IT was one of the better-dressed sets of hosts Lowell Lec had seen in a while. The ushers, each wearing a button of their mentor, were dressed in coats and ties, blouses and skirts. It might have been a gathering of young Republicans, except that the buttons bore pictures of Guru Maharaj Ji, the 15-year-old "Perfect Spiritual Master." Stage right, an empty chair covered with white satin and bed ecked with flowers stood as a constant eerie reminder of the boy-saviour.

Lowell Lec was filled to capacity. The Divine Light Mission, the organization of the followers of Maharaj Ji, generally draws pretty good crowds to "Satsangs" or Holy Discourses on the Harvard campus. But this time no more than half of the crowd were the faithful; the rest were the merely curious, drawn not by the discourse, but the discourser. For Rennie Davis, early SDS leader and member of the Chicago Seven, was now giving a May Day speech for and on his new-found religion--yeah, Rennie Davis was now one of Them.

But you can't put the star on without a warm-up, so the evening started with a little rock. Lead singer Alan Thomas travels with Davis as part of the nation-wide tour whose theme is "Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?" In a song, Thomas elaborated on the question:

What keeps the universe in motion?

Can problems be solved by devotion?

Is there truly a master plan? Can

This planet be saved by man?

Who is Guru Maharaj Ji?

Who is the lover of your soul?

That's the question you must ask;

The answer you must know.

During the singing a guy jumped up from the audience into the satin chair, and pantomimed a put-on guru: blowing kisses to the crowd, basking in their adulation. There was no doubt as to his particular answer to The Question: the Guru was a charlatan. Half of the crowd roared its approval, delighted with the sacrilege.

The other half of the audience, especially the people with the lapel buttons, didn't think it was so funny. A couple of ushers came up to the stage and talked to the guy. Hoping to escalate the confrontation, he refused to budge. The crowd salivated in anticipation, the singer forgotten.

The ushers simply sat down again. The pseudo-guru continued his gesticulations, but the crowd was bored with him and returned its attention to the music. With a sheepish gesture the blasphemer made his exit. Advantage: Guru.

The next act in the show was a dance troupe, with a polished Brechtian little mime about the dog-eat-dog world. In the background a slide projector flashed pictures of atrocities in Indochina. Again a question--What is the way out of all this? Blackout. And on stage appears Davis to give The Answer.