Sporting a smile that curls somewhere between warmth and omnipotence, the boy with the face that has plastered Harvard Square for two weeks came to Boston Saturday to make his pitch.
"All I promise is peace--that's my contract with you," Guru Maharaj Ji told an overflow audience of 6700 followers at War Memorial Auditorium. He spoke from a red velvet throne mounted on a satin covered platform, and covered with a suspended semi-circle of cut glass crystals that broke the auditorium lights into an artificial rainbow.
Insulated from his devotees by security guards uniformed in white carnations, he spoke in a shrill, small-boy's voice, with only a trace of an accent. In his rambling, anecdotal, half-hour satsang discourse, the Guru said that happiness springs from knowledge of the kinetic energy within each person.
"This knowledge is very far out," he said. "If you can't find it anywhere else, I can give you peace." The guru claims to have a practical plan to achieve world peace. This plan will be 'fully revealed" during the coming year, a spokesman for the Divine Light Mission, the organization of the guru's followers, said Saturday.
Who is Guru Maharaj Ji? An official biography says that he was born in India 15 years ago, the youngest of four sons of Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, "Perfect Master of his time and founder of the Divine Light Mission." His followers claim that Maharaj Ji, who first gave discourse at the age of two-and-a-half, (and his first English discourse at six), became a Perfect Master at eight, barely two weeks after his father's death. A Perfect Master is "one who can teach the Knowledge of God."
The guru's Boston visit is part of his third "world peace tour," which will culminate in a three-day celebration planned for November in the Houston Astrodome.
The Divine Light Mission claims six million followers worldwide, and 40,000 in the United States, including 1200 devotees in the Boston area. The organization, which says that it is supported mainly through donations of money and services by members, has six ashrams (residences) in the U.S.
The Mission has also set up a health clinic in New York; a chain of Divine Sales stores offering second-hand goods; a small school at its national headquarters in Denver, Col.; the Divine United Organization to enlist "efforts of all trying to improve the condition of the world;" Shri Hans Aviation, which operates two small planes in Riverside, Calif.; and, Divine Systems Enterprises Inc., an organization of wholesale dealerships in electronic equipment (Divinatronics), duplicating machines and office furniture (Divine Office Systems) and musical instruments (Divine Harmony).
And...
In addition, it published a bi-weekly newspaper, the Divine Times, and a professional-looking monthly magazine, And It Is Divine, which features a centerfold photo of the guru in every issue, and is doing well at $1 a copy. On Sunday. The Boston Globe estimated that the organization's income is $250.000 a month.
Maharaj Ji himself has been given several residences, a limousine, and many expensive gifts by his devotees. He says that these possessions have been given to him "to help spread the knowledge. If Jesus came today, you are not going to give him a donkey to ride on. Is that right?"
"The gifts are only material things, given to him by grateful people," one Divine Light member said. "He's not attached to them."
The core of the guru's teachings is the Divine Light, a physical, revelatory experience. After attending satsang, where the basic outline of Divine Light's message is discussed, those who decide to join the faithful attend a "knowledge session." At this stage, a Mahatma--one of the guru's several thousand apostles--reveals the "Knowledge" through instruction in meditative techniques.
Other meditation techniques focus concentration upon a phrase such as a mantra, or upon a physical process like breathing, utilizing them as intermediaries in order to reach a state closer to God. The Divine Light technique claims to allow devotees to meditate directly upon God, without use of an intermediary.
God is the life force which is found identically within each human, they claim. He is manifested, say devotees, by the Divine Light, which is the main object of their meditation. Devotees claim the Divine Light--described in the Divine Light Mission's official glossary as "a self-effulgent light which can be seen within"--to be the most brilliant sight they have ever seen. Some have claimed to see the light "shining through walls."
