Prem Pal Singh Rawat was born on December 10, 1957, in kankhal, india also known as Maharaji and formerly known as Guru Maharaj Ji and Balyogeshwar, teaches a meditation practice which he calls Knowledge, consisting of four techniques to help a individual focus their attention within and discover a world of profound peace. At the age of eight, he succeeded his father Hans Ji Maharaj as leader of the Divine Light Mission (Divya Sandesh Parishad) and as the new Satguru to millions of followers.
Guru Maharaj Ji since his very childhood used to practice meditation. He was 
always in meditation and he was very reserved in his speech. He was not like an ordinary worldly child, he never wept and he was just very reserved in manner. On very special occasions, on a rare occasion, he would make speeches, and each one was always very meaningful, very significant and to the point.Although Shri Bal Bhagwan Ji, Shri Bhole Nathe Ji and Shri Raja Ji are the elder brothers of Guru Maharaj Ji, they used to pranam to him. Although in the Indian culture the younger brother salutes the elder, al! the three elder brothers used to salute the youngest. In their childhood, the four brothers used to play very exceptional games. They were extremely playful, but their play was special. Shri Bal Bhagwan Ji, Bhole Ji, Shri Raja Ji Maharaj ordered the mahatmas to bring bricks, and they collected many any bricks. With these bricks they used to make a stage for Guru Maharaj Ji, a very high pedestal. Then they would make al! the arrangements and in the end Guru Maharaj Ji would come and sit on the stage. He would say, "Okay, now everybody sit, take your seats." And then Shri Bhole Ji was just very humble and with folded hands he always asked Guru Maharaj Ji, "Maharaj Ji, what should I do, what should I do, what service should I do?" From his high pedestal Guru Maharaj Ji used to give satsang and what he used to say was that, "This human body is only for meditation, so you people should do meditation." Then he himself used to demonstrate how to do meditation.
He gained further prominence at thirteen when he traveled to the West to spread his message.Prem Rawat has established his teachings in over eighty countries, and in the early 1970s the Divine Light Mission was judged to be the fastest growing new religious movement in the West.The core of Rawat's teaching is that the human need for fulfillment can be satisfied by turning inward to discover a constant source of joy. He emphasizes a direct experience of transcendence, rather than a body of dogma. He says he offers practical ways to achieve spiritual tranquility by anyone. Though he originally aspired to bring about world peace, the idea being that peace would come to the world as individuals experienced inner peace, he now places his attention on helping individuals, which according to him takes priority over societal aims.
Prem rawat
words of peace
"The power you need in your life is not physical power. The power you need in your life is the power to fight the darkness. And nothing does that better than a little light," Prem Rawat says. "Light the candle of belief, and it will become, 'I know.' And then you will have light."
"Admire the good in you, and the good that is in other people. To live this life in that joy, in that completeness. To know that journey was made well, and the journey was, is, and will be, enjoyable. That's heaven," Prem Rawat says. " 'I am enjoying this journey.' I think everybody that is alive on the face of this earth needs to be able to say that. That is the day you begin to understand what peace is all about."
“So, for me, I want you to experience the joy that resides within you. Not the one that comes from outside. Not the one that is created. The one that you were born with and will die with. The one joy that resides in you that is capable of bringing you peace.”
“If what I have to say to you could simplify your life even a little a bit, that would make me very happy. Your life, your existence, the gift you have been given—it’s all so simple, the breath that comes into you and then leaves and then comes again. The question is, how did it get so complicated. "
"Who am I? What am I doing here? What is the purpose of my life? Why do you suppose there isn't a book titled Three Most Frequently Asked Questions and Their Answers?" Prem Rawat says to his audience in Lisbon. "Because the answer to these questions does not exist in words. It has to be felt, in that one very special place that you have. And it is called your heart."
"Maybe on the outside, there is a difference in the colour of our skin. The difference is this extremely thin layer of epidermis. While we perceive our differences, we are in fact very similar. Peel away the skin of this world and you will find that everybody is looking for peace. Everybody is looking for fulfilment,for joy, for the ultimate satisfaction in this life."
"We are all looking for some kind of satisfaction. There are different kinds of satisfaction in this world. But there is one satisfaction that we all are looking for. And that is peace. And remember that peace is nos outside. Peace is inside."
These were the words spoken by Maharaji in different venues around the globe.
The knowledge techniques
There are four techniques of meditation that Maharaji teaches, which are practised one after the other sequentially, in a given order, in the same meditation sitting. He used to stipulate that a sitting should be no shorter than one hour, giving approximately equal time of 15 minutes or so to each technique. Now he has dropped the minimum of one hour, but still requires the meditator to give equal importance to each technique.
Maharaji used to give the techniques spiritual-sounding and poetic names: Light, Music, Holy Name (or the Word), and Nectar. These days they are prosaically known as number one, two, three, and four. Each technique engages a particular sense: seeing, hearing, kinesthetic feeling, and tasting/smelling respectively.
They are also given very secretively, and at the time of initiation the follower has to make a vow that they will not reveal to anyone what these techniques are. In fact, however, they are widely published on the Internet (including the ex-premie web site). And once you start researching and comparing notes, you find that many gurus and spiritual 'masters' are giving the same, or very similar, techniques. Furthermore, these meditation techniques are standard in a popular branch of Hinduism which started in the mid-19th century (the Sant Mat, or Radhasoami, traditions), and which now has literally thousands of gurus giving these techniques, or slight variants thereof.
Each technique isolates an area of the body which the practioner must concentrate on, using the sense appropriate for that technique.
Maharaji as Teacher
A very interesting phenomenon is this: Maharaji is precise about the physical aspect of each technique; but does not teach, or talk about, what the meditator has to do mentally with each technique. So Maharaji's followers may be doing the same four techniques in the same way physically, but the mental focus differs widely. Some people just concentrate on the highlighted physical spot, in a very one-pointed and exclusive way; others use the physical spot more as a reference point, and try to have a more open concentration around it. Some try to see or sense through the physical object of concentration into an inner world, real or imagined; and some try specifically not to do this!
Maharaji's apologists explain this lack of instruction, except for the physical, as profound and the sign of a true teacher; the inference being that where the meditation takes a person is beyond words and instruction, and so Maharaji leads you to the physical object of concentration, which is a portal into your true being, but no words or explanation can tell you how to go through that portal into the deathless.
Another viewpoint is that Maharaji probably does not himself practise the techniques, has no interest in them for himself or for anybody else, picked them up 'off the shelf' as it were from his father, and that there is nothing remotely meaningful that can be said about how to focus on the physical place each technique pinpoints, so it is best to keep a mysterious silence and hope that it is taken for something deep and wise.
The Techniques and where to Focus
In the first technique, or Light, the sense used is that of your sight or vision, and where to place your hands is specifically stated: the thumb and middle finger of your dominant hand stroke across each eyeball from outer corner to inner, coming to rest with a light but firm touch on the upper inner corner of each eyeball. Your forefinger rests in the middle of your forehead, just above the eyebrow line (your 'third eye'). In the early 70's the mahatmas who gave people Knowledge on Maharaji's behalf, and who performed this technique on them, often used to press the eyeballs hard, in their enthusiasm. Certainly if you do press your eyeballs hard you see swirling colors, and we used to think this was the beginning of the Divine Light, and we were on the way, rather than the neural entopic phenomenon that every child discovers when they squeeze their eyes. I have heard several stories of premies who got detached retinas due to practising this technique, but I have never verified any of these stories. After a while Maharaji told his mahatmas and instructors to give Knowledge the 'gentle way', emphasizing that it was not the pressure on the eyeballs that counted, and the point of touching the eyeballs with the thumb and middle finger was simply to steady them to allow you to focus better.
But where you are to actually focus your sight is and never was stated - do you stare through the colored shapes and blackness behind the closed eyelids into infinity? Do you focus right on the back of your eyelids, trying to make sense of the swirling colors, the 'black light', you see there? Do you actually focus not on what you see, but on a spot on your forehead? Do you turn your eyeballs upwards to this spot, or do you keep a level horizontal gaze? Generations of meditators have asked these questions - the master is silent.
In the second technique, or Music, again where to place your hands is specifically shown: each thumb is placed in the ear and each hand is twisted upwards so that the four fingers of each hand rest on the top of your head, with each thumbtip lightly but firmly in each earhole, sealed with the twisting action. Both of these two techniques - Light and Music - involved holding the arms up at head height, and it was the sign of a devoted and serious meditator to be able to keep them fully up without moving them or trembling for the duration of the techinque (usually 15 minutes for each technique).
But how do you listen to the Divine Music? You are told to listen to what you hear, but what is that? The Sound of the Spheres, or the sound of silence. Or is it a sound like a waterfall? Is that just a physical manifestion of the pulse in the thumbs in the ear, or the trapped air in the closed ear canal? And if it is, do you listen to it, or do you listen through it, trying to find some ineffable celestial sound beyond it? Are you trying to listen to a silence beyond it? Again, most meditators have these questions, but there are no answers from the master.
The third technique, or Holy Name, or the Word, involves following your breath. Many meditation traditions involve watching the breath in some way, but most traditions give clear instructions on how to do this, since in fact you can use your breath in many different ways to create many different mind states. But Maharaji says very little about it. In the early 1970's you were supposed to imagine, or in fact actually hear, the sound of the in and out breath as so-hung: 'so' on the in-breath, 'hung' on the out-breath (so hung up, as one wag said!) This changed in the mid-1970's to a very vague instruction to just 'follow the breath'.
Later, Maharaji's most common instruction while demonstrating the Holy Name technique is to move his hand up and down in front of him as he breathes in and out, the implication being that you are to follow the in-breath and out-breath upwards and downwards (or is it downwards and upwards?) from your nose to the base of the lungs or the abdomen and up again. Another instruction he sometimes gives is that you follow your breath like you are sitting on an inner swing, with Maharaji pushing this swing. This is one of the clearest signs in recent times that Maharaji is still inferring that he is a power inside the meditator helping and guiding their meditation, and contradicts the public pronouncements that he is merely an inspirational speaker.
The fourth and final technique, or Nectar, involves the tongue and the taste sensation. Again, the instructions what to do with your tongue are specific, and is the yogi technique of Kechari Mudra, where you curl your tongue up to the roof of your mouth. Again, in the 1970's the technique was fairly extreme, in that you were encouraged to stretch your tongue back so that it went behind the uvula (that skin flap hanging down at the back of your mouth at the entrance to your throat) and then up into your nasal cavity. The ultimate aim was to connect the tip of your tongue to the base of your brain and become enlightened! But again, after a few years Maharaji changed the technique to a gentler version, where you simply rested the tip of your tongue on the roof of the mouth, and curled it back as far as was comfortable. All references to the uvula and nasal cavity were dropped.
Maharaji used to give the techniques spiritual-sounding and poetic names: Light, Music, Holy Name (or the Word), and Nectar. These days they are prosaically known as number one, two, three, and four. Each technique engages a particular sense: seeing, hearing, kinesthetic feeling, and tasting/smelling respectively.
They are also given very secretively, and at the time of initiation the follower has to make a vow that they will not reveal to anyone what these techniques are. In fact, however, they are widely published on the Internet (including the ex-premie web site). And once you start researching and comparing notes, you find that many gurus and spiritual 'masters' are giving the same, or very similar, techniques. Furthermore, these meditation techniques are standard in a popular branch of Hinduism which started in the mid-19th century (the Sant Mat, or Radhasoami, traditions), and which now has literally thousands of gurus giving these techniques, or slight variants thereof.
Each technique isolates an area of the body which the practioner must concentrate on, using the sense appropriate for that technique.
Maharaji as Teacher
A very interesting phenomenon is this: Maharaji is precise about the physical aspect of each technique; but does not teach, or talk about, what the meditator has to do mentally with each technique. So Maharaji's followers may be doing the same four techniques in the same way physically, but the mental focus differs widely. Some people just concentrate on the highlighted physical spot, in a very one-pointed and exclusive way; others use the physical spot more as a reference point, and try to have a more open concentration around it. Some try to see or sense through the physical object of concentration into an inner world, real or imagined; and some try specifically not to do this!
Maharaji's apologists explain this lack of instruction, except for the physical, as profound and the sign of a true teacher; the inference being that where the meditation takes a person is beyond words and instruction, and so Maharaji leads you to the physical object of concentration, which is a portal into your true being, but no words or explanation can tell you how to go through that portal into the deathless.
Another viewpoint is that Maharaji probably does not himself practise the techniques, has no interest in them for himself or for anybody else, picked them up 'off the shelf' as it were from his father, and that there is nothing remotely meaningful that can be said about how to focus on the physical place each technique pinpoints, so it is best to keep a mysterious silence and hope that it is taken for something deep and wise.
The Techniques and where to Focus
In the first technique, or Light, the sense used is that of your sight or vision, and where to place your hands is specifically stated: the thumb and middle finger of your dominant hand stroke across each eyeball from outer corner to inner, coming to rest with a light but firm touch on the upper inner corner of each eyeball. Your forefinger rests in the middle of your forehead, just above the eyebrow line (your 'third eye'). In the early 70's the mahatmas who gave people Knowledge on Maharaji's behalf, and who performed this technique on them, often used to press the eyeballs hard, in their enthusiasm. Certainly if you do press your eyeballs hard you see swirling colors, and we used to think this was the beginning of the Divine Light, and we were on the way, rather than the neural entopic phenomenon that every child discovers when they squeeze their eyes. I have heard several stories of premies who got detached retinas due to practising this technique, but I have never verified any of these stories. After a while Maharaji told his mahatmas and instructors to give Knowledge the 'gentle way', emphasizing that it was not the pressure on the eyeballs that counted, and the point of touching the eyeballs with the thumb and middle finger was simply to steady them to allow you to focus better.
But where you are to actually focus your sight is and never was stated - do you stare through the colored shapes and blackness behind the closed eyelids into infinity? Do you focus right on the back of your eyelids, trying to make sense of the swirling colors, the 'black light', you see there? Do you actually focus not on what you see, but on a spot on your forehead? Do you turn your eyeballs upwards to this spot, or do you keep a level horizontal gaze? Generations of meditators have asked these questions - the master is silent.
In the second technique, or Music, again where to place your hands is specifically shown: each thumb is placed in the ear and each hand is twisted upwards so that the four fingers of each hand rest on the top of your head, with each thumbtip lightly but firmly in each earhole, sealed with the twisting action. Both of these two techniques - Light and Music - involved holding the arms up at head height, and it was the sign of a devoted and serious meditator to be able to keep them fully up without moving them or trembling for the duration of the techinque (usually 15 minutes for each technique).
But how do you listen to the Divine Music? You are told to listen to what you hear, but what is that? The Sound of the Spheres, or the sound of silence. Or is it a sound like a waterfall? Is that just a physical manifestion of the pulse in the thumbs in the ear, or the trapped air in the closed ear canal? And if it is, do you listen to it, or do you listen through it, trying to find some ineffable celestial sound beyond it? Are you trying to listen to a silence beyond it? Again, most meditators have these questions, but there are no answers from the master.
The third technique, or Holy Name, or the Word, involves following your breath. Many meditation traditions involve watching the breath in some way, but most traditions give clear instructions on how to do this, since in fact you can use your breath in many different ways to create many different mind states. But Maharaji says very little about it. In the early 1970's you were supposed to imagine, or in fact actually hear, the sound of the in and out breath as so-hung: 'so' on the in-breath, 'hung' on the out-breath (so hung up, as one wag said!) This changed in the mid-1970's to a very vague instruction to just 'follow the breath'.
Later, Maharaji's most common instruction while demonstrating the Holy Name technique is to move his hand up and down in front of him as he breathes in and out, the implication being that you are to follow the in-breath and out-breath upwards and downwards (or is it downwards and upwards?) from your nose to the base of the lungs or the abdomen and up again. Another instruction he sometimes gives is that you follow your breath like you are sitting on an inner swing, with Maharaji pushing this swing. This is one of the clearest signs in recent times that Maharaji is still inferring that he is a power inside the meditator helping and guiding their meditation, and contradicts the public pronouncements that he is merely an inspirational speaker.
The fourth and final technique, or Nectar, involves the tongue and the taste sensation. Again, the instructions what to do with your tongue are specific, and is the yogi technique of Kechari Mudra, where you curl your tongue up to the roof of your mouth. Again, in the 1970's the technique was fairly extreme, in that you were encouraged to stretch your tongue back so that it went behind the uvula (that skin flap hanging down at the back of your mouth at the entrance to your throat) and then up into your nasal cavity. The ultimate aim was to connect the tip of your tongue to the base of your brain and become enlightened! But again, after a few years Maharaji changed the technique to a gentler version, where you simply rested the tip of your tongue on the roof of the mouth, and curled it back as far as was comfortable. All references to the uvula and nasal cavity were dropped.
Man of peace
Every living human being has something wonderful happening inside. Within each person is a supreme beauty. Within each person is peace, joy, the feeling of the heart. I offer inspiration, reminding people of the beauty of existence; I remind people that life itself is a gift.I encourage people to know that it is possible to open windows of understanding so they can be fulfilled. I see each human beings as complete. Within each one shines a sun so bright that it can make any darkness go away. What I am proposing is that within each individual is the domain where peace can be found. This is the message that i feel is sorely needed in this world. How important it is for that one message to be accessible to everyone. More than just words, I offer a practical way to feel the contentment that is already within. My message is neither new nor old- it is timeless. The peace , the contentment, that we seek is within. It was, is, and always will be. Now is the time to turn within. What i offer is a gift from one being to another. I want to make this possibility available to people. And if they want to pursue it, I want to help them however I can.
Maharaji.
Maharaji.
People really should understand who they are and what is the purpose of life. And that is something to feel, not be told. This knowledge is an individual experiance for everybody. And everybody can actually feel it within their heart.
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