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Mike Finch was one of the
first Western followers of Guru Maharaj Ji (Maharaji / Prem Rawat), and in the early years
spent a lot of time in his company. He counted Maharaji as a
close friend, as well as his teacher and Master. Mike still
meditates regularly, and values the extraordinary
experiences that can be achieved through meditation. Mike
originally posted the letter below on the public ex-premie forum,
and has requested that it be posted here.
This letter, and other essays from Mike about his time with Maharaji, can now also be found on his personal website.
In 2009, Mike published his book, "Without the Guru" about his experiences as a follower of Maharaji. Click on the image for further details.
Maharaji,
You are known now to the public as Prem Rawat, but for the
30 or so years that I gave my life to you, I knew you as
Maharaji, or Guru Maharaji, so that is how I will continue
to refer to you.
I have had a long and involved relationship with you,
ranging from sublime moments of incredible beauty, good
times, mediocre times, through boredom and frustration, to
pain, abuse and feelings of desertion.
I have withdrawn from you in stages.
For the 20 years up to 1990, you were my Lord - someone who
could reach into my heart whatever my situation, and rescue
me. I practiced Knowledge almost everyday, and begged and
prayed for your grace to make the Knowledge work, in full
confidence that you could and would do this if I were open
to it. And if it didn't happen, well then I was obviously
not open enough, and needed to surrender to you more.
In the early 90's, I had my first doubts that you were the
Lord; perhaps you did not control this amazing grace that
could enlighten me. But that was OK, because the Knowledge
was internal, between me and God, and could still take me to
the deepest place; even if your role was just to give the
Knowledge, and remind me of the importance of it
periodically, that was enough.
In the mid 90's I met you briefly backstage at the Atlantic
City event, and that was the last time I spoke to you. Since
then, the accumulation of 30 years pursuing an impossible
goal - or to be precise, pursuing two goals which are
mutually impossible to fulfill - had become an overbearing
weight from which I had to escape.
The two goals I refer to that a premie has to fulfill are
these: The inner goal of finding their heart or center, and
the outer goal of being connected with you. The essence of
your message for 30 years has been that you need to pursue
both goals, and that you cannot get one without the
other.
I see now that achieving these two goals together is an
impossible task. It is quite possible to achieve either goal
on its own. I believe that the first goal, the human search
for ultimate meaning and freedom within the human
consciousness, is both possible and a worthwhile endeavour;
in doing this, other people can be teachers, but no other
person can become the master to whom you dedicate your
life.
It is also of course possible to attain the second goal - a
connection with you as a person, devotion to you as the
Master. For most premies this meant being near you
physically, or at least having access to you; selling family
and career to be with you at an event on the other side of
the world, selling anything to be seated near you, and so
on. A particularly virulent form of this devotion was the
urge to be in the inner circle around you. During my 30
years as a premie I have observed this phenomenon closely
and intimately - sometimes from the inside, as someone in
the inner circle, but usually from the outside, as someone
who was trying desperately to climb up the ladder to the
inner circle.
The interesting thing about this phenomenon, is that I
really did not want to be near you, or rub shoulders with
other inner circle players - I only did so because I thought
it was the passport to the first goal of inner contentment.
I now see that it actually prevented inner contentment.
Ironic.
So that in a nutshell is why I no longer consider you my
master, nor practice your Knowledge. The first goal of inner
discovery I have always wanted, and still want. I took you
as my master to help me fulfill that goal, which you
promised to do; but you introduced another goal, centered
around yourself, which in fact made it impossible to fulfill
the first goal. Unfortunately, for 30 years I accepted your
message that the second goal of a connection or devotion to
you was necessary to attain the first goal.
To see and logically understand the dynamics of the last 30
years is one thing, but of course there is a lot of emotion
and feeling too. As I have said, there were good times and
profound experiences. At the time, I thought the deep
experiences I had were due to your grace; now I think they
were due to my grace, meaning that I had them independently
of you. I did of course learn much from you; the problem is
that I had to invest so much - way too much - to learn what
I did.
So my predominant feeling now is one of grief and anger. I
grieve for the last 30 years: for the careers given up to be
ready to go anywhere anytime to do your bidding; for the
relationships given up to be in the ashram or 'available for
service'; for the money given up in order to be free of ego
(I gave you a house, inheritances, wages and enough spare
cash over 30 years that would have left me financially
comfortable for the rest of my life had I not given it all
to you.)
I grieve for a book I wrote that was suppressed after
writing it, because the initial suggestion for writing it
came from your brother SatPal. I grieve for the lost
thoughts and dreams, my own thoughts, lost because they were
not allowed to exist in a premie, otherwise he was 'in his
mind'. I grieve for what might have been, had I not been
marching up a dead-end alley, all the time proclaiming to
myself and the world that I was marching along the golden
highway to liberation. I grieve for all the people that I
tried so earnestly to convince that this dead-end alley was
the glorious road that they should be marching on too.
I am not sure how you see yourself these days. Do you see
yourself still as the Perfect Master, needing of course to
tone it down for public consumption, but still the living
embodiment of that grace, without which no one can really
benefit from the Knowledge techniques ? Or do you privately
think of that as a Hindu myth, and you are content to live
off it - and live very well off it, like a family business,
as your detractors maintain ? Or was it a gradual change
over the years from one to the other ?
To be honest, I don't really care - my grief is felt and
expressed, and now I intend to move on. As the English
expression says, there is no point in crying over spilt
milk. Although I left you 18 months ago (I first publicly
posted on the ex-premie Forum in January 2001) it has taken
me these 18 months to fully extricate myself from your
influence.
So I thank you for the good times; for all the rest, and the
grief I have expressed in this letter, I drop them from my
shoulders - thus ! The dream I had before I met you, I still
have; and I am going for it, unencumbered and feeling very
much lighter.
-- Mike
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