Religious Scholarship
George Chryssides describes what Rawat terms 'Knowledge' as based on self-understanding and an inner self, identical with the divine.
James V. Downton, who studied Rawat's followers for five years in the 70s, says "these young people had a spiritual experience which deeply affected them and changed the course of their lives. It was an experience which moved many to tears of joy, for they had found the answer they had been seeking".
Marc Galanter, a physician, and professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at the New York University Medical Center, writes that "over the long term of membership, meditation also played an important role in supporting a convert's continuing involvement. An analysis of the relationship between the time members spent in meditation and the decline in their level of neurotic distress revealed that greater meditation time was associated with diminished neurotic distress".
Ron Geaves, an expert in comparative religions and a student of Prem Rawat, writes that Rawat, rather than considering himself a charismatic leader, deemphasizes the sealing of the master disciple relationship, and focuses on correct practice and staying in touch through participation or listening.
Stephen J. Hunt describes Rawat's major focus as being on stillness, peace and contentment within the individual, and his 'Knowledge' consists of the techniques to obtain them.
Writing in the 1980s, Paul Schnabel, a sociologist, referenced Van der Lans, a religious psychologist employed at the Catholic University of Nijmegen saying that among his Western students, Rawat appeared to stimulate an uncritical attitude, which gave them an opportunity to project their fantasies of divinity onto his person. According to Schnabel, the divine nature of the guru is a standard element of Eastern religion, but removed from its cultural context, and confounded with the Western understanding of God as a father, what is lost is the difference between the guru's person and that which the guru symbolizes—resulting in what was described as limitless personality worship.
Read more about this topic: Prem Rawat
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