30 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed, December 24, 2009
This review is from: Without the Guru: How I took my life back after thirty years (Paperback)
I was able to borrow a copy of this book and only had to pay for the postage. As other reviewers have pointed out, Finch's painful narrative reads like the story of a marriage that ended in divorce. Finch wanted personal attention. He wanted to be an important person, a kind of guiding figure within an organization, dispensing advice that would spring from the fountain of his enlightenment. Ultimately, he was denied the attention and the importance that were the objects of his longing. To a limited extent, he is honest about that.
However, the path he chose was not predicated upon getting personal attention or attaining a position of importance, nor was it based on a belief system. "The Knowledge" freely taught by Prem Rawat (Maharaji), is based upon personal experience that is potentially profound and positively life changing. "Belief" does not enter the equation. Finch, along with many others during the 1970s, helped to foster a religion based on Indian traditions. They invented a "Lord of the universe" pedestal and placed on it the teenage Prem Rawat. Ironically, the rituals they practiced included parroting the words of a dead saint which included, "Rights and rituals won't reach the goal." I was there at the time and I saw through it clearly, and probably many others did also. To most of us the religious facade was not an issue. Beliefs come and go. The experience of Knowledge was the essential ingredient, along with the inspiration that Prem Rawat has always been able to provide.
The ashrams described by Finch were set up in the West in the 1970s. They provided an essential shelter for a lot of people who had emerged from the drug sodden hippie culture of the time. Due to the religiosity that accompanied ashram life, the ashrams eventually became an obstacle to the spread of 'Knowledge' into the wider community. They were disbanded in the early 1980s as Prem Rawat pulled the rug out from under the religion that Finch had helped to foster.
To me, the most odd thing about Finch's story was that he wrote about being afraid. If he had no real inner experience, and his entire 30 year journey was based on a belief system, perhaps that would induce fear. In more than 30 years of practicing Knowledge, occasionally helping to set up events, occasionally being around Prem Rawat and associating with people who have met him, I have never felt fear or encountered anyone who did. I have felt and encountered great optimism, extreme happiness and joy, and more personal fulfillment than I could ever describe, but never fear.
After his departure, Finch joined a small group of apostates known as "ex-premies." Due to their record of harassment and hate speech, many observers regard them as a hate group. Under Finch's guidance, and increasingly aware of their poor public image, group members are now less inclined to engage in overtly hateful behavior. For that reason, IMO, Finch deserves a single star, but in terms of accuracy and literary merit, his book merits no starts at all.
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13 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Baby Thrown Out With Bathwater, June 10, 2010
Author made mistakes in dropping out of education, and making large wealth transfers to Maharaji's organisation, and writes about the era in which this took place, actually an era which ended long ago. The cover photo may well pertain to the era he experienced, but it is very Seventies, rather misleading and obsolete. Maharaji long ago discarded Hindu garb, and the trappings of Hinduism.
You may remember Mike that I was a close colleague during your days as organiser of the Brighton group around 1975/76. At the time, Maharaji was only recently arrived in the West, was extremely young, and brought with him the assumptions and cultural trappings of Indian Hinduism, much of which I found distasteful.
We both took a stand against some of the more misguided ideas found in Maharaji's followers, and I always regarded you with great respect, thought you were level headed. And we both have Physics degrees to boot.
So it comes as some surprise to learn that you took the plunge into the "hierarchy" and the ashram scene, where things were not necessarily in tune with truth and honesty, and where people competed for Maharaji's approval. The book may pertain to that by-gone era, but it seems late in the day for such a retrospective.
It seems to me many in that era suspended their God-given powers of discrimination, and neglected the most important part (for me) of Maharaji's teaching - the practice of meditation. Now we see the rancour on their ex-premie websites, and I can only conclude that they never actually experienced the real power of Creation within themselves. Certainly many hung out around Maharaji like groupies, or rode the "Grace" bandwagon, feeding off Maharaji's incredible spiritual energy, rather than establishing their own.
I never subscribed to celibate vegetarianism or ashrams, but trusted my own judgement, lived my own life, as did my friends, and Maharaji threw out such Hinduistic trappings, abolished the dysfunctional hierarchy, decades ago. My approach was eclectic - take the best, decline the rest.
Reading your account I'm reminded of the dysfunction that I side-stepped, yet you yourself dived into, and find myself torn between laughter and horror!
For my own story, my first teacher was an outstanding Vipassana Buddhist Master from Thailand, and I ran his UK meditation centre for him in my early days of spiritual quest. But the excellent Vipassana, which I revere to this day, did not enable the breakthrough to the innermost "Buddha-Nature", or Self-Knowledge, that I read about in Zen Buddhist literature. Zen emphasised the inner breakthrough to one's "original nature", and stressed its pre-eminence.
So I took the plunge, assiduously studied Japanese, gave up the world, and spent two years in austere Zen monasteries in that exquisite country, with two outstanding Japanese masters as my teachers. Yet still I could not reach the Essence I sought, and when my Abbot retired I returned to the West and checked out Maharaji, despite my minimalist Zen leanings - diametrically opposed to the lavish extravagance of Indian spirituality. "Lord Of The Universe" - ha!
Well, Maharaji delivered the goods! After all my efforts, and 35 years later I continue to experience the powerful radiance within, that my previous masters could not transmit. It is the essence of all religions, but never mentioned in the Christianity I grew up with. Doctrine and scriptures were never enough for me.
Those who still reproach him for the past I can only assume to have never tapped into this exquisite ocean of Self-Nature, and so feel grievances that date from a bygone age. Hindu trappings, devotional practices, ashrams, mahatmas etc. were swept away decades ago, and all that is left today is the core that I saw right from the beginning - the shining experience within of your True Self, available free of charge, as it always was.
However, there is no doubt that Maharaji definitely encouraged emphasis to be placed on him, the Guru, back in those days. It was what the Hindus call "bhakti" yoga - devotion to Guru, while meditation, practice within oneself, is "raja" yoga. Bhakti is clearly suited to the Hindu/Indian temperament but hardly suited to independent-thinking westerners. I always tried to hold the two in balance, with "raja" predominant.
My own donations have been modest; enough to support public presentations, comparable to what a decent Christian would put in the collection box each Sunday. As I pointed out to the ex-premie website guys, the essence for me is not Maharaji the person, but MY diligent practice of meditation - precisely what Maharaji is teaching today, in the real world of 2010.
To have travelled the path that Mike has travelled, and been unable to separate the gold from the dross, throwing away both, is unfortunate. Mike has truly thrown out the baby with the bathwater.
I know many today who have followed this path since the Seventies, or only recently, and are hugely grateful to Maharaji for his great gift. I honour all my Buddhist teachers, but Maharaji has given me Buddhism's essence.
.
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22 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent book, November 22, 2009
This review is from: Without the Guru: How I took my life back after thirty years (Paperback)
Without the guru is not a book just for people who were caught in similar situations, giving themselves unconditionally to someone and letting him absolute power over them. This is a book about human life, of a person who grew up in the 60's, and how he was affected by the zeitgeist, but not only. This particular person had a burning need to know the truth, to find out more about himself as a human-being and to be able to transcendent himself.
Unfortunately he met the Guru, guru Maharaji or in his present name, Prem Rawat. Mike Finch, in his outmost sincerity gave everything he had to that guru, emotionally, spiritually and materially, and believed without any shadow of a doubt that he was serving the Lord of the universe who came to this earth in a human body to save us. Mike did not invent this myth, he simply believed the explicit claim of Guru Maharaji and the entourage of mahatmas who came with him to the west. After 30 years of outstanding devotion, of ups and downs, of acceptance and rejection of his pure love, and after maturing and realizing that he was almost driven to despair and insanity by this impossible path and impossible guru, he makes all the way back to his independent self, to a successful and full recovery and to becoming a person who can contribute so much to our society and human search.
I find the book most compelling, painfully honest, whereby the author let us into the most intimate and fragile realms of his psych and soul while being loyal to the British tradition of understatment and reserve. Even in the most elevated moments or the most painful moments the author maintains a basic dignity and respect. Yet his style of wrtiting allures the reader deeper into his journey, and intertwined with a refined sense of humour.
This book is a must read.
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