Customer Reviews

Without the Guru: How I took my life back after thirty years

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.
.

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.

Whilst a clearly articulate writer, Mike comes across as a very bitter man, and never seems to take responsibility for his own life. He sounds as if he wanted to be a 'guru' or leader. Well maybe with this book, he will have fulfilled this ambition. But, Mike - get a grip and get on with your life.

This book is self serving, not illuminating. So the embittered and resentful have decided to put on the mask of quiet respectability. Mike Finch being the great 'writer' of the ex-premie cult had to be the author, naturally. There's a change from their rabid online forum. Clearly that was having no effect anywhere, cyber or otherwise. Let's try a 'sensible' book they thought..then we'll be heard!

As we see clearly in the 5 star academically guised 'reviews' the sorry and angry have banded behind their intellectual superior Mike, he who lost the most when their little guru cult dream was crushed. He also who has the most to gain by writing his 'expose' on a figure who he embraced with unusual gusto and enthusiasm. He had to be seen as the Close One to Maharaji, and still does apparently. But before being fooled by this bitter account it must be noted that Maharaji first actually gave Mike Finch the wave goodbye when he saw that here was yet another ego tripping peacock who's only ambition was to be seen with the star attraction rather than help in the distribution of the gift. The first of many false impressions Mr Finch gives is that he leaves the 'guru'. No, if anything the teacher dismissed the student.
Now That would be an interesting story!
But sadly for Dr Finch his target is the child guru who happened to mature into one of the world's most respected teachers, speakers and philanthropists, with him have matured an uncountable number of grateful friends and students around the world. So the book falls rather into the abyss of irrelevant anonymity than stand as a relevant comment on the times. It has no bearing on what's happening now. Apart from his free talks and free gift of Knowledge Prem Rawat is helping many thousands of the suffering around the world find sight, shelter, water, food and clothing though the Prem Rawat Foundation, right now they are engaged in a Haiti rescue package. This is the real world and we are here now! This book is a fanciful claim to represent a time 30 years ago which is now beyond any summary or measure, the author claims knowledge of an experience that can never be adequately described because it is individually experienced. His journey is his alone and he is trying to take others down the now familiar path of post enlightenment enlightenment. Yes, a joke indeed. Mike's candle blew out, big deal, so what. Has yours? Whatever candle it is, flame on!
So the banished attention seeker now finds solace in reading and writing books, where he knows better than anything that the truth is nowhere to be found. There's the glorious irony.

The gift Maharaji brought in the 70's is the same now as it was then, free and unconditional. The cult was made by those who needed a cult and Mike Finch needed to be seen at the top of the cult leadership pile. When the cult was ended by Maharaji - what happened to all the Mike Finches? Here is the sorry tale of one of them. Your time would be much better spent weeding the garden.

My first impression of the book can be summarized as follows: If Dr Finch make claims that are tantamount to admitting that he was gullible and an easily led person (for 30 years, no less), his current perspective about his previous affiliation can't, consequently, be worth much, can it? If he was misled then, is he maybe misled now? If we had met him 20 years ago and we disbelieved his claims, under what premises should we believe him now?

Painfully similar to the well-know "divorcee syndrome", we are familiar with the narrative: "I gave him/her the best years of my life, (10/20/30 years) and did this with honesty and unwavering commitment, only to find out that I was duped/cheated. He/She was really not the person what I believed to be. I had doubts from the beginning about his/her love for me and my love for him/her, but chose to perilously ignore them. Now I am 'free' and I have recovered my life"--a narrative that is painfully one-sided, self-serving, and inherently apologetic about the divorcee's past life-decisions and behaviors.

In summary, Finch seeks to polarize his former and present identities, accentuating a personal transformation akin to a religious conversion. The intensity in which Finch embraces his new moral vision, seeks atonement through a public confession and testimony in this book. This suggests that his new identity can be analyzed as a type of quasi-religious conversion in its own right at best, an apology for his past at worst (he has to, otherwise how can he explain 30 years of devotion?), or both.

Finch's memoir, exiting a career as an "insider" to become an apostate (claims that, by the way, we can't verify), is given meaning in his book to the extent that the social and moral distance between the two words can be maximized for best effect. Finch's folies de grandeur and saccharine prose will be too tedious to read for most people (that is if you are not an apostate yourself, in which case you will heap praise as some reviewers have done here). If you want to know more about this phenomenon, the politics of apostasy are well researched and documented. See for example The Politics of Religious Apostasy: The Role of Apostates in the Transformation of Religious Movements (Religion in the Age of Transformation).

"Hell has no fury like a woman scorned" seems to ring true here, despite Finch being a male and despite his attempts to disguise his "fury" under the not-so-believable cloak of properness in his discourse. The apologetic tone is too obvious and, quite frankly, boring and predictable.

Self-publishing outlets, such as Amazom BookSurge (the publisher of this book), bring out some good quality publications such as the wonderfully mischievous children's story "The Witch with an Itch" by Richard Spalding, but unfortunately breeds also self-serving vanity books such as this one. We can only hope that Finch will be able to recover the $794 that he paid to have his "memoir" published (I doubt it). You can do the math: Amazon keeps 55% of the cover price.

I note that some of the negative reviews consist of personal attacks against Mike Finch by current followers of the guru, who appear to be more interested in discrediting Mr. Finch than in reviewing his book. Knowing that a critical treatment of his days with Maharaji/Rawat would certainly result in personal attacks by Rawat's followers, it took courage on Mr. Finch's part to write this book.

Some negative comments insist that Mike simply didn't "get it." I can only speak for myself, who also left Guru Maharaji/Prem Rawat in 1985 after being involved for 12 years: Mr. Finch got it, got it well, and got out. There is nothing wrong with meditation; it is the cult of worship around a guru that is destructive. This is not merely true of Prem Rawat's organization - this observation concerns the inherent problems in the guru-discipline relationship, a relationship that Finch was exploring in this book on an intensely personal level. One thing I appreciated was the fact that there was no bashing, blaming or whining, just Finch's own journey. Clear eyed and insightful, it was a good review for me, a time to reflect on my own past involvement with the guru - what got me there, and what helped me to find my way out.

I think this book is of value to a wider circle than followers or ex-followers of one particular guru, as Finch has broken down the dynamic, the machine by which one becomes involved in a cult, in guru worship, and gets lost in the "mindgame." Luckily allowing ourselves to think again, critically, is a way out. Another way is to mine for, and follow our true passion instead of putting a guru face on it and following it somewhere else.

This memoir reads as an attempt by the author to clear his name, putting all the blame about his own actions on others by means of what is known as "transference".

Quoting Carl Jung, this is a state when unconsciously a person endows another with an attribute that is actually projected from themselves. In this case, Finch mistakenly places all the burden on the Guru, when it is actually his own concepts and pre-conceived ideas on the meaning and role of a "guru" that took to him where he is now.

This book can be a study-case on the perils of bringing your concepts to the spiritual path, where it has been said that you need to come to with the guileless heart of a child. Finch, although he claims he did, it is obvious he did not: What his Guru offered him was a simple way to connect with the life-force within, and nothing more -- Simplicity escaped him.

One has to wonder why would Finch write this book? An attempt at catharsis? A way to get some stature and recognition which he could not get from the group he joined? An attempt to gain reputation with other leavetakers that share an antagonistic view of their Gurus for similar reasons? Probably all of the above.

The wild speculation about the authors motives from Prem Rawat followers here is mostly just mild, New-Agey 'blame the victim' ad-hominem nonsense. But it becomes chilling when Mia condescendingly suggests that Mike Finch did not have enough of a 'guileless heart' to 'get' Rawat's message. That is a very telling, low blow and is also simply wrong. I knew Mike Finch well during the times he's described in his book. I lived with him in several of Prem Rawats ashrams in the UK. He was always refreshingly sincere and wore his heart on his sleeve, as he continues to do here in his book. Mia's comments simply add weight to everything Mike's observed. Clearly the unkind, pompous, guilt-tripping, spiritual hierarchy is alive and well today.

In his book Mike reports a dysfunctional and abusive hierarchy where fear was a factor. I saw that too and it put me off the whole thing. This book is not just a cathartic exercise for Finch. As a man of apparently superior integrity and ethics to his critics, Finch rightly wants to draw attention to the dysfunctional past of the guru's organisation that he personally witnessed. It's an exercise in altruism that will unfortunately be lost on many of Prem Rawat's admirers.

Finch could easily have written a tell-all tabloid account of Guru Maharaji (AKA Prem Pal Rawat), but instead carefully limits his tale to his own experience. Thus, it is not as exciting as books like The God that Failed (about Bhagwan Rajneesh, AKA Osho). Also, Guru Maharaji's life was never as exciting as the dramatic narrative arcs other gurus have provided us. His sexual and substance-abuse transgressions have been hushed up and have not led to public drama and humiliation. Maharaji's story is one of gradually gaining a huge number of Western devotees, and over a period of ten or twenty years, losing most of them, but retaining enough to fuel a lavish lifestyle. Guru Maharaji's teachings were never very exciting, either, so, in short, the material for an exciting book is lacking.

However, what Finch has done is to detail how we ordinary followers allow ourselves to get caught up in a life of spiritual dependency to a spiritual master. The author also, as the title implies, manages to reclaim his life, his creativity, and his spirituality. Perhaps the guru should get more blame for taking much more than giving, but it is to Finch's credit that he does not play the blame game, instead examining his own life, which he does without excess bathos or drama. Without the Guru is a well told story, and although it will be appreciated especially by the many people who were suckered into submitting their autonomy to this (or any other) guru, it will be appreciated by anyone interested in spirituality, psychology, or the sociological aspects of religion.