(c) Joe Dobrow 2013
On Election Day, November 5, voters in Harris County, Texas will decide the future of the Houston Astrodome. They may vote to authorize issuance of up to $217 million in bonds that would help convert the 48-year-old building, once known as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” into a huge convention center and exhibition space. Or they may not – in which case, presumably, the elegies will commence, and the plans for a grand implosion will begin.
Over the years, the Astrodome hosted some of the stranger events on the planet – Evel Knievel motorcycle jumps, WrestleMania spectaculars, Elvis concerts, and the infamous 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” tennis exhibition between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, for which she was conveyed to the court in a chair carried by four shirtless men, and he in a rickshaw pulled by fashion models. But nothing in its past was stranger than what took place 40 years ago to the week from when the Harris County voters will decide the Dome’s future – a largely forgotten event called Millennium ’73 that led, in its own way, to an implosion more spectacular than anything the dynamiters could ever plan.
To understand what happened at the Astrodome on November 8-10, 1973, and what didn’t, it is helpful go back even further, to the 60s, that decade of black-and-white TV and Day-Glo tie-dye, space shots and acid trips, love and Haight, the two-finger peace sign and the one-finger salute. During that confusing, belligerent and provocative era, the search for meaning often turned eastward. Many Americans became fascinated with yoga, vegetarianism, transcendental meditation, mysticism, and other eastern exports. Ravi Shankar’s sitar music had a great influence on the Beatles. The Hare Krishna movement began in New York in 1965. Life magazine even declared 1967 “the year of the guru” after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came to the United Kingdom and led a weekend of “spiritual regeneration.”
And in the midst of it all came a pudgy teenager from India, the Guru Maharaj Ji, whose meditative teachings and banal messages of peace found resonance with millions of people around the world. Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, the young guru rode an incredible wave of popularity, building up to a 3-day gathering he promised would be “the most holy and significant event in human history” – Millennium ’73, in the Houston Astrodome.
Prem Pal Singh Rawat was born in India in 1958, son of a revered spiritual leader. When his father died in 1966, the young boy immediately assumed the title of Satguru, “the true revealer of light and spiritual master of the divine light mission,” and became known as the Guru Maharaj Ji. He told the mourners, “Dear children of God, why are you weeping? The Perfect Master is among you. Recognize him. Obey him and adore him.”
Following his father’s teachings, he encouraged people to renounce their worldly possessions and receive “the Knowledge,” which was described as “a direct and concrete experience of inner peace and joy” that “eradicates hatred, greed, and fear” and “contains a solution to every problem at present facing humanity.” One of his fundamental practices, the Satsang meditation, involved four techniques, which one was supposed to practice for 2 hours each day, including The Light (pressing your thumb and forefinger against closed eyes) and the Nectar (rolling your tongue back in your mouth as far as possible). He soon articulated a rather simplistic vision of world peace and love that, in a world wracked by the war in Vietnam, was well received. On November 8, 1970, at the age of 12, Guru Maharaj Ji addressed a crowd of more than one million followers at Delhi’s India Gate and said, “I declare I will establish peace in this world.” Before long, he claimed 6 million followers worldwide, including 40,000 in America who organized themselves in 54 ashrams, or communities, throughout the country. He established the US headquarters of the Divine Light Mission (DLM) in a seven-story office building in Denver.
The Guru Maharaj Ji exerted an extraordinary influence over his acolytes, or “Premies,” as they became known – especially given that he was just a teenager. One middle-aged woman reflected the spirit in an interview captured in the 1974 documentary Lord of the Universe: “I was very happy. Had a family. Beautiful children, grandchildren, 14 grandchildren, very, very happy. Beautiful husband, beautiful friends. I didn’t realize I was searching, really. But I am through searching. I have found that thing that we are all searching for.” An old woman next to her asked, “I’d like to know, how did he get so many people to follow him?” The first woman giddily answered: “Because he gives that true experience of God. He gives a true experience of God. You see light, you hear music, you taste nectar, and you feel the word…. This is the day we have been waiting for. He’s here! He’s here!”
Today, hearing the accounts of the Premies conjures up frightening associations with the People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, or another cult that was making news from 1969 to 1970, the Manson Family. Such was the starry-eyed nature of their devotion. And certainly there were those who viewed the guru as a fraud, someone who quickly accumulated an incredible amount of wealth when applicants signed over their insurance policies, mortgages, inheritances, and trust funds to the DLM. Before long, Guru Maharaj Ji had Rolls-Royces and Jaguars in London, a chauffeured Mercedes limousine in Denver, and mansions in Long Island, Denver, and Malibu. He also had an insatiable thirst for western culture (Hawaiian Punch, Baskin-Robbins ice cream, Batman comics, a digital watch, squirt guns, and a motor bike that he liked to drive into his mother’s hotel room).
But the Premies’ love and devotion was generally sincere, attracting not just lost souls but smart young seekers with college degrees. And the DLM was serious business. It included 10 retail thrift stores, a restaurant in New York, a movie production company, a monthly magazine, three airplanes, WATS and Telex lines to connect its 154 branch offices, an IBM computer system to keep track of every Premie’s skills and background, the Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness janitorial service, and, in order to feed all those people in the ashrams, a network of sophisticated natural foods co-ops called Rainbow Grocery.
Yet that was small change compared to what was to come. In 1973, the DLM decided to stage a massive event at the one place in America that was big enough and important enough to accommodate it: the Houston Astrodome. Millennium ’73 would be a 3-day gathering of Premies and supplicants, featuring Guru Maharaj Ji’s proclamation of 1,000 years of peace. The Guru would “present to the world a plan for putting peace into effect,” read their press release. “He will announce the founding of an international agency to feed and shelter the world’s hungry. He will initiate the building of a Divine City that shall demonstrate to the world a way for people of all sorts to live together in harmony.” Massive crowds were expected.
Millennium ’73 was a lavishly prepared and highly anticipated event. It was over-the-top and under-the-dome. The lead-up was accompanied by the “Soul Rush” publicity campaign that implied that something unprecedented would happen in Houston—perhaps even the appearance of aliens. Thirty-three jets were chartered to bring in faithful followers from around the world. A band called Blue Aquarius, led by Guru Maharaj Ji’s 20-year-old brother, Bhole Ji, performed “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, wearing powder-blue leisure suits. Guru Maharaj Ji himself sat on a throne in white robes or a Nehru jacket, with ornate headwear, and when he wasn’t engaged in Darshan – a practice where supplicants kissed his feet – he was giving news conferences and bantering with the press in perfect idiomatic American English (“What’s up, what do you want?” . . . “You just don’t like guys fooling around”).
Rennie Davis, a prominent 32-year-old activist who had been one of the “Chicago Seven” prosecuted for their roles in disrupting the 1968 Democratic convention, opened the event by declaring, “It is not possible to understand the Middle East, or Watergate, or UFOs, or the super comet in the sky, unless you understand the central event on this planet around which all other events now spin.” He also said that the political and cultural revolution of the sixties, for which he had fought so hard, “was really all a warm-up… for the greatest transformation in the history of human civilization.” An op-ed in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner wondered whether Davis had been lobotomized, and suggested that if not, he might consider it.
In the end, though, Millennium ’73 was a total bust.
Only about 20,000 people attended, leaving the Dome looking and feeling empty throughout the event; 7 weeks earlier, the hokey “Battle of the Sexes” tennis exhibition between had drawn 30,472. The press coverage of Millennium ’73 and the Guru Maharaj Ji was devastating. Rolling Stone magazine ran a story entitled, “When The Lord of All the Universe Played Houston, Many are Called but Few Show Up.” Worse, the DLM was left with a debt in excess of a half-million dollars. It had to cut staff and tighten up its operations. In short order, many of its subsidiary businesses were dissolved or sold off. It was, in effect, a rapid and comprehensive implosion of an entire movement that, until Houston, had seemed invincible.
And the Guru Maharaj Ji? In 1983, he renamed the Divine Light Mission “Elan Vital” and closed the ashrams. But he continued to spread his message of peace through speeches, broadcasts, and events – piloting himself around the world on a leased private jet – and does to this day.
One wonders how he might vote on November 5, were he a resident of Harris County.
This article was adapted from material from Joe Dobrow’s forthcoming history of the natural foods industry, Natural Prophets (Rodale Books, 2014).