Word: ji
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Followers of the teenage Guru Maharaj Ji are among the many Harvard evangelists who have tried to offer students salvation for the past three years. Ministers of the Church of Scientology pressed hard on campus a while back, charging thousands of dollars to "clear" people of problems by using skin-sweat detectors. At the same time, figures caped in black and necklaced in silver swept down on the Square to proselytize for a religion called the Process, which installs Satan, Lucifer, and Jehovah as equal rulers in its universe. Neither of these religions has any visible following at the College...
...that of the religious group known at Harvard as the Divine Light Mission. An array of framed photographs of a baby-faced 15-year-old guru smiles out at visitors, inviting them to tap a superfocused sunlight within each individual: the religion of the perfect spiritual master Guru Maharaj Ji...
Guru Maharaj Ji is but the latest in a long line of perfect spiritual masters, tracing back over centuries, who have kept alive the Divine Light. He "received Knowledge" from the previous perfect master, his father, at the age of six, and became a perfect master at eight, two days after his father died. His perfection lies ostensibly with his complete detachment from worry for his physical being, and the constant flow of love and peace from him to others and back again...
...whole thing is so improbable that present believers retain vivid memories of their reactions upon first learning of the religion. "A guy in my Ec 10 section said one day that I ought to look into the Guru Maharaj Ji," Chadwick said early this month as he sat eating lunch in Winthrop House. "I said he was crazy." Nevertheless, Chadwick agreed to attend a Sat-sang--a regularly held introductory meeting--shortly afterwards. "I thought the people didn't believe in a word they said," he continued. "I didn't relate to it, that hocus pocus about a Divine Light...
...possible explanation of the sect's success in the U.S. is that the Guru Maharaj Ji is indeed (gulp) God. If this is an unpalatable hypothesis, there are more mundane explanations. Perhaps the attraction is to a group with all the psychic benefits of old-time religion, but without the stigma attached to them in a liberal society...