Millennium '73 was a three-day festival held on November 8–10, 1973 at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, United States, by the Divine Light Mission (DLM). It featured Prem Rawat, then known as Guru Maharaj Ji, a 15-year-old guru and the leader of a fast-growing new religious movement. Organizers billed the festival as the most significant event in human history which would usher in a thousand years of peace.
The festival's official schedule described the three evening addresses by Guru Maharaj Ji as the highlights of the event. Big-band music, rock bands, religious songs, choral works, a dance performance and speeches by other DLM leaders filled the program from noon to 10 pm. Media events included press conferences and an impromptu debate.
Millennium '73 received wide publicity. Rennie Davis, a prominent anti-war activist and member of the Chicago Seven, helped draw attention to the event as a spokesman for the DLM. Notable journalists attended, some of them acquaintances of Davis from the New Left. It was later described by some scholars and journalists as among the major events of 1973 and the 1970s, the high point of Guru Maharaj Ji's popularity, and the most important development in the American DLM's history.
Attendance was estimated from 10,000 to 35,000, compared to the projected 100,000. Many scholars and journalists generally depicted the event as a disappointment. That, along with other factors including a large debt, led to changes in the DLM's structure, management and message. The following year the movement split into branches headed by Maharaj Ji in the West, and his mother and brother Bal Bhagwan Ji in India.
Before the event
Background
Hans Ji Maharaj, who taught secret meditation techniques called "Knowledge", founded the Divine Light Mission (DLM) in India in 1960. Hans Ji, called "Guru Maharaj Ji", died six years later and was succeeded as spiritual leader and Perfect Master by his eight-year-old youngest son, who adopted his father's title. As the young Guru Maharaj Ji was a minor, his mother, Mata Ji, and the eldest son, Bal Bhagwan Ji, managed the DLM's affairs., ch. 12 By 1971, when the 13-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji made his first tours of the United Kingdom and United States, the Indian DLM claimed over five million members (known as "premies"). Within two years the DLM had as many as 50,000 members in the US, with thousands more in the UK and other countries and as many as six million in India. Most of the Western followers were young people from the 1960s counterculture.
The DLM celebrated three annual festivals, the largest of which, "Hans Jayanti", commemorated Hans Ji Maharaj's birthday on November 9. The Hans Jayanti festivals held in India in the early 1970s were well-attended, attracting audiences of up to a million people, including Westerners. Mata Ji and the 22-year-old Bal Bhagwan Ji decided that the 1973 Hans Jayanti should be held in the United States; it was the first to be held outside India.
The movement invested all of its resources in the event, with an overall budget of close to US$1,000,000, including $75,000 to rent the Astrodome and $100,000 for publicity. The DLM paid for many of the international charter flights that brought followers to Houston. DLM members were under pressure to contribute money to support the event. Organizers invited hundreds of reporters from all over the country, hoping to achieve positive media exposure for Maharaj Ji.
Millenarian appeal In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many people in the US, especially hippies, believed that the world was on the verge of a new era, the Age of Aquarius. This new age was expected to be characterized by peace and love, harmony and understanding. By the late autumn of 1973 there was an "apocalyptic chill in the air", as headlines dealt with the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the Agnew resignation, a war in the Middle East, an energy crisis, mass murders in Houston and California, and UFO sightings across the South.
Sociologist James V. Downton wrote that the millenarian appeal of the DLM prior to the festival sprang from a belief that Guru Maharaj Ji was the Lord, and that a new age of peace would begin under his leadership. These hopes appealed to the counterculture youth of the time, who were disillusioned with earlier attempts at political and cultural revolution and who were turning their aspirations in a spiritual direction. Downton describes these aspirations as encouraging millennial beliefs within the DLM, including the "psychological trappings of surrender and idealization." He states the guru's mother, whose satsang was "full of references to his divine nature", aided these beliefs, as did the guru himself, "for letting others cast him in the role of the Lord." Maharaj Ji's appeal to followers to give up beliefs and concepts did not prevent them "from adopting a fairly rigid set of ideas about his divinity and the coming of a new age."
In a meeting with members, DLM President Bob Mishler denied that the event would start the millennium and said they called it "Millennium '73" because the word "millennium" evoked the "vision of one peaceful world based on spiritual values".
Promotion The Mission's most prominent member was anti-war activist and Chicago Seven defendant Rennie Davis, who had first met Guru Maharaj Ji in February 1973. Davis was appointed vice president of the organization a short time later and served as general coordinator for the Millennium festival. His conversion was the topic of numerous newspaper articles, as it reportedly shook the New Left from coast to coast. An energetic promoter of his new guru and of Millennium '73, Davis traveled across the United States on a 21-city tour, speaking to what he said were about a million people a day through radio and television interviews. He told people that Guru Maharaj Ji was the solution to civilization's problems. Davis was not always well-received, particularly by his former comrades in the peace movement (one Berkeley newspaper had the headline "Rennie Unites Left – Against Him"), and was heckled at some of his appearances., The Chicago Seven retrial was underway in the fall of 1973, and the judge gave Davis a dispensation to attend the festival. Several associates of Davis from the left also attended, some as journalists.
A two-week, eight-city, 500-person tour, called "Soul Rush", was organized to promote Millennium '73. At a stop in Washington, D.C., premies (DLM members) gathered in front of the White House and invited President Richard Nixon to attend the festival and receive Knowledge. One reporter for the Village Voice who traveled in the tour wrote that they had little press coverage and poor attendance but showed obvious energy, and that the tour itself went remarkably smoothly with expressions of love among the members. At each city, the touring group and local premies paraded in the morning, and a drama troupe performed in the afternoon. The main event was the free evening performance by Blue Aquarius, a 50 to 60-piece band led by Bhole Ji, Maharaj Ji's 20-year-old brother, referred to as the "Lord of Music" by Davis and others., The band was composed of professional and amateur musicians who donated their efforts, and its leading member was drummer Geoff Bridgeford, formerly of the Bee Gees. It went on to anchor the Houston festival.
Press releases and a festival poster announced that the event would mark the beginning of "a thousand years of peace for people who want peace", the idea being that peace could come to the world as individuals experienced inner peace. A flyer said, "Now the turning point in human civilization is here. ... The Dawn of the New Age." In a letter to premies inviting them attend the festival, which had only been celebrated in India up to that point, Guru Maharaj Ji said, "This year the most Holy and significant event in human history will take place in America". The "Call to Millennium" announcement published in the DLM publication And It Is Divine said that "Guru Maharaj Ji has proved to us that an age of peace is possible, now, ... Peace is needed. And peace shall be obtained. ... [Guru Maharaj Ji] will present to the world a plan for putting peace into effect."
Expectations and rumors Official DLM literature predicted the dawn of a new age of peace, the Age of Aquarius, and some followers expected dramatic change or even the Second Coming of Jesus. In a letter to premies inviting them to attend the festival, Guru Maharaj Ji said, "This is a festival not for you or me. It is for the whole world and maybe the whole universe." He urged them to support the festival, saying, "Isn't it about time you all get together and help me bring peace to this Earth?" Rennie Davis promised that a practical plan for world peace would be revealed.
Sociologist Thomas Pilarzyk wrote that devotees made "bizarre, 'cultic'" predictions, and suggested that their excitement validated the significance of the event. A member remarked that even normally realistic followers were swayed by the collective fantasies. Sophia Collier, a teenaged member who later left the movement and published a memoir, said that a minority of members, mostly limited to Houston, became victims of a "Millennium Fever" promoted chiefly by Bal Bhagwan Ji. The majority of the premies repeated Bal Bhagwan Ji's ideas out of astonishment, but some actually believed him. Journalists noted that some followers perceived the predicted appearance of Comet Kohoutek as an omen, as a spaceship on its way to Houston, or as the return of the Star of Bethlehem.
A frequently repeated prediction, attributed to Maharaj Ji, was that the Astrodome would levitate., Davis and others made often-reported predictions, repeated in half-jest, that extraterrestrials would attend the festival. Bal Bhagwan Ji is said to have predicted the festival would be preceded by earthquakes in New York and Denver, along with a dive in the stock markets. Sociologist Downton wrote that there were runaway expectations about attendance. Public predictions of attendance grew larger: from 100,000 to 144,000 (the number foretold in the Book of Revelation for the Second Coming), to 200,000 and even 400,000. (The capacity of the Astrodome was 66,000.) Davis told one audience that millions would attend.
Bob Mishler, the founding president of the DLM in the United States, later said he had tried to slow the growing expectations. He said he had only expected 20,000–25,000 and that he toured the country explaining to members that the festival would be significant because of what happened there, not because of the number of attendees. He said he tried to remind them that the aim was to establish peace on Earth, not to travel to another planet.
Festival
Rainbow Brigade During the summer prior to the festival, 380 followers worked full-time in Houston preparing for the event. Known as the "Rainbow Brigade", their motto was "Work Is Worship". The total staff for the festival eventually numbered 4,000. Fifteen hundred festival volunteers stayed at a former Coca-Cola plant, renamed the "Peace Plant" for the occasion, where they slept on folded blankets over the concrete floor. Another thousand stayed at the Rainbow Inn motel. Reporters wrote that the volunteers maintained a tight and professional operation, and showed the egalitarian obedience of the Israeli Army or a monastery. One reporter wrote that he never saw a premie lose his temper. Another noted that the workers seemed to be "model human beings, perhaps even on their way to becoming the 'new evolutionary species' that they claim will establish heaven on earth".
World Peace Corps