07 Sep 2026 6 min read

Chapter 4: I Wonder What Binds Me to Prem Rawat

My Amaroo tent. I cleaned and rearranged it this morning.

Title: I Wonder What Binds Me to Prem Rawat

Object: Wallaby

12 associations

Kangaroo
Old photos
The Milky Way
AI
A copse
The veranda
The fucking tent is boiling
My bed
My stations
Abundance
Money Queen Feed
The food is awful; there is no fucking need.

When she comes out of her tent this morning to go to breakfast, dawn is happening, a wallaby is just standing looking at her. He doesn’t move. She walks past. It’s only then does he skip off. Fast. Rio, her daughter’s dog, would chase him, but he couldn’t catch him. Her meditation is brilliant when she comes back. The other premies may be causing a build-up of kinetic energy, of some kind of energy, because she doesn’t think all the way through it, she is just lost in it.

She makes the mistake of going for a shower first — she can’t stay in the tent; the tent is fucking boiling you could die in there. Staying in the tent would be her dream. She makes the mistake of thinking I’ll go on the veranda, next to the big tent where the breakfast is, the food is awful; there is no fucking need.

32 years ago, when she is young, when she goes to India, the chef prides himself, the Premie chef, a follower of Prem Rawat, prides himself on the food. The tent is beautiful, there, a big one full of spicy Indian vegetarian food, it is in with the price. The slovenliness of the world is touching the Premie world, she is sad to say. The cooks are not Premies, but large boned Australians who eat the kind of fatty food they cook. The deep-fried croissants, France would refuse a visa. She eats it all cos she has paid for it. She goes into the shower. There is hair on the floor. She also makes the mistake of going for a shower first before doing her writing. When last week she learns that it is as simple as finishing her meditation, going straight into 12-words. ½ an hour max, title, object, 12 associations, 20 minutes to write — over. Not the procrastination and the-decorate-the-downstairs-bedroom cos she doesn’t want to go to the typewriter, the computer, it saves her having to type it out, though she wonders if the pen and paper method is better. Deeper, more touches her. She is on her computer now outside her tent. The door flap is open, she will probably pay for that later when the insects, sneaking in, crawl all over her. The thought of it. The fucking thought of it. She is such a mardy. She hates the real world, the David Attenborough world, but loves it at the same time. She tells it to AI. Confesses to AI, that she is scared shitless of the Milky Way, after asking will there be a Milky Way tonight. ‘You are in prime position for it in the clearing of your little copse’ ‘It is gonna take some superhuman strength on my part to stomach it. It makes me feel sick. But it’s so beautiful.’

It’s like here, they make her feel sick. The other fucking Premies. She cleans out the cubicle, the hair, the Japanese Permie, she is presuming, thanks her for it, with her gracious Asian way. Australia is in their neck of the woods. The fucking English one says, ‘Can I show you this.’ She thinks she’s doing service; volunteering to clean the showers. She replies, ‘I‘m cleaning it for myself.’ Miss English wants to point out the shower head that is broken. Our protagonist takes a look to add to all the other things she’s not happy with. ‘Yeah, someone needs to be told, considering all the money we’ve paid’ Miss English is annoyed with her in her jovial I-am-still-a-child way. Funny, all the female Premies seem to revert back to children: Secret Seven; Milly Molly Mandy children. All the men too; they become hypochondriac children. Maybe, they are. She doesn’t know what they are. Maybe that is why her daughter sees her as her idiot child. They don’t care too much about anything. The girl/woman runs into the spiel of the type of shower they had when they came here and built the place with their bare hands, ‘And all they did was pour water over us.’ Our protagonist hates her enough to punch her in her teeth, her weird fucking teeth as she goes on and on, and there we go, it had to happen, ‘I got Knowledge in 1974.’ She witnesses the same conversation behind her on the shuttle here. From Charanand. The true real Indian Mahatma. Fucking hell, to some of them he is more realistic on their path to enlightenment than Prem himself.

They are inherently selfish, like when she leaves the bathroom to go in the room where you can sit because the tents are too hot, they are lying all over everything, whereas if they sat up straight, they could fit them all in. She tries the veranda. No, there is a bunch of them there; one of the other kind of Premie the-mother-of-everyone, saying, ‘It’s only a gecko,’ to one of the big 73-year-old girls that jumps away. She leaves the veranda and goes back to her tent. Her tent is abundant with her Bear travel kettle, which doubles as a thermos flask. So cute. Her own hot water. Her bed. Her Out of Africa bed with full internet where she watches the finale of Silo in the middle of the night and feels genuinely moved. Waking at 3.30 for a wee, but she can’t cross the site to the toilet block in case there are stars, or bad things, David Attenborough things — she asks AI when is dawn? She has a fear of night. At home it is in case it brings Death. Funnily enough, she’s not afraid of death here. She has 2 hours to wait. She adds to her abundance, by taking the plastic inside from the little toilet bin, it will be her toilet tonight.

She wonders what binds her to Prem Rawat? She knows but the knowing is not in her mind, like she can’t know the reason for the universe, for the Milky Way, it is something she feels when he talks. She feels like lying to Money Queen Feed, where she is training herself to make dough, to build the retirement pot she promises herself. That she tells everyone, like she tells them her first play will be at The Royal Court, published by Methuen, ‘I will be rich when I retire.’ She’s 67. She better get on with it. The Money Queen Feed, is the same as all those retreats she does to learn how to write. She feels like lying to them, cos this is what she writes last night.

Arrived this morning. Australian 11am.
Made my spacious deluxe tent home abundant with essential oils, coordinated clothes hanging, toiletries station, electric station, creative stationery station.
Wallaby skips by my tent.
Massive shower.
Pavilion lunch. Some new friends. One who gets arrested in Singapore for vaping then calmed for being distressed, my kind of person.
One who has been to Amaroo 13 times. It feels like she is in heaven when she is here. No noise. No cars. No talking. Stillness. It is a different kind of abundance. I feel it now.
But one I can't experience without dough.
Massive stars through my mosquito netted windows, I watch from my percale sheeted bed.

Last time she saw the Milky Way, 20 years ago, when she last came to Amaroo, she is outside a 200-year-old colonial house haunted by those in the old photographs, with kangaroos taller than men pulling at the fence. For a split second she can see, feel, know, the ancestors of all humanity, and the reasons for the stories they tell, before, overwhelmed, she has to lie on the floor.

Homework

Today will be the first time I see Prem Rawat. I will see him twice on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each day I am gonna log my experience as a 12-word narrative. Essentially, answering the question I have posed myself. Directly? Maybe indirectly. I don't know what my 12-word narratives will reveal.

Over the next 5 days, I have 5 tasks for you.

Today: Read this newsletter.

Who are you substituting for Prem Rawat in the title I Wonder What Binds Me to Prem Rawat? The first person you think of.

Tuesday: In your Sacred Hour Sacred Space (SHSS).

Title: I Wonder What Binds Me to ??
What tangible object do you see?
List 12 associations.
I'm finding I need 30 minutes to write.
Remember you are exclusively in the 3^rd person.
You are the narrator in the reader’s eyes.
In your eyes you are both the narrator and the protagonist once removed.

Wednesday: In your SHSS, push further and link it to your superhero self.

Title: I Wonder What Binds Me to (the same person)
What tangible object do you see?
List 12 associations.
30 minutes to write.

Thursday: In your SHSS, review the favourite book you are listening to now. How is their style like yours?

Title: I Wonder What Binds Me to (the same person)
What tangible object do you see?
List 12 associations.
30 minutes to write.

Friday: In your SHSS. Before you begin, ask yourself why did Linda ask me to do this — to keep repeating the same title?

Title: I Wonder What Binds Me to (the same person)
What tangible object do you see?
List 12 associations.
30 minutes to write.