“Satguru has come” cultish new-age video stills, 1972

“Satguru Has Come” was a promotional video made by adherents of the controversial Indian guru Maharaji, whose “Divine Light Mission” attracted devotees from the fracturing counter-culture and New Left including, most famously, Rennie Davis. Maharaji was the subject of TVTV’s influential 1974 portapak video documentary “Lord of the Universe,” which recorded the ecstatic scenes at “Millenium ’73,” a frankly millenarian new media religious spectacle held by the guru in the Houston Astrodome in 1973 and intended to inaugurate the arrival of a new age. These stills from “Satguru has come” show how savvy the Divine Light Mission was in grasping the affective potential of video, especially to a new generation of bliss-seekers, video-freaks and television-babies. Little wonder that this polarizing figure, seen alternately as savior and grand fraud of the American counter-culture, should have attracted TVTV’s critical lens…

More clips here: http://www.ex-premie.org/video/satguruhasgone.html