> When I was in Moscow in 1990 teaching TM with a lot of Indians, > one of the Brahmacharya had an affair with a Russian woman. When > the Co-ordidinator from TMO told MMY about it. MMY got furious - > the Brahmacharya became kicked out of the TMO - tried to send > back to India. He run away on the Airport - I do not know what > happened after that. > Ingegerd
I find the sexual hangups of spiritual groups fascinating. Sometimes they reflect the larger hangups of the countries the group came from, sometimes they don't. India, the home of the Kama Sutra, last time I checked was so prudish that they can't show people *kissing* in films, much less doing anything else. Add to that the influence of the English, and you've hardly got a scenario conducive to healthy sexual attitudes. :-) Is it any wonder that repression and acting out of illicit fantasies are given more weight than they deserve? Tibet, on the other hand, has always had a more down-to-earth, it's-really-no-big-deal attitude about sex and sexuality, so I doubt that a monk getting his rocks off would be considered that big a deal. As for "getting kicked out of the TMO," that's another subject entirely. At a certain point in TMO history, the threat of excommunication became very real indeed, and the fear of being declared apostate was used to control how people thought and acted. I always thought that it was a sad, unnecessary, and completely unspiritual approach to spirituality. Stifle doubt and the testing of boundaries with the fear of excommunication and IMO you have begun to create a path based on fear instead of on light. I had a friend who was a Paulist priest, and he told me something once that stuck with me. He said that in his particular order of the Catholic Church, no one was *ever* considered for a position of authority unless they had had their own personal "dark night of the soul" and had either almost left the Church or gotten laid or something equally rebel- lious. The reasoning was that no one who hadn't actually *dealt* with the everyday doubt and questions that are part of the spiritual path could be trusted. Those who had *not* dealt with such things and come out the other side, with their faith strengthened from the experience, were considered blissninnies, mere parrots, and thus not worthy of being placed in a position of leadership. Fascinating how in the TMO it was always the other way around. Doubt is considered a sin, a sign that one is "off the program" or "unstressing" or worse. Persist in the doubt, or in OTP activities, and you run the risk of being declared apostate. But toe the line, pretend never to have had a doubt in your life and keep your own sexual pecadillos secret, and you stand a good chance of running things. It's also worth pointing out that Maharishi's anger at someone for doing essentially the same things he was doing is not all that uncommon among spiritual teachers who have been fooling around. One of the first signs that a teacher has caught the egodisease is when he or she starts reaming people for doing the same things he or she does regularly. Unc To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
