On Feb 4, 2008, at 4:33 PM, Duveyoung wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "claudiouk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> Never was myself a TM teacher and personally I WAS interested in
> MMY's commentary on the Gita and his SBAL - as an underlying
> universal spiritual perspective to the practice of TM, but one which
> was not forced down your throat (unless perhaps you became a
> teacher?). Because of that it WAS OK to see the technique
> independently, as a SECULAR procedure.
TM teachers "got it across" to everyone by a variety of methods
right from the start: the puja "required one" to kneel -- okay,
they were invited, merely, to kneel, but I never had anyone not
kneel over 2,000 pujas. It was a religious rite, a worship -- plain
and simple.
>
> The fact that mantras were "sounds" of Hindu significance was to be
> expected, given MMY's cultural background,
Jerry Jarvis made fun of the concept by saying we could be using
sounds that were, in Chinese, the names of spices but that didn't
make TM an act of cookery. But it was a big fat lie and every
teacher knew that the mantras were the names and attributes of Gods
that the Holy Tradition ADORED, and today, we openly SELL PRAYERS TO
THESE GODS and call them yagyas.
but there was nothing in
> TM practice itself that resembled a religious practice - no required
> articles of faith, moral commandments to follow, nothing that
> resembled traditional prayer.
"Meditate twice a day and take it easy." THAT'S A RELIGIOUS
COMMANDMENT. If one didn't do it twice a day, the TM teacher was
expected to challenge the meditator about that.....it was a TM
teacher's morality being imposed on them. Take it easy meant a host
of lifestyle changes that TM teachers slowly indoctrinated them with
-- sleep by 10pm, no root veggies, no salt, no meat.....these were
especially seen in resident courses. WE LET THEM KNOW WHAT WAS
WHAT...even though it wasn't "official," we sure knew it was.
Sitting with eyes closed, repeating a sound, after a puja -- this
screams RELIGION.
Edg, the closer you look, the more you'll see (and this is a shocker
for most westerners) that the root of TM are Vedic Fundamentalism and
Hindu nationalism.
It's bizarrely parallel, in a somewhat different manner, to Christian
Fundamentalism. Vedic Fundamentalism, from the POV of western tastes,
appears very left to our western worldview, but in terms of India/
Bharat itself, it's similar to other right-wing nationalistic "family
value" type movements in that it tries to be very puritanical and
pretends to return to some imagined past. Instead of a Judeo-Christian
Creation Science, these guys admonish a Vedic Creation Science
provocatively (and very tenuously) connected to Quantum physics.
Hinduism as a popular movement has lost most of it's Dionysian gnostic
roots and has instead settled into a sentimental, puritanical form of
Vaishnavism. Once, in the middle ages, the leanings of the merchant
class; now it has become mainstream--much like the fundie megachurches
of the American middle classes.
Most westerners would do well, for the sake of perspective, to look at
what political movements these Vedic Fundies are associated with. I
think they'd be downright shocked.
