As a student (77-79) I was aware that the sacrifice of staff was at "heroic" levels (they were spread thin). Yet of the group photos presented in the yearbooks, I feel the most persuasive feelings of love and enthusiasm radiate from the group photos of the "volunteer" staff (for example, see Page 78 of the 1978 Yearbook, available as PDF at MUM).
In another thread I think it was "Vaj" who stated: *********** According to friends who worked on staff at MIU for very low wages, and supposedly to get on course, i.e. pay for the TM-Sidhi course, they were treated like shudras, like lesser-evolved people, who shouldn't be touched or engaged. The idea, they felt, was that more evolved people would naturally receive the "support of nature" and so they were naturally more prosperous. ************ My sense of a "caste"-like social stratification was one of the discomforts which led me to leave MIU after the second year. I went on to another spiritual group in which I took on a role similar to that of "volunteer staff" at MIU. However, in that other spiritual group, drudge-work like washing dishes, preparing food, and taking out the trash were considered "exalted spiritual practices," so there wasn't such a painful marginalization. Everyone who came to the ashram was given a seva [service] assignment. (However, later on, greater favoritism for VIP's also took hold in that group.) Bottom-line, I think it's important to consider whether God is, after all, an "equal opportunity employer," and if your paradigm makes spiritual progress contingent on paying exorbitant course fees (effectively "paying for enlightenment") whether that paradigm is actually consistent with the way God has structured spiritual progress here. I think the current downturn will reveal the limitations of the "more evolved = more money" assertion. I'm on my third guru now (definitely could be accused of "window shopping" in the spiritual domain!), and the focus of my spiritual practice is trying to "get it right" in my simple daily relationships with others. We all have an absolutely huge set of interconnections with others from past lives, and if we can "get it right" in even one interaction, it has the effect of loosening and lifting all the ties we have with others. My present teacher states that one cannot really become enlightened on ones own; we all help loosen and dissolve one another's samskaras through love. Cam
