--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote: > <snip to> > But what was much more revealing to me was the account of his > driver. As he was describing Hitler's last hours, he was > speaking about the terrible loss and bereavement that he > experienced -- and there was something heartbreaking about his > devotion to Hitler. I'm serious: I completely identified with > his intense emotions. I was only familiar with such powerful > emotions in relationship to God or to one's Guru -- but here > was a person who was relating to Hitler in this way, and was > still lamenting his death so many years later, knowing all that > he had done! > > I later on saw a BBC 6-hr documentary program on the rise of > Nazism. They interviewed a person who worked with him closely > at one point. And that person spoke about Hitler with the same > passion that one speaks of one's Guru. He described his experience > of interacting with Hitler -- there's no other way to describe it, > except a spiritual experience -- and said, in this regard: "I saw > this side of Hitler, Hitler's most beautiful side; and no one can > take it away from me. That is the Hitler I know and cherish". > > Why am I saying all this? Because that was the first time I > understood how Hitler could have done what he had done. People > who came in contact with him had a spiritual experience, and you > know how such a profound experience often makes you surrender > your discriminating ability. And you can even do atrocities.
I will jump on this not to dump on Maharishi but because I almost jumped on similar naivete in emptybill's earlier post on this same phen- omenon. emptybill seems not to understand the difference between shakti (the intentional manipulation of energy to attract attention and manipulate consciousness) and the actual quiet charisma one associates with enlightenment. This writer seems not to understand it, either. Many have written here about their experiences of "being around Maharishi." I am often at a loss when they do this because I was "around Maharishi" a lot, and never felt much of anything except cheap flash. However, I *did* feel things around other spiritual teachers, and I was around enough of them to realize that the things I felt fell into two separate and distinctly different cat- egories. The first was cheap shakti -- the person using energy to dazzle and distract his or her followers and *make* them feel something, that the teacher knew they would then interpret as "spiritual." The other was people who had honest, unintentional charisma -- something that came from the "inside out," with no volition or intention involved. They just radiated what they were. It is my opinion that the latter may be classed as a "spiritual experience," but that the former is merely an occult experience. The reasons that so many people interpret cheap shakti as a "spiritual experience" are -- 1) naivete -- they know so little about the different kinds of pot- ential energetic experiences that they interpret shakti as something it is not, 2) emotion -- the people who interpret shakti as spiritual are deeply in *need* of some emotional Jones, some- thing that "gets them off" emotionally, because that is what they think a "spiritual experience" is, and 3) lack of experience. It's the last one that makes people prey to cheap flash. If they've never really encountered the *difference* between quiet, non-flashy charisma and cheap shakti, they are going to interpret the latter as "spiritual." My advice to TMers is to GET OUT MORE. One of the reasons why Maharishi made seeing other teachers Off The Program and a "banishable offence" in my opinion is that he *didn't want his students experiencing what it was like to sit with teachers who didn't have to resort to cheap shakti*. If they had, they would have known his "energy" for what it was. All of this is just opinion on my part, but it is at least *informed* experience, the result of having seen and sat and meditated with MANY spiritual teachers. If you've only sat with one, or only one or two, you really have nothing to say to counter it -- you just don't have the breadth of experience with which to do so. GET OUT MORE. See what's out there in the spiritual smorgasbord. Analyze *not only* how it feels to be in the presence of the teacher *while that experience is going on*, but what it feels like *afterwards*. Do you long to be in their presence again, as if not being there is a "lack" of some kind, a "need" that needs to be filled? Do you feel a "comedown" between sitting with them and not sitting with them? Did you feel "emotional highs" in the presence of the teacher that you are not feeling now that you are not with them, and that you miss? If the answers to these questions are Yes, then what you are dealing with is an occultist, someone who beamed cheap, intentional shakti at you. You are NOT dealing with the quiet, charismatic energy of enlightenment. Just my opinion...
