--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@> > wrote: > > > > I don't believe that. It is still hypocritical > > considering... let's call it a more neutral "outside > > the box, male bonding." Maharishi was very clear that > > he wanted a personal relationship with Guru Dev and > > contrived a scheme to make it happen. He was not > > looking for a way to sneak into his Vedic study class. > > You are drawing different conclusions than I am from > > the few facts we do know about the guy. > > That's a pretty standard form of sadhana in India. It's > called Guru-Bhakti Yoga. In that context, it's not at > all out-of-the-box. Google it; there's over 15,000 hits. > And the way he described how he went about it in that > one tape that's been transcribed and posted a number of > times is in very close accord with the traditional > formulations.
What Judy is trying to obscure is that Curtis and I are CHALLENGING that "trad- itional formulation." We think it's a "cover" for something more mundane, the love of one man for another man. The "traditional formulation" is a way of pretending that guru-bhakti love is something *different* than the love of one man for another man. It's "loftier," more "spiritual," and all about God, not flesh. I don't think it is. I think it's just a way to not only excuse what the SAME society felt was inexcusable, but elevate it and put it on a pedestal as something noble and admirable. The "traditional formulation" of guru wor- ship and devotion is ON ONE LEVEL a way that men who are attracted to other men can do it and GET AWAY WITH IT. It's a social structure that allows them to get all weepy and blissed-out and bhakti- fied about another man not only without being dragged out into an alley and left to die in a pool of blood for doing it, but getting *praised* for doing it. The guru-bhakti "traditional formulation" is a way of turning socially unacceptable male-to-male behavior into socially acceptable male-to-male behavior. Men in ashram situations are *praised* and put on pedestals for the SAME behavior with regard to gushing over other men that would get them beaten to a pulp in Texas, or even in Bombay. ALL that Curtis and I are doing is pointing out the *artificiality* of this "traditional formulation" and looking at it a different way than the "tradition" looks at it. And Judy's RESPONSE to that intellectual questioning and "out of the box" thinking? Attack! Vilify! Call the "out of the box" thinkers names. Accuse them of everything she can possibly think of. And WHY? Because we not only thought "out of the box," but suggested that the "box" was more than a little artificial and self-serving. That's all. I have NOT ONCE in these discussions suggested that Maharishi was gay and *acted on it*. I believe that he was so sexually repressed that he would never in a million years have been able to do that. But I *DO* believe that there were *elements* of "man-love" involved in his obsessional relationship with Guru Dev, and that one of the reasons he was drawn to the ashram life was that its "traditional formu- lation" allowed him to express what he was really feeling about other men in a way that was IN THAT CONTEXT socially acceptable. And not ONLY socially acceptable...he could get "brownie points" and "strokes" for doing what would have gotten him beaten to a pulp in Bombay. The more flowery the language he used to describe Guru Dev, the more he was praised. The more he gushed over him and treated him as if he was the master in a master-slave relationship, the more Maharishi was seen as a "good student," an example of bhakti, a veritable budding Trotakacharya to Guru Dev's Shankara. I don't know about Curtis, but I'm really just playing with ideas here. I think that ON ONE LEVEL the guru-bhakti "traditional formulation" is a *cover* for something. And that on that same level, the men who are drawn to such environments are "looking for cover." Judy is so offended by me and Curtis expressing these ideas that's she's trying her best to vilify us. In words, she's acting out the counter- part of dragging us out behind the bar and beat- ing us to a pulp because we've done something that she considers "socially unacceptable." Judy is ideaphobic in the same way that some men are homophobic. The homophobic men are so challenged and threat- ened by men who act "outside the box" that they feel the need to attack them. Ideaphobic Judy is so challenged and threatened by men who *think* "outside the box" that she feels the need to attack them.
