This has some interesting points about the teaching. This is from a while a ago so you may want to amend some statements. But these points caught my eye. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > >
Andrew here has to resort to distorting the context of my response, as well as employing fractional truths and blatant inaccuracies, in order to claim what I said is false. The invitation to kneel doesn't come till the end of the ceremony, and BY NO MEANS does the student "invariably" kneel. ME: The puja is actually a study in assumptive behavior. It uses a number of techniques similar to how a magician acquires compliance with his audience. (I know some will object to my choice of magicians but I am purposely not using con men who employ the same principles.) We start: "You'd like to have a flower (as we hand them one) and witness the ceremony... Knowing what we know about how religious pujas are performed, the fact that their flower will be offered takes away any doubt in how they participate. They participate unknowingly unless they are familiar with Hindu pujas and then it it obvious. Judy: We've discussed this before here, and TMers chimed in about their own initiations; some knelt, some didn't. I didn't. There's no pressure to do so. Some who had more recently learned TM said there hadn't even been an *invitation* to kneel. ME: No one if forced to kneel. But the presumptive motion we make as we kneel,indicating that they kneel worked every time I used it. I never had anyone in all my teaching, not kneel. The impression that some do and some don't is a vast overstatement of people who do not. It would require a pretty strong oppositional personality or a person who had their own religious convictions to not go along. Judy: Even if the student *does* choose to kneel at the end, he or she spends most of the ceremony standing off to the side, just watching, contrary to the post I was responding to which claimed by analogy, falsely, that the student was "on his knees" throughout and very directly participated. ME: "Just watching" IS how you participate in a Hindu puja. They don't have the call and response deal Christians have. It is correct that they do not kneel the whole time of course. The "off to the side" thing is a bit slippery. It is a small alter. There is no room for them to be shoulder to shoulder as the teacher is making the offerings. And just because they are looking at the religious alter from the side rather than straight on doesn't change anything anyway. At most Hindu pujas people are all over the place as they participate in the puja by bringing offerings and paying the priest and then just watching. This is the only way for Hindus to participate. They don't keep saying AMEN. Judy: Here's what Andrew carefully omitted from what he quoted, the part I was addressing (from Drew Olson): When the time comes to get the technique, he must first participate in a ceremony (the puja). This consists of saying confession, taking Holy Communion, and having ashes rubbed on ones forehead, all the while on your knees Andrew knows, of course, that this analogy is ludicrously inaccurate. But he figured he might have a better chance of misleading readers if he deleted what I was responding to. This is absolutely typical of his tactics. If the whole truth doesn't serve his agenda, he does whatever's necessary to obscure it. The student also must bring fruit and a new > handkerchief which he/she gives as an offering in the ceremony. No, wrong again, Andrew. The fruit and handkerchief (and flowers--you forgot the flowers) are for the teacher who is going to instruct the student, and they're given to the teacher when the student walks into the room, BEFORE THE CEREMONY BEGINS, not "in" the ceremony. Giving fruit/flowers/hankerchief to the teacher is not part of the ceremony. There's even a brief conversation in between giving them to the teacher and when the teacher begins the ceremony. ME: Right giving fruit and flower and handkerchief is not part of the ceremony. But it is as I mentioned the only way people ever participate in pujas. The priest makes the offerings for you and even hands you a flower to hold at the beginning so there is not confusion that your flower has been offered. Judy: Moreover, if the student doesn't show up with fruit and handkerchief and flowers, the center usually has a supply on hand. ME: I take exception to this. We sent them out to get the stuff if they came without it. I may have witnessed a few times when a handkerchief was supplied for a person who didn't bring a white one. But people were told that they had to bring this as a requirement for initiation. It was not casual the way you describe. Many people asked me if they could just give me the money to get them for them and we told them "no." I do not remember what the instruction is, if we had the ability to teach them if they brought nothing. I'll look it up. I don't remember because people brought them or we sent them out to get them. Judy: Again, unless the student chooses to kneel at the very end of the ceremony, he or she cannot be said to participate in it in any way. And even that minimal participation is entirely optional. Me: Now that you know more about traditional Hindu pujas you may want to amend this claim. In a Hindu puja, you give the priest offerings to be made on your behalf and you give him cash for his service. The student who is not aware of how pujas are done may be confused about their level of participation. Judy: Finally, it isn't even required that the student witness the ceremony. Susan Seifert pointed out that she had instructed people who were incapable of witnessing it, let alone of kneeling at the end. Me: I question this also. I was not given permission to instruct anyone who did not witness the puja. Perhaps earlier teachers were given more leeway but for my TTC, this was an absolute requirement. As a teacher, we believed that the puja had a magical quality. It was a way for the blessing of Guru Dev to enliven the mantra, to activate it. If you went through TTC you would not think of it in the casual terms you are describing here. And if you never had to tell people older than you that they had to get fruit flowers and handkerchief for you to teach them, you would understand that this was also not a casual thing. We were taught that their participation (unknowing) was a critical element in the success of their first meditation. We took it very seriously. Your only argument is that the student is unaware of how he is participating. The idea that he is not participating is false and gives a false impression of the religious nature of the belief system of the movement. Now the student is welcomed to think of it any way they want. They can misunderstand everything that is going on. They can imagine that the words in Sanskrit are the results from the day's horse races if they want. But that does not change the religious nature of the ceremony, their participation in it or the layers of beliefs that support the insistence that it is performed every time someone learns TM. This ceremony of "gratitude" was also prescribed as a method for purification of the world around the time of Maharishi's death. Teachers in their homes, doing pujas every day to magically purify the world. This is more reflective of how the movement views the puja than the more casual description you have given. > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > WHY should we believe that you chose never to > > > > > mention it then, but choose to mention it now? > > > > > > > > The question is, why should we believe *Barry* > > > > when he claims I never mentioned it then? > > > > > > > > March 28, 1998, me in response to Andrew Skolnick: > > > > > > > > http://groups.google.com/group/alt.meditation.transcendental/msg/f5e9ccef04333bf4 > > > > > > > > http://tinyurl.com/cahj7s > > > > > > If that's so, I apologize. > > > > Thank you. Not sure why the "if," though, when I gave > > you the URL so you could check it out for yourself. > > > > > > And of course, as Barry knows, I've mentioned it > > > > here as well. > > > > > > As should be fairly OBVIOUS, I *didn't* know > > > that. Duh. > > > > Not obvious at all. Why would you go to all the > > trouble of running off to Google to search alt.m.t > > if you hadn't looked here first? > > Because Yahoo Groups Search has not worked > for me for some weeks. It returns nothing, > no matter what settings I use. It may be > working for you in the U.S., but it isn't > working at all for me from Spain. I've men- > tioned this a couple of times already. If > *you* had been paying attention, you'd have > known this. :-) > > But I'll let you rant anyway, like the crazy > woman you are. > > > After all, this is > > where the discussion was taking place. It would > > have been so much more effective if you could have > > found me on FFL talking about kneeling without > > mentioning that I hadn't knelt. > > > > So I don't believe you. I think you *did* search > > here and found to your disappointment that I *had* > > mentioned not kneeling, so you were forced to try > > to prove I hadn't mentioned it years ago on alt.m.t. > > > > (Funny too how you always complain about *my* quoting > > posts from alt.m.t, as though they couldn't have any > > relevance to anything going on here.) >
