--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine <salsunsh...@...> wrote:
>
> On Apr 28, 2009, at 9:54 AM, Hugo wrote:
>
> > Since 1974 the Maharishi University of Management (formerly
> > Maharishi International University) has opened it's doors
> > to students from around the world. I have come to have a
> > look round both at it's campus and a new township that has
> > been built just outside, Maharishi Vedic City.
> >
> > I look in on the office of one Dr Fred Travis, who has
> > got his daughter wired up with dozens of electrodes to a
> > computer.
>
> Poor kid!
>
> > He is monitoring her EEG activity as she goes in
> > and out of TM states. He explains to me what these data on
> > the screen reveal, but I'm ashamed to say the theory has all
> > gone out of my head. I seem to recall being surprised that
> > the claim for TM is not that the brain relaxes but that it
> > becomes more active. I may have got that wrong. I have never
> > met any regular TM practitioner who has struck me as having
> > a mind of any special speed, dynamism or creative energy,
>
> Hmmm...clearly he hasn't met the right people!
>
> > but I have no doubt the practise gives pleasure and rewards
> > to many.
>
> Well, to an increasing few, at least.
>
> > When the electrodes are planted in my brain I cannot
> > tell what is different about the readings, but Dr Travis,
> > whose qualifications are real enough, assures me that these
> > experiments prove something. He is less comfortable when
> > I ask him about yogic flying and other aspects of Vedic
> > "science". Ah well.
>
> I wonder why...
>
> > Next I wander round the campus, noting the Maharishi Tower
> > of Invincibility. There are almost no signs of the original
> > Parsons College. Despite being on the National Register of
> > Historical Places, nearly all of it was bulldozed to make way
> > for new buildings that accorded with Maharishi Sthapatya Veda,
> > which is a kind of Vedic Feng Shui. A few years before he died
> > the Maharishi informed the world that it was vital for the
> > whole planet to live and work in buildings constructed according
> > to Sthapatya. It seems to come down to everything facing east
> > and looking like a ghastly impersonal hotel.
>
> He's got that one right. Impersonal hits the nail
> on the head. Not only looks but feels that way too.
>
> > I am in a thoroughly bad mood by this time. I wouldn't mind
> > all this nonsense if it didn't arrogate half-understood
> > principles of Western science, attempting to marry it's
> > 'philosophy' with the ideas behind quantum mechanics,
> > probability, chaos theory and other essentially mathematical
> > and empirically derived concepts. You cannot simultaneously
> > insult western thinking and use it's precepts to 'prove' your
> > moronic theories: not without losing my respect at least.
>
> Another excellent point...I like this guy.
>
> > I go to the dining hall and eat with some of the students.
> > The food at least is excellent, all organic, all frsh, none
> > processed or frozen. I sit with some students, mostly muslims,
> > who come to the university to study computer science, which
> > seems to be far and away the most popular course. They all
> > appear to put up with the strictures of the university (lights
> > out by 10.00pm, enforced physical exercise and TM) as a price
> > they are willing to pay for an American education. I ask them
> > if they will continue to adhere to the Maharishi's teachings
> > and do TM after they leave. They all laugh. Of course not.
>
> What a shock, no?
>
> > A painful night follows. I am staying in a hotel in Vedic
> > City, which turns out to be a collection of houses off the
> > main road with no focal centre and sense at all of being a
> > city or a community. The hotel does not serve alcohol. I go
> > to bed in a very bad mood indeed.
>
> That's Vedic City in a nutshell: a collection of houses
> thrown down, all facing east, populated with people
> in perpetual bad moods.
>
> > Early the next morning I watch the rush of studentry to the
> > main dome. They have to get there by eight o'clock to swipe
> > their cards through a machine,
>
> Holy shit! I hadn't heard about that! That's a riot!
> Like swiping a credit card! This is really too much...
>
> > pad into the hall and meditate
> > for twenty minutes, which gives them course credits. If they
> > miss more than a few of these daily rituals, they will be fined
> > and docked their credits. I find this all very creepy.
>
> Bingo.
>
> > The film
> > crew says that they think the students look too pale, too thin
> > and too unhealthy. Where is the laughter, the fun, the
> > boisterousness? Cynical about this weird place as I am, I point
> > out that it is after all five minutes to eight in the morning.
> > To find a student awake at that hour is miracle enough-to expect
> > boisterousness would surely be asking too much.
> >
> > I am pleased to put Maharishi University behind me, pleased
> > to see the Tower of Invincibility diminishing in the rear
> > view mirror as I prepare to head back east and towards the Great
> > Lakes.
>
> Another POV indeed! Something tells me this won't
> be making the MUM catalogue. Thanks for posting that, Richard.
>
> Sal
>
It's a shame he couldn't have visited there before BB...(before Bevan)
Back in the day, he wouldn't have written this way, I am absolutely sure...
I remember one time we were doing some gardening...on campus,
And Jerry Jarvis, in his laid back way, would hang with us...
A very kind soul, he is...
'Those were the days, my friend...we thought they'd never end'
R.G.
