--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "geezerfreak" <geezerfr...@...> wrote: > I'm also curious about the true source of the > technique of using these particular bija mantras > in this way. I would like to think that it was > there long before MMY. But I've heard evidence > that this was something Maharishi cooked up in > 1954.
Way he told it, or wanted it told, both are true: he rediscovered it. Have you ever read Larry Domash's introductory essay to the Collected Papers? There's a whole section on MMY's account of how he developed the technique. It's made quite clear (albeit between the lines) that it wasn't something Guru Dev taught. Don't know if you'll find it plausible, but I'm pretty sure you'll find it interesting. Here's a link to the first half, which was posted on alt.m.t way back in 1993: http://tinyurl.com/34zns4 If you want to get right to that section, click on "Read More" at the bottom of the post to get to the complete post, then do a text search for "Such a reversal" and read from there. <snip> > Ever wonder why the TMO let out almost NO information > about Guru Dev and what he actually thought? Didn't > that strike any of you as a bit strange? Never occurred to me until Paul Mason posed the question awhile back, but the answer seemed to me pretty obvious: because Guru Dev was a *religious* leader, and MMY was trying to package TM as secular. Guru Dev was also strong on the behavioral stuff, do's and don'ts, which MMY wanted to deemphasize. (Not talking about TMO "rules" but yamas and niyamas and devotion to God and so on.) > The TMO became a rotted farce of the original intention > long ago. My personal curiosity in the TMO history at > this point revolves around when MMY reached the tipping > point between the original goal and the money/power/ > influence goal that ruined the modern day movement. Don't know about the timing of the "tipping point" or if there ever actually was one. I've never been around him, but from reading *about* him, my sense is that once he got the idea of "spiritually regenerating" the world back in the early days in India, it took hold of him and never let go. He couldn't say at any point, OK, that's as much as we can do; he had to try to go all the way. Temperamentally, he was brilliant at building a movement up to a certain point, but then he began to flounder and just didn't make the right moves, especially when he began to come up against opposition. I think he genuinely expected that it would all fall into place, as it did in the early years, and he had no sense of what to do when that expansion stopped. (Not that he didn't have all kinds of ideas, but they obviously weren't effective.)
