--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Premanand" <premanandp...@...> wrote: > > Actually, most hermits, sadhus and swamis in India are perceived as beggars. > In 1967 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi put it like this:- > "So there is nothing definite in the life of a monk, particularly in India. > Here in the west the monks are more organized and the church is there and > they take care of it, but in India when one leaves home he doesn't take > care of himself, because he has no means to take care. He is out of society; > no one asks him to do some work and pays him wages or anything nothing. So > now he is all in the faith of God now that he is left with just his faith. > So the life of a monk is a very very hard life." - Extract of interview > published in International Times, 15 December 1967. > > Interestingly though, despite his acknowledgement that monks receive no > wages, Maharishi himself had a problem with being seen as a beggar:- > "People had made a rule, that they put some basket there so that people when > they come and when they go, they put something in the basket. And I felt very > ashamed with that basket on the door and people coming and I said `It is like > begging on the door', because it was too odd to me to put a basket in front > of my room." - transcript of tape recording.
To my knowledge, MMY never claimed he was a Saint, enlightened or even a Guru. I think people need to accept MMY for who he was, based on what he did, not some preconceived notion YOU or ME may have, albeit MMY WAS somewhat of a enigma but that is perhaps where it ends. If anything his constant deflection of praise to his Master Guru Dev suggests to me the message he was sending was that the Guru Dev was the real power house and inspiration behind it all, literally, whether SBS intended it that way or not, MMY certainly did! I've noticed the tmorg has proclaimed him to be Omnipresent, etc. but MMY himself never claimed that, nor do I believe he was. He was a simple Yogi, with a simple message, for simple minded (ignorant) people, perhaps more than they deserved, at least for some!!
