--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, gullible fool <ffl...@...> wrote: > > > One of his fans once insisted to me that Charlie must be > > speaking from direct experience âbecause he has been > > meditating for 15 years. > > 11 years was enough to convince some of us back then. I used > to go to the weekly evening lecture Charlie Donahue gave at > the Cambridge TM center in his days as east coast regional > coordinator back in the 70s. In one lecture, Charlie was asked > about UC. Charlie says something like "I have no experience > with TC, and I'm supposed to talk about CC, GC, and UC?"
Very honest of him. I never really knew C.Donahue, because he was an East Coast guy and I was West Coast. Besides, whenever all the Regional Coordin- ators got together I never got to go because I was one of the gophers left behind to run things while they were away, in my case sub-bing for Stan Crowe. But I can identify with what he says, because until Fiuggi, when I flashed out for about three weeks and thought I was in CC, I'd never really had a *clear* experience of TC myself. That, for me, happened at the "five-year mark" of practicing TM. I would suspect that many TMers have never had a clear experience of transcending/TC. > Talk about bursting a bubble. I was expecting CC was a > 5 to 8 year thing, hopefully much faster with all the > residence courses I was doing, and here someone with > long rounding courses and time with MMY and 11 years > of TM (or maybe it was 8 Charlie had then), says he is > nowhere close. Curtis has spoken often, and eloquently, about a certain *style* of talking and presenting yourself. Charlie Lutes had that *style*. It is *supposed* to convey a sense of "I *know* things you do not," and inspire awe and devotion. I didn't know what it was until I lived down the street from a small Theosophical Society group and started dropping into their meetings. Surprise! *Everyone* there tried to carry themselves and push out the "I know things you do not" number that Charlie Lutes was running. Add to that the fact that we were all *looking for* someone -- anyone -- who knew things we did not. We were the perfect "sucker bait" for this *style* of presentation and "teaching." I've been paying attention to some of the discussions in the last few days to see how many of them devolve into one consistent bottom line. Surprise! ALL of them do. That bottom line is, "I believe this because some- one once said it (or wrote it in a book I consider authoritative) and I choose to believe them." That's really THE bottom line of spiritual experience for most people, because on the whole most don't have enough of their *own* experiences to fall back on. So they pick someone whom they choose to believe, and believe them. Or they do what Charlie Lutes did and just make up shit or repeat shit they've heard from people they choose to believe, hoping that people will believe *them* in turn. And thus the made-up shit masquerading as "knowledge" persists and replicates. Take the raps about aliens and ETs. almost every one of them is nothing more than "Someone I believe said so, so it's true." Almost. The other alternative is to do what Edg did and spout off about how he thinks (and hopes) the universe "should" work and declare it as if it were fact. There is not an ounce of proof for ANY of these statements. And yet people repeat them as if they were not only true but Truth, and other people buy into them as if they were Truth. All these years, all these decades, and people are still doing the same thing. It takes someone strong to do what Charlie Donahue did and say simply, "I don't know." I respect "I don't know." There is honesty in that stance, and more, because given the centuries-old trend in spiritual pursuits to do the opposite and claim that you *do* know, based on what someone once told you, it takes a certain strength of character and level of self-acceptance and humility to do the opposite. Besides, "I don't know" is *liberating* whereas "I know" is binding. If you claim to "know" something, in most cases that means you have simply stopped looking for more to learn about that subject. "I don't know" means that you are still open to learning more.
