--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <LEnglish5@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <LEnglish5@> wrote: > > > > > > The most important secret: don't say this stuff out loud > > > if you plan on using it in TM practice. And reading it > > > is probably kinda silly as well... > > > > Lawson, > > > > Can you please explain to us why you believe this? > > > > Thanks in advance. > > Well, short answer, it was what I was taught and that it was an > important issue. > > Slightly longer answer: over the years I notice, as has Judy, > that when I encounter a non-mental version of "my mantra," I > tend to feel a tad disconcerted. This could obviously be a > result of my emotional trauma with being "off-program" and no > doubt, that is part of it.
At least you can admit this as a possibility; I doubt seriously that she can. > However, as one non-meditating researcher commented, it is > possible that the fact that the mantra becomes "special" > and only encountered [regularly] during TM practice, gives > it a special "signal value" that facilitates its use in the > meditation context. It's not a "thing" you encounter in your > everyday life, so when you DO encounter it (in the context > of meditation), it helps make the process more automatic. That's an interesting rationalization, but I think even you will have to agree that it's a rationalization...for "doing what you were told to do." My position is that "what you were told to do" by TM teachers was for one reason and one reason only -- to keep people from talking about or writing down their mantras to share them with others. Because if they did, everyone would figure out very quickly that everyone in the same age group has the same mantra. In other words, it was a marketing ploy by Maharishi, nothing else. Over the years, people have built this market- ing ploy up into a full-blown superstition, believing that all sorts of Bad Things will happen if they do anything other than what they were told to do.
