--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...>
wrote:
>
> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote:
<snip>
> I agree that MMY's scientific standards were pretty
> > low, but not that he didn't really believe what he said
> > about spirituality being measurably reflected in the
> > physiology.
>
> I think he believed this till CC.
Well, that's the big step.
After consciousness
> is established in that state then it becomes independent
> of physiology in his system. (the brain can ever rot!)
> There are still some physical components to refinement of
> perception through the mythical soma (produced miraculously
> out of semen for dudes.)
And in the stomach too, no?
> But that doesn't affect the
> independent consciousness but only perception to GC. (Oh
> my God! I mean really, really, OH MY GOD!) Then after
> Unity you have leisha vidya
(I've never been sure how to spell the first part, but
I'm pretty sure the second part is "avidya," no? The
phrase means "remains of ignorance." So it would be
leish avidya, I believe.)
In any case, leish avidya would have to be related to
the physiology, wouldn't it? It's because you're still
*in* a body that you have it.
which I suspect was one of his
> personal excuses for banging groupies.
>
> His approach was holistic no matter who he was
> > talking to. He'd emphasize either the physical or the
> > metaphysical (although he hated that word) depending on the
> > occasion, but never one to the exclusion of the other, at
> > least that I ever heard, and I've been in both types of
> > audience.
>
> If you missed the lectures showing his contempt for science
> you might just catch it from his positioning of his
> subjective means of gaining knowledge compared to science.
Sure, but that isn't what I'm talking about.
> And here is my sincere beef with the guy. He played up
> the limitations of the scientific method and claimed that
> his techniques gave us access to not only a new way of
> feeling about our own identity ("I am eternal and will
> never perish), but also claimed that we could have a
> reliable way to know about the way the world actually
> works from inside our minds (which he would claim was
> deeper than that in consciousness). But he never
> produced any examples of anything that he or any of his
> followers got from inside that turned out to be really
> important or interesting to the rest of us. In fact
> dreams have so far produced much more fodder for
> scientific exploration than any of the TMer's states of
> mind.
"Important or interesting to the rest of us" isn't
necessarily comprehensive.
Granted, no Nobel Prizes to TMers, as far as we know (but
it's entirely possible we might not know if there were),
but I'm not positive scientific exploration per se is the
sine qua non.
> So I have a strong dislike for politicians or gurus who
> play on most people's unfamiliarity of the methods of
> science as a confidence game to make it seem like their
> speculations about how the world works is deeper than that.
Well, who wouldn't? But I'm not convinced that's what
MMY was doing.
>
> I am not anti-speculation in and of itself. It is an important part of the
> creative process. But at some point we need to sort out the BS from the
> substantial and Maharishi had no interest in that process since it was his
> speculations that were causing his success on all levels. Cynically, money
> and power. More charitably, more people who believed that he was a unique
> person who knew things we don't, and would accept his priorities for our
> lives and "attention".
>
> So this point is not a superficial Maharishi bash for me. It strikes at the
> core of what I consider to be an honest inquiry into reality and I am no less
> serious about it than he was.
