Great response, thanks for an excellent read of thoughtful points!
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
> e: Help a Saint - Lose Your Badge
> MIU anti-saint? WTF! CDB
>
> CDB:Let's recap the "teaching". All humans have an innate capacity to reach
> the
> ground of all being, the home of all the laws of nature, the source of
> thought,
> the Self in a simple natural, innocent way. Through repeated exposure to this
> level of life alternated by activity consisting of speaking in a soft lilting
> voice and eating mountains of celebration cake you stabilize this state of
> consciousness into a permanent state where you are functioning according to
> all
> the laws spontaneously due to the need of the time or in accordance with the
> dictates of movement lawyers.
>
> RESPONSE: Not a single person in my lifetime has demonstrated impeccably and
> infallibly that such a "ground of all being" even exists. That is, if I am to
> go by his/her claim to become the embodiment of such an irreducible level of
> reality. In fact, I would go further: I have not observed a single person who
> even gives evidence that they have made contact with such a fundamental form
> of reality. For me the "home of all the laws of nature" is a metaphysical
> fiction. Sure, the EXPERIENCE seems to verify this reality (via TM), but,
> given how wonderfully convincing one's initial experiences are of TM (the
> auguring of everything MMY promises), the final pay-off (nothing to show for
> it, an extraordinarily disappointing trajectory of 'progress' in one's
> 'evolution' over decades of doing TM), logically forces one to conclude:
> THESE EXPERIENCES ARE FALSE; that is, they DO NOT COINCIDE WITH REALITY.
> There IS no such thing as Enlightenment.
>
> CDB:But if you claim to have gotten there some other way than TM then you are
> to be
> shunned? Even if you claim to have gotten there through TM you can't put out a
> shingle that says "I know some stuff you really aught to know, but Maharishi
> didn't have time to lay on us" you are gunna get in trouuuuuuble.
>
> RESPONSE: Anyone who claims "to have gotten there some other way than TM" is
> just as deceived as the person who (like me) seemed to have all the empirical
> proof that I was enlightened through TM. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO GET TO ANY
> OTHER PLACE THAN ONESELF. There is in fact no place to get to. This itself,
> no matter how beautiful and inexpressibly profound the EXPERIENCE is that
> such an alternate state of consciousness exists, is a lie.
>
> CDB:Sometimes I wonder if the movement believes its own rap.
>
> RESPONSE: The Movement DOES "believe its own rap". Didn't you when you were a
> devout and conscientious initiator in the late seventies? Just put yourself
> in the mind of THAT PERSON. Would you ever conceive of accusing him
> (yourself) of being the least bit disingenuous about this matter of guarding
> the inviolable uniqueness of TM and the singular reputation of your teacher
> Maharishi? And spontaneously believe, even intuiting, that EVERY OTHER PATH
> was, at the very best, inferior, and if combined somehow with TM, would
> interrupt and interfere with one's chosen path of evolution? Indeed the Holy
> Tradition could even supernaturally punish you for this experimental
> disobedience. This was, for me, the consensus that exists among the strongest
> and most enthusiastic teachers of TM.
>
> CDB:This suspicion of any other system based on the implied arrogance of TM
> being
> the best, highest, whateverest technique was totally pervasive when I taught.
> We could study Kant or Hegel's impenetrable speculations about the nature of
> reality, but if you slipped into a Muktananda lecture, you could get in some
> serious shit. But now that people have decades of experience, and if Batgap
> interviews are to be believed, are popping into "awakened" states right and
> left, MIU people need to continue this policy of viewing anyone claiming a
> higher state as a threat to purity?
>
> RRESPONSE: No, it's not the expression of arrogance. The estimation and
> judgment of TM being "the best, the highest, whateverest technique" (as you
> will yourself testify to) was born of 1. the unarguable sense of how
> quintessentially innocent that procedure and the experience was of TM 2. the
> credible authority of Maharishi himself as our Master. We did not have to
> convince ourselves that TM was the best; we 'knew' this in our very being.
> For your accusation of arrogance to apply here requires that there to be some
> discrepancy between the professed belief and the degree to which that belief
> resonated with one's soul. In my case, and I believe in the case of thousands
> of initiators (up until the late seventies), this was as real as saying that
> you preferred your own Mother to the mother of any other person. ("Mother is
> at Home" is the very proof of this, for this notion was experienced to be a
> very real phenomenon: physical not just psychological.)
>
> I have watched some of those Batgap interviews, and it is my
> impressioninvariablythat Rick Archer, implicitly and, I believe,
> unknowingly, exhibits a deeper comprehension of and familiarity with the
> so-called spiritual world he is discussing with his guests than any of his
> guests doeven as Rick has pronounced certain of his guests to be in a more
> advanced state of spiritual wholeness than himself. What does this mean? It
> means that, despite the deterioration and defeatedness that has set into the
> TMO [most everyone there is in denial of this or course], Maharishi did
> impart (as did TM) some form of highly sophisticated understanding of what
> this whole universe of spirituality is. In fact, I think Maharishi was so
> cunning and complex as a character, and the context of his performance as a
> Master so dextrous and personally manipulative that HE (inadvertently)
> ACTUALLY PREPARED HIS FOLLOWERS FOR HANDLING THE EVENTUAL DISILLUSIONMENT
> better than any other Guru or spiritual teacher hasor could.
>
> Regarding this "policy of viewing anyone claiming a higher state as a threat
> to purity" I think it a misconception to hold the TMO accountable for this,
> as if they had any say in the matter in the first place. No, this comes from
> the Master, Maharishi himself; therefore, regardless of how rational or
> reasonable the policy isor how realistic or defensibleIT IS LAW. And since
> Maharishi laid it down as law, there is the satisfaction afforded the
> enforcers of this law that the cries of the ignorant or the apostates are
> part of what will accelerate one's evolution: that is, living with these
> contradictions, and even the intellectual persecution contained in this post.
>
> In any case, I don't believe, as I have already asserted, that the are any
> personsanywhere"popping into 'awakened' states". If there really were any
> empirical proof of this, I am sure even the TMO would start to pay attention.
> But those charactersI have not found an exception yetthat Rich Archer
> interviews, they are only credible as persons who tacitly or otherwise claim
> to be in a higher state of consciousness to those who 1. believe that such
> higher states of consciousness exist 2. are predisposed to be receptive to
> what are the putative signs or tokens of such a higher state of
> consciousness. People do believe in gravity, because it has been proved. The
> larger population in Western Civilization do not believe in enlightenmentand
> for good reason: because there is no compelling proof that such a state of
> consciousness is real. And even HH the Dalai Lama has not demonstrated he is
> any more beautiful or more discerning or happier than many other human
> beings. In fact, I deem Maharishi (in all his corruption and arrogance and
> irony and charisma) a far more impressive character than the sweet and
> properand somewhat woodenDL.
>
> Just an aside: reading Hegel or Kant does not mean hearing some truth uttered
> from supposedly a different metaphysical mental space in the universe.
> Attending a Muktananda lecture does mean exactly this. It is in some sense a
> benign attempt at mind-f***ingjust as TM and Maharishi are. No one walks
> away from reading or hearing about Kant with their nervous system invaded by
> some Sanskrit sound designed to take one to "the source of thought".
> Attending a Muktananda lecture means encountering some other occult stream of
> Eastern mysticismwhile one is attempting to navigate oneself via a specific
> and discrete technique (TM) whose supremacy is obviously in question by the
> mere fact of this competing spiritual practice. But it is very different from
> going to one class in Kant, then another in Wittgenstein. These persons are
> real thinkers. The Eastern Gurus, they attempt to ALTER YOUR NEUROPHYSIOLOGY.
> They are not, in my experience, real thinkers at all. Isn't that why
> philosophy was eventually banished as a subject from MIU?
>
>
> CDB:Like little idiot children, the domers can't be trusted to not become
> "confused"
> by these other teachings. They can't be trusted to listen to another POV and
> integrate it into SCI like every other discipline at MIU because the people
> are
> too close to Maharishi's own viewpoint of the world? They are too unethical to
> live by a TM and TM sidis in the dome rule? They can't be trusted?
>
> RESPONSE: The ATTITUDE of the higher-ups in the TMO is certainly this. But
> the sincerity and seriousness with which this injunction is enforced, this
> surely is, as I have said previously, the wish and wisdom of the Master.
> Maharishi forbade this; ergo, it not only must be forbidden now, that very
> prohibition represents the opportunity to be faithful to the Master and to
> preserve the integrity of the Teaching. But your point is well-taken,
> because, even were the authorities at MUM willing to try to make the
> appropriate discriminations and delineations with regard to these "other
> teachings", they, themselves, WOULD BE JUST AS CONFUSED AS ANYONE ELSE.
> Because THERE IS NO RELIABLE MEANS OF TESTING THE METAPHYSICAL VALIDITY OF
> ANYONE OF THESE PRACTICESTM included. So, in a sense, this proscription
> holds, because the actual fact of the matter is that TM and Maharishi do not
> provide a safe (or even objective) perspective from which to evaluate and
> judge the claims of other spiritual practices. And this, in my mind at least,
> is because this simply is intrinsically impossible. Although in the heyday of
> the Movement, when one was experiencing the universe through the medium of TM
> and Maharishi, it did seem then that one could from the point of view of
> one's own experience, confirm the truth of Maharishi's claim: that indeed TM
> was superior, and that we were, through TM, as he once said (I am
> paraphrasing) "drawing everything else out of the woods". Of course "they
> can't be trusted to listen to another POV and integrate it into SCI like
> every other discipline at MIU"because IT IS A DYNAMIC PROCESS THEY ARE
> SUBMITTING THEMSELVES TO IN EXPOSING THEMSELVES TO ANOTHER SPIRITUAL
> TRADITION. It's not a question of these people (former TMers) being
> untrustworthy ethically, it is a question of THEIR INSIDIOUS METAPHYSICAL
> INFLUENCE UPON THE VIRGINAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE TMER.
>
> Re: this whole trust thing: If there were any sort of reliability regarding
> spiritual truth, it would be taught at university. It is in the nature of
> things that ALL of Maharishi's claims for TM are essentially unprovable. Now
> I happen to believe they are unprovable BECAUSE REALITY IS NOT ABOUT TO BE
> MISREPRESENTED BY THE HINDU CLAIM THAT IT IS THE TRUTHvia the experience of
> Transcendental Meditation.
>
> CDB:Is the reason that it is OK to read the Bible because Jesus is dead,
> because
> that isn't what Christians believe. They believe he rose again so he might be
> able to communicate with you through the Holy Spirit (impregnated Mary,
> totally
> hung) and confuse the poor half-wits who have been studying Maharishi's
> teaching
> for the last half century.
>
> RESPONSE: I think the reason why "it is OK to read the Bible" is because,
> while it is true that theologically Christians believe that Christ, as you
> say, is far from dead, Maharishi himself intuited that Christianity (and
> Roman Catholicism, the Church) IS deadonce it was NOT dead. But I think the
> postmodern metaphysic is proof that THE Tradition of the West (Roman
> Catholicism) is no longerto use your termimpregnated by the Holy Ghost. The
> HG has departed from the Church. And this is why Maharishi never felt any
> threat from this tradition. Because he could take stock of its ontological
> status in the universe. And the verdict was: Christ and his Church are dead.
> What exists as a substitute is pure mystical sentimentality. Mood-making. TM
> is much more powerfuland it was. Anyhow, reading the Bible is a relatively
> benign experience (in Maharishi's estimation), and I think him right in this.
> I don't think the Bibleor any form of Christianitythese days, at leastcan
> produce a Road to Damascus experience. Much less a Saint like St Ignatius of
> Loyola.
>
> Mysteriously, it seems (this is my own admittedly idiosyncratic theory) God
> has withdrawn the grace of himself from his creation (assuming there was once
> a being who fits the definition of God), thereby leaving everyone on the
> planet at this time, pretty much at the mercy of their own resources. There
> is no objective source of inspiration for knowing what reality is in any
> supernatural sense. Therefore the successful invasion of the Eastern
> godsand, presumably, the perfectly sane conclusion that atheism is the most
> reasonable vantage point from which to view the universe and one's own
> existence.
>
