Whoa, very nice waking state critique Turq.
Nice writing. -Buck
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> Today for some reason I found myself thinking back to
> the first time I saw Maharishi, in 1967. At that talk,
> at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, he said a few
> things that got me interested enough in the spiritual
> path that I set about walking it.
>
> He laid out the benefits of meditation as he saw it,
> that it offered a way to draw upon one's own inner
> resources for one's sense of self worth and happiness,
> and not be dependent on others and how they see us or
> what they tell us to do for those things. I remember
> him speaking about how meditation (as he saw it)
> required no belief for it to work, and no leaders or
> gurus for it to work. All that it did require was
> actually doing the work -- practicing meditation. And
> I remember him speaking about how meditation could
> help to develop one's own creativity, and how that
> could help to resolve the problems of life by being
> able to create more effective solutions to them.
>
> At one point a person stood up and asked a question.
> He talked about a particular problem he was having,
> and how it had left him in a quandary, not knowing
> what to do. He then asked Maharishi what to do.
>
> Maharishi's answer was the most impressive thing he'd
> said in the entire talk. He said, "If I tell you what
> to do, all that will happen is that it will make you
> weaker. The next time you have a problem, you'll want
> me to tell you what to do about it again. You will
> become dependent on me. What you should do instead is
> meditate, draw upon your own creativity, and solve
> the problem yourself. That will make you stronger."
>
> Compare and contrast to what Maharishi allowed his
> teaching and his spiritual movement to devolve into.
> What I find myself thinking today, remembering this
> first talk, is how SAD it is how little of what he
> said that day turned out to be true. Or at least how
> little of it turned out to be what he actually taught
> and how he conducted himself as the years went on.
>
> Instead of the independence and self-sufficiency he
> touted in that first talk, what happened -- and
> within a couple of years -- was an environment in
> which the students were taught to rely on him and
> what he told them to do. Being on the whole young
> and impressionable people in the 60's they may in
> fact have brought a lot of this tendency to rely
> on guru figures with them, but he allowed them to
> do so, and in fact encouraged it.
>
> He also encouraged "magical thinking," the view that
> all you had to do was meditate and that if you did,
> and listened to what he told you to do, magical
> forces that were larger than you would take care of
> you and make everything turn out right. "Do less and
> accomplish more," which in those early talks clearly
> meant "Meditate and recharge your energy and your
> creativity and then go out and USE it by working more
> efficiently for the things you want" turned into "Just
> meditate and everything will be taken care of." Prag-
> matic thinking gave way to magical thinking.
>
> And look what the outcome of this reliance on magical
> thinking has produced. People who can no longer imagine
> solutions to the problems of hunger and war and violence
> that come from humans using their own intelligence and
> working towards pragmatic solutions. Instead, the only
> source that they can imagine a solution to these prob-
> lems coming from is magic, in the form of some Woo Woo
> Rays emanating from the thuds of their butts on foam,
> or from other, even more magical Woo Woo Rays emanating
> from some teacher or guru or avatar.
>
> Call me crazy but I miss the message of that first
> Maharishi talk. I am hopeful that the problems of this
> planet, both individual and worldwide, can in fact be
> resolved. But I don't believe that they can only be
> resolved by some magical force outside ourselves, or
> by Woo Woo Rays. I think that these problems can only
> be resolved by the pragmatic, creative ideas of indi-
> vidual human beings, creative ideas that are possibly
> enhanced by meditation and other practices, but *our*
> ideas, not those of some avatar or guru or spiritual
> teacher or other source of magical Woo Woo.
>
> That, after all, was the message of the first talk I
> ever heard Maharishi give. It's just too bad that he
> either was lying about what he said, or didn't believe
> it thoroughly enough to follow through on it in his
> own teachings, and with his own students. If he had,
> the world might have been a much better place, and
> they would certainly have been much stronger human
> beings. Instead, just as he said in that first talk,
> he wound up making them weaker.
>
