This latest round of TMers claiming that they have been personally insulted by someone criticizing or making fun of their teacher or their path has caused me to think back to my time in the TM movement. Those memories are full of people -- my fellow TM teachers -- making all *sorts* of jokes about and poking fun at Maharishi, TM, the hours we spent on "program," our completely artificial way of speaking in SIMS-speak and, most of all, ourselves. People back then weren't so *touchy*. We had senses of humor. We could *laugh* about ourselves, and the silly thing we'd gotten ourselves involved with.
So WTF happened? I think that part of it is that *over time* many people became "self unaware." That is, they got so completely immersed in the cult that they became incapable of seeing themselves the way that someone outside the cult might see them. There was a kind of homogenized self- referentiality about always hanging with people who believed the same things that you did and dressed the same way that you did and said the same things you did and...well...you get the point. It's as if people lost the ability to discriminate between themselves and the beliefs or people (spiritual teachers) or lifestyles they had attached themselves to. Criticize one of these things, and the self-unaware types react as if you had criticized *them*. The fascinating thing is that I don't see this inability to "see oneself in context" in spiritual seekers who only "signed on" to their spiritual trip for shorter periods of time. I think that the rigidity and the loss of the ability to laugh at oneself and one's spiritual trip may be something that "accrues" over time -- many years or decades. What about it, you long-timers out there? Don't you remember being able to make jokes about Maharishi or TM or ourselves and the silly things we believed and did in rooms full of other TBs...and have everyone laugh? I sure do. So WTF happened? If you have theories other than my "stayed too long at the party" theory, I'd love to hear them.
