Bevan:
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--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> An Open Letter to Bevan Morris
>
> Dear Bevan,
>
> I knew you on my Six Month Course in Arosa in 1976. Then again we met when
> you gave a public lecture in Chicago in 1982 (I remember your mother crying
> in witnessing the intense debate between us at the end of your lecture). As I
> recall, at Arosa, you had a special status as a course participant, since you
> periodically would visit Maharishi in Seelisberg, while the rest of us were
> held steadfast in our obedience to the rules, which meant never leaving
> Arosa. I also observed you exercise your authority as Maharishi's surrogate
> on that course: you were determined to make sure Maharishi's will was being
> done in everything that went on there. I accepted this invigilator role
> because I sensed it came entirely out of your devotion to Maharishi.
>
> Then that brief and confounding court appearance in Ottumwa [1983], where you
> played an audio tape of Maharishi's gruff, one word answers (in the negative)
> to my questions about the validity of my spiritual claims to represent
> Maharishi (I had brought roses in anticipation of the full and final
> endorsement by Maharishi). The only other time I think I found myself in rapt
> conversation about you was with Tony Harding who was at Cambridge with you
> (he getting a Second Class, you a Firsthis enthusiasm, admiration, and
> reverence for you was unqualified): this was on the Two Week Extension after
> my first ATR (1975).
>
> Now, while so many persons who were close to Maharishi, served him, and
> devoted their lives to him, have left the Movement, you have remained the
> loyal and faithful disciple. Not only this; but you have acted in the absence
> of Maharishi ("Now. . .wholly given over to unfamiliar affections"Auden),
> upholding to the letter what you deem to be the inviolable truths of his
> Teaching and the Tradition out of which he came. This has made you unpopular
> among many initiators, former initiators, governors, ex-governors: because
> they would have you compromise, adapt, modernize the Movement, to bring it
> into conformity to what seems to be what reality, nature has determined
> (based upon the degree to which Maharishi's vision and goals have been
> realized) it is entitled to be. (Of course had Maharishi's promises been
> fulfilled there never would have been any protest against the most scrupulous
> enforcement of the letter of the law; but in the wake of a profound sense of
> disillusionment, frustration and betrayal, the dogmatic adherence to the
> context within which Maharishi first laid down his rules appears to be
> maladaptive and reactionary. And yet I understand it *must* be thus; else the
> whole thing will begin to collapse from the inside. The Movement will
> officially lose its soul.)
>
> But why am I writing this letter to you, Bevan? It is to inspire you in your
> very raison d'etre: which is to carry on the beautiful dream of Maharishi,
> and bring about everything that you believe was his mission in the world. Now
> how can this letter act in accordance with your most fundamental desire?
> Simply this, Bevan: by explaining your relationship to Maharishi and how you
> maintain your absolute love for and surrender to him (even in his death) in
> the face of all the contradictory evidence that 1. Maharishi was not the
> holy, virtuous, infallible, loving Master he implied he was [and we were
> convinced he was]; 2. Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhi program,
> has not produced a trillionth of what we innocently and ingenuously believed
> it would, based upon what Maharishi told us, and based even on our own
> personal experiences (at least up to and through the mid-seventies).
>
> What I (and others) want to know, Bevan is: How do you live with, reconcile,
> integrate these damning facts about Maharishi with your present posture,
> since, from all that I can infer from your attitude and actions, you believe
> that everything is just as it was, say, in 1976 in Arosa: There is nothing to
> explain, defend, justify about Maharishi's behaviour nor the diminishing
> power and prestige of Maharishi and his Movement.
>
> It seems a terrible strain and effort, the classic posture which is
> incompatible with the very first principle of TM: innocent, simple, natural,
> effortless. *Suffering is unnecessary*; *suffering means weakness*. Well,
> Bevan, do you not admit Maharishi towards the end of his life suffered
> acutely?and I don't just mean physically. I mean in the sense of the
> crushing defeat (to take just one example) of his hopes when so few
> initiators responded to his re-certification course for all TM Teachers. Do
> you believe, Bevan, that Maharishi himself, thought he had succeeded in what
> he set out to do? Did he act towards the end as if he was the man and Master
> he was, say, in 1976? Did you experience happiness and love around him in
> 2007 the way you did when you lived in his ashram in Rishikesh in 1970?
>
> You see, Bevan, I am not trying to hound you, press you, confront you in any
> of this. No, what I seek is that special and hidden knowledge you have in
> your heart and soul which enables you, with a clear conscience, to carry on
> as if nothing that has gone wrong in the Movement (or in the reputation of
> Maharishi as a paragon of integrity) which would inevitably lead to any kind
> of personal existential crisis in you. Do you believe, Bevan, that when it
> comes for you to dieor "to drop the body"you will find there the
> fulfillment and consummation of everything you live for right now, a way of
> seeing reality, the universe, and yourself strictly in the same terms as
> dictated by your sublime experiences in Rishikesh, or when you first gave
> lectures as "Bevan from Heaven" (after your Six Month Course)?
>
> I am not seeking some kind of revenge, or humiliation here. Not at all. On
> the contrary: I believe you owe it to every human being who trusted Maharishi
> and gave themselves up to him in the most extreme and sacrificial way, to
> explain *just what it is about your experience and knowledge of Maharishi
> which keeps you going*and your emphatic refusal to discuss or to allow into
> the conversation anything about Maharishi or the Movement which would subject
> your traditional view of Maharishi, TM, and the Movement, to the scrutiny of
> reality. Reality based upon how Nature, the universe, has responded in these
> latter years to the person, status, and promise of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
>
> I believe you of all persons who were associated with Maharishi knew him
> best. He considered you (I would have thought) the best possible candidate
> for being his successor. In any case, no one I think knew Maharishi more
> personally, and in every aspect of his life, better than you. So therefore,
> Bevan, you must know something about Maharishi, or some things about
> Maharishi, that we, who compared to you, were on the outside, don't know or
> could not know. What specifically is it about your relationship with
> Maharishi which allows you to carry on as if this was 1975, and everything is
> flowering just as Maharishi (and your own intuition) said it would? There
> seems to be a great mystery here, Bevan, because I cannot believe you are
> simply a human being who refuses to face up to the truth. As intelligent, as
> discerning, as devoted, as sincere as I know you were in first forming your
> allegiance to Maharishi, I can't conceive that you are, deliberately living
> out a lie. That is, refusing to process the information that is available to
> everyone who knew Maharishi and who has followed this supreme adventure and
> romance of the last 45 years.
>
> You are profoundly aware of the accusations, the complaints, the challenges,
> the opposition that is out therefrom among those who loved Maharishi most.
> How do you, inside of yourself, answer these people? Are you going to leave
> that to God, to reality, to Creative Intelligence? The way I see it, Bevan,
> is that if there is even a measure of goodwill and honesty and graciousness
> in you (both from who you really are independent of your intimate association
> with Maharishi, and who you are as the favorite disciple of a great Master),
> you will tell us (in a letter, in a book, in a video tape, in a series of
> lectures, in your journal) what secret you possess about Maharishi that was
> kept from the rest of us. The secret basis of your continued and unflinching
> fidelity to Maharishi. Your confidence that you are doing what is not only
> right according to Maharishi's will, but which, because of this, is right in
> some divine and supernatural sense.
>
> If I had access to you as a friend, I wouldwith total openness and the
> keenest of receptivitywant to know what keeps you going in this calling of
> being the person who feels inspired to uphold the name and legacy of
> Maharishiperhaps *even more* than if everything that Maharishi had told us
> was in fact coming true, and everything we thought Maharishi was, was being
> borne out posthumously in the absence of any evidence which would besmirch
> his personal reputation as a Master of the Holy Tradition. You see, Bevan,
> you have adopted the self-anointed role of martyr for Maharishi, and I can
> only believe that it is through this very context (suffering for the truth,
> knowing in yourself that these animadversions against the name and honor of
> your Teacher and his Teaching (including his spiritual techniques for
> becoming enlightened) represent (in some unfathomable karmic sense) the most
> extreme form of unstressing imaginable, and that, ironically enough, these
> powerful setbacks and intense calumniations of Maharishi, go towards proving
> his greatness and his perfection.
>
> Surely this must be it, Bevan. But whatever it is which allows you to sustain
> your faith and your devotion and your love, you must realize that it is
> double martyrdom. Not just the martyrdom that I have described here (the
> ultimately unjust slandering of the spiritual integrity of Maharishi, and a
> most premature negative judgment of the efficacy and potential of TM), but
> the martyrdom of knowing that in holding inside yourself this perspective
> about Maharishi, TM, and the Movement, *you fail to provide evidence of the
> truth of this experience*, for in effect, in the eyes of those who examine
> you closely, *you seem to be suffering the exact and objective consequences
> that inevitably must come from these bitter and undeniable facts about
> Maharishi, TM, and Maharishi's Movement*. In other wordsI think you get it,
> Bevanyou do not convince us that how you are bearing these wounds of
> misrepresentation of your Master and his Teaching go towards proving to us
> that you are holding up because of the very grace that is afforded you in
> being such a martyr. On the contrary, it would seem from your attitude, your
> bearing, that the dark side of Maharishi, the mystical deceit contained in
> the promises of TM, and the totalitarian aspects of the Movement are
> perfectly mirrored in your inner psychology.
>
> Of course it could be I am wrong about all this. Perhaps I have gone further
> than I should have in that last paragraphgiving away my own predetermined
> conclusion in all this. Namely, that you are suffering, Bevan, because
> reality will not refute Maharishi's and TM's critics; and that you have no
> other option than to in essence go into denial. And that's where you are.
>
> *However*, I also can't quite believe that, if we knew all that you know
> about Maharishi personally, we wouldn't understand a great deal more about
> why you continue to preserve the context within which you first became
> convinced that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a true Master, and held the secret
> for the fulfillment or every human being on the earth (and elsewhere).
> Because of course there were thousands of us who were just as persuaded of
> this as you werebut are no longer. The thing is, Bevan, if Maharishi had
> something about himwhich was lasting, enduring, immutablewhich stands in
> contradiction to what his most severe critics say about him [former
> initiators all], that something would have somehow *gone into you*. You would
> be the beneficiary of this goodness, this beauty, this innocence, this love,
> this silence (or whatever it was that Maharishi had, even at the end, which
> you knew would stand you in good stead against the rising wave of hatred,
> bitterness, and negativity coming out of the those who came to believe
> Maharishi was dissembling on a grand scalewas even personally corrupt). But
> for the close observer of yourself these days, one cannotfrom the reports
> that I receivesee evidence of how the supreme grace of the Master is now
> located inside the favorite disciple.
>
> And I wonder if your mother (when she was alive), in perhaps hearing rumors
> of these nasty criticisms of Maharishiand yourself, remonstrated with you
> lovingly, asking, demanding, that you tell her the real truth: "Bevan, are
> you sure Maharishi is what you want him to be, what you believe him to be,
> what you have experienced him to be? Because I love you, and I would hate to
> know that you are giving over your whole life to a false cause. Bevan, as my
> son, I ask you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth: Are all these
> people wrong? Is Maharishi as true as you want him to be?"
>
> Maybe this scenario actually happened in real life. Maybe (remembering your
> mother's traumatic tears during our quarrel at that lecture: her crying
> demonstrated she was conflicted) your mother went to her grave, intuitively
> believing that her son had to live out this deception to the end, and that
> this was a kind of tragedy for her. Even though she knew: I cannot help him,
> I cannot stop him; this is his terrible destiny: to be the victim of this
> extraordinary man, who, when all is said and done, is not and could never be
> what my son in his heart believes to the death that he is.
>
> Very sincerely yours,
> Robin Carlsen
>
