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
