Thanks for taking the time to collect the links. I will read the threads and comment.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: > > Curtis-- > > I think you'll get most of it if you follow the thread > that starts with this August 2009 post from Vaj: > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/226302 This is a classic case of what we were talking about mixing together different layers of understanding and using words outside a jargon context. Remember when I mentioned a while back about the choice to stay with the Self in meditation? I shut the discussion down because I felt this was not a suitable context for it but this post touches on some of those issues. I don't view this as evidence of not understanding TM yet. This is an advanced discussion of meditation including TM IMO. Once you open up techniques like the Chopra thing which I had, you have a different view of your options down there, or up there, or in there or whatever it is we are doing wherever. So I get how you could take a position that he shouldn't say what he said in the context of a TM center, but he was discussing it in a very different context outside the need to maintain jargon or approve phrases. Unless you are in a context where being precise about the teaching really matters, or you are hanging around a lot of TMers, or you are just really into being precise about your language of TM, it kind of drops away. We are talking decades of Vaj not trying to be precise about the language. Decades of adapting his memory of how people talk about TM mixed with his new understanding of meditations that he currently practices. Plus you are taking this as some kind of test of his exposure to TM teaching, Vaj is just talking here. He obviously is somewhere the continuum of not giving a shit to actually enjoying that you seem to believe he never was a teacher. > > There was an earlier thread in March that more or less > began here with a post from you: > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/213494 Yes, this was the thread I was talking about. So check out Vaj's comment" "His particular phrasing--which IMO the sensitivity and careful phrasing--is all that is unique. But easy repetition of mantra itself is not unique at all, although limiting oneself to just that slant on mantra, to the exclusion of others, is a uniqueness (really a dogmatic narrowness) of the TM technique." How TM insiderish does he have to be? He is comparing the central teaching of TM to other practices he has been exposed to. And once you have some of the advanced techniques or the Chopra technique, the simple formula of innocence is altered. If out of the blue I told you to think you mantra as if it is coming from your heart, under beginner TM rules you might think this involves effort. It does not as evidenced by higher TM practices. >From is next post: Really, in terms of the technical description of how TM is practiced in the initial technique--it's not truly like 'any other thought', as one is enjoined to maintain mindfulness (or smriti to use the actual technical term) both as the mantra first arises (waiting or "monitoring" for the mantra to "appear") and one must be mindful to return to the mantra--otherwise one would potentially end up never returning to the mantra, but remain distracted for the entire session! This is not like any other thought. The level of mantra repetition where mantra continues continuously like a spontaneous thought actually is ajapa-japa: no effort or smriti, just constant ongoing awareness of mantra 24/7/365. This is like a deep experience discussion with Maharishi applying traditional Sanskrit terms to TM with him concluding that it is an "effortless effort". (Actual tape) It is a fine distinction between any other thought and the mantra and I have heard Maharishi himself make such a distinction. The terminology may not be movement approved for beginners, but Vaj has combined it with his current perspective. And in the end I get his point. It is a valid distinction. Any other thought flows through my mind with no attempt to go back to it. The mantra has a special quality of attention that the obsessive Hindus have a name for. Here Vaj is bound to piss some TM people off: "Technically the style of mantra repetition where one has to return to the mantra still is called "faulty" or "defective" in Sanskrit since one has to constantly re-engage the mantra as it is lost. It's one of the lower levels of mantra practice." So he is fitting TM into a whole perspective that demotes TM. Maybe he is right, I don't know. But it doesn't mean he doesn't understand TM to me. I just read your refutation of his point. This is why I didn't pursue this discussion with you when I was making this kind of distinction. The words are so inaccurate that unless you are in good rapport with a person you end up talking about different things, which is what I believe you were doing. Your points were fine, accurate for what you were discussing about TM. But you were not getting his point because you seemed too committed to correcting his understanding rather than understanding it. The posts reveal both your and my lack of familiarity with Vaj's other meditations. I believe that is the cause of the disconnect with the language. And I suspect there is probably a bit of shaping going on as Vaj remembers TM which he considers a special ed technique for short bus riders like you and me. But you and I can both relate to how the mantra goes by itself in our meditation through lots of practice which is different from what it was when we first started and required more of our mind to keep it going. Now we have the neural pathway superhighway for repeating the mantra established and it goes more effortlessly. Which Vaj says is a higher practice so good for us! > > This is the post (in the same thread but further down) > in which Raunchy first voiced her doubt that Vaj had > ever done TM (and when I then commented to her that Vaj > claimed to have been a TM teacher, she was astounded): > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/213530 She was missing the same point I believe you were. This discussion is a mixup of levels of understanding. And I don't mean that you don't have a good one about your practice of TM. I mean you are both mixing up levels of discussion from the instruction to the experience in our advanced practice. I have heard Maharishi introduce the idea of an effortless effort. What Vaj seems to be saying is what we were discussing earlier. We just start up the meditation machine and don't have to come back to the mantra the way a new meditator does. I believe that this is what he is talking about. But whether I am right or wrong about that, it doesn't mean that he doesn't understand TM, quite the contrary. He is making a distinction between beginner and advanced practice of mantra meditations. And it is close to how I would describe my own actual practice rather than the words used when I am teaching a new meditator. > > Follow that part of the thread for a few posts. > > BTW, I just reread a post of Tom's from back then. I'd > forgotten that he also suspects Vaj was never a TM > teacher, and he's a checker. So that's now five TM > teachers, two certified checkers, and one trained but > uncertified checker who are on the record. Plus > several non-teacher TMers. Of these, only Nabby and > Raunchy could be considered full-blown TBs, and > Raunchy is a pretty idiosyncratic one. I know this has been a popular perspective on Vaj for a number of reasons, but I just can't make the jump. He relates to me as an insider and I still haven't found a reason to doubt that. > > Like me, she's much more offended by misrepresentation > than by negative opinions. emptybill, I believe, no > longer practices TM. BillyG does but he has no > inhibitions about criticizing MMY. do.rkflex (who still > practices, I think) is a Guru Dev devotee who doesn't > have much use for MMY but who's a stickler for accuracy > with regard to instruction in TM (and who would disagree > with Raunchy and me if he could figure out an excuse to > do so without compromising his own position). > > Lawson is another idiosyncratic TB who arguably has the > clearest understanding of basic TM of anybody here. Tom's > a demon practitioner (he should excuse the expression) > but has lots of ambivalence and is hardly a TB in other > respects. I don't doubt that this list of people have their reasons to doubt but I just don't. It is so much easier for me to see him as a guy into TM who moved on, who is still fascinated with TM and Maharishi as I am for his own reasons now. It seems harder to construct the kind of person who would create such an elaborate presentation. And to what end? To make us all believe that he is into something better that we don't have access to? He comes off as much more normal and sincere than that to me. > > Anyway, finally, a post from me from December 2010, when > Vaj brought the same "waiting" issue up again; my post > quotes his extensively (you can track back to find > his original in response to a post from emptybill): > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/263765 > > There are other bits and pieces here and there, but > this ought to give you a pretty good idea. This reinforces my belief that you are missing his point. And it can't be made without your interest in understanding it. You had already made up your mind that Vaj was an imposter and are not making an attempt to connect how his words connect to your experience. You are looking for any discrepancy to make a case that he wasn't a real TM teacher. You are deliberately ignoring his clarification of meaning to go back to specific words used in TM to attempt to make the distinction that they are not the exact ones used in TM instruction. You don't want him to be making a subtle point about meditation. You want him to be wrong. We are talking about the subtly of inner experience here. I don't ever get the impression that Vaj is trying to make a case for his previous involvement by parroting the right phrases. He is assuming that you are either on board with his experience or not. If you are not, no explaining will do. If you are, then you might understand the point he is making with regard to our experience. I believe it is an experience that you and I actually share in our meditations. But you can't connect it without rapport. And it is even hard for you and I to connect on this level of language and we share the same practice! How much harder if he is coming from a view of TM as a beginner's step. I am surprised he does as well as he does to connect it with our TM at this stage. You have been barking up the "Vaj was never a TM teacher" tree. Vaj has been ignoring that, not making a case to prove it, and has been pursuing his own interests concerning meditatiton. Remember, I am not conceding that I buy into anything Vaj has experienced in his meditation travels as superior in a way I value to my homely TM. She was the one I brung to the hoedown I am fine spinning her around the floor. I figure that at this stage she is my best chance for a little somet'n sumet'n in the back of the Ford before her daddy comes out to collect her with the buckshot musket in his hands. I don't expect this to be convincing for you Judy, but appreciate the invitation to have another look at some of the evidence that leads you to believe Vaj never was a teacher or maybe not even a TMer. I still believe he was and consider his insights into meditation to be a resource here with no more diabolical agenda than to express his interest in meditation techniques. I found this series of posts to be informative about my own practice. And it could, in the end, just be the imprecision of language concerning subjective experience that gets shaped when I read it into something that I apply to my own experience in a way unintended by Vaj completely. We may just all be talking past each other with little real communication going on like each of us throwing out lines of poetry and each of us separately getting what we can relate to out of it. But it is a worthy endeavor to understand each other concerning our inner experience, so I enjoyed the ride. >
