[FairfieldLife] Re: Dome meeting with Maharaja-ji

[raunchydog]

"TM is the ice-cream." Beautifully expressed, Robin. Thank you.

--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, maskedzebra <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> Darling Obbajeeba,
> 
> I can't get rid of the hate in my heart, so please bear with me while I 
> attack you without cause.
> 
> Did you watch Ellen Degeneres open that David Lynch Foundation event? And did 
> you read Bob Price's wife's post attempting to persuade Emily to start 
> Transcendental Meditation? And do you recall when TM for you was the best 
> thing going—before the 1980's, that is? (By the way, I am going to assume you 
> are an initiator; if you are not then some of my comments here are not, for 
> you, completely on the mark.)
> 
> No one could see anything about Ellen Degeneres (or for that matter in Martin 
> Scorsese's comments) or in 'Mrs. Price's' commentary which would imply any 
> kind of influence over their own individualism and originality. TM is the 
> most subtle and efficacious technique there is to produce a blissful 
> experience, and the most subtle kind of changes—almost immediately—in one's 
> personal life. If you listen to Ellen read what Mrs. Price says in her post, 
> you realize that TM, mechanically and efficaciously considered, beats any 
> other spiritual technique in existence—I would even say (from an Eastern 
> point of view) ever. The fact that in doing TM one does not change anything 
> about oneself in terms of one's own values, beliefs, or life style—and Ellen 
> when she extolled the benefits of TM was as convincing and persuasive as 
> anyone could be—likewise when 'Mrs Price' wrote her letter to Emily—is 
> something without precedent. There is no 'technique' that I know of which is 
> not wedded to some belief system in the very practising of that technique. 
> Not so TM.
> 
> Transcendental Meditation, therefore, in my opinion, obbajeeba, is sui 
> generis, intrinsically unique, like nothing else. Doing TM does not resemble 
> doing anything else. There is—this is my argument based upon empirical 
> evidence—absolutely no cross-pollination with any other technique or forms of 
> meditation. In fact, I contend that whatever alternative spiritual tradition 
> a former TMer turns to—especially a former initiator—he or she will approach, 
> and even practise—and evaluate—that new technique *entirely in terms of their 
> pervious experience of Transcendental Meditation*. TM is not just different, 
> obbajeeba; it is distinct and separate from everything else spiritually in 
> existence.
> 
> This is why Rick Archer always comes off—to me at least—as so much more 
> conversant with the religious forms of experience, with spiritual reality, 
> with how to understand states of consciousness than any of his guests (except 
> for the TM ones: like Phil Goldberg and Dana Sawyer). Despite turning from TM 
> and Maharishi, his nervous system has been schooled in the TM-Maharishi-Guru 
> Dev universe, and this shows through at every level of himself. Even as he 
> now professes to have a more authentic religious experience through his 
> relationship with Mata Amritanandamayi (Amma: the Hugging Saint) than he did 
> with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
> 
> Every one of us keen initiators, throughout the early and mid seventies, 
> would have been nonplussed by any TM teacher trying to make the argument you 
> make here. It wouldn't make sense to us. We did not just abide by what 
> Maharishi had told us about guarding "the purity of The Teaching"; we felt it 
> in our very soul. It was so manifestly clear to us that TM was something 
> absolutely special, and could never be compared to anything that had been 
> offered in our lifetime [our present one :-)] We acted on behalf of this 
> notion of "No Saints" scrupulously, but not, as I say, out of deference to 
> Maharishi; we could intuitively, deeply, feel the necessity of this. After 
> all, what Master had produced the experience that "Mother is at Home"? What 
> Master could allow us to confirm for ourselves that we were getting "The 
> Support of Nature"? What other Master could deliver on his promise that once 
> we became initiators, we could give to some other human being, a perfect 
> stranger, this ultimate transcendent experience? The Checking Notes 
> themselves—the Checking Procedure as memorized and applied—are more 
> dazzlingly and perfectly efficient than anything in existence. And there is 
> no Master in our lifetime who systematically made teachers of this wisdom 
> such that we could actually have the experience of tuning into the Holy 
> Tradition, to having the experiences that previously were reserved for Hindus 
> who sought silence in some Himalayan cave. 
> 
> Lookee here, obbajeeba: TM, Maharishi, becoming a TM Teacher—all the advanced 
> techniques that followed (including of course the Two Week Extension and the 
> Sidhis)—entailed participating in a certain metaphysical context within 
> creation. And there is nothing nor ever will be anything just like TM and 
> just like Maharishi (seen through our golden glasses as devout initiators).
> 
> It is a very simple thing: the very moment Bevan relents on this policy, the 
> floodgates will open and TM will dilute in its potency, and there will be a 
> mystical mixture of substances which are not made to unite. If Bevan lifts 
> the No Saints ruling, thus going directly against his Master's wishes, he 
> will pollute everything, and TM will quite swiftly lose whatever status and 
> efficacy it has presently—and the whole project of Maharishi will not just 
> flounder; it will alter its nature, and it will attenuate into something 
> almost unrecognizable to what it has always been. No, Bevan is being true to 
> Maharishi, to Guru Dev, and to the actual mechanical nature of TM to stick to 
> his absolute fiat.
> 
> Now I would never think about doing TM again—and I have a pretty cynical view 
> of who Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is seen sub specie aeternitatis. But were I 
> still practicing and teaching TM—and remained as Bevan is, devoted utterly to 
> Maharishi—I would offer to debate this issue with anyone—even in a public 
> forum. Because it happens to be, if you accept what TM actually is [and watch 
> Ellen Degeneres and Martin Scorsese and read 'Mrs Price's' letter to Emily], 
> like nothing else. And either is any other Saint or Master of our time like 
> Maharishi. With all his faults and failings and worse, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 
> at his peak, was like no one who has ever been since Christ. No one on this 
> forum who was at the zenith of their enthusiasm for TM and devotion to 
> Maharishi would even be capable of questioning this judgment.
> 
> The problem comes in when one looks at the long-term effects of TM, and the 
> actions of Maharishi in private. Well, then, the argument could be made: why 
> not subject TM to the eclecticism of the New Age smorgasbord  and let it fend 
> for itself? This would be fatal. Maybe it is coming, but the first person of 
> final authority who bends this rule brings on the deluge. And the final 
> ignominious fate of TM and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
> 
> No, obbejeeba; it's either TM or bust. Bevan is acting —and Feste37 intuits 
> this—in accordance with what he believes and knows to be the very desire of 
> Guru Dev himself.
> 
> There will be plenty of arguments flying back against what I have said here; 
> but no one will seriously believe that he or she can change Bevan's mind 
> about this. Because if they could, it would mean that even Bevan has 
> abandoned his own beloved Master—and this would throw the whole Movement, 
> Purusha, Mother Divine, into permanent confusion.
> 
> I reject TM and Maharishi absolutely. But at the same time, if I am to 
> believe in my experiences under TM and Maharishi—including my 
> enlightenment—then I must firmly come out totally on the side of Bevan. All 
> objections to this No Saint policy are destined to be futile. Maharishi, in 
> his own way, created something miraculous—at the level of *experience* 
> anyway. And his possession of integrity—in some basic sense: even Judith 
> Bourque gave him absolute credit here—was undeniable. As I knew only too well 
> by being in his physical presence.
> 
> The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. The emperor was Maharishi; the 
> ice-cream was, and is, TM.
> 
> Robin
>