I won't weigh in on the Subject question because...uh...Duh. Nothing to discuss. Done deal.
What still amuses me are some of the direct contradictions that the cultists managed to embrace, and in some cases still embrace. I'm talking about self-contradictory teachings, which almost every TMer and TM teacher managed to not notice *were* contradictory, often for years or decades. Let's take one of the earliest teachings: "TM is all you need." That was, after all, the way it was presented by Maharishi early in the game. He taught TM teachers to parrot this line, and they did -- faithfully -- in intro lectures. Often they gave these lectures while on their way to an ATR course they had to pay for, or to get a new technique that was the latest and thus the bestest thing. In other words, they *taught* that "TM is all you need," but were part of an organization that not only sold TM, it sold any number of "add-on" products, ranging from "advanced techniques" to the Sidhis to yagyas to ayur-vedic potions, to astrology (Jyotish) and even to houses. Some of the products this organization sold cost a million dollars. Classic "bait and switch," and yet people failed to even notice the contradiction. Go figure. ________________________________ From: "steve.sun...@yahoo.com" <steve.sun...@yahoo.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:13 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Is TM a Cult? Looking back, I think many of the things you say are true. And it sounds like we still both have friends in the TMO who still have the frame of mind you refer to. But what were some of the "positives" you took from it, if you don't mind me asking? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote: As far as I'm concerned it never had a charismatic leader. Marshy's woolly, illogical and ignorant lecturing style always left me cold. Corporation is a good word for it though. As it sells both a product and a belief system that makes that product seem a lot more valuable than it actually is. Marshy's genius is the lectures he gave that conned everyone into thinking all the unified field, sci, land of the ved bollocks was an ultimate truth for all mankind and that he was its natural voice. Most people in the TMO thought/think that he could do no wrong and always spoke the ultimate truth. All they had to do was interpret and rationalise what he meant. What a great trick, I'm glad Tony Blair never thought of it. I heard so much rubbish when in the TMO I'd like to have my brain replaced so I could use those neurons for something useful. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote: > > >TM, more accurately now is a [religious spiritual] sect in its post-charismatic leader phase. As an organizational structure it is a corporation. Fairly, TM is no longer a cult with a charismatic leader. >salyavin808 writes: > >Potayto, potahto. > > > >No, most of what you are offering as definition technically is about sects. >Cults form around charismatic persons. Sects form out of specialness, >exception or differentiation as in different denominations of protestantism or >catholicism or denominations or types of meditation. Those are sects. Sects >are around fragmentation and cults are around persons as charismatics. For >instance, If someone really 'charismatic', like earlier defined by Weber, like >a Robin were to show up in Fairfield, Iowa and take off a bunch of meditators >as his followers by force and power of personality then we're talking cult, as >a sect. That is different than the different sects of people out teaching >meditations and some others out there teaching other things they've learned. >-Buck in the Dome > > >Salyavin808 writes: You don't need any leader to be a cult. All you need is a >belief system that sets you apart from the norm. > > >Om, policy and movement within TM now is based much more on science, merit and efficacy than old ways promoted around Totakacharya-like devotion, fealty and ideology. But that old movement way of fealty test and ideology test is fast dying away of a necessity and become cultural memory of a past. > > >Heck TM does not even have a charismatic leader or leadership anymore. WE got administrators. It is kind of hard to have a cult without a charismatic leader that you could point to. That is defining of cults. Please see FFL post# 370565 . No, people become meditators and then freely participating in this organization because they like meditation and appreciate all the good that the transcendent meditative state provides everyone individually and collectively. Our meditating organization is here to facilitate that good. That facilitating in our case now is the work of good in progress by our new incorporation as meditators. Our corporation as it always has been is certainly about affecting a positive revolutionary radical change in all of society for everybody. Most of us in TM are pretty clear about that. Are you with us or against us in this? >-U.S. Buck in the Dome > > >MJ, See Weber's comments on 'cult' in Melton's Intro to The Postcharismatic Fate of New Religious Movements: >http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/370565 > > > >MJ, Your thesis around TM being a 'cult' has a problem in that we in TM no longer have a charismatic leader of TM. We are either administrators or meditators in TM and anyone in TM is enfranchised by a little of both under Maharishi's Absolute Theories of Management and Government. You clearly are full of your own personal BS and have your ax grinding about something. I feels a sorrow for thee in thy lack of peace around this. >-Buck > > >“Which would you rather experience: living the paradox or understanding it to your satisfaction?” Not either position is mutually exclusive, or that there is a third possibility of both. > > > > >MJ writes: > >You need to read up on what cults actually are before you make such statements. > > >Nope, not a cult. TM now as a corporation obviously is not a cult any more than any modern productive working corporation of employees is a 'cult'. TM and meditators as a community now are just like airline corporation employee pilots of an airline company. And they might go fly for their work wearing funny looking hats and coats too where they would go to work and pilot an airliner. And those lesser employees too as part of the corporate team who organize a flight as a gate agent or direct people as flight attendants or load luggage or maintain the corporation equipment. TM is as very modern as is any corporation in 'cult' -ure, as Maharishi himself particularly set that in motion now. TM now is not hardly as bad as you portray it. It is rapidly becoming more modern and scientific as it is of vedic origin in corporation all the time. And we don't hardly see the gold hats and robes around much outside of a small circle deep inside at the top. If there is a cult it is possibly at that level to see but you can see a lot of them avoiding the caps and robes when they can. >-Buck > >MJwrites:You are right Buck, the TMO IS different now - it is much more of a >cult than it was when I started in 1974. If you can look at these idiots >wearing robes and gold crowns who practice and follow every Hindu religious >observance and holiday and not see it as a cult, then you have been snorting >too much sheep dip. > > >Shame on you MHJ. Om, First-Class Bull-Manure you Spread Wide and Spread Thick here, MHJ. This TM now is not a “cult” no more as much as you might like to declare that it is. As we used to explain in the olde days, “Om no, TM is not a 'cult' like christian cults or the people's-temple may be; TM is way too dis-organized to be that. . It's about meditation and the evident scientific spiritual value of meditation”. MJ, there is something malevolent in what you do to something that is so good in itself as what is simply transcending meditation. In this new corporate-post-charismantic-era, Transcendental Meditation is plainly now different. Your commentary is clearly out of date. I appreciate that it takes a long time for the current news to travel to the hollers and plantations of South Carolina but clearly you are out of it. >-Buck in the Dome > > >mjackson74 writes: I shall begin an immediate campaign to have it removed from >Whole Goods (sic) so they don't support cults. > > > >The Transcendental Meditative State of >Consciousness is Found Within Restful ALERTNESS. >Drink: Vedic >Coffee to Support Restful ALERTNESS! > >http://vediccoffee.com/ > > >---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I shall begin an immediate campaign to have it removed from Whole Goods >>>>>>>so they don't support cults. >>>>>>> >>>>>>>-------------------------------------------- >>>>>>> >>>>>>>On Fri, 2/14/14, Buck> wrote: >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>Subject: [FairfieldLife] Drink Vedic Coffee and Support Peace >>>>>>>>To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com >>>>>>>>Date: Friday, February 14, 2014, 11:52 PM >>>>>>> >>>>>>>>The Transcendental Meditative State of >>>>>>>>Consciousness is Found Within Restful ALERTNESS. >>>>>>>>Drink: Vedic >>>>>>>>Coffee to Support Restful ALERTNESS! >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>http://vediccoffee.com/ >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>
