And thank you for giving your memory of this - another piece of info I had no idea of - that the TM teachers could and did buy these tapes. -------------------------------------------- On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee <turquoi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 6:34 AM Indeed. I remember working in the TMO Western Regional Office during the period when we had been instructed to round up and send back to Switzerland any "unauthorized" audio- and videotapes. This tape ("Soma and the Gods") was top on the list. The fascinating thing is that none of these tapes were "bootlegs." All of them had been *sold* to the TM teachers who owned them *at a substantial profit* earlier in TM history, before Maharishi decided to start practicing "revisionist history" and pretending that he hadn't really taught the things that he taught. We were told to tell the TM teachers who owned them that they *had* to return them, and that they would be compensated for them by WPEC in Seelisberg. That's what we were told...no one ever received a penny for any of the hundreds of dollars worth of tapes they "turned in." We were also told to threaten them with expulsion from the TMO if they refused to turn them in. Later I saw the Rama guy do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason ("revisionist history," trying to pretend to the press that he hadn't said the things that he'd said), and that was one of the "tipping points" that caused me to back away from him. The thing is, especially given my raps about increased production of Oxytocin yesterday, people on "rounding courses" were VULNERABLE to Neo-Hindu crap like this. They weren't allowed off the course premises because frankly many of them would not have been able to find their way back to their hotels if they had been...they were that spaced out. So *of course* they're going to believe any crap that's "taught" to them by the person who (in their minds) got them as "high" as they thought they were. On another level, Michael's revulsion at learning about Hindu gods supposedly being vampires feeding off of TMers' soma is understandable. I mean, what else are "yagyas?" The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. What a low-vibe philosophy/religion...it's right up there in the "ignorant barbarism" column with live animal sacrifice. (Which, of course, was *also* practiced extensively in supposedly pure and perfect "Vedic" India.) From: salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods Cultmania 101. Isolation, mind altering practises, culturing a sense of uniqueness and superiority through revelation of secret and privileged knowledge... it's all there. The paranoid, controlling and utopianist leader is optional to cults but rather common. Soma and Xenu seem to be walking hand in hand here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? "Soma and the Gods" On the next Web page begins the transcription of "Soma and the Gods" taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, "Soma and the Gods" lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed "ready" for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of "Soma and the Gods" is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal "Ishta" (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to "stir" the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: "Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink.... Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies, bestow on us the riches of the affluent." And we take Ayurvedic potions and pills believing we will produce "extra" or "more refined" soma. An anecdote from a former Maharishi International University (MIU/MUM) professor: When I was on MIU faculty, there was a special videotape that only faculty were privy to. It was the Ninth Mandala, chanted in the original Sanskrit. Sitting with eyes closed, listening to it was considered a great privilege and was highly secret. On my Governor Training Course, after we had rounded and rounded and rounded for three months, MMY [the Maharishi] finally called to answer our questions. I asked what we should expect from endlessly reading the Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda and I never forgot his reply: "It will become a living reality." To my knowledge, this fairly frightening vision is the Maharishi's alone. The Rig and Sama Vedas themselves describe the process of making a beverage, soma, by grinding and brewing a certain medicinal plant -- or alternatively by feeding a plant to a cow and then imbibing either its milk or urine. James Allegro speculated some years back that soma was actually the hallucinogenic mushroom amanita muscara, a prevalent inebriator among all Aryan cultures. Perhaps. But even in modern day India, there are hotris who perform the Soma sacrifice using the humble soma plant, and imbibing the juice. Nowhere in all of Vedic literature have we found a single reference to soma as a substance produced in the human stomach and fed upon by Gods. Except this product of the Maharishi's imagination. Many sources from the inner circles of the TM movement have already reported on the Maharishi's preoccupation with the influence of other people's thoughts (stress), purity of food (genetic engineering), and apparent preoccupation with "enemies" (re: the CIA and AMA). The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma seems a conclusive indication that TM theology may simply be the by-product delusion of the Maharishi's seriously distrubed mind.