TM teachers paid for pretty much *everything* they gave away at the TM centers
or otherwise distributed or made available to meditators there. Tapes, promo
materials, books, etc. Many people who never became TM teachers themselves seem
to think that these materials were somehow provided by the TM organization.
They were not. We had to pay for them. At least when I was teaching TM.
________________________________
From: Michael Jackson <mjackso...@yahoo.com>
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:09 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
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.
