---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote :
Rereading, a couple points come to mind. It would be useful to get some collaboration for some of these recollections. As an informant, Barry, one must ask if you have a vested interest in skewing things in a particular way. On the other hand, one has to ask, how well whatever path you have chosen has worked for you Barry? I don't think you can deny that the interest you have in MMY's organization far exceeds any other spiritual interest you may have. Yes, I know it is not the technique, but the mindset of the dozen or so people who actively participate here. This is, as you say, one of your primary laboratories for study. But, hey, what about the many people who stayed "on the program". Are they cult apologists? I mean, if you ask them, they would say that in most cases, they have gone on to live happy and fulfilling lives. Are we to believe that you are better off than they? I am going to speculate that many, like myself, practice the techniques we learned from MMY in a way that suits our routine. I am going to speculate that our time with MMY opened the door to a spiritual awareness that we are grateful to have found. And I am going to speculate that we look upon that period as time well spent and feel fortunate to have had the darshan of MMY either in person, or at a distance. This is where you are much better off than bawee or anyone else who appears cemented within an attitude of negativity, criticism and perennial dwelling on the fact that the whole thing (TM) is encumbered by a falseness and corruption that completely eliminates any positive aspects of the Movement, MMY or TM. It would be one thing if TM was a world movement the embraced racial hatred, advocated large-scale violence and war or experimented on animals and small children in brutal lab tests. Instead, the Movement is a conglomeration of people like so many other conglomerations of people - it has its power hungry, its sheep, its followers, its mood makers but somewhere amongst all of that there is the seed of something closer to an intention to let others know of a practice that could possibly reduce stress or even open one's awareness to greater possibilities. Why bawee needs to keep harping on the fact that Maharishi was a fallible human being who wanted to keep those already within his Movement close to "home" is beyond me because it is hardly worth noting. No one was getting thrown in jail, beaten or their first born taken away as a result of going to see other teachers. It's easy to watch tapes, read books and travel other places to visit alternative gurus without getting caught. Anyway, you and I both know bawee is just on this particular bandwagon because it suits his need to teach us underlings a thing or two about independent thinkers and to make himself appear so liberal and unique and strong and wise. Humour him, Steve, he really, really needs to feel like he has an advantage over the rest of us Ovis aries. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : To provide some counterpoint to the chorus of excuses and cult apologetics spouted lately by people like Jim, Judy, and Lawson, who were *never there* to see how Maharishi "dealt with" those who committed the Cardinal Sin of "seeing other teachers," I'll provide a bit more information. After all, unlike these poseurs, I really *was* there, for many years, and sat in rooms with Maharishi as he lit into *dozens* of people for this supposed "sin." They weren't. They never even met Maharishi, and were never a part of his organization. My considered opinion is that he did this because he was -- in two words -- JEALOUS and INSECURE. He wanted students who had never known any other spiritual teacher than himself. In a sense he was *exactly* like those sad men who want to marry a virgin, so they can (theoretically) forever avoid being compared to another lover, and be found wanting. In the encounters I witnessed, Maharishi reacted to someone "seeing another teacher" exactly the way an insecure husband reacts to his wife getting "caught" checkin' out another handsome man. He was livid. His first reaction was to try to make the person who had committed such a sin APOLOGIZE and grovel in front of him, hopefully in front of as many people as possible, to "make an example of them." If they didn't do that, and saw nothing wrong with their actions, he would *seemingly* graciously tell them to leave, and go with this other teacher. Then, the minute they left the room, he would start bad-mouthing the former student and saying nasty things about them. He'd also tell the people left in the room all about the terrible, horrible karmic things that were going to happen to these sinners for having "fallen" and wandered away from the "highest path." None of this had *anything* to do with any of these people "threatening the organization," or even the other teachers being any kind of "threat." It had to do with Maharishi's Victorian-era ideas of "devotion to the teacher." He wanted them to think of him as if they were *married* to him, and to believe that even *thinking* of "seeing someone else" was equivalent to "cheating on him." In other words, he was Just Another Insecure Guy, wanting to be the One And Only for his students, forever. Once the offending "cheaters" had been sent away, he'd often lie about them mercilessly, telling stories that many of us in the room *knew* not to be true. But everyone would remain silent and not speak up, because *the example had been made*. The one time I saw a couple of people speak up for someone he'd just excommunicated (Walter Bellin), and point out that none of the nasty things Maharishi was saying about him were true, Maharishi reacted by kicking them out, too. To repeat something I said earlier, this behavior is UNUSUAL in spiritual practice. I have *never* encountered another spiritual teacher who did this. With Rama, and with any of the other Tibetan or Japanese teachers I've studied with, students were *encouraged* to visit other teachers, and learn whatever they were teaching. OF COURSE they were encouraged to do this -- why on earth would anyone want to stand in the way of normal, natural curiosity, otherwise known as "the natural tendency of the mind?" But Maharishi not only tried to stand in the way of this natural desire to learn more and expand one's spiritual experience, he PUNISHED people for doing it. These cult apologists trying to make it sound as if he was doing this for pragmatic business reasons WEREN'T THERE. They're just being cult apologists. Those of us who watched him excommunicate dozens of people for the "sin" of simply being curious know better. And so should those who also weren't there, and are lurking on this forum wanting to learn more. Maharishi was UNIQUE in not allowing his students to visit other spiritual teachers. And this uniqueness wasn't a positive thing -- it was a perversion based on his own insecurity, and his need to feel that he was the ONLY teacher in his students' lives. He was a tiny little man with a large, fragile ego, and he did this because that ego was threatened by the idea that his students would be able to compare him to other teachers.
