---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <fleetwood_macncheese@...> wrote :
"What struck me because I have spent quite a bit of time around old people in the last few years and it seemed obvious that Maharishi was clearly suffering from the diminished capacity of age and very likely dementia. He was not well." Um, have you ever actually spent hours at a time with each resident of a nursing home, as in worked there, changing diapers, serving meals, doing bed checks? I have, and the thing that clearly distinguishes Maharishi's response, from that of someone suffering from dementia, is that Maharishi, despite some irritability, retains his focus. The same cannot be said of nursing home patients, with dementia. I don't think he retained any focus, it was awful to watch from my seat. He was rambling a lot in the last few years, and repeating himself. Not to mention making less sense than usual (I never thought he was much of a speaker) and his hands were shaking a lot too. The responses to this among my fellow workers at the academy were many and various. Denial that there was anything wrong was the principle one, beliefs that the amount of stress in the world has wearing him out (or similar attempts to fit it into the "knowledge" so that it wasn't a problem) came a close second. And a few were shocked but didn't say anything as any health problems would contradict everything he'd been telling everyone his whole life. I was angry, because I honestly thought that someone in his condition should not be allowed to appear like that in public without help or any sort of explanation, what were they thinking over in Vlodrop? I thought he should just be propped up in bed on a silk pillow with a big box of chocolates. Forced retirement and let the devotees run it on their own. Quite a stretch, from you, with a little cherry-picked "evidence" as garnish. Seems very similar to the sort of things you have been accusing Nabby of lately, doesn't it? I guess fairness only counts, when *you* are the target. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote : I was struck by the posted interview between the Aussie and the Maharishi through closed circuit TV where Maharishi was unable to field a question about whether or not he could actually fly by going into "you kids get off of my lawn" mode. What struck me because I have spent quite a bit of time around old people in the last few years and it seemed obvious that Maharishi was clearly suffering from the diminished capacity of age and very likely dementia. He was not well. This observation only matters because at the heart of a lot of the premises in TM is that the state of consciousness in enlightenment transcends the functioning of the brain. This is the premise on which we have claims about witnessing deep sleep for example, and all the conjectural nonsense surrounding what happens after a "conscious" enlightened death. It is stated in different ways as a premise underneath many claims about how a person functions in enlightenment. We saw Maharishi, who in his salad days would have gigglingly swatted away such a direct question calling him on an outrageous claim, completely flummoxed and left with a broom in his hand chasing the local scamps out of his rutabaga patch. How can it be that "consciousness development" can have an effect on the person after their brain stops functioning and rots, when it couldn't even weather the storm of old age for the supposedly most developed person, Maharishi himself? Apparently consciousness development has the same impact as imagination development when it comes to being able to resist the ravages of age. Brain functioning trumps all imagination of it being otherwise. And the difference between Maharishi in old age and my own father can only be seen clearly in the zeros in their bank accounts.
