From: "curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
Officially it never would have happened. I had a hook up on the library staff
and these were transcripts that were under official radar. It helped me
understand the different eras of Maharishi's presentation better both in the
movement and now that I am out. He was a guy who learned as he went along and
adjusted. His message changed considerably through the years.
I think in some ways he was just entertaining the people on those early courses
with his wild stories. Think about the pressure of keeping so many foreigners
engaged for hours when he had never been a scholar himself.
This corresponds to my first experience of seeing him have to fill time (6-10
hours of talks a day for a month) at Squaw Valley in 1968. Before that, I had
only seen him "perform" in short bursts, which he was always able to steer back
to his (by then) well-practiced intro lecture. But at Squaw Valley he had
several hundred people sitting in a room, and he had to find ways to entertain
them. So he'd drag out (in my opinion) a lot of Other People's Stories and tell
them as if they were his.
The most egregious examples of this were when he'd open the microphone to
questions, and people would ask him about other spiritual paths and other
spiritual teachers he knew nothing about. At least twice I saw/heard him say
things that were *completely* wrong, 180 degrees opposite from what the
organization believed and that the teacher taught. To this day I don't know
whether he just made this shit up, or had heard it from someone who was also
making it up, like Charlie Lutes.
His duties around Guru Dev were not intellectual ones, he was an advance man
and communications department. So he told stories from every source he could
remember or dig up to create the impression that he knew about everything.
Later he had Vedic pundits some in to occupy the time.They would jabber for a
while and then he would declare that they were saying that transcending was
blah bah blah.
One very curious thing about the movement is how cagy they are about this era
of his teaching. It goes so counter to the image of who he is that they
promote. If this guy was really the most important thinker in modern times
wouldn't it be imperative to get everything he ever said out?
When I worked for the Regional Office in L.A., I was "in charge of the tapes."
All of them. Unfortunately, during the period I worked there, that meant that
not only was I in charge of boxing them up and sending them to the teachers who
were scheduled to teach one of our residence courses, about twice a month I was
in charge of boxing up the tapes that Seelisberg had *demanded be returned to
them* to take them out of circulation. Several times during this period I was
told to write to all TM teachers in the Western Region and demand that *they*
send back any "unauthorized tapes" in their possession.
The impetus for this -- at that time -- was clearly legal. The American TMO was
still claiming its practices weren't religious in nature, but there were
*dozens* of tapes out there in which Maharishi himself exhibited exactly *how*
religious it was.
Interesting, isn't it? The most important thinker in modern times and people,
even devout believers have so little access to the thousands of hours of his
teaching. And with today's random access it would be so easy to get it all
online and indexed for people to be "enriched" by his profound words.
But his words are hidden because the image is more important than the message.
It always has been. I believe it is one of the biggest indictment of the
movement that they have treated his teaching as if no one is trusted to know
what it is in its completeness. It is as if they know people would realized
that there is no there, there!
I completely agree. I honestly think that if most people on this forum were
forced to go back and listen to a few hours of what *in their minds and
memories* they consider "Maharishi's Greatest Hits," they'd be shocked to
discover how repetitive and inane they were, and how little was actually said.
This is just human nature. *At the time* we were sitting in rooms listening to
these talks "live," and we were all swept up in the emotion and the enthusiasm
of it all. So in our minds an association was formed between all of those
exciting emotions and the talks we assumed were inspiring them. When you go
back and listen with the experience of two to three decades of life experience
under your belt, you are are often surprised at how little was actually said,
and how much you *projected* into your memories of the Same Old Intro Lecture,
Rehashed.
I actually recommend the experience, if you can somehow *find* some of these
tapes that you have such a fondness for in your memories. I suspect you'd find
the experience revealing, as I did a few years ago when I decided to go back
and re-listen to the music I thought was so great back in the late 60s. In my
mind it was great stuff. But when I actually found the albums and listened to
them again, I found that with only one exception (Jimi Hendrix) there was only
one possible reason I'd liked these people's music as much as I had -- I was
stoned. I suspect that the same would be true for anyone here doing a "binge
listen" to old Maharishi tapes, and for the same reason.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote :
I'm surprised they would let you have access to those early lectures, but I
guess things got tighter as time went by.
From: "curtisdeltablues@... [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2014 11:53 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: George Hammond's November 30, 2014 Lecture
I really enjoyed that, thanks for posting. Many good points I agree with and a
few I don't. I do think that George had a brain event that is more than just
imagination. I believe that his ability to distinguish between internal and
external experience was drastically compromised. Just a guess.
I agree that he was a rambley speaker. In his defense so was Maharishi when he
started. I spent a lot of time at MIU reading transcripts from Maharishi
lectures in India and they were much more Hammondy. With unverifiable claims
right and left like entering someone else's body after death by using yogic
techniques if you hadn't reached enlightenment in your own body. Over the years
he refined his pitch to basically be an intro lecture no matter what the topic
under discussion. He would toss out a few Vedic terms, talk about how they
related to his message of TM and close with a call to action for us to keep on
doing his program. It was a formula that minimized challenges to assertions.
His greatest speaking talent to me was to appear to have some new detail of
interest to hook us in before we found ourselves back at the intro!
And like those guys who sell the latest potato peeler sitting on a milk crate
outside subway stations, he had the salesman ability to make every pitch as
enthusiastically as his last, as if he was just discovering that TM WAS the
solution to all problems in life, and he was just sharing his revelation as he
was having it himself.
I wonder if you have any thoughts on how we would be able to determine if
someone was enlightened among the movement leaders? That seems like a step back
into the world of subjectively reported experiences that George just provided a
vivid cautionary tale against.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote :
Some reflections on George Hammond's November 30, 2014 Lecture:
The following reflections are my own opinion only (I believe strongly that
opinions should never be presented as facts). It was fun to see in the audience
someone who played an important role in the Movement, and who was briefly my
friend on our mutual TM-Sidha course. He looked like he found the talk
entertaining, but I hope, like me, that he did not take it seriously.
My impression of Hammond is that he doesn't act like a hoaxer, which
unfortunately does not guarantee that he isn't one, or that his ideas are
reliable or useful. He seemed like someone who was either very well-rehearsed
or an experienced actor. He also impressed me as a very dull speaker, who uses
only a monotone to spice up his presentation. He moves his hands like a robot.
He tells pointless stories about Shankara, Vyasa, and other familiar names from
the Shankaracharya tradition of India, and others like Jesus and Jehovah God.
Not one of his off-hand stories has any possibility of verification, or any
interesting depth. (Jesus told him that people in Manhattan should build more
parking garages instead of praying to him for a parking space over and over
again. Funny? Might depend on the listener's mood.) These qualities make me
feel that I've wasted my time listening to him for three hours. I can only hope
that this review is helpful for helping someone else avoid having to listen to
the whole recording.
I think his content is based on imagination. The whole concept of
reincarnation, which seemed during one section to be the cornerstone of his
beliefs, seems a waste of time to me. It has no physical evidence, no
satisfying theoretical rationale, and is clearly motivated by the ego's desire
to survive, which is based not on spirituality but on the separation of an
alienated life and the identification with a limited mind and body. To discuss
reincarnation as a personal fact, as Hammond did, along with other clues like
his very limited descriptions of the nature of fear and transcending, reveals
to me his limited personal state of consciousness. Why should we take the
imagined reports of the words of Maharshi, Jesus, Socrates, and Jehovah
seriously when the speaker knows so little about spiritual matters, such as the
higher states of consciousness, and the nature of pure awareness? All is
spiritual statements are compatible with Maharshi's views; there seems to be
nothing new here.
The funny thing is that Hammond's announcement promised important information
for Movement leaders, TM teachers, and TM meditators, yet delivered nothing but
his own recasting of Maharshi's principles and a whole bunch of imagined
reports of events and people (either imagined or perhaps based on a dream he
had around the time of his sister's death).
Would Jehovah really spend time with a human medium discussing Elizabeth Smart
and her significance for Mormon women? I doubt it.
Is the message "Cruelty is the desire to gain happiness from someone else's
pain; the Movement should explain how to transcend cruelty," really of vital
interest to us or the Movement? I doubt it. I think he invented it, along with
everything else.
He ended the talk by singing a silly song. I think that was fitting.
Everyone who has attended Maharshi's lectures knows that he could speak for
hours without once saying anything that was not obviously natural, sensible,
and correct so far as we could determine based on our own experience. This was
clearly based on his own clarity of awareness and thinking, as well as his
supreme talent as a teacher. We can see similar qualities in great teachers
from other traditions today, such as Mooji and Rupert Spira, who both teach the
Direct Path of nonduality. We do not see this wonderful quality of teaching in
George Hammond; we merely see the polished speaking of a very well-educated man
with a general background and a vivid imagination. He himself admits that his
relationship with the Movement is slight--he listed the handful of people in
the Movement who know him. He appears to have no deep understanding of
Maharishi's knowledge or indeed of Buddhism or any other source of
spirituality. His knowledge of the Bible and history, and of reincarnation,
could have been picked up in conventional sources.
I feel certain that most listeners took this lecture with a big 'grain of
salt', not being won over by the free use of terms like 'the purity of the
teaching' that are so important to many of us. There wasn't much actual content
from people like Maharshi, Brighu/Shankara, and so on, and of this content, not
much was significant for what we (or the Movement) should do in the world. I
myself could give a very short talk that would provide useful suggestions for
how the Movement could become more effective in reaching its/our goals; it's
not very challenging.
Hammond talked a lot of the fear of death. Yes, it's an important fear, but I
doubt that it comes from incorrect thinking, as Hammond suggested. It comes
primarily from identification with the body, which will die. The alternative is
not reincarnation, as Hammond stated, but enlightenment (self-realization),
which leaves one free to live the qualities of the Absolute in relative life.
Freed from limitations, we are fulfilled, and not likely to have residual
desires that would make us want the body or the mind to live forever. Instead,
we are free to live as we wish, either in a body or free of a body. This is a
much greater human possibility than envisioned by Hammond the self-proclaimed
spirit medium.
In the final analysis, what is important about spiritual knowledge is that it
makes it easy for each person to discover their true nature, align themselves
with that nature, and act in the world in accordance with that alignment. There
is no need for discussion of angels, reincarnation, cruelty, or even of right
and wrong. There is no need to discuss worry, fear, anxiety, or other feelings.
There is no need to discuss thinking, or even problems associated with ego, as
Hammond did. These are all relative concepts. Following Maharshi (or any other
true spiritual teacher), we need only consider the fullness of the Absolute,
our true nature. Aligning ourselves with unbounded and eternal awareness, we
can easily act in harmony with our environment, helping others to reach and
even exceed our own level of consciousness.
I do not think any of this message came from a Maharshi who is still alive on
an imperceptible plane of existence. But I do think it shows that there is a
thirst among his followers to know more and to evolve quicker. We should
address that thirst and provide more knowledge, both from Maharshi's own
video-recorded words as well as from his enlightened teachers and leaders.
Jai Guru Dev
David Spector,
Governor of the Age of Enlightenment, June, 1972
(not currently teaching TM)
Maine, USA
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