Yep, in a line of transcendentalists Elias Hicks carried the banner in satsang
a generation before Emerson. In their day actually they were widely heard and
followed penetrating the contemporary thought. Considering the size and
population of America then they were in about as far as Maharishi penetrated
culture with transcendentalism in the 20th Century. Elias Hicks and Emerson
along with Henry Thoreau and others traveled widely as speakers, they wrote
extensively, they published and were widely read at the time. At the time
America was quite literate and people followed the religious convolutions of
those times.
Transcendentalism as a spirituality seems to provide critique to the
ideologies of materialism and formality of religions generation by generation,
by experience.
In the transcendentalist line running through time here is an interesting
inter-generational monograph by Walt Whitman about Elias Hicks..
Anecdotes about Elias Hicks - Wikisource, the free online library
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anecdotes_about_Elias_Hicks
Anecdotes about Elias Hicks - Wikisource, the free online library
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anecdotes_about_Elias_Hicks AS MYSELF A LITTLE
BOY hearing so much of Elias Hicks, at that time—and more than once personally
seeing the old man—and my dear, dear father and mother faithful listeners to
him at the meetings—
View on en.wikisource.org
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Anecdotes_about_Elias_Hicks
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---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <olliesed...@yahoo.com> wrote :
Thanks - I like this broader context of the transcendental wave running
through time and consciousness, with some of us picking it up (again and again)
as it comes by. Perhaps the efficiency of the TM technique (diving deeply,
precisely, and quickly, 2 x 20) speaks to this age, where we don't have a lot
of time to learn about transcending. Nature's balance for fast-paced modern
life, and with any luck, some progress in the meantime.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote :
Well, in a line Maharishi's transcendentalism message a hundred years before
was carried forward as American Transcendentalism by Emerson and the American
transcendentalist satsanga at the time. Same message of populist
transcendentalism was carried then as seems always has been carried in somewhat
of a line through time.
Transcendentalism evidently has long lineage. Evidently Transcending as
experience and then transcendentalism as satsanga are a story-line to read that
runs through out time. For instance, Quaker Meeting here in Fairfield starts in
a little while. George Fox, founder of the historic Society of Friends
satsanga, he like Maharishi was another mystic in the line of
transcendentalism. And, you and we are in that line too, transcendentalists in
time.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <olliesedwuz@...> wrote :
I wonder if little Mahesh ever got the inkling as he was sitting in school,
for example, that he would one day grow up to become a famous spiritual
teacher? The times have definitely favored his message, and so many of us have
been influenced by this one man. It could have been anybody (though probably
Indian) that popularized TM, and yet it just happened to be Maharishi. Even a
hundred years ago, his mission would have been impossible.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote :
From the MVS Thesaurus:
Spirituality
Description In 1957, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said that: 'Spiritual development
is the birthright of everyone, for it is the unfoldment of the essential nature
of the soul, or inner consciousness…. Soul is the individual property of
everybody. It is the natural and inseparable possession, nay, the very
existence, of every man. Everybody has the right to enjoy his own possession.
Everybody has the right to enjoy the sat [truth] chit [Being] ananda [bliss]
nature of his own soul. In the most natural manner, everybody has every right
to enjoy permanent peace, bliss eternal, which is the nature of his own soul.'
-- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Thirty Years Around the World—Dawn of the Age of
Enlightenment, Volume One 1957-1964 (Netherlands: MVU Press, 1986), p. 195.
Some people feel that the outer or material joys of life are opposed to, or
diminish, the spiritual value, and that one has to give up, or become detached,
from material values in order to achieve inner fulfillment. Below is a short
video of Maharishi reflecting on the topic of spirituality. Here Maharishi
points out that inner spirituality does not conflict with the outer material
value of life: See video
onhttp://www.enlightenmentforeveryone.com/spirituality/.
http://www.enlightenmentforeveryone.com/spirituality/ Maharishi always said
we should enjoy 200% of life—100% of the inner spiritual value along with 100%
of the outer material value. He offered Transcendental Meditation as a simple
way to integrate abstract absolute being with the concrete details of the
relative.
