Persecutions by creedal religionists of mystics and their groups of separatist transcendentalists across Europe are often a theme in these communal narratives.
Recently retired to a safety in community of meditating Fairfield, Iowa a meditator’s spouse who practiced law for a career in NYC at a law firm kept their practice of meditation secret to avoid persecution. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Of the modern day persecution of transcendentalists, up in Wisconsin recently I ran into an older ™ initiator from there. This is someone who saw a TM intro lecture poster in 1969 in Madison, attended the lecture that was given by Walter Koch and learned ™ then in those times. As a State certified teacher working in public school this person then fell victim to persecution for associating with ™. Directly persecuted by school superintendents, building principals,other staff, parents asking that their kids not be taught by this person or parents going directly to the school board to have this person fired for fear this person might be teaching meditation to the children. The superintendent calling the local ™ center seeking information about this staff teacher. The teacher declined resignation and stayed on teaching. But the pressure was great to resign. This followed for years affecting this person’s career advancement. An irony now is that mindfulness meditation is taught in the public schools up there today. This person is retired now from teaching and still traumatized by the longer experience of it does not talk to friends and associates about meditating or being with Maharishi in those days. When the person found I was from Fairfield and an old initiator from those days a comparing of old stories opened up. The person was a working school teacher then and made use of school breaks. We figured we attended the same weekend residence courses early on in Iowa City as new meditators, one month courses with Maharishi, a teacher training course with Maharishi, ATR courses with Maharishi in Europe, was with Maharishi in Fairfield too. This person used the word ‘persecution’ in recounting the experience throughout. It was stark. Early days of moving to Meditating Fairfield, Ia. gave a small taste of insight in to what persecution in Jim Crow might have been to someone who was otherwise majority Iowan, like me coming to Fairfield as a transcendental meditationist. Now though with a longer time of assimilation the separation is not nearly so great in Fairfield. And evidently, the postmodern is catching up with Madison, Wisconsin too as they are teaching meditation in their schools now. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : In victimization of separatist movements by the hands of creedal religionists persecution runs throughout the narratives of these historic satsanga groups across Europe and across time as they formed. As transcendentalist and essentially heretical to the religious belief and ideology of God the Father Church, these ‘separatist’ groups and their practitioners evidently fell victim to a State of fear within religious formality throughout Europe. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Separating the heterodox and heretical.. A Christian statement of belief, The Athanasian Creed it differs from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed and Apostles' Creeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostles%27_Creed in the inclusion of anathemas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema, or condemnations of those who disagree with the creed (like the original Nicene Creed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed#The_original_Nicene_Creed_of_325 ..which various anathemas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema against Arian propositions were added.[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicene_Creed#cite_note-15).. All mainstream branches[citation needed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed] of Christianity now consider (Arianism in that case) to be heterodox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterodoxy and heretical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heresy. The Ecumenical First Council of Nicaea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea of 325 deemed it to be a heresy.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism#cite_note-Ferguson2013-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasian_Creed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasian_Creed ..Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.” -Albert Einstein ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Separatism. The historical ‘separating’ of spiritual mystics from the creedal orthodoxy of institutional ‘churches’ (Catholic, Lutheran, or Anglican) evidently is also contemporary. In the early 1970’s as a ™ teacher I was able to visit and ‘check’ the meditations of Cistercian trappist monks in Spencer, Mass who after having studied the spiritual experience of the ‘desert mystics’ and so many others of the early Christian era found in themselves a lacking in spiritual depth of experience where they then reached out for methodology outside their own confines of practice. These Spencer, Mass Trappist monks were earnest, scholarly and dedicated spiritual seekers who set about finding better method than what they had in their order. (At one point one of these monks exclaimed, “Thank God for Vatican II!”). Of course Thomas Merton, also a Cistercian in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, had done the same thing a generation before in his visiting with Buddhism or Eastern practices and writing about his experience. The Spencer, Mass. monks proceeded then from their experience in learning to meditate with ™ to abstract instruction from the ™practice and share with others what they subsequently re-branded as “Centering Prayer”, a meditative technique for lay people with features taken from ™. Centering Prayer now is widely taught as church adult education classes taught and supported by these monks in courses with video and lectures as a transcendent meditative practice for lay Catholic religious people. In a type of movement Centering Prayer now has also crossed over as progressive spiritual practice methodology to Protestant churches. A couple years ago I visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky where I found the legacy of Thomas Merton supporting a thriving monastic community serving as a Merton pilgrimage site, with a modern museum and a bookstore doing active business vending in so many books by and about Thomas Merton. By contrast a few weeks ago I visited New Mallory Abbey near Dubuque, Iowa. In the 1980’s I had opportunity to visit and stay at New Mallory in their guest house quite a lot. I was excited recently to be able to return and visit back there and also see their bookstore. In their bookstore surprisingly I found not a book on Centering Prayer or Thomas Merton, by contrast. A little puzzled after this visit there to New Mallory I asked around about this seeming ‘edit’ and obvious blank and was told that some in the Church feel those teachings are heretical to the Holy Father Church. Even within the Church today? Evidently dangerous for being out of control (unorthodox) the mystics in cultivated spiritual experience and by their critique in transcendentalism are still ‘separated’ from the orthodox. “They who believe their practice is best are devotees They who believe their technique is the only are zealots.” -Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : It seems that every generation or so in European history a mystic in experience and a satsanga would rise up in contrast to the form of religious institutions of the day. The nature of the spiritual experience in transcendentalism places transcendentalists in critique of religious materialism. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Throughout these narratives below, in cycle a mystic shares their transcendentalist experience at living-room satsanga-like meetings, a group organization may form for facilitating meetings ‘separate’ from the churches, the separate movement gets discovered by institutional religionists and in reaction the persecution begins in fear for the critique being given. History repeat. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : I. Mysticism. Contextualizing a where we have come from as Transcendentalists this monograph on 'mysticism' published in the 19th Century takes an inter-generational line of 'separatist' teachers and satsanga and lights it up with some detail. Starting with a contextualization defining of 'mysticism' as we might know it in experience the first 30 pages of the monograph are a fair accounting fleshed out of an arc of spiritual 'separatist' movements in the West, connecting the dots of luminaries. Look for part !, Mysticism.. Google Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=Y6naAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=History+of+the+Amana+Society,&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2-aSUs77TAhVn_4MKHUlHBnAQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=History%20of%20the%20Amana%20Society%2C&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=Y6naAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=History+of+the+Amana+Society,&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2-aSUs77TAhVn_4MKHUlHBnAQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=History%20of%20the%20Amana%20Society%2C&f=false This monograph goes well along with the paper linked below of Northern European Transcendentalist satsanga that is further back in this thread. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Science.. means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an aim which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp. -Max Planck On the Way.. “The Higgs particle validates that there is this field that exists everywhere in the universe that allows us to exist. That field exists. It sounds religious but this is different than religion , this field exists and had to be discovered, and that is what the large hadron collider was about. “The Greatest Story Ever Told, So Far” -Lawrence Krauss “..not just a great story of human ingenuity, but the greatest.” # Science Friday interview.. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/why-are-we-here-physics-has-answers/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/why-are-we-here-physics-has-answers/ “The Tao Is” (21st Century) Transcendentalism: “Maharishi explains that pure consciousness has a field-like character and is a universal field at the basis of everyone’s thought and behavior. When a sufficient number of individuals are experiencing pure consciousness during group practice of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program, the field of pure consciousness is enlivened in the entire population. This field effect positively influences the quality of consciousness in the individuals in society in much the same direction as that experienced by those practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique,” said lead author MUM Professor Dr. Kenneth Cavanaugh. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : From Historic German Transcendentalism, a sequence.. ..We can now offer an expanded definition of Transcendentalism: It derives from the “transcendental” philosophy of Immanuel Kant; its proponents emphasized the divine in nature, the value of the individual and of human intuition, and a spiritual reality that “transcends” sensory experience, while also providing a better guide for life than purely empirical or logical reasoning. The term refers to a cluster of concepts set forth by a number of individuals rather than a formal philosophy. -Professor Ashton Nichols, Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement Our initial working definition of transcendentalism, however, will stress a divine force in each individual, a force that is also linked to nature and has the power to transform lives, as well as social institutions. -Professor Ashton Nichols, Emerson, Thoreau, and the Transcendentalist Movement 20th Century Fairfield, Iowa, Radical American Transcendentalism: The Transcendental Meditationist! ..The Unified Field Akbar! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : From reading their histories evidently practicing transcendentalists would move around Europe to the protection of more progressive aristocrats. That safety could vary by locality and through time. A challenge in this is that natural mortality [turnover) could quickly change the climate of a region’s leadership with areas quickly shifting between rigidities of the formality of the Roman Church or Protestant churches. Current edition of Journal of Military History Quarterly has published a reproduction of a hand drawn hand colored map that depicts the sub-principalities of the Austro-German parts of Europe of the 1840’s. By the 1840’s the commotion of the ‘social question’ from the industrial technological revolution [dislocation] was well underway with social strife and civil war breaking out between localities. At that point a lot of transcendentalist leaning folks fled Europe to the safety of America. I have grandparents on both sides coming in that time frame from transcendentalist meditationist groups [satsang communities], one side of the family from England and the other side from German spiritual ashram communities fleeing conscription into local armies within the ‘locality’ of civil wars that were raging throughout Europe then. A lot of spiritual peoples came then to America fleeing both social dislocation and religious persecutions of those times. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Yes, evidently transcendentalism and transcendental meditationist practice goes way back. It seems that about every generation or so mystics by their own experience with it would satsang and teach a meditation. Often time meditationism as spiritual practice gets put under the label of Quietism. In time Quietists evidently were disperse across Europe giving critique to the ‘formalism’ of the established churches and religion. Their essays, pamphlets and books were traded across Europe through generations of ‘separatists’, as they are also often called. Spiritual people in Europe, meditationists, would flow to where there was changing safety within satsang and ashram villages as they could find cover. Eventually as these lines immigrated to America this spirituality is much part of a thread in our collective history. As it comes to us, ours is a remarkably safe period of time now to be a practicing transcendentalist, by comparison. A lot of a story of Europe has been the contending of spiritual people with religionists. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <jr_...@yahoo.com> wrote : Doug, Did these European transcendentalist use a meditation method. Do you know any of them. Is it like TM? If yes, these may be similar to what Angela Mailander learned when she was a child, as she described in the BATGAP interview. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : The European Transcendental Satsanga, and the forming of the Western ashram-like village: Mysticism and spiritual community growing through individual spiritual experience, to living room 'satsanga' gatherings, to meetings, to intentional community... ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : Interestingly as it has happened in time, as many of these spiritual communal villages located in America liquidated their communal assets at a point in their own histories their meeting houses often followed a different path from the productive assets of the villages. Subsequent to sale their central artifact of mystical heritage as their village meeting houses have often ended up outside the bounds of what may have become their modern museum interpretation, the meeting houses even coming in to the hands of denominational forms of institutional religion. Such seems a life-cyclical fate of transcendentalism. One of the best ironies now in this 'meeting house' history is the Harmonist brick meeting house in Economy, Pa. now being owned subsequently by a Lutheran church, the church of persecution of these transcendentalists fleeing from Europe. http://www.stjohnsambridge.org/ http://www.stjohnsambridge.org/ . A close second, the old Zoar brick 'meeting house' being presently owned by United Church of Christ goers. Both of these old meeting houses presently sitting outside the bounds of and not necessarily included on tour interpretation of these old communal spiritual villages within the respective State Historical Society museum presentations. Also, the original brick meeting house of the Community of True Inspiration at the hamlet of Ebeneezer in New York (current day West Seneca, NY) is now operated presently as a Catholic Church is another example of transcendentalism spiritually forgotten and overlooked for religious form. From Ebenezer, NY The Community of True Inspiration as a spiritual communal group subsequently settling as the Amana Colonies in Iowa. In present day Amana several of the meeting houses are in the hands of the present day Amana museum collection of buildings for interpretation. # Excerpts from: The German Pietists: Spiritual Mentors of the German Communal Settlements in America Victor Peters Professor of History Moorehead University Moorehead, Minnesota Published in: Communal Societies, The Journal of the Communal Studies Association http://www.communalstudies.org/communal-societies-vol-1-1981 http://www.communalstudies.org/communal-societies-vol-1-1981 Paracelsus, 1493-1541 The dream of a New Jerusalem where there are no rich and poor, where there is no war and violence, and man is "whole" in body, mind, and spirit - the formation of the communal colonies in America was nothing less than an attempt to realize, with God's help, this dream. In Paracelsus we find a harbinger, a religious-social precursor and advocate of this new, God-sanctioned order. His full name was Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, but he called himself Paracelsus. Of Suabian-Swiss background, Paracelsus grew up with the rich folklore and folk-wisdom of his homeland. Like his father he became a physician, but he was also a naturalist, a chemist and philosopher. Like the German-American communalists, Paracelsus held that this new order could come about only through "an inner renewal of man." Kaspar von Schwenckfeld, 1489-1561 Schwenckfeld was a contemporary of Martin Luther. His talents and productivity at first impressed Luther, but when Schwenckfeld advocated radical doctrinal changes, Luther turned against him. Schwenckfeld was born in Silesia and died in Ulm. He spent much of his life being hounded from state to state in his native Silesia, in Thuringia, in Hesse, and in Alsace. Although he never founded a church, he had many followers and some of these emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1734, where they did organize as a church. Known as Schwenckfelders they held services in a family setting and did not observe the rites of baptism and communion until the end of the 19th century. Schwenckfeld's beliefs and writings strongly influenced Bohme and the Pietistic movement. He preached Absonderung (separation), a term used by critics of the state church. Contained in this term was the belief that the Separatists were the "true church," while the state church was "Babel." Schwenckfeld also believed very strongly in divine inner inspiration, which superseded even the Bible as a directive in a person's life. He opposed baptism and communion as empty ceremonialism, and taught that simplicity in life as well as in church service was "the best adornment for the spirit." Though Schwenckfeld espoused the cause of education, he opposed speculative philosophy. According to him, man should not seek beyond the Scriptures for the meaning of life. Positive experience and the inner illumination of the spirit would provide the right answers.
