Looking through the whole Batgap list now I can see some lot of interviewees
whose spiritual pollination or incubation included ™ in their biography though
they may not be affiliated directly with ™now. This is a longer list in itself.
™ like reading Yogananda’s book was an aspect that was pervasive in
counter-culture to the orthodox at a time in a demographic shift of the
‘spiritual but not religious’ transformation that has taken place in the last
50 years. Batgap coming as it has as a phenomena in the information age seems
emblematic of a (progressive) transformation that is going on.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wrote :
Batgap guests with a TM background:
https://batgap.com/past-interviews/categorical-index-guests/#TM
Rick Archer
Buddha at the Gas Pump
https://batgap.com
From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2019 6:49 AM
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: The Importance of Group Meditation! Excellent
well written Doug! Great start for a FRESH & look inwards via the dome
experience to be more inclusive
Good question, ArchOn. There is a composite of things here.
Reading your observation out to meditators in Ff, with easy regaling people do
readily recall how nice the inner experiences were meditating in the group
whence the aggregate numbers meditating together before were high.
Comments Also,
“Those who want to be and can be there doing program in the Domes are there
now.”
“The place is still incredibly activated as a place to meditate.”
“For too long, since the 1980’s, the cumulative communications of exclusion
were such that it became known that the group was not necessarily welcoming.”
“There is an assumption on both the admin and meditating community sides that
people are not even listening and that it is way or likely past a recovery
point.”
“This is sad really.”
“Knowing a moral character involved and the hostage taking of the creed of
their religious belief, “That if Maharishi said something, it can’t be
changed”, it will take massive administrative leadership magnanimity to move
this forward towards thriving again, let alone just surviving.”
mag·na·nim·i·ty
generosity, charitableness, charity, benevolence, beneficence,
open-handedness, big-heartedness, great-heartedness, liberality, humanity,
nobility, chivalry, kindness, munificence, bountifulness, bounty, largesse,
altruism, philanthropy;
unselfishness, selflessness, self-sacrifice, self-denial;
clemency, mercy, leniency, forgiveness, indulgence
There is an enduring cultural fear and anxiety about spiritual teachers as a
stance that remains in the ownership that is held within the written membership
guidelines for the group meditations. Fearing of people who would be spiritual
teachers, fearing of those with their persistence for visiting spiritual
people, and a fear of people, old meditators, who may work for other spiritual
teachers. By one or another count these have been held against people of the
TM meditating community for decades here.
Our demographic pool to draw on has gotten very small.
In practicality those who have wanted to be in the Domes meditating with the
large group often have worked around the guidelines i e., staying low as
frightened flyers or as the process taught towards being yogic liars, while
others simply have withdrawn from the movement community.
May the providential support of Nature grace a survival of the Fairfield Dome
meditations through these currents of adverse times. Jai Guru Dev.
A remarkable thing now is to recognize how many people with their resources
have sold homes and moved away now by what seems became a lack in communal
cohesion driven to a detachment of peoples meditating in the Dome group by a
remoteness from an insular group inside TM.
This while a number of folks of the old TM meditating community have become
relevant spiritual commentators in larger culture as spiritual teachers where
each can represent communal nodes of old TM meditators who associate. The
narrow membership guidelines to the group Dome meditation practice with the
large group in the past were adversarial to and would have excluded most all of
them. Scroll down Rick Archer’s Buddha at the Gas Pump and see how many of
those interviewees are TM meditator alumni with TM in their pedigree and also
have alignment followings that include TM meditators. Evidently these are a
fruit of TM going mainstream. Should Batgappers with a following be able to
simply meditate with the large group as TM meditators?
Figure there were about 6000 TM teachers in the mid-1970’s in the United
States and only about 560 active TM teachers now and 300 or 400 people
meditating in the Domes now. Driven on for decades these membership guidelines
for participation in the large group have not been sympathetic towards
gathering what is a gone away
