[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig spar...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: [,,,] There you have it -- your position within the TM movement. Consider it my clarification gift to you this new year. :-) It's a clarification gift to all who read FFL, thanks for sharing. ?? DOn't remember writing this. Brain fart?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
Your posts today have been really garbled and off-target. You sound as though you're so mad at the world you can't think straight. Not a great way to start the new year. Sounds to me like someone is not happy about being reminded that as far as the TM movement goes, she was never a player. (Says Barry, trying, as usual, to change the subject so he won't have to address his own goof, but inadvertently demonstrating the accuracy of both my observations about his posts today, as well as my previous observation about his tendency to shoehorn non sequitur slams into his posts.) No, Barry, *you're* the one who gets all riled up about my not having been a TM teacher. I made the right choice and have never regretted it. I was merely using the game metaphor to explain to you what your real stature within the TM movement is, as opposed to what you seem to believe it is. I shall continue, expanding on the metaphor. Say that the TM movement is a high school football team, the Horny Heiffers. Maharishi is the coach. As a team, they started out well back in the 60s, but haven't really had much of a winning season since then. Now, as to where you fit in in this metaphorical scenario -- you're not a player; never have been, never will be; that's a given. You've also never been a coach or an assistant coach or the water boy or even the person putting the numbers up on the scoreboards. You were never a cheerleader or one of the pushpam girls. To tell the truth, you don't even attend the games. What it is that you do is that you wear your Horny Heiffers T-shirt (the one with the levitating cow on it) and you read the local newspapers after every game. Then when someone who *has* been a player or an assistant coach writes a letter to the editor saying what a pity it is that the team is on such a losing streak these days, *you* write back and tell the world what an uninformed idiot the first letter-writer is, and that the current record of 1 win, 21 losses for the season does NOT mean that the Heiffers are on a losing streak. It means exactly just the opposite. The local folks in the town, including the *real* supporters of the team (known affectionately as the Moo-Makers) tolerate your letters to the editor, but most of them stopped reading them long ago. They would rather read the comments of someone who's actually been on the field a few times himself, or at the very least has been in the grandstands. There you have it -- your position within the TM movement. Consider it my clarification gift to you this new year. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [,,,] There you have it -- your position within the TM movement. Consider it my clarification gift to you this new year. :-) It's a clarification gift to all who read FFL, thanks for sharing.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your posts today have been really garbled and off-target. You sound as though you're so mad at the world you can't think straight. Not a great way to start the new year. Sounds to me like someone is not happy about being reminded that as far as the TM movement goes, she was never a player. (Says Barry, trying, as usual, to change the subject so he won't have to address his own goof, but inadvertently demonstrating the accuracy of both my observations about his posts today, as well as my previous observation about his tendency to shoehorn non sequitur slams into his posts.) No, Barry, *you're* the one who gets all riled up about my not having been a TM teacher. I made the right choice and have never regretted it. I was merely using the game metaphor to explain to you what your real stature within the TM movement is, as opposed to what you seem to believe it is. I shall continue, expanding on the metaphor. One more time: You'd be well advised to take the new year as an opportunity to work on living in reality rather than in your fantasy world. Start with this, please: I *have* no stature within the TM movement, never did, never wanted to be a player. I've always thought, and said, many times, that the movement sucked big-time. You know this, but you've blocked it out in favor of your fantasies about me, because they make it possible for you to feel superior. Why the reality should make you feel so *inferior* that you have to create an alternate reality in your own mind, I don't know, but it's one of the many things you need to explore and deal with. Once you accept reality as it is, rather than the way you'd like it to be, you'll be much happier, I guarantee it. Life will become a lot simpler, and you'll be much more relaxed and productive; all that energy and angst that's tied up in creating and maintaining your fantasy world will be available for things that really matter. And that's my clarification gift for *you* this new year. Try it on for size. It'll be tough at first, but the ultimate rewards will be greater than you can imagine.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You'd be well advised to take the new year as an opportunity to work on living in reality rather than in your fantasy world. As a famous science fiction writer once said so well, Reality is a crutch for those who can't handle fantasy. Did *you* honestly think that my little football team riff was real? Here's a clue -- check your closet. If there is no Horny Heiffers T-shirt in there, I was having a little fun with metaphor. If there *is* a Horny Heiffers T-shirt in your closet with a levitating cow on it, you have bigger problems than dealing with my imagination. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: You'd be well advised to take the new year as an opportunity to work on living in reality rather than in your fantasy world. As a famous science fiction writer once said so well, Reality is a crutch for those who can't handle fantasy. Did *you* honestly think that my little football team riff was real? Um, no. What I was addressing was your fantasy about my wanting to be a player in the movement, which you've reiterated many times over the years.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. In that contest, as with so much else in your life, you were an also ran. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Dec 31, 2006, at 10:09 AM, TurquoiseB wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. Always has. So do the most enlightened teachers I've encountered on the planet. The constant contradiction is not a problem IMO; the tendency for people to want not to *deal* with the contradiction and say that one version is the correct version is where the problem lies. :-) I guess I've been fortunate, few of my teachers did contradict themselves, in one case when a student brought up contradictions, the teacher explained why that sometimes occurred and what it meant (in that context) and why contradictions are sometimes just irreconcilable (and that's fine). The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). That's certainly becoming more pronounced lately. Yes it is. I suspect he is about the average level of senility for his age. Transcripts and audio feeds seem rather edited. So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Bingo. The gist of this latest talk seems to be, These are the experiences I want to hear. Don't bother to get up to the microphone if you don't have one of these type of experiences to relate. And, by the way, what you *really* want to do more than anything else on this course is to get yourself on the LIST of people who are *having* the type of experiences I want to hear about. Well duh...what do you think people are going to be falling all over themselves to report from now on? It's likely the last big chance to do so. It doesn't matter if the teaching is corrupted or represents a departure from that particular enlightenment-tradition, it's what the people want--and if the people don't get what they want, there'll be no more real cash-flow. Plus I'm sure M. likes to be on the answering end of the mike--it's a real ego-boost for an old businessman. It's interesting, the Tibetan word for meditative experiences, nyams, even refers to meditation experiences as meditative moods (meditative mood-making). It's instructive just reading the definition: nyams debased [RY] experience [RY] nga'i nyams la bltas na + tshod red - I feel that [RY] 1) experience and feeling; 2) mental 'gyur ba externally symbolized in body and speech expressions or, tshugs ka; 3) experience of, familiarity; 4) [in] mind 'ong [IW] Temporary experiences [RY] nyams kyi snang ba visions of (ephemeral) (meditative) experience [RB] must endure [RY] feeling-sentiment, failures, soul, thought, strength, state, experiences, deteriorate, faults, experiential sign of the development of practice, violation, conviction, transgressor, corruption, corrupted, humiliated, apprehension of ideas, soul, manner, extent, degree, condition, elegance, charm, dignity, meditative experience, mystical experience, corrupted, meditation- mood, meditative moods, moods, diminish, signs-experiences, sign experience [JV] ephemeral meditative experience; fleeting experience [RB] 1) [meditative / temporary] experience, meditation-moods. 2) vision. 3) Abbr. of nyams pa 4) imposing air / presence / dignity, haughty, arrogant. 5) elegance, charm, handsome, elegant. 6) thought, mind, spirit. 7) impairment, impairment, sentiment [in dramatic arts]. thought, experiential sign of the development of practice, experiences, withered; experience, meditation experience; violate, damage, deteriorate, weaken [in context of vows and commitments] [RY] feeling-sentiment, failures, soul, thought, strength, state, experiences, deteriorate, faults, experiential sign of the development of practice, violation, conviction, transgressor, corruption, corrupted, humiliated, apprehension of ideas, soul, manner, extent, degree, condition, elegance, charm, dignity, meditative experience, mystical experience, corrupted, meditation- mood, meditative moods, moods, diminish, signs-experiences, sign experience, impairments [JV] It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. It did surprise me too. When it got to repeating more of these old patterns, it was a red flag for me.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Dec 31, 2006, at 11:19 AM, dhamiltony2k5 wrote: Yeah, received an excited phone call yesterday from someone on the TM invincibility course, that Maharishi wants to hear of those having experiences with the dieties. irony that those who do see or understand the devatas are mostly quiet and under ground about it, any rising to share within the movement culture has long since been grounds for being hounded and rooted out of the dome in the ongoing rein of terror of the administration of their natural law here. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Some people pay would pay for that. It is a niche market. Yeah, interesting the currency in the end now is changing to those who speak with the devatas, or is that, favor now towards hearing voices ...and now speaking in tongues is going to be rated? The Spiritualist circus is coming to the domes next. Spiritualist is really a good word. There is no indication (from any of the reports I've read) that these *are* experiences of devatas but merely meditative moods. This stuff has happened for decades, now it's suddenly chic and good? This would be a sign for me that the movement is over as far as evolution goes if this is what the founder is promoting and expecting. It also is a clue to his own level of realization and that it is really not that great. Ah, if only slapping a title on yourself could make it so! But you still *can* fool some of the people, some of the time.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Dec 31, 2006, at 9:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. You meant to say underwritten, right?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Dec 31, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Sal Sunshine wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. And what do you want to bet there's plugs for $$ every day? The TMO never does anything for free. They'll grab you for as much as they can, one way or another. Or at least bombard you with advertisement and suggestions. The only reason the current course is free (from what I can tell) is that some very wealthy TB's, seeing the movement floundering and dying a slow death, decided to underwrite it. In other words, this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't bought and paid for. I also strongly suspect the recent deployment of Vedic-sacrificial experts is helping bring more dollars from the remaining millionaire TB's as they can finally see it is happening and therefore see it as a worthwhile thing to throw money at.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Jan 1, 2007, at 9:20 AM, Vaj wrote: It's interesting, the Tibetan word for meditative experiences, nyams, even refers to meditation experiences as meditative moods (meditative mood-making). It's instructive just reading the definition: nyams debased [RY] experience [RY] nga'i nyams la bltas na + tshod red - I feel that [RY] 1) experience and feeling; 2) mental 'gyur ba externally symbolized in body and speech expressions or, tshugs ka; 3) experience of, familiarity; 4) [in] mind 'ong [IW] Temporary experiences [RY] nyams kyi snang ba visions of (ephemeral) (meditative) experience [RB] must endure [RY] feeling-sentiment, failures, soul, thought, strength, state, experiences, deteriorate, faults, experiential sign of the development of practice, violation, conviction, transgressor, corruption, corrupted, humiliated, apprehension of ideas, soul, manner, extent, degree, condition, elegance, charm, dignity, meditative experience, mystical experience, corrupted, meditation- mood, meditative moods, moods, diminish, signs-experiences, sign experience [JV] ephemeral meditative experience; fleeting experience [RB] 1) [meditative / temporary] experience, meditation-moods. 2) vision. 3) Abbr. of nyams pa 4) imposing air / presence / dignity, haughty, arrogant. 5) elegance, charm, handsome, elegant. 6) thought, mind, spirit. 7) impairment, impairment, sentiment [in dramatic arts]. thought, experiential sign of the development of practice, experiences, withered; experience, meditation experience; violate, damage, deteriorate, weaken [in context of vows and commitments] [RY] feeling-sentiment, failures, soul, thought, strength, state, experiences, deteriorate, faults, experiential sign of the development of practice, violation, conviction, transgressor, corruption, corrupted, humiliated, apprehension of ideas, soul, manner, extent, degree, condition, elegance, charm, dignity, meditative experience, mystical experience, corrupted, meditation- mood, meditative moods, moods, diminish, signs-experiences, sign experience, impairments [JV] Also: nyams pa (Tha mi dad pa,, broken, torn, damaged, hurt spoiled injur[e][d][y], degenera[cy][tion], deteriorat[e][tion], decline, impaired, fall away from, depravity, destroy, ruin, damage, violation [of vows], exhaustion, emaciation, offense, corruption, transgress[ion][or], violat[or][ed], lost, declined, degenerate[d], lowered, sink, corrupted, decreased, damaged, impaired, failed, fallen from, gone down, [fallen into] decay, waned, faded away, withered, exhausted, thin, weakened, deprived, ruined, weakened [in context of vows and commitments]- [be] spoiled [IW] de las nyams pa - falling back from those states [RY] get weaker [RY] impairment (of vow/ precept); impaired [RB] slip, drop, decrease, injured, damaged, decline, defects, degenerate, deteriorate, subject to destruction, wasted, spoiled, degenerated, injured, hurt, spoiled, impaired, imperfect, defiled, polluted, degeneration [JV] I) verb nyams pa, nyams pa, nyams pa intr. v. to break, be broken, corrupted, damaged, decay, decline, declined, decreased, degenerated, deprived, deteriorate, deteriorated, diminished, exhausted, faded away, failed, fall away from, fallen from, fallen into decay, gone down, impaired, injured, lost, lowered, ruined, spoiled, thin, violated, waned, weaken, weakened, withered. II) 1) n. degeneracy, deterioration, decline, decay, degeneration, depravity, ruin, injury, damage, exhaustion, emaciation, weakening. 2) violation, offense, corruption, transgression, impairment. 3) violator, transgressor [RY] to spoil [RY]
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. (In any case, as I recall, it was Kook of the Month, not Kook of the Year.) In that contest, as with so much else in your life, you were an also ran. :-) Pity you never even got a nomination, eh?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 11:19 AM, dhamiltony2k5 wrote: snip Yeah, interesting the currency in the end now is changing to those who speak with the devatas, or is that, favor now towards hearing voices...and now speaking in tongues is going to be rated? The Spiritualist circus is coming to the domes next. Spiritualist is really a good word. Well, not really. Spiritualism is the belief that one can communicate through a medium with the spirits of the dead, not with deities. (Or, more generically, the belief that reality is ultimately constituted of Spirit.) And according to what DHamilton reports of the phone call he received, what MMY is looking for is experiences of deities, not necessarily communicating with them, much less hearing voices or speaking in tongues.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. You had to go search sci.skeptic to find out how many votes I'd gotten?? Jeez. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) The folks on sci.skeptic who weren't former TMers were very largely ignorant of TM and tended to bash TM and TMers just on principle, so, yes, they were intellectually dishonest, if not personally angry at TM/the TMO/MMY.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Sal Sunshine wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. And what do you want to bet there's plugs for $$ every day? The TMO never does anything for free. They'll grab you for as much as they can, one way or another. Or at least bombard you with advertisement and suggestions. The only reason the current course is free (from what I can tell) is that some very wealthy TB's, seeing the movement floundering and dying a slow death, decided to underwrite it. In other words, this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't bought and paid for. I also strongly suspect the recent deployment of Vedic- sacrificial experts is helping bring more dollars from the remaining millionaire TB's as they can finally see it is happening and therefore see it as a worthwhile thing to throw money at. Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. You had to go search sci.skeptic to find out how many votes I'd gotten?? Jeez. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) The folks on sci.skeptic who weren't former TMers were very largely ignorant of TM and tended to bash TM and TMers just on principle, so, yes, they were intellectually dishonest, if not personally angry at TM/the TMO/MMY. I think we understand, Judy...you've been saying the same thing for over a decade. Anyone who doesn't do TM is ignorant. It's the TMO version of humility. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. You had to go search sci.skeptic to find out how many votes I'd gotten?? Jeez. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) The folks on sci.skeptic who weren't former TMers were very largely ignorant of TM and tended to bash TM and TMers just on principle, so, yes, they were intellectually dishonest, if not personally angry at TM/the TMO/MMY. I think we understand, Judy...you've been saying the same thing for over a decade. Anyone who doesn't do TM is ignorant. I've never said that, as you know. Why on earth would you want to tell such a silly lie? It's the TMO version of humility. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. In that contest, as with so much else in your life, you were an also ran. :-) Sigh, new New Years Resolution, Barry?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] And there is no real instruction in the value and the problem with meditative experiences and/or how to handle them. Of course,. from the reports, and by common sense, the people who are willing to come to this course are not HAVING problems.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] Spiritualist is really a good word. There is no indication (from any of the reports I've read) that these *are* experiences of devatas but merely meditative moods. This stuff has happened for decades, now it's suddenly chic and good? This would be a sign for me that the movement is over as far as evolution goes if this is what the founder is promoting and expecting. It also is a clue to his own level of realization and that it is really not that great. Ah, if only slapping a title on yourself could make it so! But you still *can* fool some of the people, some of the time. Which reports have you read, BTW? Seems to me that the only one you explicitly commented on i FFL, you were supportive of. Of course that was in the context of someone who had just brought other teachers into the conversation. I guess if she had NOT done that you would have refrained from complementing on her experiences in a positive way or even made comments as above...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Sal Sunshine wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. And what do you want to bet there's plugs for $$ every day? The TMO never does anything for free. They'll grab you for as much as they can, one way or another. Or at least bombard you with advertisement and suggestions. The only reason the current course is free (from what I can tell) is that some very wealthy TB's, seeing the movement floundering and dying a slow death, decided to underwrite it. In other words, this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't bought and paid for. So, the TMO has never managed to raise $12 million from donors in a single year before? I also strongly suspect the recent deployment of Vedic-sacrificial experts is helping bring more dollars from the remaining millionaire TB's as they can finally see it is happening and therefore see it as a worthwhile thing to throw money at. How do you know it is a dwindling set of millionaire TBs?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 11:19 AM, dhamiltony2k5 wrote: snip Yeah, interesting the currency in the end now is changing to those who speak with the devatas, or is that, favor now towards hearing voices...and now speaking in tongues is going to be rated? The Spiritualist circus is coming to the domes next. Spiritualist is really a good word. Well, not really. Spiritualism is the belief that one can communicate through a medium with the spirits of the dead, not with deities. (Or, more generically, the belief that reality is ultimately constituted of Spirit.) And according to what DHamilton reports of the phone call he received, what MMY is looking for is experiences of deities, not necessarily communicating with them, much less hearing voices or speaking in tongues. My intution says that he doesn't mean visions of 4-armed, blue skinned fellows, either...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 9:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. You meant to say underwritten, right? What course would be truely free? Either it is paid for now, later, or by income from the past...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) In general, yeah. Non-angry and usually honest critics of anything don't indulge in ad hoc web-sites, ad hominem attacks, etc., on proponents of what they are critical of.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) In general, yeah. Non-angry and usually honest critics of anything don't indulge in ad hoc web-sites, ad hominem attacks, etc., on proponents of what they are critical of. I think he was referring here to the denizens of sci.skeptic generally, not the Web-site owners (although like two of the latter, the sci.skeptic folks had no firsthand knowledge of TM, and were even less well informed second-hand).
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) In general, yeah. Non-angry and usually honest critics of anything don't indulge in ad hoc web-sites, ad hominem attacks, etc., on proponents of what they are critical of. You're trying to pull the same propaganda stunt that Judy runs here. These people didn't come down on Judy because she was a TMer, ferchris- sakes; they came down on her because she's JUDY. I followed sci.skeptic for a while. They did NOT rag on TMers because they were TMers. They ragged on abusive, arrogant posters because they were abusive and arrogant. That's where Judy fit in. It's all about her personality, and how she wields it. It wouldn't have mattered to those people if she had been a member of a cargo cult from the South Pacific; they'd still have found her tactics repugnant. *That* is what you're trying to obscure by claiming that they reacted to her as they did because she was a TMer.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book. Vaj sees things his way, you see things your way, that's all. Me, I see the underwriting as a nostalgic attempt by a few wealthy long-term members of the TM movement to allow Maharishi to die with his illusions that he still *has* a movement intact. I think it's nice that the tiny handful of people who still care enough to bounce on their butts together get to do so; if that has any effect whatsoever on the world I think that's nice, too. But I think it takes some pretty rose-colored glasses to view the history of this particular course as a success. It's the *illusion* of a success, salvaged by outsourcing the buttbouncing to India and funded by a few individuals who care as much about preserving the illusion that the TMO still *is* a movement as much as Maharishi does. In many ways, that's noble. I think it's sweet that a tiny handful of people still believe in the ME and believe in Maharishi and are willing to put their money where their beliefs are. But don't ask me to call the papier mache illusion created by that handful and their money a success. For me, a success would be if Maharishi put out a call to action to his many students over the years and those students did what was asked of them. Do the math -- let's say that the TMO has (conservatively) taught 1,200,000 people to meditate over the years. But only 1200 or so people -- at the *peak* of the pre-pundit numbers -- answered the call and bothered to show up for this course. If you can't do the math, that's -- synchronistically -- one-tenth of one percent. First the TMO asked its movement to come, then they begged the movement to come, then they dropped the price and begged again, and finally they resorted to threats and started making noises about the horrible things that would happen to the world if they *didn't* come. Nobody else came. So they outsourced the effort, and tried to *hire* people from within the movement to buttbounce together. And they didn't even do *that* with their *own* money; one of the faithful had to step in and offer to do it for them. Then when *that* wasn't working either they took his money and spent it to staff up the course with paid labor from India. Some movement. Jim, I've been watching the short history of this course fairly closely, and I don't think I've mistated the sequence of events above. What does it say about *your* spiritual practice that you see that history as a success? One tenth of one percent, Jim. It cuts both ways. For the record, I think it's *sad* that the TMO destroyed itself. I think it could have been a real force on this planet if it had stuck to what it was good at -- teaching people a simple, easily-learned technique of meditation, and otherwise staying the fuck out of their lives. But they didn't. They chose to self-destruct instead. And now they choose to pretend that they didn't self-destruct, by hiring people from another country to come to American and stand in for the members of the movement who stopped being part of it long ago. A movement only moves when it has members *to* move. If you've systematically driven them all away for decades and *then* ask them to move and they don't, I think that the sane thing to do would be to step back and rethink all that you've done to *destroy* your own movement. The TMO, obviously, doesn't think that way; they'd rather hire kids from India so that they can pretend they still have one. 'Nuff said.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Jan 1, 2007, at 11:53 AM, jim_flanegin wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Sal Sunshine wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. And what do you want to bet there's plugs for $$ every day? The TMO never does anything for free. They'll grab you for as much as they can, one way or another. Or at least bombard you with advertisement and suggestions. The only reason the current course is free (from what I can tell) is that some very wealthy TB's, seeing the movement floundering and dying a slow death, decided to underwrite it. In other words, this wouldn't be happening if it wasn't bought and paid for. I'm shocked, shocked! to hear that. I had no idea. I also strongly suspect the recent deployment of Vedic- sacrificial experts is helping bring more dollars from the remaining millionaire TB's as they can finally see it is happening and therefore see it as a worthwhile thing to throw money at. Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book. Um, that he's honestly expressing how he feels about it? And what does the success (or lack thereof) of the course have to do with who may be funding it? He didn't say anything about that.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book. Vaj sees things his way, you see things your way, that's all. Me, I see the underwriting as a nostalgic attempt by a few wealthy long-term members of the TM movement to allow Maharishi to die with his illusions that he still *has* a movement intact. But the TMO is constantly getting infusions of millions of dollars. Your logic is flawed. This is the first time that MMY has directed such infusions to sponsor participation in such a large course of this type IN THIS COUNTRY, but donors have sponsored large courses in other countries, and of course donors have been purchasing land and building buildings for the TMO for decades. I gotta think that you know this, given how long you have hung around the TMO taking snipes at it, so the question arises: why do you pretend that your speculation is meant seriously?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) In general, yeah. Non-angry and usually honest critics of anything don't indulge in ad hoc web-sites, ad hominem attacks, etc., on proponents of what they are critical of. I think he was referring here to the denizens of sci.skeptic generally, not the Web-site owners (although like two of the latter, the sci.skeptic folks had no firsthand knowledge of TM, and were even less well informed second-hand). sci.skeptic denizens either engage in reasoned arguments when presented with reasoned arguments, or they don't. Those that do, are reasonable people, by definition. Those that don't, fall into the angry, usually [intellectually] dishonest category, by definition.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) In general, yeah. Non-angry and usually honest critics of anything don't indulge in ad hoc web-sites, ad hominem attacks, etc., on proponents of what they are critical of. You're trying to pull the same propaganda stunt that Judy runs here. These people didn't come down on Judy because she was a TMer, ferchris- sakes; they came down on her because she's JUDY. I followed sci.skeptic for a while. They did NOT rag on TMers because they were TMers. They ragged on abusive, arrogant posters because they were abusive and arrogant. That's where Judy fit in. It's all about her personality, and how she wields it. It wouldn't have mattered to those people if she had been a member of a cargo cult from the South Pacific; they'd still have found her tactics repugnant. *That* is what you're trying to obscure by claiming that they reacted to her as they did because she was a TMer. My recollection is that they ragged on her because she was arguing in a reasoned way, which challenged all sorts of things important to them, so they responded with the net- kook nomination.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Jan 1, 2007, at 12:52 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: For the record, I think it's *sad* that the TMO destroyed itself. I think it could have been a real force on this planet if it had stuck to what it was good at -- teaching people a simple, easily-learned technique of meditation That's really the issue IMO--the early courses were wonderful, great food, laid-back atmosphere, reasonable prices, etc. Then they got weird and outsourced the whole thing to the control-freaks and $$-grubbers. Looking back now it's hard to believe it was the same movement. Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book. Vaj sees things his way, you see things your way, that's all. Me, I see the underwriting as a nostalgic attempt by a few wealthy long-term members of the TM movement to allow Maharishi to die with his illusions that he still *has* a movement intact. But the TMO is constantly getting infusions of millions of dollars. Your logic is flawed. This is the first time that MMY has directed such infusions to sponsor participation in such a large course of this type IN THIS COUNTRY, but donors have sponsored large courses in other countries, and of course donors have been purchasing land and building buildings for the TMO for decades. I gotta think that you know this, given how long you have hung around the TMO taking snipes at it, so the question arises: why do you pretend that your speculation is meant seriously? The bottom line is that Maharishi *can't* get 2000 people together for one of his courses unless he hires people from India to staff it. Color it how you will...in my book that speaks for itself.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 1, 2007, at 12:52 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: For the record, I think it's *sad* that the TMO destroyed itself. I think it could have been a real force on this planet if it had stuck to what it was good at -- teaching people a simple, easily-learned technique of meditation That's really the issue IMO--the early courses were wonderful, great food... Not always...remember Poland Spring and the rotten produce? And some of the courses in Switzerland where we got brussel sprouts four to five nights a week? I *still* can't look a brussel sprout in the eye after my last course. :-) ...laid-back atmosphere, reasonable prices, etc. Then they got weird and outsourced the whole thing to the control- freaks and $$-grubbers. Looking back now it's hard to believe it was the same movement. Remember the tragedy of knowledge tape? It's the perfect explanation for what has happened to the TM movement, and Maharishi didn't even have to die first.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) In general, yeah. Non-angry and usually honest critics of anything don't indulge in ad hoc web-sites, ad hominem attacks, etc., on proponents of what they are critical of. You're trying to pull the same propaganda stunt that Judy runs here. These people didn't come down on Judy because she was a TMer, ferchris- sakes; they came down on her because she's JUDY. Ah, no, in fact they came down on me--and Lawson-- first and foremost because we were defending what they considered a pseudoscience and a scam. They go after *anybody* who tries to argue for anything that is not, in their view, scientific. That's pretty much the purpose of the group, as its name implies. Secondarily, they came down on me and Lawson because we were able to demonstrate that they were largely uninformed about TM. I followed sci.skeptic for a while. They did NOT rag on TMers because they were TMers. They ragged on abusive, arrogant posters because they were abusive and arrogant. That's where Judy fit in. Not true. If you had really been following the discussions, you'd know we were polite at first. They were not, from the start. Any aggressiveness on our part came only after they'd been insulting and abusing *us*. (As to arrogance, it's hard to think of anything more arrogant than dumping on something one knows virtually nothing about. The sci.skeptic posters were among the most arrogant and abusive I've ever encountered, not just to me by any means, but to anyone who dared espouse a nonmainstream view.) It's all about her personality, and how she wields it. It wouldn't have mattered to those people if she had been a member of a cargo cult from the South Pacific; they'd still have found her tactics repugnant. That would be the tactics of pointing out that they didn't know what they were talking about. Yes, they sure did find that repugnant. (Barry gets tangled up in his rhetoric again above; he didn't mean to cite cargo cults, of course; he meant to say they would have found my tactics repugnant even if I had been arguing with them about something respectably scientific in which I was well versed.) *That* is what you're trying to obscure by claiming that they reacted to her as they did because she was a TMer. Lawson was referring to the Web site owners-- specifically Skolnick, Kellett, and Sherilyn, not the members of sci.skeptic. (This post of Barry's is an example of the non- sequitur slamming of TMers I mentioned earlier, by the way. He knows Lawson wasn't referring to the sci.skeptic folks, but he hoped others would not, so he pretended he didn't in order to irrelevantly slam Lawson and me.)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For me, a success would be if Maharishi put out a call to action to his many students over the years and those students did what was asked of them. Do the math -- let's say that the TMO has (conservatively) taught 1,200,000 people to meditate over the years. But only 1200 or so people -- at the *peak* of the pre-pundit numbers -- answered the call and bothered to show up for this course. If you can't do the math, that's -- synchronistically -- one-tenth of one percent. Nah, you're just being glib, Barry - Knowing you, if that happened, you'd be all upset that the course participants were clones or TBs or something. God knows there'd be *something* wrong with it... The way you and Steve twist whatever comes out of Maharishi's mouth to suit your purposes, there is absolutely NO WAY you would ever declare a course of Maharishi's a success. Your and Steve's constant naysaying of Maharishi's speech and actions speak far louder about the lack of success of your own respective practices, than anything you may be saying about Maharishi. I mean look at this- Do any others here that practice TM spend years on some website that discusses and promotes another practice, Christianity for example, just so they can throw mud at it? It wouldn't seem so weird to me if you guys did TM or had any connection to it. But you don't. You just camp out here, slinging mud at TM, TMO and Maharishi. What's up with that??
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Jan 1, 2007, at 1:49 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 1, 2007, at 12:52 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: For the record, I think it's *sad* that the TMO destroyed itself. I think it could have been a real force on this planet if it had stuck to what it was good at -- teaching people a simple, easily-learned technique of meditation That's really the issue IMO--the early courses were wonderful, great food... Not always...remember Poland Spring and the rotten produce? And some of the courses in Switzerland where we got brussel sprouts four to five nights a week? I *still* can't look a brussel sprout in the eye after my last course. :-) Didn't go to that one. I was thinking pretty much of some of the more local courses in and around the Chicago area. Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book. Vaj sees things his way, you see things your way, that's all. snip First the TMO asked its movement to come, then they begged the movement to come, then they dropped the price and begged again, and finally they resorted to threats and started making noises about the horrible things that would happen to the world if they *didn't* come. Nobody else came. Actually, they *started* with the horrible things that would happen to the world if they didn't come. snip Jim, I've been watching the short history of this course fairly closely, and I don't think I've mistated the sequence of events above. Actually, you did; see above. What does it say about *your* spiritual practice that you see that history as a success? Was Jim referring to the history of the movement, or the course itself? I do believe it was the latter. (Another non sequitur slam. Or perhaps Barry's New Year's Eve celebration didn't quite result in the enhanced clarity he'd predicted.) Obviously he has a different definition of success than you do. Jim sees things his way, you see things your way, that's all. If the goal was to get a group together, then they've succeeded very nicely indeed, whatever the means. A movement only moves when it has members *to* move. If you've systematically driven them all away for decades and *then* ask them to move and they don't, I think that the sane thing to do would be to step back and rethink all that you've done to *destroy* your own movement. The TMO, obviously, doesn't think that way; they'd rather hire kids from India so that they can pretend they still have one. If they truly believe the course is necessary to save the world from imminent disaster, it would be folly for them to step back and rethink their previous actions rather than do whatever they could to get a group together as quickly as possible.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
Remember the tragedy of knowledge tape? It's the perfect explanation for what has happened to the TM movement, and Maharishi didn't even have to die first. And the blame for the tragedy of knowledge occurring the last time around was put on the current TM initiators. They were responsible for losing the knowledge during the previous revival and so had to come back to teach again. Thirty years after first hearing that, I realize the fault likely was elsewhere. --- TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 1, 2007, at 12:52 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: For the record, I think it's *sad* that the TMO destroyed itself. I think it could have been a real force on this planet if it had stuck to what it was good at -- teaching people a simple, easily-learned technique of meditation That's really the issue IMO--the early courses were wonderful, great food... Not always...remember Poland Spring and the rotten produce? And some of the courses in Switzerland where we got brussel sprouts four to five nights a week? I *still* can't look a brussel sprout in the eye after my last course. :-) ...laid-back atmosphere, reasonable prices, etc. Then they got weird and outsourced the whole thing to the control- freaks and $$-grubbers. Looking back now it's hard to believe it was the same movement. Remember the tragedy of knowledge tape? It's the perfect explanation for what has happened to the TM movement, and Maharishi didn't even have to die first. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Jan 1, 2007, at 3:01 PM, jim_flanegin wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For me, a success would be if Maharishi put out a call to action to his many students over the years and those students did what was asked of them. Do the math -- let's say that the TMO has (conservatively) taught 1,200,000 people to meditate over the years. But only 1200 or so people -- at the *peak* of the pre-pundit numbers -- answered the call and bothered to show up for this course. If you can't do the math, that's -- synchronistically -- one-tenth of one percent. Nah, you're just being glib, Barry - Knowing you, if that happened, you'd be all upset that the course participants were clones or TBs or something. God knows there'd be *something* wrong with it... The way you and Steve twist whatever comes out of Maharishi's mouth to suit your purposes, there is absolutely NO WAY you would ever declare a course of Maharishi's a success. Even if all the course participants spontaneously began hovering? Highly unlikely I would call that a failure. It's interesting you know, I was talking to someone from the TMO offlist a couple of weeks back and I mentioned to him, in all the years I'd been here, not one person had asked me what it was I liked-- like my own top ten list of things I liked about TM/TMO. Not once. How come? Are you just naturally assuming there was nothing we liked or why were you afraid to ask? Also, it's probably worth mentioning that this is not a TM exclusive list, so there are others here and they may comment on things posted here. I've always thought the best thing about the TMO was not so much TM or any program, but the interesting and wonderful people it attracted.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
Any movement that is Arrogant and declares it's superiority, naturally come under intense scrutiny. This is why, the Christian right comes under intense scrutiny. This is why, Muslims come under intense scrutiny. The TM-org as no one to blame but itself for this negative publicity. The other Spiritual groups are far more humble and don't proclaim their superiority and also keep a much lower profile, therefore they come under less scrutiny. If you look at history, hatred for Jews existed because they declared their superiority.!! jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2007 20:01:57 - Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences Nah, you're just being glib, Barry - Knowing you, if that happened, you'd be all upset that the course participants were clones or TBs or something. God knows there'd be *something* wrong with it... The way you and Steve twist whatever comes out of Maharishi's mouth to suit your purposes, there is absolutely NO WAY you would ever declare a course of Maharishi's a success. Your and Steve's constant naysaying of Maharishi's speech and actions speak far louder about the lack of success of your own respective practices, than anything you may be saying about Maharishi. I mean look at this- Do any others here that practice TM spend years on some website that discusses and promotes another practice, Christianity for example, just so they can throw mud at it? It wouldn't seem so weird to me if you guys did TM or had any connection to it. But you don't. You just camp out here, slinging mud at TM, TMO and Maharishi. What's up with that?? __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It wouldn't seem so weird to me if you guys did TM or had any connection to it. But you don't. You just camp out here, slinging mud at TM, TMO and Maharishi. What's up with that?? If they weren't so busy *generating* mud, there would be none to sling. The fact that there is interests me, because the winding down of cults and spiritual groups interests me. I find it far more interesting than the winding up. Every group is born more or less the same way, but the ones that die always seem to find their own unique way to do it. But yours is a good point, and I've been considering lately whether this group represents a waste of my time. There was a time, when I first joined it, that people talked about interesting spiritual experiences of their own, non-demoninational spiritual experiences, not copyrighted TM-brand spiritual experiences or Other People's Experiences. But that time seems to have come and gone. Perhaps it's my time to go as well. We'll see...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, gullible fool [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Remember the tragedy of knowledge tape? It's the perfect explanation for what has happened to the TM movement, and Maharishi didn't even have to die first. And the blame for the tragedy of knowledge occurring the last time around was put on the current TM initiators. They were responsible for losing the knowledge during the previous revival and so had to come back to teach again. Thirty years after first hearing that, I realize the fault likely was elsewhere. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. -- George Santayana One of the reasons I like Chogyam Trungpa is his theory that one learns more from one's mistakes than one does from one's successes. I can only hope that I've learned enough from my two experiments with spiritual teachers who are willing to take everything except responsibility for their own actions to not fall for that particular dodge again. I'll find new ways to fuck up. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: A movement only moves when it has members *to* move. If you've systematically driven them all away for decades and *then* ask them to move and they don't, I think that the sane thing to do would be to step back and rethink all that you've done to *destroy* your own movement. The TMO, obviously, doesn't think that way; they'd rather hire kids from India so that they can pretend they still have one. If they truly believe the course is necessary to save the world from imminent disaster, it would be folly for them to step back and rethink their previous actions rather than do whatever they could to get a group together as quickly as possible. There is a point that you always ignore. *If* that is what they truly believe, why did they not get a group together years ago? They had the money. They *have* the money. But they refuse to put their *own* money where their mouth is. The *only* reason this course is achieving the numbers is that they suckered someone *else* into paying for it. If Maharishi and the TMO really believed in the ME, they could have paid for a test group DECADES ago. They did not. They still *have* not. They only believe in the efficacy of group practice if someone ELSE pays for it.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's interesting you know, I was talking to someone from the TMO offlist a couple of weeks back and I mentioned to him, in all the years I'd been here, not one person had asked me what it was I liked--like my own top ten list of things I liked about TM/TMO. Not once. How come? Are you just naturally assuming there was nothing we liked or why were you afraid to ask? Afraid to ask. It's easier to characterize us as completely negative. That's part and parcel of the TM apologists' agenda. Also, it's probably worth mentioning that this is not a TM exclusive list, so there are others here and they may comment on things posted here. I've always thought the best thing about the TMO was not so much TM or any program, but the interesting and wonderful people it attracted. Bingo. Also the best part about this list, when it's on. The people here are *far* more inter- esting than the TM soap opera they tend to get hung up on. For me, I guess it was a combination of the people who I got to work with in the TM movement and the sense of *enthusiasm* and *happiness* that we all brought to our teaching activities for a short time. That was magic. I still feel grateful to Maharishi for giving me the chance to teach during that era, when it was still possible to believe in what we were teaching. I liked some of the experiences I had pre-siddhis. A few of them were downright smokin' *at the time*, although in retrospect they were pretty ordinary. I even liked the siddhis for a couple of days, but then I got bored with them, and moved on. Some of the women were pretty smokin', too, before they got into that wearing saris and trying to act like they didn't have pussies thang. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Jason Spock [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any movement that is Arrogant and declares it's superiority, naturally come under intense scrutiny. This is why, the Christian right comes under intense scrutiny. This is why, Muslims come under intense scrutiny. The TM-org as no one to blame but itself for this negative publicity. It's not often that I feel like agreeing with Jason, but this is one of those times. Right on.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: A movement only moves when it has members *to* move. If you've systematically driven them all away for decades and *then* ask them to move and they don't, I think that the sane thing to do would be to step back and rethink all that you've done to *destroy* your own movement. The TMO, obviously, doesn't think that way; they'd rather hire kids from India so that they can pretend they still have one. If they truly believe the course is necessary to save the world from imminent disaster, it would be folly for them to step back and rethink their previous actions rather than do whatever they could to get a group together as quickly as possible. There is a point that you always ignore. *If* that is what they truly believe, why did they not get a group together years ago? I don't know, but it's kind of a silly question because there are so many possible answers. I'm just pointing out that yours isn't the only conceivable answer, as you appear to believe it is. They had the money. They *have* the money. But they refuse to put their *own* money where their mouth is. The *only* reason this course is achieving the numbers is that they suckered someone *else* into paying for it. If Maharishi and the TMO really believed in the ME, they could have paid for a test group DECADES ago. They did not. They still *have* not. They only believe in the efficacy of group practice if someone ELSE pays for it. MMY has always wanted somebody else--governments, other institutions--to pay for it so they would have an investment in its success. If it's purely a TMO production, it's much less likely to be taken seriously, even if the results are positive. That they're having TM donors pay for it this time suggests to me that they think it's more of an emergency situation than ever before.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book. Vaj sees things his way, you see things your way, that's all. Me, I see the underwriting as a nostalgic attempt by a few wealthy long-term members of the TM movement to allow Maharishi to die with his illusions that he still *has* a movement intact. But the TMO is constantly getting infusions of millions of dollars. Your logic is flawed. This is the first time that MMY has directed such infusions to sponsor participation in such a large course of this type IN THIS COUNTRY, but donors have sponsored large courses in other countries, and of course donors have been purchasing land and building buildings for the TMO for decades. I gotta think that you know this, given how long you have hung around the TMO taking snipes at it, so the question arises: why do you pretend that your speculation is meant seriously? The bottom line is that Maharishi *can't* get 2000 people together for one of his courses unless he hires people from India to staff it. Color it how you will...in my book that speaks for itself. Yep. Of course, how many people drop what they are doing to head to ANYTHING on a moment's notice?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: A movement only moves when it has members *to* move. If you've systematically driven them all away for decades and *then* ask them to move and they don't, I think that the sane thing to do would be to step back and rethink all that you've done to *destroy* your own movement. The TMO, obviously, doesn't think that way; they'd rather hire kids from India so that they can pretend they still have one. If they truly believe the course is necessary to save the world from imminent disaster, it would be folly for them to step back and rethink their previous actions rather than do whatever they could to get a group together as quickly as possible. There is a point that you always ignore. *If* that is what they truly believe, why did they not get a group together years ago? They had the money. They *have* the money. But they refuse to put their *own* money where their mouth is. The *only* reason this course is achieving the numbers is that they suckered someone *else* into paying for it. If Maharishi and the TMO really believed in the ME, they could have paid for a test group DECADES ago. They did not. They still *have* not. They only believe in the efficacy of group practice if someone ELSE pays for it. What money has MMY ever generated of his own? ALL TM money is donated money. The revenue from instruction from TM or even the TM-SIdhis is hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the donated funds and I canmake a case that the instruction revenue hardly pays for itself any more.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: ...and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. I wouldn't worry about it that much. You only got about 40 votes, mainly from your fans on alt.meditation.transcendental and sci.skeptic. Um, I never worried about it at all. But apparently it was a big enough deal for you that you actually had to go count the votes. Nope. Someone on sci.skeptic kept track. They were quite amused by you. I presume they were all angry and usually dishonest critics of TM, too? :-) In general, yeah. Non-angry and usually honest critics of anything don't indulge in ad hoc web-sites, ad hominem attacks, etc., on proponents of what they are critical of. You're trying to pull the same propaganda stunt that Judy runs here. These people didn't come down on Judy because she was a TMer, ferchris- sakes; they came down on her because she's JUDY. Ah, no, in fact they came down on me--and Lawson-- first and foremost because we were defending what they considered a pseudoscience and a scam. They go after *anybody* who tries to argue for anything that is not, in their view, scientific. That's pretty much the purpose of the group, as its name implies. Secondarily, they came down on me and Lawson because we were able to demonstrate that they were largely uninformed about TM. I followed sci.skeptic for a while. They did NOT rag on TMers because they were TMers. They ragged on abusive, arrogant posters because they were abusive and arrogant. That's where Judy fit in. Not true. If you had really been following the discussions, you'd know we were polite at first. They were not, from the start. Any aggressiveness on our part came only after they'd been insulting and abusing *us*. (As to arrogance, it's hard to think of anything more arrogant than dumping on something one knows virtually nothing about. The sci.skeptic posters were among the most arrogant and abusive I've ever encountered, not just to me by any means, but to anyone who dared espouse a nonmainstream view.) It's all about her personality, and how she wields it. It wouldn't have mattered to those people if she had been a member of a cargo cult from the South Pacific; they'd still have found her tactics repugnant. That would be the tactics of pointing out that they didn't know what they were talking about. Yes, they sure did find that repugnant. (Barry gets tangled up in his rhetoric again above; he didn't mean to cite cargo cults, of course; he meant to say they would have found my tactics repugnant even if I had been arguing with them about something respectably scientific in which I was well versed.) *That* is what you're trying to obscure by claiming that they reacted to her as they did because she was a TMer. Lawson was referring to the Web site owners-- specifically Skolnick, Kellett, and Sherilyn, not the members of sci.skeptic. (This post of Barry's is an example of the non- sequitur slamming of TMers I mentioned earlier, by the way. He knows Lawson wasn't referring to the sci.skeptic folks, but he hoped others would not, so he pretended he didn't in order to irrelevantly slam Lawson and me.) Eh, I had in mind specific examples INCLUDING some of the TM-slammers, but not limited to them. There are plenty of denizens of sci.skeptic who maintain websites attacking all sorts of things, often in ignorance of what they are attacking.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yep. Of course, how many people drop what they are doing to head to ANYTHING on a moment's notice? Many, if not most, of the people on this list. They did it for decades. Some still do.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Jan 1, 2007, at 4:24 PM, TurquoiseB wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's interesting you know, I was talking to someone from the TMO offlist a couple of weeks back and I mentioned to him, in all the years I'd been here, not one person had asked me what it was I liked--like my own top ten list of things I liked about TM/TMO. Not once. How come? Are you just naturally assuming there was nothing we liked or why were you afraid to ask? Afraid to ask. It's easier to characterize us as completely negative. That's part and parcel of the TM apologists' agenda. I even shared my favorite TMO technique (without revealing it's secrets) and the reasons why it was something I enjoyed at the time and how I felt it could be evolutionary. Hardly a response. In fact, whenever I share anything glaringly *nice* about TM/TMSP I get little or no response. I always found that lack of response rather interesting, if not telling. Also, it's probably worth mentioning that this is not a TM exclusive list, so there are others here and they may comment on things posted here. I've always thought the best thing about the TMO was not so much TM or any program, but the interesting and wonderful people it attracted. Bingo. Also the best part about this list, when it's on. The people here are *far* more inter- esting than the TM soap opera they tend to get hung up on. Yes indeedee.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: Steve, odd that the current course is quite successful, with the underwriting of the course, the arrival of the pundits, the experiences reported, and yet you see it in an entirely negative light...What does that say about your spiritual practice? Not much, in my book. Vaj sees things his way, you see things your way, that's all. Me, I see the underwriting as a nostalgic attempt by a few wealthy long-term members of the TM movement to allow Maharishi to die with his illusions that he still *has* a movement intact. But the TMO is constantly getting infusions of millions of dollars. Your logic is flawed. This is the first time that MMY has directed such infusions to sponsor participation in such a large course of this type IN THIS COUNTRY, but donors have sponsored large courses in other countries, and of course donors have been purchasing land and building buildings for the TMO for decades. I gotta think that you know this, given how long you have hung around the TMO taking snipes at it, so the question arises: why do you pretend that your speculation is meant seriously? MMY isn't directing the infusion to MUM, Howard Settle is, with his original pledge of $1 million per month to fund 2,000 sidhas at $500 per month sponsorship. When far less than that number of sidhas showed up, then MMY took advantage of the extra funds to send pundits over and renovate the campus and build up vedic city. As you say, MMY is constantly receiving large donations, primarily through the million dollar courses, but has never in the past directed the money to the US when he has the choice how to use the funds. If you study tmo finances through the public filings and just generally use your eyes, you see that MMY prefers donations to end up in private offshore accts where it can be moved about in private, rather than spend on courses in the US. Once the pundit housing has been built and/or renovated, it shouldn't be that expensive to keep them here, so they might stay after the Settle money runs out, but sponsorship of sidhas is already being phased out and will definitely go when Settle funds dries up.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: Yep. Of course, how many people drop what they are doing to head to ANYTHING on a moment's notice? Many, if not most, of the people on this list. They did it for decades. Some still do. You've taken a poll, right? Jeez, Barry, *try* to start curbing your fantasies for the new year, OK?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: Yep. Of course, how many people drop what they are doing to head to ANYTHING on a moment's notice? Many, if not most, of the people on this list. They did it for decades. Some still do. You've taken a poll, right? No, I was a TM teacher, during the era where pretty much the definition for being one was being able to drop what you are doing and go where you were asked to go. Many, if not most, of the people on this list were, too. Jeez, Barry, *try* to start curbing your fantasies for the new year, OK? If you'd ever had the experience of living like this, perhaps you wouldn't consider it a fantasy. But you haven't, have you? Sad.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: Yep. Of course, how many people drop what they are doing to head to ANYTHING on a moment's notice? Many, if not most, of the people on this list. They did it for decades. Some still do. You've taken a poll, right? No, I was a TM teacher, during the era where pretty much the definition for being one was being able to drop what you are doing and go where you were asked to go. Many, if not most, of the people on this list were, too. You've taken a poll, right? Jeez, Barry, *try* to start curbing your fantasies for the new year, OK? If you'd ever had the experience of living like this, perhaps you wouldn't consider it a fantasy. But you haven't, have you? Sad. Not my point, of course. But you knew that; you thought you'd just try to sneak in yet another non sequitur slam. The vast majority of people on this list *never post*. You don't have a clue whether they were teachers or not. And if you're referring just to those who do post and have said they were teachers, that's, what, maybe 20 people. If what you were trying to say was that in the past many TM teachers would drop everything to attend a hastily called course, nobody's disputing that. But I do wonder how many such courses there were in your day. Your posts today have been really garbled and off-target. You sound as though you're so mad at the world you can't think straight. Not a great way to start the new year.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: Yep. Of course, how many people drop what they are doing to head to ANYTHING on a moment's notice? Many, if not most, of the people on this list. They did it for decades. Some still do. You've taken a poll, right? No, I was a TM teacher, during the era where pretty much the definition for being one was being able to drop what you are doing and go where you were asked to go. Many, if not most, of the people on this list were, too. You've taken a poll, right? Jeez, Barry, *try* to start curbing your fantasies for the new year, OK? If you'd ever had the experience of living like this, perhaps you wouldn't consider it a fantasy. But you haven't, have you? Sad. Not my point, of course. But you knew that; you thought you'd just try to sneak in yet another non sequitur slam. The vast majority of people on this list *never post*. You don't have a clue whether they were teachers or not. And if you're referring just to those who do post and have said they were teachers, that's, what, maybe 20 people. If what you were trying to say was that in the past many TM teachers would drop everything to attend a hastily called course, nobody's disputing that. But I do wonder how many such courses there were in your day. Your posts today have been really garbled and off-target. You sound as though you're so mad at the world you can't think straight. Not a great way to start the new year. Sounds to me like someone is not happy about being reminded that as far as the TM movement goes, she was never a player. And that she's on a forum full of people who were.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig sparaig@ wrote: Yep. Of course, how many people drop what they are doing to head to ANYTHING on a moment's notice? Many, if not most, of the people on this list. They did it for decades. Some still do. You've taken a poll, right? No, I was a TM teacher, during the era where pretty much the definition for being one was being able to drop what you are doing and go where you were asked to go. Many, if not most, of the people on this list were, too. You've taken a poll, right? Jeez, Barry, *try* to start curbing your fantasies for the new year, OK? If you'd ever had the experience of living like this, perhaps you wouldn't consider it a fantasy. But you haven't, have you? Sad. Not my point, of course. But you knew that; you thought you'd just try to sneak in yet another non sequitur slam. The vast majority of people on this list *never post*. You don't have a clue whether they were teachers or not. And if you're referring just to those who do post and have said they were teachers, that's, what, maybe 20 people. If what you were trying to say was that in the past many TM teachers would drop everything to attend a hastily called course, nobody's disputing that. But I do wonder how many such courses there were in your day. Your posts today have been really garbled and off-target. You sound as though you're so mad at the world you can't think straight. Not a great way to start the new year. Sounds to me like someone is not happy about being reminded that as far as the TM movement goes, she was never a player. (Says Barry, trying, as usual, to change the subject so he won't have to address his own goof, but inadvertently demonstrating the accuracy of both my observations about his posts today, as well as my previous observation about his tendency to shoehorn non sequitur slams into his posts.) No, Barry, *you're* the one who gets all riled up about my not having been a TM teacher. I made the right choice and have never regretted it. And that she's on a forum full of people who were. As I said, you'd be well advised to take the new year as an opportunity to work on living in reality rather than in your fantasy world.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Dick Mays [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
MAHARISHI, DECEMBER 20, 2006
Maharishi: Jai Guru Dev.
Dr. Morris: Jai Guru Dev.
Maharishi: [laughter] They are all with you still?
Dr. Morris: Maharishi, we're in the press
conference now, with His Excellency Dr. Hagelin.
Maharishi: I have heard last few words of Dr.
Hagelin, and I want to bring him success. So I
want to say something.
Dr. Morris: Yes.
Maharishi: I want to say something that will
really fulfill what Dr. Hagelin has offered today
to the world through this Assembly. I would like
to explain, as Dr. Hagelin said-he said in the
next meeting, but I would like to fulfill his
desire today.
What I want to do is: collect all those
first-class experiences, and I would like to
unfold to them to the extent they have the
experience. This is-I would remind them-these are
the values of the Dirghatamas: long-drawn
silence,
dIrghatamA mAmateyo jujurvAn dashame yuge |\\ \EN{115801062}
apAmarthaM yatInAM brahmA bhavati sArathiH ||\\
A possible translation (Griffith):
6 Dirghatamas (diirgha-tamaa) the son of Mamata (maamateyo) hath come
to length of days (jujurvaan) in the tenth (dashame) age of human kind
(yuge).
He is (bhavati) the Brahman (?brahmaa) of the waters (apaam) as they
strive to reach (yatiinaam) their end and aim (artham): their
charioteer is he (saarathiH).
Rgveda I 158, 6
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
Has something to do with the up-tick in world consciousness, from the
hanging of Sadam yesterday morning.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Dick Mays dickmays@ wrote:
MAHARISHI, DECEMBER 20, 2006
Maharishi: Jai Guru Dev.
Dr. Morris: Jai Guru Dev.
Maharishi: [laughter] They are all with you still?
Dr. Morris: Maharishi, we're in the press
conference now, with His Excellency Dr. Hagelin.
Maharishi: I have heard last few words of Dr.
Hagelin, and I want to bring him success. So I
want to say something.
Dr. Morris: Yes.
Maharishi: I want to say something that will
really fulfill what Dr. Hagelin has offered today
to the world through this Assembly. I would like
to explain, as Dr. Hagelin said-he said in the
next meeting, but I would like to fulfill his
desire today.
What I want to do is: collect all those
first-class experiences, and I would like to
unfold to them to the extent they have the
experience. This is-I would remind them-these are
the values of the Dirghatamas: long-drawn
silence,
dIrghatamA mAmateyo jujurvAn dashame yuge |\\ \EN{115801062}
apAmarthaM yatInAM brahmA bhavati sArathiH ||\\
A possible translation (Griffith):
6 Dirghatamas (diirgha-tamaa) the son of Mamata (maamateyo) hath
come
to length of days (jujurvaan) in the tenth (dashame) age of human
kind
(yuge).
He is (bhavati) the Brahman (?brahmaa) of the waters (apaam) as they
strive to reach (yatiinaam) their end and aim (artham): their
charioteer is he (saarathiH).
Rgveda I 158, 6
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. Always has. So do the most enlightened teachers I've encountered on the planet. The constant contradiction is not a problem IMO; the tendency for people to want not to *deal* with the contradiction and say that one version is the correct version is where the problem lies. :-) The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). That's certainly becoming more pronounced lately. So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Bingo. The gist of this latest talk seems to be, These are the experiences I want to hear. Don't bother to get up to the microphone if you don't have one of these type of experiences to relate. And, by the way, what you *really* want to do more than anything else on this course is to get yourself on the LIST of people who are *having* the type of experiences I want to hear about. Well duh...what do you think people are going to be falling all over themselves to report from now on? It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. It's such a contrast to Rama and some of the other teachers I've worked with -- in the cases where they asked what people's experiences were, they really wanted to *know* what people's experiences were. There was NEVER any suggestion of what a good experience was, or what type of experience was expected or better than another. I guess I got used to that type of *non*-programming in such talk about your experiences sessions, and was a little shocked to read this latest rap, in which it is pretty clear that if you want to be considered happening on this course, and on the LIST, you should stand up and say that you are having the expected experiences, or (given the before-mentioned tendency of devotees to give the teacher whatever he asks for), pretend to be having such experiences. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. I would not go so far. I think that a much simpler, and kinder, explanation is that these are the types of exper- iences that Maharishi assumes he *should* be hearing by now, given all his time working with these people. There- fore he *wants* to hear them, so he's telling people *what* he wants to hear, so that they'll *say* what he wants to hear. To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. And what do you want to bet there's plugs for $$ every day? The TMO never does anything for free. They'll grab you for as much as they can, one way or another. Sal
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
Constant naysaying is quite stupid. I am grateful to Maharishi for letting the final remnants of his movement speak freely of their experiences finally and him making the primacy of personal cognition of importance for his people finally instead of always putting that off. This is a good step towards respecting all things, by learning to respect ones own experiences. Plus, this satsang is what Fairfielders have been doing now with their wedsnday night meets for awhile. So it's all of a key. People who separate out MMY or the Movement from the entirety of all things do so plunderously into greater ignorance. All things have developed into this ability to have anything at will spiritual or material. I think people will realize what I'm saying and so fulfillment is possible if not entirely final in the present moment as the great completeness. At any rate. Please check into this -From Devipuram: Sri Matre Namaha, There is a divine sankalpam that we dedicate one Garland with 1008 Gold coins with each name of Lalita Sahasranama inscribed in a coin to the Goddess Supreme Sri Sahasrakshi Rajarajeshwari on the day of Kumbhabhishekam 2nd Feb 2007, at Devipuram . Devotees can contribute to that mala by sponsoring one coin with a name from Lalita Sahasranama. There are close to 500 coins which have already been contributed by devotees from all over the world. We request the devotees to read more about this Mala at the following link: http://www.devipuram.com/events/kasumala.html We request you to kindly spread the word to your friends and devotees and help us in completing the Mala as early as possible. Sri Matre Namah Devipuram/Vi1 Group www.devipuram.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] +91-8924-207652 Yahoo! Groups Links - Original Message - From: feste37 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2006 8:50 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. Well, but there's nothing wrong with contradicting oneself, at least according to Barry. He does it all the time, and he insists it's actually a higher level of functioning; he says those who boggle at contradictions have limited minds. The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I don't see any signs of senility myself. Could you point to some examples so we know what you're talking about? (Silly me. Of course not.) So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. Boy, there's an irrefutable syllogism if I've ever seen one. He probably contradicts himself a lot, and Vaj sees some signs of senility in his recent addresses, THEREFORE he has probably said both 3-4 and 8 hours of meditation somewhere in the transcripts. Impeccable reasoning. Actually I haven't read anything in the previous transcripts about how long course participants should meditate. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Again, could you point us to some examples? What I read is a very strong emphasis on experience and the intellectual understanding thereof, not moodmaking. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Wow, another irrefutable syllogism! Vaj, the workings of your intellect are simply stunning in their depth and insight.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
That's not my experience, Sal. I'm going to the dome, and no one is asking me for a dime. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. And what do you want to bet there's plugs for $$ every day? The TMO never does anything for free. They'll grab you for as much as they can, one way or another. Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
Yeah, received an excited phone call yesterday from someone on the TM invincibility course, that Maharishi wants to hear of those having experiences with the dieties. irony that those who do see or understand the devatas are mostly quiet and under ground about it, any rising to share within the movement culture has long since been grounds for being hounded and rooted out of the dome in the ongoing rein of terror of the administration of their natural law here. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Some people pay would pay for that. It is a niche market. Yeah, interesting the currency in the end now is changing to those who speak with the devatas, or is that, favor now towards hearing voices ...and now speaking in tongues is going to be rated? The Spiritualist circus is coming to the domes next.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: snip The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). Actually, echolalia is repeating the words of someone else, not one's own words. He's obviously not as mentally quick as he used to be; my guess is that repeating words and phrases is his way of giving himself time to formulate what he's going to say next. snip It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. Actually that is your *interpretation* of what you see. Others might have very different interpretations. snip Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. I would not go so far. I think that a much simpler, and kinder, explanation is that these are the types of exper- iences that Maharishi assumes he *should* be hearing by now, given all his time working with these people. There- fore he *wants* to hear them, so he's telling people *what* he wants to hear, so that they'll *say* what he wants to hear. Actually, we should probably not conclude this when we haven't been on the course and heard how he conducts the experience sessions. For example, he may have solicited the experiences first before identifying them as good experiences. To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. Again, we don't know that he told them what he wanted to hear, at least at first. Certainly verifying good experiences after they had been reported innocently would give others an idea of what he wants to hear, but on the other hand, he wants others to be able to *recognize* these experiences when they have them themselves. Plus which, he's clearly intent on conveying an intellectual understanding of these types of experiences, which would be hard to do if nobody knew what they were, no? if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking. Sure, but perhaps that's a chance he's willing to take in the interests of what he wants to teach *about* such experiences. Perhaps he feels that after many years of hearing him condemn moodmaking, everyone should be clear as to how counterproductive it is; and that those who do it anyway deserve what they get. You can't force anybody not to moodmake, but if the alternative is not to explore experiences at all, maybe you just have to figure the benefits of exploration to those who refrain from moodmaking outweigh the negative consequences to those who don't.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
A couple of weeks ago Doug was comparing the pundit compound here with the Warsaw Ghetto. I wondered when someone would be able to top that. Well, Doug's made a good attempt here with his comment about the ongoing reign of terror that he claims is going on right here in Fairfield. To most people, the Reign of Terror refers to a period of particular savagery that took place during the French Revolution. Can anyone top this reference about the incredible evil that is being perpetrated by the TMO right here in our midst? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah, received an excited phone call yesterday from someone on the TM invincibility course, that Maharishi wants to hear of those having experiences with the dieties. irony that those who do see or understand the devatas are mostly quiet and under ground about it, any rising to share within the movement culture has long since been grounds for being hounded and rooted out of the dome in the ongoing rein of terror of the administration of their natural law here. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Some people pay would pay for that. It is a niche market. Yeah, interesting the currency in the end now is changing to those who speak with the devatas, or is that, favor now towards hearing voices ...and now speaking in tongues is going to be rated? The Spiritualist circus is coming to the domes next.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A couple of weeks ago Doug was comparing the pundit compound here with the Warsaw Ghetto. I wondered when someone would be able to top that. Well, Doug's made a good attempt here with his comment about the ongoing reign of terror that he claims is going on right here in Fairfield. To most people, the Reign of Terror refers to a period of particular savagery that took place during the French Revolution. Can anyone top this reference about the incredible evil that is being perpetrated by the TMO right here in our midst? I can top it, but only as an inside joke for those who have seen the TV series Firefly and its followup film Serenity. The TMO is the Alliance. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. Always has. So do the most enlightened teachers I've encountered on the planet. The constant contradiction is not a problem IMO; the tendency for people to want not to *deal* with the contradiction and say that one version is the correct version is where the problem lies. :-) The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). That's certainly becoming more pronounced lately. So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Bingo. The gist of this latest talk seems to be, These are the experiences I want to hear. Don't bother to get up to the microphone if you don't have one of these type of experiences to relate. And, by the way, what you *really* want to do more than anything else on this course is to get yourself on the LIST of people who are *having* the type of experiences I want to hear about. Well duh...what do you think people are going to be falling all over themselves to report from now on? It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. It's such a contrast to Rama and some of the other teachers I've worked with -- in the cases where they asked what people's experiences were, they really wanted to *know* what people's experiences were. There was NEVER any suggestion of what a good experience was, or what type of experience was expected or better than another. I guess I got used to that type of *non*-programming in such talk about your experiences sessions, and was a little shocked to read this latest rap, in which it is pretty clear that if you want to be considered happening on this course, and on the LIST, you should stand up and say that you are having the expected experiences, or (given the before-mentioned tendency of devotees to give the teacher whatever he asks for), pretend to be having such experiences. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. I would not go so far. I think that a much simpler, and kinder, explanation is that these are the types of exper- iences that Maharishi assumes he *should* be hearing by now, given all his time working with these people. There- fore he *wants* to hear them, so he's telling people *what* he wants to hear, so that they'll *say* what he wants to hear. To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking. There are specific experiences associated with the refinement of consciousness, cognitive milestones as consciousness is refined. Maharishi has heard of people bringing up these experiences and now wants to hear about more of them, so that he can gauge what is occurring on the course. This is not some mood-making exercise. If people want to moodmake, that is clearly enough seen. I haven't seen any evidence of moodmaking in the domes from the experiences that have been posted here and in otrher groups. They read genuine. What is going on in the domes is the unfoldment of the Vedas, *not* moodmaking. You appear to see Maharishi as a false teacher, a person driven by petty desires, more concerned about his appearance than almost anything else. Just as Steve (vaj) sees him, as a greedy failure, out for money. Why this is I am not sure, for it all seems to be a dreamt up scenario which you and Steve (vaj) constantly play out, supposedly
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking. At this point, regularity in group-practice is key to his agenda. If he has to indulge in some feel-good pep-talks to get everyone to stick with the program, he will do that. The pundits are his REAL focus. As far as I can tell, he doesn't do the pep-talks with them.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, feste37 feste37@ wrote: A couple of weeks ago Doug was comparing the pundit compound here with the Warsaw Ghetto. I wondered when someone would be able to top that. Well, Doug's made a good attempt here with his comment about the ongoing reign of terror that he claims is going on right here in Fairfield. To most people, the Reign of Terror refers to a period of particular savagery that took place during the French Revolution. Can anyone top this reference about the incredible evil that is being perpetrated by the TMO right here in our midst? I can top it, but only as an inside joke for those who have seen the TV series Firefly and its followup film Serenity. The TMO is the Alliance. :-) BTW, the WSJ reviewer hated Serenity... Said it was just like a TV movie and where's that darned remote...?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 31, 2006, at 8:50 AM, feste37 wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Perhaps it has escaped your notice that the current course is free. And what do you want to bet there's plugs for $$ every day? The TMO never does anything for free. They'll grab you for as much as they can, one way or another. Sal There might be, but they have $1 million per month coming in from ONE GUY. Any further fund-raising is almost counter-productive, since literally hundreds of the participants are being sponsored by the TMO itself (via the Settle Foundation).
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. Always has. So do the most enlightened teachers I've encountered on the planet. The constant contradiction is not a problem IMO; the tendency for people to want not to *deal* with the contradiction and say that one version is the correct version is where the problem lies. :-) The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). That's certainly becoming more pronounced lately. So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Bingo. The gist of this latest talk seems to be, These are the experiences I want to hear. Don't bother to get up to the microphone if you don't have one of these type of experiences to relate. And, by the way, what you *really* want to do more than anything else on this course is to get yourself on the LIST of people who are *having* the type of experiences I want to hear about. Well duh...what do you think people are going to be falling all over themselves to report from now on? It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. It's such a contrast to Rama and some of the other teachers I've worked with -- in the cases where they asked what people's experiences were, they really wanted to *know* what people's experiences were. There was NEVER any suggestion of what a good experience was, or what type of experience was expected or better than another. I guess I got used to that type of *non*-programming in such talk about your experiences sessions, and was a little shocked to read this latest rap, in which it is pretty clear that if you want to be considered happening on this course, and on the LIST, you should stand up and say that you are having the expected experiences, or (given the before-mentioned tendency of devotees to give the teacher whatever he asks for), pretend to be having such experiences. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. I would not go so far. I think that a much simpler, and kinder, explanation is that these are the types of exper- iences that Maharishi assumes he *should* be hearing by now, given all his time working with these people. There- fore he *wants* to hear them, so he's telling people *what* he wants to hear, so that they'll *say* what he wants to hear. To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking. There are specific experiences associated with the refinement of consciousness, cognitive milestones as consciousness is refined. Maharishi has heard of people bringing up these experiences and now wants to hear about more of them, so that he can gauge what is occurring on the course. This is not some mood-making exercise. If people want to moodmake, that is clearly enough seen. I haven't seen any evidence of moodmaking in the domes from the experiences that have been posted here and in otrher groups. They read genuine. What is going on in the domes is the unfoldment of the Vedas, *not* moodmaking. I hope that you are correct. It's just that the validity of many of your other seeings tends to make that a faint hope :-) You appear to see Maharishi as a false
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. Always has. So do the most enlightened teachers I've encountered on the planet. The constant contradiction is not a problem IMO; the tendency for people to want not to *deal* with the contradiction and say that one version is the correct version is where the problem lies. :-) The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). That's certainly becoming more pronounced lately. So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Bingo. The gist of this latest talk seems to be, These are the experiences I want to hear. Don't bother to get up to the microphone if you don't have one of these type of experiences to relate. And, by the way, what you *really* want to do more than anything else on this course is to get yourself on the LIST of people who are *having* the type of experiences I want to hear about. Well duh...what do you think people are going to be falling all over themselves to report from now on? It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. It's such a contrast to Rama and some of the other teachers I've worked with -- in the cases where they asked what people's experiences were, they really wanted to *know* what people's experiences were. There was NEVER any suggestion of what a good experience was, or what type of experience was expected or better than another. I guess I got used to that type of *non*-programming in such talk about your experiences sessions, and was a little shocked to read this latest rap, in which it is pretty clear that if you want to be considered happening on this course, and on the LIST, you should stand up and say that you are having the expected experiences, or (given the before-mentioned tendency of devotees to give the teacher whatever he asks for), pretend to be having such experiences. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. I would not go so far. I think that a much simpler, and kinder, explanation is that these are the types of exper- iences that Maharishi assumes he *should* be hearing by now, given all his time working with these people. There- fore he *wants* to hear them, so he's telling people *what* he wants to hear, so that they'll *say* what he wants to hear. To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking. There are specific experiences associated with the refinement of consciousness, cognitive milestones as consciousness is refined. Maharishi has heard of people bringing up these experiences and now wants to hear about more of them, so that he can gauge what is occurring on the course. This is not some mood-making exercise. If people want to moodmake, that is clearly enough seen. I haven't seen any evidence of moodmaking in the domes from the experiences that have been posted here and in otrher groups. They read genuine. What is going on in the domes is the unfoldment of the Vedas,
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: BTW, the WSJ reviewer hated Serenity... Said it was just like a TV movie and where's that darned remote...? Ha! QED.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
I've been seeing deities since I bought my pair of rudraksha beads five years ago and while sitting at the bar coked up and drinking smoking after work I started seeing em everywhere. So what of it? - Original Message - From: dhamiltony2k5 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, December 31, 2006 10:19 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences Yeah, received an excited phone call yesterday from someone on the TM invincibility course, that Maharishi wants to hear of those having experiences with the dieties. irony that those who do see or understand the devatas are mostly quiet and under ground about it, any rising to share within the movement culture has long since been grounds for being hounded and rooted out of the dome in the ongoing rein of terror of the administration of their natural law here. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. Some people pay would pay for that. It is a niche market. Yeah, interesting the currency in the end now is changing to those who speak with the devatas, or is that, favor now towards hearing voices ...and now speaking in tongues is going to be rated? The Spiritualist circus is coming to the domes next. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin jflanegi@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: snip You appear to see Maharishi as a false teacher, a person driven by petty desires, more concerned about his appearance than almost anything else. Just as Steve (vaj) sees him, as a greedy failure, out for money. Why this is I am not sure, for it all seems to be a dreamt up scenario which you and Steve (vaj) constantly play out, supposedly trying to convince some imaginary brainwashed TMers of this concocted reality about Maharishi, when in fact all you are doing is sharing your own fantasy about Maharishi-- nothing more. There is no benefit to the constant strawman games and false arguments you pose about Maharishi, no 'aha!' experience to be gained from it, because there is no truth in it. Just another fantasy. Jim, I believe NONE of the things that you attribute to me above. Not one of them. You will find none of them in the post you replied to, at least none written by me. Hell, even *Judy* didn't seem to find any of them in her reply to the same post Actually, although I'd have phrased the description of your attitude toward MMY a little differently, Jim's got the essence of your behavior. You've been dumping on MMY for 12 years now (maybe longer, but I first encountered you 12 years ago), and the vast majority of your criticisms have been straw men, your fantasies of who he is and why he does what he does. The post of yours in question is certainly a typical example. Unlike Jim, I don't think you're trying to convince imaginary brainwashed TMers of what you say about MMY; I think you're trying to convince others that anyone who supports or defends MMY against your attacks, or who says anything positive about MMY, is a brainwashed True Believer--another fantasy, designed to intimidate people into not voicing support for MMY lest they be classed as TBs, and to drive a wedge between supporters and nonsupporters. snip Compare and contrast to yours. Something you read pushed one of your buttons. As a spiritual exercise, you might just oughta PageUp and read the post again and figure out what it was. As a spiritual exercise, you might just want to contemplate why you've felt compelled to bash MMY and TMers continuously for *twelve years*--what, 15-20 years after you quit TM and the movement-- and why it has never occurred to you that this behavior might be just a tad unbalanced.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a spiritual exercise, you might just want to contemplate why you've felt compelled to bash MMY and TMers continuously for *twelve years*--what, 15-20 years after you quit TM and the movement-- and why it has never occurred to you that this behavior might be just a tad unbalanced. To paraphrase you, Did I ever claim to be balanced? But I'll contemplate your koan if you agree to contemplate how you've managed to be con- sidered an angry, insufferable bitch by so many people -- dozens, if not hundreds -- in that same period of time. I mean, as unbalanced as I may be, I don't have a website dedicated to my unacceptable behavior, and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--Thanks, as you pointed out before (re: Vaj's dissing MMY) it appears to be a case of jealously. His own Guru, Chogyal Norbu Rinpche, is undoubtedly Enlightened according to all/any standards; but that doesn't make him a good teacher. He only has a few hundred disciples and no single technique of his can hold a candle to TM. Also, his retreats cost $$$. I only paid $35. for TM, and can take it anywhere, even to other planets when the time comes. - In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, jim_flanegin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajranatha@ wrote: On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: He probably contradicts himself quite often. Always has. So do the most enlightened teachers I've encountered on the planet. The constant contradiction is not a problem IMO; the tendency for people to want not to *deal* with the contradiction and say that one version is the correct version is where the problem lies. :-) The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). That's certainly becoming more pronounced lately. So he's probably said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Bingo. The gist of this latest talk seems to be, These are the experiences I want to hear. Don't bother to get up to the microphone if you don't have one of these type of experiences to relate. And, by the way, what you *really* want to do more than anything else on this course is to get yourself on the LIST of people who are *having* the type of experiences I want to hear about. Well duh...what do you think people are going to be falling all over themselves to report from now on? It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. It's such a contrast to Rama and some of the other teachers I've worked with -- in the cases where they asked what people's experiences were, they really wanted to *know* what people's experiences were. There was NEVER any suggestion of what a good experience was, or what type of experience was expected or better than another. I guess I got used to that type of *non*-programming in such talk about your experiences sessions, and was a little shocked to read this latest rap, in which it is pretty clear that if you want to be considered happening on this course, and on the LIST, you should stand up and say that you are having the expected experiences, or (given the before-mentioned tendency of devotees to give the teacher whatever he asks for), pretend to be having such experiences. Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. I would not go so far. I think that a much simpler, and kinder, explanation is that these are the types of exper- iences that Maharishi assumes he *should* be hearing by now, given all his time working with these people. There- fore he *wants* to hear them, so he's telling people *what* he wants to hear, so that they'll *say* what he wants to hear. To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking. There are specific experiences associated with the refinement of consciousness, cognitive milestones as consciousness is refined. Maharishi has heard of people bringing up these experiences and now wants to hear about more of them, so that he can gauge what is occurring on the course. This is not some mood-making exercise.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
(snip) Happy New Year anyway. I'm about to go party down at a chateau near my village. It is at the top of the highest mountain in the area, and tonight is so clear that we'll be able to see for maybe a hundred kilometers. I wish everyone on the list equal clarity of vision in the next year. Happy New Year, Everyone, and remember: To be disillusioned: You must have been deluded in illusion...
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: As a spiritual exercise, you might just want to contemplate why you've felt compelled to bash MMY and TMers continuously for *twelve years*--what, 15-20 years after you quit TM and the movement-- and why it has never occurred to you that this behavior might be just a tad unbalanced. To paraphrase you, Did I ever claim to be balanced? Um, what exactly are you paraphrasing? In any case, just substitute for unbalanced any word or phrase describing what you pretend not to be. But I'll contemplate your koan if you agree to contemplate how you've managed to be con- sidered an angry, insufferable bitch by so many people -- dozens, if not hundreds -- in that same period of time. (Says Barry, hastily changing the subject rather than actually addressing what I wrote, one of his standard dishonest tactics.) The vast majority of whom *just happen* to be angry and usually dishonest critics of TM--you know, like you--who don't appreciate being called on their grossly distorted perspective. I mean, as unbalanced as I may be, I don't have a website dedicated to my unacceptable behavior Three, actually: Those of rabid anti-TMers Andrew Skolnick, Joe Kellett, and Sherilyn, all of whom the characterization above fits to a T. , and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) By Sherilyn, one of her more desperate moves. These sites are all, as far as I'm concerned, badges of honor, representing the inability of their proprietors to accomplish any significant rebuttal of my commentaries in open debate. On a Web site, they can lie and distort all they want without fear of rebuttal. It would be all too easy to create a Web site-- an honest one--dedicated to *your* unacceptable behavior, but I have no need to do that, since it's even easier to rebut your compulsive fantasies in the context of an Internet forum. In any case, I'd vastly rather be considered an angry, insufferable bitch than an angry hypocritical fraud. Your mileage obviously varies.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: As a spiritual exercise, you might just want to contemplate why you've felt compelled to bash MMY and TMers continuously for *twelve years*--what, 15-20 years after you quit TM and the movement-- and why it has never occurred to you that this behavior might be just a tad unbalanced. To paraphrase you, Did I ever claim to be balanced? But I'll contemplate your koan if you agree to contemplate how you've managed to be con- sidered an angry, insufferable bitch by so many people -- dozens, if not hundreds -- in that same period of time. I mean, as unbalanced as I may be, I don't have a website dedicated to my unacceptable behavior, and I have never been nominated for Usenet Kook of the Year. :-) You choose the targets for your obsession more carefully.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Has something to do with the up-tick in world consciousness, from the hanging of Sadam yesterday morning. http://tinyurl.com/ycvdsr
[FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi - Invincible America Assembly Finer Experiences
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Dick Mays [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MAHARISHI, DECEMBER 20, 2006 *** In your post http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility course participants to do 8 hours: ** So the work you are experiencing (?)-nothing is straining, absolutely no strain. It should be as natural as possible. Have all the things that have to be done during the day-bathing and eating and laughing and talking-everything in a very normal position. We don't strain ourself, uh? When we are emphasizing on the holiday, we thought-so we don't forget about society; we don't forget our home. That is there already. Not to that extent completely-uh? We are not- never go out on that level, because that will be too, too, too- premature is the word, uh? That will be only on the experiencing level, experiencing level. Lot of rest-lot of rest is necessary. And rest, and asanas, pranayama, asanas, pranayama, asanas, pranayama. And good food is already there; good environment is already there. Completely natural life-what is called natural life. Natural life does not forget anything. Only, we spend time in this. We don't call it exercise, but for the time being, for the meaning of it, we can call it exercise. So exercise has time value: three hours, four hours-a good exercise. We don't meditate whole day long; we never meditate whole day long. That will be stretching the ideal too much on one side. It must be normal; it must be normal; it must be normal, that's all. And come what may, experience will give us that ability to understand intellectually all our experiences. It's very necessary. It's very necessary not to have long time of it. Just three, four hours, good enough-and good rest in the middle, good rest in the middle: talking to friends, and laughing with them, and-all that should continue, all that. Only, our side interest in all these things, and then meditate on time. Give those four hours to meditate, or three hours to meditate. At that time, we just relax and we are meditating. When it's time for lunch, we take good lunch, and after lunch some rest, or listen to something nice, like that. And talk to friends, or- necessary, it's necessary, that we connect the ordinary waking state with the deep level of experience of the transcendental state. So don't forget about this thing, uh? Otherwise, the brain will be strained. Both things-balance, balance-both things-balance So it's very good (?). I am emphasizing now a balanced state, because all fifteen days Mind your own business-Mind your own business does not mean we strain our performance, we strain our awareness. Completely normal, natural life. And meditation has a place: two hours, three hours, four hours. We take complete rest, meditate for two hours-like that, like that-with complete gaps. I am emphasizing balance, because it does not go into the other side too much. Otherwise, physiology will strain unduly. And we want to save-that's why I'm emphasizing lot of rest and lot of rest and lot of rest, and lot of activity through the senses, through the mind, through the intellect, through the ego.
