End of the road

Why did I pull the ripcord on my relationship to the TMO?

The year was 1977. After spending the greater portion of the prior 4 years in Switzerland and France, attending one “next big thing” course after another, I found myself working at the WPEC in Pacific Palisades, CA. First I was in the accounting department, then, after the regime change from Jerry to three of Rindy's minions (Rindy and the Rindettes) I was one of the few allowed to stay, working in the mailroom, among other tasks.

During the years in Switzerland, I had noted an increased level of paranoia from MMY, an “us vs. them” attitude that gradually had my inner alarm bells sounding. A common theme that emerged from various meetings with MMY in those days was that the CIA had infiltrated the movement. There were occasional “purges” of people who had loyally served the TMO for many years. MMY would accuse them of having CIA ties. Even in the midst of intense rounding schedules (when you became like a one way sponge, accepting anything) I experienced a slowly growing feeling of (mostly) sadness as I saw MMY and the TMO turning from what had seemed like a beautifully open movement dedicated to simply spreading TM, to an organization that, from the top, had turned paranoid, petty, insecure, cynical and greedy.

Every year in the early 70's bought a new carrot that MMY dangled…the Age Of Enlightenment techniques, Governor “Training” Courses, the Sidhi Program. That last years program had not achieved the promised result was quickly forgotten when the new programs were announced. The TMO became stratified by rank to an even greater degree than before. Status in the TMO was increasingly tied to whether or not you had attended the latest and greatest “course”.

Back to 1977 and the WPEC center. One day one of the “Rindettes' ordered an intensive program of document shredding. I had been noting an increased concern about the “CIA” for many months. I was ordered to start shedding box after box of documents stored at WPEC. The pressure to complete this task was such that I barely had a chance to examine what I was shredding, but it appeared most were financial reports of one kind or another. I began to feel like I was part of a military cult rather than a spiritual organization. Keep in mind I had been among the truest of believers two years before.

One other event spooked me when I was around MMY the year before. The level of my devotion was such it occurred to me that if MMY had asked me to take someone's life I would have done it without a thought. (After all, I would simply be “helping” that person to move on to his next life, right?).

Finally, I decided to take what I first thought was a break from the TMO. I left WPEC, moved to Malibu and never looked back. Only in early 2006 did I decide to check in on the TMO again to see what had happened. What I saw shocked me. King Nader, the rajas with their tin burger king crowns, the Global Country of Peace. The seeds of monarchy that were so disturbing in the 70s were now fully grown.

And people were still bouncing on their butts and purporting to “fly”!
More on that in the next post.