When I learned TM in 1971, my initiator promised me that if I practiced TM for 20 minutes twice a day I would become enlightened in eight to eleven years.
I've heard that Maharishi originally taught, "3-5 years." When enlightenment didn't come after 5 years, he said, "5-8 years." Then "8-11 years." What did he say after that?
What did he promise you?
Later we were taught that TM 20 minutes twice a day plus the occasional weekend residence course would bring us to enlightenment.
When Maharishi first introduced the "Six-Month Courses," which were the predecessors to the TM-Sidhis courses, he said, "One six month course is enough to enlighten some people, two six month courses is enough to enlighten most people, and three six-month courses is enough to enlighten a horse!"
He also promised us that by learning his TM-Sidhis program we would be able to walk through walls and to become invisible. (Later these two promises were eliminated.) Also that we'd have increased friendliness, compassion, happiness, physical strength, control of hunger and thirst, ability to see the motion of the stars, ability to see into our body any illnesses and to heal them, and to levitate.
He also promised us that if we did TM, we would have "support of nature," which translated more or less as having our wishes fulfilled almost without effort.
We were told that our houseplants would grow better, and that unhealthy behaviors would spontaneously drop away. (How long has the cigarette smoker, David Lynch, been practicing TM?)
He promised we would be able to "do less and accomplish more."
He promised us that if we did the TM-Sidhis we would have "perfect health." Also immortality. (Ask Gina, contributor for this website, for stories of Sidhas dying of horrible diseases in Fairfield.)
He also promised us that by "flying" together we would create world peace and good will between the family of nations. Also that it would bring favorable weather condition. (Hurricane Katrina, tsunamis, global warming, anyone?)
He also promised that TM would raise our intelligence, improve our health, our family life, our social relationships, and our financial success.
He also promised us that practicing TM twice a day for 20 minutes would lead to spontaneous right action - that what we did would be "life-supporting" for ourselves and for those around us.
He promised that TM would make Christians better Christians, Jews better Jews, Moslems better Moslems, Hindus better Hindus, Buddhists better Buddhists....He promised that TM was not at odds with any religion.
He promised that TM asked no change in lifestyle: not in beliefs, not in diet, not in clothes, not in socializing, not in sexual activities, not in medical preferences, not in daily activities....
He promised that TM worked for everyone. And that it had no negative effects on anyone.
He promised that the ceremony (puja) during personal instruction was not religious in nature. He promised that TM itself was not religious in nature. He promised that the mantras were not religious in nature. He promised new student that they would not have to participate in the initiation ceremony.
He taught that "that which we put our attention grows stronger." Medical clinics, counseling clinics, and workplace safety measures were all reduced to discourage "putting our attention on negativity."
We were promised that 1,000 people "flying" together would make world peace. Then 5,000. Then 5,000 pundits flying and chanting together. Then many communities of flyers and chanters all over the world would create world peace.
He promised that eliminating south-facing doors would eliminate most obstacles to success and disharmony.
He promised that communities having a large percentage of people meditating would have a very harmonious civic life. (See the Fairfield Ledger newspaper, Fairfield Iowa, with a giant percentage of the population practicing TM and the TM-Sidhis. Read the police blotter and other daily reports for suicides, rapes, murders, mental hospital commitments, traffic accidents, robberies, fires, drug use, adultery, divorces, etc.)
What promises did Maharishi and the TM organization make to YOU? Which promises did they keep? Which ones did they break?
29 comments:
Laurie:
Your compassionate and humble essays always strike home in way that supports others' reflection and recovery. Thank you for your gentle example.
You asked : What promises did Maharishi and the TM organization make to YOU? Which promises did they keep? Which did they break?
Big question! I could write a book on that topic! Oh right, I did.. the manuscript still not submitted for publication.
On another note about normalizing lying within the TMOrg, I observe many post-TMOrg folks, whether they continue to practice TM or not, continue personal and professional lives based upon deception. Lying, manipulation for "enlightenment" and personal gain was the pervasive norm w/in the TM community. The community accepted inflated commissions on selling commodities, gemstones, 'consulting', psychic readings, land speculation - all was lauded because it funded attendance to the Golden Dome Programs, and donations to Purusha and Mother Divine Programs. Jeru Hall is finally in prison for fraud. Ed Beckley was also inprisoned for his lying business practices. Others got away with it, some continue. There remain some honest believers within the TM global community also, deceived naive True Believers. The common acceptance of lies, however, is the foundation.. right from the beginning of TM's introduction.
Some charismatic TMers followed MMY's example of grand success based upon snake-oil promises including Deepak Chopra, John Gray (Men are from Mars), Louise Haye empire, Maharishi Sadahsiva Isham (aka, TM-teacher Vaughn Abrams founder of the Ishaya Ascension), Thom Knowles (founder of "Vedic Meditation"), many "life coaches" and "consultants" who charismatically speak authoritatively & with charm not upon solid credentials. When Maharishi died, Chopra was quoted in the press as saying (I paraphrase) "I learned everything from Maharishi" The implication was that spiritual leader Chopra learned spiritual lessons from MMY. Really, IMHO, Chopra learned the mastery of professional & public scamming from MMY.
I learned the value of honesty and integrity from MMY. I learned that I never want to be responsible for one iota of the pain observed and experienced at the hands of MMY's (and others') manipulation and "spiritual lies."
Good ultimately came from TM to me, decades later; one could say that MMY's promises were ultimately fulfilled in a round about way (in spite of him, not because of him) ... my wonderful children resulted from a TM-based marriage. Other lifelong friends remain from TM. From TM/cult recovery work I've connected with intelligent accomplished, compassionate others.
Independence and strength comes from rebirth out of the ashes of cult betrayal. In a warped way, I must "thank" Maharishi for being the catalyst for the many gifts from cult-recovery.
Just as Victor Frankl, author of "Man's Search for Meaning" can "thank" Adolph Hitler for the perspective and strength gained from surviving Auschwitz, or as Jim Jones Jr. and "thank" his father, the Reverend Jim Jones, for education, multiracial perspective, and the strength that comes only from surviving devastation.
I will never excuse Maharishi for what he's done. Same for the unnamed corporate board of directors of "Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation" who profit with full knowledge of the fall out from their deceptive corporate practices.
g :)
I hear much of all that was written in the 1st installment of this series, either directly from my TM teacher friends. I don't remember exactly what I was told regarding "enlightenment" and how long that would take when I was initiated at age 14. It's truly pathetic-- all the lies and empty (and impossible) promises. It makes me sick.
*HEARD* , not "I hear." OC about that stuff. :)
I've been doing TM for over 30 years, attending TM Center functions, going to weekend retreats, etc., and not once have I ever heard anyone in the TM organization tell an untruth about the practice or what to expect from it—from the bottom to the top of the TM org. I seriously doubt that all the claims made here are fully true—distortions, most likely told to further the negative perception of TM that you guys are so devoted to and need to hear in order to maintain your collective beliefs in the face of so much positive evidence to the contrary. While it's possible that someone's TM teacher, back in the 70s, did unthinkingly tell a TM student something as asinine as "you will be enlightened in 5-8 years," such assertions have never been a formal or implicit element of the TM program. I asked my own TM teacher about it, who now lives in Fairfield, and he just laughed. It was a myth that Maharishi ever laid out a definite timeline—another of many myths that have become reality for some of you. My experience with TM has way more than fulfilled what I was taught on my initial TM course, and everyone I know who followed through and really understood how to meditate effortlessly and naturally, and kept up the practice, has had the same satisfying experience. There are so few of you who feel otherwise, and I seriously doubt that you understand your own experiences. Could it be that misunderstanding is at the basis of your negativity?
Arjuna, For the big lies like Laurie is talkin, you'd have had to come earlier to the picnic. By the time you arrived Mugharishi had already been sued for lyin bout the flyin and all. If you aint heard lies, then you aint been listnin!
Thinking out oud here: Arjuna has something of a point but to suggest that the organization was never deceptive in the least is just LOL ridiculous and I doubt even many current hardcore TMers would sign on to that. The only question is if the deception was intended as a sort of benevolent deception - designed to keep people and a culture who demanded instant gratification working at it until they could accept the idea of a slow evolutionary process - and I sometimes wonder still about that. Obviously MMY believed the means justified the end and if the end really was world enlightenment then maybe he had good reason. He was the Guru and as such he may have believed he was warranted in using exaggerated motivations to keep the 'children' in line. I no longer believe TM was all that but I suppose I'm not so sure that MMY didn't sort of believe it. In my book the bottom line here is how he spoke and behaved privately about it all and what he did with the money.
I started in 73 and I was never 'formally' told about the 5-8 year thing, though I did end up hearing about it informally from the teachers there. I believed it for a while. It was only when I pressed them for a timetable that they mentioned it as a sort of guesstimate, I think the exact phrasing was something like 'MMY has said it should take the average man 5-8 years to get to CC'. I was only 17 at the time. Was this their innocent over-enthusiasm or a policy of deception on the part of the organization? I think MMY knew it was being said and he was happy to let it be said though I have little doubt he knew it was false.
I surely believed I was going to get a state of rest twice as deep as deep sleep and I doubt that seriously ever happened but I did find TM very refreshing in a different way than sleep and wrote the claim off as more of an exaggeration than a lie. There was that Wallace study and it may have seemed to the movement that it was solid enough to make that claim. I did find TM to be effective as a stress reliever in a very big way, though the meditation ended up causing stress in many other ways having to do with my withdrawing from everyday life. I ended up going half-way with TM. I was not willing to stake my life on it and I'm glad I hedged a bit.
I was never told I was going to fly either and I took the sidhis course in 77. We were told that hopping was the 'first stage' of flying and I did come away with an exaggerated idea of what hopping was going to be like. I of course expected that my body weight would drop and that an outside force would lift me up. Instead I discovered the hop required that I jump off the ground, albeit the jump had an involuntary aspect to it, a bit like allowing yourself to cough - you do the coughing but it isn't exactly voluntary either. In retrospect I'm not sure I was ever formally told much of anything about the sidhis because at that time it was still propagated more by the grapevine than by official movement communication. I was glad enough in the end that the hopping turned out to have waked up some Shakti-like energy which to this day I still find very invigorating when I occasionaly do it. I doubt very seriously any sidha has lost one ounce of body weight so I will call the whole flying experiment on the whole a deception but not without some value. How much of that perceived value is placebo or something other techniques could have provided without the trappings and all that are open questions for me. I'm no longer holding my breath! If TM and a few minutes of flying are helping me than great, if not, I have my ordinary life moving now and no way I'm altering it just in case TM turns out to be all that.
part 2:
As teachers in the late seventies we were told to tone down expectations when it came time to apply for the course, perhaps this was after some law suites, or after mmy realized the techniques were less than what he hoped? Not sure about that. I made a point as a TM teacher of telling students that NOBODY was flying or losing body weight, and that the hopping was just interesting and invigorating and that we hoped in time it would turn into levitating. I really tried to be honest about it and some heavy-duty executive governor types looked down on me for being so iffy about it all. in retro I am so very glad I trusted myself on this. It sems to me that there was a lot of leeway depending on what teacher you were talking to.
With all the stuff now about facing east, and Rajas with gold crowns, and paying thousands for a Vedic ceremony in your name, questionable Ayervedic health claims, Vedic astrology and all that I would never last a second as a spokesman for TM though I do still think the basic technique is good. That they promote all that other stuff has greatky reduced my sense of trust in MMY and the organization as a whole and even in the basic claims for TM.
Like everyone, I used to hear (from TM-center people), or read in the TM literature, the various vaunted claims and innuendos about benefits, enlightenment, etc. Some things were conveyed by implication, not by direct assertion - so it might be difficult to label some of these things "lies". Overall, my own observations (as a 'rank-and-file' street-level TM practitioner, not as a teacher or TMO official) evoked my skepticism.
However, I used to cut MMY some slack, because a) I figured he was doing his best, and everyine makes some mistakes of judgment now and again, and b) I had heard about the pervasive East-Indian "penchant for hyperbole of expression" in spiritual matters (i.e., it's a cultural thing). So I used to tend to see MMY as mistaken, rather than dishonest.
Okay, so why would I give MMY the benefit of the doubt for well over fifteen years? Sometimes I've answered this question by believing that I'm, personally, a softy and perhaps a bit of a pushover. But another ingredient, for me, was that I had not fully invested myself in the TMO by going to all the presentations, watching all the org videos, taking all the various courses, paying the big bucks, moving to Fairfield (or some other such TM place), etc. I began to see the TMO as "full of sh--" after six or eight years of regular meditation, but I still felt some benefit from doing daily TM. So I just gradually began to ignore the TMO more and more.
On the other hand, when after many years even 2x20 daily TM started to present real problems (ill effects) in my daily life, I wanted to reduce the time for each sitting. I went to the nearest TM center, got "checked" (my process was confirmed as correct), and then told the people at the center that I was having troubles in daily life and intended to cut back my sittings to 10-15 minuets each. I was firmly advised not to... that this was not recommended. This was <span>bad</span> advice, and I knew it. It was one more piece of evidence that, in regardto any TM matter, the people in the centers did not think for themselves at all!
And of course this could easily be construed as an atmosphere and culture of deception and self-deception.
Like everyone, I used to hear (from TM-center people), or read in the TM literature, the various vaunted claims and innuendos about benefits, enlightenment, etc. Some things were conveyed by implication, not by direct assertion - so it might be difficult to label some of these things "lies". Overall, my own observations (as a 'rank-and-file' street-level TM practitioner, not as a teacher or TMO official) evoked my skepticism.
However, I used to cut MMY some slack, because a) I figured he was doing his best, and everyine makes some mistakes of judgment now and again, and b) I had heard about the pervasive East-Indian "penchant for hyperbole of expression" in spiritual matters (i.e., it's a cultural thing). So I used to tend to see MMY as mistaken, rather than dishonest.
Okay, so why would I give MMY the benefit of the doubt for well over fifteen years? Sometimes I've answered this question by believing that I'm, personally, a softy and perhaps a bit of a pushover. But another ingredient, for me, was that I had not fully invested myself in the TMO by going to all the presentations, watching all the org videos, taking all the various courses, paying the big bucks, moving to Fairfield (or some other such TM place), etc. I began to see the TMO as "full of sh--" after six or eight years of regular meditation, but I still felt some benefit from doing daily TM. So I just gradually began to ignore the TMO more and more.
On the other hand, when after many years even 2x20 daily TM started to present real problems (ill effects) in my daily life, I wanted to reduce the time for each sitting. I went to the nearest TM center, got "checked" (my process was confirmed as correct), and then told the people at the center that I was having troubles in daily life and intended to cut back my sittings to 10-15 minuets each. I was firmly advised not to... that this was not recommended. This was <span>bad</span> advice, and I knew it. It was one more piece of evidence that, in regardto any TM matter, the people in the centers did not think for themselves at all!
And of course this could easily be construed as an atmosphere and culture of deception and self-deception.
Like everyone, I used to hear (from TM-center people), or read in the TM literature, the various vaunted claims and innuendos about benefits, enlightenment, etc. Some things were conveyed by implication, not by direct assertion - so it might be difficult to label some of these things "lies". Overall, my own observations (as a 'rank-and-file' street-level TM practitioner, not as a teacher or TMO official) evoked my skepticism.
However, I used to cut MMY some slack, because a) I figured he was doing his best, and everyine makes some mistakes of judgment now and again, and b) I had heard about the pervasive East-Indian "penchant for hyperbole of expression" in spiritual matters (i.e., it's a cultural thing). So I used to tend to see MMY as mistaken, rather than dishonest.
Okay, so why would I give MMY the benefit of the doubt for well over fifteen years? Sometimes I've answered this question by believing that I'm, personally, a softy and perhaps a bit of a pushover. But another ingredient, for me, was that I had not fully invested myself in the TMO by going to all the presentations, watching all the org videos, taking all the various courses, paying the big bucks, moving to Fairfield (or some other such TM place), etc. I began to see the TMO as "full of sh--" after six or eight years of regular meditation, but I still felt some benefit from doing daily TM. So I just gradually began to ignore the TMO more and more.
On the other hand, when after many years even 2x20 daily TM started to present real problems (ill effects) in my daily life, I wanted to reduce the time for each sitting. I went to the nearest TM center, got "checked" (my process was confirmed as correct), and then told the people at the center that I was having troubles in daily life and intended to cut back my sittings to 10-15 minuets each. I was firmly advised not to... that this was not recommended. This was <span>bad</span> advice, and I knew it. It was one more piece of evidence that, in regardto any TM matter, the people in the centers did not think for themselves at all!
And of course this could easily be construed as an atmosphere and culture of deception and self-deception.
Excellent post as always, Laurie.
I was initiated in 1969 and was certainly told by MMY to expect enlightenment within 5-8 years of regular TM practise. And I remember the other promises described, as well, eg, perfect health, support of nature, world peace, although I bailed before the TM Sidhi program got off the ground.
Arjuna, you are seriously kidding yourself but don't worry we all did that.
It was standard practise to tell people they would be enlightened in 7 years and I know many who were told just that. I was told it depended on the accumulated stress in my nervous system if not in this life the previous ones too!
There are also accidental lies due to true believerism. Things like the maharishi effect and perfect health or just that TM is superior to other forms of meditation and that vedic science represents the pinnacle of human knowledge.
But then the TM teachers probably believed people would get enlightened quickly in the early years so maybe that isn't strictly speaking a lie......Would depend on whwne they realised that no-one was getting what was advertised.
Come on laurie, your initiator promised these things? How about writing an essay entitled "In 1971 I was very gullible!"? We all were, nothing to be ashamed about, we wanted good news and many organizations merely had to hint at our wishes. Yeah, some of TM was and maybe is suspect, list would go here, but the tone of your essay is way over the top. I did not hear anyone promise anything. In fact, it was very sad that nothing exact was put forth, nothing. Even the practice, whether one was doing it right or not was lacking, since anything that happens is ok. And, yes even the TM-Siddhis were hedged, no exact claims, just subterfuge like the people bouncing and the electrodes not attached ..... Yeah, some over zealous teachers made conjectures, so? If that bothers you, don't join a church cause they have been promising things for over 2000 years.
Laurie has not exaggerated at all. There are plenty of old-time ex-TM initiators here. Could someone dig out their introductory lecture notes?
too appropriate!
g :)
Oh I see, The Watcher wrote: "<span>It was standard practise to tell people they would be enlightened in 7 years .... I was told it depended on the accumulated stress in my nervous system if not in this life the previous ones too! " Isn't that a qualification? Standard practice in any endevor. Ever see the new commercials for the weight lost schemes? Visit a place of worship lately?</span>
I don't know, I think something is going on with older people lately. Like the Teabaggers, as if plain ole common sense and wisdom departed from the boomer generation. Probably some food additive they've been ingesting since the 50s. :)
Yes, qualification. When 7 years passed, and folks still not enlightened. MMY said that westerners had more stress than he had anticipated, so it might take longer than 7 years dependent upon the individual's accumulated stress. Soooo, to help accelerate the process, he added more and more advanced technique$, residence course$, special program$.
Peter Wallace, brother of Keith Wallace and a long-time meditator, has had a stroke. There is a thread about this at the yahoo group 'fairfield life' http://www.mail-archive.com/fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com/msg191286.html. Not sure about his condition but it sounds very serious. Peter goes way back to India days and I believe it was he who got his brother Keith involved.
For some reason the thread about him turns into a discussion about the three to five or five to eight year 'promise' and some very interesting points are made. It sort of sounds like Jerry Jarvis (the "Maharishi of the west" LOL) may have been the original source of this and that he based this estimate on his own experience and not anything said by M. It has also been said that M when asked about it denied it and said that the length of time was variable depending on karma and other factors or that maybe he said it would take that long to go through all of the advanced techniques and this had been misunderstood to mean how long it would take to get to CC.
Teachers may well have oft repeated this and it was at least for a while sort of an unofficial estimate but I don't think that M or the movement ever made it official. There is supposedly a pamphlet that was distributed in California from SIMS that said something about 'cosmic in five years!' but it sounds like a one-time thing if it existed at all.
There was so much optimism and\or self-delusion (depending on your point of view) on the part of teachers and meditators that things like this got picked up and pounced on and it is hard to say where the line is drawn between this and what was official or from M. but IMO M is off the hook on this one as I never ever heard it on any tape or saw it in anything such as the suggestions for into lectures on in the three days checking. I suppose he gets some blame for allowing things like this to propagate, if he was aware it was so widely repeated.
I am not suggesting he is without blame on this issue of deception in general, just trying to be clear on this one point.
BTW If anyone wants to go through all the tapes there is a massive 12 gig archive of M's tapes on usenet.
Gina:
And the point is? Again, this is perfectly reasonable. I'm sure the Self-Realization Fellowship has made course corrections also (I'm guessing here, subsistute any org). And, when people don't lose the lard on some program they add on more techniques, diets, and menus. To help we hope, but the cynic in us will of course say its just to make money and channal money elsewhere. All perfectly understandable if not justifiable. Again, it comes to people not being self-delusional and aware of their own cultic potentialities, which we all have at a certain point in our maturation.
-- jb
Exactly!
My TM Teacher (he himself is only a freeloader) invented the "Maharishi Tollerance Factor" (MTF) to cover the enlightment lie of "Maharishi" Mahesh "Yogi". He claimed, that Mahesh was so enlightened that the normal people would take far longer than Mahesh had assumed. So he told you need MTF * 5 years to enlightment.
You can use any value for this variable you like. By using this trick, Mahesh and also Günther Frass were of course not lying...
Excellent stor, Paul. The TM organization was so full of these factors it is a wonder that any truths got told. A few did. I cannot claim that the organization was a total pack of lies. I think Chuck put it well: <span>Arjuna, For the big lies like Laurie is talkin, you'd have had to come earlier to the picnic. By the time you arrived Mugharishi had already been sued for lyin bout the flyin and all. If you aint heard lies, then you aint been listnin!</span>
Very few were listening to their own experience. This is a critical factor in just about any human endevor and surely a key factor in achieving human excellence (which seems more an accident than an actual undertaking). I have no misgivings that surely some people benefitted from TM. Just that. The organization appears largely to have simply levied a stupid tax promoting all its programs which seem completely incompatible with logic, reason, good sense and ethical standards, however.
The Maharishi was no fool. He had to have understood very early in his teaching career that what he was teaching was one thing and what he was claiming was something completely different and unrelated to what was happening. That he encouraged or tolerated the hype that promoted his method does not speak at all well to his honesty, sincerity or spiritual grasp of reality. At the TM centre where I learned TM, over the years as I watched, those who just did the 2x20 routine and otherwise kept all else at arm's length did far better in terms of happiness and productive living than those who bought into all the hype and gotta-haves the organization was selling. Not science, but perhaps worthy of some further observation
Excellent stor, Paul. The TM organization was so full of these factors it is a wonder that any truths got told. A few did. I cannot claim that the organization was a total pack of lies. I think Chuck put it well: <span>Arjuna, For the big lies like Laurie is talkin, you'd have had to come earlier to the picnic. By the time you arrived Mugharishi had already been sued for lyin bout the flyin and all. If you aint heard lies, then you aint been listnin!</span>
Very few were listening to their own experience. This is a critical factor in just about any human endevor and surely a key factor in achieving human excellence (which seems more an accident than an actual undertaking). I have no misgivings that surely some people benefitted from TM. Just that. The organization appears largely to have simply levied a stupid tax promoting all its programs which seem completely incompatible with logic, reason, good sense and ethical standards, however.
The Maharishi was no fool. He had to have understood very early in his teaching career that what he was teaching was one thing and what he was claiming was something completely different and unrelated to what was happening. That he encouraged or tolerated the hype that promoted his method does not speak at all well to his honesty, sincerity or spiritual grasp of reality. At the TM centre where I learned TM, over the years as I watched, those who just did the 2x20 routine and otherwise kept all else at arm's length did far better in terms of happiness and productive living than those who bought into all the hype and gotta-haves the organization was selling. Not science, but perhaps worthy of some further observation
I don't think it was a deliberate lie. I definitely remember MMY telling us at Humboldt that our lives would proceed with the support of nature, that things would become effortless, etc. I am racking my brains to recall whether he put a definite date on which to expect CC. But it was part of the canon, because we were all drunk on hope and mass self-deception. What we should have done was to seek out the acquaintance of the TM followers from the 1950s and question them hard about their experience. But it wouldn't have been easy. There was such an atmosphere of positivity and optimism around that hard scrutiny would have been very much derided. By Majorca of course, things had changed. All the men had reluctantly cut their hair and the fun of the month-long US summer courses, with nude co-ed skinnydipping was replaced with something very dfferent; a top-down hierarchy, people jockeying to get close to MMY, and a serious expectation for all to conform and toe the party line.
I like your very calm and equanamous perspective, Deborah. If I ever heard the Maharishi say, exactly, that CC would arrive in 3 to 5 years, I cannot remember. But I clearly and unquestionably remember that this was pretty much the TRUTH that we knew in that way True Believers know their particular truths.
Still, TM isn't anything what the Maharishi claimed. If it were, then all the doo-doo the TM organization peddles wouldn't be necessary, wouldn't be a necessary cover-up.
Some of the deceptions were really omissions. I have attended "advanced lectures" where the TM staff would praising the tm-sidhis w/o explaining how the $5,000 were spent or why they were so expen$ive. A couple of times (at least) I was advised to use a credit card to pay for them ! Was that a real solution? What an ingenious idea.
Ingenious idea? more like desperation to get money. I may have a warped view, but as I watched the TM center and its people "progress" it looked to me like the object was not so much to spread TM because it would do good, but rather, and much more importantly, to get more and more initiations, more and more money. I wasn't around in the earliest days of TM. I got involved at just about the time things were changing from TM 2x20 to TM + sidhis + supplements + courses + well, + more-and-more. As I said above, the Maharishi wasn't stupid. He could see that TM was not doing as he claimed and, obviously, he couldn't fix that, although, I think it might have been fixable. So, he started selling more-and-more distractions so people wouldn't have time to notice that all they were gaining was a MINUS in their credit ratings.
Laurie, you are truly onto something taking note of the Maharishi's substitution of outright lies and clever omissions and turning a blind eye when people started rumors he could happily live with. Please keep up the good work.
Ingenious idea? more like desperation to get money. I may have a warped view, but as I watched the TM center and its people "progress" it looked to me like the object was not so much to spread TM because it would do good, but rather, and much more importantly, to get more and more initiations, more and more money. I wasn't around in the earliest days of TM. I got involved at just about the time things were changing from TM 2x20 to TM + sidhis + supplements + courses + well, + more-and-more. As I said above, the Maharishi wasn't stupid. He could see that TM was not doing as he claimed and, obviously, he couldn't fix that, although, I think it might have been fixable. So, he started selling more-and-more distractions so people wouldn't have time to notice that all they were gaining was a MINUS in their credit ratings.
Laurie, you are truly onto something taking note of the Maharishi's substitution of outright lies and clever omissions and turning a blind eye when people started rumors he could happily live with. Please keep up the good work.
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