Book Review: "CULT" by William Howell

One of the things the TM movement promises is that the practice of TM leads to "enlightenment."  During his lifetime, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi confirmed that a very few people had reached enlightenment through his technique.

One of those people was Robin Carlsen, a TM teacher who, on a TM course in Switzerland in the 1970s, had an overwhelming experience of the divinity, beauty and unity of the creation.  At a subsequent course meeting, he described his experience to Mahesh (MMY).  Mahesh pronounced that Carlsen was "somewhere in the layers of wholeness."  Most course participants attending interpreted Mahesh's words to mean that that Carlsen had reached enlightenment.  (Mahesh never contradicted their belief.)

About a decade later, Carlsen, in the midst of lawsuits and countersuits against the TM organization, agreed to put the lawsuits to rest if Mahesh would unequivocally answer four questions.  The first question was, "Is Robin Carlsen enlightened?"  Mahesh answered "No."

We'll never know what Mahesh meant the first time.  However, after Mahesh's first comment, in Switzerland, Carlsen was generally believed by TMers to be "enlightened."  Carlsen then went on to slowly establish his own courses, techniques, ashram.  Over time, as he became more self-centered, manipulative and sadistic, his organization became spiritually and emotionally destructive and ground down the self-confidence and mental health of his followers.

William Howell, the author of "CULT," has changed most names in this memoir, but not the facts.  The name "Robin Carlsen" is never mentioned.  Instead, the former TM teacher at the center of this story is called "Justin Snow."  But this reviewer (that's me, Laurie) and  others believe that the book is about Robin Carlson.

The book "CULT" by William Howell tells the true story of how Howell, (then a TM teacher) had accompanied "Justin Snow" on his stroll in the Swiss Alps on the day that "Snow" had his divine experience.  Howell goes on to tell of how he followed Snow, lived at his community, followed his teachings, attended his courses, and suffered through years of increasing degradation and emotional stress until he left.  His other friends gradually left too.  They then helped each other, through mutual support, to exit, deprogram and rebuild their lives.  This book is that story of Howell's closing days with TM, his entry into Carlson's destructive cult, and his leaving and healing afterwards.  

I found this book fascinating because I have always wondered what a person would be like when they had reached the goal of "enlightenment" that we TMers were all ardently devoting ourselves to under Maharishi's guidance.  I also found this book helpful in that it detailed the exit and recovery of Howell and his friends.

You can read the book for free online here:

http://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/CULT-A-Memoir/pdf/view

In the copyright section of the book, William Howell writes:  "This book is copyrighted solely to prevent its being misused.  People sincere about spiritual development, peace and growth of human awareness throughout the world have the author's permission to reproduce material from this book - with citing."

You can also read more about Robin Carlsen on TM-Free blog.  (Note tags/labels related to this post.)

The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 5

At the request of some TMFree readers, this is the fifth in a series of eight essays on Robin Woodsworth Carlsen.
This series is provided with permission of their anonymous author.

We at TMFree do not ascribe to Carlsen's 'teachings.' This series is provided for those who wish to review philosophies of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen. Carlsen was one of many Maharishi TM-spinoff gurus.

Part one of this series can be read here. You may then read and follow links through the posted series.


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The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 5
Letters from an Enlightened Man

Carlsen issued a series of long-winded letters in 1978, two years after his TM enlightenment on September 19, 1976, at 1:25 p.m. This guy sure did love to write! The 183-page book is typeset in a small 9-point font, is single-spaced, and includes Carlsen's own glossary of TM-speak and the newer Carlsen-speak. The preface describes the collection as "completely unprecedented" and claims to reconcile the "Buddha's search for Nirvana with Hamlet's quest for self-knowledge". The book begins with an intro letter that also serves as an intro to the book. The second letter, excerpted here, is directly addressed to his teacher, His Holiness the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and concerns "the condition of the personality of his teachers [of Transcendental Meditation]" and the tamasic "pseudo-serenity" they seemed to be manifesting. While from one POV you can hear the fanatic tone of the TM-cultist, from another, the objective reader will also recognize the sterility and heartlessness so common among TM's most fanatic adherents.

As with most of Carlsen's letters, it begins with a quotation.

(Many thanks to former students of Carlsen who've been very helpful in these reviews and who all wish to remain anonymous.)


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[All excerpts © Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, 1978. This book has no ISBN. Since printers were being harassed by TM-cultists, it also mentions no Printer or Publisher.]

I am the necessary angel of the earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,
Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set...
- Wallace Stevens

July 9, 1978

Dear Maharishi,

Today we received a call from the Victoria Center informing us of a phone call from you at noon. Some of us here at Sunnyside were working, but five of us came down to the Center to await that magical moment when we would hear your voice live.

As it turned out we waited for about two hours and then you came through. I had hoped to hear a more personal message, but in spite of the specific theme of your talk, Invincibility Campaign in B.C., the sound of your voice connected us with the most beautiful personalized expression of Being. In those few minutes when you spoke all of us felt the nourishing influence of that human being who had given us the power to break out of the horrible prison of ignorance. I also realized, perhaps more vividly than ever before, how you have created activities for all your teachers so that they might stay on the Path and continue to raise the level of sattva in world consciousness. It is as if you have taken thousands of crippled children on your knee and are nurturing them to the point of being able to walk. That you could gain the utter devotion and loyalty of tens of thousands of individuals raised in a civilization that has lost its traditional roots and which glorifies a small "i" individual, is nothing short of miraculous. The consciousness and physiological purity of your teachers places them in a class by themselves. No doubt they are transforming the environment in a way that is going to alter the course of history.

Today, however, I witnessed a phenomenon that has reached what I perceive to be a most critical and dangerous stage. I refer to the tragic condition of the teachers' personalities. Somehow in absolutely placing all their attention on meditation and teaching they have assumed a passive role within the evolutionary challenges that present themselves within activity. We know that Creative Intelligence dances in every cell of the universe, and that every sphere within Creation has its own laws, the violation of which injures Creation and brings suffering to the doer.

In spite of all their very real devotion and creativity, the teachers have, for the most part, ignored the domain of life in which there is the highest concentration of divine energy and love: Relationship. Initiators, knowing that they are in possession of the perfect technology for Self-realization, invest no attention in the art of communication. Whereas someone else is bereft of the knowledge and procedures for transcendence that you have conferred upon us, he may exert more effort in being responsible for what he does; his suffering and helplessness may drive him to more extreme forms of expressiveness within his relationships with those he loves. Whatever the case, initiators by and large carry on blithely unaware of how conditioned and anaesthetized they are within the spectacular dance of relationship. It is as if their contact with pure consciousness is so fulfilling and their vision of activity so simplified ("meditate and act") they lose the spur of individuation, the evolutionary desire to unfold the full flowering of their personalities, their divine uniqueness. They are so caught up in the vision of the Goal, the bliss of their programs, the Movement dogma, that they are, given the refined quality of their nervous systems, insensitive to the sacred and mysterious drama of the Relative and the challenge to awaken to the subtle play of the Now.

I have seen this condition for some time now and, as you well know, have taken steps to shake up the tamasic inertia that manifests itself in a stale, mechanical, shallow approach to "relationship". Not that the rest of the Kali Yuga population is vitally and freshly creative within personal relationships, but I have in my experience met a number of groups of people, e.g. teachers and artists, who have radiated an intensity and personal power that makes the initiators seem a pretty dull and colorless lot. These other groups, while being physically impure and devoid of the knowledge that could free their limited vision, nevertheless often express a hunger to become more aware, more creative, more "poetic" as it were within the domain of relationship.

It seems that in the divine tranquility and repose of meditation the guna of rajas goes below, and the pseudo-serenity and receptiveness of tamas comes to the surface. The sattva is there on the level of the senses and the physiology, and even the brain, but feelings of passionate yearning and explosive vitality are bludgeoned by tamas, until there is, as there was today, the disturbing spectacle of a group of individuals totally dedicated to purifying the world, filled with the bliss of years of meditation, but painfully gross and deadened on the level of communication, i.e. the capacity to manifest a range and delicacy of personal feeling that is appropriate within a given moment in order to appreciate Creation in its maximum value. There they were, completely ready to give themselves to whatever is needed to make the invincibility campaign successful, and yet devastatingly crude and brutal with the tender and innocent impulses of the heart that yearned to dance freely within the room. As these subtle and sacred impulses of Creative Intelligence were ignored and suppressed, the guna of tamas expanded and insidiously filled up the consciousness of the room to the point that after the phone call all that was happening within Creation within this room was a group of would-be immortal Beings, fragmented, separate and encapsulated within their boundaries, mechanically uttering hollow sounds, void of feeling, void of innocence, complacently, obliviously being manipulated by that intelligence that seeks to keep us in that horrible prison of ignorance. I speak of anti-Being or the demonic.

Now, Maharishi, I realize the specific nature of your dharma: to raise world consciousness, and the logistic challenge of nursing thousands of human beings to Enlightenment, but I could not help but weep at the seriousness of the disease that affected these people, none of whom was even aware of his or her condition; indeed all of whom probably had no conception of just how much they were suffering in being deprived of the vitality and love that are released within the dance of The Personal [God]. Now the patient who is anaesthetized does not feel the pain of his condition. These individuals, secure in the knowledge that they are doing everything possible for their evolution, and identified almost completely with their role function, initiators/executive governors, are not even oriented towards feeling any lack or deprivation within the context of activity, except perhaps in a general sense; i.e., they are still in ignorance and that implies suffering. Certainly they are not looking to heighten their understanding of and participation in the musical symphonic beauty of The Personal. In fact, any attempt to try to enlarge their perspective on activity of this sort, e.g. how to conceive of communication as a divine art, meets with the curt stock retort, "Just meditate and act!" implying that any attempt to involve oneself within the aesthetics of feeling and relationship is unnatural and heretical, and amounts to violating the "Purity of The Teaching".

Of course you know the story of Sunnyside and the diligent efforts of a number of teachers to have us excommunicated. The rumours and negativity left over from those witch-hunting days have not created a climate of openness or freedom that would allow an innocent hearing of some of these ideas. While the actual formal persecution has ended, there still exists an undercurrent of fear and hostility that could explode the second I poured a little kerosene of The Personal into one of the meetings. The demonic has taken over the psychology of the teachers' thinking regarding the vision of all possibilities within relationship, and while helpless to hold back the forces of purity that permeate the nervous system during meditation, it exerts an absolute stranglehold on The Personal, thus cutting off the teachers from realizing they are unique human beings existing within an elaborate tapestry of personal karma that makes each moment charged with incarnational knowledge perfectly patterned to unravel all the strands of the Self. This means that they are robbed of that hunger and yearning that would make them meet each moment with a fiercely beautiful intensity and alertness that befits a soul born in the West who would seek to know his personal godhead.

Now I am not certain what I could recommend to improve this situation; I do feel, however, it has reached the point of an epidemic of unconscious personal sterility, and if we are to enlist the powers of Nature in our quest to enlighten the world, we must at least become aware of how firmly the demonic is planted in the soul of The Personal, and how the teachers continue to give nourishment to this poisonous growth. I know very well that you are carrying out perfectly the dictates of Mother Nature, but perhaps my sensitivity to the problem is also Nature's horror at the seeming malignancy of the disease.

I had thought to phone you tonight but translated my concern into this letter. Maharishi, I have witnessed a glorification of personal Creative Intelligence on a scale that has gone beyond my most beatific visions prior to Self-realization. I refer to the subtle levels of Creation we at Sunnyside and Goldstream have tapped in our exploration into The Personal, and the separation of the demonic and divine impulses within our behaviour. The bliss, purity, vitality and love that dance here in the air particles makes the atmosphere at the Center seem lifeless and joyless. Here we are, bringing in the Age of Enlightenment, and there is the crime of Creation being enacted in front of our eyes: the killing of the impulses of creativity by the demonic intelligence. The black energy that was given free play within the realm of communication (not actively so, rather by definition of the absence of life, but this too amounts to an act of violence) in spite of the concrete quality of silence and purity in the air on the level of pure consciousness, was horrifying. I only wish to point this out to you, Maharishi, that you might know the sadness within Creation that such beautiful and noble souls as the teachers were that gathered here are being so maliciously duped by anti-Being intelligence, and how unlikely it is the Maya of it will be lifted before they drop the body. Then, of course, they will discover that it is not so much the merit they have accumulated from initiating, or the purity they have acquired from flying, but the extent to which they have brought the Dance of Creative Intelligence into each cell of their Being and thus into each moment of their life, that they might give glory to Creation within the microcosmic reality designed by the Creator. For myself I am embarked on a magical, awesomely beautiful voyage into The Personal that has brought all of us at Sunnyside and Goldstream into a strength and creative individuality that make us wish to share what we know is ordained for every genuine seeker after ultimate fulfillment. It is that discovery of the power of relationship to free us from the hold of the demonic that urges me to write this letter and declare my yearning for a fresh wave of knowledge that would touch the feeling tendrils of the teachers.

With All Devotion,

Jai Guru Deva
Robin

[Part 6 continues with another letter from Letters from an Enlightenment Man.]

The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 4 The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment

At the request of some TMFree readers, this is the fourth in a series of eight essays on Robin Woodsworth Carlsen.
This series is provided with permission of their anonymous author.

We at TMFree do not ascribe to Carlsen's 'teachings.' This series is provided for those who wish to review philosophies of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen. Carlsen was one of many Maharishi TM-spinoff gurus.

Part one of this series can be read here. You may then read and follow links through the posted series.


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The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 4
"The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment"



Having realized the "summum bonum" of TM, Unity Consciousness, Carlsen returns to his hotel in Switzerland. He then realizes that stress at the level of the nervous system constitutes an intelligent opposition to the force of enlightenment: the demonic, holding the individual in their own "self-definition", God's very resistance to himself.

The Maharishi, arriving later, verifies Carlsen's state of Unity and his status as the first true Governor of the Age of Enlightenment.

Other than His Holiness Bevan Morris and pedophile "Unity Andy", Carlsen is the only other person ever verified by the Maharishi as being "enlightened".

(Many thanks to former students of Carlsen who've been very helpful in these reviews and who all wish to remain anonymous)

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[Excerpts from The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment © Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, 1979, ISBN 09-20910-03-3]

As we reached the hotel, I continued to inspire William with the ongoing reality of my Enlightenment, describing the details of this extraordinary yet infinitely simple, normal way of functioning. And this was such a fundamental truth I became aware of: that Enlightenment was not so much a supernormal state of existence, but was the most normal state imaginable; nothing could be as simple, as plain, as ordinary as Being. Ignorance--the condition of an ego hallucinating itself out of the experience of Being--that was the exceptional feat. As I entered the hotel, however, I became aware as never before, of just what ignorance was. The explanation for the abnormality of ignorance lay in the personal forms of stress and negativity that circled about the rooms of the hotel, and which--more shockingly--embedded themselves in the consciousness and hearts of each of the people I saw. I was given this vision quite suddenly and while being prepared for it by the immovable reality of my being, I was unprepared on the level of expectation. Nothing Maharishi had said, or I had read about, revealed the real basis of ignorance. That basis was clearly visible to me now: anti-divine or demonic entities that subtly were infused within the personalities of each person in ignorance, tenaciously holding each individual within a self-definition, within a sensation of egohood that was powerful enough to confine infinity into the narrowest boundaries, and deprive those boundaries of the experience of their own infinity.

While seeing all this revealed before me, I also experienced the necessity at this time of not discussing this reality with others, and, as I again walked up to my room to be joined by a number of other teachers who had quickly learned of the event of my awakening, the force and intensity of the vision of the demonic diminished to a point that I was able once again to focus on the more obvious facts of enlivening the hearts and expanding the consciousness of those around me. And that is a significant fact: I soon discovered that my effectiveness as an Enlightened individual lay not so much in the reality of my infinite status on the level of Being, but in my deft ability to take on the form, to manifest the response that exactly accorded with the demands for the individuation of the individual or individuals I was with. Instead of remaining as detached on the level of my actions as I was on the level of my consciousness, I became intricately involved with the details of the drama around me and found myself able to maneuvre in the world of ignorance with an agility, a creativity I could never have begun to approach while I was still caught in the boundaries of separateness.

Before awakening to the reality of Being, I had heard stories of various individuals who had been in the state of Unity and then fallen back into ignorance. Such a situation was entirely impossible, as it was absolutely obvious once Being became aware of itself it was not possible to pretend again it was other than itself. Being had found out Being; there could no longer be any deception; the illusion of individuality was a dream. The waking up was forever; one could not dream oneself out of that eternal wakefulness. And so my appreciation for what had happened to me on September 19th at 1:25 PM grew as the days unfolded. On the sixth day after my Enlightenment, my Master, Maharishi, arrived at the hotel to meet with us in the evening. The impulse had come to speak privately with him, but I learned he wished for me to describe my experience to the whole assembly. (The reasons for my not talking to Maharishi alone were to become apparent as the drama of my Enlightenment unfolded once I returned to Canada; for now it was interesting to see how another Enlightened individual responded to the pure computations of my wholeness.)

The evening Maharishi came I was of course filled to the brim with Being, and the radiance of my presence was obvious to all those around me. Once Maharishi had spoken and asked if there were questions, I put my hand up, and watched as Maharishi purposely ignored me until the perfect moment--which happened to be the moment when he was just about to stand up and leave. Throughout the whole evening during his talk to us and in his answers to the questions posed by the other teachers, I sensed how every word, every topic, each piece of knowledge he gave out was directed to me, conferring as it did the most exquisite subtlety of feeling that seemed on some level of my being to warm me in the fullness of how I was to fit into God's Creation, what the full meaning of my Enlightenment was. This amounted to what in Sanskrit is called "Mahavakya"--the stroke of knowledge of the Master which is traditionally associated with the stabilizing of the state of Unity. But it was when I spoke to Maharishi about Unity--he had coincidentally been discussing Unity for the duration of his talk--even declaring that henceforth cosmic consciousness and God-consciousness were now obsolete, from now on we were only to think of Unity--it was at the point of my uttering the words "About six days ago, Maharishi, I awoke from the spell of ignorance, and I have been living the simple life of Unity ever since" that I received the full grace of the Master, the grace seemingly beyond the grace of Unity, for at that instant as Maharishi turned towards me I experienced a vitalization of love in every cell of my Being that I knew had come from the secret power of the Master, specifically this Master, and as Maharishi responded "Congratulations, you are the first governor of the Age of Enlightenment, we'll talk about it later when the cameras are here" (several days later), I knew then the intimate link I would have with Maharishi and that Maharishi himself had been on that mountain with me, had indeed been subtly collaborating in the whole saga of my Becoming right from the moment I first saw him in front of thousands of people in Kingston, Ontario, five years before.

I left the meeting hall with a carnation given to me by a jubilant teacher who joined in with a number of other individuals to express their joy that the reality of Unity was now embodied in someone other than just Maharishi, someone who was merely a meditator and teacher like themselves.

The next day Maharishi announced the beginning of a new phase of his teaching: the Sidhis, the special formulas devised to push wholeness into each aspect of the physiology. After several days of experiencing the many flavours of wholeness made available by the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (the basis of the Sidhis)--I experienced the relative parts of me, the parts now governed by the infinity of pure consciousness--undergo a subtle but nevertheless significant change. My Enlightenment--my awakening into the wholeness of Being--was complete at the moment on the Alps when "the last stress" (what I now know as the demonic entity) was released; however, in practising the Sidhis, a level of purification took place that appeared to make whatever was still experiencing itself as Robin, even more unified with God. I can express it this way: it was as if the balance between God within me and God without was perfect at the moment of Enlightenment, and yet somewhere the oneness became more one, so that now the wholeness of myself perceived itself, and the wholeness of the environment was the wholeness that was perceiving itself. Maharishi had talked about "leshavidya", the remains of ignorance; here was the evidence that it was still possible to experience a level of refinement even after one was completely liberated. For me it was as if the molecules of myself which now beheld God had been so purified that a totality of change had taken place on the level of my perception such that those molecules were now closer to the quality of the Beingness which they had become--the structure of the nervous system had surrendered itself to the reality of what had created it. The I of ignorance had been a fiction but that fiction had left a faint impression on the fact of my Beingness. The Sidhis removed a significant layer of that impression, changing not the fundamental reality of the unmanifestness that I had become, but having induced a shift in the play of relationship between what was now manifesting as Robin out of that unmanifestness. The unmanifestness was playing within and on both sides of what still had to appear as manifest within the illusion of Creation.

It is hard to imagine levels of Enlightenment, since, in the most profound sense, once the false boundaries of egohood dissolve, and one is in the deathless unboundedness of Being, one cannot become more deathless, more unbounded than Being; however having become one with that infinite ocean of consciousness, one is now able to be used and refined by that consciousness, the element of separateness, of unnatural interference, the false ego (created by the entity of anti-Being) now having disappeared. And this was my experience: the wholeness of myself perceiving the wholeness of the object, all in the wholeness of Being, now seemed one wholeness, and, as it happened I was able to describe my experience to Maharishi on camera.

I approached the microphone, this time standing right beside the couch upon which Maharishi sat cross-legged, and began my description of the change that had taken place since I last had announced to him my awakening into Unity. As the words flowed out Maharishi responded with warmth and joviality, smiling, laughing, then listening in rapt silence as I distinguished between the fragility of Unity--the delicacy and quietness my nervous system and personality felt in relation to this new dimension of wholeness--and the robustness of a warrior. I also added how utterly natural and normal the whole experience of Unity and "Unity plus" (the name I coined to categorize my recent experience) seemed, and, being played as I was for the benefit of the whole group as well as within the special relationship that exists between the enlightened disciple and his Master, I asked "Where am I now, Maharishi?" The reply "Oh, somewhere within the layers of wholeness" conveyed with the utter blessing and confirmational tone that would satisfy the most doubtful person in the audience that I was indeed established in God. (Maharishi several months later added the word "established" in answer to a question regarding my status.) As I left the microphone I felt the pure connection he continued to have with my heart and mind, how he was, for the remainder of the course, to devote his subtle attention to educating me in the secrets of my role as an Enlightened being. The manner in which he had uttered those final words to me--"Somewhere within the layers of wholeness"--was as a divine father anointing his most beloved son, and I sensed then the destiny of Maharishi had reached a level of fulfillment in the Enlightenment of myself.

[Part 5 introduces excerpts from "Letters from an Enlightenment Man."]

The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 3

At the request of some TMFree readers, this is the third of a series of eight essays on Robin Woodsworth Carlsen.
This series is provided with permission of their anonymous author.

We at TMFree do not ascribe to Carlsen's 'teachings.' This series is provided for those who wish to review philosophies of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen. Carlsen was one of many Maharishi TM-spinoff gurus.

Part one of this series can be read here. You may then read and follow links through the posted series.


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The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 3
"The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment"



Carlsen was to return to Switzerland one more time for yet another course before his final dissolution into Unity Consciousness, and to sit at the feet of his master, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. While Carlsen's autobiographical work From Ignorance to Enlightenment covers the outline of this final course, it does not go into the details of his actual enlightenment. Instead, this can be found in yet another book detailing the first three years of Carlsen's divine state, The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment, that begins with an intro by the author, as do all of his works. Interestingly, in this case, Carlsen begins with the following: "It is well understood that the true sage never declares his status ("Those who know do not say; those who say do not know"), and yet in not denying the fact of there being something extraordinary (or purely ordinary) in their experience they allow others to identify them (the sage) with a quality of existence that carries with it the sense of wholeness, the sense of a final freedom, a joyous consummation." Carlsen then goes on to describe his own "enlightenment" in grandiose TM-speak as is so typical among its teachers and proponents.

(Many thanks to former students of Carlsen who've been very helpful in these reviews and who all wish to remain anonymous.) - Anon

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[Excerpts from The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment © Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, 1979, ISBN 09-20910-03-3]

Robin, by the grace of God,
will you manifest the essence of the heart of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen
Through the nervous system of creation,
Through the nervous system,
Through my nervous system
Through me,
Through my heart.
- a "sutra" from the Technique for the Discovery of Grace which extends the TM-Sidhi programme

It was getting late. There I was, about to begin the last of my six months in Switzerland; I had come here to achieve the final freedom--Enlightenment--and, in spite of the relative fulfillment of meditation, and my sense of the extraordinary sensitivity and intuition I possessed in relation to the others on this special course devised by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for his teachers, I could not categorize myself as a "clear", the name given to those of us who could materialize the object of our desire at will, or at least who could perceive the truth of a given object or idea merely through the slightest intention in meditation. This was called "ritam", the Sanskrit term for pure perception. I later discovered these powers were but Maharishi's device to heighten the motivation of his teachers, keeping them enthusiastic about "experiences" in the absence of the final experience: liberation.

As a "hazy ritam" I joined one of the lesser evolved groups, and we were seated in a special section within the assembly hall whenever Maharishi came to visit. The interesting thing though was the obvious fact that many members of the "nil" group--those of us who had experienced no direct power over the environment--as often as not appeared more integrated in terms of personality and "presence" than the so-called "clears". I continued, however, to remain satisfied with the applied value of my ten years of regular meditation and nearly a year of intense "rounding"--the program of long meditation sessions broken up by asanas (yoga exercises) for the duration of the day--held in Europe under the direction of Maharishi. While others felt safe about claiming spontaneous ritam, I comforted myself with the knowledge that, when it came down to it, I was still the most appreciative of Maharishi, in terms of sensitizing myself to the subtleties of his heart, to the brilliance of his role.

But still caught in the agony of ignorance, knowing the bliss that was promised, and having had such a good taste of it both in and out of meditation--I was convinced that over the years I had experienced the basis of higher states of consciousness, including the character of cosmic consciousness and God-consciousness which Maharishi had proclaimed the two milestones of growth on the way to Unity consciousness, the state of fulfillment--knowing this I wondered when I would be released. Was there still something impure in my heart? I had to rule that out, simply because for the past ten years I knew how easily and creatively I could surrender to whatever experience, person, situation contained the element of holiness, of God, and I knew that my every waking moment was approached with a kind of absolute vulnerability and openness.

No, I knew my heart was pure; the only obstacle I could conceive of was karma: somewhere there were still some things that had to complete themselves, some of my transgressions had not yet been paid off in spite of all my meditation and giving. I knew too that my mind did not operate in the precise, orderly manner that would enable me to be as efficient in my activity as I had wished to be. It still took me plenty of time to compose a paper for a graduate course at university, and with all my acquired objectivity when I was faced with some challenge from the mechanical world, the world of "things" and how they worked, a self-definition would seize me up, and I would not experience the power and intuition that so easily and abundantly was there when, say, I was with people, or performing on stage, teaching school, attuning myself to the wisdom of Maharishi.

But even the limitations I have spoken of--efficiency and mechanical aptitude--seemed to recede as I experienced more and more bliss in my consciousness, ever increasing levels of refinement in my physiology, and such an obvious degree of radiant wholeness and love in my activity. Maharishi had begun to give us the special techniques that had been promised, and from the start I felt at any moment I could be overtaken by the reality of Unity. Just a few days before my historic walk in the Alps, I had gone up to Maharishi's room to express my fulfillment, for just that afternoon I had felt a long period of sustained egolessness and bliss that seemed so near to the final beatitude Maharishi had described and which had been the glory of Indian religion.

As it happened Maharishi had just gone down in the elevator as I was on my way up, and as I walked, innocently, and joyfully into the corridor towards his room I was met by one of his secretaries, John Cowhig, who, while in his manner congenial and supportive, advised me it was impolitic to wander into Maharishi's room without first seeking permission. I of course knew this, but had experienced the desire to see him as the expansion of life within me wanting to celebrate the joy of what he had conferred upon me. But sensing immediately the slight tension in John's demeanour I did what I was so often wont to do in my life: to turn the attention towards him, praising him, and indicating what prodigious acts of goodness he must have performed in earlier lifetimes to deserve the karma of being so close to Maharishi. (I later, as in the significance of the ritam groupings, discovered that there was not a simple causal relationship between ripeness of the heart, and proximity to Maharishi; some of the purest and most evolved souls who had come under the grace and guidance of Maharishi spent their time thousands of miles from his presence.) Once I had gauged the method of stimulating John's heart (and ego!) I quickly delivered myself from any kind of difficulty incurred by my unannounced visit. John happily agreed with my speculations about his fortunes, and I soon departed for my room, aware that it would be another time before I could express my gratitude--as spontaneous and overflowing as it was--to Maharishi. Also by this time the intensity of my experience of fullness had diminished, and I accustomed myself once again to renewing the program of evolution.

Several days later--Maharishi had returned to his hotel forty kilometres away in Seelisberg, we were in Arosa--I was lunching on the balcony that looked over Swiss meadowland; one of the course participants handed me an article from Time describing the Dalai Lama, formerly from Tibet, the recognized leader of Tibetan Buddhism in the world. The article spoke of his direct connection with Buddha and the thousands of people that had gathered to enjoy his darshan--the particular aura of holiness that is supposed to radiate from a saint. I read the article several times, and was about to discuss it with the friend who had first given me the article, when another friend, William H. [truncated], tapped me on the shoulder to remind me of a promised walk we were to take up the mountain. (Part of the program of the day called for daily walks after lunch in the vigorous Alpine air, this to stabilize the effects of the long sessions of meditation, and to breathe in the prana--life energy--of the mountain atmosphere.)

My friend was a poet of sorts, gentle, effortfully (at times) warm, and although I enjoyed his company, he did seem to often mistake sentimentality for pure and intense feeling. Some of his poetry, while sincere and "spiritual", lacked a rawness, a pungency that would enable the form to rise to the elevated level of the content. Some of it seemed merely the propagation of his obsession with a state of harmony and bliss.

And this is what we immediately began to discuss as we started our walk up the mountain path: the merits of didactic poetry versus imagistic poetry, or to be specific, the ultimate validity of describing in poetry a reality (God, Enlightenment) that was not
yet the reality of one's experience. William, as devoted and intelligent as he was, had not expressed his own individuality, his own agonies, and unfinished desires. I argued that no matter how limited so-called realistic poetry may seem--when, say, measured against the content of the scriptures--still it was preferable to lofty descriptions of ideas whose truth had not yet incarnated within one's experience.

We continued to argue--happily, boisterously--until we began the descent, a different and more circuitous route back to the hotel. While Bill walked ahead I stopped and began to feel a surge of expansion in my mind, which I immediately translated into a more animated and histrionic level of debate. As I shouted and acted out my thesis--we must speak from where we are in order to give a potency to poetic form--the whole sensation of perception, feeling, and thought began to alter. A rock face just to my immediate right began to transform into the most delicate and holy substance I had seen; it seemed as if the rock was composed of the breath of what could only be described as God: it floated in a shimmering of Beingness and appeared to be deathless and more effulgent than the sun. I felt the essence of my heart melting into the texture of infinity of the rock.

My friend by this time was asking what was happening, and by the look on my face, knew something powerfully expansive was taking place. I could not speak and by this time had fallen to my knees, turning in the opposite direction to give some respite to my exploding vision; here on the other side was the panorama of mountains, and they too assumed the form and reality of Beingness, of the most liquid yet ethereal immortality. I was moaning as I experienced all these boundaries of perception dissolving, and then, as I turned to look up into my friend's face, I saw the perfection of God shining from his face and body. I put my head down to touch the ground when suddenly my whole being began to flow out of its self, engulfing me in the same ocean of light which had swept over the rock face, the mountains, and my now Godlike friend.

And then I as if woke up. The spell was broken. I knew myself to have always existed. All my suffering, all my strivings, time, space, personal history was but a dream. There had never been anything but the light of consciousness. I had never been born nor would I ever die. Something disappeared forever, and I later came to know what that was. Something continued to form the apparent boundaries of Robin but the ego that had previously had so much to say about my sensation and experience of the world was now the individuated expression of what was the unmanifest reality of God.

With the completion of my being, I assumed a silence and inner repose, having been transformed into the actuality of what existence was. I was the substance, the reality that so obviously had its being before and beyond the phenomenal forms that before seemed to have an existence of their own. Now I had become invisibly one with something whose integrity could only be described as God, for I saw how that something was the essential character of everything, indeed was naught else but that something. I had lost everything only to gain everything, and that everything now supported and motivated the particular something I was, giving me a uniqueness that was the purest form of the universality which now was the primary reality of my existence and of my being.

By this time I spoke quietly and persuasively to my friend about what had happened--that I was "in Unity", the term all meditators and teachers were familiar with as equated with liberation, Enlightenment. Apparently my actions and my appearance during and immediately after the experience testified to the authenticity of what I now simply and innocently declared. The integration of my personality was suddenly absolute and every sensation of tension, worry, or doubt had dissolved leaving only the self-confidence of Being.

All of us on this course--about one hundred and fifty teachers, plus the thousand or so others located in different hotels in Switzerland--had come to achieve this condition of wholeness, and it was both natural and extraordinary that someone had finally "made it". My friend, given to effusive displays of affection, rejoiced in the miracle of having been present to witness my metamorphosis, divining quite remarkably the impulses which now carried me through each moment and which radiated in perfect harmony from my being. We began to walk while I described all the sensations of being unified with God, each sensation corresponding to the traditional descriptions found in Eastern scriptures and in the subtle analysis Maharishi had given us of higher states of consciousness.

Now, while I dwelled in my previous condition of separateness--ignorance--I had been sensitive to all the currents of feeling moving between people and within a situation. So much of my attention had been placed on attuning myself to those currents so I could adjust the movements within my own heart so as to respond and act in a manner which would heighten the flow of harmony and individuation within the situation, each moment. Such sensitivity, such action required an elaborate form of control and effort, gauging the slightest nuances of meaning evoked by those feelings, effectively bringing that meaning into a focused understanding--all this to make the moment charged with the maximum evolution.

Now I found myself helpless to impose the faintest amount of control; I was entirely powerless to influence what was happening through me and around me. Nothing could center itself from within that would allow me to manipulate or exercise some influence over what I was to think, say, feel, or do. Every impulse, every molecule in my being was now aligned with the eternal continuum of pure consciousness, the wholeness of what was absolute and unmanifest. The Robin that was still there enjoyed the faint illusion of will, desire, but the actual reality of all my actions had its origin and purpose in the supreme reality out of which I had come, the reality which had conceived of my "I"-ness. The contrast to my previous state of experience was staggering, for now, I could sensitize myself to the currents of feeling, yet all the while remain purely detached and, indeed, sensitize myself without inefficiently empathizing or involving myself in a way that made the experience complex; my mind remained free of all impressions; I felt spontaneously my actions to represent the perfect computation of all the variables in the cosmos relating to that one moment, the computation that would deliver the most evolutionary content, the most aesthetic style.

Three Swiss villagers were approaching us, two men and a woman, and I registered the grossness of the two men--crude, hard faces, a heaviness in their walk--and the relative purity of the woman, but at the same time, because there was nothing I could do in the situation but observe, I blissfully watched this fact: the contrast in beauty and sensitivity between the men and the woman, without experiencing the constellation of feelings and thoughts that would have overtaken me in ignorance and caused me to lament the woman's fate. I knew I could watch the death of my child without losing the integrity of my consciousness, the integrity of my emotions. I might--if it was called for--respond passionately, even violently, but at the most fundamental level I would remain wholly centred in the infinite serenity of Being, knowing as I did that everything had its existence, its dramatic forms in the repose of God Himself.

This, then, was the first real evidence of the application of my Enlightenment: the amazing contrast in my sensation of subjective experience in the face of a particular personal situation. (Each situation for me in ignorance was personal since I was always acutely aware of the quality and content of every feeling that was being expressed--this is what always captured my attention, often when such bias towards "The Personal" was not particularly the most efficient way of focusing to accomplish the task before me.) I walked away from the three Swiss villagers completely unchanged in spite of perceiving all of what I would have perceived in ignorance--more so in fact, since even my perceiving was being done for me. Instead of becoming involved in this scene I was immediately fresh and ready to absorb the specific meaning of the next moment, this that I might function in a way for the evolutionary benefit of the environment. And this was the glorious freedom I now enjoyed: without intending to do anything, everything I could have desired--and much more--was accomplished skillfully, effortlessly. Yet, in experiencing all this going on automatically, I nevertheless paradoxically had a more vivid sense of the pure individuality that was the purpose of these boundaries called Robin, having been created.

[Part 4 continues with excerpts from "The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment."]

The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 2

At the request of some TMFree readers, this is the second of a series of eight essays on Robin Woodsworth Carlsen.
This series is provided with permission of their anonymous author.

We at TMFree do not ascribe to Carlsen's 'teachings.' This series is provided for those who wish to review philosophies of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen. Carlsen was one of many Maharishi TM-spinoff gurus.

Part one of this series can be read here.

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The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 2

Carlsen continues on his road to the Enlightened Dawn.

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[Excerpts from From" Ignorance to Enlightenment: An Autobiography" © Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, 1980, ISBN 0-920910-06-8]

I was still as enthusiastic as ever about meditation, but I also realized how necessary it was that I become fully developed as an individual--skilled, efficient, creative--apart from the radiance of my heart, the expanded purity of my consciousness. Yes, I was adept--exceptionally so--regarding the theatre of my personality, as a divine manipulator/actor of feeling (by this time always in the service of evolution), but I wanted also to achieve something that would give me more credibility as someone who could give to others the highest knowledge, the most perfect technique for fulfillment.

But as I continued the year, I sensed the gathering of grace (particularly noticeable in the context of giving "residence courses", weekend seminar-type advanced training to meditators, where questions came up, and demands were made, that fully extended my personality, my intuition, my heart-wisdom). Then I received a letter indicating I was accepted as a graduate student in Theatre at the University of Victoria; knowing I had several courses to make up in order to get off to the right start, I realized my summer would be taken up, that I wouldn't have the chance to attend an "ATR" (Advanced Training and Rounding course) set up by Maharishi to accelerate the growth of his teachers, and for purposes of long rounding to deepen one's experience of Being, to release the impurities one had gathered in the course of activity within our stressed civilization.

Another course had been announced for March 15th, and I decided to resign from my teaching position in order to attend, confirming at the same time that I would enroll for a Master's degree beginning in the summer.

My resignation was accepted--much to the regret of my students--and the morning after a spectacular appearance by Maharishi on the Merv Griffin Show, I was off to Switzerland once again, stopping off to be nourished by a devoted mother, who was still teaching just south of Toronto.

And here as I arrived in Zurich began another formative phase in my journey to wholeness. The course office had notified Canadians that the site of the ATR was to be Arosa, and that the course was to begin on the 22nd. Well, I arrived on the evening of the 21st and at the only hotel I recognized by name, the Prâtchli, there was only one light on--there was about three feet of snow on the ground, and it was only by accident that the taxicab driver ended up at the Prâtchli. (I had asked him the names of the various hotels as they all appeared shut down for the season; the Prâtchli was only the final possibility.)

Well, this "error" on my part--I had left just before Ottawa had telegrammed to announce a four day delay of the course, and a different venue--proved once again to be beneficently arranged and exploited by Nature. The hotel owners at the Prâtchli put me up for the night--I was the only guest--and then made contact with the hotel near Lucerne, the Park Hotel, where Maharishi was staying. Stranded as I was, I was able to persuade John Cowhig, Maharishi's personal secretary, and brother to Gemma Field, who, with her husband Fraser, were two of my dearest friends, to arrange for me to stay in Gersau, just a few miles from Maharishi's hotel. Once established I was able to spend all my time at the Park Hotel, playing out this more favourable option, mixing with the various people who had the closest contact with Maharishi. Somehow I managed to find myself only a few feet away from Maharishi at most of the lectures, videotaping, and inauguration ceremonies. The section I was in was reserved for Maharishi International University faculty and guests. I did not know this, and I imagine the reason I was not asked to move was that I appeared to be a special guest. In any case, I spent seven days there basking in the sunlight of Maharishi's consciousness, sensitizing myself to the whole drama of his role, the relationship he had with the other teachers there.

It sounds mystical and perhaps presumptuous, but the bond between Maharishi and myself, first begun at Queen's University when I stood at one of the stage doors as an usher, and later strengthened during my teacher training course and especially at the time of being made an initiator, now became the dominant reality of my life. Each word, each gesture, the invisible spiritual consciousness and focus behind his apparent physical and obvious one, seemed directed towards my soul. I knew he knew I was there. I also knew he was still far too holy and infinite for me to touch. I could become enraptured by his beauty, the subtle movements of his cosmic mind, but apart from my extraordinary appreciation, Robin Carlsen, the being, was still very much in ignorance, very much less than I wanted to be.

The time finally came for me to go to the course, now held in Courchevel, France. There I began a ten week residence and almost at the start slipped into what appeared to be a higher state of consciousness. Maharishi had spoken of four states of consciousness that in evolving progression signified the steps of Enlightenment. First off after transcendental consciousness--the state a meditator reaches during his meditation--is cosmic consciousness, in which the perceiver is established in pure consciousness but perceives the rest of the world to still be finite. In other words he becomes infinity witnessing the finite, his own body and personality being part of that finiteness. Well this corresponded exactly with my experience: I floated in a kind of absolute bliss and watched as my mouth uttered sounds, as my body moved, as my individuality carried out its natural actions. In the midst of the experience I thought--or rather I witnessed the thought come: Maharishi says the real test is sleep--if pure consciousness stays awake while everything else sleeps, then one knows one is in CC. It was not long after retiring for the night that I awakened to my old boundaries, but I had experienced all the characteristics of an advanced state of consciousness, and this was gratifying indeed.

For the first six weeks the emphasis was on rounding, but then Maharishi announced the special surprise, hinted at when he was inaugurating MERU, Maharishi European Research University, while in Weggis, near the Park Hotel where I had spent the first week of my "unofficial" ATR.

Now up until this point I had gained concrete results from the long sessions of meditation and was fully prepared to leave for home knowing I had been graced, knowing that each moment had been used wisely. At the same time, just before Maharishi's announcement of his special evolutionary package (what turned out to be some awesomely powerful advanced techniques of expansion of consciousness) I received a letter from the Dean of Graduate Studies informing me I had been awarded a forty-eight hundred dollar fellowship, renewable the following year. This eased any financial worries I might have had, and in the eyes of my parents, gave me more right to enjoy this obsession with meditation, Maharishi, and Switzerland.

But here we were, about to return home, and Maharishi was promising to deliver some "powers" that would put us up there with Christ and Buddha. He said the atmosphere had become pure enough for some added techniques that would greatly speed up our evolution. Now it is important to point out that up until this time Maharishi had emphasized again and again that one must "capture the fort" (pure consciousness, Being) and then "enjoy the surrounding territory". In other words, the technique of Transcendental Meditation led to the wholeness of life, within which were all the "powers", e.g. telepathy, clairvoyance, etc. If one focused on acquiring these powers before acquiring the Fort, then one might get caught up in the enticements of a diamond mine, and never reach the source of those diamonds.

Now here was Maharishi openly discussing the acquisition of special powers, powers based on something he called "ritam", the power of manifesting the object of one's desire at will. It apparently worked like this: when we received our initiation into these advanced techniques, we would find that we could influence Creation on the level of our own desire, since we would be able to entertain that desire just at the point where Being was structuring the forms of itself, i.e. the unmanifest was becoming manifest. In this way one could spontaneously decide to see something, know something, touch something, and lo, it would materialize.

All this seemed pretty heretical given our well-preserved assumptions of innocence, and getting to the source before playing with the parts, but Maharishi had the unquestioned authority of his consciousness, and although what he was saying seemed contradictory, it must after all be right. In any case the proposition was exciting. Those of us who decided to stay--and there didn't seem to be any decision to make: if one had the misfortune of some irrevocable commitment at home, that would be cruel karma indeed--filled out application forms in which we stated whether we had experienced cosmic consciousness and/or "kundalini" up the spine. The kundalini experience seemed a fairly isolated kind of thing, and certainly was not a part of my remembered experiences, but the wholeness of CC, that was indeed convincingly a part of my evolutionary heritage, although at the time I was of course back in waking state--pre-CC-consciousness, along with everyone else excepting Maharishi.

Now as we were just about to leave for another area of France, I had done a somersault while running down a steep hill while attempting a shortcut through a dry river bed. It was a spectacular fall; miraculously in spite of the sharp rocks all around me, I escaped with a minor cut on my knee and grass stains on my blazer, but in the shock of the experience I felt the purification that it accomplished, that, as I was headed for something sacred and beautiful--a gift from the gods--I first had to earn this privilege, and in the sudden helplessness and vulnerability of that fall, something was paid back, and by the time I was on my feet I felt considerably lighter, more prepared for the blessings that were to come. By now I had interpreted each incident in my life--painful or otherwise--as fraught with meaning and spiritual significance. Never since my first transcendence did I for a moment question the wisdom behind each event, circumstance of my existence. In the case of the fall, it was yet another indication to me of the special attention I was receiving, this, that I might fully deserve the increasingly beautiful pattern of my destiny.

Once we had made the move to the remote ski resort of Place d'Ors we were divided up into groups according to the information we supplied on the forms. Now Maharishi has always been one for getting people to describe their "experiences", and once one knew that "positive" experiences were more likely to bring about the most potent of techniques, naturally each teacher tended to view his meditation history in the most positive light. There could be no question of the purity, the efficacy of the technique of TM, but the psychology of the meditator--his or her affirmation of real spiritual progress--was a most necessary feature of a teacher's life, and constantly Maharishi would play with the subjective vulnerability of his teachers, using "experience" questions to form various gradations, castes, and groups. Ultimately it really did not matter what sort of experiences one was having; the thing was to keep meditating, to realize the applied value of the technique in one's everyday life. But the interest in what group one would be placed in added to the secrecy and spiritual hullaballoo surrounding the new program. In my own case, despite disclaiming any "flashy" experiences of kundalini or even special powers, I was aware constantly of the perfect relationship I had with Nature: perfect not in the sense of my own perfection, but perfect in that I knew I was doing what was expected of me, that meditation was providing exactly what my soul needed, that I was in touch always with the appropriateness of whatever happened. For me the important thing was to receive the program; the touchstone of evolution remained always the beauty, the grace, the intelligence with which one lived, with which one emanated one's influence and uniqueness into the world.

In our hotel there were about sixty of us, and half of us--the men--met with Maharishi in a modest waiting room. Here we heard Maharishi discuss further enrichment of the program he was about to give us: a six month course which practically carried the guarantee of Unity Consciousness, the second stage of Enlightenment after cosmic consciousness, and for all intents and purposes, the supreme achievement of life. I was one of those who gave my name--the course was to start right away, the applicants would wait to receive the program--but with my commitment to graduate school, the fellowship, and minus the thirty-six hundred dollar course fee, I reconsidered and thus allowed myself to receive what Maharishi was to give to us right then and there; apparently only a fraction of what awaited the "six-month" participants.

It turned out to be plenty, making more than a fractional difference to my evolution. But before I describe my experiences under the new program I should point out a decisive event that altered my whole approach to my evolution. On the morning before we were to receive the first installment of our program--there was to be about seven separate initiations--I found myself pushed to the front of the huge throng of teachers. (This meeting was going on at the more central hotel and included as well as participants from the other hotels, about eight hundred newly arrived teachers about to begin their ATR--Maharishi's announcement of the special program occurred after the next course had already been planned, so here were hundreds of teachers hearing the news, having to wait until they had completed their initial six weeks of rounding.) Maharishi was at the front with eyes closed as one member of the Vedic Studies group demonstrated the "third set" of asanas (hatha yoga exercises) while another provided the commentary.

Now I had been assiduous in my regular "twisting and bending" as Maharishi called it, and had moved up from the first level to the second. But it had been emphatically registered upon my mind that these asanas were at best lubricative--they loosened up the physiology--and homogenizing--they spread the effects of meditation evenly throughout the body. In no sense was it made clear they were necessary, although "in the field" (back home in activity) we were encouraged to do one set a day. During rounding it was advisable to break up long sessions of meditation with physical exercise, but I never considered these "postures of devotion" (as they became for me later) vital to my evolution.

Well, Maharishi was obviously shifting his attention, and although many in the crowd ho-hummed at the demonstration, I picked up the significance of the event and studied each posture closely, realizing as I did how much more adept the asana demonstrator was than myself, how more sophisticated and "athletic" the third and final set was.

I had been passionately committed to sports and fitness in my high school days, but having developed strong intellectual and then spiritual interests, my concern with the calisthenic flexibility and strength of my body had diminished. Meditation with light asanas provided me with a distinct sense of well-being, and I experienced my physiology to be, while not ruggedly conditioned, nevertheless responsive, coordinated, and "sattvic" (composed of molecules that increasingly reflected light and purity: the criterion of real fitness). Now here as I watched the suppleness and grace of the boy performing the asanas, I felt an inspiration to perfect myself in this way, as it was clear Maharishi was suddenly attaching unprecedented importance to this aspect of rounding. He even recommended "full lotus"--if one could manage it. Even sitting for a while, in pain, was not a bad idea. Now that shocked me: I could not even come close to getting my legs in a position to accomplish this classic yogic pose, but here Maharishi was inspiring us to do so. With my usual intensity of purpose, I vowed I would do everything possible to master these postures and be able to sit in the full lotus--right through my meditation.

I returned to my room and then decided to check once again on certain fine points of the advanced asanas. Watching another teacher effortlessly perform bodily positions I only crudely could approximate, I felt the exhilaration of knowing here was something I could perfect, that would take me nearer to God. In one sense I was ashamed that I had been--unwittingly so--negligent in not refining my asana technique, but my athletic experience--cross country, track, basketball--now proved useful; I set myself the goal of actualizing whatever flexibility and dexterity was available and began the painful process of inching my way into the full lotus.

Well, just at this time we were presented with the first series of techniques, and their results were so powerful that it became easy to endure the discomfort and soreness of my asana regime. The bliss produced by the new program allowed me a divine distraction while I pressed one leg over the other, and, as the days went on, I came to depend on the lotus, for in the (by now I could hold on for about ten minutes) classic posture, there seemed to be a perfect balance and physiological unity to support the experience of bliss. My head filled up with energy and "prana" (life-giving, pure breath), and the pain just turned into ecstasy.

What happened in my room during those twelve days was miraculous. I mastered the third set of asanas, received experiences of love, wholeness, and divine exaltation that seemed about as close to God as I could imagine, and I felt an enormous strengthening and integrating of my whole personality. I had expected a great deal but the actual experience--my growth--exceeded any vision I had of beatitude prior to Enlightenment itself.

I cannot of course discuss the actual techniques themselves, but suffice to say, even in their conception, i.e. the actual content and scope of their meaning, they seemed as marvelous as contemplating the architecture of God's mind. Clearly the actual performing of the techniques affected the whole world, the whole universe; we were the blessed instruments and beneficiaries of this divine purification.

Now while my "experiences" were of a more universal and holistic kind, there were others who indeed began to manifest the "powers", the ritam that Maharishi had promised. In addition to the teachers on my ATR course, there had been a large group of people who had joined us in the advanced program from a teacher training course. It was, interestingly enough, among these individuals that the most spectacular accounts were told: seeing events at home thousands of miles away; diagnosing the exact nature of someone's physical ailment (seeing an X-ray of the internal parts of the body); meeting an immortal being; accurate foretelling of future events (humorous in this case: the person would see exactly what was on the table for dinner, down to the exact arrangement of the dishes); the materializing of the form of some member of one's family right there in the room. It was all stupendous, and I knew all the teachers and meditators back home who would hear of these stories would envy us, the first recipients of this new and wondrous technology. When the question came up about whether a desire might not necessarily be "life-supporting" (this in the context of ritam, where one simply desired and received), Maharishi quickly countered by saying that teachers would only have life-supporting desires; everything was fine.

In his grading system Maharishi gave A+'s for those who had demonstrated ritam, and lesser grades to those with less colorful experiences, right down to D for those with "nil" experiences. This latter group Maharishi interviewed right in front of everyone and he skillfully persuaded each and every one of them that indeed they had been successful, that the techniques produced satisfactory results. I recall getting a B+ rating, but for my own standards, somewhat more subtle than Maharishi's public criteria for success, I had achieved profound results.

Just before we were to leave the course, Maharishi had us, in groups of five, come to his room, there briefly to discuss the program we would carry on with at home: length of meditation, number of sets of asanas (how many cycles of asanas/breathing we would do before beginning our meditation and special programs). I remember long lines of people meditating along the corridor, and that magical moment when our group's number was called. Ushered in by one of Maharishi's aides, and sharing the room with the instructor who had been chosen by Maharishi to give us the program, we sat steadfast as this celestial, radiant being looked upon us from his couch. He was in a jovial state when we entered and played about with the various questions put to him, encouraging us, deflecting any doubts, emphasizing the innocence of the whole procedure. Then, just before we were to leave, it was asked how many sets of asanas we should do. Maharishi replied, "Three, morning and evening."

Well, that was an incredible prescription (and one that was only given to our group, although I now realize it was directed essentially at me--this that I could meet the divine time-tabling of my evolution), and when one teacher posed the dilemma of being invited somewhere for dinner and not wanting to cause a scene in order to complete the asanas, Maharishi quickly counseled using the bathroom to finish our routine--no one would know what we were doing in there!

I felt during our encounter with Maharishi (I said nothing throughout: there was nothing to say to God; He had given me everything, had made my experience transparently clear: I was coming towards Him) the subtle movements of feeling from his heart to my own, and in the magnificence of his being, I felt his ability to be projected--or to project--exactly what was necessary for each person, especially for the more deserving and graced--this, all the while appearing universalized for everyone. So much was said in that room--silently--and the vision of Maharishi clothed in his brown cashmere blanket over his silk dhoti, his whole presence burning in a fire of love and beauty perpetually shone in my mind. It seemed that from that moment on, I could just will it, and Maharishi was right with me, palpably, personally.

[Click to read Part 3 which introduces excerpts from " The Sunnyside Drama: The First Three Years of Enlightenment."]

The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 1

Robin Carlsen is one of many spin-off gurus from Transcendental Meditation.

A new essay will appear every few days, for a total of 8 essays, on Robin Carlsen's teachings. This may be of interest to those interested in the study of comparative philosophy between Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his protoges.

Many thanks to the author of these essays for allowing us to publish this series onto TMFree. Introduction is provided by the anonymous author of the following 8 Essays on the teachings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, presented with permission by said anonymous contributor :

I had a large cache of Carlsen papers in storage from his first appearance on the scene in Fairfield. He was coming there and giving seminars, which as he was a theatre student at one time, were done in a theatrical, stage-type presentation. He would "confront" the demonic in a person in order to help them disengage from their 'resistance to God' or the Self. In the stage setting the person would go through a kind of catharsis, some of them quite dramatic. Of course eventually this lead to him punching and hitting his students on stage to disengage them from their demons. And that was the end of his growing following. He became a devotee of Roman Catholicism and Padre Pio, the famous stigmata saint and then just disappeared. While there was a rumor passed around by the TM Org that he had committed suicide, I recently received an email from an old friend of Carlsen's indicating he was still quite alive.

All the papers went into a box long ago and I recently came across them while going through old books. He put a lot of stuff into writing: his initial enlightenment in Seelisberg, Switzerland, his first years as an enlightened being, his correspondence, a children's book, his meeting with Khomeni, etc. As people bailed from his trip, I got a lot of other stuff his old students had, so they too went into storage. Since they detailed some interesting times in the TM movement, I decided to get them out and share some relevant excerpts. After all, this was the first person Mahesh had recognized as being enlightened. The first real "governor of the age of enlightenment".

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The Writings of Robin Woodsworth Carlsen: Part 1
"From Ignorance to Enlightenment: An Autobiography"

In 1972, Robin Woodsworth Carlsen headed on his journey towards the goal of all serious TMers, the Cosmic Consciousness. Here begins the journey with his teacher training in what TMers believe is the fastest vehicle known for discovering the pure consciousness within and the unified field of all the laws of nature: Transcendental Meditation™. It was only after this special training that he would be a suitable vehicle to "bring others to transcendence" through direct training from "the most beautiful and highest human being on earth", His Holiness the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, lineal descendant of His Divinity Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya and Jagadguru from Jyotir Math. This Transcendental Meditation™ was so scientific, systematic, and perfect that, if practiced correctly, it guaranteed success for its meditators, a veritable "science of consciousness" for the individual.

It was this course of action that was to be eventually "culminating in a final and all embracing deliverance" for Carlsen: enlightenment at long last.

(Many thanks to former students of Carlsen who've been very helpful in these reviews and who all wish to remain anonymous.)

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[Excerpts from From Ignorance to Enlightenment: An Autobiography © Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, 1980, ISBN 0-920910-06-8]

In the meantime I was on my plane to New York where the charter was to leave for Geneva. The location of the course was about ninety-five kilometres east of Geneva, in the town of Villars. Before leaving for New York I had a stay over with my mother who was teaching psychology at an eastern university in St. Catherines, Ontario. This relationship was fully equal in its intensity and purity to my relationship with Sarah, and it was a time of grace for us both as I awaited the announcement of the charter, which had, for the purposes of excitement been delayed for several days. The wholeness, the warmth of the heart dominated our visit, and I knew I had gradually won her over to the value of meditation, something she began while I was in Switzerland.

But it was at the airport in New York that I first felt the awesome bliss of what I was headed for: there they were, over a thousand young souls embarked on the journey of their lives. They seemed filled with energy and silence, all while they entertained themselves, meditated, and sensed the exhilaration of what awaited them: Himalayan wisdom, transcendence, a divine ordination.

Nature made me perceive what was highest and most radiant in each would-be teacher, and I later realized this phenomenon: being used by Nature (that which controlled and directed the destiny of the universe) to place my attention on a certain aspect of a situation in order to sustain the inspiration of my heart. In this case it was dramatically necessary at this stage of my evolution to be moved by the purity and grace of my situation. Thus, the majority of the people gathered at the airport seemed holy and chosen. (It was not until later that this vision altered, and I realized how beneficially my perception had been manipulated.) But this is one of the gifts of being able to stay objectively vulnerable: in spite of one's "ignorance" one can be "played" by the divine in such a way as to attend to the specific and appropriate experience and meaning most conducive to evolution, most conducive to the individuation of one's soul. It may amount in some sense to a kind of "blindness", but that blindness is in the service of a greater seeing: for my heart, for the majesty of the goal (Enlightenment) it was important that my consciousness dwell only on the celestial, the innocent, the positive.

Throughout the flight I concentrated on resting and preparing myself for the pilgrimage to Godhead. Switzerland seemed an ideal place to purify oneself, to obtain the knowledge that would enable one to bring others to transcendence. It was at this time that I believed the ceremony and choosing of a mantra to be that which placed one in such a relationship to God that one was "given" the particular mantra right on the spot. As it turned out it was more mechanical than that, but not altogether inferior in the effects it produced, effects more transforming for the teacher than the student.

But here I was, finally guaranteed the precious wisdom and experience that for me was the greatest secret in the universe. And I would have personal contact with the most beautiful and highest human being on earth. (Certainly he was for me and the thousands of other teachers and meditators fortunate enough to experience him first hand; even now there is little question that Maharishi towers above all the leaders of the world, religious or otherwise; but the verification of this claim lies in the consciousness of the beholder; suffice to say that if the masses were as open to Maharishi as they were to the Pope, they would have encountered an experience of charisma, purity, wholeness of an entirely different order.) The mountains, the meadows, the lush pastureland, the cleanliness and order--all made Switzerland the next best thing to Maharishi's ashram in India. (Although from the point of view of luxury, convenience, climate, spectacular scenery, Villars--the site of the three month course--was probably much more suitable, if less spiritually romantic.)

The hotel was high in the mountains just above the town of Villars, and our bus trip from Geneva delivered to my senses the most Eden-like experience. Here was tradition preserved in the most beautiful forms: vineyards, chalet architecture, castles, ancient churches, and a sense of life as custom, as ceremony, as simplicity. The spirit of Switzerland was to welcome the wisdom of India and it was to be high in the Alps where all my purest illuminations would take place, culminating in a final and all embracing deliverance.

All my life had prepared me for this moment. The suffering; the "serving of time" as a school teacher, as a husband whose eyes were on heaven while his loved ones (excepting his child) saw only the earth, held in the darkness of what was only relative; the incommensurable facts that alienated Miranda from my heart and made me acquiesce in a lesser happiness--all this was but the karma, the purgatory, the ripening necessary to deserve and to appreciate fully the opportunity before me. The highest gifts must always come at the right time, and although I may have yearned to be here with Maharishi and possessed of the knowledge of liberation much earlier, it was only now that the strength, the integration was adequate to the immensity of responsibility this situation placed before me.

In the draw I received a spacious and beautiful room with a balcony, looking over the valley and across at another range of serene, chaste-looking peaks. No, there was absolutely nothing that I could have wished to alter; this was the most idyllic course that Maharishi had ever structured, the one hundred and forty participants selected for this hotel nearly all professional people or over twenty-five, and I settled down to a vacation undreamed of by any travel agency. And I experienced everything having been created for me, that all deprivation previous to this moment was simply the means to allow me to enjoy the affluence (spiritually and materially) of this situation.

Our course leaders, John and Sarah Konhaus were both bright, commanding, and dignified--especially John, who had an almost seraphic translucence to his face and presence. The first stage consisted of memorizing exactly the procedure known as "checking", the systematic method of verifying whether someone was meditating correctly. This was an enormous challenge; mastering the minute, meticulous details that enabled one to handle any complaint, any experience of a meditator, giving him the precise knowledge and procedure necessary to defeat his problem and provide the soothing renewal of innocent contact with Being, transcendence. It was an amazing accomplishment of Maharishi's: that here was a formula, that no matter who administered it, was perfect, successful, foolproof. In its logic, in its systematized steps, it took in every possible contingency and computation. The thing was to be able to automatically, effortlessly utter the exact wording called for in each specific situation. And in our training every possible variation and "problem" was presented to the "checker", determining whether his memorization was complete.

For myself it was less enjoyable than the anticipation of the actual knowledge, the wisdom we would receive later--the science of consciousness, the blueprint of Creation, the tradition of the Veda, and of course the ceremony and technique of imparting the knowledge and procedure of Transcendental Meditation. But at the same time, the discipline, the exactitude required to pass this stage of the training was not only necessary but purifying, since it made certain one's commitment to the proposition of teaching was complete, unqualified. Color videotapes of Maharishi speaking at earlier courses comprised--in addition to our "rounding": meditation, yoga breathing (pranayama), and hatha yoga (asanas)--the program for the day. In each tape there was the absoluteness of Maharishi's consciousness and heart as it surveyed each aspect of existence, each aspect of evolution.

Maharishi visited us two or three times each month, and his presence was enough to both elevate and humble my spirit, for while I was pure enough to behold his beauty and grandeur, I could also feel how finite and flawed my own individuality was. His purity was so penetrating and flame-like, that one's own impurity was exposed mercilessly. One part of me rejoiced in the objective vision I had of just what he was; another part of me wept that I was still defiled by my ignorance. But the course moved along and in single-minded devotion I absorbed everything that was essential, everything that I felt was there for me to take.

The other individuals on the course seemed more ordinary than when I had first seen them at the airport, but the artistic and intellectual elements within the group provided me with a challenge--my heart I knew to be unchallenged by anyone there, although I did find a pure companion in the form of a young poet who would later accompany me on my final journey to the Center. But no matter what surrounded me I knew my responsibility was a purely spiritual one, that although we were in a hotel, served sumptuous meals, could purchase Swiss chocolate in town, the situation was internally at least the same as the monk who wandered in search of his Master in the Himalayan caves--finding him one surrendered everything and became obsessed with one thing only: Enlightenment. For this, absolute devotion was required and a renunciation of the superfluous; in this case, everything not directly associated with one's evolution.

So for myself, despite the comfort of Western-style living, the various temptations--dalliances with the opposite sex, Time magazines, tourist expeditions, late night rendezvous--I found it easy to be ascetic and one-pointed, that indeed, the situation was ideal for my desires. I thus remained fairly solitary throughout the course, and then, just as we began to learn the ceremony of instruction, another drama was contrived by the forces of perfectibility: a young woman came to our course along with half a dozen other persons to administer testing--to refine our skills in this last procedure: the invocation to the tradition of Masters with whom this Teaching was secured. Maharishi was the most recent of a line of famous teachers, beginning with the great saint and Master of India, Shankara, who had purified the knowledge stemming from the Rig Veda, which originated some five thousand years ago. Shankara had brought the knowledge of transcendence (and meditation) out of the grip of ignorance and established the Shankaracharya Tradition from which Guru Dev, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Maharishi's Master, had come.

The girl and her associates were trained teachers of TM, and because of their financial status were able to remain in Europe with Maharishi, receiving the blessing of his presence, working to organize and develop the worldwide Movement from its center in Switzerland. Maharishi had sent them to our hotel in order to give us the individual attention necessary to master the demanding coordination required to gracefully, aesthetically perform the ceremony of initiation. "Elizabeth" we'll call her, was an attractive, intense girl, a wealthy scion from established New England stock. Again, although completely focused on the task at hand--there were less than two weeks before our formal baptism by Maharishi into his teacherhood, I was overcome by the power that drew us together, and before long, all kinds of subtle cues were coming that made it impossible to ignore the significance of this event.

For the final ten days of the course we moved to Vittel, France, and it was there I succeeded in mastering the final steps of initiation plus remaining vulnerable to the potent meaning and experience of being with Elizabeth. When I considered it rationally, the whole thing was absurd: what was I, a married man, devoted to the purist ideals of the Shankaracharya Tradition, involving myself in an affair with a beautiful woman, another teacher? But again, there was no denying the divine wholeness that contained and resolved this apparent paradox: it was through the alchemy of this relationship that I moved even closer to God, and even to Maharishi, a monk!

Now the interesting thing was that Elizabeth, although an experienced teacher, was extremely unstable--brilliant, intuitive, but troubled and confused. But the particular intelligence that played through us allowed an extraordinary amount of purification and expansion to take place, and revelations important to the understanding of the destiny of our souls. Ambivalent then as it was, the relationship worked evolutionary wonders; every emotion, every encounter, every development seemed to unfold innocently, and I felt how, in spite of her weaknesses, Elizabeth was a conduit for some vital experiences that had to attach themselves to my soul that I could become the particular actor in this great cosmic drama that my existence had implied.

On the final night--actually, about 2:00 a.m.--when Maharishi was to make us teachers, and we were to meet briefly with him on a personal basis, the heavens declared the sanctifying of the circumstances that had embroiled me in this dissonant situation. Meeting with Maharishi, receiving an advanced technique, meditating, and then visiting with Elizabeth just before climbing onto a bus back to Zurich where our charter was to depart for New York, I felt how everything had come together, and how Elizabeth had been used for my evolution. As complex and subtle as she was, her main purpose (this, as determined by Nature, not herself) had been to produce those kinds of emotional, intellectual experiences that would further prepare my soul for its final anointing, and for the specific destiny that awaited it in the wake of that anointing. My heart had been innocent enough to become the means to allow Nature to create an experience in apparent violation of the rules, and, in a persuasive sense, beyond the ability of its central element--Elizabeth--to fulfill. However, as before, the rest of Creation could be divinely distorted in order to harmonize the elements of my soul.

Returning home December 22nd, I stopped over briefly in New York where I learned first-hand about subways and Jewish tradition--my brother, a converted orthodox Jew, could not meet me at the airport on the Friday evening of my arrival because it was after dusk. Here I had my first meeting with my nephew, Benjamin, who I suspected had sensed some powerful spiritual atmosphere within the Carlsen clan, not the least of which was associated with a tradition perhaps more effective--in producing genuine religious experience--than his own father's. (All this as he made his decision to incarnate.)

On the ferry to Staten Island I saw the Statue of Liberty and wondered how so many millions of people could live with an idea of freedom without yearning to touch the purest freedom of all: the pure consciousness within them. In the subway I felt protected by a shield of grace; here I was in the tense pulsations of a metropolis, possessed of the knowledge that would bring about the serenity that was Godhead. No one knew who I was, yet my soul moved invisibly over all of them, confident that in time they too would awaken from the nightmare of their ignorance.

[ Click here to read Part 2 continues with more excerpts from "From Ignorance to Enlightenment: An Autobiography."]