A TMFree reader requests views and discussion of his observations of unusual behaviors at Maharishi University.
I do not conduct private email conversations on these topics.
With permission of said TMFree reader, his private emails are posted below, with the hope of explanatory comments from educated and involved TMFree readers.
Please offer your views and experiences for this individual. The cumulative experiences of TMFree readers should make for an interesting discussion. (I will be unavailable for a few days)
Thank you!
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email #1. Subject "money and delusions:
I have heard/read that the meditation fees are used to subsidize the various projects of the TMO. How is it that meditators pay such high prices w/o objections? In the early 1990's i spent a few months in Fairfield, Iowa and attended Annapurna dining hall w/some frequency. Several times i heard the phrase "the money just came to me" as in "manna from heaven", i suppose. I was surprised that no one seemed to be concerned about how the money was being spent or the high prices in general! At the time $3000 was the cost of the tm-sidhis.
I must admit that i enjoyed the meditations and i should have gone on staff in order to work for the tm-sidhis but i decided to return to the east coast. I spent a few weeks at this boarding house on the western edge of town. It was located across the street from a motel and a supermarket, called "Hi-V", as i remember. The owners were "tm-sidhas" and pleasant enough but their two cats urinated on sofas, carpets and almost everywhere. The stench was obvious to me but the owners appeared to be oblivious. The cats' litter box was in the basement and an ugly stench emanated from that. How could the owners not notice? A friend of mine was living just north of Fairfield and was telling me about his roomate and how he was such a prolific composer. It sounded like a modern Beethoven. He played several of his "compositions" for me. They sounded like new wage music, i.e. the chord progressions consisted of 2 or 3 chords, and just the basic triads, no chord extensions etc. He was claiming that practising the tm-sidhis made him so prolific.
The point of all this is: could the practise of tm contribute to a person's delusions and/or create a placebo effect? Is this the reason that tm teachers tend to defend the tm prices and projects? Is this why tmer's say that if i do not have $5000 for the tm-sidhis then i am not ready for them? Is this why so many believe in the maharishi effect, even though a student was murdered by another student on the MUM campus. If the maharishi effect does not function in Fairfield then where will it function? Please respond when you have time or if you can.
email #2. Subject "delusions"
If you can publish my questions then please do so. I forgot to mention that trailor park on or north of campus, if i remember, was called "utopia park". it was just an average trailor park. why was called "utopia park"? and what was that "heaven on earth" stuff in Fairfield? The town square was nice but much of the town was squallid,i.e., quasi slum. if I am mistaken then please correct me!
Finally, there was to be a lecture at this round structure called "yagya varna hall" or something similar to that, by Bevan Morris, a TM big shot. As i approached this ediface i noticed that many persons were walking toward the entrance very quickly, almost running. They appeared to be desperate or at least excited. Therefore i expected to hear some cosmic wisdom from Mr.Morris. I listened to his monologue for about 25 minutes and decided to leave. It was extremely boring. It was the typical "cosmic debris" that emanates from TM videos and dvd's.
If someone can correct me about all this then please do so.
Showing posts with label initiation fee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label initiation fee. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Friday, May 23, 2008
Thirty Years Later: What was all that about? (Part 5 of a series)
(To read this series from the beginning, start here.)
What is the actual cost of committing oneself to practicing the basic TM technique?
Back in 1959, according to Paul Mason’s biography of the program’s founder, an initiation fee was set at one week’s pay. That amount has varied over the years, perhaps depending on whose definition of “one week’s pay” is being used. It also says something about what stratum of society the program is being marketed to. When the current fee of $2500 is considered against the “one week’s pay” rationale, the size of the fee suggests that the program is being marketed to people with an income of $130,000 per year, or more.
Along with the fee, the initiate must bring fruit, flowers and a white handkerchief. Perhaps the need to bring physical objects underscores the underlying transactional assumption, that to be involved with the movement’s programs and to gain the claimed benefits, one must bring something of substance to the table. Later, clearly, that substance is money, but at the beginning, physical offerings are also part of the exchange. Belying the movement’s claim that what it’s offering is some kind of eternal “knowledge” available to all, clearly the “knowledge” is only made available to those who can pay whatever they charge for it.
Less obvious is the time commitment. The initiation process, about eight hours in total over seven days, involves five group sessions outside of the “interview” and the initiation itself. Thereafter, one must meditate twenty minutes twice a day, and allow an additional few minutes’ time to finish meditation. What is that time worth? Perhaps the clearest way to put a price tag on that time is to consider, as I put forward above, that the movement’s target prospect makes $130,000 a year. Based even on a sixty hour work week, that comes out to about 42 dollars an hour. Given that TM requires a time commitment of at least fifty minutes a day - time that can’t be spent doing anything else - at that rate, TM costs 304 hours a year, and if that time is valued monetarily, that cost is, at least, an additional $12,750 a year.
Thus the program conditions the meditator towards the idea that involvement in the program involves ongoing expenditures of time and money, particularly when the current program becomes stale and the movement’s other products and programs become attractive. At the very high end is the movement’s ultimate product: the million-dollar residence course. While the cost and the trappings are in a different realm of price and ostentatiousness (or, perhaps, outrageousness), the underlying appeal of all the programs are the same. They offer the initiate the promise of control of various aspects of life that generally are not under conscious control.
(Continue to Part 6)
What is the actual cost of committing oneself to practicing the basic TM technique?
Back in 1959, according to Paul Mason’s biography of the program’s founder, an initiation fee was set at one week’s pay. That amount has varied over the years, perhaps depending on whose definition of “one week’s pay” is being used. It also says something about what stratum of society the program is being marketed to. When the current fee of $2500 is considered against the “one week’s pay” rationale, the size of the fee suggests that the program is being marketed to people with an income of $130,000 per year, or more.
Along with the fee, the initiate must bring fruit, flowers and a white handkerchief. Perhaps the need to bring physical objects underscores the underlying transactional assumption, that to be involved with the movement’s programs and to gain the claimed benefits, one must bring something of substance to the table. Later, clearly, that substance is money, but at the beginning, physical offerings are also part of the exchange. Belying the movement’s claim that what it’s offering is some kind of eternal “knowledge” available to all, clearly the “knowledge” is only made available to those who can pay whatever they charge for it.
Less obvious is the time commitment. The initiation process, about eight hours in total over seven days, involves five group sessions outside of the “interview” and the initiation itself. Thereafter, one must meditate twenty minutes twice a day, and allow an additional few minutes’ time to finish meditation. What is that time worth? Perhaps the clearest way to put a price tag on that time is to consider, as I put forward above, that the movement’s target prospect makes $130,000 a year. Based even on a sixty hour work week, that comes out to about 42 dollars an hour. Given that TM requires a time commitment of at least fifty minutes a day - time that can’t be spent doing anything else - at that rate, TM costs 304 hours a year, and if that time is valued monetarily, that cost is, at least, an additional $12,750 a year.
Thus the program conditions the meditator towards the idea that involvement in the program involves ongoing expenditures of time and money, particularly when the current program becomes stale and the movement’s other products and programs become attractive. At the very high end is the movement’s ultimate product: the million-dollar residence course. While the cost and the trappings are in a different realm of price and ostentatiousness (or, perhaps, outrageousness), the underlying appeal of all the programs are the same. They offer the initiate the promise of control of various aspects of life that generally are not under conscious control.
(Continue to Part 6)
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