More TM Promises: cumulative, lasting, speedy?

Here is yet another lens through which to view Maharishi Mahesh's many promises.  He told us that regular practice of TM would lead to both continued and permanent improvements in ones life, and that attending TM retreats would lead to exponentially quicker growth.  But what were the actual results?  What were the results for me?  What were the results for you?


Cumulative results?    When I first learned TM, I felt calmer, more productive, more energetic.  Every day I felt better than the day before.  That continued for about 2 months.  After that, even though I kept meditating twice a day, I didn't feel any continued improvement.  I plateaued.  Mahesh promised us that by practicing TM twice a day, we were on our way toward "the unfoldment of our true potential," but after those first 2 months, I didn't notice any additional changes. 

Permanent results?    When I learned the TM-Sidhis technique, sometimes I felt euphoric, at one with the universe, more confident, joyful, loving and energetic.  But when I stopped doing the TM-Sidhis, I went back to feeling the same way I had felt before I had started.  (In addition, when I stopped, I went through a period where I felt emptiness and panic .  It felt like descriptions I have read of people withdrawing from opiates.  I suspect that the TM-Sidhis was activating a brain chemical similar to the one that opiates and addictive behaviors activate).

What about "rounding?"  "Rounding" is the procedure for meditating more than two times a day.  It is done on TM retreats ("residence courses").  In my day, one "round" consisted of yoga postures, then yogic breathing, then TM, then lying down.  Mahesh promised us that rounding exponentially speeded up one's growth.  That is, doing TM eight times in one weekend was supposed to lead to more personal growth than doing TM eight times over the course of four days.  But actually, I never saw any fast growth from residence courses.  I would often get relaxed on retreats, and the relaxedness would continue for a while after I returned.  After a a weekend retreat, I'd be mellow for 3 days; after a six-month retreat, I'd be mellow for about a month.  But after that, I'd be back to my usual self.

What about you?  Did TM fulfill its promises of cumulative benefits, lasting benefits, and more rapid benefits from rounding?    

Conference for Former Members of Groups

Announcement from the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA), a respected organization dealing with high-demand groups:


"ICSA will conduct a conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico November 6-8, 2015.  This conference will focus on the needs of former group members and families and will include a training track for mental health professionals.  Conference sessions will emphasize discussion so participants can address issues pertinent to their individual concerns.

The conference will take place at La Fonda on the Plaza, one of Santa Fe's finest hotels, located in the heart of the old city.

Santa Fe has been chosen in order to give ICSA's western supporters an opportunity to attend a conference closer to home.  It is also a lovely setting for those who come from other parts of the USA, Canada, and the world.

Speakers include some of the cultic studies field's most experienced mental health professionals, as well as former members and family members who will share their experiences.

Attend this conference if you are interested in how psychologically manipulative and demanding groups can hurt people and what can be done to help those who are harmed.  The agenda will address the needs of those seeking help and those who want to help others.  Among the topics to be explored are

·         What helps people leave cultic groups and relationships?
·         Dealing with cult-related trauma
·         Traumatizing narcissism and the psychology of cult leaders
·         Coping with triggers
·         Building relationships and communicating with the cult involved
·         After the cult: who am I
·         Support groups
·         Cults and the suppression of free speech
·         Exit counseling and conflict resolution
·         Spiritual issues in recovery
·         Cults and children
·         Case discussions for mental health professionals
·         Cultic dynamics in sex trafficking

Because Santa Fe is a “daytime” city, we have scheduled 2-hour lunch breaks so that attendees can enjoy walking around old Santa Fe, where there are numerous art galleries, museums, and quaint shops, as well as stunning Southwest architecture.  The hotel will permit the special conference rate 3 days pre- and postconference for those who wish to spend time touring Santa Fe and its environs.  Call La Fonda’s Reservations Department at 1-800-523-5002.

Please tell others about this conference.  We hope you join us!"

Online Information:  www.icsahome.com

Prison of Indoctrination - TMO

The author of this unsolicited contribution requests to remain publicly anonymous for now. 
This person was raised in the Transcendental Meditation Movement.

Being born into a TM Cult family has lasting impacts on relationships both physical and emotional, personal and working.

The broad strokes can be traced back to a few things, most noticeable in my eyes are: Jyotish, the blabberish of your entire life being predetermined and predictable, and the built in assumption that you must be with another cult member (read true believer), or convert the one you have into a true believer. 

This has had a devastating effect on my relationships with non-TM friends, with girl friends, and significant others. How? 

Growing up as a second generation TM kid, you were constantly told what a special gift to be born into a family of yogi's, truly amazing, and that you, and others born into TMO families would bring about heaven on earth. 

The constant reinforcement through TM schools engrained in the pschye that no happiness would be possible, and no-one would truly know you unless they also were helping "heaven on earth" eventuate by joining the TMO. This ingrained brainwashing led to the brink of sex addiction - seeking a connection, but never allowing any emotional openness because "it would never lead to anything, they aren't TMO". 

Looking back, the callous way this destroyed any playful emotional connections, and removed any possible seeds of a relationship with meaning to flourish is the saddest thing to me. A 3 year relationship finally ended on the back of mental turmoil - I couldn't see her embracing the TMO, and closed myself off, ending it suddenly and refusing any chance of reconciliation. This relationship lasted this long almost in spite of myself - I was experiencing significant dissonance and attempted to live a "normal life", not meditating, making friends not within the TMO, and making a go of it. 

In spite of all this, I was conflicted throughout, wrestling with truly giving in and having a relationship about us, and not her or my beliefs. I failed, it failed, and I reverted back to several years of emotionally restricted physical encounters, despairing of finding someone "on my level" and fully TMO. 

Regular lectures from my TMO invested father throughout this period on how important it was to have a wife of the same background and values (read TMO faithful) were endured during this time, including strong positive reinforcement when I ended the 3 year relationship, saying it was the right decision, and discouraging me from second-guessing myself. 

Jyotish was the counter-punch one-two blow that landed regularly in conduction with the conditioning. Being told throughout childhood and adulthood that my life would be hard, difficult, and unhappiness would reign if my main focus wasn't on the spiritual side of life (read TMO only, no other), due to my particular chart combination, built in another reason to shut down any connection that wasn't interested in TM.

It took a lot to break that, to the point that the delightful person I'm married to was pre-emptively dumped after a month of dating because I couldn't see her becoming part of the TMO. Thankfully she didn't take no for an answer and persevered with me, held on even through being coerced into learning TM (she felt nothing, had no positive effects, and it bored her), and almost pushed into becoming a teacher of ™. 

The dissonance I experienced between the conditioning of being born into the TM Cult and cold, hard, beautiful reality finally broke through the veil and started the exiting process that is filling me with more self awareness than any of Mahesh's sleepfest mumbles ever did. 

Boston-Area Cult Recovery Group Starts Jan. 26, 2013

I want to share with our readers this email that I recently received from the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA):

"ICSA will soon begin two-hour meetings in the Boston area.  The meetings will take place at MeadowHaven, a residential facility for former group members that is located about 25 miles south of Boston.  The meetings will be directed by MeadowHaven's founders, Robert Pardon and Judy Pardon.  The meetings will be educational yet supportive.  The plan is to explore a particular topic, e.g., resolving trauma, recovering from an aberrational Christian group, for 8 meetings, and then to explore another topic.  Former members of any high-control or cultic group are welcome.  Through these meetings, participants can acquire conceptual tools to help them understand troubling issues, get to know others wrestling with similar problems, improve communication skills, and facilitate healing.  An introductory meeting will take place at MeadowHaven on January 26, 2013 (Saturday) from 9:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M.  (URL for directions:  http://www.meadowhaven.org/place.html).  At this meeting, participants can discuss possible topic areas that the first series of meetings can cover and decide on dates and times for subsequent meetings.

Although this first group is designed for former group members, ICSA also hopes to provide supportive groups for family members in the Boston area, if there is sufficient demand.  If you are interested in attending the former member group or in starting a family group, please e-mail ICSA at: mail@icsamail.com.

Please tell others who might be interested in these meetings, especially if you think they are not on our mailing list."

Unhooking From Maharishi's Teachings: Laurie Interviews Sudarsha about the Puja (Ceremony)

I (Laurie) left TM 30 years ago, after 10 years in the TM movement, and I have been "deprogramming" myself ever since. I now believe that everything I was taught on the TM Teacher Training Course while I was "rounding" (meditating many times a day) bypassed my critical thinking, and went straight into my belief system. Therefore, even today I am still finding unexamined beliefs inside myself that hook me into Mahesh Prasad Varma's system. (According to Wikipedia, "Mahesh Prasad Varma" may be Maharishi's given name.)

One of those beliefs was that the puja had magical powers. Mr. Varma told us that the word "puja" translates as "traditional ceremony of gratitude," but most other translators say it means "worship". On my TM Teacher Training Course in La Antilla, Spain, in 1974, Mr. Varma taught us that the puja must be performed before the person is instructed in TM. Without it, he said, TM cannot be successfully learned or practiced. He gave quasi-scientific and quasi-mystical reasons why this was so; and I was left with fear and trembling for the sacred, God-given puja.

Therefore, it was helpful to my recovery to learn that after his disillusionment with Mr. Varma's movement, Sudarsha, (one of the co-editors of TM-Free), successfully instructed many people in TM without first chanting the puja. I thought it might be helpful to other readers recovery too, to read about this, so I decided to interview Sudarsha. Here goes:

Laurie: How did you first hear of TM?

Sudarsha: I remember it like it was yesterday! It was in May of 1968. I had just finished another miserable day teaching high school English, and I decided to go for a walk rather than immediately take the bus home. I wandered into a drugstore, and there on a book rack was this childishly cuddly guy draped in white on the cover of a book. For some reason, I was fascinated and I bought it.

That night, I started to read it. He had written, "To be is to live." Those words struck me like lightening. I sat up straight and confirmed to myself, "This is it! This is what I've been searching for!" Sadly, the book didn't actually teach me anything. It just theorized and theorized. The title? "The Science of Being and Art of Living" by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I felt hooked. Now I believe that I was more hooked by to have that final secret of how to do it than anything else. I wanted to learn to do this. Cleverly, Mahesh could rope us in by coming so close to telling us the secret, but just stopping short.

A week or so later, I found and bought an LP (a vinyl record - remember those?) of Mahesh giving a talk. His voice sounded so captivating. There was an address and phone number on the record sleeve. I phoned and made an appointment to learn TM.

L: What results did you get from TM?

S: Same results as everyone else: in the beginning TM felt good. I felt a sense of relief. As I think back on it now, I realize that "relief" is quite different from the "pure consciousness" or "source of thought" that Mahesh was promising, but I mistook the relief for what he was promising. Ultimately, I think it all comes back to "me": my understanding, my misunderstanding, my expectations, my desires, my greeds. But being a schoolteacher was stressful, and I was stressed. TM was a contrast to that, so it felt good.

L: What made you decide to become an initiator?

S: TM was easy to do and it felt good. It was only many years later that I began to believe that it operated on the basis of contrast and little more. Back then, though, I thought that this was good, worthwhile, valuable, a lot more satisfying than what I was currently doing. And, into the bargain, a lot more valuable to others. So I went to Estes Park, Colorado, USA, in 1970 and took the TM Teacher Training Course.

L: What was your understanding at that time of the reason for doing the puja?

S: That's complicated. It was what we were supposed to do; it was what Mahesh taught us; it somehow empowered us to "give" the mantra - he said it allowed us to pick up the mantra at the finest level. It was special, maybe even sacred.

But when I was finally given that piece of paper with the mantras written on it, and saw that they were selected not by some deep psycho-spiritual-physiological reasoning, but just by age and gender - well! There was a conflict! Something wasn't making sense, and it was very difficult to think about that, when I really wanted to teach TM because I thought it was really a good thing.

L: From today's vantage point, what do you think the puja is really about, or what is its purpose?

S: The puja was a nice touch. I suppose it was Mahesh's way of trying to flaunt his so-called tremendous devotion to Guru Dev. We know from what Paul Mason has written on his website about Guru Dev that some pundit wrote the puja for Guru Dev, and Guru Dev didn't like it. He said to tie it to a stone and throw it into the Ganges. Which the pundit did. Mahesh said, and I don't remember where, that he dove in and rescued it.

Some of the earliest initiators to be trained in India by Mahesh learned an ending which Mahesh later changed, probably in the early 1960's. Also, when I learned the puja, in 1968, there were only three parts to it: the Sanskrit words, the English translation and the movements we made with our hands, etc.

L: By 1974, when I learned it on my TM Teacher Training Course, there was also a fourth part, called "puja feeling." Mr. Varma said all four parts were essential for the puja to "work." So this whole business of "the purity of the teaching" and "doing the puja to preserve the purity of the teaching" is suspect.

S: I think now that what the puja actually does is simply what all ceremonies do: it draws attention away from everything else. Look how the Roman Catholic Church used the Mass to manipulate people all through the Middle Ages. In teaching TM, the puja is very useful because it is so strange - at least to Westerners - at least it was strange when TM hit the West in the 1960's. People being instructed get completely disoriented. They can't figure out what is going on. This is useful, because when the teacher says a mantra and asks the person to start repeating it, the person does so in a completely non-judgmental state. I believe this is one of the reasons why the first TM experience is so spectacular. It's a real contrast to how you were feeling an hour ago when you were walking to the TM Center.

L: How many people did you initiate using the puja?

S: Something near 800.

L: What experience did those students have with TM?

S: They had the prescribed experience, much like my own initial experience: it felt good, they experienced deep rest. I wonder now if what they experienced wasn't deep rest, but a contrast from their normal way of feeling, which they mistook for "deep rest," because that's what the TM teachers told them they would experience.

L: What led you to consider teaching TM without the puja?

S: That's a really tough question, Laurie, because I don't really remember all the details. I do remember being dissatisfied with what Mahesh had done with TM: adding the Science of Creative Intelligence, Six-Month Courses, Age of Enlightenment techniques, sidhi nonsense. It was obvious to me that the steps of initiation were the only thing that was useful, to lead an individual into a very quiet state so that thinking the mantra would be easy.

After I quit teaching at the TM Center, some friends showed an interest in TM. So I said, "OK, let's just sit quietly and I'll teach you how to do it," and very off-handedly did the steps of initiation starting with the "open the eyes; close the eyes" business from the checking notes. The results were the same. People were happy with the results. Another one of Mahesh's dogmatic superstitions bit the dust.

L: How many people did you instruct without the puja?

S: Maybe 25 or 30. I don't really remember. Those were very traumatic days. I was feeling very sad that I had wasted three months learning to teach TM when anyone could learn how to teach it in a weekend. All the hubbub of rounding for three months had just been brainwashing - or whatever the correct word for that is these days.

L: Were you nervous or guilty or scared about teaching TM without the puja? I know I would have been.

S: No. I hadn't bought into the superstitions of Maheshism. If nothing else, those two years when I was on TM's international staff intimately working side by side with Mahesh demonstrated to me, beyond any doubt, that Mahesh was making it up as he went along. There was no evidence at all that he was any kind of superhuman. Granted, he was very intelligent and quick-witted, and had a remarkably retentive memory. But so do lots of "normal" human beings. What Mahesh had that other people didn't have was the aura of specialness. That is to say, our attribution of mystical specialness to him . He let us believe that he had all sorts of knowledge and "blessings" from Guru Dev. Mahesh was also extraordinarily clever, and used his cleverness to manipulate others. He had a very amoral approach to what he did: if it benefitted his agenda, it was OK.

So, since I came to the conclusion that Mahesh was very human indeed - from direct contact with him - no, I had no nervousness, guilt or fear at all about dropping the puja. And as it turned out, dropping the puja had no effect on the learning or the practice of TM.

L: How did you choose the mantra for the non-puja initiates?

S: Same as I was taught. For some reason, back then it never occurred to me to experiment with mantras. How curious, because Mahesh himself had said that "any word would do," but back then, I only knew the mantras he taught me at Estes Park. I was still unable to think outside the box in this regard.

L: What results did the non-puja students have?

S: Same as all the people I taught the "orthodox" way.

L: Did they keep up with meditating? Did you "check" their meditations?

S: They all got checked, non-puja students and puja students alike. Both groups had the same outcomes: some continued , some said they thought it was silly, some said they didn't have time, some said it quit working....

L: Did you tell them what the mantras really meant?

S: Back then I didn't know what they meant. I found that out later.

L: Thanks so much, Sudarsha, for letting me interview you.

S: It was my pleasure, sort of. This is stuff people have a right to know. Mahesh was using his cleverness, his powers of persuasion, his amoral manipulation of others, without regard to their safety, well-being, or any other aspect of their lives. He simply used people for his own ends, something which is never taught or done by legitimate teachers.

I wonder if my answers are typical. I would find it really interesting - perhaps we could do a survey - to see how many other initiators discovered that the whole puja thing was just part of the phobia-induction that Mahesh used to make our minds like his.

More Thoughts on Recovering from Transcendental Meditation

Here are a few questions that I thought were interesting to ponder. I have written my own answers below. I invite you to think about your own experiences, and if you'd like, to share your stories. Anonymous replies are fine!

1. Did you experience problems due to TM? If so, what were they?

After I left TM, I experienced extreme anxiety and depression. I also had "floating" episodes, where I reverted to believing the entire panoply of TM beliefs.

2. What helped you heal?

Learning about "mind control" and how it worked helped a lot. I did lots of reading. Discovering how easy it is to induce an altered state of reduced critical thinking in someone was pivotal.

Also, for many years I attended a monthly support group for former cult members. This was extremely helpful. Also, I attended a few cult recovery conferences.

Two linchpins that continued to keep my anxiety, depression and floating alive even after 20 years of working to recover from TM were (1) the belief that I was making a serious mistake by not doing TM, and (2) my belief that Maharishi was superhuman and therefore should be followed. When I discovered the internet, I read anti-TM websites. There I learned that researchers had lied about the benefits of TM, and that people who knew Maharishi on a personal level reported what a flawed human being he was. These two pieces of information broke the grip of belief. It was stuff I couldn't have learned no matter how much I read about mind control.

Also, for years I had been looking for other former TM teachers to compare notes with. Finding TM-Free Blog was a blessing for me. When I finally had other former TMers to share my stories with, I ceased obsessively carrying them around in my head, and my TM beliefs finally left.

Psychotherapy was extremely helpful in providing support and grounding and helping my general mood and life issues, but only somewhat helpful around the TM stuff.

3. What didn't help you heal?

I got voluntary exit counseling about 10 years after leaving TM, but it really didn't help much. Perhaps that was because I had already learned most of the stuff they were telling me, mostly about mind control, I think.

4.What well-meaning advice did people give you that did not help you heal?

At one of the cult-recovery conferences I attended, we had a panel of priests, ministers and rabbis who tried to answer our questions about spirituality. One of the panelists started waxing euphoric about how humans are by nature spiritual, and how God loves us. I shuffled restlessly and started dissociating as I was lectured at. Fortunately I wasn't the only one. One former cult member interrupted him and said, "This isn't helpful to us. We were spiritually fucked by these organizations. Some of us were physically fucked too. It is not helpful for us to have to sit through you lecturing us about this." She did go on to explain, (correctly I believe,) that after leaving a cult, a person is best off avoiding religion for a few years, until they are capable of not "floating," and ended by saying, "If there really is a God out there who is all-knowing and all-compassionate, then He knows what I've gone through, and He isn't going to be offended if I keep away from religion for as many years as it takes for me to heal."

Another well-meaning person, a minister-in-training whom I met at a Unitarian-Universalist retreat (i.e. she should have known better, in my opinion) listened to my agonized story of my flashbacks, anxiety, depression, confusion, etc. and wrote me a letter about the value of forgiveness and of letting go, and how "holding on" and not learning from one's mistakes keeps one from moving on. I think she was upset by my still being in so much pain after 9 years. I felt judged, criticized, and not understood. I wrote her back explaining that mind control is not a matter of "will" but a physical change in the brain, and that so long as I was still suffering emotionally, and could barely think straight due to brainwashing, it was physically impossible to "forgive" and "put it behind me."

5. Have you ever successfully helped someone heal from their experiences with TM (or from some other group?) What specifically did you do that helped them?

About 5 year after I left TM, I went to a restaurant for dinner with my sister's ex-boyfriend. She and he had been involved in TM together, and we met in order to discuss (i.e., criticize) TM. A woman at the next table came over and introduced herself as a Sidha, and said that she couldn't help overhearing our conversation. I panicked, expecting to be criticized and to start floating, but she soon made clear that she was very unhappy with TM, and was desperately seeking outside support, and a way to get out of TM. We invited her to sit and talk with us, and exchanged phone numbers, and she ended up attending the former cult member support group that I attended.

The former cult member support group had people who had left all sorts of cults, not just TM. One cult I learned about at the group was the Boston Church of Christ. (Not to be confused with the United Church of Christ or the Church of Christ, which are non-cult Protestant denominations.) Soon after, I attended a party, where I met someone who told me that he was starting to get involved with the Boston Church of Christ and "needed to make a soul-impacting decision very soon." It was an easy intervention for me, because he wasn't thoroughly "in"/brainwashed yet. I told him that I knew some people who had been in the BCC, and had left, and had come to realize that it was a destructive cult. I suggested that before he give his life to that church, that he have a chance to hear the other side of the story, and then he could make a more informed decision. He agreed, so I put him in touch with a few former BCC'ers. I am happy to say that after talking with them, he decided the BCC was a destructive organization, and didn't join.

6. Have you ever seriously tried and failed to get someone out of TM (or some other group)? What did you do? What happened? What advice would you give to someone in this position?

I've never had this experience. Lucky me.

7. Anything else you'd like to share from your experiences?

You are all brave and courageous and have all survived a lot! I tip my hat to you all! Please feel free share your thoughts and experiences below, if you'd like.

Transcendental Meditation and an Interrupted Life

Sometimes young adults make plans for what they intend to do with their lives. If you are a middle-class American, your plan may have looked something like this: attend college in my teens and 20's, attend graduate school in my 20's, start my career in my 20's, get married in my 20's, buy a home in my 30's, have children in my 30's...." Or maybe you had a different set of plans for your life.

Some people had a plan set up, and then TM came into their life, and somehow, their plan changed. Some people put their plan on hold or gave up their plan, and became deeply involved in TM (perhaps by becoming a TM teachers, or by working for the movement full time as a volunteer).

Some people who became deeply involved with TM have been satisfied with the life choice they made. But others spent a few - or many - years of their lives in the TM movement and then decided they wanted to leave. Some of them found that their time in TM caused a disruption in their life plan. For some, their originals plans were simply delayed by the years that they were involved in TM. For others, the rent in their lives lasted long after they gave up TM (for example, if the time spent in TM was followed by years of post-cult trauma syndrome.) For others, the original dream had to be modified due to the time spent in TM (for instance, if the person's life dream was to become a full professor, but after leaving the TMO they were now behind others their own age on the career ladder, and only made it to assistant professor.) For others, their dreams were not just deferred but now unobtainable, (for instance, by delaying raising a family for the sake of TM, and when they left the movement, being past child-bearing age.)

So, some of us have a great deal of grieving to do over the losses in our lives and of our dreams that we sustained due to our involvement in the TMO.

You may find that it helps you move through the grieving process and get on with your life by sharing some of your personal stories here - the life plans you once had, and how your goals were delayed or rendered impossible to achieve due to your involvement in TM. Even if you left TM many years ago, you may still have unfinished grieving to do. So, if you'd like, share your personal stories in the "Comments" section below. These stories may be very personal, so take care of yourself, and feel free to write anonymously.

(This post was inspired by John Knapp, the founder of TM-Free Blog, who has written about the losses we sustain due to time spent in a "toxic group"; and by Karina, one of TM-Free Blog's regular readers and commenters, who suggested this as a good topic for a post. Thanks, John and Karina.)

Questioning my real motives – why did I start TM, why did I leave

I have taken a couple of comments from other sections of this Blog to set up this new thread where, if anyone wishes, s/he may talk about the why’s of starting TM and, if it is the case, the why’s of deciding to leave either the whole TMO shtick or just TM or meditation altogether … and, should anyone wish, to discuss what s/he is doing now, whether some other school of meditation, some other yogic practice or other religious pursuit.

It might also be useful if people could tell us how they feel now in relation to how they remember feeling when they were doing TM/TMSP.

Here follows comments previously made:

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Seeker noted I’m beginning to question my real motives for being here -

I’d like to know more about everyone’s feelings of “motives” for being here. I’ll start: I thought, believed, deeply, personally felt devotion to Mahesh because I thought (on the basis of almost no experience of any kind) that I had found something precious, monumental, real and lasting. This, as it happens, turned out to be false. It simply is not so. Thank you, Vaj, for clarifying this, above, for exactly what it is in a far better writing fashion than my own poor powers of explication could ever manage.

So I forgot about TM and all things Maheshism for a long time and went in search of more and clearer experience and understanding.

Then, as one does, I sort of re-discovered TM and things Maheshistic via John’s excellent Trancenet and, as things are so oft want to do, one thing led to another and here’s TM-Free Blog where I am finding out more and more about how disappointing TM/Maheshism has been for people who didn’t find wearing “transcendental” (ought I to have said vedic ?) blinders all that satisfactory.

When Mahesh said he made his mind like Guru Dev’s, I cannot now help but consider that, like a politician, he was actually saying, I figured out how to stay on his good side, how to manipulate him and his surroundings. When I hear Mahesh sayI could adjust his table, aside from wondering why he talked like an idiot, I now understand him to be saying, not unlike a politician, I wanted to get into his room and snoop around.

When I read Paul Mason’s excellent material on Guru Dev, I read about a truly committed individual who was willing to give up everything in his search for something transcendent to the materialistic and “gotta have” world of the flesh — and actually found something that permeated his every word and action. Obviously I only know what I read; I wasn’t present in the Ashram to see how he treated Mahesh who bitched that Guru Dev had been very hard on him and he wowed (why couldn’t the man pronounce his v’s ???) he’d never be as hard on any of his disciples as Guru Dev had been on him. What is the real message there? He got caught again and again trying to manipulate others, to gain personal favours????

The people I knew in India who had attended Guru Dev’s public talks and even been a bit closer to Guru Dev than that were profoundly moved by Guru Dev’s presence and his teachings. They also knew/remembered Mahesh from those days but would absolutely not talk about him. While reasons for this are many and varied, I cannot help but consider that, although Mahesh said he made his mind like Guru Dev’s, the disparity between the two men was blatant, patently noticeable and not at all what Mahesh let us believe.

Aside from sharing my own experiences of Mahesh who liked to tell the truth (“the actor can play god better than god”) and hide his motives in plain sight (“I knew something that would make all the people happy”*), I have found everyone’s contribution to this Blog insightful with respect to clarifying my own experiences of Mahesh and his very, very watered down teachings (yep, Hinduism light, Hinduism for people who’ll believe anything I tell them).

There’s more out there. There are deeper experiences of profound rest and profound wakefulness; there are meaningful teachings out there that exist only for the purpose of helping the individual find her or his own transcendent reality.

____________

* and I knew I could get them to pay a fancy price for it, too

Sudarsha | 06.22.09 - 4:46 pm | #

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Sudarsha, why don’t you start the thread (but not open...give it a title) and use your comment above as the introductory article? Then it can be archived so that we can find it to remind ourselves of why we are here. Also, comments with regard to this won’t steer our attention away from this article under which they now appear...did that make any sense? It’s just a suggestion and I certainly have a few things that I’d like to contribute.

Seeker | 06.22.09 - 5:21 pm | #

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Here’s my 2 rupees (typed while eating lunch at my computer.) Sudarsha, yes, please --- open a thread. Our individual motives here have been questioned more than a time or two (as in “Get a life!” type remarks) by some drop-in TMO-TBers. Let’s open a specific thread on the topic so that they can really have something to chew on!

Karina | 06.22.09 - 5:35 pm | #

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Exellent idea Sudarsha! I was 19 years old when I met MMY, followed him for a couple of years in Europe and “initiated” more than 1000 in a few years and walked away when the powerprogram of siddhis were introduced 1976. Married the most beautiful initiator, had 3 children, had our sex, redwine, meat and holidays. We both live professional lifes in our chosen fields, trying to help fellow humans in trouble to the best of our abilities. Now, children away, and once more we go to India several times a year.... because we are having a good time. Really no problem with TM, Guru Dev or even MMY but BIG problem with organisations. They are like cancer, necrotizising from within...sending out their metastasis in many directions.

I am here at intervals simply because I love the truth... that is my definition of a seeker, might be a side effect of meditating on a Saraswati bijmantra for many years... who knows?, and is spirituality not never to be caught in a static web? That is at least my beliefsystem for the time being. As the danish mystic Emanuel Sörensen alias Sunyata puts it:

Emanuel was a simple man from Denmark.

“I did not belong to any cliques or creed.

I was not attracted to their magnetism.

What words will you use, when you, walking the

path alone, meet crossroad souls?

This Lion spontaneously

roared out his own Wu! language.

I am not alone! he would proclaim... I am all-one!

Joyous ease, innerstanding, delightful uncertainty, affectionate detachment.

Emanuel´s words are easy to innerstand”

However, I had my ups and downs and sadnesses, will properbly have in the future, and I love to hear how you are all doing!

Bjarne Hansen | 06.23.09 - 4:09 am | #