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This is my favorite topic.
What ARE the actual benfits of meditation?
A good way to start a battle is to mention long-term TMers or people from other Traditions that can only be described of as a MESS. You will either get a semi-knowledgable dissertation on Karma residue or told that you are too unevolved to even discuss the issue.
Plain & simple - some people are just screwed up big time regardless of their meditative practises.
Abusive behaviors of ALL sorts are dismissed. The internet has several web sites with significant information about the Bad Boys & Girls of Zen, Yoga or whatever.
Official line - ALL LIES.
Why bother to discuss.
Successfull people will be successfull.
Others will be less so.
Ed,
I think there is a presumption that there must be proven tangible benefits from an activity - is this an example of 'scientific' thinking? For many, successfully transcending thought would be an achievement in itself. However, I guess the question arises as to what effect, if any, transcending actually has on an individual.
Early on in Maharishi's attempts to spread the message of meditation, a newspaper article dubbed this meditation a 'Non-medicinal tranquiliser' - personally, I think that is about right.
Paul
What is interesting is that different paradigms have different meditations. For example in Tibetian Buddhism meditation is a "method for acquainting our mind with virtue." An object is selected for example "great compassion." Then using the intellect the object is contemplated. In the second phase called "placement" the object produces a result. This could be an idea or a feeling which is then focused on one-pointedly. No transcendent field of pure awareness; in Buddhism that is still in the formless realm of samasara...
Paul you mention smokin marijuana as if it’s a bad thang! Personally I quit in 1972 with the understandin that it was debtreemental to my meditation exploits. But I used to enjoy it back when one rolled joint was enough to get a man ten to fifteen years in the Huntsville Pen. There was a time I could smoke a little weed and see through walls! One time I saw a local catholic priest mouth kissin the wife of one of my professors. This was back when I was in school! Sure enough it became a school scandal and the priest ended up defrocked and driving short haul truck for a livin! Another time I was listenin to a Neil Diamond song on the AM radio and I could see that music comin out of the speaker in streams and shapes of color. After all these 35 years I have never questioned that smoking this pot was no good for me. Now I’m wonderin…
Chuck, I wasn't saying that smoking marijuana was bad, anymore than I was saying alcohol or sex are bad. No, what I was saying was that I don't believe meditating necessarilly takes away one's appetite for any of these things. The TM philosophy indicates that there is a model of behaviour towards which you will naturally go if you meditate. I say that if you don't know what the model is then you might well not go towards it.
Paul, you said.."I don't believe meditating necessarilly takes away one's appetite..." Aint it the truth! I remember bein so horny I could barely stand myself on all my TM courses! And bein horny does a fat man no good whatsoever! When I went to talk to my pert little course leader--on SCI at Livingston Manor-- she told me she had never heard of such a thing! I was reduced to opening my window and geting handfuls of snow to pack my chuckmeister in. The cold did help for a while! Appetite for food? Forget about it... I chowed down like a brood hog at these same course until 1978 when the food started gettin so bad it was hardly worth eatin! Maybe someone could do a postin on how good the food used to be on TM courses!
Chuck-Obviously you weren't practicing all of Patanjali's 8 limbs of Yoga as rcommended by MMY "......each limb is designed to create the state of Yoga in the sphere of life to which it relates" MMY Gita appendix/under Yoga.
Perhaps if you had been making an effort to practice Yama and Niyama (proscriptions and prescriptions)your efforts would have yielded better results, did you expect God to do *everything*?
Hell yes, Billy, I do expect God to do everythang! Quite an assumption you make about this humble son of the soil! I did everthang I was told to do. One thang I have come to expect is you shootin off your gobb about what you know not of! You would have made a fine TM course administrator, boy! The idea that you never got horny at these courses comes at no surprise to me, though Billy Goat!
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
Russell's Teapot
But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
Thanks "a different anonymous" for finding Russell's Teapot, this little bit sure hits the Mahesh's nail square on the thingy.
Maheshism has become a fundamentalist's belief system, unchallengable because so many smug twits can recite his feckless pablum. I remember him wanting to get TM into China "before" Mao died and Maoist thinking became dogma. Simple solution, make your own tripe dogma!
An interesting take on Russell's Teapot, Sudarsha. People stick to dogma like ants to a spill of honey. Nothing can dissuade them. They are doomed, yet they proclaim their victory. A little known nineteenth century politician who was of a scientific bent of mind had this to say:
Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment. - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It seems to me that it fairly well defines those who preach the dogma of some false yogi, some self-proclaimed evangelist more full of himself than ability.
a different anonymous said..."I hope that you will listen..."
I hear ya loud and clear, different. My wife and my mule, Da Free Jack, has been tellin me the same thang for years!
You need to listen harder, Chuck. I didn't say, Krishnamurti said. There's a significant difference
You can't blame a man for his confusion, a different anonymous... There ain't a whole lot of difference between "a different anonymous" and "a significant difference"! I tried to read a book by this Krishnamurti fellow but I couldn't follow it. It's like readin a book on Einstein. At some point they tell you if you haven't understood it by now you may as well read somethin by LOUIS L’AMOUR! Also my good man, hearin ain't that easy when you get to be Betty's and my age! Youre always battlin wax build up. I can't speak for Betty or some of these other fellas around here but I am overwhelmed with that villain of natural hearin---rampagin growth of ear hair! The Good Lord takes from one spot and overpopulates another... Who are we to contend with that kind of cosmic power?!
So the Canadian's name was Robin Carlson. I never saw him but he made quite an impression in his time. The fact that noone here seems to know anything about him makes me wonder if one of the posters here IS Robin Carlson. But, like Chuck, I have been wrong before. Chuck, please stay away from my ears.
This site is worth reading just for the humor!
Wifey
Hi, Betty - I asked a friend who had been involved with Carlsen; this is his response.
Carlsen (with an “sen”) was a cult leader in Victoria BC. He claimed to have become enlightened on a course in Switzerland.
The essence of his teaching was that it was demonic influence that kept people from enlightenment. He had been given the power and the destiny to “confront the demonic” in people, to free people of these demonic influence. Unfortunately, we are all infested with lots of demons so there was no end to the need to attend his courses, have ones demons confronted, and lose a few of them in the process. This is amazingly like the OT3 teachings in Scientology.
I believe that he really believed this stuff.
He was extraordinarily charismatic and creative. His “seminars” consisted of what amounted to performance art. He kept the attendees enthralled throughout the seminar, which usually was a weekend but a few times was an entire week. He would confront the demonic in one person at a time, presenting the person with a myriad of creative verbal input that was impossible for a person to process completely. The person’s intellect would therefore eventually shut down and they would have the expected feeling of release and euphoria.
In reality it amounted to Large Groups Awareness Training (LGAT), similar to “est”, which is now called “Landmark Forums” and which itself is a cult.
Carlsen (with an “sen”) was a cult leader in Victoria BC. He claimed to have become enlightened on a course in Switzerland.
I'm virtually positive the TM guy who claimed to be enlightened and started his own cult was Robin Carlson, not Carlsen.
There may be some confusion here with a Robin Woodsworth Carlsen, also a Canadian, a scholar who seems to be an expert on Islam and Iran. He's written quite a few books on those topics, but also several having to do with enlightenment (at least on the basis of their titles).
So it's understandable how they would get mixed up, but they are apparently two different individuals.
Thanks, Sudarsha. Considering how many people were involved with this man and how completely he "went away", it makes me wonder if either he sincerely believed he wasn't being effective anymore in his exorcisms, or if the TM movement put enough pressure on him to get him to quit, as in what became of Ross Perot…
I remember old Rick Stanley tellin me that he had gone to a Robin Carlson/sen meeting there in Fairfield. I believe he was supposed to report back to his handlers what was goin on there and who he could add to the growin black list! Old Rick who was and may still be a hell of a butt loop said he was swarmed by the folks there and they were beatin on him to try to get the demons out! I could have told them they could have beat on him all day without gettin to the end of those demons. Wonder what that old bastard is doin now?
Sorry I didn't know anything about Carlsen myself, Betty. One of these days another of our editors will post more. My friend had spent a year or something with Carlsen somewhere in BC.
I'm curious how you come to know or know about him. He's typical, I suppose, of the charismatic types who recognize the power to be had in the pretence of having the key to "salvation".
I remember Googling Carlsen many years ago and finding a recording. Rather chilling, actually.
I heard about him when I moved to Fairfield in the early 80's. It seemed that a number of smaller centers within driving distance of Fairfield "went over" to Carlsen. I never saw or read anything by him but it was interesting to have him challenging MMY in his own domain. I do remember helping get one of the larger buildings ready for MMY when he came for the 7000 course. There were passwords and heavily armed guards to protect MMY from the Carlsen threat. Quite silly I thought at the time. But maybe this guy was sincere and not just out for personal power and glory. Even St Francis would look like a cult leader these days.
"went over" to Carlsen
That would be *CarlSON*, Betty.
Judy, since the poor bastard has probably lot his mind doin TM, I think we should let him spell his name which ever way pleases him at the moment. Sometimes he's Carlson sometime sen. Either way he's crazyer than red ants in a gas fire!
I lived in Fairfield in the early 80's, and in the summer of 82 I met a man named Robin Woodsworth CarlSEN who was leader of an offshoot movement of TM. Same guy who wrote the book The Imam and his Islamic Revolution and a book about Enlightenment, all published by his own press, Snow Man Press. Hailed from Vancouver. Almost all my interactions were with his followers; I spoke briefly with him one night but it was not an entirely pleasant experience - Robin was always watching to unbalance the other person, even in casual conversation. I watched numerous tapes of his seminars, read his book on Enlightenment. Robin CarlSEN claimed enlightenment, preached "the demonic", took people through est like experiences to expose the demons, was very charismatic and in my opinion, brilliant but unstable. Same guy that the MIU establishment was paranoid about. There was no Robin CarlSON that I know of. The charismatic cult leader Robin and the Islamic expert Robin are the exact same dude.
Chuck asked about Rick Stanley.
Rick is as talented as ever:
http://iptv.org/lii/feature.cfm?...45&
showNum=1415
http://www.celticmp3s.com/free/2...e-by-
rick.shtml
http://www.tagtuner.com/music/al...s/Rick-Stanley/
http://www.saradainc.com/
ricksta...ickstanley.html
His family had a rough go of it.
g
also:
World Teacher Seminar (Robin Carlsen)
at http://www.cesnur.org/2001/CAN/a.../
appendix_B.htm
for what it's worth
I'm "virtually positive", whatever the hell that means, that this trumps wh'sserface
Same guy who wrote the book The Imam and his Islamic Revolution and a book about Enlightenment, all published by his own press, Snow Man Press.
OK, I give. If the Islamic scholar who published via Snow Man Press was also into TM and tried to start his own cult, then they must be the same dude; and either TMers have been spelling the name wrong all these years, or he spelled it two different ways.
Thanks for the specifics.
forgot to provide Rick's direct contact site, for those interested:
http://www.celticharps.com/
sorry,
g 
Thanks, Gina. Hard to believe a guy can talented with such an eye and ear for beauty and be such a butt wipe at the same time!
Rick's a good guy - as are most 'Ru's.
Just another family adversely affected by M's "blissful" indoctrination. Many of us "been there" w/ truly sad results. Intelligence and creativity are not protective factors (regretably) to indoctrination susceptibility. Those not so sadly affected can laugh at community humor - some IS hystericly funny!
I'll spare Rick's story; he's an old friend. If you knew him, he's probably enjoy hearing from you.
best to all, g
Gina said..."Rick's a good guy..."
Gina, this sorry son of the soil is truly humbled by your good heartedness! Mayhaps my less than stellular experiences with Rick were not descriptive of his total nature! However I hardly think it's realistic to blame Maharisky for all the trials and tribulations of Rick and family. Even I myself brought a lot of family baggage to the TM table! I doubt if Rick and co were without prior family damage...
Gina, some of us have never been to the States let alone Fairfield, and the use of the word 'Ru' just has us reaching for our googles. At first it seemed likely to be 'roo' as in 'kangaroo', on account of the leaping about of the TM-Sidhi's. But I now understand it is a corruption of the word 'guru' and is applied to meditators who practice TM. Funny that anyone would think that Maharishi was a guru, I wonder where they got that idea - because a whole load of people worship him?
Paul I believe it was the Fairfield town folks or "townies" who branded us as RUs. Little unwashed Iowan children used to shout that nomiker at yours truly as I rode my oversized 3 wheel trike around the square!
I remember Rick from my TTC. We had nearly played the surface off our LP of his recording of the puja, so I was literally awe struck at being in his presence.
But I haven't heard a word about Rick since then, not until today. Many thanks, Gina.
Does anyone know if that old recording is somehow, somewhere available. It was almost heartbreakingly beautiful and still is in my memory.
Chuck said..."as I rode my oversized 3 wheel trike around the square!"
So that was you, Chuck? I have a hazy memory of somone like that, or maybe it's a false memory or a horrific LSD flashback...
Betty, if your horrifficc flash back is of a hog on ice wearin an antique cowbot hat and boots, that could very well be yours truly! But I couldn't swear to it on the Bible...
'Ru originally short for Gu-RU (w/ an Iowan accent on second syllable)
I was first "Goo-RU" in FF High (before MSAE). Used to be taunted in the halls.
Was later shortened to 'Ru.
When hopping began,.. it became 'Roo referring to kangaroo-like hoping.
Rick's music available for purchase online.
g
Paul said 'Funny that anyone would think that Maharishi was a guru, I wonder where they got that idea '
I remember being at some festival or other in Seelisberg, where Larry Domash was giving a speech, and said, in M's presence, 'Maharishi is our Guru'.
I think I remember that there was a rumour that M was displeased by that.
I can't vouch for that, though. I can vouch for the first bit.
Sorry I've been out of touch with the blog for the last few days - pressure elsewhere.
David
David, nice to have you back - "guru" does connote some responsibility and Mahesh definitely was not into that.
I remember part of his bitching about the people who were such an embarrassment to him that he couldn't let them go home after the Fiuggi near-disaster. He was really pissed and admitted he was ultimately responsible for what happened. It wasn't sitting well with him.
Of course, he is responsible for all the crap that evolved out of his nasty craving for more and more. If he didn't hoodwink people into devotion to him, he'd have nothing to live on. Horrors!
I cannot recall the wag who noted that if you present yourself as a religious leader you have carte blanche. (The television is a great place to find these types.)
Mahesh, of course, never presented himself as an actual religious leader. But the unmistakable hint was always there. A little hint, a little charm, some secrets you might be able to find out and presto: carte blanche.
I gotta give the old coot credit, he's taken nearly everyone for nearly everything: belief, money, ability -- if you had what he wanted, he could coo like a dove cooing to another dove from whom he hoped to borrow money.*
___
* with due credit to P. G. Wodehouse who said it first
"check out what life in the Vedic age was really like from some impartial historian" - For hundred and fifty years, the impartial historians understood India in terms a fight, as predicted in europe. Most of them disown that these days. When historians are impartial, medidation must be unnecessary.
"Mahesh, of course, never presented himself as an actual religious leader" - Sudarsha -> all 'actual' religious 'leader'? from India have been kind of jews and sometimes people of 3000 BCE without a mind. Unless they banish, govt will arrest them in historical charges of race and misappropriation of economy or any other political theory we got there in Harvards of the world. I think Mahesh Yogi had a mind, and humanistic too.
About me? ... I am a naught.
Like stated above, the term "roo" or "ru" was a derogatory term for the meditators in Fairfield created by the natives. It started as "guru" from the phrase everyone said: Jai Guru Dev. The meditators of course took it lightly and they soon called themselves "roos".
The story about me going to report on
Robin Carlson is quite a story! The truth is, I went to a meeting that he had invited the press to video. I opened the door, heared what he was saying about Maharishi and I yelled "Bullshit," as loud as I could.
I have only ever been a singer/songwriter for Maharishi.
Now he is watching you from your own heart. He is gone, why not respect Him? Most of you probably never knew Him...not really! No matter what you feel "The Movement" has done to you it sure ain't gonna get you nowhere to bad mouth a Saint.
Rick
PS I can already smell the crap that crybaby chuck will throw my way now...
I don't see Chuck as a crybaby. A whistleblower, maybe.
I, like many others, knew the self-proclaimed maharishi very, very well and spent considerable time working with and serving him (both personally and privately as well as publicly).
He was full of crap, presented the ideas of others as his own and treated people with disdain no "saint" would have done. Actually "disdain" is far too polite. Could he have shit on people literally he would have. Rather he just took their money by charm and cooing words and then treated them like shit.
The "movement" was born of the little creep's shit, spread the little creep's shit like so much jam on toast and pretended to status far above their unworthy selves, just like the little creep made them.
Rick, I know you, have talked with you, have admired your voice and your song writing.
Your idiotic idolatry of the narcissistic and sociopathic little creep, Mahesh, however, makes me barf.
whoa, don't hold back, Frank, tell us what you really think
I happen to agree with you, Frank. The unconscionable worship, idolatry of idolizing the "little creep" is sickening. I would compare it to something historic, like the adulation some of the German people showed another narcissistic creep, a genuine sociopath, one Adolph Hitler.
It amazes me to no end what people will do to attract acclaim to themselves. That the screwy-reeshee would use his "cooing" charm to blindside people, to belittle them with his imagined greatness, to pit one worshiper against another in a who-can-worship-best exercise in futility is absolutely barfable.
But this is just what the little pile of giggling crap did - and for what? For his own self-esteem, his bank account, and his need for praise and being idolized.
How many lives have been ruined by the little pustule of lies? How many sincere TM worshipers have ended up with miserable lives, disastrous families and the mental disease of being overwhelmed with the junk-science of the movement's idiotic fabrications and scientific blasphemy?
The answer is simple WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY TOO MANY.
You seemed so intelligent, once, Rick, wake up, look around you, take stock and please move on, maybe write some songs, sing some new songe, be great again.
Have I done somethin to you, Ricky? Some may consider me silly or a windbag but i don't think I have whined here abouts!
But I have to agree with those above that Mugharishi--who you are correct in sayin most of us never knew-- was about as much a saint as my cousin Luther...
Seems to me I have heard you do some whinin your own self about how you were put aside by Paul Fartso and not allowed to sing in the dome... That was some pure de whinin I heard from you but since you're an old fart now your own self, what does it really matter?
Hey Rick!
Glad you're reading this site! Remember the early days (daze) with our families w/ our young children?
Please carefully peruse some essays, here and elsewhere on the internet and don't take attacks personally.
check out www.suggestibility.org
True compassion does not attack a true believer -- most of us have been there too.
Robin Carlson was gonzo.. absolutely!
MMY was smooth, no doubt. Your devotion, art and friendship was/is a blessing to many. Your singning words still ring in my head.
MMY charmed you ... as he did all talented and wealthy, to use you for his own ends... as your expense.
Your family's pain is not due to their "unstressing" or "bad karma"... Your son's troubles are typical sad fallout from cult lifestyle, confusing messages to the children, and their altered/dissociative states. It saddened me greatly to learn of your son's news. My heart out to you always.
Your music, TM based and celtic always inspired.
It is painful to question what one dedicated their life to for decades... and infuriating when one objectively understands where the blame truely lies (MMY's skilled con).
As any person, we try to avoid pain where possible. It can be painful to learn about the skilled coercive persuasion that engulfed us, and we enjoyed for a time.
Like an old friend trying gently to break the news of a cancer, please accept my words sent with kindness and deepest respect. Waking up may be painful -- but ultimate true liberation is luscious!
You and family welcome to my place for brunch ANY time - just like old times.
Gina
The other day, I attended a talk given by a psychoanalyst/Zen teacher named Barry Magid.
Dr. Magid offered us a useful distinction between healthy idealism vs. unhealthy idealism.
In healthy idealism, we admire someone who has genuine good qualities, but also has qualities that are annoying or troublesome.
(As in you may have a relative or friend whom you love very much but you currently will not let them in your house so long as they have a cocaine habit).
In unhealhty idealism, you can only love/worship someone by wilfully focusing on their good qualities and splitting off their annoying or troublesome qualities (as in you love your addicted partner or friend and you refuse to face that the person is dangerous to let live with you, because they'll start a meth lab in your back yard, the feds will arrest you, and your addict will cut a deal and you go to jail).
A genuine meditation and spiritual practice is healthy in that it supports wholeness--you do not need to split off or disown anything about yourself or about being human.
Dr Magid told us he saw a lot of people who used spiritual practice to bypass thier own humanity.
If someone who adores food as Chuck does, who is made to be a hearty soul, is forced by a meditation practice to feel inferior and to deny his own hearty appetites and told his earthy humor is incompatible with spirituality, then TM and anything like it is forcing us to do a 'spiritual bypass.'
Its splitting us off from our humanity, and making us UN WHOLE.
And that is the real offense of TM and other spiritual counterfeits. In the guise of bliss, parts of ourselves are being amputated.
If a guru or a friend or a lover is genuinely good, we shouldnt need to split off our recognition of their imperfections in order to see that they are good.
If one can only see a guru as good by denying and splitting off awareness of his imperfections, all that has to be projected somewhere else---like onto a scapegoat, or we blame ourselves.
AK, I am familiar with Dr. Magid. I find his writing goes to the heart of what is much preferable to the compartmentalization we were to fit into as the perfect model for our lives.
The “expert”, Mahesh, told us by implication and innuendo that he and he alone could save us from the horrors of a world of negativity about to implode. For some of us, nothing could have strayed farther from fact. We were willingly and by deceit corralled into a devastating delusion. Many, however, felt that they were indeed rescued from their own terrifying dependence upon themselves: it was sufficient to believe Mahesh had all the answers.
Like religion and politics, no amount of argument can solve this riddle or end the argument.
That said, I am in constant gratitude for your research and willingness to share, AK. I hope the clarity of your reporting will be a stimulus for others to investigate Dr. Magid’s writings ( http://www.ordinarymind.com/ ).
Regarding Mahesh as the “expert”, I am reminded of Jack Parr’s quip: and “ex” is a has-been and a “spurt” is water under pressure.
Good point about the tendency in the TMO to split off and disavow "unacceptable" parts of ourselves, of each other, of Mahesh. The best definition I have ever heard of holiness is wholeness. Embracing all of who we are. The opposite - evil - is therefore fragmentation and repression of parts of ourselves.
I once saw a photograph of supposed demons (taken in a Catholic cemetery at night, next to a church that did many exorcisms). I am not making any statement about the existence of said entities or the veracity of the photo, although I was disturbed by what I saw. The point I want to make is this: the creatures (which were black-on-black - midnight black shapes against a night background)were all incomplete. Missing an eye or half the face faded out. An interesting visual representation of spiritual fragmentation.
Of all the crimes that Mahesh and the TMO and TM community committed, repression of our wholeness is one of the worst - that and child molestation.
Dear Sudarsha and others, Dr Magid has been involved with Zen for about thirty years and he told us that especially in the early years, the 1960s and 1970s, it was very much the norm for Westerners to idealize their teachers.
This echoes my private hunch that those of you who were in the 'pioneer cohort' were breaking new ground, venturing into areas full of possibilities and also full of risks that were un-known and unknowable at the time.
Dr Magid brought up a most interesting point. He made a distinction between healthy idealism and unhealthy, defensive idealism.
In the first case, we love and appreciate a person and at the same know that persons full humanity. When we have healthy idealism we can love somebody and at the same time can assert ourselves when necessary, such as telling that person, 'This is out of character for you. You need to get medical attention.' I heard of a woman who dearly loved her brother but who, while loving him, had to stop being recipient of his Social Security payment, because her brother was a drug addict, didnt pay his dealers and when he arrived at his sisters house to get his SSI disability check, his dope dealers were right there at his heels to make sure he payed them. SO this lady loved her brother, but faced that she had to protect herself from him...he was bringing the most dangerous kind of street pathology right to her doorstep. So...she arranged for our clinic to become her brother's payee/almoner.
Now, if this woman had defensively and unhealthily idealized her brother, she would have refused to see that he was addicted, she would have refused to see that he was bringing dangerous people along with him, and she would have refused to see that her brother was endangering her. If X had unhealthily idealized her brother, she would have focused only on his charm, his pathos, and the happy memories they had shared in childhood. She would have blotted out the evidence that he had become a crack addict and was not paying his dealers and was bringing dangerous people to her doorstep.
Back to Dr. Magid. He noted in passing that many of us failed to ask the significance of how very many of our early Asian teachers had left thier families behind and had arrived in Europe or the US by themselves.
What does it say that someone was so easily capable of leaving his past behind him, severing ties to family and in some cases, young children still dependent on him? Dr Magid made it clear that many of these people really and truly had deep insight into nonduality, but that was not always accompanied by a corresponding ability to live in an enjoy adult intimacy with peers. One could have real deficits in emotional and social development and these deficits might well remain, unhealed and unaddressed even by years of the finest training, whether Zen Buddhist, Tibetan Buddhist, or Hindu.
In sort, Magid said that the real issues arose when teachers who had had years of training and supervision in authentic traditions still generated casualities. For...it had been common to state that a troubled teacher only got into trouble because his or her lineage was bogus, or he or she had not been given sufficient training.
Dr Magid said, Zen, though excellent might (gasp) still by pass areas in a practitione that remained unhealed.
He also suggested that practitioners need to examine whether we are covertly using our practices to bypass aspects of ourselves we find
frightening to face.
Now, Dr Magid didnt happen to mention this, but I think a very important question is whether an organization or teacher really DOES encourage us to use their spiritual practices to address our true selves or whether that organization or teacher is actually teaching us to use the methods to do a 'spiritually rationalized bypass' of our issues.
Organizations that directly foster such 'bypass mentality' and conceal this using bliss or trance or both are the ones that probably do the most damage. Its one thing if just one person is privately doing spirtual bypass in the midst of a group that is otherwise facing its stuff.
But when a teacher who has bypassed his or her own humanity is teaching all of his students to the same sort of bypass of their human issues and has created an entire doctrine and social scene that not only rationalizes this bypass, but normalizes it...its a mess.
It appears TM was such a set up, and so was/is Siddha Yoga.
Must confess that a day or two before hearing Dr Magid speak, I was already privately asking myself, 'Did I select Zen because I am scared to death of my own heart and of my own loneliness and went looking for a practice that would allow me to do an end-run around the stuff I dont want to face? Did I select Zen to do a bypass of my own heart?'
Swear to god those were the exact words of my inner dialog. And...along came a chance to hear Dr Magids musings on this subject.
It is a very, very great question for those who feel drawn to bhakti yoga to ask when is bhakti healthy idealization and when is it defensive idealization.
Magid also said it can be tempting for people who are scared of human relationships to seek safety in devotion to something that seems safetly beyond the transitory messiness of human realatedness.
Magid said the goal is to replace dissociation with the ability, consciously to bear conflict, rather than evading and bypassing conflict through defensive idealization.
This doesnt do justice to the afternoon, but I just wanted to echo Sudarsha and pass on some of the diamonds and pearls thrown my way this past weekend.
Someone asked about the benefits of meditation. If used to bypass our own conflicts, our own humanity, it will hurt us, just like a drug improperly used.
If used to strengthen our capacity to hold, contain and bear our humanity and conflicts consciously, meditation is helping us.
Thanks AK for the mention of my love of chowin down! Bein a fat man was not easy when I was in TM and all around me were the lean and the beautiful! The funny thang is that when I caught sight of Bevan close up and saw how fat that man was I decided I didn't want to be in Fairfield anymore cause this guy was givin us fat fellows a bad name!
Thank you, AK. I regret being unable to rise to your level of eloquence and erudition. - I seldom even know what the really difficult questions are, let alone ask them; so I am consistently in admiration of what you say and the clarity of the way you say it.
It is one thing to feel or experience the heartbreaking angst of having squandered one's time, devotion and commitment on a weasel like Mahesh. For so many of us, however, this is simply the fact, one of the facts of our history. You have been instrumental in helping me shift my focus of attention from the paucity of value in Maheshism, something I can do nothing about, to the far more significant recognition that, in point of fact, I can do a great deal about it: I can see it for what it is, a building block, part of my relative existence.
It turns out that TM/Maheshism has been very significant as well as important as a stepping stone. I have discovered many things to avoid. This, for example is much better said in Carolyn's message/response to ed, today.
If I wasted time (and it was a great waste and far too much of it), at least I came away having mastered "as easily as" - no insignificant accomplishment in the realm of spiritual practise. Thanks to many other, legitimate, compassionate and wise teachers, I have learned a far more sophisticated, erudite and rewarding use of this significant bolus of sound wisdom. I do not know from whom Mahesh purloined this idea or who it was who helped him turn it into the smooth and effortless piece of learning it became. I can simply be grateful for having learned it and chuck (no offense intended) the rest of the crap up to the cost of doing business, of learning, of education and growing up as a person and as one who wishes to penetrate the duality of life in favour of the one taste of the ocean of awareness.
Yesterday, a friend and I were reading bits and bobbs of Joyce Collin-Smith's Call No Man Master. Chapters 9 through the beginning of chapter 14 recount her experience with Mahesh. Regrettably, the text is no longer available on the Internet, although the book itself is easily and inexpensively obtainable. - I heartily recommend it as both a great read and a reminder that one can step aside from worthlessness of Maheshism, the scheming, dualistic, non-productive smoke-screen of Maheshistic delusion and see a thing for what it is.
A very quick Google turned up http://www.nextag.com/Call-No-Ma...203/prices-
html for some sources of copies of Joyce's book, Call No Man Master.
Hey Chuck, rather than fat guy, call yourself a 'hearty soul.' It may be that which saved you. MMY doesnt sound like a hearty soul at all.
Maybe that is why he had to steal vitality from so very many people.
Sudarsha, again, you were in the pioneer cohort. One thing that I appreciated about Dr. Magid was he emphasized how common it was during the Sixties and Seventies to idealize ones teacher/s.
Again and again, I think the early generations seekers were in much the same position as Madame Curie and the other early scientists who first isolated and worked with radioactive elements, and did so bare handed, with no protective gear, not knowing that an invisible danger lurked.
Today, because so many of those pioneers died young, those same radioactive elements are stored and transported in lead containers, and we are made to place lead aprons on ourselves when we go to the dentist for X rays, while the techician sits outside in an enclosure operating the equipment from benind a protective panel.
We are or were told so often, 'trust your experience', not knowing that in the midst of bliss, it is possible to split off and dissociate from a key portion of one's own humanity, and that a cold hearted opportunist can be a consummate bliss technician.
Experience can be misleading. I had flu once, was running tempretures of 104 plus. I felt cold as an iceblock. But my fever thermometer read that my body was 104 F and above. What was going on was that while fighting that infection, my body was releasing chemicals that messed with my brain, so that I was actually blazing hot--yet experienced my body as ice cold.
Gurus who learn various tricks of bliss can put us through similar states of confusion. And remember the stories of people who jumped out of windows on LSD--they were certain they had wings and could fly.
Persons inept at ordinary human give and take may indeed make it their business to learn every thing they can about how to manipulate us into ecstacy.
Let me make an intimate comfession: first fellow I went out with was fantastic in bed, okay?
It took a long time (I was young and naive) for me to face that he was not honest. Thank God we broke up.
About 20 years later, I chanced to read about him. He was in the news. His wife had divorced him, he hadnt taken it well, and he had stalked her, terrorized, her defied restraining orders. And the cops had busted him and found drugs and firearms on his property.
Chilled me to the marrow. A guy like this with little or no moral core, had been a brilliant bliss technician, a virtuouso in the sack.
I would bet he deliberately made it his business to make people feel good, not because he had a loving heart, but because he loved that feeling of being in control, while watching whoever was with him moan her head off or scream in ecstacy.
In his case, he was content to be a wheeler dealer businessman.
But...in slightly different circumstances, Mr. Bed Time Bliss Technician might well have gone into the guru business.
And he still may do so. In American we can re-invent ourselves and get away with it, so long as we get people to feel good.
Yes, AK, I was in the pioneering cohort. It's a bit daunting to be categorized with the likes of Madame Curie, however, and I/we didn't exactly make it any safer for those to follow.
I would like to think, however, that now, especially with this Blog, we are not only giving the appropriate warnings that Mahesh and his cronies* should have given, we are also making it clear that TM and Maheshism isn't the only way, unquestionably not the only thing out there and definitely not what Mahesh inflated it to be.
If people wish to take our experiences and develop their own lives either because of or in indifference to our experiences, at least we tried to do our job the right way, this time.
____________
* I was one of those cronies and I didn't do right then and am trying to do so now.
Sudarsha, don't feel bad about not warning others. I received several warnings which did not stop me. As a christian I was told that maharishi was "the" or at least "an" antichrist. Having been raised in a church/cult, I knew the prison of the social embrace but nothing would have deterred me when I experienced for myself the liberating, at first, magic of the mantra and its effect on my mind and body. Nothing you could have said to me in 1972 would have kept me from doing everything I could to go to courses and meditate as much possible.
Once the mantra stopped working so well and I could clearly see the ugly side of Maharishi and his movement, nothing could have kept me in it. For me it was 16 years but who knows if my life would have been better without that. I doubt it. I suspect that I might have gotten better employment and stayed in my home city but who knows? For what it's worth, I pardon you my son...
It may be that many of us have a dynamic of defensive idealization--we need a hero.
This doenst mean we are weak. I had this dynamic well into my twenties, and it came simply because as a young child who had age appropriate needs to idealize my parents, I intuited that my parents, though they looked adult, were actually fragile and, in my father's case, were not capable of being truthful.
Sensing by nonverbal cues all around me, that my parents were unreliable, I sought as a tiny child, **to give myself what my parents could not give me** and so I sought admirable role models--heroes and heroines.
First these were teachers in school, whom I hero-worshipped. Because I lacked adequate parenting, my need for admirable and perfect heroes persisted long after the age appropriate stage, which meant I had a developmental lag.
So by my early to mid-twenties I still quite desperately needed a hero to stabilize my core self.
I'd idealized/idolized a Catholic hero-saint who was safetly dead. But..when I was about 25, new research and a critical edition of this saints own writngs revealed that he had been quite cruel.
I found myself feeling shattered and choatic inside. I was also indignant. I set myself the task of reading the new research, determined to see that it was wrong...but the evidence was overwhelming. And...I had a background in science and history and knew good solid research when I saw it.
(What is very interesting is that I never, at any time, took refuge in imagining that the research was part of some satanic conspiracy. Someone else could well have preserved their idealizing fantasy of Saint X by going this route and using this defensive strategy. But...somehow that never occurred to me. In technical terms I could have split off this disturbing evidence, and avoided the pain of conscious conflict between idealizing Saint X and this new evidence that Saint X had been quite a cruel man, by splitting off that evidence, naming it as Satanic, and deciding it was unworthy of my attention. But...somehow I just could not imagine using that strategy. I think at some level I feared if I did this, I would become exactly like my father, who did this sort of splitting all the time. And...as a tiny kid, I had decided early on, I would not be like my father and took a vow to tell and face the truth even if I had to endure discomfort.)
So, there I was, my idealized hero shattered. Even though this man was dead, he had functioned in much the way that a living idealized guru does for others. And I can tell you that pain was horrifying. I could barely concentrate on my school work--serious business in graduate school.
Well, I happened to meet a local minister who, unconsciously, matched up with the outline of my "hero-shaped hole"
This man became a living object onto which I could project my idealization, and better yet, unlike the dead saint, he interacted with me--or at least his public persona interacted with me.
I felt an immediate sense of CURE. The therapists call it 'transferance cure.' Twenty years later, I can recall how this felt like magic. I took risks I never would have imagined, despair was replaced by venturesomeness and hope, and my energy levels soared.
Unfortunately, this man did not have the training needed to assist me to become conscious and gradually withdraw my idealizing projections and replace them, gradually, with adult perceptions. This man was talented, but narcissistically needy and he needed my idealizing adoration, and failed to assist me to withdraw it. And he did this despite my telling him about my entanglement with my parents, especially my father.
My information should have been a clear warning to him, but he was needy and failed to heed it. So he used me for his narcissistic supplies and even his wife colluded. We scraped the borders of going physical, but I managed to hold things back--but did this by suppressing my sexuality, which disastrously re-enacted my relationship with my father.
As time went on, I had a horrendous feeling of guilt and was dogged by a strange feeling that X and I were having an affair. Interestingly others treated us as if we were 'an item.'
The vibes we silently gave out must have been very, very intense.
This mess went on for 8 years, and X dumped me only after I failed to meet his needs. Fortunately, I found a therapist and after a few years, wrote X a letter and named all the ways he had committed boundary violations and had mucked in an area where he was untrained and should have referred me elsewhere.
So...I was never entangled with MMY but I thought after all this time I should let you kind people know where and how I learned about defensive idealism--and that it is not the same as ordinary human connectedness.
And...one can get into defensive idealism in relation to someone who is deceased and it can be just as intense as with someone who is alive, and in some cases, one can transition from defensive idealism of a dead saint, to a defensive idealism of a living leader.
And, if one has been disillusioned and betrayed by a living leader, one can try to maintain the defensive idealism by switching ones focus to a deceased saint. Some who have been grievously burned by gurus such as Adi Da or others may transition and transfer defensive idealism to someone deceased, such as HWL Poonja or Ramana Maharshi.
But they're still wearing the same chains.
Yet others like me may try to bypass the whole issue by going hyper intellectual and exploit (as Ive done) Zen for that purpose.
This is not the fault of Zen--and I now have to face myself in this matter. I just wanted to make Dr Magids material available in case anyone else wants to take a look...
Not feeling bad, Betty; feeling good that now I am doing something that might benefit others.
TM has its value, to a limited extent. But what we all learned via TM has its value, too. We are well placed to caution others that looking prior to leaping is, as the adage goes, worth two in the shrubbery.
Thanks, AK. What you have written is something I want to give a thorough mulling over. Exploiting Zen, every known "method" appears to me to be exactly what all those methods are for. It is when we get exploited by one or more of these methods that something is woefully amiss. - The record is clear enough: no one ever exploited Mahesh but he exploited everyone for his own purpose which, in the end, was nothing but the ephemeral joy of money and the illusion of power over others (from which we walked away).
Now we can take what he had on offer and see if it and any/everything else in the scope of our understanding can benefit us in ways that make Mahesh's personal gains insignificant.
Y'know, it gets complicated as hell.
There are persons (like my untrained hero, X) groups and gurus (Adi Da, MMY/TM and Siddha Yoga(Gurmayi and Muktananda) who were clearly exploitative of people.
That has to be pointed out and named for what it is. All too often persons in the grip of 'defensive idealisation' cannot bear to face the horror of betrayal and split off their misgivings and gut warnings, dissociate from thier own gut warnings and doubts, preserve idealization of their exploitative guru and preserve and defend that idealization by blaming the entourage for corrupting matters, or they blame disciples for 'giving away thier power' to the guru, while desperately ignoring how the guru actually manipulated the process by training everyone to idealize the guru.
(This is why it is so very dangerous to become an entourage member to this kind of guru. That guru will promplty put all the blame on YOU when things go wrong, and throw you to the wolves. And the many who remain eager to preserve their sanity by defensively idealizing the guru will be only too happy to hate the designated entourage member who is selected to bear the blame)
But, those of us who have been wounded by exploitative parents or spiritual leaders may find it painful as hell to face our own inner dynamic of idealization.
In looking back at my 'X' I recalled how magical he seemed. He made that impression on many other persons, too--yet he looked quite homely and even nerdy.
However, X did not make that same magical impression everybody.
And I had a very interesting conversation with a woman who had met X right at the time I was enthralled with him. To my amazement, she told me that the moment she met him, she had a gut feeling that he was covering up and lying about a lot of things. Yet, this woman was herself entangled with another local charismatic.
I was floored. 'My God!' I said, 'It has taken me years of therapy and a lot of discoveries about how X was neglecting his job responsibilities, and yet in just a second or two, you saw right through his facade. Yet, you say you were entangled with someone else right at the time you saw in X what I was not able to see?'
'I guess so' my acquaintance said. She then admitted, 'You know, I saw how enthralled you were with X. But I found it too painful to try to speak with you at the time. I think your predicament was so similar to my own entrapment with a different person that I couldnt face my predicament the way it was mirrored in you.'
'Well, we are talking about it now, and I cant thank you enough for your honesty. Its as though you and I were in ajoining cells in the same jail. You could see that I was a prisoner, but you were unable to see you were at the same time a prisoner, too.
'Its as though we were both locked up in the prison of defensive idealisization. But...the jailor who had the key to your cell was different from the jailor who had the key to MY cell.'
So a person may defensively idealize guru A and yet see very, very clearly and insightfully that someone else is a psychic prisoner and defensively idealizes Guru B. The person who is defensively idealizing guru B may see just as clearly that the other person is a psychic prisoner by defensively idealizing guru A.
Then if someone is shattered and disillusioned on finding out the unbearable truth about Guru A, he or she may transfer to Guru B and 'bypass' examining the deeper process of defensive idealization itself.
I sought to bypass my own heart by ditching this area and personally embarking upon an intellectualized spiritual bypass. In my case I used Zen.
It was NOT the fault of Zen. It was my covert use of it.
Years ago, I ran into someone who remembered what I was like back when I was idealizing X. This man said, 'Back then you were in love with everyone.'
Yes, and no. It wasnt adult love. I lacked the development needed for adult love. Adult love is more than the ability to have sexual intercourse.
Adult love is the ability to see someone clearly as a human being, not as a god or goddess, see someone as loveable, and worthy of love--without having to defensively idealize them by denying key aspects of their humanity.
As tiny kids we have to go through a necessary phase of totally idealizing our adult caregivers. Its like learning A, B, C. You have to learn that alphabet before you can get to the point of reading Shakespeare.
But if we cannot get through that necessary stage of adoringly idealizing our adult caregivers, we may stay stuck and carry this foreward into adult relationships.
And what makes this still more difficult is that Asian spiritual traditions, even when authentic and honestly taught (and in MMY's case and Muktanandas case, the traditions were not authentic and were not honestly taught)...dont show us the difference between bhakti (devotion) and defensive idealization.
So as Magid pointed out, even authentic and competantly taught spiritual traditions can be used to bypass our humanity or bypass areas where we have developmental lags.
And in the very worst cases, we get spiritual counterfeits in which the leader not only has bypassed his or her humanity but trains followers to do the same thing. This collective bypassing can give a feeling of intensity and instant intimacy, but it is merely a shared flight path, not connectedness.
I witnessed this when attending an Eastern Orthodox parish many years ago. It had a high proportion of Eastern Europeans who had been traumatized during World War II and who had a shared sense of bunker mentality. It also had attracted a high proportion of angry ex-Roman Catholics who hated the liturgical changes and social changes of Vatican II and who took refuge at our church because our liturgy had not been changed.
Thier bunker mentality meshed with the bunker mentality of the European refugees. It created a shared intensity, but it was a group that shared a similar
flight path'---a bypass of the pain of being human and a fear and hatred of change. It was cozy in a way, but it was also collectively immature and many of us were childish and squabbled endlessly in ways that undercut the soaring magnificence of the liturgy.
Thank you, AK,
and for some comic relief r.e. AK's quote "But, those of us who have been wounded by exploitative parents or spiritual leaders may find it painful as hell to face our own inner dynamic of idealization. "
The Cult Recovery Scream
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AK's discussion of the "shared flight path" articulated one of the great attractions of the TMO for me; that sense of belonging based upon a shared dysfunction that appeared to be more cohesive than it really was. I experienced it as "Us against the world out to save the world."
I also experienced a delayed shared flight path with a (now ex) friend of mine who got into a fight with our minister and left the church. They had been very close friends before the blow up and she had idolized him. Knowing that she tended to be emotionally unstable at times, I had believed his account of the incident. Two years pass. He and I get into a bad argument and I experienced how verbally unkind he could be when feeling threatened. My thoughts right after the encounter were "Oh, now I know how XXX felt." Note: she and I had both been Board Members; this relationship places one in a different dynamic with the minister than merely being a congregant. I hadn't been close to him the way she was, although we always had a wonderful rapport. After the argument I didn't leave the church. Instead I withdrew a bit and sat with my painful feelings. I finally saw how I had instigated the argument; I wasn't blameless, and part of what prompted my part of the conflict was my lingering idealization of the minister. I resented him because he hadn't "fixed" a problem of mine, as if it was his to fix, and I wasn't even aware of my childlike dependence. At the end of this period of self-reflection I felt both more detached from and accepting of the positive and negative aspects of the minister and the church. Any desire to do the guru thing (which was still somewhat active after leaving the TMO) was gone. I still attend the church (less frequently, and no longer on the Board) but don't idealize it, the teachings or the charismatic minister.
Carolyn...thank you. You have described the process that Dr Magid told us about--how to replace defensive idealization with conscious held conflict(recognition of 'the positive and negative aspectsof the minister and the church').
You were able to withdraw but without leaving the entire situation, and had a way to hold and contain the boiling energies of the positive and negative matters you had become aware of.
Your friend for whatever reason, could not do this. She had to leave entirely. We have to learn early in life how to hold and contain difficult emotions such as frustration, ambivalence, the puzzlement of being told there are some situtations for which there is no answer.
My father was unable to hold and contain realization that his own mother had a messy combination of good and bad qualities. Instead, he would describe her as utterly wonderful one day, and another day describe her as a horrid person. This is termed 'splitting.'
But what Carolyn did, through holding and containing painful recognition of positive and negative aspects of the minister and church and then recognition of things within herself, her wish that the minister had had ablity to fix a problem of hers, and her disappointment that in being merely human, he could not fix that problem..Carolyn did a very important task.
And it is intersting that afterwards Carolyn discovered that 'any desire to do the guru thing (which was still somewhat active after leaving the TMO) was gone.'
This may be why some psychologists such as Jung, appreciate the symbol of alchemy for describing such a process. One has to have a container inside oneself, strong enough to bear the pain, the heat, and conflict of different recognitions of positive and negative, and in holding all this together, we become something new.
You have told us something that I have not been very good at doing. I am embarrassed to admit that I did a lot of church switching because I got enraged at various ministers and churches who were unable to fix me.
Ouch.
The hell of it is, at one level I knew I was being unreasonable, but the level of emotion that was torturing me seemed to come from so intense and childish a place that I was utterly shame ridden to face I was enduring this as an adult.
It was something for which I needed therapy and it took a very long time to find a therapist who wasnt put off.
Here's my confession of how primative this material can get. I was thirty. I'd completed my instruction as a Catholic and after a lot of attention and study was baptized and confirmed.
Then things settled down and I became just another adult member of the parish.
After awhile, I began to get horrendously irritated by the music and especially by the many many baptisms of young children.
To my horror, I began to face I was jealous. I had been an only child, was never obligated to share my parents with a sibling.
So here I was, age 30, with the crazed feelings of a tiny child, having raw resentment that the kids being baptized were getting all this special attention--and I no longer was.
I cannot describe or convey how terrified and ashamed I felt. I thought I was going crazy. Bringing this up in prayer and confession didnt help, either.
I didnt have the ability to hold and contain all this and ended feeling furious that the church, rather than healing me, had been part of a process that brought all this up.
So all I could do was switch to parishes that were mostly adult. It was years before I could find a therapist who was empathic enough to assist me to begin learning how to hold and contain all this stuff--which is very, very intense. Ive barely got a toe hold on it today.
Carolyn's description is a valuable example of how it is possible to learn to hold and contain the conflict of appreciating someone as human and relinquishing defensive idealization.
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