I've sat in on a few of these interviews and must say I agree. Some of them were totally hilarious because no matter how negative the journalist was Maharishi would turn it into a happy event. It was astounding to watch how he was able turn even the most sour of souls around into a happy face.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote : I love that the guy Maharishi had such spirit and pluck. This interview with him The Man is really fun to read through. It captures the spark and light of the guy. Thanks, I liked reading it and hearing again his voice and humor in that. He was amazingly on, patient, and consistent throughout his whole travels with this. Reading this is like watching the benevolent revolutionary in control of things. He could certainly play it like a fiddle. What a fun time in the revolution of millenarianism it was, -Buck in the Dome dickmays forwards: REPORTER: "You're not doing much to disabuse me of the notion that you're just a P.T. Barnum of the psychic set." MAHARISHI: "What does this mean?" REPORTER: "That you're a natural salesman." MAHARISHI: "Very right. I think I have something salable." REPORTER: "What are you selling?" MAHARISHI: "Natural law and the simplest level of consciousness where everything is spontaneously supported by nature. If people buy this product, they're better off." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "Why don't you raise money and distribute it to needy people? Would this not be a more effective way to bring about change?" MAHARISHI: "No, no, it's not the money that can make one happy." REPORTER: "How can Third World people think about their consciousness when they're hungry?" MAHARISHI: "By using that hardware of the cosmic computer, if they use their brain properly -- this is the Technology of the Unified Field -- the infinity of nature will make them capable of not only earning their ordinary bread but very first-class bread." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "What do you think about the arms race and nuclear war?" MAHARISHI: "Arms race will not be the cause of nuclear war. Stress will be the cause of nuclear war. Stress is the greatest enemy of life, and that we can eliminate completely." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "You have written that by meditating, man brings out his own sense of divinity in himself." MAHARISHI: "Right, we can talk divinity." REPORTER: "What about someone like Hitler. If he had meditated?" MAHARISHI: "He would have been more positive." REPORTER: "You really think you can change people's natures by meditating?" MAHARISHI: "The world is already a changed situation. One would not know what would have happened between the power blocs if Transcendental Meditation was not raising the consciousness of the world." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "What do you do for play?" MAHARISHI: "The whole life is play." REPORTER: "What do you do for amusement?" MAHARISHI: "Oh, this is great amusement when I talk about the unified field, laws of nature, when I hear so many people are starting the courses. I am doing two things. One, creating a softness in world consciousness. Second, training leadership." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "Is what you are doing a game?" MAHARISHI: "It's a game." REPORTER: "Do you ever sit back and say, 'I've been playing this game for 25 years. I'm a millionaire. Gee, I'm a good player?'" MAHARISHI: "I don't play in the past. I always play in the present for a good future." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "Do you want to take over the world?" MAHARISHI: "I have taken over already!" REPORTER: "How do you expect people to take you seriously?" MAHARISHI: "I don't because that is damage to my own message. Serious means under stress." REPORTER: "You don't think that you're just pulling off a beautiful job of fooling people?" MAHARISHI: "Those people who don't know better are always fools, but they will become better thinkers, better knowers with this message." REPORTER: "Are you a snake-oil salesman?" MAHARISHI: "What is a snake oil?" REPORTER: "A panacea. Something that will solve all the ills of the world." MAHARISHI: "Then this is it!" * * * * * * * REPORTER: "If we sent in an outside person not connected with you to take pictures [of Yogic Flying]?" MAHARISHI: "No one is not connected with me." REPORTER: "Where did you get your modesty?" MAHARISHI: "It's simplicity." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "Do people create when they're sitting around feeling happiness bubble up? How do you explain geniuses like Dostoevski who lived a miserable life and created very much?" MAHARISHI: "He could have created much more if the environment was less stressed." REPORTER: "But he wrote about stress. He would have had nothing to write about if there hadn't been stress." MAHARISHI: "One could write about a pond, but that doesn't justify the existence of the pond or its utility." * * * * * * * REPORTER: "But you claim credit for meditating suffering away?" MAHARISHI: "Right. Exactly." REPORTER: "Have you no shame?" MAHARISHI: "No shame, no weakness, no failure." End of interview ~Washington Post -- November 1983~ * * * * * * * Jai Guru Dev .
