--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "mainstream20016" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The Raja-thing, the pinnacle of elitism (thus far) of the > TMO, has an element of karmic payback for the elites in > the TMO. For decades the TMO elites relished the opportunity > to open their checkbook in pursuit of unique 'special status'. > Their willingness to buy "Enlightenment" products that the > TMO marketed for every relative aspect of life revealed the > deep need of elites for 'specialness' - and came at the > expense of the TMO's reputation, because their need for > 'specialness' and willingess to fund the TMO through it, > negated the TMO's need to relate to the world at large, > made the TMO more and more obscure, and virutally irrelevant > to the larger world. The TMO is now addicted to million > dollar donations for Raja crowns and gowns. MMY probably > realized about five years ago how the TMO has been made > virtually irrelevant over the past decades of catering to > elite's needs for specialness. As a means of payback, the > Raja role was created - and the responsibility was given > to Rajas to administer the now obscure TMO to the world at > large. The uncomfortable crown and robe fiasco for the > German Raja in Berlin this week is indicative of what's > in store for those who played such a willing hand in making > the TMO obscure and virtually irrelevant. The tin ear response > to the crowd indicates the depth of obscurity the TMO finds > itself. I imagine those robes will be seen as a bit uncom- > fortable to wear now. MMY might insist they be worn 24/7 > for a while, as a means of making amends for the TMO's > sorry state.
The idea of "payback" is an interesting one, but I can't agree with it. I have never seen any indication that Maharishi is aware enough *of* the world to be aware that his movement has retreated further and further from it with every passing year. I see him more a victim of his own ignorance of a phenomenon that is talked about openly in most other spiritual trips I've had exposure to. This phenomenon is referred to by many names, one of them being (surprisingly, even in mainstream Tibetan orgs I've encountered) the "We've got ours, fuck any- one else" syndrome. The essence of it is, as you said so well above, the desire for "specialness" on the part of spiritual seekers. When they *first* got involved in a new and exciting spiritual trip, they felt special by devoting themselves to evangelism -- "spreading the word," and trying to bring in new members. HOWEVER, after a few years of this, they started to notice that as the move- ment grew, they tended to get lost in the crowd, and their chances for "specialness" with regard to the teacher became lessened. The new students -- some of them brighter or, in the TM movement, richer -- got more attention than they did. So what do these seekers-in-search-of-specialness DO? Simple. They start to sabotage the efforts to recruit new students. This is sometimes done by pretending to be too busy to give lectures and put up posters and teach any more. Then it tends to become manifest by offering feedback to the teacher that *reinforces* the feeling of "them vs. us" that they thrive on. They LIKE "them vs. us," because they're the "us." And they want to *stay* the "us," right there at the center of things, close to the teacher. And they want potential new students to stay away, because they're "them." And so they applaud every plan the teacher comes up with that would make their spiritual path *less* inter- esting to new students, and pooh-pooh any plan that might work to bring in new students. And over time, the move- ment stops growing, and starts shrinking instead. And the "special" students, the "us" in this scenario, LIKE this. The fewer people there are around the teacher, the easier it is to get the teacher's attention. And if you're a bhakti/darshan junkie, that's your dream world. The students who feed on being close to the teacher and having his/her attention focused on them would like nothing *better* than for the movement they are part of to shrink to the point where they are the only ones left. As I said, this phenomenon is talked about -- and fought against -- in many other spiritual traditions. Teachers in those traditions are very aware of it, and if they are happening and free of ego that could be pandered to by adoring bhakti-junkies, they do their best to stop this phenomenon as soon as it appears. For example, the moment that students start talking about doing less teaching, the wise teachers make them go out and do *more* teaching instead. The moment that the students start talking about building an ashram where they can get *away* from the world, the wise teachers come up with exercises that force them to go out *into* the world, and interact with it strongly. My feeling is that Maharishi is not aware of this phenomenon. He never studied how to be a spiritual teacher; his only exposure to "how to teach successfully" was watching someone else do it. He never had a "User's Manual For Spiritual Teachers" to warn him about this phenomenon and other tendencies that could hinder his ability to teach. In other traditions, there really *are* such manuals. Or oral traditions that the teachers must study before they are *allowed* to teach. Most of the traditions that have such teach-the-teacher materials are old; they've been around for centuries, during which the teachers of the past wrote down or consigned to an oral tradition some of the things that *worked* for them in their teaching experiences, and the things that *didn't* work. That's what was always missing in the TM organization from my perspective. Maharishi made it up as he went along. He borrowed ideas he saw around him in Guru Dev's ashram, but only the ones he noticed or was aware of; he would not have been aware of all the things that GD might have been doing on other levels, or when MMY wasn't around. And Maharishi didn't have any kind of "peer support" to go to and ask for help when things got gnarly. It is *natural* for seekers -- still with egos that are kicking and screaming and doing anything they can think of to preserve themselves -- to want to be "special." The wise teachers don't pander to this; they take the opposite approach and don't *let* these egos feel special. But the unwise teachers? Well, you saw the results of it on film, posted here a couple of days ago. You see it in the ability of these raging egos to *buy* specialness by plunking down a million bucks and, seemingly, turning in their common sense at the same time as a "trade-in." It's a sad phenomenon, IMO another aspect of the "tragedy of knowledge" that Maharishi himself used to speak of in the early days of the movement, and which in my opinion he has fallen prey to. The TM movement is *irrelevant* to the world at this point, and he has not only allowed this irrelevancy to happen, he's encouraged it.
