" - or that the siddhi program doesn't use Sanskrit?"
I'm wondering where people got the idea that the various sutras should be used
only in a Sanskrit form? Although trained as a TM teacher, I took my sutra
training at a citizen siddha course. After receiving a couple of the sutras, a
few of the participants went spinning off on an arc. Some of them were outraged
that they had spent $3000 to hear English words that they could have gotten
from a book or maybe a friend.
I told them that I agreed about the cost (which should have been one-tenth the
charge) but that after studying the Yoga Sutras for many years it made perfect
sense to me that they would not be practiced in Sanskrit. The focus of the
sutras was their meaning - a meaning which was by definition independent of
their articulated sound value in any language. The TMO could have prevented
this reaction by discussing the sanyama practice as a advance development
through using "meaning" as a more subtle value than the beginning practice of
"sound without meaning" and "learning to focus a deeper form of attention"
rather than "only favoring the mantra".
However, Maharishi was always wary that people would exchange-out the innocence
of the practice for an ineffectual discrimination.
