TurquoiseB wrote: > Another is the fact that many teachers really > *did* feel a "buzz" from doing puja. I never > felt much of one, but some did, and they assoc- > iate that buzz with magical thinking and feel > that something about *their* buzz helped give > their initiates a buzz, too. > That certainly explains a lot! :-D
I always got a buzz from the puja which I associate with shakti but then I also had the kundalini rise the very first time I tried meditation ... from a book which I wouldn't recommend to anyone but for some reason it worked for me (and the results disorienting). I stand by my assertion that the puja is used to get at least enough shakti going that the mantras would work regardless of who was teaching. Otherwise it would have taken years to get a troupe of teachers going and spread TM. If you had some success teaching meditation to people without the puja then it is because a) you either got charged up enough that the mantras were charged anyway, b) that (most likely) the people you were teaching were spiritually oriented or had spiritual past that having them meditate on "toe cheese" would have worked. And of course I'm not restricting this to mantra meditation either as you have said before you taught non mantra meditation. It is probably not magical at all but some laws of physics and sound physics at work. As a tantric I am allowed to play around with mantras a bit and have noted the effects on different centers of the brain with different mantras and thus why these mantras can produce different physiological effects. Much of this has been documented in ayurveda. Of course you're in a nihilist phase so you see all of this as TB'er stuff even when it isn't. :-D
