--- In [email protected], Duveyoung <no_re...@...> wrote: <snip> > And, even here at FFL we see long time meditators > and long time initiators disagreeing with one > another about effortlessness. The movement never > offered a "Doctor of TM Philosophy in consciousness > dynamics" program, and the seven step teaching > program doesn't try to inculcate clarity in the > meditators. "Just do this and don't ask any > questions" is the basic TMO presentation.
It's not the presentation *I* experienced, not by a very long shot. Questions were encouraged, and I asked lots of them and got answers to most. <snip> > Most of the naysayers who are contending that TM > is effortless no matter what Vaj "comes up with," > are not listening to him and grasping his POV > well enough to come back at him, and instead, are > content to fall back on memorized text from > Maharishi to be the Vaj-countering argument. That's bullshit, Edg. We've been pointing out to him that his description of the instructions for TM, from which he goes on to extrapolate his POV, *aren't the instructions for TM*. There's no way his POV can be "grasped" as long as he's got the basis of it wrong. > To me, this thread is woefully needing a scholar to > come forth and do proper battle with Vaj about what > constitues "effort." He's given some very clear > statements that might be right or wrong, but they're > precise and draw a well defined line in the sand. > Others are merely kicking sand on his line instead of > drawing their own lines and defending that their lines > are more apt drawn. That's also bullshit. You haven't been reading what we've been saying with any attention. Vaj has a definition of "effortlessness" that has nothing to do with TM; he says it's having the awareness of the mantra 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That may be valid in its own context, but it's obviously not what TM is designed to produce. It's a non sequitur. > To me there never was a TM teacher of any philosophical > merit -- all teachers were sent into the world without > clarity or "scholarship about consciousness" credentials. And that's yet more bullshit. Maybe I was just lucky, but most of the TM teachers I encountered had enormous clarity, such that they could express some extremely subtle points about TM in very straightforward language (not "parroting," but using their own words and phrases and examples and analogies) and integrate those points with everything else they were teaching so that the whole structure hung together brilliantly. Whatever I absorbed from them has turned out to be in alignment with a significant number of the TM teachers I've encountered on the Web; it's obvious we have a common basis of understanding about TM. In contrast, the teachers that have *not* been in alignment with my and these TM teachers' understanding have been all over the map--no consistency whatsoever.
