--- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > I will say this, I can see how a lot of petty > rules would become intolerable if one were subject > to them on a long-term basis. It's one of the > reasons I never became a TM teacher (and one of > the reasons I decided to work for myself instead > of somebody else--you think the TMO is petty, but > companies can be just as petty). > > So I have some sympathy for Geeze if the Great > Ice Cream Expedition was the straw the camel > stepped on and broke for him. > > But you've been arguing that the rules for > ordinary weekend residence courses for meditators > are intolerable, and that just strikes me as very > revealing of your control-freakishness.
And I've been making the point that IMO the *only* reason for the "rules" on TM residence courses is Maharishi's and the TMO's control-freak nature. It pervades everything they do, and has IMO *nothing* to do with the supposed welfare of those being controlled. How much they *really* care about them has been demonstrated over and over. The control-freak behavior is IMO *only* about establishing a pattern in the students of being controlled. It starts with telling them what to bring for the puja and demanding that they give up drugs for 15 days. It continues with the "gentle motion" to instruct them to kneel. It continues with "What we learn in private, we keep in private...you agree, yes?" It continues in the three days of checking and it is reinforced in *spades* on residence courses, where *every minute of their time* is decided for them, their diet is decided for them, and any deviance from doing what they are told to do is met with at the very least a frown and, if they persist, a stern "talking to" by the person who they are supposed to perceive as an "authority." And after years or decades of such treat- ment, some people get so used to being treated like this by control freaks that not only do they see nothing wrong with it, they make excuses for the control freaks, and attempt to paint anyone who does *not* submit to their control as having something wrong with *them*. It reminds me of that young woman who was kept chained to a radiator in her basement for years by her father. When she was finally found and set free, and her father charged with child abuse, she testified in his favor, saying "He was only trying to protect me." That could be Judy Stein.
