Llundrub wrote: > > > > Notice how > > the whole tone of this thread has shifted to an ad > > hominem attack on Rick rather than a discussion of the > > op-ed piece and the rather blatant lies of Pierson and > > Wallace.
Hey Kirk or anybody, in Pierson's and Wallace's remarks, what were the lies? As my question implies, I'm not seeing them. I've reposted Erik's op-ed piece below as a reference. - Patrick Gillam July 14, 2005 The Fairfield Ledger Opinion A tale of two gurus Could the Transcendental Meditation movement learn a thing or two from 'the Hugging Saint'? By Erik Gable Rick Archer had been practicing and teaching Transcendental Meditation for nearly three decades when he first met Mata Amritanandamayi, the Indian holy woman known to her followers as "Amma" or "the Hugging Saint." He didn't see any conflict between going to visit Amma and his regular practice of TM in the men's dome at Maharishi University of Management. In fact, Archer recalled, his experience during his daily meditations actually improved. But a few years later, after a meeting in which two TM movement officials questioned him about his involvement with Amma's group, Archer's dome badge was revoked. He had run afoul of a university policy discouraging TM teachers from seeing gurus other than Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and he was no longer welcome during group meditation. That policy has been a source of division and even fear among members of Fairfield's meditating community. Although Amma has visited Mount Pleasant every summer for the past four years, Archer said "fear and paranoia" leads some Fairfield residents to skip her local appearance and drive to Chicago to see her -- because they're afraid they'll get kicked out of the dome if the wrong person sees them in her presence. But TM movement leaders say the policy is necessary to preserve the purity of Maharishi's teachings. They also say the rules are nowhere near as draconian as many people think. This issue came up repeatedly during a community meeting last summer hosted by TM movement leaders. Robert Keith Wallace, an M.U.M. trustee and the university's first president, fielded several questions about reports of people being banned from the domes after visiting other spiritual leaders. Wallace said TM teachers all agreed when they became teachers not to see other gurus. In an interview last year, he compared the situation to a Coca-Cola salesman being seen drinking Pepsi. But movement leaders say Amma is not their enemy. "The university's policy on any other teacher of meditation or self-development is neutral," said M.U.M. executive vice president Craig Pearson, "meaning we don't endorse other people, we don't criticize other people." At the same time, Pearson said, the university doesn't want people practicing meditation techniques other than TM in its domes. "The essential core thing that we have to protect is the purity of that practice," he said. In addition to the ceremonies that earned her the nickname "the Hugging Saint," Amma offers her own meditation technique. The standards are stricter for teachers than for rank-and-file meditators, Pearson added. While teachers aren't supposed to be seen going to other gurus, he said, non-teachers aren't likely to get in trouble for being seen in another guru's presence. "Just going to see somebody else, there's no problem with that," he said. And in any case, Pearson said, "there's always due process." Archer -- who says he had good experiences with Maharishi and doesn't wish the movement any ill -- doesn't question M.U.M.'s right to decide who can and can't meditate in the domes. "They're entitled to set whatever standards they want," he said. But at the same time, some say the movement hurts itself by discouraging involvement with other gurus. "I feel they lose the respect of a lot of people," said Archer, "and they also box themselves in and run the risk, which I think has been to a great degree realized, of becoming very cult-like." "I think it tends to isolate the TM movement," said Mark Petrick, one of the people who organized Amma's visit this year. "I think the TM movement becomes less and less relevant to the life of the community when it closes itself off to experiences that many people have found valuable in their lives." Petrick, a former M.U.M. faculty member, said he left the movement because he felt it was "a little too closed, a little too cultish." Pearson, however, rejects the C-word. "I think a common definition of a cult is that people try to control the behavior, and the comings and goings and even the finances of the members of the cult," he said, "and there's nothing of that associated with the university or the practice of meditation in the golden domes." * * * The larger question, though, is whether Amma's popularity in the Fairfield meditating community is a symptom of problems within the TM movement itself. Take a look, for example, at how Amma's admirers describe her. Without exception, they paint a picture of a humble, down-to-earth woman whose charitable projects make an immediate difference for people in need -- a far cry from the TM movement with its trappings of monarchy and its seemingly endless string of grandiose schemes. "More than anybody I've ever seen, she really does what she says she does," said Bob Hoerlein, a member of the local Amma group. "I guess the thing that people respect," said Petrick, "is that the things she does are very concrete and they're serving enormous numbers of people." Petrick contrasts Amma's down-to-earth mission of helping the poor with Maharishi's promises of world peace and supernatural powers like levitation. "There's no pie in the sky with her," he said. The upper ranks of the TM movement are filled with "excellencies" and "highnesses." For $1 million, you can take a course that entitles you to become a "raja," or king, in the Global Country of World Peace. And every so often, you can see white stretch limousines driving around Fairfield with the Global Country's golden flag fluttering in the breeze. It should surprise no one that such airs of royalty don't go over well in America -- which, after all, fought a revolution to get rid of its monarchy. But they also contrast sharply with the tales of humility told by Amma's admirers, who say she's been known to carry bricks on her head and jump into sewers to work alongside her followers. "She teaches by example, I think, that we're all created equal and that you don't have the big important people and the little peons," said Archer. Amma's humanitarian efforts -- building homes for the poor, funding hospitals, coordinating tsunami relief -- contrast just as sharply with the TM movement's fundraising campaigns, which promise world peace but never seem to make a concrete impact. The latest TM campaign is an effort to build 3,000 "peace palaces" around the world, with a price tag of $3 million each. The total is a staggering $9 billion -- which could build a lot of hospitals. Faced with a choice between an organization that builds homes for the poor and one that builds palaces, it's no wonder many people would rather give their money to the former. If Maharishi's organization dropped some of its airs, it would be less likely to lose followers to Amma or any other guru. The TM movement can crown all the kings and build all the palaces it wants, but it could still learn a thing or two from a humble Indian woman who travels around the world giving hugs. (Erik Gable is assistant news editor of The Fairfield Ledger.) To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
