--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "markmeredith2002" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What exactly is purity of the teaching? Go to see 5 different > Maharishi Jyotishis and you'll get 5 different readings using 5 > different approaches, but if a jyotishi trained at maharishi jyotish > courses and using his training faithfully decides to stop giving the > right % of his revenues to the mov't, then he'll be called a threat to > the purity of the teaching and have his badge revoked. There are many > similar cases in the tmo in which purity of teaching seems to just be > an excuse to protect revenues. MMY changed his method of teaching TM > drastically when he came to west and initiators know that even the > method of choosing mantras has been changed over time. Instructions > regarding program are constantly changing. It seems to me that > misusing the term "purity of the teaching" for purely economic reasons > is itself the biggest threat to the purity of the teaching these days.
snip to end ******** Excellent question, cogent observations. When I became an Initiator (Fiuggi '72) the "purity of the teaching" was about the content of The Knowledge and the method of its transmission. In the 80s, someone in the power structure offered the opinion that MIU had been founded to "preserve the purity of the teaching". This was not the case, actually. The means of preserving the content and method of transmission had already been established in the Teacher Training courses. Maharishi said that the rationale for MIU was that universities are understood and accepted by society as repositories and laboratories of useful knowledge (not a direct quote; minor extrapolation); the establishment of the university was to promote society's acceptance of The Knowledge. I think it's fair to say that the University's successes in society's eyes have been marginal. Meanwhile, certain fundamentals of The Knowledge have actually been compromised by the University. For example, the principle of innocence in practice absolutely foundational as far as I'm concernedwas completely trashed by the practice of grading students on their performance in the Domes, where they are observed by faculty and accorded a performance rating based on how much they hop. Does anyone seriously believe that a student who hasn't hopped until the last minute of the session won't jump up and down once or twice for the sake of the grade? When one drops the theoretical considerations and looks for an operational definition, the preponderance of evidence favors a financial basis to the Purity Of The Teaching. Anything that competes with the proprietary offering is considered Off The Program. Simply put, The Purity Of The Teaching today seems to be mostly about the money. Which is why I place no faith in the organization to transmit anything of great spiritual value to the next generation. L B S 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/
