--- In [email protected], "shempmcgurk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > MMY is testing us. > > He told us for years that TM was not a philosophy or a religion...he > told us time and time again that he didn't have "followers"...yet > people insisted upon him being their guru and that TM have all the > trappings of religion. > > Well, I guess the people around him finally "won" and MMY has for a > decade or so now acted like the guru that people wanted him to be.
Strangely enough, Shemp, although I suspect you wrote this with tongue firmly in cheek, I actually agree with it. This really IS the dynamic of guru-as-megalomaniac, as far as I can tell. In the early days of a teaching, the teacher can remain strong, and keep the students from putting him on a pedestal and treating him as more than human. But over time, in teachers who have not been trained to deal with the effects of thousands or tens of thousands of people focusing their attention and their fantasies on them, the teachers can start to "believe their own PR" and start "acting out" the fantasies that have been projected onto them, and eventually warp- ing them in ways that even the students didn't imagine. It's actually a fairly well-known phenomenon in some other traditions, and one reason why people are not allowed to become teachers until they've actually proved themselves resistant to the effects of mass attention. 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/
