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Irmeli:
This kind of environment is not natural in the west because the societies have grown beyond those ways of relating. Many people are however attracted to these settings, because they still have residues of this kind of relating in their personalities, usually as disowned parts of themselves. Because of the disowning they project that part out. One result of the projecting can be the idealization of a charismatic guru, whose personality has qualities of the disowned part. This part can now be seen as very positive, because the guru creates a false grandiose image of himself. And at the same time the guru gets his "shine", that he by now is desperately dependent upon, through the adulation he receives. Without it he would be just a dry raisin. ----I don't know. I think that Maharishi is a savvy world savior in his own eyes and the eyes of many many people. I don't think he outright manipulated people for nefarious or neurotic ends, just that he truely believes his own hype, and thinks that since governments are made by people, he might as well make his own, modeled after what he really believes in - the Vedas. Meanwhile, I can't see him crying at raking in the
dough either. He is surrounded by Machivells such as Bevan Morris and John
Haeglen, two very manipulative individuals who will stop at nothing to deliver
their message, be it world recreation and their special brand of megalomania, or
salvation through divine dispensations. Often to a Machivell, since the
end justifies the means the steps of the process are not important, just as
how not suffering witches to live both got rid of Church dissenters and
made good entertainment for the polity, thus tightening the controls of the RC
Church in Europe. Certainly there's nothing wrong with that? Moreover
their souls were purified and their holdings returned to the
Church.
The problem is the reification of conceptualizations as
more important than actual life and the living, ie., the ideal becomes a more
charming vision than the reality and so worth fighting for for those who are
inclined towards mentalization based aesthetics, versus reality based
aesthetics.
This is at the heart the entire problem with Hinduism
and other God centered religions in the constant reaffirmation of mentalization
as if it is actually something more than mere thought, that is, as if some one
person high up in the hierarchy's vision has some greater truth than the person
at the bottom. This is the same thing with the Sun King mentality, which
presupposes that the richest and most powerful are that way because they are the
most correct.
But where is the value of this for those who don't
rank? Nowhere, so what happens, no such government ever lasts very long.
Because all those governments were, were houses of cards of mere
conceptuality.
In this sense Buddhism teaches up its greatest concept,
that of no concept as ultimate truth. In identifying that no concept is of the
essence we learn to not get strung out on our discursive imaginings, and instead
we take recourse to direct perception. This is a more scientific and
rational model for formulating society, and plays no favorites. Proof is
required in concrete form as the delimiter of all
concepts. Furthermore, God, and those who speak for It are both
discarded as merely delusional obstructors of the business of actual living, and
thus the vicarious conceptual and imaginary living are given much less
energy.
Maharishi though, who thinks Buddhism is stupid (or
merely stops at CC, I think he has said) could not seem to grasp the mechanics
of a truely empiracle spiritual methodology, and has instead remythified his
adolescent religious upbringing from where he received his spiritual milk pap,
and instituted it for the masses, thinking that only he could do it.
He's no dummy. Religions start with myths. If TM lasts
another thousand years then there will be nobody to separate the myth of the
Ramayana from the somewhat actual (though fantasy driven) hierarchy of Rajas and
Raams that he staged like a divine comedy of errors.
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