On May 3, 2011, at 7:23 AM, turquoiseb wrote:
It seems that both camps actively work at denying each
the other's experience. Like a spiritual warfare is
going on over the hearts and minds of the meditation market.
What an incredible crock of horseshit.
I can honestly state that I have never encountered
an organization that claims that its technique of
meditation is "best" OTHER THAN THE TMO.
Or one that claims to produce higher states of consciousness, but all
they produce is junk science to back these alleged claims.
Fortunately for them, you can fool the hypnotized a lot of the time;
"for we know the hypnotized never lie".
The most I've ever heard any other organization say
is that some of its techniques are possibly better
for people of a certain disposition, whereas other
techniques they teach may be better for those of a
different disposition. The question of "best" does
not come up, almost by definition, because all of
these organizations teach multiple techniques.
There was never any impetus for them to declare
one of them "best," as there was for the TMO, for
the simple reason that it had nothing else to sell.
The most balanced approach I know, and this is true of Hindu
meditation and Buddhist meditation and very likely other forms of
meditation as well: it's about tailoring it to the persons unique
disposition, not the student toeing the line to a monolithic
technique. This is interesting because a huge selling point for me
was that TM teachers were portrayed as mantric experts who via the
supreme wisdom of Guru Dev and the Maharishi gave mantra diksha based
on the unique qualities of the individuals' nervous system! In other
words, they were customizing the mantra to the person.
How true to that turn out to be?: not very.
That's NOT to say there can not be general techniques relevant for
the masses. There always has been such generalized methods. But
tailor-made and "off the rack" will always vary in their relative
efficacy.
Most of the organizations I've dealt with that
teach meditation would be affronted even by the
notion that there is such a thing as the "meditation
marketplace." That a phrase that only a TMer or
someone from some other group *trying to make money
by teaching meditation* would think up. The organi-
zations I'm talking about all teach for free, so
such a low-vibe concern as "marketing" what they
teach or selling it in a "marketplace" would never
even occur to them.
As for the idea of making meditation mandatory in
schools, that is also something that would never
occur to these other organizations. If someone
brought the idea up, they would first laugh, think-
ing that you were joking, and then be affronted,
because the idea of imposing meditation on anyone
or mandating its practice would be anathema to
them. They wouldn't understand how anyone could
even think such a low-vibe idea up.
It takes a Maharishi, or one of his followers, to
think of something like that. But that's probably
because they think in terms of a "meditation
marketplace." To them it doesn't matter whether
individuals pay for it or a school system pays for
it, just so long as they get paid.
Like I've said many times, the TMO are probably the premier
practitioners of spiritual materialism for our era.
