On May 18, 2011, at 3:40 PM, Xenophaneros Anartaxius wrote:
Perhaps a useful question is this: just how deep does the "purity of the teaching" have to be to ensure that a meditator has a correct experience of TM, or some other technique. From what teachers told me, there seem to be two elements. A mantra, and the correct way to use it, which is the right start of meditation, and then everything mostly takes care of itself.
The simple answer is it needs to be an intact line with an appropriate delivery method. We now know two things:
1. Maharishi was NOT authorized by Swami Brahmananda to teach nor was he trained in how to do so.
2. Puja diksha is an authentic method for mantra initiation, but it requires a) an authentic teacher, which Mahesh was not, and b) an authentic means. The "puja" Maharishi created is a hodge podge of different goods, tacked onto one another. The important thing here is that we now know that the puja is largely derived from a student of Swami Brahmananda who was a poet and scholar. When Brahmananda was told of this poem, poem, he explicitly asked Mahesh to destroy it and throw it into the Ganges. Mahesh instead kept it and used it, against the direct wishes of his guru.
So therefore we have an untrained and unauthorized student with no line of transmission using a made up, but very clever device to fool the unwary and to promote his own cause(s).
The further fact that Mahesh's teaching is in direct opposition to SBS's closes this case.
Verdict: phony guru with phony initiation ceremony, against the direct wishes of his guru...and millions of fooled customers.
