--- In [email protected], "authfriend" <jstein@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > <snip> > > I believe Vaj's contributions here are more sincere than that. > > If you accept the premise that there really IS a tradition of > > knowledge of yoga, and if you believe that Maharishi has > > corrupted it, then it all makes sense why Vaj would care. It > > comes from taking the knowledge very seriously. > > Being sincere about one's own tradition is one thing; > being intellectually honest in comparing it to another > tradition is something else again.
I think our perception of this has something to do with what motives we ascribe to him. Deliberate dishonesty requires the introduction of a dark motive, doesn't it? I'm not sure I have evidence for that but let's see if you do. But on the outset I accept your distinction as valuable if it applies. > > Two points: > > One, Vaj never addresses the question of whether MMY > "corrupted" the tradition, or whether he *reformed* > it after it had been corrupted by others. There's a > good case to be made for the latter, but Vaj won't > even acknowledge it, let alone debate it. I'm pretty sure we have heard his opinion on this. He believes that Maharishi corrupted it and that TMers are incorrect to believe that he reformed it. He may also believe that except for a few special people, the tradition itself had gone into some disrepair. He does seem to believe that there are people capable of passing on the correct information in the right way, and that he has met some of them. (Feel free to jump in at any time Vaj considering this is your head we are autopsying! > > Two, what does not make sense is why Vaj misrepresents, > in very specific and documentable ways, the basic > instructions for practicing TM when he claims to have > been a TM teacher. It's not just a matter of not using > TM lingo, it's misrepresentation of the mechanics. > (Extensive documentation on request.) I believe you here in terms of your perspective, but since I have gotten in to this snare myself from time to time I see it differently. When you have been out of TM for a long time and have applied other points of view to the teaching, you come up with your own understanding that can be really different from the TM one. And it makes little sense to go back and parrot a POV you have long since rejected. Especially since he has studied systems with excruciating details of mental states, it seems likely that he would view our TM practice in a very different way. He might have his own take on all sorts of details of what we do. Crappy example but its what I can come up with now. Lets say that there was some kind of practice that actually WAS more effortless than TM. In comparison the practice of TM might seem contrived and having a quality of effort that was objectionable to a practitioner of this system. They might commit the ultimate blasphemous phrase that TM requires effort and their practice does not. If it really was their experience, then it would be true for them, but it would seem like he had no understanding of TM wouldn't it? I think some of this is going on in how Vaj describes TM, which in his mind, is a superficial version of the high octane one he is into. > > Neither of these smacks of intellectual honesty. How > can a "sincere" comparison between teachings be made > when one of them is consistently and willfully > shortchanged? I sense his implied condescension concerning TM practice since he believes he is doing something much deeper and better. I am still not sure I can see motive for your intellectual honesty angle. He has said that he enjoyed the benefits of TM until he found something which he feels is better. So he acknowledges that TM does the stuff I enjoy from my practice. But then he claims that there are practices that lead you to sit in a state of no thought for days at a time. Personally I would rather sprinkle thumb tacks on my Cheerios and eat them than sit in any state for more than say an hour. But from his POV, if you accept the premise that this is valuable, then it is also really clear that TM doesn't deliver that. (Or hasn't to me, which suite me just fine.) So I'm not sure he is shortchanging it as much as he believes if comes up short. > > Again, it's like a devout Roman Catholic scholar > putting down Martin Luther because his teachings > didn't accord with those of the Vatican, rather than > making a reasoned case for the Vatican's teachings > being more authentic and for why Luther's were a > corruption. That is a great example because I suspect there hasn't been a lot of the latter as much as the former in history. But it brings up an interesting point of how intellectual discourse is conducted here and my motive in pursuing this conversation. I have long believed that a front row seat on a detailed discussion on such details between you and Vaj as well as others and Vaj would be fascinating. Both you and Vaj are unique resources here IMO. My experience discussing things with Vaj are characterized by a lack of touchiness on his part that I am such a skeptic. He doesn't care and I assume he figures that it is my loss and he is willing to meet me where I can hang. And through the years I have found you to be able to connect in the same way, noticing where I am drawing different lines of belief, but secure in your own version enough that it doesn't have to become personal. In other words, good intellectual boundaries. I know this goes both ways for you two and that there has developed a culture of disrespect that now destroys any possibility for what I think could be an interesting discussion. Of course you guys would have to buy into giving a shit first. > > One may be sincere in one's beliefs about the value > of a tradition, but when the sole basis for the > negative judgment of a different tradition is that > it's different from the tradition one favors, it's > hard to accept it as a serious argument. In my mind this was the exact rap Maharishi ran on us. The best he could do is call other systems like Yogananda's an airplane compared to his jet. And even on the surface, the fact that Maharishi departed from the most fundamental and obvious principles in his own tradition is clear. You have to buy into his view that he is a super special reformer whose place in history is unique to make that all OK. So from Vaj's perspective he is viewing Maharishi the way Maharishi viewed people teaching concentration techniques. It is more than that he favors a certain system, he has open contempt for what he believes Maharishi has done to destroy the system he values. (of course I may be completely full of it since I am just inferring what Vaj thinks about all this from his posts here.) Vaj might > as well be a fundamentalist Christian arguing that > Jesus is the only way to salvation because the Bible > says so and that TM is demonic because that isn't > what *it* teaches. Or that the knowledge got lost and people like Maharishi cashed in on people's ignorance. Meanwhile there is some esoteric group of people that have maintained the tradition and Vaj studied with them. And as I'm sure you know, I am not arguing his case because I have bought into his perspective about it all. I am equally skeptical about his sources being any more authoritative about the meaning of these experiences as I am about Maharishi's take. I am all for studying them but I am still of the opinion that the context of the tradition allows for as much misinformation to be passed on as good information. And the value of sitting in a state of samadhi for a prolonged period of time is not a given for me at all, so arguing that a technique could accomplish it does nothing for me. I have come to my own conclusion that these states can be overdone and that causes other problems. Problems that these traditions don't care about because it is all couched in such a strong belief web about its assumed value. A culture that thought it was Okay dokay for Ananda Moyama to be unable to attend to her bodily functions for much of her life. The icky ones. I believe all these systems need a major overhaul in light of what we have learned since they were designed. This actually happened in the martial arts and it has been amazing. Traditions of secrecy have been broken down in mixed martial arts and we know know more about what things actually work and what things were fantasy. And these old sensei's were no less entrenched in the value of their secret traditions than the yogis. So I view Vaj as an underexploited resource here. I have always had such a cordial relationship with him that I can't relate to seeing him as having dark motives of deception. I believe he is as sincere as any of us and has a strong, well-developed POV. But in the the antagonistic line of fire (for which he has pulled as many triggers as any of us) we aren't gunna get to the good stuff. And the good stuff would be just the kind of conversation you mention, where the virtues of his system, whatever that is, is laid out in detail in a way that allows us to decide if it has some merit worth considering. And since he has knowledge of the TM system it would be up to him to map it across for us so we could understand what he was referring to. Being a non-spiritual dilettante meditator, it is unlikely that it is going to attract me on more than an intellectual level. I am fine with the supposedly superficial benefits of my practice. I look for depth in my life elsewhere after meditation. But for some here who are really into these states of mind, I think we can do better than to assume that he has dark motives of deception. And that goes the same for you Judy. You have been unfairly cast as a TB who can't think thoughtfully about Maharishi's system without defensively protecting it. So it is equally unhelpful in my Kumbaya vision for Vaj to see you as a person not capable of understanding and appreciating what his POV is. I would gladly read an exchange entered into with mutual respect and the old "agree to disagree" vibe that characterizes some of the most interesting exchanges on FFL. >
