Excellent topic. Some mind-modeling I may have done with Maharishi and Krishnamurtii:
1. The power of costume. If you want to close a deal in the eastern hemisphere make sure your tie is well into three figures. Although my closet is now filled with expensive suits I never wear I learned from M & K at a young age the power of appearance in a commercial negotiation and many other kinds of transactions. As an expat I was amazed how much final outcomes were impacted by appearance. I have no doubt, I would not have been able to take my first two wives hostage if I'd dressed the way I dress now. 2. Be humble in dealings with Arabs, Asians and Brits. I learned from M&K to treat all transactions with these ethnic groups as a learning experience and if I started thinking I was getting the upper hand in a transaction I needed reconsider what I was smoking or drinking at the time. In a negotiation, not only do these groups not: "leave anything on the table”, as often as not, if you’re not being humble, they don't bother to even leave the table which you would swear was there a minute ago. And not to forget when Maharishi obtained his degree, India was the British Raj and the theosophists bought K the best British education money could buy although some of the Dons at Oxford wondered out loud if he was retarded. 3. Function follows form. Contrary to everything I was taught as a child, I learned from M&K that what I say is so much less important than how I say it. That the silver tongued devil always gets the worm no matter what time he gets out of bed. My theory is that it was when they first met the Brits that the Chinese started referring to Caucasians as "Guai Lo" (white devils). 4.A good story is much more important than the company you keep. I have no idea what I believe or don't believe about what Maharishi taught me---after 40 years its a work in progress. That said, I mind-modeled from M&K's behaviour that a a good story is much more important than the company you keep. As an example, I would point out the fact that someone too the right of Attila the Hun (Maharishi) was able to convince someone to the left of Trotsky (John Lennon) to spent time with him in India near a river with a lot of bugs and terrible food based on a story about a place called "The Absolute". Of course you could point out that with to attainment of a knighthood and billionaire status for Macca and Yoko Lennon's socialism was pretty soft centred to start with. 5. Most people do not want the burden of taking responsibility for themselves. I learned from M&K that most people would prefer you to agree with them than burden them with the truth. Also that there are pots of money to be made offering people a system, or non system in the case of K, that allows them to avoid all the nasty bits of their existence. Things like fear, boredom, stupidity, failure, homeliness, betrayal, intolerance, and resentment (I think I'll stop this one here since I want to send this post today). 6. Money is the only meaningful metric for valuing a human being. When I met M&K I was a committed hippy and by the time our association ended seven years later I was a Reaganaut who thought the only way to get to heaven was with a platinum AMEX, a gold Rolex and the best looking car ---or wife---in the garage. If food, clothing, shelter and the people you hang with are indicators---than everything about M&K screamed money and commerce. I’m embarrassed to admit I was well into my forties before I realized that money has nothing to do with the rarity of an individual and irony of irony billionaires are a better indicator of the end of a civilization then its advancement. Anyone who has traveled knows there are no shortage of wealthy people in Mexico, India and the Philippines although there is a very visible shortage of the type of middle class that made this country what it is. 7. Extremism in the defence of consciousness is no vice! It was not until I was older that I realized that"nothing new under the sun” also applied to M&K hanging with elites and in M's case extreme right wing nut jobs. That it was no coincidence that Hitler and many in the National Socialists (talk about CD in a party name) stole the swastika from the east, were vegetarians, believed in astrology and generally put a premium on most eastern spirituality. At one time or other M&K helped my mind model itself on many of these fronts, including politics, -although I was a bit of a punter with the right wing stuff. ________________________________ From: turquoiseb <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 4:16:45 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Mind-Modeling One of Rama's sayings that I still believe is useful was about the value of "admiration." He taught that focusing on another person and admiring their good qualities was a useful spiritual tool, because this process caused those same qualities to grow in us. I think this is true. What you focus on you become. Unfortunately, IMO there is a potential down side to this, for example when you focus on another person who has many admirable good qualities, but also a host of...uh...less good qualities. Do you pick *them* up as well as a result of focusing on them? Do these lesser traits start to grow in you the same way the admirable qualities do? I think the answer is Yes. Maharishi used to speak in terms of learning to think like him, and I don't think I'm alone here in saying that we managed to do so. You pretty much had to to be a full-time TM teacher, or work on staff. It was like a subtle (rarely conscious but often subconscious) TM form of "What would Jesus do?" as practiced by Christians. You'd model your thinking and to some extent your actions based on what you'd seen in your teacher. Ditto with Rama. He actually had a buzz-phrase for this process, and called it "mind-modeling." Is it any surprise then, years later, that I look at lists of DSM-IV traits used to diagnose things like Narcissistic Personality Disorder, traits that to me seem to apply to spiritual teachers I have known, and notice that I've picked up more than a few of those same traits? Duh. Yes, I picked up some admirable things from focusing on Maharishi and Rama for all those years, but I think I picked up a lot of their baggage as well. Add that to my own baggage, and I'm pretty convinced that I'll never run out of things to work on in my mindfulness practice. :-) What do you guys think? Can you identify with this at all? If so, are there things you feel that you "picked up" from Maharishi or other spiritual teachers, as a result of "mind-modeling," using them as models? This phenomenon explains much about the spiritual marketplace to me, and how clerks at the Bodhi Tree bookstore, for instance, can "nail" which teacher a customer studies with just by looking at them and talking with them. They're relating the ways that the students look and talk to the teachers themselves, and looking for elements of mind-modeling. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, they might say, chances are it studies with Swami Duckananda.
