--- In [email protected], Vaj <vajradhatu@...> wrote: > > You know the sad thing? It doesn't matter if the TM-Sidhi thing was > when they went officially crazy (I too believe that was the major > turning point). It doesn't matter if the research is bullshit. It' > doesn't matter that Mahesh was never trained as a guru or shishya. It > doesn't matter that he was making up it all along. > > What matters is that they've been able to keep up appearances. Their > websites still look cool: esp. if you are wealthy or upper middle > class person who gets lots of very nice catalogues. Their advertising > looks on par with such high-end product lines, and thus geared to the > Oprahs and the ladder climbers of this world. It speaks in their > advert. language. And it doesn't matter if Mahesh was molesting his > students: he maintained an impeccable stage persona, complete with > make-up. etc. and that wonderful silk attire. > > And the most important part is that they have super-saturated the web > with this air-brushed image and they've pushed themselves to the top > of the search engines. If I search for anything remotely related to > TM or TM org products - or just plain meditation - I'm very likely to > have an advert. link to MUM.edu. > > They've played and paid the game of spiritual materialism better than > anyone else. So that may be all it takes. People love their appearances.
Thanks for your reply, Vaj. I cannot disagree with your assessment. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how people can cling to beliefs and work tirelessly to preserve the appearance that they are true, long after other more reasonable people would have realized that they were not. But for me the "tipping point" into this world of clinging to appearances was not the introduction of the TM-Sidhi program itself but the rebranding of it in terms of self importance. That, essentially, is what the shift from "You perform the Sidhis as a way to realize your own enlightenment" to "You perform the Sidhis as a kind of sacred duty, because by doing so you become One Of The Most Important People On Earth, one of the select few, the holy thud of whose butt-bounces can bring about world peace and an Age Of Enlightenment" was. It was a radical shift into the world of self importance and the amplification of individual ego. And the more sense of self importance one has about one's spiritual practices, the greater the tendency to cling to them. An *association* has been created, linking the practices to the myth that YOU are one of the most important people on earth. YOUR woo woo is just so much more woo than other peoples'. They may meditate, but you perform the *Sidhis*, and that's just so much better, doncha know...more woo. Once you've bought into this -- being one of the most woo individuals on the planet -- it's tough to let go of it. Especially if this sense of self importance is reinforced twice a day by being in a group of people who believe that they are equally important, and equally woo. So the clinging to appearances doesn't surprise me; that's just human nature. The surprise, as you suggest, is that those doing the clinging have been so successful for so long *at* preserving the appearance of rationality, despite the reality of their daily lives. They still sell the myth of "20 minutes twice a day" while living a reality of "several hours twice a day, and only in a group of people as special as I am," never noticing that they're being hypocrites by doing so. I think it's the "never noticing" that makes the TMO PR engine so effective. The people who write it really believe it. They believe it so thoroughly that they don't even recognize that their own lives and lifestyles make what they're writing a lie.
