--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Ann" wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb wrote: <snip> > > TM teachers are actually instructed *to* moodmake > > while performing the puja, and to "dwell on the > > meaning of the words" while performing one. > > I wouldn't know about that but other teachers here would. Can > anyone who are TM teachers here confirm that?
When this same issue came up in November 2011 and Barry made this same point, Robin made a powerful case against Barry's conclusion that moodmaking was involved: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/294883 Worth rereading in its entirety, I think. I'll quote the most directly relevant parts here (I've taken the liberty of rather sloppily inserting paragraph breaks for ease of reading): ======= BW: If you think back on it, what could possibly BE more of an exercise in moodmaking than the way we were taught to perform the puja? It (at least as on my TTC) was *not* about the mere "power of the words" and reciting them. We were taught explicitly to (contravening MMY's "Don't divide the mind" dictum) maintain a constant awareness of the meaning of the words in the puja in our minds while chanting/singing them. MZ: Yes, Barry is right here. But I don't know of anyone who taught TMexcept in an ex post facto sensewho was able to conform to this exhortation of Maharishi's. That Maharishi inspired us with this intention, simply had nothing, or almost nothing, to do with what actually happened in that Puja room. To try to make the case that one's experience of performing the Puja was determined by the extent to which one was able to adhere to these instructions from Maharishi, will not go any ways towards explaining what happened in that Puja room when one sang the Puja, and submitted oneself to the mechanical procedure of teaching TM, a process as impersonal and automatic as the experience of doing Transcendental Meditation. If the Puja was trained moodmaking, then so was TM. (It is interesting that Barry invokes the term moodmaking, which is itself a brilliant concept taught to us by Maharishi. I think you run into trouble if you are using, as your main idea, an idea which itself is derived from the very thing which you are attempting to denigrate.) Maharishi certainly cultured us in our respect for Guru Dev and performing the Puja. But we did not, paint-by-numbers, carry these memories (on our TTC) into the Puja room such as to be able to make determinative these experiences over the experience that suddenly and irresistibly began to work on us once we began to perform the Puja. BW: We were told endless stories about the personal- ities of the teachers and/or gods and goddesses being invoked by the words of the puja, and taught explicitly to keep a conscious awareness of those meanings in our minds. It was also implied in no uncertain terms that the puja was *supposed* to make you high, to change your state of attention and boost you into a higher one. MZ: All this is true which Barry tells us here. But the relevance of this to the actual experience of teaching TM via the Puja is simply based upon what actually happened to each teacher when he or she stepped into that Puja room having already submitted oneself to the entire procedure of TMwhich began with the Introductory Lecture and continued right through the Three Days Checking. The whole thing was one of obedience and precise conformity. It was like an algorithm. There was no room for the primacy of the ego or subjective interpretation, or wish-fulfillment, or different levels of achievement of moodmaking. Teaching TM has nothing to do with moodmaking, and demonstrated the antithesis (and thus the validity) of why Maharishi made the distinction between what we could imagine as being some experience, and an experience which was the mechanical and choiceless effect of executing the formula for teaching TM that intrinsic relationship to this experience of transcending in TM. Maharishi was the consummate bullshitter and of course he wanted us to be inspired by these Hindu gods and goddesses. But most of all he wanted to allow us to be influenced by his Master Guru Dev, and this particular influence was decisive, as so much of what is said towards the end of the Puja is explicitly honouring and worshipping Guru Dev in a way which almost forces one into a posture of adoration. I think Maharishi had problems with his sincerity; but his devotion to Guru Dev, and his belief in the value and power of the Puja, this could not be doubted. It certainly wasn't by anyone on any Teacher Training Course. =======