--- 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 
TM—except in an ex post facto sense—who 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 TM—which 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.
=======




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