--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <curtisdeltablues@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote: > > <Well, including TM for those privy to the "secret > teachings," but not including TM for the ordinary TMer, > who, in my experience, was told most emphatically that > the value of TM was one's experience in activity, not > one's experience during meditation.> > > You are mixing up two very distinct levels of the teaching > here. One is the instruction to meditators not to try to > manipulate their practice during the practice by preferring > any experience over another during the practice, or worrying > about it afterwards.
Oh, that's funny, Curtis. No, I wasn't even thinking of this. > But the fact that our practice has experiential goals, > especially after you have been doing it for a while and > in an advanced group context is pretty obvious. Of course the practice has experiential goals. They're obvious from the start; they're why people take up TM in the first place: "During the TM technique, the mind settles down effortlessly, experiencing quieter and quieter levels of thought. From time to time, the mind transcendsor "goes beyond"thought to the state of pure consciousness. As you continue to meditate 20 minutes twice a day, the qualities of that stateserenity, steadiness, harmonypermeate your life. Research indicates that the practice of the TM technique increases calmness and decreases stress." http://www.tm.org/inner-peace "The Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique provides access to the profound silence of the inner Self that is deep inside everyone. With regular meditation, the peacefulness and bliss of that inner experience is naturally integrated into daily living leading to an enlightened life with a fully developed heart, mind and soul." http://www.tm.org/enlightenment And of course better health, decreased anxiety, greater productivity, improved relationships, etc., etc., etc. All goals that have to do with experience in activity, not just during meditation. > Do you mean you were never on a course where you rated > your experiences with A, B and C for how clear your > transcending was and how much time you spent there? Actually, no, I wasn't. Went on lots of courses, too. (Last WPA I was on was sometime in 1995, so it's been awhile.) > Are you unclear that the goals of Maharishi's meditaiton > are clear transcending, witnessing transcending, witnessing > the celestial level, realizing that what you are > experiencing as outside you is actually the same > unboundeness as your own Self, having that thread of unity > woven into the cloth of Brahaman as even those things not > directly perceived are enveloped by your Self...it goes on. I'm very clear that what *I* was taught was that the goal of Maharishi's meditation was enlightenment, not the neat experiences one may have while practicing it as an end in themselves. > When you only write from the perspective of how a non > meditator or new meditator might misunderstand something > you are not writing authentically from your own > experience as I am. You are filtering it through some PR > concern. "PR concern" is weasel wording when we're talking about apparently factual statements that are potentially misleading to non- or new meditators. > If we can't let it all hang out here and discuss what > we really think about this practice here, where could we? Curtis, your context-shifting doesn't work on me any more, hasn't in quite some time. Nobody's objecting to discussing what we really think about the practice. > Judy > > Oh, please, Curtis, you don't limit yourself to your own > > POV here, including in this exchange. Just for one example, > > above you write, "It was the goal of the practice to have > > the experiences I was having." And you refer to what you're > > questioning as "the whole goal of the yoga systems including > > TM." Those are statements made as if of established fact. And > > they may *be* established fact. My point is that you make > > factual statements as well as POV statements, but some of > > your POV statements are indistinguishable from your factual > > statements. > > I don't believe your distinction holds up. Obviously as > a trained teacher of TM and MIU grad I have confidence > in my POV about his teaching. But I am not representing > the organization here. (Or anywhere) So I can believe > something I am stating is a fact but I would never expect > anyone else to just take it on face value. I am quite > obviously viewing the system from outside of it in my own > original way. That influences everything I say here. So > for someone to take what I write as the definitive > statement of fact about the teaching would be pretty > idiotic. This is *such* a weird set of non sequiturs, especially since you've made a bunch of what are obviously intended to be definitive statements of fact about the teaching in this very post. (The main thrust, that having experiences during meditation is more important than one's experience in activity, is--and I'll say this as a definitive statement of fact about the teaching-- simply not accurate in terms of what *I* was taught.) But this is a tangent from my original objection to what you had written to Emily, in which you both gave your own POV, clearly identified as such, *and* made what you clearly intended to be read as statements of fact about the human nervous system and how it responded to TM. That's the distinction I was making above. Where Maharishi's teaching comes in is with such assertions as "It was the goal of the practice to have the experiences I was having," and that you were questioning "the whole goal of the yoga systems including TM." This kind of thing is only a subset of what I was objecting to, not the whole deal by any means. We can certainly discuss it on its own terms, but it doesn't encompass the whole of the issue I was raising. > And it was always like this even when Maharishi was alive. > There was no one person other than him who held the > authority to speak for him without the caveat that we > were all doing the best we could from whatever the level > of consciousness we were in. As soon as you move off the > memorized scripts used in teaching and checking, you were > in the world of "not Maharishi". OK, so do you acknowledge that what I just quoted above is in the world of "not Maharishi"? (And *explicitly* "not Maharishi," given that it contradicts what's in the memorized scripts.) So your complaint about me could be leveled at Bevan every time he opens his mouth about the wholeness of life or to receive a whole meat-lover's pizza as a reward for lumbering through a very low hanging hoop in the walrus show.
