>From 23 years ago. Wow.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Michael Jackson <mjackson74@...> wrote:
>
> Ex-Followers Demonstrate Against
> TM
>
> From "Grounding
> the Guru," by Susan Gervasi, City Paper (Washington, DC), 7/13/90;
> 14,16.
>
>
> More than 800 members of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental
> Meditation, attending a week-long convention at Washington, DC's
> Omni-Shoreham Hotel in June, faced the protest of members of TM-EX, an
> informal
> anti-TM group that educates the public about TM and offers "exit counseling"
> to
> those who want out of the movement.
>
>
> One TM-EX, former 15-year follower Curtis Mailloux, a 33-year-old real estate
> broker from Fairfax, VA, denounced the organization as a cultist religion
> that
> is exploitative, deceptive, and damaging. Mailloux is a 1979 graduate of
> Maharishi International University, in Fairfield, IA, who in 1985 became head
> of
> TM's Washington Center.
>
>
> TM-EXers do not dispute that TM can be an effective relaxation technique,
> though
> they say it is no better than similar relaxation regimens. The danger in TM,
> they say, comes when the discipline takes over the meditators'
> lives.
>
>
> TM-EX member Joe Kelley said: "When we started we were told it was a simple,
> effortless technique for releasing stress with no religious implications.
> Initially, it was a 20 minute technique." But by taking advanced residence
> courses and other activities, "I was effectively made into a Hindu believer,"
> said Kelley.
>
>
> Former TM teacher Diane Hendel, who has sued the organization for fraud and
> extortion, said the many bizarre mental experiences she had were considered a
> sign of spiritual superiority. "I saw little creatures with wings" during
> intensive meditation periods, she related. "They were like my pets. They'd
> tell
> me things." She was encouraged to believe that these winged beasties were
> "devas" -- Hindu spirits of nature. "I began not to be able to tell who was a
> person and who was a deva," she said. Hendel sought counseling, eventually
> quit
> meditating, and left the movement.
>
>
> Mailloux said involvement in the movement becomes "a prison of specialness.
> Especially as a leader in the movement, there's no way you can leave this
> group
> and be [regarded by other devotees as] OK or leave with dignity... I was only
> special as a nervous system which is a 'generator of purity,' not as an
> individual."
>
>
> Mailloux's "specialness"earned him three years in Florida with a group of
> celibate TM men, living monastically within the movement, where he enjoyed
> the
> adulation of female movement "groupies" drawn to his hard-to-getness -- a
> common
> ego-trip among the celibates, he said. Some movement women with low
> self-esteem,
> he added, tend to get fixated on these celibate men and get milked for
> donations
> to support them.
>