I was there, briefly. The last big course I attended. The administration and assignment of rooms for participants was unprofessional, inefficient, and highly political - like some third world backwater.
After waiting five hours (5:30 PM to 10:30 PM) at the hotel, for my reserved and paid for, single room, I was finally given a dorm room on the other side of town, shared with some guy with a skin infection, who woke me up at 1 AM, to move in. I left the course the next day. As for the demonstrators mentioned in this article, they must have phoned it in, because nobody, including me, saw any of them. --- 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. >
