I have never heard of this place - you know anything about it Sal? vedic
village in Rendlesham
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On Tue, 2/11/14, salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Skelmersdale
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, February 11, 2014, 8:13 AM
Sounds like someone didn't enjoy their
school days!
I
never lived there but spent a lot of time on courses and
felt both happy and sad for the TM kids. Maybe it's my
prejudice as a southerner from a really nice town near
London but I thought Skem was a seriously depressing place,
a sprawling low-rent estate built to ease overcrowding in
nearby Liverpool.
I
thought the Domies had built a really nice village though,
meditating in the dome was lovely and they had plenty of
activities for adults and kids alike. The people I used to
stay with organised a lot of it and were seriously cool and
respected other peoples beliefs - including my natural
scepticism which was rare in the TMO but they didn't
like the emphasis on Indian stuff in the TMO so maybe they
are part of a minority ;-). A lot of people weren't like
that though and the emphasis was very much on TM conformity
to the extent that the directors had spies reporting back to
them about people were talking about outside the
dome.
The
TMO is a very insular organisation, you couldn't move
there and set up a whole food shop for instance as you would
be in competition with the dome shop and would be
blacklisted (this happened, I was disgusted) But it is a
cult and we shouldn't forget that.
There
are plenty of funny stories about people trying other
techniques and new age beliefs and the response of the TMO
but that's life, people experiment and it isn't
worth getting upset about.
This
is interesting:
The daughter
of my old Geography teacher, Ruth, told me that not long ago
a couple of members of the British Humanist Association
protested outside the Maharishi school as they were
convinced it was teaching creationism because one of the
subjects is called the Science of Creative Intelligence
(SCI).SCI taught a
mixture of Vedic philosophy and lifestyle tools, but steered
away from faith and religion of any sort – it was merely
the use of the word "creative" which riled people
up. “They said we were being brainwashed, but once we
spoke to them, they were really cool, they told us about
their practice and it was really interesting. We were going
to take the mick and pretend we were all robots.”I wouldn't
say they were brainwashed
but they were definitely taught a load of shit. And this
must have been a pretty poor bunch of humanists not to have
spotted that, but then the TMO is always careful to give an
acceptable view of their beliefs, they make their crazy kool
aid sound almost reasonable. Unified field based education,
my arse!I had so many
arguments about SCI with people I lost count. The idea is
totally without intellectual merit and supporting evidence,
and they teach jyotish there! I think lying to children is
wrong, I couldn't care less what adults choose to
believe but schools should keep it to what is known and why
we think that is the case (it's called science). There
are so many wonders you can teach in the school day, why
waste time with a stupid religious belief from iron age
India, mixed up with crap quantum physics and failed
sociology? It's the reason I never donated to the
school, I just felt sorry for the kids thinking they were
learning something in jyotish that
would be useful at university studying physics.I did envy the laid
back school lifestyle and "quiet periods" it's
a stark contrast to the school I went to. The small class
sizes help too and I've met some very cool and well
adjusted kids who went there, some of them rejected the TM
belief system when they got into the wider world and some
didn't. But I do remember a bit of friction between the
meddy kids and the locals, but nothing serious or worse than
I got from grammar school toff's in my town. It's
part of growing up.All in all, Skem is
a nice place if you like that sort of thing but it's an
ageing community and the youngsters can't wait to leave
as there is nothing to do and the best careers will be found
away from the depressed north west. Since the vedic village
in Rendlesham got built an awful lot of people have moved
away, but Skem still has a friendly community feel to it
which is all too rare these days.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...>
wrote:
This is
a fascinating article on the TM community written by a woman
who grew up there. It is fascinating to read the article and
then read the comments left by readers.
Those
of you on FFL who are Brits, whaddya think?
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/liverpools-decaying-yogi-commune
