Maharishi's version does show some interesting deviations from other translations, such as rendering maha as 'subtle' rather than 'great' when in the context of meditation. I think, as far as it went, since it is incomplete, it is an insightful translation. Vernon Katz told me once he had all these tapes resulting from the work with Maharishi, and he was wondering how they could be preserved. That seemed to indicate they were in his personal possession (that was about twenty years ago). I recall telling him that the tapes needed to be digitized because analogue tape was subject to mechanical deterioration and the signal, if copied in analogue form, would also get noisier and more distorted, while digital copying, even to materials that can mechanically deteriorate, can be copied faithfully to a new substrate because error correction in digital code preserves the information in spite of minor errors cause by imperfections in the substrate. He seemed such a simple sweet guy, not much into technicalities, so I doubt what I said had much impact.
That was my only conversation with the man. I saw a photograph once, of Vernon and Maharishi sitting across from each other at a table, silhouetted by a window, apparently taken at one of their work sessions. ---In [email protected], <authfriend@...> wrote: Maharishi didn't just sort of send Vernon Katz off on his own to write the commentary from scratch. According to Katz, it was an extremely close day-to-day collaboration, with Maharishi supplying the thoughts and he and Katz deciding together how to put them into words on the page. That's not to minimize Katz's contribution, which was substantial, but it's incorrect to suggest he wrote the commentary by himself. Also, it isn't established fact that Maharishi "distorted" the Gita. Every translation/commentary reflects the consciousness, knowledge, and understanding of the translator/commentator. There's no one definitive overall meaning that one can determine from the various versions, or even find in the original Sanskrit. Maharishi may well have tweaked his version here and there to bring out more strongly and clearly what he wanted to teach about TM, but whether that constitutes "distortion" is a matter of opinion. For all we know, he may have brought out what others had missed or misinterpreted. Anyone who reads versions of the Gita other than the Marshy version will know that Marshy distorted a good deal of it to funnel people's awareness to believe that it was all about TM. That's not what the Gita says. And marshy didn't write his commentary - he had a TM'er write it for him, Vernon Katz I think it was.
