Thank you for these beautiful points, Ann. Now I'll do the Libra thing and mention how ancient people would eat various body parts of slain enemies to ingest their courage, etc. Go figure!
On Friday, April 4, 2014 9:05 AM, "awoelfleba...@yahoo.com" <awoelfleba...@yahoo.com> wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <steve.sundur@...> wrote : Share, I think you can find all manner of opinions about communion. I just mentioned that as one comment I once heard. As rituals go,it seems okay to me. Is it hurting anyone? Not that I can see. Does it bring people some measure of comfort, or spiritual upliftment? It seems to. There was a theoophist, C.W. Leadbetter, (yes, the same one MJ regularly castigates), who said that the whole ritual leading up to the communion involves angels creating a sort of celestial altar culminating in the actual communion. So, there's a comment on the other end of the spectrum. My wife and kids regularly get communion. "Communion" is an apt word. There are lots of ways of coming into contact or communion with a thing and many of them physical. Eating something or making love to someone places those entities, the subject, as close as you can get to really being inside yourself. This is a really good example of a willingness to hold that person or that thing as close to you as physically possible (being actually inside). So, it is a powerful image and a powerful show of willingness to be in total communion with a thing. Eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ is rather symbolic and not the same (for me) as eating the arm of my husband so I have no problem with the concept or actual practice of Holy Communion in the context of the Catholic Church (I am Catholic, although not practicing). ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Steve, I didn't know that about Communion, that some people think of it as cannabalism. I can see how they might think that. As for me, I've never been comfortable having some of the wine, which is allegedly become the blood of Christ. Maybe the early Christians morphed what Jesus did at the Last Supper to something more similar to what the pagans were doing. Similar to how they stole some of the pagan holidays. What I look forward to is when the huge field of neuroscience, psychoneuroendocrinology, etc. can provide some plausible explanations for some of our so called spiritual experiences. I mean, is the love of a mother for her newborn simply a chemical event precipitated by a huge increase in oxytocin?! On Thursday, April 3, 2014 4:39 PM, "steve.sundur@..." <steve.sundur@...> wrote: You know Share, some people compare it to cannibalism. I don't. I don't see anything wrong with it. As rituals go, it seems as good a one as any. I don't know if it was corrupted along the way somehow. It's been a while since I've read the Bible, but supposedly that's the way it played out at that Passover Supper. Not that it matters, but I think the new Pope is quite a breath of fresh air. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote : Steve, one of the meta issues that fascinates me about all this is how in Catholicism we supposedly ingest the body and blood of Christ. What it suggests to me is something that the mythologist Joseph Campbell might notice, that in all cultures around the world, there's some notion of ingesting the other when it comes to humans and divinities. Must be something physically in the human brain about that. Does that sound far out? On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 10:50 PM, "steve.sundur@..." <steve.sundur@...> wrote: You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? "Soma and the Gods" On the next Web page begins the transcription of "Soma and the Gods" taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, "Soma and the Gods" lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed "ready" for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of "Soma and the Gods" is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal "Ishta" (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to "stir" the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: "Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink.... Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies, bestow on us the riches of the affluent." And we take Ayurvedic potions and pills believing we will produce "extra" or "more refined" soma. An anecdote from a former Maharishi International University (MIU/MUM) professor: When I was on MIU faculty, there was a special videotape that only faculty were privy to. It was the Ninth Mandala, chanted in the original Sanskrit. Sitting with eyes closed, listening to it was considered a great privilege and was highly secret. On my Governor Training Course, after we had rounded and rounded and rounded for three months, MMY [the Maharishi] finally called to answer our questions. I asked what we should expect from endlessly reading the Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda and I never forgot his reply: "It will become a living reality." To my knowledge, this fairly frightening vision is the Maharishi's alone. The Rig and Sama Vedas themselves describe the process of making a beverage, soma, by grinding and brewing a certain medicinal plant -- or alternatively by feeding a plant to a cow and then imbibing either its milk or urine. James Allegro speculated some years back that soma was actually the hallucinogenic mushroom amanita muscara, a prevalent inebriator among all Aryan cultures. Perhaps. But even in modern day India, there are hotris who perform the Soma sacrifice using the humble soma plant, and imbibing the juice. Nowhere in all of Vedic literature have we found a single reference to soma as a substance produced in the human stomach and fed upon by Gods. Except this product of the Maharishi's imagination. Many sources from the inner circles of the TM movement have already reported on the Maharishi's preoccupation with the influence of other people's thoughts (stress), purity of food (genetic engineering), and apparent preoccupation with "enemies" (re: the CIA and AMA). The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma seems a conclusive indication that TM theology may simply be the by-product delusion of the Maharishi's seriously distrubed mind.
