That's silly. "The Maharishi Effect" name was coined rather late. I don't know when he started pitching the idea that a small number of meditators could have an effect on society, but its probably years prior tot he name being given to the concept.
L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters disputing this, and claiming that the "idea" of the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I challenge you to come up with a mention of the "Maharishi Effect" *per se* in *any* publication before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to "total numbers of people practicing TM," or the old "1% of the population" idea. The earliest mention of any "group effect" I could find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News Search page was this article from 1984, and that only mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time, "super-radiance effect" -- The Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some Iowans Are Hopping Mad http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20087003,00.html Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt at "revisionist history" as many of the current TM publications have been) talking about a "mass effect" caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in particular using the term "Maharishi Effect," I think my point has been made. Which is that the "ME" is a made-up term that was "late to the party," invented *long* after the TMSP had been invented and had already been marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform "revisionist history" in their own brains that they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the TMSP program, *even though they themselves weren't*. Besides, the old 1984 "People" article is pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in the domes even when they PAY them to do so... :-) From: TurquoiseBee <turquoiseb@...> To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 11:28 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates From: TurquoiseBee <turquoiseb@...> To: "FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:45 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do "research" to validate or "prove" something as ludicrous as "We can affect other people and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam." Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such a dumbfuck idea as to want to "prove" it. It occurs to me that someone should provide a little history about the TM Sidhis for those who weren't around when they first came out. That is, in the beginning there was NONE of this "Maharishi Effect" crap or even the *concept* that we were "doing it for the world" or anything like that. The TMSP was marketed to us True Believers at the time as: 1) a way to master superpowers like levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly) progress more quickly towards one's *own* enlightenment. In the beginning, during the early courses, reason #1 was the one emphasized in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed and NO ONE ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales pitch to emphasize #2. By this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed from the whole TM movement, and *at no point had anything ever been mentioned about the TMSP benefiting anyone other than the person practicing it*. The whole "Maharishi Effect" nonsense was invented later, after they had realized that not only the original reason #1 for practicing it was never going to happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen, either. People had spent literally thousands of dollars learning to "fly" without flying, and had spent similar amounts learning to "become enlightened" without that ever happening, either. Many people were beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM movement, *including* many who had learned the TMSP. So what they did was to invent two mechanisms to keep people hanging on, still chasing carrots at the end of the stick. The first was that the TMSP didn't "work" properly unless you were in a big roomful of people doing it with you. This was supposed to create a "herd" mentality and cause people to identify with the group, and of course it worked. The second was to invent the made-up "Maharishi Effect" and pretend that doing the TMSP was somehow benefiting other people, and the world. This worked, too, because it gave people a reason to keep practicing it, plus it made them feel self-important, because they were "saving the world." I just thought it was important to remind people of this, because some here like to pretend that the way the TMSP is currently marketed is how it always was. And they like to pretend that the idea of the ME was always present, and always part of the sales pitch. Neither is true.
