Like I said, I really didn't read any of this. It's pretty much standard BBP (Barry Boiler Plate).
But here's what I see as the story behind the story. I'm not really sure what Xeno wrote here either, (but mercifully it has paragraph breaks), but it's as though Barry's been waiting in the wings for something, anything he could post to. I hope he felt better afterwards. ---In [email protected], <turquoiseb@...> wrote : From: "Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... [FairfieldLife]" Parroting is one of the ways we learn, but the object of education is to make the mind more flexible, to learn how to learn. One of the things I found objectionable about MIU was an emphasis, at least from some instructors, on saying things the way Maharishi said them. I came into understanding this consciousness thing by way of Zen, Sufism, and a few other things, and Maharishi's explanations eventually added another layer of jargon. The point is to get through the jargon — you have to use some jargon in this business — and find a way to express yourself that truly represents what you experience. If you have no experience, you only have the jargon. But many people can *fake* experience just by repeating the jargon faithfully. That, after all, is what every TM teacher in history was doing when they were talking about enlightenment. I think we can safely say that not one of them actually *was* enlightened, especially way back in the 70s and 80s and 90s, but they had been trained to repeat Maharishi's dogma *about* enlightenment so faithfully that many TM newbs became convinced that they actually were enlightened. Many low-vibe initiators actually took advantage of this, and when some starry-eyed newb came up to them saying, "Oh, you've been meditating for five years...you *must* be enlightened..." they would look sheepish and say, "We're not supposed to talk about our state of consciousness." Another piece of dogma they'd learned to parrot from Maharishi, but in this case one that conveyed the impression that yes, they *were* enlightened. In other words, this was an example of dogma and jargon used for the purpose of LYING. As it turned out for me, no system of description really nails what happens in experience or adequately covers what one knows. I'd go further. No description or set of jargon/dogma ever created in human history to describe the process of enlightenment was ever accurate, or of use. It was just something for ignorant people to hold onto so that they could pretend to themselves that they "understood" something that can never be understood. After a time, the pile of jargon, which one does retain, becomes a resource which one can combine and recombine at will, and the wider the selection one has, from as many sources as one has, the more closely you can match those terms to your experience. Even so, the map will never either *be* the territory or match the territory. I recall many instances from my time in the movement when people would jump on me because I did not use movement jargon verbatim or used terms and concepts from other traditions. Also I was approaching the age of 30 when I learned TM, so a lot of that pliability of manipulation you find in younger minds was already in retreat. Kids coming up through the Maharishi School etc., are going to have a problem in later life. And many of them certainly did. I went through public schools, had rejected spirituality as having any relevance by the time I was in high school, and when the spiritual side of life came into my awareness by a totally non-verbal experience when I was in my late twenties, I had absolutely no way understanding what it was about, just an intuitive feel that I should pursue it. Now I find some of Maharishi's terminology useful, but my experiences did not unfold in the linear way his descriptions seem to imply. I find *none* of his terminology accurate or useful, *except* when chatting with people here. I use Maharishi's bullshit here because people speak it like a common language. If I used terms I'm more comfortable with, most people wouldn't understand what I was talking about. So I can refer to BS like "seven states of consciousness" to communicate with some TMer who still believes there are only seven, while at the same time knowing that the reality is closer to the Buddhist "10,000 states of mind." I sometimes think Maharishi settled for 7 because he intuitively understood that most of the people he was dealing with were not smart enough to count higher than that. :-) And I discovered that most of things Maharishi associated with TM, like world peace, happiness, health, etc., were really mostly irrelevant in the pursuit of enlightenment because they only appeal to the ego-infested state of experience. But that's both who he was selling to, and what he was selling. He never really sold or intended to sell anything to get one past the ego. TM and all of his techniques -- plus most of his pandering to people telling them how "important" they were -- were IMO designed to *increase* ego, and generate self-importance. I would say that he was successful in developing *that* in many of his students. :-) From: "TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2014 12:30 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MIU Promo Video 1981 Dr. Pete [...] "I helped produce several videos for various MIU functions in the 1980's and it was always a problem to get people to talk about their experiences in their own words rather than in TM jargon. It was the worst with people 'higher-up' in the movement..."
