Is not this diversity in community with the transcendent experience a good thing? That you could have such diversity exploring and such unified perspective. Avenues of teachings, pathways or faithways that relate. Informed by experience, is that a schism or a healthy diversification?
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : ‘Schismogenesis’? What a hoot. Someone got their doctorate coming up with that term. Q: In a communalism that is here in Fairfield, Ia. it is interesting to see that there has been overt and covert schismatic processes going on that is reflected in subsets of community that are here. Academic, global country, the meditating community in town. A: Those are ideas, alignment of belief structure. This does not touch the commonality of the experience in this which is consciousness itself. It, the experience of state in transcendentalism, is like an ultimate unifier even when groups get together in Fairfield. If you go around a room of the meditating community and really ask people and you will get people who are really TM’ers to people who are Mahur Baba people, whatever they are exploring or have gone in to; or waking down, Artee, mystic Christianity, all of it is informed by the experience of this. In going around, in spite of that, we all can understand this because we all know what we are talking about because it is in the experiential. This is how deep does that TM community go. Does it have to be ‘schism’ or is it the expression of diversity in the community of the experience. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : "..Some types of schismogenic behavior are expressed, yes. But what we have here in community is there is ‘no schism is possible in consciousness’. She, the author of the paper is not going to see that because she does not meditate, she is not going to understand what that means and the implication of it and that is what really is the profound quality of Fairfield that sets it apart from any other community because you do have so many people that do have experience regardless of their faith or their belief structure, they are informed by an experience somewhat, wherever they are in it. That is why it is different. It just is. Not just around which of some Mormons or whoever woo-haw fracturing of some group over some alignment, congregations of Christians, literalists or whatever they are it is all built on faith, it is just an idea. Of course they are going to have schism How they believe in hell, whether over foot washing or full immersion or other sillinesses of course there is going to be schisms with that." ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : In Fairfield conversation.. Q: Schismogenesis in the Fairfield meditating community? A: On the superficial level there is some but experientially not so much. There are going to be the whack-jobs like (..) that are fractured, the mentally fractured. There is mental fracturing as that is described, but yet again here he ( elderly demented) is again. He came to Fairfield. Angry upset, rejected, and he came back, why? Because experientially there is continuum here, there is understanding here built on that. Experience. There is experience. In community of idea or faith that is one thing in fracture or schism. This is a different idea here than a community of ‘faith’. To a community of faith that is one thing to have fracture in faith or schismogenesis or whatever. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : “Schismogenesis” Quoting Atmore: “The idea of “schismogenesis” was first identified by Gregory Bateson to describe the ways in which relationship between individual or groups deteriorate. Schismogenesis occurs in several different ways: factional schismogenesis , in which a group splinters into two or more distinct group; apostatizing schismogenesis, in which an individual separates from the group; symmetrical schismogenesis, in which individuals from the group compete directly with each other, the severity of competition increasing equally on each side; and complementary schismogenesis, in which a rift forms between unequal partners playing the roles of dominant and submissive. Bateson treats the events involved in schismogenesis as openly recognized by both parties. However, in my study of Fairfield, it became apparent that schisms are not always overt and recognized by those involved in them. In some cases, schism occur without the knowledge of one or more parties, which I will refer to as a covert schism or overt schismogenesis. This can often lead to overt schismogenesis (Batesons’ openly recognized schism) once the schism has progressed to a certain point. However, this does not mean schismogenesis is not occurring until it has become overt; there are still social rifts forming during the covert phase. This necessitates a slight redefinition of schismogenesis, in which the term encompasses all situations in which rifts form between people, whether overt, covert, or in a processual relationship from covert to overt.” -excerpted from: Communal Societies, Journal of the Communal Studies Association, Lane Atmore, Death of a Guru: An Analysis of the Postcharismatic Phase in the Transcendental Meditation Movement. Exampling Schismosis in Fairfield TM: Factional schismogenesis, in which a group splinters What TM movement community meditators can recognize as a creed, a difference with those who are seen as ‘devotee’ True-Believers’ with an orthodox faith and belief and then ‘practitioner meditators’ who are here in a state of experience otherwise from their practice,. A burning question of ‘sufficiency’ made of those ‘Off the Program’ (OTP) meditators who had sought company of healers/ spiritual people otherwise of their own wellbeing and then those true-believers who have not. (ie., driving factional schismogenesis administratively of cultural organizational jealousies over monies spent on ‘non-Maharishi’ jyotish, yagya and more in an active decades long administrative separation of meditator membership from the communal group meditations. The affiliated and the unaffiliated TM Fairfield meditator.) Apostatizing schismogenesis, in which an individual separates Deepak Chopra, Ravi Shankar, and others for example (See BATGAP interviews of old TM’ers with their own separate spiritual .orgs). Symmetrical schismogenesis, in which individuals from the group compete directly with each other, For instance: Jerry Jarvis with SIMS/IMS and Charlie Lutes with SRM. Also an older pre-Siddhis era of a teaching movement and then an administrative Morris-Patterson era guardian over ‘Maharishi’s knowledge’. Complementary schismogenesis, a rift forms between unequal partners playing the roles of dominant and submissive. Socio-economic power differentials throughout: Money access. Council of Rajas Patriarchy v Mother Divine. The Dome badge membership. Re-certification. India and the West. Also, TM of before the Vedic Science course in India 1993, and then after. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Thanks,dbraff8. You give a good example that is noteworthy in an aspect of what is communal meditating Fairfield, Iowa having withdrawn or disaffiliated itself from TM.org-Fairfield strictly, either covertly or overtly. A Lot of people have come and are now gone away and yet there remains in community a diversity within a core set of values and practices in Transcendentalism that stays on in Fairfield, Iowa. The next five years in demography will be more telling about the remains. There is some, none and all of these gradation of schismogenesis apparent in meditating Fairfield, Ia. depending on where you look at it. Looking in to the sub-communities, the University, The Global Country folks, the ™.org folks, MSAE, the Dome attenders, the meditating community young and old out in town and describing them each relative to each other is a feature of Fairfield, Iowa. Parsing gradations of schismogenesis within and between them becomes narrative in a larger story. dbraff8 writes: Fascinating. I Googled the author and title to read the entire piece. I taught and practiced TM for over 35 years. It was invaluable earlier in my life. I look on my spiritual journey as starting with being a devout Catholic, experiencing spiritual malaise, finding TM, dissatisfaction, flirtation with New Age "vacuity", and finally transitioning to a more fulfilling Vedic teaching and practice. All the steps were valuable. It's sort of like taking a train to a certain point, then switching trains, then another. Each has its purpose and value. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote :
