Q:The tru-beliver would look at it that there is a schism where people would go off to see other gurus or spiritual people and groups? A: "That is their problem and it does not have to have anything to do with what people are doing out here in the community. But it is in the complexion of the community that is here. That there was a falling apart in an aspect of the community. Falling away from the group experience and the reference point of that experience by administration."
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Meditator Quakers.. A history of Ff’s silent Quaker meetings #385494 Friends Journal article, The TM Diaspora... https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/385494 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/385494 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : “People, meditators are for getting done what needs are for themselves as what they are getting done communally.” “Within the various meditator infused churches, temples, and spiritual groups, in Fairfield, Iowa this has not just only to do with groups meditating, the transcendent is an important part of it, Maharishi got it off to a realy good start, Jai Guru Dev. It is fantastic. We have a transcendent practice, Jai Guru Dev. But the need to go beyond that in terms of how we are going to live it, that is what is happening in Fairfield. Group practice wherever you find it. The Trillium people, the Art of Living people, the Oneness people, the meditators in the Liberal Catholic churches, the meditators in the Jewish, the Germain, and the Hindu Temples, the silent Quakers, go for it.” ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Yet, People, practicing meditators were disaffiliated from the group? A: Just on the intellectual level of belief by personality of administration. The naturally limiting value of beliefs is that not everyone is going to believe the same thing. Just like a forest of trees are not going to be all elms. And yet disaffiliation has happened. Separating people over belief structures, over ‘devotion to the guru’, pressing an alignment to the guru. That is really what is under the TM Dome guidelines for membership and how they have been enforced for decades. A contriving of feeling that people made promises and that people are in violation and should be punished and separated. For example, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/PXOdRY1SlUY https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/PXOdRY1SlUY ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : “Is it necessary for something to be strong for everyone to act and behave in a similar way on a behavioral level? This is one of the amazing things about Fairfield, Ia. is that it proves ‘no you don’t have to be’. That you can have wildly different people who believe, have wildly different politics, different religions, all of it, and ask them and it is TM where they all started and are informed by. It is incredible.” ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : Using “schismogenesis” as an anthropologist's social science vehicle for driving through the Fairfield, Iowa story becomes a whole different level of exploration into the story of community. At a Communal Studies Association Annual Conference I presented a paper as an overview road-map interpretation for outsiders who would look in on meditating Fairfield, Ia. An irony is that locals are not themselves necessarily able to fathom the meditating community.. The Text of that paper is posted as: Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/Hbd4EfxrbU0 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/Hbd4EfxrbU0 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <dhamiltony...@yahoo.com> wrote : "..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 diversity 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 or is coming in from outside, 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 : .