--- In [email protected], Michael Dean Goodman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
a very thoughtful essay, which I think I saw the first time round. For a long time I too mistakenly thought that a priority goal was to make TM available widely, in order to generate support for its teachers and programmes in society. There are plenty of examples of Movements with humble beginning gathering momentum and resources and respectability. But when the Natural Law Parties came into being the voters had already been turned off. The course fee issue had a moral dimension to it - fine, charge what you like, but make special concessions for pensioners, students & unemployed. Not doing so was, and remains, uncharitable and offensive. Then there was the paradox of Nature Support - hardly any was coming Maharishi's way. Unlike the IRA, the PLO and countless other terrorist organizations who attracted huge donations like a magnet, to finance their operations, Maharishi had to resort to increasingly distasteful practices that made the TMO look like the money-grabbing organization it has become. Then there was the issue of how this money was being used. Instead of oozing in creativity and efficiency (like its scientific charts had promised) the TMO turned out to be a commercial disaster area. So many projects started, hardly any realised. Even its incredible "products" like TM and Amrit Kallash failed to make any commercial impact. Countless bad investments and dishonourable misappropriations of donations have ensured that even the mass of TM practitioners now distance themselves from the TMO. But the worst disaster was its inability to use its global resources to set up even ONE permanent group of 8,000 anywhere, in all these years since it became apparent that this alone could transform everything, way back in the 1990s - the more so in the light of patent mistrust and disinterest from "governments". We come finally to the latest master plan - the adoption of 24 countries. Why not stick with 8,000 groups in India, with the $1 billion fund-raising for that; or better still, with financing that from its own global resources (many times over this figure anyway)? But it is typical of MMY to announce a new initiative - Peace Palaces in hundreds of cities (instead of starting one real one somewhere important) - then soon after shifting the focus on an even more unrealistic goal - eg the reconstruction of Geneva and all major cities or government buildings, ampounting to hundreds of TRILLIONS of dollars. So now supposedly the focus is on 24 countries - when it should have remained India, with perhaps the addition of the real open wounds of the world - the Middle East and the horn of Africa. I write this in the same spirit as Michael Dean's - as my personal "opinion" of the "facts". An opinion moreover which has increasingly become less relevant in my life, as indeed MMY and even TM now have. I hope, for the sake of humanity, that your optimism about MMY's legacy will prove right. But right now I can't even see a single ray of hope anywhere I look in the TMO. Because you have had good experiences with TM you are willing to give MMY all the benefit of the doubt. It's a familiar stance - I had it too once, and I can see how fundamentalists everywhere end up doing the same, as the goal ends up justifying the means. But looking at it dispassionately, it never does. The means need to ring true as well. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/UlWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
