--- In [email protected], t3rinity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > In the case of your ex-Guru Rama, people channeling him > were doing so on an established authority within the > community, which they were using to give messages.
Michael, you should stick to what you actually know something about. When you try to make things up, they usually *sound* made up. :-) There IS no "established authority" within the Rama "community." He failed to leave one. He just croaked himself and left nothing behind but a foundation to give away what was left of his money and a buncha students who didn't know what to do next. So anybody who felt like "carrying on his work" did so on their own, without any kind of "authority" or organization backing them whatsoever. Some did so cleanly in my opinion, limiting themselves to teaching the only thing they were qualified to teach, basic meditation, and doing so for free. A few others set themselves up as gurus, and some of them claimed "direct communication" from Rama to do so. Since there are suckers everywhere, a few of those suckers fell for this routine for short periods of time. Now, a few years later, none of these poseurs have any followers left any more. It became evident very quickly that they couldn't walk their talk. > Maharishi OTOH didn't give messages from > Guru Dev to people. That's a big difference. True. > He took GD's advice for himself... Uh, excuse me...it seems to me that Maharishi did the *opposite* of taking Guru Dev's advice. According to witnesses, that advice, given directly to Maharishi in public while Guru Dev was alive, was that he should *not* teach. Yet within a few years of Guru Dev's death, there he was teaching. That doesn't strike me as following one's teacher's advice. > ...and simply traces himself to the tradition of his > master whom he served for more than 13 years. And within whose tradition he would never have been allowed to teach. Never. > Can you see the difference at all? Sure. Totally different situation in some ways, but similar in other ways. Maharishi rode to short-lived fame in India on the coattails of a famous teacher and then later to short-lived fame in the West by riding on the coattails of some famous musicians. The Rama poseurs rode to even shorter-lived fame on the coattails of the teacher they worked with for a few years (in some cases, longer than MMY spent with GD). I'm really not making a case for Maharishi being as much of a charlatan as some of these poseurs were. MMY accomplished a few good things in his time, and as far as I can tell, the poseurs didn't. But Maharishi *did* get famous initially by riding on his teacher's coattails, and has consistently ever since tried to give the impression that he had Guru Dev's blessing to go into the teaching biz. As far as I can tell, this claim is not true. But all this is moot. Ya meet one of the people making these kinds of claims, whether they are for real or simply spiritual poseurs, and ya makes yer decision whether to believe them or not. And then ya lives with it. No one on earth will ever be able to prove whether ya made a good decision or a bad one. My personal feeling is that the more one feels that they have to justify their decision to others, the greater chance there is that it was a bad one. 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/
