--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Dec 30, 2006, at 6:04 PM, bob_brigante wrote: > > > In your post > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126763 > > I found it interesting that Maharishi repeated several times that > > people should only be meditating 3-4 hours. I wonder if this > > message got through to Bevan et al who are requiring invincibility > > course participants to do 8 hours: > > He probably contradicts himself quite often.
Always has. So do the most enlightened teachers I've encountered on the planet. The constant contradiction is not a problem IMO; the tendency for people to want not to *deal* with the contradiction and say that one version is the "correct" version is where the problem lies. :-) > The recent posts attributed to him seem to indicate some > senility. I wouldn't say senility. I have seen no real sign of the more common forms of senility. But I *am* getting really tired of the kind of echolalia he indulges in (repeating words that don't need to be repeated). That's certainly becoming more pronounced lately. > So he's probably > said both 3-4 and 8 if you go back in the transcripts. > > What's disturbing to me is his emphasis on subtle meditative > moods and getting the students to wallow in them. Bingo. The gist of this latest talk seems to be, "These are the experiences I want to hear. Don't bother to get up to the microphone if you don't have one of these type of experiences to relate. And, by the way, what you *really* want to do more than anything else on this course is to get yourself on the LIST of people who are *having* the type of experiences I want to hear about." Well duh...what do you think people are going to be falling all over themselves to report from now on? It *surprised* me to see MMY pandering to the inherent tendency in spiritual devotees to *moodmake* the type of experiences they have been *told* are expected of them. It's such a contrast to Rama and some of the other teachers I've worked with -- in the cases where they asked what people's experiences were, they really wanted to *know* what people's experiences were. There was NEVER any suggestion of what a "good" experience was, or what type of experience was expected or "better" than another. I guess I got used to that type of *non*-programming in such "talk about your experiences" sessions, and was a little shocked to read this latest rap, in which it is pretty clear that if you want to be considered "happening" on this course, and on the LIST, you should stand up and say that you are having the "expected" experiences, or (given the before-mentioned tendency of devotees to give the teacher whatever he asks for), pretend to be having such experiences. > Why would you want to encourage such nonsense? Since there's > no spiritual benefit, one has to assume it's to raise more money. I would not go so far. I think that a much simpler, and kinder, explanation is that these are the types of exper- iences that Maharishi assumes he *should* be hearing by now, given all his time working with these people. There- fore he *wants* to hear them, so he's telling people *what* he wants to hear, so that they'll *say* what he wants to hear. To be open to all possibilities, it is certainly possible that some of the people who report such experiences after hearing what kind of experiences they are *supposed* to be having are doing so in good faith, and reporting their real experiences. But the fact that they *have* been told what to report taints the reports themselves. if you've been around the spiritual block a few times and are aware of how devotees tend to tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, the fact that he told everyone in no uncertain terms what he wanted to hear doesn't really suggest that such reports are going to be free of moodmaking.
