--- In [email protected], Sal Sunshine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jan 21, 2007, at 11:38 AM, Marek Reavis wrote: > > >> > > [Maharishi and the TMO have long been strong proponents of avoiding > > anything that evenly faintly smacks of anything "hippie". As an old > > hippie, and living in a part of California where hippie culture still > > flourishes, I find that unfortunate.] > > I always have as well. It really just occurred to me > that rather than being anything against hippie culture > per se, that since many of us have so many pleasant > memories of that time and feel so much of a connection > to it, it was more of an attempt to get us to deny our > collective past (and therefore an important part of > ourselves) so the TMO could then "remake" us in its own > image, sort of like the army.
Actually it wasn't about getting TMers to deny part of themselves so the TMO could "remake" them. It was a lot simpler than that: because MMY wanted TM and the TMO to be seen as mainstream by the rest of the world. It was a PR move, in other words. MMY wanted TM to be adopted by business and government and mainline churches and so on and thought, most likely correctly, that a hippie-dippie image would get in the way of that goal. Hippies, after all, didn't tend to have money and influence; and churches would automatically resist anything that looked New Age-y, or, God forbid, Hindu.
