--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > The "effort" myth is probably one of the greatest > falsehoods perpetuated by TM adherents and marketeers. I say "TM > adherents" because Mahesh Varma, the Maharishi, corrected this > misperception long ago at a Teacher Training Course held at Estes > Park.
Here's the source of Vaj's claim that MMY "corrected" the "misperception" that TM was supposed to be effortless (from a post by Rick Archer in a discussion of effortlessness back in March 2004): "On my TTC MMY quoted the Vedas, with reference to meditation, as saying 'Be easy to us with gentle effort' "He didn't want to elaborate too much on this, probably for fear it would be misinterpreted, but he said it." As I commented at the time: "Obviously we'd need a great deal more context to know whether Maharishi was using this quote to describe TM as involving some effort. Who is being addressed in the quote? It appears to be a request of some kind, but who is making the request, and of whom? And how would one entity making a request of another entity to 'be easy to us' relate to TM? "There may be some connection, but it certainly isn't obvious without the context." (And I'd add, What was the specific question or comment that elicited the Veda quote from MMY?) We never did find out what the context was. To conclude, as Vaj does on the basis of this isolated quote, that MMY was correcting the "misperception" that TM does not require effort, and repeat it as if it were established fact, is entirely baseless. And if Vaj is wrong, it does an incalculable disservice to those reading who are uncertain about the issue of effortlessness in TM, assuming they take Vaj to be some kind of authority.
