My friend's response:
The thing is, all these oppositions you have, we could take each one, one at a time, and examine them, like the Zimbabwe dictator, Maharishi and Mia Farrow and the rest, the tallest building, Rajas, etc. etc. etc., but the individual issues like these will be endless -- your list will never run out -- because it's rooted in something deeper within you than the individual items and examples. What I've found w/TM-X type people, and most of the fringe roos in Ff (even the more intelligent ones, such as LB), it's kind of like talking to the KKK. I read a book once by a journalist who went down south and interviewed all these KKK crackers -- the leaders, the current and former Grand Wizards and Dragons -- hoping to get at the more thoughtful and intellectual underpinnings of their prejudices, some more valid sounding justifications to write about (perhaps he was hoping at least for something as intelligent sounding as the Bertrand Russell and some of the other quotes you sent me; although, Russell, whom it sounds cool and intelligent to quote, is really not such a good reference for a six-pack Hindu Joe like yourself, because his empiricist philosophical school denied the very possibility of consciousness ever experiencing consciousness). What the journalist found was, they really had no intellectual foundations for their beliefs. They were all a bunch of dumb-ass rednecks who had no further justifications than, "Those bunch of goddamn coons. I hate em." We both know that your world view is not based on surface issues such as, "What about Maharishi's praise of Robert Mugabe?" or "Well, then why didn't they build the tallest building in the world yet?" (Arguments, as Bobby showed, easily blown out of the murky waters of doubt.) And I'm not comparing you to the KKK, although most of the oppositions and prejudices I hear from the Ff fringe are no more thoughtful than racism. I am saying that the intellectual underpinnings are simply rooted in a belief system that is a projection of something deeper than sense data and logic; it's about how you process that data and interpret it, which has nothing to do with discrimination and logic, but with the feeling level, and the feeling level is rooted in the fibers of your being, constituted by karma, gunas, planets, the whole package of who you are. You FEEL more comfortable reducing Maharishi to a relative personality, with flaws like all of us, who may know less about Vedic knowledge than some gay cowboy named Dana or Oscar or LeRoy who went to India and studied with the Hindu status quo; you don't FEEL comfortable seeing Maharishi as an embodiment of pure knowledge, the only Rishi in history who has cognized all the vedas, because that would not fit into your world view and that is not how you feel comfortable with yourself. There are no plausible intellectual reasonings to justify a particular relative world view; in the end, it's all about justifying one's individual existence, arranging ones sense of self to survive and more comfortably "be" in the world; thinking the way you think because of who you are, modifying your thoughts and attitudes in a way that will allow you to feel most resolved in your relationship with everyone around you. Character is fate. What I will argue against, Ricky, is your adhering to these lines of reasoning, using lame examples to justify your beliefs, calling people fundamentalists if they don't agree with you on these surface issues, and your presenting of all these "facts" on your website to support your world view when the real discrepancy between all these view points is not these confused issues themselves but what lies deeper: the feeling level of acceptance or rejection, which is based on how much love and how much universal sympathy and support for all beings there is deep in one's heart. That and a degree of brainwave coherence, or lack thereof. Amma, 'one of the beautiful flowers rising up as the Age of Enlightenment dawns,' would never waste time putting Maharishi down. There's way too much love and clarity in her heart. But instead, says of him, "The greatest meditation teacher who ever walked the earth," as quoted to me by one of her disciples. (I experienced her adoration on Maharishi myself once when I spoke to her about him.) You tell me I need to challenge my assumptions because I don't FEEL like you do about Maharishi. You use Bertrand Russell quotes to imply that I need to see things oppositely because I'm aligned with Maharishi and support him wholeheartedly. You tell me, in so many words, that I still stand 100% in the Movement only because I merely believe what I've been told. You, by way of inserting quotes, tell me I'm a fundamentalist because I am unwaveringly devoted to the Master. Perhaps I deserve that condescending treatment because I tell you outright that you're deluded. But Ricky, it's only your use of these flaky superficial arguments against Maharishi that I dismiss, so you will see through them. If you want to embrace Amma that's not an unevolutionary thing. But your negativity masquerading as rationality, you know better than that and need to go deeper into that universal love where all this is resolved and there's no mucky opposition in your awareness. Yes I'm telling you what you need because I know the Vikings and your fondness for goats have gotten to you. You could never "dampen" the "enthusiasm or devotion" of these people, because it is self-referral, true and real and pure. Because your "facts" are not facts at all, but whining expressions of doubt and misinformation, rooted in whatever feelings are there inside you. But truth is not based on feeling. It just is. Maybe you're the one who needs to consider that the opposite is true.
