--- In [email protected], "Rick Archer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Behalf Of off_world_beings > > > > Lol, the guy is right Rick. You are already set in your > > conclusions, and have fundamentalist beliefs based on > > heresay and gossip. Your letter to him shows a complete > > stagnancy of thinking on the topic.
I could not agree less. I don't think I've ever encountered someone as open to entertaining many different possibilities about Maharishi and TM and trying to find some way to juggle them *all* as Rick Archer. > > That does not mean the other side is not the same. It could be. > > But your problem is this Rick. Research published in peer- > > reviewed cientific journals, decade after decade, wins hands > > down over gossip and ill-supported conspiracy theories. Good > > luck wit' that bud. > > What's with this journal obsession? I have no problem with the > research. It shows TM is effective and many ways. I don't dispute > that. What I do is take ALL available information, throw it in > the pot, and try to make a palatable stew of it. The more > controversial things I have come to believe, based on evidence > I find credible, do not negate the many positive things about TM, > MMY, etc. For me, reconciling them just presents an interesting > challenge. Well said. Whether you've ever thought of it that way or not, Rick, that's the Tantric approach. Life is *full* of contra- dictions -- black juxtaposed against white, sattva against tamas, ethics against the lack of them -- and yet on some level all of them not only coexist peace- fully, they're all composed of That. Go figure, eh? I've encountered the same complaints from former Rama students that you're getting here, Rick. And for the same reasons. I don't buy the Party Line about Rama (Frederick Lenz) and who or what he was. I just collected as much data as I could find and threw it all into the olde mental blender and turned it on and now I sit there watching the whole frog-in-a-blender mess as kind of a Work In Progress. I don't have any fixed ideas about the dude. I am fully aware of many of the good things about him, and I am just as aware of many of the bad things about him. And for me, neither one "outweighs" the other, making him either good or bad. He was a mix, his *own* frog-in- a-blender dance of samadhi and samskara. I *get off* on juggling the seemingly opposite aspects of his nature, keeping all of the balls in the air at the same time. I think you feel the same way about Maharishi. For the record, because you sometimes take heat here, my "take" on you is that you have one of the most *balanced* views of Maharishi of anyone here. I don't perceive you as being terribly attached to either his enlightenment or non-enlightenment, to his saint- liness or his sinnerhood. Instead, you take these seem- ingly opposite views of the man and juggle them. I've never felt anything but love and respect for Maharishi in your cyber "voice" here. Concern, sometimes, yes. Antipathy, never. Love, always. A lot of people on this forum are, in my estimation, a bit...uh...judgemental about "sin." There are actions that someone could perform that would make him or her a "sinner," and thus no longer worthy of their respect. If they found that someone they'd placed upon a pedestal had been "guilty" of one of these actions that they consider a "sin," then they would HAVE to tumble the person from his or her pedestal. If the person has committed this terrible "sin," they don't DESERVE to be on the pedestal. For them, being "pedestal worthy" can not *coexist* with being capable of performing the "sinful" action. That's what I think is going on with the people who cannot *conceive* of Maharishi boinking some girls along the Way. For them, if they believed it, that would make him non "pedestal-worthy." Therefore the stories *about* him boinking young girls *must* be a lie, mere gossip. You obviously don't think like that, Rick, and I for one think it's a good thing to see and to learn from. For you, the impression I get is that Maharishi's sex life is just a point of data. His invention of TM is another point of data. His lack of followthrough on the projects he creates and then abandons is another point of data. You throw all of the data into the blender and then watch WITHOUT JUDGEMENT and see what sense you can make of it all. I think you're on the right track.
