--- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It's not the words, Curtis, it's the investiture.
More on "investiture," because it's an interesting metaphor to apply to Maharishi and the TM movement. Almost everyone here "bought stock" in Maharishi and in the TM movement. Some of us signed on when it was still a "startup company." We identified with the company's founder and its goals and thought that its products were the niftiest thing since sliced bread. So we *invested* in it -- our hearts, our minds, our lives (often to the point of giving up personal goals and dreams), our time, and in most cases a great deal of our money. And then the company's stock started to slide. So many of the people here sold off their stock in the company and moved their investment elsewhere. They might still have a fondness for the company and/or its founder, and most of them still identify with the company's original stated goals. But after one decade or two decades or even three decades of seeing those goals remain unrealized goals, and all of the talk of changing the world remain just talk, we bailed. In general, when someone posts something here that can be seen as critical of the company and/or its founder, the people who have "sold their stock" and are no longer "invested" in Maharishi and the TMO don't react in a hostile or threatened manner. It's the company that's being criticized, or the company's founder that's being criticized, not them. When they "sold their stock" they severed the connection that had made them believe for a time that any criticism of the company or its founder was criticism of them personally. Some others have quit working for the company or never worked for the company but *definitely* bought stock in it. A few others still work for the company and are still buying stock in it. Compare and contrast the way that these folks who are *still* invested in the company react when it or its founder are criticized. Not everyone does this, but I think it is safe to say that there is a strong tendency for "current investors" to react as if any criticism of the TMO or Maharishi were directed at them personally, even when it clearly is not. Being "stockholders" has, for them, blurred the line between company and stock- holder such that any criticism of the company *IS* a criticism of them, or worse, an outright attack. Ditto any criticism of Maharishi, the "CEO." I stopped working for the company thirty years ago. I sold the last of my stock in it a couple of years later. If, as I suspect, the TMO "does an Enron" and goes completely belly up within five years of Maharishi's death, it's not really going to affect me in any way. I'm not an investor. It's not my company, and Maharishi is not my teacher. Big deal. So what. But I have the sneakin' suspicion that if the TMO *does* "do an Enron" and vanishes from view as quickly as it appeared, there are quite a few "investors" who have been holding onto their stock all these decades who are going to have a hard time with that. If they can't tell the difference between criticism of the "company" and criticism of themselves, what are they going to do when the company kicks the bucket? Are they going to want to kick the bucket, too? It's just a company. It's just stock. Whatever happens with it, or to it, it's not happening to you, only to something you invested in. On Wall Street investors tend to realize this, and if the company they've invested in starts to tank, they cut their losses, sell their stock and move on. It seems to be only in the world of "spiritual investment" that people cling to the idea that once they've invested, they have to hold onto their stock forever.
