--- In [email protected], Duveyoung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Ned Wynn was my group's "leader" in Majorca 1971. He was in > charge of getting our 200 course participants from meeting to > meeting with Maharishi -- we were seeing Maharishi for THREE > two-hour sessions EVERY DAY -- imagine that, only 200 people > in the room. Everyone could count the hairs on Maharishi's chin. > > I found Ned a true believer and gentle soul. Or, at least he > was good at acting the part. Nice style. Nice mask to wear. > > When he "caught" me reading "Be Here Now," he simply said that > Ram Dass was still a seeker, "so why get knowledge from a lesser > source?" He was a bit sad about my reading it, but I think he put > that down to my being a newbie. He could have gotten me very > depressed and ready to quit if he'd had very much judgementalism > going, cuz I'm a psychic when it comes to detecting besmirching > of my narcissism, but he was gentle and kind and patient and > forgiving. At the time, I thought he was a great embodiment of > the teaching -- I thought I'd be like him when I "grew up." > > I saw him carry Maharishi's deerskin a few times, don't know what > else he did, but it sure looked like he had a ton of access to > Maharishi. > > I was in the lobby of my hotel when Keenan Wynn came to visit. > I knew him immediately -- having seen him in umpteen films. I > stood about 20 feet away -- gave him privacy as he checked in. > It was late, no one in the lobby except him, me and the clerk > behind the front desk. > > It didn't take long to figure that Keenan was unsteady on his > feet, and only a little longer to smell his breath, and I should > have been quite appalled that "this drunk" was going to get to > sit up front, have a private meeting with Maharishi, and ask > stupid first lecture questions, maybe even be drunk during his > meeting with Maharishi, and then leave Majorca without having > gained anything from it -- except to have shown up "for his son's > sake," and maybe to have bragging rights for "having met the guru > of the Beatles." > > But I wasn't appalled. Ned was such a good person that my first > reaction to his father was: "this is Ned's father who deserves > all my respect, because, no matter how he did it, he created a > foundation in Ned that led Ned to TM." Something like that. > > That's how good a person New Wynn was -- he inspired me to step > beyond my knee jerk judgment of others. I think that that's how > "all us hippies" were thinking about the movement back then: > "Mood make about the panacea that's being handed to us on a silver > platter. Be passionate about saving the world. Do the right thing. > Keep this going. Don't fuck up the community." Like that. A > Woodstocky energy. Spiritual Rock and Roll. > > After I got my mantras in Fiuggi eight months later, I never saw > Ned again, but even now, I'd drive more than an hour to have lunch > with him. No matter what became of him, I cannot imagine his > integrity being any less than it was when he "handled" me. > > I say unashamedly, even as a fallen TMer, "Ned, Jai Guru Dev!" > > And inside, I bow.
Nice, Edg. I never knew Ned, and when it comes to the people who led my TTC or ATR courses, they had so little impact on me (or had so little personality) that I don't remember a one of their names. Except Bevan, at my 6-month Siddhis course...he was an arrogant asshole even then, and thus tough to forget. So I can't wax eloquent about anyone like Ned, except for one -- Jerry Jarvis. He was my TM teacher, and gave the first intro lecture I ever heard (Maharishi gave the second), and then I wound up working with him as part of the Regional Office and later at TM National. He had that "caring about people" thing that you talk about in Ned, in spades. He *often* had the chance to stomp on someone or treat them badly, but I don't remember him doing that. Instead, he tended to treat people as *fellow human beings*, not mere specks on the evolutionary and organizational ladder, so far beneath him that he could barely make out their features. In France they would say that Jerry was bien elevé -- raised well, "brought up right." Even during the first of the anti-TM backlash, when Jerry was sending me out to make appearances in churches to tell the TM side of things at anti-TM rallies, he never spoke dispar- agingly of those people or of their motivations. They saddened him, true, but I never got the feeling that he looked down on them or considered them in any way "beneath" him. Jerry was a mensch -- just a nice guy, who would go out of his way *not* to ruin your day if it was in his power to do so. Compare and contrast to some of the behavior we have seen here lately. The French would call some of the folks here mal elevé, "raised badly." As with Jerry, I suspect that part of the problem predated their involvement with TM. The offenders here probably were never *taught* how one is expected to act with one's fellow human beings in everyday society. Hell, many of them were never *part* of "everyday society," and may not be today. They went straight from school into the TM movement and never touched real life again. And, however they were "raised up," they found them- selves in an environment in which not only was it con- sidered OK *to* step on someone's feelings if you felt that they were "off the program," or less evolved than you were, or lower in the TMO hierarchy -- you often got *strokes* for doing this. People *praised* you for ruining a person's day and dumping on the book that, up until that moment, had been inspiring the hell out of them. People got *promoted* within the TMO for keeping someone off of a TTC or ATR course because they were living with their girlfriends or because they had a forbidden Carlos Castaneda book on their bookshelves. When I get sad about the behavior that *people think nothing is wrong with* here on Fairfield Life -- as I am today -- it makes me wonder. Where have these folks *been* all their lives, to think that this stuff is *acceptable*? It surely wasn't out in society, inter- acting with everyday people. If it was, they'd have more still-unhealed bruises and welts on their faces from being pummeled senseless by the everyday people they were trying to pull this shit on. Give me someone -- like Jerry -- who can *keep it in his pants*, no matter what he might have thought priv- ately. It's almost a martial arts thang for me. Who do you respect more, the hotdog black belt who can whup most people's asses in the room, and does just that occasionally, or the quiet master who can whup the hotdog's ass without breaking a sweat, but doesn't because he was bien elevé? The answer is a no-brainer for me. I just wonder why so many long-term TMers are so willing to tolerate and even applaud those whose major accomplishment in life seems to be an inability to keep their whupass in the can where it belongs.
