[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Ah, Curtis, I'm not gay but reading your posts is giving me a man crush. just kiddin bahahaha --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. So you don't think they would just join him in his self perception as being the most important human being in history? What if they heard Bevan telling them that he really really was, many many many many many many many times? How about then? Still no? This is going to be harder than I thought... This is the most troubling aspect of the cute little holy man picture of Maharishi, his extreme version of grandiosity. And it is also where the devotion of his followers cross over into a darker place of enabling a person with a real psychological problem. A person who might have needed help instead of a steady stream of ass kissing. Unless of course you want to give his own self perception another shot? You know, the perspective where EVERY other meditation teacher and spiritual leader was his inferior. Where he was uniqually saddled with the responsibility to spiritually regenerate all of mankind alone, and only he among ALL the spiritual representatives of the Vedic tradition in India knew the SPECIAL SECRETS. The ONLY authentic spiritual teacher, or at least the best of them ALL. The TOPPERMOST of the POPPERMOST, a wonder unto himself AMEN and Hallelujah! Words cannot express how great and important he was, yet his minions try... And people wonder why I need the DSM-IV? It is to keep me somewhat sympathetic to his condition instead of ... being less sympathetic, let's just leave it at.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Tom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah, Curtis, I'm not gay but reading your posts is giving me a man crush. just kiddin bahahaha Thanks, I'm tickled pink...er...blue, I meant blue dammit! So who do think is going to win in that sporting contest between rival teams of men involving a sphere of some sort? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. So you don't think they would just join him in his self perception as being the most important human being in history? What if they heard Bevan telling them that he really really was, many many many many many many many times? How about then? Still no? This is going to be harder than I thought... This is the most troubling aspect of the cute little holy man picture of Maharishi, his extreme version of grandiosity. And it is also where the devotion of his followers cross over into a darker place of enabling a person with a real psychological problem. A person who might have needed help instead of a steady stream of ass kissing. Unless of course you want to give his own self perception another shot? You know, the perspective where EVERY other meditation teacher and spiritual leader was his inferior. Where he was uniqually saddled with the responsibility to spiritually regenerate all of mankind alone, and only he among ALL the spiritual representatives of the Vedic tradition in India knew the SPECIAL SECRETS. The ONLY authentic spiritual teacher, or at least the best of them ALL. The TOPPERMOST of the POPPERMOST, a wonder unto himself AMEN and Hallelujah! Words cannot express how great and important he was, yet his minions try... And people wonder why I need the DSM-IV? It is to keep me somewhat sympathetic to his condition instead of ... being less sympathetic, let's just leave it at.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Tom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah, Curtis, I'm not gay but reading your posts is giving me a man crush. just kiddin bahahaha Wait until he plays his mouth harp for you...he'll have you weak at the knees... --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. So you don't think they would just join him in his self perception as being the most important human being in history? What if they heard Bevan telling them that he really really was, many many many many many many many times? How about then? Still no? This is going to be harder than I thought... This is the most troubling aspect of the cute little holy man picture of Maharishi, his extreme version of grandiosity. And it is also where the devotion of his followers cross over into a darker place of enabling a person with a real psychological problem. A person who might have needed help instead of a steady stream of ass kissing. Unless of course you want to give his own self perception another shot? You know, the perspective where EVERY other meditation teacher and spiritual leader was his inferior. Where he was uniqually saddled with the responsibility to spiritually regenerate all of mankind alone, and only he among ALL the spiritual representatives of the Vedic tradition in India knew the SPECIAL SECRETS. The ONLY authentic spiritual teacher, or at least the best of them ALL. The TOPPERMOST of the POPPERMOST, a wonder unto himself AMEN and Hallelujah! Words cannot express how great and important he was, yet his minions try... And people wonder why I need the DSM-IV? It is to keep me somewhat sympathetic to his condition instead of ... being less sympathetic, let's just leave it at.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, do.rflex [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~~ Buddha This is why Buddhism attracts me. But then, the ism gets in the way and a whole bunch of other things get hooked onto the Buddhism truck, and it doesn't feel so right anymore. I end up claiming that one line from Buddha and calling that the guidance on my path. Kinda minimalist.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: why are you so interested and caught up in Maharishi's ego? its all ego, ego, ego, to you. the central core of what he was and what he did you always relate in terms of what he must have thought about himself and what others thought about him. That is all we have to measure him by. Everything else is a claim or a subjective seeing. Same with you. i see him essentially as a fungus or a hummingbird or a galaxy. playing his part in the universe just like anyone else. That's true, but meaningless if what you want to discern is whether he was a benevolent fungus or a benign fungus or one that causes infirmity in other sentient beings. Face it, dude...one is going to be measured as a result of one's *actions* -- one's thoughts and how one expres- ses them in words and how one treats the people around them, NOT by any of their claims of enlightenment. That's exactly why many of us don't believe your claims of enlightenment. To you, its existence is self-evident, and you don't seem to understand why people don't buy it. But to us, you are Just Another Ego, acting *just* as petty and *just* as much from anger and a need to protect that ego as anyone else we've ever seen. So, in my opinion, was Maharishi. So while it's true you are no different than any other fungus on the planet, you're just another fungus on the planet.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer rick@ wrote: Don't forget Jennifer's comment, that Maharishi often derided the Westerners as gullible fools for believing all the things he told them. That's oneof the women who reports that MMY slept with her dozens of times? Well... LOL. A trustworthy soul, for certain. Lawson, you've been doing well, but it's time to up the dosage of your OCD medication again. This is beneath even you. YOU don't want to believe what she says, so SHE is untrustworthy? Man, seriously...just LOOK at what you're doing here. You're going out of your way to systematically demonize people who don't believe about Maharishi the things you believe about him. It's not a matter of a simple difference of opinion, where they just have a different view on the subject than you do. Instead, you seem compelled to suggest -- and strongly -- that the people who hold these different views are deficient in character and somehow untrustworthy. OCD, schmoeCD. What is WRONG with you that someone else is not entitled to believe what they want about Maharishi or about Deepak Chopra? What is WRONG with you that your first reaction when they believe some- thing that you do not is to suggest that they are not only wrong, but broken or untrustworthy in some way? I *understand* that you believe what you believe. I have no problem with that. But it's just a belief, man. SO is what these other people believe. NONE of you has any handle on truth as far as I can tell. I don't believe that floating has anything whatsoever to do with enlightenment, but at the same time I don't feel compelled to suggest that because *you* believe the definition of enlightenment is floating that there is something wrong with you, or that you are untrustworthy. You seem to feel the need to imply that about these people you're demonizing lately. Why do you think that is? Where do you think you *learned* this behavior? BTW, the other day you suggested that people here didn't cut Judy a break because she was a woman and that they have...uh...unresolved anger against women. I'm suggesting that there may be more than a little projection going on in that statement. Look what you just did to a woman you have never met who has done nothing more than report her experiences.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, geezerfreak [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander mailander111@ wrote: Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture. We are all a product of our genes and our experiences and some might say, our karma. We all look at the world through those glasses. I have yet to meet a person that I would consider liberated from this state. My reference to scary isn't a reference to different experiences or backgrounds. Scary is when people lose their capacity for independent thought and do anything that their master tells them to do, no matter how inappropriate because it simply cannot be wrong. I am not saying that occurred with MMY, but there are signs . . . . Thank god MMY was not the type to ask people to drink the kool-aid. Funny that you brought this up Ruth. One of the reasons I originally bailed on MMY and TMO was because it had occurred to me that I was rationalizing every kind of behavior for him. If he put someone though some kind of mental torment, it was to burn that person's karmanot that he was pissed off and being ornery. If he lost his temper (and boy could he EVER!) it was all part of some cosmic play, certainly not that he was just in a bad mood. As I thought about it I realized that if he had ordered someone killed, for instance (not saying that he did mind you) that I would have also excused this, since heywe're all in this for the long hall anyway and he was simply moving that person ahead on the long corridor of time. I needed to get off of that bus. Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~~ Buddha
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ispiritkin ispiritkin@ wrote: Creating that kind of experience for a student is quite an accomplishment for a sage, no? No. And what does that say about Nader, Morris, Hagelin et. al? To me it says [and has for years] that Transcendental Meditation is a do-it-yourself proposition and you can't look to Maharishi or to the TMO for what you're looking for within yourself. Neti, neti - not this, not this. Some seem to have bought into this and this instead.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] BTW, the other day you suggested that people here didn't cut Judy a break because she was a woman and that they have...uh...unresolved anger against women. I'm suggesting that there may be more than a little projection going on in that statement. Look what you just did to a woman you have never met who has done nothing more than report her experiences. That you presume to have reported her experiences Certain aspects of MMY's womanizing have never quite made sense to me. That doesn't mean they didn't happen, just that htey don't make sense. Specifically, the time of life that MMY would have *started* having sex with women, and what he was doing with the rest of his time while he was doing them also. Lawson
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, do.rflex [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~~ Buddha Thank you for the lovely and on point quote.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, do.rflex do.rflex@ wrote: Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~~ Buddha Thank you for the lovely and on point quote. Yeah, it gets to the bottom line for me.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The point is I think is the realization that we have control over the action only, not over the fruit. Whether we get the fruit or not is up to any number of things. True, buy my emphasis in your sentence would be that we have control over the action. The TM dogma tended to suggest the opposite, that when we were in shitty moods it was the result of forces we had no control over -- unstressing -- and we should just take it easy and take it as it comes. I don't believe that this is either true or productive in the long run. We DO have control over the temporary states of attention we find ourselves in. We can change them as easily as we come back to the mantra in TM. And to my way of thinking, there is a strong value in doing so. I know entrepreneurs and those in service fields like real estate, who never focus on the end result -- other than setting it in their sights initially. Its sort of don't count your chickens before they are hatched. And that the real thing is the journey, not the destination. The mountain lions nature is to run and hunt. He excels at that. He focuses on that. At the end of day, he may starve or feast. Thats not up to him. Alan Watts once said, Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. There is a remarkably liberating effect of focusing on the work at hand, rather than the expected result of that work. Based on my own experiences in life, I would suggest that the likelihood of the action turning out successfully is in direct proportion to how thoroughly one can focus on being in the moment of doing the work, and having as little thought as pos- sible of the eventual goal of the work. In living for just the fruit, one misses the beauty of the journey. I obviously agree. The journey is the destination, and all that. And they are not satisfied in the moment. Their satisfaction is always out there. Obviously, this extends to those who focus on the goal of enlightenment. We have all known seekers who have spent years dissatisfied with some of the finest lives it has been anyone's fortune on planet Earth to live, just because they aren't enlight- ened yet. Others are totally in the NOW, satisfied in the NOW, enjoying the journey as it passes. If they feast at the end of the day, thats great to. Yup. Because at the end of one of those days, worms are going to feast on us. It's all transitory. snip I am happy with my process of posting as a way to work out ideas. If no one reads it, I am still fulfilled. Can't argue with that. Its like a skier. The goal is not to get to the bottom of the mountain. In fact thats an anti-climax. The goal, the fruit, is to make your feet, heart, mind, whole body and soul feel real good, by manipulating gravity a bit, in gorgeous and sometimes awesomely extreme terrain. Its all about the process, the journey. Not the anti-climax. A good analogy. I prefer surfing myself, because with surfing the terrain isn't fixed; it's ever- changing. You just can't get a handle on it. With even a black diamond ski run you can get used to it and have everything sorta figured out and lose to some extent the joy of Beginner's Mind. With a wave, it's always a new wave every time. Anti-climax. You can see where I could go with that. The joy making love is in the doing. Not the aftermath. Excellent. And as I suggested above, the more focus one can bring to the moment and not the expected result, the better the result is likely to be.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Retiring from public life is one way to make it difficult to get on-going media exposure. Dying will get your name in the media for a day or two. Thereafter, one's media presence is nil ... DH's death and many other young TMers early deaths were preventable, had the bias against allopathic medicine been revisited when so many began to get serious illnesses in the 1990s. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I understand burnout. I am to understand that Doug Henning was kept from performing because Maharishi asked him to not do it anymore and work on Vedaland. Because DH also liked a party and such is pretty much forbidden in TMO. M asked him to not do either activity anymore, entertain or party. It's amazing how quick the media forgets someone. I absolutely loved Doug Henning when I was a kid. I am sad for one that he stopped performing. He always kicked David Copperfield's ass AFAIC.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
I understand burnout. I am to understand that Doug Henning was kept from performing because Maharishi asked him to not do it anymore and work on Vedaland. Because DH also liked a party and such is pretty much forbidden in TMO. M asked him to not do either activity anymore, entertain or party. It's amazing how quick the media forgets someone. I absolutely loved Doug Henning when I was a kid. I am sad for one that he stopped performing. He always kicked David Copperfield's ass AFAIC.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Looking at Maharishi as an enlightened guy who knew what he was doing lends itself to your interpretation. In my view of him as a guy who was completely winging it, and who created a situation where every whim was catered to, it comes out differently. Not sure why being enlightened and winging it are necessarily mutually exclusive. Also, there's his story of how Guru Dev would do the same thing to him, so maybe he thought if it had benefited him, it would also benefit his close followers. I find my own comfort in thinking about him as a guy who, like a lot of hight achievers, had a bit of ADD. Why do you find comfort in diagnosing him with all sorts of DSM-IV disorders? The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Why do you find comfort in diagnosing him with all sorts of DSM-IV disorders? The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope. My relationship with the information in the DSM-IV comes mostly from a personality test book written by two of the authors of the DSM series. They explain how all of our personalities fall in a range of degrees of 14 different personality traits. This is just a model for understanding, but you can test yourself to see how much of certain qualities you have. You can have a lot of a trait they call vigilance way before you become a paranoid which is the pathological end of that spectrum. They have a 100 question test to rate yourself and I have found it really helpful in relationships. It helps me understand how my partner is viewing the world and how I can communicate better. Understanding breeds compassion for me. High achievers like Maharishi usually are cranked up kind of high in certain traits. It doesn't have to take on a pejorative connotation, but the guy was functioning differently than most average performers. In the movement this is attributed to his enlightenment. For me it is seen through the mental filters I am comfortable with. Spending time in schools for my shows has brought me into contact with special education teachers. Their models of cognitive styles is also influencing how I view people. And being around Maharishi and ADD kids is remarkably similar for me. They are often brilliant. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: snip Looking at Maharishi as an enlightened guy who knew what he was doing lends itself to your interpretation. In my view of him as a guy who was completely winging it, and who created a situation where every whim was catered to, it comes out differently. Not sure why being enlightened and winging it are necessarily mutually exclusive. Also, there's his story of how Guru Dev would do the same thing to him, so maybe he thought if it had benefited him, it would also benefit his close followers. I find my own comfort in thinking about him as a guy who, like a lot of hight achievers, had a bit of ADD. Why do you find comfort in diagnosing him with all sorts of DSM-IV disorders? The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Fair enough. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why do you find comfort in diagnosing him with all sorts of DSM-IV disorders? The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope. My relationship with the information in the DSM-IV comes mostly from a personality test book written by two of the authors of the DSM series. They explain how all of our personalities fall in a range of degrees of 14 different personality traits. This is just a model for understanding, but you can test yourself to see how much of certain qualities you have. You can have a lot of a trait they call vigilance way before you become a paranoid which is the pathological end of that spectrum. They have a 100 question test to rate yourself and I have found it really helpful in relationships. It helps me understand how my partner is viewing the world and how I can communicate better. Understanding breeds compassion for me. High achievers like Maharishi usually are cranked up kind of high in certain traits. It doesn't have to take on a pejorative connotation, but the guy was functioning differently than most average performers. In the movement this is attributed to his enlightenment. For me it is seen through the mental filters I am comfortable with. Spending time in schools for my shows has brought me into contact with special education teachers. Their models of cognitive styles is also influencing how I view people. And being around Maharishi and ADD kids is remarkably similar for me. They are often brilliant. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: snip Looking at Maharishi as an enlightened guy who knew what he was doing lends itself to your interpretation. In my view of him as a guy who was completely winging it, and who created a situation where every whim was catered to, it comes out differently. Not sure why being enlightened and winging it are necessarily mutually exclusive. Also, there's his story of how Guru Dev would do the same thing to him, so maybe he thought if it had benefited him, it would also benefit his close followers. I find my own comfort in thinking about him as a guy who, like a lot of hight achievers, had a bit of ADD. Why do you find comfort in diagnosing him with all sorts of DSM-IV disorders? The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning no_reply@ wrote: The point is I think is the realization that we have control over the action only, not over the fruit. Whether we get the fruit or not is up to any number of things. True, buy my emphasis in your sentence would be that we have control over the action. The TM dogma tended to suggest the opposite, that when we were in shitty moods it was the result of forces we had no control over -- unstressing -- and we should just take it easy and take it as it comes. And keep doing whatever we were doing. How does this suggest the opposite? We have control over the action, no matter what our moods are, and we aren't to focus on the moods. I don't believe that this is either true or productive in the long run. We DO have control over the temporary states of attention we find ourselves in. We can change them as easily as we come back to the mantra in TM. Well, maybe we can, maybe we can't. Maybe the best course is neither to indulge our state of attention nor to fight to change it, but simply to take it as it comes without dwelling on it. I know entrepreneurs and those in service fields like real estate, who never focus on the end result -- other than setting it in their sights initially. Its sort of don't count your chickens before they are hatched. And that the real thing is the journey, not the destination. The mountain lions nature is to run and hunt. He excels at that. He focuses on that. At the end of day, he may starve or feast. Thats not up to him. Alan Watts once said, Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. There is a remarkably liberating effect of focusing on the work at hand, rather than the expected result of that work. Based on my own experiences in life, I would suggest that the likelihood of the action turning out successfully is in direct proportion to how thoroughly one can focus on being in the moment of doing the work, and having as little thought as pos- sible of the eventual goal of the work. Which is exactly what focusing on the action rather than the fruit is all about. Sounds like you're in perfect agreement with what MMY was teaching on that point.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Judy, you made the comment: The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope. which may be generally true, I don't know, I am not a shrink. As I recall, this is explained in the intro sections of DSM. (Can't cope is my phrase; change to seek treatment if that seems more appropriately neutral). However, people with certain personality disorders may cope just fine,a narcissist or sociopath for example. Technically, these are only disorders if they're professionally diagnosed, and typically people aren't diagnosed unless they seek treatment (or perhaps commit a crime and are required to submit to psychiatric examination). So to some extent it's a matter of semantics, but I think the caveat bears consideration. snip The working hard of TM TBs on one fruitless activity after another is very disturbing to me. I am still processing what I think about it and what I think about what y'all think about it. It was to me as well until I had the opportunity to interact with folks who were in the middle of it, to see it from the inside, as it were. Then it made perfect sense.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living
thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training
looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see
training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived
spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you
don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks
bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be
the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture.
- Original Message
From: ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2008 11:14:20 AM
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between
Fruit and Action
Judy, you made the comment:
The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance
of therapists who are working with patients who
can't cope, based on the characteristics found in
thousands of past patients who couldn't cope.
which may be generally true, I don't know, I am not a shrink.
However, people with certain personality disorders may cope just fine,
a narcissist or sociopath for example. They may be unpleasant people,
but they may not suffer anxiety or depression as a result of their
disorders. Or if they do, they blame it on something external to
themselves so they likely wouldn't seek treatment.
For a time I volunteered with a number of young people that were often
runaways and homeless. It was interesting how many suffered from
personality disorders. (Given the bad things that had happened to
them, also no surprise). Many had no interest whatsoever in
treatment. If they were anxious they might want a pill, but they
often did not perceive anything wrong with how they viewed the world.
Just making a side point in an interesting conversion.
The working hard of TM TBs on one fruitless activity after another is
very disturbing to me. I am still processing what I think about it and
what I think about what y'all think about it.
I do think that some TBs reached a point where it would not have
mattered much what MMY did or told them to do, the TB would fit it
into their view of MMY as an enlightened being whose actions were all
right actions. Arguably, they were trained that way, whether
unwittingly or intentionally. Now that is frightening.
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[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Judy, you made the comment: The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope. which may be generally true, I don't know, I am not a shrink. However, people with certain personality disorders may cope just fine, a narcissist or sociopath for example. They may be unpleasant people, but they may not suffer anxiety or depression as a result of their disorders. Or if they do, they blame it on something external to themselves so they likely wouldn't seek treatment. For a time I volunteered with a number of young people that were often runaways and homeless. It was interesting how many suffered from personality disorders. (Given the bad things that had happened to them, also no surprise). Many had no interest whatsoever in treatment. If they were anxious they might want a pill, but they often did not perceive anything wrong with how they viewed the world. Just making a side point in an interesting conversion. The working hard of TM TBs on one fruitless activity after another is very disturbing to me. I am still processing what I think about it and what I think about what y'all think about it. I do think that some TBs reached a point where it would not have mattered much what MMY did or told them to do, the TB would fit it into their view of MMY as an enlightened being whose actions were all right actions. Arguably, they were trained that way, whether unwittingly or intentionally. Now that is frightening.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: Judy, you made the comment: The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope. which may be generally true, I don't know, I am not a shrink. As I recall, this is explained in the intro sections of DSM. (Can't cope is my phrase; change to seek treatment if that seems more appropriately neutral). However, people with certain personality disorders may cope just fine,a narcissist or sociopath for example. Technically, these are only disorders if they're professionally diagnosed, and typically people aren't diagnosed unless they seek treatment (or perhaps commit a crime and are required to submit to psychiatric examination). So to some extent it's a matter of semantics, but I think the caveat bears consideration. When I think about this more, and certainly Peter would know more than we do about this, but the DSM IV categories are likely based on a combination of historical categories, clinical experience, and research. Certainly the diagnosis of amateurs or even professionals based on just what they read or hear about a person is risky and vulnerable to attack. But then again, I have seen patients who are diagnosed inconsistently by professionals who met with them personally. For example, a young person might be diagnosed with PTSD or borderline personality disorder by different people. Nevertheless, even if a person never meets with a professional or if professionals disagree as to a diagnosis, it doesn't mean that there isn't something amiss. I wouldn't be surprised if most people with narcissistic PD don't go for treatment, but that their families end up looking for help in dealing with the person. My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. lol- and vice versa to be sure.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture. We are all a product of our genes and our experiences and some might say, our karma. We all look at the world through those glasses. I have yet to meet a person that I would consider liberated from this state. My reference to scary isn't a reference to different experiences or backgrounds. Scary is when people lose their capacity for independent thought and do anything that their master tells them to do, no matter how inappropriate because it simply cannot be wrong. I am not saying that occurred with MMY, but there are signs . . . . Thank god MMY was not the type to ask people to drink the kool-aid.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture. We are all a product of our genes and our experiences and some might say, our karma. We all look at the world through those glasses. I have yet to meet a person that I would consider liberated from this state. My reference to scary isn't a reference to different experiences or backgrounds. Scary is when people lose their capacity for independent thought and do anything that their master tells them to do, no matter how inappropriate because it simply cannot be wrong. I am not saying that occurred with MMY, but there are signs . . . . Thank god MMY was not the type to ask people to drink the kool-aid.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. So you don't think they would just join him in his self perception as being the most important human being in history? What if they heard Bevan telling them that he really really was, many many many many many many many times? How about then? Still no? This is going to be harder than I thought... This is the most troubling aspect of the cute little holy man picture of Maharishi, his extreme version of grandiosity. And it is also where the devotion of his followers cross over into a darker place of enabling a person with a real psychological problem. A person who might have needed help instead of a steady stream of ass kissing. Unless of course you want to give his own self perception another shot? You know, the perspective where EVERY other meditation teacher and spiritual leader was his inferior. Where he was uniqually saddled with the responsibility to spiritually regenerate all of mankind alone, and only he among ALL the spiritual representatives of the Vedic tradition in India knew the SPECIAL SECRETS. The ONLY authentic spiritual teacher, or at least the best of them ALL. The TOPPERMOST of the POPPERMOST, a wonder unto himself AMEN and Hallelujah! Words cannot express how great and important he was, yet his minions try... And people wonder why I need the DSM-IV? It is to keep me somewhat sympathetic to his condition instead of ... being less sympathetic, let's just leave it at. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: Judy, you made the comment: The DSM diagnoses, remember, are for the guidance of therapists who are working with patients who can't cope, based on the characteristics found in thousands of past patients who couldn't cope. which may be generally true, I don't know, I am not a shrink. As I recall, this is explained in the intro sections of DSM. (Can't cope is my phrase; change to seek treatment if that seems more appropriately neutral). However, people with certain personality disorders may cope just fine,a narcissist or sociopath for example. Technically, these are only disorders if they're professionally diagnosed, and typically people aren't diagnosed unless they seek treatment (or perhaps commit a crime and are required to submit to psychiatric examination). So to some extent it's a matter of semantics, but I think the caveat bears consideration. When I think about this more, and certainly Peter would know more than we do about this, but the DSM IV categories are likely based on a combination of historical categories, clinical experience, and research. Certainly the diagnosis of amateurs or even professionals based on just what they read or hear about a person is risky and vulnerable to attack. But then again, I have seen patients who are diagnosed inconsistently by professionals who met with them personally. For example, a young person might be diagnosed with PTSD or borderline personality disorder by different people. Nevertheless, even if a person never meets with a professional or if professionals disagree as to a diagnosis, it doesn't mean that there isn't something amiss. I wouldn't be surprised if most people with narcissistic PD don't go for treatment, but that their families end up looking for help in dealing with the person. My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Nevertheless, even if a person never meets with a professional or if professionals disagree as to a diagnosis, it doesn't mean that there isn't something amiss. Not at all. I wouldn't be surprised if most people with narcissistic PD don't go for treatment, but that their families end up looking for help in dealing with the person. My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. I wouldn't doubt it in the slightest. But I suspect that would be the case with quite a few spiritual leaders, especially those from the East. Which makes me wonder whether Indian psychologists and psychiatrists would have the same response. And then I wonder how MMY would have behaved had he been born in the West as a European or an American. In other words, how much of his behavior has to do with what is sanctioned, even expected, in Indian spiritual culture? I also wonder whether the Western professionals would come to the same conclusion if they were to have spent enough time around him to experience his presence. Do those who have the psychic juice to take on huge leadership roles and inspire large numbers of people to follow them maybe not quite fit the standard categories in terms of personality characteristics? How can one tell if a messianic personality is disordered, rather than exceptional? I dunno. I was never around MMY; I'm just speculating.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: snip My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. lol- and vice versa to be sure. No disagreement about that! LOL right back at ya.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. I wouldn't doubt it in the slightest. But I suspect that would be the case with quite a few spiritual leaders, especially those from the East. I would have said, especially those from the west. ;)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: snip My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. I wouldn't doubt it in the slightest. But I suspect that would be the case with quite a few spiritual leaders, especially those from the East. I would have said, especially those from the west. ;) The key to me is the seeming lack of empathy. You can have some charismatic leaders with grand ideas, but who are not preoccupied with ideas of unlimited success coupled with lack of empathy. Again, I agree we are only speculating.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander mailander111@ wrote: Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture. We are all a product of our genes and our experiences and some might say, our karma. We all look at the world through those glasses. I have yet to meet a person that I would consider liberated from this state. My reference to scary isn't a reference to different experiences or backgrounds. Scary is when people lose their capacity for independent thought and do anything that their master tells them to do, no matter how inappropriate because it simply cannot be wrong. I am not saying that occurred with MMY, but there are signs . . . . Thank god MMY was not the type to ask people to drink the kool-aid. Funny that you brought this up Ruth. One of the reasons I originally bailed on MMY and TMO was because it had occurred to me that I was rationalizing every kind of behavior for him. If he put someone though some kind of mental torment, it was to burn that person's karmanot that he was pissed off and being ornery. If he lost his temper (and boy could he EVER!) it was all part of some cosmic play, certainly not that he was just in a bad mood. As I thought about it I realized that if he had ordered someone killed, for instance (not saying that he did mind you) that I would have also excused this, since heywe're all in this for the long hall anyway and he was simply moving that person ahead on the long corridor of time. I needed to get off of that bus.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of curtisdeltablues Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 9:00 PM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action He allowed this belief to exist as a kind of implied teaching because it served his purposes. It kept people off center and running around all the time. He could play games making stuff up and watch everyone knock themselves out fulfilling his desires. I don't think this was the most charming part of his personality. Some people gave up a lot to chase some of his bogus projects, ask Doug Henning. Oh yeah, we can't. Don�t forget Jennifer�s comment, that Maharishi often derided the Westerners as �gullible fools� for believing all the things he told them. That's oneof the women who reports that MMY slept with her dozens of times? Well... LOL. A trustworthy soul, for certain. Lawson
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip I can't help but wonder if those who believe that is the path end up with crazy enlightenment. Post traumatic enlightenment disorder. LOL!! I think you just coined a phrase. Huh, maybe *MMY* had PTED. He's always said Guru Dev gave him a really rough time.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip i personally enjoy both music, and what Maharishi brought, and think that what he did and said were just as un self conscious and well meaning and universal as what any of us do and say. he was a creation of his environment just like anyone else, and how much you value his existence is a personal thing. buy into it, or not-- doesn't matter. i like this Jim. Thanks for pulling this discussion to more of a middle ground.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. So you don't think they would just join him in his self perception as being the most important human being in history? What if they heard Bevan telling them that he really really was, many many many many many many many times? How about then? Still no? This is going to be harder than I thought... This is the most troubling aspect of the cute little holy man picture of Maharishi, his extreme version of grandiosity. And it is also where the devotion of his followers cross over into a darker place of enabling a person with a real psychological problem. A person who might have needed help instead of a steady stream of ass kissing. Unless of course you want to give his own self perception another shot? You know, the perspective where EVERY other meditation teacher and spiritual leader was his inferior. Where he was uniqually saddled with the responsibility to spiritually regenerate all of mankind alone, and only he among ALL the spiritual representatives of the Vedic tradition in India knew the SPECIAL SECRETS. The ONLY authentic spiritual teacher, or at least the best of them ALL. The TOPPERMOST of the POPPERMOST, a wonder unto himself AMEN and Hallelujah! Words cannot express how great and important he was, yet his minions try... And people wonder why I need the DSM-IV? It is to keep me somewhat sympathetic to his condition instead of ... being less sympathetic, let's just leave it at. why are you so interested and caught up in Maharishi's ego? its all ego, ego, ego, to you. the central core of what he was and what he did you always relate in terms of what he must have thought about himself and what others thought about him. i see him essentially as a fungus or a hummingbird or a galaxy. playing his part in the universe just like anyone else. just as you are a musician, created out of both your impulses and abilities, and the way your environment responds to you, (i.e. you wouldn't be a musician for very long if your environment told you you weren't any good), same with Maharishi. if there hadn't been any universal need for him, no one would have heard another word from him, and that would be that. ah, but you say it is all contrivance and buying into a lie, and manipulation. and i respond that some might say the same thing about music, that it has no intrinsic value and is unecessary, and those that enjoy it are brainwashed into enjoying a false, wholly consensual reality, that there is no there, there, and that the only reason you do it is to be falsely gratified by those who buy into the artifice of music. even to make money from it is a con- you play soemthing ephemeral in time and space and after people have paid their money, they walk away with nothing, except a pleasant memory, and you walk the other way with their money. i personally enjoy both music, and what Maharishi brought, and think that what he did and said were just as un self conscious and well meaning and universal as what any of us do and say. he was a creation of his environment just like anyone else, and how much you value his existence is a personal thing. buy into it, or not-- doesn't matter.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: so you only want feel good spirituality? something soothing that keeps you in your comfort zone-- wholly understandable and friendly? compassionate and empathetic. if you are nodding your head Yes, you absolutely have no interest in enlightenment. someone put it so perfectly recently when they quoted someone as saying the path to enlightenment is the path of constant insults. No, I have no expectation of something soothing that keeps me in my comfort zone. But a path of constant insults? I can't help but wonder if those who believe that is the path end up with crazy enlightenment. Post traumatic enlightenment disorder. I still hold open, however, the possibility that some end up enlightened through a tortuous path. But I think most would end up with a bit of PTSD or PTED.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: snip My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. I wouldn't doubt it in the slightest. But I suspect that would be the case with quite a few spiritual leaders, especially those from the East. I would have said, especially those from the west. ;) The key to me is the seeming lack of empathy. You can have some charismatic leaders with grand ideas, but who are not preoccupied with ideas of unlimited success coupled with lack of empathy. Again, I agree we are only speculating. so you only want feel good spirituality? something soothing that keeps you in your comfort zone-- wholly understandable and friendly? compassionate and empathetic. if you are nodding your head Yes, you absolutely have no interest in enlightenment. someone put it so perfectly recently when they quoted someone as saying the path to enlightenment is the path of constant insults. No, I have no expectation of something soothing that keeps me in my comfort zone. But a path of constant insults? I can't help but wonder if those who believe that is the path end up with crazy enlightenment. Post traumatic enlightenment disorder. I still hold open, however, the possibility that some end up enlightened through a tortuous path.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, geezerfreak [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander mailander111@ wrote: Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture. We are all a product of our genes and our experiences and some might say, our karma. We all look at the world through those glasses. I have yet to meet a person that I would consider liberated from this state. My reference to scary isn't a reference to different experiences or backgrounds. Scary is when people lose their capacity for independent thought and do anything that their master tells them to do, no matter how inappropriate because it simply cannot be wrong. I am not saying that occurred with MMY, but there are signs . . . . Thank god MMY was not the type to ask people to drink the kool- aid. Funny that you brought this up Ruth. One of the reasons I originally bailed on MMY and TMO was because it had occurred to me that I was rationalizing every kind of behavior for him. If he put someone though some kind of mental torment, it was to burn that person's karmanot that he was pissed off and being ornery. If he lost his temper (and boy could he EVER!) it was all part of some cosmic play, certainly not that he was just in a bad mood. As I thought about it I realized that if he had ordered someone killed, for instance (not saying that he did mind you) that I would have also excused this, since heywe're all in this for the long hall anyway and he was simply moving that person ahead on the long corridor of time. I needed to get off of that bus. yes, especially since it was you who carefully welded and hammered and bolted the bus together. then dutifully paid your fare, got behind the wheel and began driving. then at some point actually looked out the windshield, saw where you were going, and exclaimed holy shit! I am outta here! so is that another bus seat under your butt right now???
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: snip My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. I wouldn't doubt it in the slightest. But I suspect that would be the case with quite a few spiritual leaders, especially those from the East. I would have said, especially those from the west. ;) The key to me is the seeming lack of empathy. You can have some charismatic leaders with grand ideas, but who are not preoccupied with ideas of unlimited success coupled with lack of empathy. Again, I agree we are only speculating. so you only want feel good spirituality? something soothing that keeps you in your comfort zone-- wholly understandable and friendly? compassionate and empathetic. if you are nodding your head Yes, you absolutely have no interest in enlightenment. someone put it so perfectly recently when they quoted someone as saying the path to enlightenment is the path of constant insults.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer rick@ wrote: From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of curtisdeltablues Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 9:00 PM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action He allowed this belief to exist as a kind of implied teaching because it served his purposes. It kept people off center and running around all the time. He could play games making stuff up and watch everyone knock themselves out fulfilling his desires. I don't think this was the most charming part of his personality. Some people gave up a lot to chase some of his bogus projects, ask Doug Henning. Oh yeah, we can't. Don�t forget Jennifer�s comment, that Maharishi often derided the Westerners as �gullible fools� for believing all the things he told them. That's oneof the women who reports that MMY slept with her dozens of times? Well... LOL. A trustworthy soul, for certain. Lawson That damned Maharishi was a fucking asshole! Gr! Jerk! some holy man he turned out to be! what an asshole!
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 sandiego108@ wrote: so you only want feel good spirituality? something soothing that keeps you in your comfort zone-- wholly understandable and friendly? compassionate and empathetic. if you are nodding your head Yes, you absolutely have no interest in enlightenment. someone put it so perfectly recently when they quoted someone as saying the path to enlightenment is the path of constant insults. No, I have no expectation of something soothing that keeps me in my comfort zone. But a path of constant insults? Well, at least a path of constant insults would be consistent... (You said just before this that it was the *inconsistency* that drove you crazy.) I can't help but wonder if those who believe that is the path end up with crazy enlightenment. Post traumatic enlightenment disorder. LOL!! I think you just coined a phrase. I still hold open, however, the possibility that some end up enlightened through a tortuous path. But I think most would end up with a bit of PTSD or PTED.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 sandiego108@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: snip My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. lol- and vice versa to be sure. No disagreement about that! LOL right back at ya. cool!
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
i personally enjoy both music, and what Maharishi brought, and think that what he did and said were just as un self conscious and well meaning and universal as what any of us do and say. he was a creation of his environment just like anyone else, and how much you value his existence is a personal thing. buy into it, or not-- doesn't matter. You are missing the point of the discussion. If I claimed that I am the only person in the history of music to play real music. If I claimed that when I play music it is different from any other human alive today who plays music. That my music has magical effects on my listeners unlike the effect of any other music, including all the music of the past. If I claimed that it was the greatest good fortune of all mankind that I decided to play music... Someone might reach for a DSM-IV. Not you, I know. But someone who is interested in these distinctions. In my world everyone is not the same Jim. Some people are a bit hinkie. And speculating on exactly what version of hinkiness Maharishi was running might be of more interest to people who spent some time with him personally than those who didn't. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: My gut feeling is that if you describe MMY's behavior in detail to a number of psychologist and psychiatrists, they will guess that he had a personality disorder. So you don't think they would just join him in his self perception as being the most important human being in history? What if they heard Bevan telling them that he really really was, many many many many many many many times? How about then? Still no? This is going to be harder than I thought... This is the most troubling aspect of the cute little holy man picture of Maharishi, his extreme version of grandiosity. And it is also where the devotion of his followers cross over into a darker place of enabling a person with a real psychological problem. A person who might have needed help instead of a steady stream of ass kissing. Unless of course you want to give his own self perception another shot? You know, the perspective where EVERY other meditation teacher and spiritual leader was his inferior. Where he was uniqually saddled with the responsibility to spiritually regenerate all of mankind alone, and only he among ALL the spiritual representatives of the Vedic tradition in India knew the SPECIAL SECRETS. The ONLY authentic spiritual teacher, or at least the best of them ALL. The TOPPERMOST of the POPPERMOST, a wonder unto himself AMEN and Hallelujah! Words cannot express how great and important he was, yet his minions try... And people wonder why I need the DSM-IV? It is to keep me somewhat sympathetic to his condition instead of ... being less sympathetic, let's just leave it at. why are you so interested and caught up in Maharishi's ego? its all ego, ego, ego, to you. the central core of what he was and what he did you always relate in terms of what he must have thought about himself and what others thought about him. i see him essentially as a fungus or a hummingbird or a galaxy. playing his part in the universe just like anyone else. just as you are a musician, created out of both your impulses and abilities, and the way your environment responds to you, (i.e. you wouldn't be a musician for very long if your environment told you you weren't any good), same with Maharishi. if there hadn't been any universal need for him, no one would have heard another word from him, and that would be that. ah, but you say it is all contrivance and buying into a lie, and manipulation. and i respond that some might say the same thing about music, that it has no intrinsic value and is unecessary, and those that enjoy it are brainwashed into enjoying a false, wholly consensual reality, that there is no there, there, and that the only reason you do it is to be falsely gratified by those who buy into the artifice of music. even to make money from it is a con- you play soemthing ephemeral in time and space and after people have paid their money, they walk away with nothing, except a pleasant memory, and you walk the other way with their money. i personally enjoy both music, and what Maharishi brought, and think that what he did and said were just as un self conscious and well meaning and universal as what any of us do and say. he was a creation of his environment just like anyone else, and how much you value his existence is a personal thing. buy into it, or not-- doesn't matter.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, geezerfreak geezerfreak@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander mailander111@ wrote: Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture. We are all a product of our genes and our experiences and some might say, our karma. We all look at the world through those glasses. I have yet to meet a person that I would consider liberated from this state. My reference to scary isn't a reference to different experiences or backgrounds. Scary is when people lose their capacity for independent thought and do anything that their master tells them to do, no matter how inappropriate because it simply cannot be wrong. I am not saying that occurred with MMY, but there are signs . . . . Thank god MMY was not the type to ask people to drink the kool- aid. Funny that you brought this up Ruth. One of the reasons I originally bailed on MMY and TMO was because it had occurred to me that I was rationalizing every kind of behavior for him. If he put someone though some kind of mental torment, it was to burn that person's karmanot that he was pissed off and being ornery. If he lost his temper (and boy could he EVER!) it was all part of some cosmic play, certainly not that he was just in a bad mood. As I thought about it I realized that if he had ordered someone killed, for instance (not saying that he did mind you) that I would have also excused this, since heywe're all in this for the long hall anyway and he was simply moving that person ahead on the long corridor of time. I needed to get off of that bus. yes, especially since it was you who carefully welded and hammered and bolted the bus together. then dutifully paid your fare, got behind the wheel and began driving. then at some point actually looked out the windshield, saw where you were going, and exclaimed holy shit! I am outta here! so is that another bus seat under your butt right now??? Yep. Much more rewarding and sane ride. The view is great. No complaints.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ispiritkin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Creating that kind of experience for a student is quite an accomplishment for a sage, no? No. And what does that say about Nader, Morris, Hagelin et. al?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
geezerfreak wrote: I needed to get off of that bus. sandiego108 wrote: so is that another bus seat under your butt right now??? geezerfreak wrote: Yep. Much more rewarding and sane ride. The view is great. No complaints. I think there is a way to reconcile the bizarre behavior of MMY and his followers (it takes two!) When I think of Chopra's report of his departure, and Geezer's report, and the reports of so many personal friends, one thread goes through them all. Each person was asked to go beyond what they judged to be appropriate for themselves. That means that they had developed their own judgment independent of MMY's (or TMO's). The departures happened in such a way that the break was undeniable, inarguable, and irreversible. The step for each person was huge and unforgettable. It might feel unlike any other break in a person's life except perhaps death of loved ones. Creating that kind of experience for a student is quite an accomplishment for a sage, no?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Post traumatic enlightenment disorder. Oh, that is rich! :D I still hold open, however, the possibility that some end up enlightened through a tortuous path. But I think most would end up with a bit of PTSD or PTED. I agree, I think some do.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
I don't know about Nader, etc. I do think that even for a nonsage-nonstudent combination, it's quite an experience to find and value your own judgment and self. Sometimes a student doesn't even know who the teacher is until after the stormy experience and subsequent clearing. Quite often we call the teacher experience. --- ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- ispiritkin ispiritkin@ wrote: Creating that kind of experience for a student is quite an accomplishment for a sage, no? No. And what does that say about Nader, Morris, Hagelin et. al?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, geezerfreak [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 sandiego108@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, geezerfreak geezerfreak@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity ruthsimplicity@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander mailander111@ wrote: Ruth, we're all trained one way or another. It is impossible for any living thing not to be trained from birth on (and maybe before). And all training looks more or less normal from the inside. It only gets scary when we see training radically different from our own. Liberation means a perceived spiritual independence from training. The training is still there, but you don't identify with it. From that point of view, all training looks bizarre--even, and, maybe especially, the training most of us consider to be the normal state for most folks at any given time in any given culture. We are all a product of our genes and our experiences and some might say, our karma. We all look at the world through those glasses. I have yet to meet a person that I would consider liberated from this state. My reference to scary isn't a reference to different experiences or backgrounds. Scary is when people lose their capacity for independent thought and do anything that their master tells them to do, no matter how inappropriate because it simply cannot be wrong. I am not saying that occurred with MMY, but there are signs . . . . Thank god MMY was not the type to ask people to drink the kool- aid. Funny that you brought this up Ruth. One of the reasons I originally bailed on MMY and TMO was because it had occurred to me that I was rationalizing every kind of behavior for him. If he put someone though some kind of mental torment, it was to burn that person's karmanot that he was pissed off and being ornery. If he lost his temper (and boy could he EVER!) it was all part of some cosmic play, certainly not that he was just in a bad mood. As I thought about it I realized that if he had ordered someone killed, for instance (not saying that he did mind you) that I would have also excused this, since heywe're all in this for the long hall anyway and he was simply moving that person ahead on the long corridor of time. I needed to get off of that bus. yes, especially since it was you who carefully welded and hammered and bolted the bus together. then dutifully paid your fare, got behind the wheel and began driving. then at some point actually looked out the windshield, saw where you were going, and exclaimed holy shit! I am outta here! so is that another bus seat under your butt right now??? Yep. Much more rewarding and sane ride. The view is great. No complaints. excellent-- glad to hear it.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sandiego108 sandiego108@ wrote: so you only want feel good spirituality? something soothing that keeps you in your comfort zone-- wholly understandable and friendly? compassionate and empathetic. if you are nodding your head Yes, you absolutely have no interest in enlightenment. someone put it so perfectly recently when they quoted someone as saying the path to enlightenment is the path of constant insults. No, I have no expectation of something soothing that keeps me in my comfort zone. But a path of constant insults? I can't help but wonder if those who believe that is the path end up with crazy enlightenment. Post traumatic enlightenment disorder. all enlightenment is crazy- absolute fucked up insanity when compared to the constructs that the ego artificially keeps in place. there is no enlightenment that makes any sense at all to the unenlightened. (and vice versa, btw...) I still hold open, however, the possibility that some end up enlightened through a tortuous path. But I think most would end up with a bit of PTSD or PTED. the insults are to the individual ego, that it ever thinks it knows what is going on within its treasured context of segregated, albeit artificial, existence. this keeps getting broken down by tearing down and destroying the ego's world view until it cannot resist any longer and surrenders, dies, disappears, and in so doing transforms into cosmic ego. there is no PTSD or PTED to experience once this process is complete because there is no longer a localized self to apply it to, no if a equals b and b equals c then a equals c. does not compute. no one home in the conventional sense.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
---The traditional expectation angle doesn't make much sense in terms of the obvious economic laws. The bottom line: get results or you're outta here. Expectation is an ingrained behavior prevalent in all evolutionary pathways of sufficiently advanced organisms. Can you feature a mountain lion chasing a coyote without expectation of results? In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: WHY I don't agree is because of the real nature of selfless service. It FREES you from having too much attachment to any *expectations* regarding the service performed. You do something nice for someone, or for some charity or group you care about, and you do it because it feels good JUST to do it. You don't need to believe that doing this good work is going to change the world; you just do the work. And the cool part of all this is that if the good work DOESN'T change the world, you don't feel that you have to bitch and moan and claim that your time was wasted An excellent point. It sparks in my mind part of the explanation for MMY's crazy project binges. They are not so crazy if MMY was doing, among other things, the following three things -- which I am certain he was. He even said Hey! This is what I am doing... 1) breaking the link between fruit and action. Getting rid of the expectation. Pititful is the man who lives for the fruit of action... A Purusha, on a nice long beach walk told me of some the projects M had him and peers doing -- the buying huge old crumbling hotels, Blackstone, etc. He said doing such really breaks the above link. And an added part is that the project is begun with great haste, and urgency -- almost emergency -- its cast as the most important project in the world, and then after it got rolling and people got into it, M. would yank the rug out from under them, rip apart the act fruit link, by starting a new urgent project. 2) demonstrating the power of sankalpa -- what he explained in one of his last lectures (on MOU) that for a project, any big task, we can see the whole thing, like a flash IMO, at the beginning of the project. That lively glowing seed impulse. We don't see all of the small details because they are wrapped up in the seed. But we can feel the whole thing, see it in our minds eye, we get it. This sankalpa, this seed, is precious and nurturing it brings the whole thing to fruition easily. (not that we are living for that fruit.) This is what he taught the rajas to do, he said. This is the administering in silence. And M was a machine gun firing a massive barrage of sankalpa golden bullets -- every hour of everyday. Well begun is half done. Just acknowledging and seeing the sankalpa as it arises is the begun part. Well begun. He planted all of these seeds. The next 3-4 generations of rajas have the opportunity to nurture each of those old crazy projects. If done, it would be amazing if all of those seeds sprouted and matured into huge trees. M was the Johnny Appleseed of spiritual transformation. 3) expansive thinking. Related to 2) above, but goes to the style of thinking. Letting your mind and imagine soar with no limits. Like a child is apt to do, but doing this in an adult mind. He would say to a small group, just keep your mind going with mine. Go with his flow as his imagination and mind soar to vast heights and depths. an Anything is possibly spirit. Doing such breaks the boundaries of the mind. Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise. Very nicely put. This is also what I heard once from the old-time TM teacher who used to run the Asbury Park TM facility; can't remember his name now. He was just reminiscing about his time with MMY some years previously, and he was very informal and funny, but you could sense the energy and opening he'd gotten from the experience. My stay at that hotel facility for the summer of 1995-- as a paying guest, not working for the TMO--was the closest I've ever come to getting sucked into the movement. From interacting and chatting with the teachers and lifers there, I got a really different perspective on so many of the things that had seemed totally nuts about the movement. I think I've said before here of my Asbury Park experience that the problem was that these perspectives only made sense from *within the TM worldview*. And you couldn't keep one foot in the real world and one foot in the TM world, because the cognitive dissonance was too great. You had to commit totally to the TM world--at which point the real world appeared to be just as nuts as the TM world did from the outside--and I couldn't bring myself to take that leap. I stepped back and forth from one to the other all summer and finally stepped out again for good. I'm glad I didn't decide to commit, but gee whiz, it was a fascinating, stretching experience.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
The point is I think is the realization that we have control over the action only, not over the fruit. Whether we get the fruit or not is up to any number of things. I know entrepreneurs and those in service fields like real estate, who never focus on the end result -- other than setting it in their sights initially. Its sort of don't count your chickens before they are hatched. And that the real thing is the journey, not the destination. The mountain lions nature is to run and hunt. He excels at that. He focuses on that. At the end of day, he may starve or feast. Thats not up to him. In living for just the fruit, one misses the beauty of the journey. And they are not satisfied in the moment. Their satisfaction is always out there. Others are totally in the NOW, satisfied in the NOW, enjoying the journey as it passes. If they feast at the end of the day, thats great to. Its sort of parallel the motivations of posters. One poster threaten not to read my post if I did not change some style element. (Are there any other benefits?). I tried to explain, that I had little interest in who or how many read my posts. That is not the fruit of writing them. The fruit is in .figuring out some idea. To let a flash, a sankalpa, a seed idea, develop. Thats it. If someone then also reads the post, and we engage in a nice conversation, thats a good thing too. An added benefit. But not the goal. I am happy with my process of posting as a way to work out ideas. If no one reads it, I am still fulfilled. Its like a skier. The goal is not to get to the bottom of the mountain. In fact thats an anti-climax. The goal, the fruit, is to make your feet, heart, mind, whole body and soul feel real good, by manipulating gravity a bit, in gorgeous and sometimes awesomely extreme terrain. Its all about the process, the journey. Not the anti-climax. Anti-climax. You can see where I could go with that. The joy making love is in the doing. Not the aftermath. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tertonzeno [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ---The traditional expectation angle doesn't make much sense in terms of the obvious economic laws. The bottom line: get results othr you're outta here. Expectation is an ingrained behavior prevalent in all evolutionary pathways of sufficiently advanced organisms. Can you feature a mountain lion chasing a coyote without expectation of results? In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: WHY I don't agree is because of the real nature of selfless service. It FREES you from having too much attachment to any *expectations* regarding the service performed. You do something nice for someone, or for some charity or group you care about, and you do it because it feels good JUST to do it. You don't need to believe that doing this good work is going to change the world; you just do the work. And the cool part of all this is that if the good work DOESN'T change the world, you don't feel that you have to bitch and moan and claim that your time was wasted An excellent point. It sparks in my mind part of the explanation for MMY's crazy project binges. They are not so crazy if MMY was doing, among other things, the following three things -- which I am certain he was. He even said Hey! This is what I am doing... 1) breaking the link between fruit and action. Getting rid of the expectation. Pititful is the man who lives for the fruit of action... A Purusha, on a nice long beach walk told me of some the projects M had him and peers doing -- the buying huge old crumbling hotels, Blackstone, etc. He said doing such really breaks the above link. And an added part is that the project is begun with great haste, and urgency -- almost emergency -- its cast as the most important project in the world, and then after it got rolling and people got into it, M. would yank the rug out from under them, rip apart the act fruit link, by starting a new urgent project. 2) demonstrating the power of sankalpa -- what he explained in one of his last lectures (on MOU) that for a project, any big task, we can see the whole thing, like a flash IMO, at the beginning of the project. That lively glowing seed impulse. We don't see all of the small details because they are wrapped up in the seed. But we can feel the whole thing, see it in our minds eye, we get it. This sankalpa, this seed, is precious and nurturing it brings the whole thing to fruition easily. (not that we are living for that fruit.) This is what he taught the rajas to do, he said. This is the administering in silence. And M was a machine gun firing a massive barrage of sankalpa golden bullets -- every hour of everyday. Well begun is half done. Just acknowledging and seeing the sankalpa as it arises is the begun part.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Yes, you are correct. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning no_reply@ wrote: snip Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise. Very nicely put. This is also what I heard once from the old-time TM teacher who used to run the Asbury Park TM facility; can't remember his name now. He was just reminiscing about his time with MMY some years previously, and he was very informal and funny, but you could sense the energy and opening he'd gotten from the experience. My stay at that hotel facility for the summer of 1995-- as a paying guest, not working for the TMO--was the closest I've ever come to getting sucked into the movement. From interacting and chatting with the teachers and lifers there, I got a really different perspective on so many of the things that had seemed totally nuts about the movement. I think I've said before here of my Asbury Park experience that the problem was that these perspectives only made sense from *within the TM worldview*. And you couldn't keep one foot in the real world and one foot in the TM world, because the cognitive dissonance was too great. You had to commit totally to the TM world--at which point the real world appeared to be just as nuts as the TM world did from the outside--and I couldn't bring myself to take that leap. I stepped back and forth from one to the other all summer and finally stepped out again for good. I'm glad I didn't decide to commit, but gee whiz, it was a fascinating, stretching experience.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--Precisely, auth: being highly motivated to succeed can ONLY be measured (in the economic sense) via a quantifiable level of profits in some form. That's an expectation, is is not? This means one does her best to achieve a goal - (then don't mope about it); then go onto the next goal. The fact that one doesn't mope by no means detracts from the reality of true expectation. Whether or not one mopes, it's still an expectation of results. If indeed, MMY displayed a low level of expectation (but a high level of creative motivation with this and that project), well, I'd say it points to a relative failure at achieving some preconceived results (an expectation). And what was that? Simple: according to the set of oaths that somebody was kind enough to post, one of the goals was to spread TM to as many people as possible. The results are miniscule, the espected and hoped for goal unattained. Now what remains of the TM Movement is in the hands of? - In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tertonzeno tertonzeno@ wrote: ---The traditional expectation angle doesn't make much sense in terms of the obvious economic laws. The bottom line: get results or you're outta here. Expectation is an ingrained behavior prevalent in all evolutionary pathways of sufficiently advanced organisms. Can you feature a mountain lion chasing a coyote without expectation of results? MMY was real clear in his Gita commentary on this point, though, that not having expectations doesn't mean you aren't highly motivated to succeed. If the mountain lion doesn't catch the coyote, does it sit around being disappointed and beating up on itself, or does it immediately start looking for another coyote to chase? MMY's take on this is one of the very juiciest parts of his Gita commentary, IMHO. I'll try to look it up later.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, tertonzeno [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ---The traditional expectation angle doesn't make much sense in terms of the obvious economic laws. The bottom line: get results or you're outta here. Expectation is an ingrained behavior prevalent in all evolutionary pathways of sufficiently advanced organisms. Can you feature a mountain lion chasing a coyote without expectation of results? MMY was real clear in his Gita commentary on this point, though, that not having expectations doesn't mean you aren't highly motivated to succeed. If the mountain lion doesn't catch the coyote, does it sit around being disappointed and beating up on itself, or does it immediately start looking for another coyote to chase? MMY's take on this is one of the very juiciest parts of his Gita commentary, IMHO. I'll try to look it up later.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning no_reply@ wrote: snip Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise. Very nicely put. This is also what I heard once from the old-time TM teacher who used to run the Asbury Park TM facility; can't remember his name now. He was just reminiscing about his time with MMY some years previously, and he was very informal and funny, but you could sense the energy and opening he'd gotten from the experience. My stay at that hotel facility for the summer of 1995-- as a paying guest, not working for the TMO--was the closest I've ever come to getting sucked into the movement. From interacting and chatting with the teachers and lifers there, I got a really different perspective on so many of the things that had seemed totally nuts about the movement. I think I've said before here of my Asbury Park experience that the problem was that these perspectives only made sense from *within the TM worldview*. And you couldn't keep one foot in the real world and one foot in the TM world, because the cognitive dissonance was too great. You had to commit totally to the TM world--at which point the real world appeared to be just as nuts as the TM world did from the outside--and I couldn't bring myself to take that leap. I stepped back and forth from one to the other all summer and finally stepped out again for good. I'm glad I didn't decide to commit, but gee whiz, it was a fascinating, stretching experience. Yes. I remember those posts. (on AMT maybe). They were nice. We are talking the same thing. or similar.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise. Doesn't this whole belief, which was so common among fulltimers, really fly in the face of his whole teaching? It is a relative breaking of the connection with the fruits of action only and has nothing to do with your state of consciousness being established in being. It sounds like the kind of traditional notion that Maharishi would devote a whole lecture dispelling. But he never did and I'll offer a possible explanation why. Because he wasn't very good at follow through, he was an idea man. Simple as that, he was the typical entrepreneur who thought he could handle parts of his business that he wasn't good at. He allowed this belief to exist as a kind of implied teaching because it served his purposes. It kept people off center and running around all the time. He could play games making stuff up and watch everyone knock themselves out fulfilling his desires. I don't think this was the most charming part of his personality. Some people gave up a lot to chase some of his bogus projects, ask Doug Henning. Oh yeah, we can't. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: WHY I don't agree is because of the real nature of selfless service. It FREES you from having too much attachment to any *expectations* regarding the service performed. You do something nice for someone, or for some charity or group you care about, and you do it because it feels good JUST to do it. You don't need to believe that doing this good work is going to change the world; you just do the work. And the cool part of all this is that if the good work DOESN'T change the world, you don't feel that you have to bitch and moan and claim that your time was wasted An excellent point. It sparks in my mind part of the explanation for MMY's crazy project binges. They are not so crazy if MMY was doing, among other things, the following three things -- which I am certain he was. He even said Hey! This is what I am doing... 1) breaking the link between fruit and action. Getting rid of the expectation. Pititful is the man who lives for the fruit of action... A Purusha, on a nice long beach walk told me of some the projects M had him and peers doing -- the buying huge old crumbling hotels, Blackstone, etc. He said doing such really breaks the above link. And an added part is that the project is begun with great haste, and urgency -- almost emergency -- its cast as the most important project in the world, and then after it got rolling and people got into it, M. would yank the rug out from under them, rip apart the act fruit link, by starting a new urgent project. 2) demonstrating the power of sankalpa -- what he explained in one of his last lectures (on MOU) that for a project, any big task, we can see the whole thing, like a flash IMO, at the beginning of the project. That lively glowing seed impulse. We don't see all of the small details because they are wrapped up in the seed. But we can feel the whole thing, see it in our minds eye, we get it. This sankalpa, this seed, is precious and nurturing it brings the whole thing to fruition easily. (not that we are living for that fruit.) This is what he taught the rajas to do, he said. This is the administering in silence. And M was a machine gun firing a massive barrage of sankalpa golden bullets -- every hour of everyday. Well begun is half done. Just acknowledging and seeing the sankalpa as it arises is the begun part. Well begun. He planted all of these seeds. The next 3-4 generations of rajas have the opportunity to nurture each of those old crazy projects. If done, it would be amazing if all of those seeds sprouted and matured into huge trees. M was the Johnny Appleseed of spiritual transformation. 3) expansive thinking. Related to 2) above, but goes to the style of thinking. Letting your mind and imagine soar with no limits. Like a child is apt to do, but doing this in an adult mind. He would say to a small group, just keep your mind going with mine. Go with his flow as his imagination and mind soar to vast heights and depths. an Anything is possibly spirit. Doing such breaks the boundaries of the mind. Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, yifuxero [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If indeed, MMY displayed a low level of expectation (but a high level of creative motivation with this and that project), well, I'd say it points to a relative failure at achieving some preconceived results (an expectation). And what was that? Simple: according to the set of oaths that somebody was kind enough to post, one of the goals was to spread TM to as many people as possible. The results are miniscule, the espected and hoped for goal unattained. Now what remains of the TM Movement is in the hands of? I think we are not near a place yet to evaluate M's impact. Which,I hold possible to be 0. And I have no indentity issues that wish it more. (I do hope its more for humanitarian reasons). The TMO is just begining a new phase. Almost as if the past 40 years were gestation. And only NOW do we see the infant. And I don't like the term TMO. It constrains things to see M's work only in terms of the number of people who take the basic course each weekend. The 60's-mid 70's model of the TMO. Many are still stuck in that era and see nothing else, and will evaluate the TMO on that singular metric. Not wise, IMO. I think Maharish's Transcendental Technologies (MTT) is a better term (tho far from good or complete). Phase I of the MTT just ended. The school years. The kids are wet behind the ears, but have a magnificent smile of naive optimism. Diploma in hand, lets see how the kids do over their career. The next 40 years. Then we can look Phase III (the rest home, wheel chair racing years). Some kids graduate and flop big time. Some quit, some get up and try again. A few, often surprising choices, become the leaders in everything: education, arts, science, business, politics. The education was intense. A crazy wide wide through Maharishis Insane-looking Mind Blowing University. See my prior posts on how Maharishi's crazy binge phase can be viewed). The kids were so busy learning, studying, partying, and being groomed well by their tutors and mentors -- that they look like a wild crazy bunch. The patrons of Animal House walking out the door on graduation day, drunk, dishevelled, broke, clueless. Yet giddy, grinning from ear to ear, making wild claims of future success -- the bravado that only blooming, peaking shakti-bursting youth can bring. NOW, for the first time in the lives,the kids hit the streets, joyful to be free of the torturous routine and constant drills. It will be 5 years or so whether the kid is making ANY headway in his career. Or has been fired 4 times, and is working at WalMart. And five years, will be nothing compared to the 40 year view. Some great careers, some flops. Who Knew! But the kids have a huge crate of seed business plans and short, focuseed venture capital proposals that they have collected from ideas of their professors over the years. All seeds created by great minds just framing and sketching out a business plan. Sketchy and vague. More a book of dreams. And the kids got TALENT. And the kids got a vision. And the kids have some good business plans. Who can say a Silicon Valley might spring from one of them. So, I think its WAY too early to evaluate Maharishi's impact. Which may be Nada, or may in 40 years with all of us gasping, Who Knew!.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise. Doesn't this whole belief, which was so common among fulltimers, really fly in the face of his whole teaching? It is a relative breaking of the connection with the fruits of action only and has nothing to do with your state of consciousness being established in being. It sounds like the kind of traditional notion that Maharishi would devote a whole lecture dispelling. Yes, in a sense it's moodmaking, but under the guidance of the guru, and in the context of vigorous activity rather than self-indulgent introspection. Also in the context of surrender-to-the-guru, which operated only in MMY's direct sphere of influence among his most dedicated followers. Their meditation program was working on them from the inside, and he was working on them from the outside, to the same end--dissolving attachment. The guy at Asbury Park said it was like another technique, but an external one. It's not something MMY would have recomended to rank-and-filers, because it wouldn't work in that context. He didn't completely eschew certain kinds of moodmaking anyway. What you put your attention on grows, for example; or keeping his behavioral rasayanas lively in the mind; or Don't do what you think might be wrong. All those were in the relative, intentional manipulations of one's thinking. But *none* of the above would do much for you if you weren't transcending regularly. They were designed to be applied in the context of, and to take advantage of, expanding consciousness. My take, anyway.
RE: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of curtisdeltablues Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 9:00 PM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action He allowed this belief to exist as a kind of implied teaching because it served his purposes. It kept people off center and running around all the time. He could play games making stuff up and watch everyone knock themselves out fulfilling his desires. I don't think this was the most charming part of his personality. Some people gave up a lot to chase some of his bogus projects, ask Doug Henning. Oh yeah, we can't. Don’t forget Jennifer’s comment, that Maharishi often derided the Westerners as “gullible fools” for believing all the things he told them. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.20.6/1282 - Release Date: 2/15/2008 7:08 PM
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
Don't forget Jennifer's comment, that Maharishi often derided the Westerners as gullible fools for believing all the things he told them. That comment lends itself to the narcissistic personality disorder theory of Maharishi. It would be a characteristic of this type of person to have contempt for his followers and enjoy toying with them to see how far he could push them. I think it shows up in some rock stars and movie star types who live lives surrounded by sycophants. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Rick Archer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of curtisdeltablues Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 9:00 PM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action He allowed this belief to exist as a kind of implied teaching because it served his purposes. It kept people off center and running around all the time. He could play games making stuff up and watch everyone knock themselves out fulfilling his desires. I don't think this was the most charming part of his personality. Some people gave up a lot to chase some of his bogus projects, ask Doug Henning. Oh yeah, we can't. Don't forget Jennifer's comment, that Maharishi often derided the Westerners as gullible fools for believing all the things he told them. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.20.6/1282 - Release Date: 2/15/2008 7:08 PM
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
My take, anyway. And I think your take is accurate for what I lived particularly in India for a few months but also in Sidhaland where we would get directions to follow. So we certainly believed it as you presented it.The trick was to fully engage with each project fully, even knowing that the next day it would mean nothing. That was not always easy. I'll be it was even tougher for the guys whose money he was burning up on projects that never received follow through attention. As an guy in my 20's it wasn't too much of a stretch. But in retrospect is seems kind of odd to me. And it certainly got him off the hook for following through with things that might have bored him, conveniently. Looking at Maharishi as an enlightened guy who knew what he was doing lends itself to your interpretation. In my view of him as a guy who was completely winging it, and who created a situation where every whim was catered to, it comes out differently. I find my own comfort in thinking about him as a guy who, like a lot of hight achievers, had a bit of ADD. Now I think that pursuing dreams with consistency shows the kind of personal character I can relate to. Maharishi had a bit of both working IMO. I guess he got the movement he wanted. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise. Doesn't this whole belief, which was so common among fulltimers, really fly in the face of his whole teaching? It is a relative breaking of the connection with the fruits of action only and has nothing to do with your state of consciousness being established in being. It sounds like the kind of traditional notion that Maharishi would devote a whole lecture dispelling. Yes, in a sense it's moodmaking, but under the guidance of the guru, and in the context of vigorous activity rather than self-indulgent introspection. Also in the context of surrender-to-the-guru, which operated only in MMY's direct sphere of influence among his most dedicated followers. Their meditation program was working on them from the inside, and he was working on them from the outside, to the same end--dissolving attachment. The guy at Asbury Park said it was like another technique, but an external one. It's not something MMY would have recomended to rank-and-filers, because it wouldn't work in that context. He didn't completely eschew certain kinds of moodmaking anyway. What you put your attention on grows, for example; or keeping his behavioral rasayanas lively in the mind; or Don't do what you think might be wrong. All those were in the relative, intentional manipulations of one's thinking. But *none* of the above would do much for you if you weren't transcending regularly. They were designed to be applied in the context of, and to take advantage of, expanding consciousness. My take, anyway.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Selfless Service --- and Breaking the Link Between Fruit and Action
I surmise that MMY's eccentric directions to his troops to perform actions without rational concern for the outcome of their actions didn't dominate his persona until the TM movement began its retreat from integration with the world, and became progressively insular. From 1957 to 1977, the focus was solely on promoting the basic TM technique as a means for every human nervous system on the planet to directly experience silence, and thereby improve the lives of every person. I think that when progress slowed on that front, and the movement became insular, MMY became cynical and played with the people around him by giving them useless activities to do. Of course, MMY would have liked the basic TM technique and TM centers to have become as ubiquitous as Starbucks has become in the U.S., but when Benson declared the Relaxation response technique was effective as TM, the brilliance of TM was challenged. The public began to doubt the need to learn an authentic meditation technique. Why bother with TM, they reasoned, when they could get the same benefits from the RR technique, at a fraction of the cost, and without compromising any personal religious values that the puja and mantras might offend. As the Merv wave subsided, cash flow problems appeared. MMY panicked, and rather than confront Benson with extensive research to counter Benson's claims, MMY began the course of exhausting the goodwill of already-satisfied TMers by selling the TM-Siddhi program at more than 100 X the price that many had paid to learn TM. Short-term cash flow problem solved, but the future of the TMO's revenues was irrevocably altered by that move. From then on, the movement depended on their existing clientele to survive. Many were wise to the cynicism, and left. Those that remained rationalized that they were evolving by obeying ridiculous, arbitrary, whims. Give me a break. If the movement had continued to integrate the TM program with the larger world, such foolishness would have been considered a waste of time and resources. I wasn't there, but it would be interesting to hear from those who worked closely with MMY during the movement's expansion phase on the topic. -Mainstream --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: Take these three things together (and perhaps a few others) and M's constant crazy project binges make sense, IMO, and puts it all in context. Seen in this light, his binges were a most wonderful and creative dance over 40 years. And a wonderful path for some who could keep up and withstand the craziness -- and enjoy inner fruit of the whole crazy exercise. Doesn't this whole belief, which was so common among fulltimers, really fly in the face of his whole teaching? It is a relative breaking of the connection with the fruits of action only and has nothing to do with your state of consciousness being established in being. It sounds like the kind of traditional notion that Maharishi would devote a whole lecture dispelling. Yes, in a sense it's moodmaking, but under the guidance of the guru, and in the context of vigorous activity rather than self-indulgent introspection. Also in the context of surrender-to-the-guru, which operated only in MMY's direct sphere of influence among his most dedicated followers. Their meditation program was working on them from the inside, and he was working on them from the outside, to the same end--dissolving attachment. The guy at Asbury Park said it was like another technique, but an external one. It's not something MMY would have recomended to rank-and-filers, because it wouldn't work in that context. He didn't completely eschew certain kinds of moodmaking anyway. What you put your attention on grows, for example; or keeping his behavioral rasayanas lively in the mind; or Don't do what you think might be wrong. All those were in the relative, intentional manipulations of one's thinking. But *none* of the above would do much for you if you weren't transcending regularly. They were designed to be applied in the context of, and to take advantage of, expanding consciousness. My take, anyway.
