Nabloss wrote to Archer: You are trying to justify that you are spreading rumours. Wether they are true or false, contentwise, are of no importance. At least to me. The stuff you are spreading about MMy could be true or not. It is of no importance for me if it is true, as I have stated before. It does not diminish his positive influence on my life or the influence he has had and continue to have on the life of this planet.
Bronte writes: Nabloss, I too have had positive influences on my life on account of Maharishi. I have also had negative ones, but I treasure the positive. There's no denying, in my mind, that MMY contributed good to my life. At the same time, I personally know one woman who had a sexual encounter with him -- she told me the story. She is a person outside the TM movement who actually likes Maharishi and sees no problems with his having been sexual. I also know another woman, whose name is highly regarded within the TM movement, who confided in Rick about a very explicit sexual invitation MMY made to her on more than one occasion. She insisted that Rick keep it confidential. This is not a rumor he subscribes to, but his firsthand experience of a firsthand account. I know this same woman shared a troubling story that bordered on sexual with my old friend Sharon Ballyntine, a TM governor who died some years back. Sharon told me that the anonymous person shared with her that when she went in to see MMY privately, he would always put his head in her lap. Again, this undisclosed person is a very high-ranking TMer, whose name is as deeply written into TM movement history as "Larry Domash" or "Keith Wallace." She's almost that famous. If Rick says she told him this, I believe him, and I believe Sharon who told me the troubling head-in-the-lap part of it 23 years ago. Also, there is Conny Larson, who you may remember as one of MMY's skin boys from Sweden. Conny is a personal friend of Rick's, as Rick was not in the inner circle but right on the fringe, a member of International Staff for many years. Conny wrote an autobiography recently, and he sent a copy of it to me as he was looking for an American editor. In it he tells of female disciples slipping into MMY's quarters at late hours of the night, coming out dissheveled much later, and the knowledge among the skin boys that sex was going on. Mostly the book is about Conny's experiences some time later as a disciple of Sai Baba, who sexually molested him time and time again, as he did many young, blonde, male disciples. Conny tells this humiliating story in an effort to bring out the truth, and the book has already been published and well-received in Sweden. In the story, four ashramites confront Sai Baba about the sex, are asked to stay in the room for a few minutes, get locked in, and later are found murdered. There is a lot of funny stuff going on with these gurus, and that does NOT mean there are not genuine practitioners of meditation, like yourself, who are focusing on the good they've learned and putting it to good use. Your love and loyalty are admirable. Your gratitude is beautiful. MMY deserves much of it. He gave us so many good things. But there is another side to the story that hasn't been seen, and people who follow the gurus have a right to know it. Then they can do with that knowledge what they choose. Where I stand on these matters is this: deep within us all is a pure field of eternity, and we are eternal individual spirits that live and breathe within That. We are unbounded at our core, the universe is our nature, and our purpose here is to express divine freedom, love, creativity and joy. Some teachers have appeared who pointed us the way toward connecting with that nature, so real but hidden by thoughts. Along the way of our learning, so many teachers took advantage of us. But the truth about our nature is the same and never can be taken away, although it can be and has been twisted and manipulated, to serve the purposes of others. I'll never throw out the baby with the bath water. I'm so glad and grateful to know who I am. But I will do everything in my power to expose the behavior of spiritual teachers who take the sincere spiritual aspirations of the innocent and use them to serve their selfish purposes. It confuses the real meaning of spirituality, and of self-realization. Nabloss wrote to Archer: The reason I labelled you "white trash" is because you are thriving in that gossip. Gossip without substance because your "source" does not want to talk. Bronte writes: Archer gossips in the sense that he shares little snippets from people's past, like what band someone belonged to, and he usually cruises on the surface of discussions in FFL instead of going deeply into them. But what he has written about people's accounts of sexual encounters with MMY isn't gossip. And it's clear in the Sexy Sadie files in the archives of this forum that he's not the only one making the claims. In leaving the TM movement, Archer found his way out of one deception. Unfortunately, he jumped right into another. But in time I think he'll find his way out.