Steve Briggs, Meditation and Indian Yogis Lead to ET |397|

I was furious when I first learned of Maharishi's indiscretions. I ranted and raved to my friends. Did my reaction improve my life? Had to let it all go... the sooner the better.
 
Last edited:
Of course there is the need for public outcry... and that is happening. Otherwise, the status quo continues. But do we begin to see the manipulation of our collective emotions? This control goes on day after day orchestrated by network news because intensely negative emotion is food for certain beings in our world.

Angels and devas are nourished by loving human emotions such as compassion, kindness, and joy. Likewise, dark beings are nourished by fearful emotions such as hatred, anger, and jealousy. This is a hidden truth known to the adepts and those who have learned a few things from the adepts.
 
Last edited:
If no-one in the church had become angry on the children’s behalf the situation would still be the same. Congregations in Catholic Churches have little influence on the hierarchy and I think too much forgiveness and moving priests around went on there.

My friends are good and charitable people, they have lived their lives around their faith and the church but that is all breaking down now. If their anger is an impetus for change so be it but the only people who can forgive in this situation are the children who are probably messed up for life. It isn’t only the abuse that matters it’s the trust that is lost in other areas of faith as well.​
 
Indian parable: A yogi lived across the alley from a prostitute. Every day the yogi watched with scorn as men came and went, thinking how sinful the woman was. And, seeing the yogi meditating, the prostitute thought how pure and holy he must be.

When yogi and prostitute died, the prostitute ascended to heaven but the yogi ended up in hell. Seeing the woman in heaven, the yogi was outraged, 'Why this injustice?" The gatekeeper replied, "because you spent your life thinking how sinful the prostitute was while she spent her life thinking how pure you were. Remember, what you think, you become."

Yet what is so "sinful" about a prostitiute, anyway? She does not force or compel anyone to come to her, and she grants men pleasure and satisfaction rather than suffering and disappointment.

As for herself, the prostitution is certainly bad for her if she was forced into it by some powerful and ruthless people against her will. It is also definitely bad if she was compelled into prostituion by having to endure a life of poverty and desperate need for money, and thus being deprived of a genuine choice how to obtain the means for living.

Otherwise, it is her own decision that must be respected by others. If she is a sexually unbound person and wants such life for herself, it is her freedom to lead such life.

(For David Bailey and Alex: I hope, such comment is not too much here? Nowadays, a defence of sexuality outside of the bonds of the dominant sexual morality may be quite perilous and unwelcome even here on Skeptiko, as I once painfully learned myself. Please tell me whether my comment is acceptable or not - and if it is not, I will just remove it.)
 
Last edited:
Sorry, Michael, but here I disagree with you - quite strongly. With the emotion being placed above intellect, or at least granted an equal stance,

Hi Steve. That is not what I am arguing. It is clear that intellect without emotion is dangerous - generating psychopathic mentality. What we call emotion is a mixture of instinct and another sense we seem not to have a clear name for. I think that sense is Love - but usually filtered through trauma and mingled with instinct. For the want of another name we do call it emotion. It is something we find hard to handle. For example we call emotional trauma a mental illness.

Most of the crap that plagues our world is not a want of intellect but screwed up emotions that lead to a lack of authenticity, integrity, honesty. I want to call that 'injured love'. Early on in the climate change debate there was an argument that 'science' would come up with the answer (like clean coal), because the alternative was moderation of demands and wants - which were inimical to capitalism. So when faced with a head or a heart response there are still those who insist that head alone will solve the problems.

Heart oriented solutions require 'emotional intelligence' (EQ as opposed to IQ). i don't want to get into a debate about how Buddhist compassion is different to Christian love. It is sufficient to observe that Love demands levels of self-authenticity and self-awareness that tax most of us. For the most part we talk about such attributes in terms of emotions.

So let me rephrase my assertion in the understanding that 'emotions' embrace instincts and the love impulse which must become conscious, and then disciplined with the aid of the intellect. For me the intellect (head - as opposed to reason, which was originally soul awareness) is a servant of the heart, not the master. The western idea of mind replaced the earlier idea of soul. So reason became intellect.

In the Western mystical tradition Love/Wisdom is a binary attribute. Intellect isn't mentioned, and that's because it is dislocated subset of wisdom (remember - data isn't information, information isn't knowledge and knowledge isn't wisdom).

I entirely agree that emotion as that fusion of injured love and instinct is dangerous of itself - but fuse it with a rampant but weak intellect and you get the profoundly dangerous passions that fuel both extreme sides of contemporary politics. And this was nowhere better exemplified than a recent US poll that show Republicans and Democrats almost exactly polarised on all assessed themes, save the extent to which they are polarised - where the agreement pretty well matched.

Anyone observing the yogic tradition will see that gurus are not exactly exemplars of personal authenticity. Of course some are deeply aware and profoundly sacred beings. In fact none of the religious traditions are free from deep conceits and inauthenticity. Proper training in the mystery tradition includes the struggle to attain genuine self-awareness. But so often that 'training' becomes a bureaucratic process that embodies indoctrination and engagement in organisational, politics. That's what produces priests who rape children and gurus who fondle their students.

The practices of yoga and meditation have become automatic signals of spiritual advancement these days in the same way that Bible study and attending church were/are. You can do both and not get close to the struggle of personal authenticity - as liars, fraudsters and wankers constantly remind us.

I think the struggle for personal authenticity through increasing awareness of our emotional states, so that we understand and learn to heal our injured capacity for love is far more a critical objective than the acquisition of knowledge. But that is not to say that knowledge seeking through intellectual endeavour has no proper value or place. The head is the servant of the heart.

The very best computer technology we can develop is employed to create animated stories about learning how to love. The exemplar of the contemporary expresses the exemplar of the ancient. That is how it should be - what we craft with our head and hands gives voice to our hearts.

What we call emotion, then kind you are concerned about, is the absence of self awareness. In the denial of the soul to create mind, we also created an irrationality (fit only for women and children). Mind eschewed emotion as a lesser and inferior primitive attribute - closer to animals (and hence more like women and children as well as 'savages' and 'primitives')., That gave us the rational (and Christian) capacity to perpetrate genocide on 'inferior races' and rape the natural world (a quarry, butchery and sewer) with aplomb.

I have just finished listening to an autobiography on US VP Mike Pence, in which was described the contemporary view of some Christians that God gave the world to them to do as they pleased - so whatever they did was cool with Him. Last time I heard anything like that was in the description of some pretty disturbed people. There's no love here. You don't get to this deranged state of mind through a struggle to love. You get there because you enlist your fucked up intellect to concoct rabid nonsense no sane person would accept.

That was what I meant to convey. I hope its clear now.
 
P.S. Well, to be honest, I can't say I'm immune to moral arguments myself: for example, I reject biological racism ("our race's IQ test results are so much higher than yours!") because of my ethical choices and emotional preferences, rather than on a detailed assessment of a relevant research.

I have heard these claims and I wonder what the point is in making them. There is a presumption that there is some IQ standard that is meaningful and I struggle to comprehend what this might be. I suppose there is a rational motive to make comparative measures, but I have no idea what it could be. I am more disposed to doubt that this testing has any real merit. For me there are so many problematic issues to be considered around testing that there is no strong motive to bother with the results at all.

From what little I have bothered to observe about these supposed tests I ask myself what have the higher scorers done to bring merit to their actions? If we measured a people by how they have lived their lives rather than what they have scored on a test, we may have a more useful indication.

As a person who has had his IQ tested multiple times between aged 16 and 30 I can tell you that over time you come to understand that having an impressive score doesn't mean squat if you are a fucked up mess. I like MLK's observation that its the content of your character that counts. In my choice of friends it is character first, by a long chalk.

More me testing people for their IQ in isolation from their EQ and MQ (moral intelligence) is simply a signal of how dumb those who champion IQ alone really are.
 
(For David Bailey and Alex: I hope, such comment is not too much here? Nowadays, a defence of sexuality outside of the bonds of the dominant sexual morality may be quite perilous and unwelcome even here on Skeptiko, as I once painfully learned myself. Please tell me whether my comment is acceptable or not - and if it is not, I will just remove it.)

I know this comment is for Davis and Alex but I want to celebrate your right to make it.
 
I have heard these claims and I wonder what the point is in making them. There is a presumption that there is some IQ standard that is meaningful and I struggle to comprehend what this might be. I suppose there is a rational motive to make comparative measures, but I have no idea what it could be. I am more disposed to doubt that this testing has any real merit. For me there are so many problematic issues to be considered around testing that there is no strong motive to bother with the results at all.

From what little I have bothered to observe about these supposed tests I ask myself what have the higher scorers done to bring merit to their actions? If we measured a people by how they have lived their lives rather than what they have scored on a test, we may have a more useful indication.

As a person who has had his IQ tested multiple times between aged 16 and 30 I can tell you that over time you come to understand that having an impressive score doesn't mean squat if you are a fucked up mess. I like MLK's observation that its the content of your character that counts. In my choice of friends it is character first, by a long chalk.

More me testing people for their IQ in isolation from their EQ and MQ (moral intelligence) is simply a signal of how dumb those who champion IQ alone really are.

I think, most such people are the ones who Nicholas Nassim Taleb called "intellectuals yet idiots" (IYIs). His article on such people is a highly recommended read.
 
If no-one in the church had become angry on the children’s behalf the situation would still be the same. Congregations in Catholic Churches have little influence on the hierarchy and I think too much forgiveness and moving priests around went on there.

My friends are good and charitable people, they have lived their lives around their faith and the church but that is all breaking down now. If their anger is an impetus for change so be it but the only people who can forgive in this situation are the children who are probably messed up for life. It isn’t only the abuse that matters it’s the trust that is lost in other areas of faith as well.​

When the truth regarding the Vatican is uncovered, our Catholic friends
If no-one in the church had become angry on the children’s behalf the situation would still be the same. Congregations in Catholic Churches have little influence on the hierarchy and I think too much forgiveness and moving priests around went on there.

My friends are good and charitable people, they have lived their lives around their faith and the church but that is all breaking down now. If their anger is an impetus for change so be it but the only people who can forgive in this situation are the children who are probably messed up for life. It isn’t only the abuse that matters it’s the trust that is lost in other areas of faith as well.​


Of course there is the need for public outcry... and that is happening. Otherwise, the status quo continues. But do we begin to see the manipulation of our collective emotions? This control goes on day after day orchestrated by network news because intensely negative emotion is food for certain beings in our world.

Angels and devas are nourished by loving human emotions such as compassion, kindness, and joy. Likewise, dark beings are nourished by fearful emotions such as hatred, anger, and jealousy. This is a hidden truth known to the adepts and those who have learned a few things from the adepts.
 
Hi Steve. That is not what I am arguing. It is clear that intellect without emotion is dangerous - generating psychopathic mentality. What we call emotion is a mixture of instinct and another sense we seem not to have a clear name for. I think that sense is Love - but usually filtered through trauma and mingled with instinct. For the want of another name we do call it emotion. It is something we find hard to handle. For example we call emotional trauma a mental illness.

Most of the crap that plagues our world is not a want of intellect but screwed up emotions that lead to a lack of authenticity, integrity, honesty. I want to call that 'injured love'. Early on in the climate change debate there was an argument that 'science' would come up with the answer (like clean coal), because the alternative was moderation of demands and wants - which were inimical to capitalism. So when faced with a head or a heart response there are still those who insist that head alone will solve the problems.

Heart oriented solutions require 'emotional intelligence' (EQ as opposed to IQ). i don't want to get into a debate about how Buddhist compassion is different to Christian love. It is sufficient to observe that Love demands levels of self-authenticity and self-awareness that tax most of us. For the most part we talk about such attributes in terms of emotions.

So let me rephrase my assertion in the understanding that 'emotions' embrace instincts and the love impulse which must become conscious, and then disciplined with the aid of the intellect.

For me the intellect (head - as opposed to reason, which was originally soul awareness) is a servant of the heart, not the master.


Steve: Such a profound insight...

The western idea of mind replaced the earlier idea of soul. So reason became intellect.

In the Western mystical tradition Love/Wisdom is a binary attribute. Intellect isn't mentioned, and that's because it is dislocated subset of wisdom (remember - data isn't information, information isn't knowledge and knowledge isn't wisdom).

I entirely agree that emotion as that fusion of injured love and instinct is dangerous of itself - but fuse it with a rampant but weak intellect and you get the profoundly dangerous passions that fuel both extreme sides of contemporary politics. And this was nowhere better exemplified than a recent US poll that show Republicans and Democrats almost exactly polarised on all assessed themes, save the extent to which they are polarised - where the agreement pretty well matched.

Anyone observing the yogic tradition will see that gurus are not exactly exemplars of personal authenticity. Of course some are deeply aware and profoundly sacred beings. In fact none of the religious traditions are free from deep conceits and inauthenticity. Proper training in the mystery tradition includes the struggle to attain genuine self-awareness. But so often that 'training' becomes a bureaucratic process that embodies indoctrination and engagement in organisational, politics.

Steve: The religious traditions that I've been exposed to are top heavy with dogma, indoctrination, and politics, and that may be motivated by a number of less than noble goals such as control and financial gain. The authentic mystery schools focus on freeing the individual, making them self sufficient, rather than dependent.on an organization In Catholicism, you're taught that you're not going to progress very far without the priest and church liturgy. The emphasis in most religions has not been on inner experience because once the individual taps into their soul directly, they realize that everything they could ever want is inside, 'the kingdom of heaven is within,' so the formal religion is eliminated, actually undesirable. This becomes a threat to organized religion because it undermines church authority and impacts tithing among other things.

The practices of yoga and meditation have become automatic signals of spiritual advancement these days in the same way that Bible study and attending church were/are. You can do both and not get close to the struggle of personal authenticity - as liars, fraudsters and wankers constantly remind us.

I think the struggle for personal authenticity through increasing awareness of our emotional states, so that we understand and learn to heal our injured capacity for love is far more a critical objective than the acquisition of knowledge. But that is not to say that knowledge seeking through intellectual endeavour has no proper value or place. The head is the servant of the heart.

The very best computer technology we can develop is employed to create animated stories about learning how to love. The exemplar of the contemporary expresses the exemplar of the ancient. That is how it should be - what we craft with our head and hands gives voice to our hearts.

Steve: wonderful observation. You should develop this theme in a book

What we call emotion, then kind you are concerned about, is the absence of self awareness. In the denial of the soul to create mind, we also created an irrationality (fit only for women and children). Mind eschewed emotion as a lesser and inferior primitive attribute - closer to animals (and hence more like women and children as well as 'savages' and 'primitives')., That gave us the rational (and Christian) capacity to perpetrate genocide on 'inferior races' and rape the natural world (a quarry, butchery and sewer) with aplomb.

I have just finished listening to an autobiography on US VP Mike Pence, in which was described the contemporary view of some Christians that God gave the world to them to do as they pleased - so whatever they did was cool with Him. Last time I heard anything like that was in the description of some pretty disturbed people. There's no love here. You don't get to this deranged state of mind through a struggle to love. You get there because you enlist your fucked up intellect to concoct rabid nonsense no sane person would accept.

That was what I meant to convey. I hope its clear now.

These sentiments are noble and ably articulated. Are you British, Michael?
 
Last edited:
I'm unaware of any situation where Maharishi's relationships weren't 100% consensual between two adults. IMO, that's a far cry from what has surfaced across the Catholic community, is it not?

point taken. all the more reason to keep hammering on this and allowing distinctions to emerge.

I tread lightly on this topic for one very important reason -- causing a person to lose faith in their guru is something I would never want to be responsible for...
great... I'm happy to carry this burden for you :)

if you encounter Buddha on the road/path...
 
(For David Bailey and Alex: I hope, such comment is not too much here? Nowadays, a defence of sexuality outside of the bonds of the dominant sexual morality may be quite perilous and unwelcome even here on Skeptiko, as I once painfully learned myself. Please tell me whether my comment is acceptable or not - and if it is not, I will just remove it.)
free thought rules! :)
 
Hi Steve. That is not what I am arguing. It is clear that intellect without emotion is dangerous - generating psychopathic mentality. What we call emotion is a mixture of instinct and another sense we seem not to have a clear name for. I think that sense is Love - but usually filtered through trauma and mingled with instinct. For the want of another name we do call it emotion. It is something we find hard to handle. For example we call emotional trauma a mental illness.

Most of the crap that plagues our world is not a want of intellect but screwed up emotions that lead to a lack of authenticity, integrity, honesty. I want to call that 'injured love'. Early on in the climate change debate there was an argument that 'science' would come up with the answer (like clean coal), because the alternative was moderation of demands and wants - which were inimical to capitalism. So when faced with a head or a heart response there are still those who insist that head alone will solve the problems.

Heart oriented solutions require 'emotional intelligence' (EQ as opposed to IQ). i don't want to get into a debate about how Buddhist compassion is different to Christian love. It is sufficient to observe that Love demands levels of self-authenticity and self-awareness that tax most of us. For the most part we talk about such attributes in terms of emotions.

So let me rephrase my assertion in the understanding that 'emotions' embrace instincts and the love impulse which must become conscious, and then disciplined with the aid of the intellect. For me the intellect (head - as opposed to reason, which was originally soul awareness) is a servant of the heart, not the master. The western idea of mind replaced the earlier idea of soul. So reason became intellect.

In the Western mystical tradition Love/Wisdom is a binary attribute. Intellect isn't mentioned, and that's because it is dislocated subset of wisdom (remember - data isn't information, information isn't knowledge and knowledge isn't wisdom).

I entirely agree that emotion as that fusion of injured love and instinct is dangerous of itself - but fuse it with a rampant but weak intellect and you get the profoundly dangerous passions that fuel both extreme sides of contemporary politics. And this was nowhere better exemplified than a recent US poll that show Republicans and Democrats almost exactly polarised on all assessed themes, save the extent to which they are polarised - where the agreement pretty well matched.

Anyone observing the yogic tradition will see that gurus are not exactly exemplars of personal authenticity. Of course some are deeply aware and profoundly sacred beings. In fact none of the religious traditions are free from deep conceits and inauthenticity. Proper training in the mystery tradition includes the struggle to attain genuine self-awareness. But so often that 'training' becomes a bureaucratic process that embodies indoctrination and engagement in organisational, politics. That's what produces priests who rape children and gurus who fondle their students.

The practices of yoga and meditation have become automatic signals of spiritual advancement these days in the same way that Bible study and attending church were/are. You can do both and not get close to the struggle of personal authenticity - as liars, fraudsters and wankers constantly remind us.

I think the struggle for personal authenticity through increasing awareness of our emotional states, so that we understand and learn to heal our injured capacity for love is far more a critical objective than the acquisition of knowledge. But that is not to say that knowledge seeking through intellectual endeavour has no proper value or place. The head is the servant of the heart.

The very best computer technology we can develop is employed to create animated stories about learning how to love. The exemplar of the contemporary expresses the exemplar of the ancient. That is how it should be - what we craft with our head and hands gives voice to our hearts.

What we call emotion, then kind you are concerned about, is the absence of self awareness. In the denial of the soul to create mind, we also created an irrationality (fit only for women and children). Mind eschewed emotion as a lesser and inferior primitive attribute - closer to animals (and hence more like women and children as well as 'savages' and 'primitives')., That gave us the rational (and Christian) capacity to perpetrate genocide on 'inferior races' and rape the natural world (a quarry, butchery and sewer) with aplomb.

I have just finished listening to an autobiography on US VP Mike Pence, in which was described the contemporary view of some Christians that God gave the world to them to do as they pleased - so whatever they did was cool with Him. Last time I heard anything like that was in the description of some pretty disturbed people. There's no love here. You don't get to this deranged state of mind through a struggle to love. You get there because you enlist your fucked up intellect to concoct rabid nonsense no sane person would accept.

That was what I meant to convey. I hope its clear now.
 
point taken. all the more reason to keep hammering on this and allowing distinctions to emerge.


great... I'm happy to carry this burden for you :)

if you encounter Buddha on the road/path...
[/QUOTE]


OK, thanks Alex. You are very welcome to shoulder the burden.
 
Obama was CIA... just like the Bush clan. this fact isn't hard to verify... i.e. not super-conspiratorial.

OK, but he did get an arms reduction treaty with Russia.

My feeling is that perhaps he tried to do his own thing when be became president, but was gradually brought to heel.

He, above all must have realised just how fake and twisted the quarrel with Russia really was. Crimea, for example, was originally part of Russia, given away by Gorbachev without asking the people! Russia gave them a vote on whether to join Russia or take their chances with the Kiev regime. Since the Kiev regime was threatening to take them back by force, their choice was inevitable.

David
 
My friends are good and charitable people, they have lived their lives around their faith and the church but that is all breaking down now. If their anger is an impetus for change so be it but the only people who can forgive in this situation are the children who are probably messed up for life. It isn’t only the abuse that matters it’s the trust that is lost in other areas of faith as well.
I think the real answer is not religion - which inevitably becomes a man-made political device - but more personal study, using all the links on the internet - avoiding things that seem too controlling.

Even without the scandals of Catholic priests, I don't think the Catholic Church was a force for good, particularly because of its excessively strict views on sex. Unfortunately I suspect people can end up tethered to a religion because they are made to feel sinful, and therefore unworthy to choose to leave. A man I know, who went to a Catholic school, told me that each of them was quizzed about whether and how often they masturbated, and told to confess these 'sins'. I would say that such behaviour was itself child abuse, never mind the rest!

David
 
OK, but he did get an arms reduction treaty with Russia.

My feeling is that perhaps he tried to do his own thing when be became president, but was gradually brought to heel.

He, above all must have realised just how fake and twisted the quarrel with Russia really was. Crimea, for example, was originally part of Russia, given away by Gorbachev without asking the people! Russia gave them a vote on whether to join Russia or take their chances with the Kiev regime. Since the Kiev regime was threatening to take them back by force, their choice was inevitable.

David


Well, an important clarification: it was Nikita Khrushchev, not Mikhail Gorbachev, who gave Crimea away to Ukraine. Gorbachev has just reasserted his decision and left Crimea for Ukraine when the USSR started to shatter and fall apart.


Another clarification: if one really wants to dwell deep into history, one should say that Crimea was not originally Russian as well, it belonged to Crimean Tatars and was later violently invaded, conquested and colonised by Russians. Yet Tatars also were not the indigenous people there, they were violent colonisers themselves. And before them, Crimea was violently colonised by Venetians and Genoese, before them - Byzantines and Romans, before them - Greeks, before them - Scythians, before them - Cimmerians. And before them, Tauri have lived there, and these are them who were the indigenous population... well, supposedly indigenous - we simply don't know who, possibly, was there before them. They lived there so long ago that anything we can say about them is just an extrapolation from a few ancient sources.


So, as it is common in the Afro-Eurasia, it is effectively impossible to clarify to whom the land belongs, since it was conquered and reconquered and re-reconquered and re-re-reconquered, by armed violence, for innumerable times, and the indigenous - well, questionably indigenous - population has long dissolved in the flow of history.


So, Russia has no more right to claim Crimea for itself then Ukraine has. In fact, Ukraine was the only owner of the peninsula that did not invaded it and taken it by force, but accepted it as a gift from Russia - the gift that taken away by force when Ukraine was weakened by an internal violent conflict.
 
Last edited:
I think the real answer is not religion - which inevitably becomes a man-made political device - but more personal study, using all the links on the internet - avoiding things that seem too controlling.

Even without the scandals of Catholic priests, I don't think the Catholic Church was a force for good, particularly because of its excessively strict views on sex. Unfortunately I suspect people can end up tethered to a religion because they are made to feel sinful, and therefore unworthy to choose to leave. A man I know, who went to a Catholic school, told me that each of them was quizzed about whether and how often they masturbated, and told to confess these 'sins'. I would say that such behaviour was itself child abuse, never mind the rest!

David

The problem is, in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries masturbation was considered to be horrible and devastative "self-abuse", leading to countless and severe physical and mental ailments. It was scientific, medical and social consensus at the time. In fact, it was seen almost exactly as "child sexual abuse" nowadays, with the only difference that a masturbating child was himself (or herself - girls masturbate, too) abuser and abused, both in the same time. No adult was needed.

So, Catholic priests are neither better nor worse that all the other (usually secular) "child protectors" who strive to save children from being "sexually abused", yet, in the end, abuse them themselves by their misguided and overzealous "protection" efforts.

And yet modern "child protectors" hilariously consider themselves to be so enlightened, rational and liberal, scoffing at "superstitious" and "ignorant" Catholic priests. While, in fact, they just follow a slightly updated and revised version of the same sex-negative mythology: the mythology that is not even Christian, but were born at the dawn of modernity - in the time when the notion of "childhood", in its modern sense, was itself formulated - inspired by the desperate desire to keep children "pure" from the "sinful" influence of the very modernity that was considered so beneficial for adults.

(An interesting observation: the very same dawn of modernity was the time when witch-hunts and witch-trials, commonly but mistakenly associated by the modern people with the Mediaeval times, started. They have not stopped since then, returning again and again, in the form of Satanic Panic-like waves of baseless yet widely and hyper-emotionalistically supported accusations and persecutions.)

But I will stop here, and won't dwell further. You understand why, David. ;)
 
Last edited:
in our interview, Alex asked, "Where is God in all of this?" There are two aspects to God, the personal and the impersonal. The impersonal permea
point taken. all the more reason to keep hammering on this and allowing distinctions to emerge.


great... I'm happy to carry this burden for you :)

if you encounter Buddha on the road/path...

Encountering Buddha is a bit beyond me, Alex...

but, if you'll indulge me, I'd like to reminisce about Maharishi's life in the hope that the extraordinarily demanding routine he kept for 50+ years might result in a more sympathetic understanding of the man.

Maharishi spent 20 hours a day, every day, lecturing on topics ranging from Quantum Physics to human DNA to Rig Veda (always without notes) in addition to overseeing TM activities in some 50 countries while hosting ambassadors, Nobel Laureates, military commanders, industrialists, and even heads of state.

I was with Maharishi a fair amount over three decades in India, Switzerland, France, Holland, Germany, Philippines, and USA. In the 90's, Maharishi organized our corporate India project. My project partner and I often met with Maharishi around midnight and by 3:00 am one of the secretaries would suggest that it was time to retire. As we stumbled off to bed another group took our seats in Maharishi's suite.

Meetings went on around the clock seven days a week 51 weeks out of the year (Maharishi began the new year with a week of silence). Meetings typically adjourned as the sun came up, but not always because somewhere in the world someone wanted to speak to Maharishi about a prison project, an upcoming media interview, a proposed school or hospital, or a research paper about to be published. Maharishi loved celebrations, and regardless who was with him, he took time to celebrate everyone's birthday. Despite the grueling schedule, Maharishi was always gracious, energetic, in good humor, and effortlessly able to inspire his guests, whether in a talk or with a welcoming smile. His laughter infected everyone in his presence.

I remember Maharishi's conversation in Switzerland with Welsh physicist, Dr. Brian Josephson. The discussion was animated, often playful as Maharishi explained the parallels between consciousness and theoretical physics to the Nobel Laureate. On Thanksgiving, 1983, Deepak Chopra met Maharishi for the first time. Chopra was Chief of Staff at a large Boston hospital at the time. Over the course of the evening, Maharishi persuaded Chopra to join the TM movement. Chopra's assignment: make Ayur Veda a household name in America.

Maharishi visited Communist Europe many times where he organized meditation programs for government officials in several eastern block nations. One memory stands out from that era. In a monastery on the Rhein River near Bonn, our group of monks was settling into morning meditation when Maharishi sent word for the Americans to come to the hall. Earlier, a secretary had read him an article in the International Herald Tribune describing the dismissal of a couple hundred Romanian government officials who were doing TM. Maharishi was furious and wanted to know why the CIA was meddling with his peace programs. I have never seen or felt fury like that. For 40 minutes we were, as if, consumed by flames. But nothing deterred Maharishi. He launched dozens more initiatives in eastern Europe, including some in Siberia (I was spared that assignment).

In 1982, I recall Maharishi instructing his graphics people to create a huge map of a unified Germany. After the map was taped to the wall of the monastery chapel, Maharishi pointed to it and said 'one day this will be the reality.' I never saw Maharishi happier than the day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. It was also a day of personal celebration for me as I had toured East Berlin in the summer of 1979 as guest of some publishers. Check Point Charlie, the endless rows of Plattenbauten (drab government block housing), rusting gray Trabants (Soviet manufactured cars), barren bakeries and shops, and German children who wanted to touch my thick down jacket left enduring impressions.

During the Sino-Indian border conflict of 1962, Maharishi spent several weeks in the war zone high in the Himalayas. Upon returning to Delhi, his driver reported that Maharishi had ridden a mule along the border day after day while meditating through the night in an effort to avert all out war.

Maharishi patiently answered questions. When asked about UFO's, he replied: "They're the truck drivers of the universe... don't get on the cigar shaped ones." Once he asked his monks if they would like to become 'galactic ambassadors.'

Maharishi didn't seem to sleep; nor did he meditate much. He simply worked round the clock year after year with a superhuman stamina that stayed with him past age 90. What he did in his private moments was known only to his personal secretaries. Apparently, his legendary stamina was even greater than we realized.

Maharishi wasn't perfect, but he lived his life for others and was dedicated to helping humanity during some difficult times. He absolutely forbade anyone from 'worshiping' him. When a group of Americans performed a puja ceremony in his honor when he arrived at our Interlaken hotel, his response was: "I hated that." In 2008, as thousands watched flames consume Maharishi's mortal remains on the banks of the Ganges, those present felt orphaned. It was an honor to have known the "giggling saint" who had come to the west from the Himalayas.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top