condolencess kali, i know while you have separated yourself from his understandings, you were at one time quite involved in these practices and so his passing has some personal reminusce going on

do you spend more time on gaudiya repercussions or tm repercussions?

my pranamams to Maharshiji, may he come back from the Brahmajyoti occasionally to expound the glories of meditation

chocolate is better

beer is better than chocolate

Donovan singing "Happiness Runs" on the Maharishi's last birthday January 16, 2008.

TM…in the AM…in the PM…Jai Guruuuuu Devaaaaaa…the Beach Boys once sang this…about diving deep into the realm of consciousness twice a day…oh Daddy Rishi…am I enlightened yet?

I did practice TM and their sidhi program up until I became a devotee. I can remember having a darshan with Bhavananda in Detroit, where he told me that he would give me a room to keep practicing it while I learned KC, for he guaranteed that I would give it up in one month after chanting the superior Maha Mantra and doing service in the temple.

Back in early 70’s, TM was the rage among college students and it did not ask much from you, outside bringing $25, a white handkerchief and flowers for your initiation. After that you just had to meditate 20 minutes in the morning and evening. Once hooked, you were encouraged to go on advance residence courses for a weekend or during the summer for a week or two, where you would meditate throughout the day and watch films on subtle consciousness being explained through Quantum Physics. With time they introduced advanced mantra techniques and Patanjali’s yoga sutra’s, where one was supposed to be able to levitate and become invisible. What happened was that everyone just learned how to hop around foam mattresses while in a lotus position, and the more athletic you were, the higher and longer you could hop. People were convinced that Kali Yuga was changing to Satya Yuga based on the coherence of consciousness that was created when large groups of TM’ers would meditate and practice their sidhis. I learned my sidhi’s while in a large group of around 2 thousand meditators, practicing our program on the border of Israel and Lebanon in late 1978, while jet planes dropped bombs a few miles up the road and the Iranian revolution was outing the Shah, being sure we were bringing peace to the Middle East.

It took 4 years of practicing the Sidhi’s and I realized it was really not working and although there was an Egyptian/Israeli peace accord signed in 79’ that the Maharishi took credit for, there really was no lasting peace and no one could really fly. People believed so much that they would be able to fly around the skies freely, a few people who worked for NASA and were TM’ers were creating prototype flight suits for those who could levitate and fly across the lands at will.

Once I left TM, I did step out of the meditation frying pan and into the fire of ISKCON, for I wanted to do some real authentic Vedic devotion as Bhavananda and Ramesvar were teaching in Detroit (laugh track please).

And yes, there is a place for former practitioners of TM to commiserate online, it is called TM Free Blog, but I have never posted there, but it is interesting to see through that site how many ex-members feel about his death and how the current practitioners are responding to it all. It seems that the Maharishi knew he was dying, for he made some final public statements about his movement in January and appointed a Lebanese physicist TM’er to be it’s new leader, who goes by the name Maharaja Nader Raam, plus an administrative group (their GBC) called The New Raja’s.

After reading the TM Free Blog, I can see many similarities as to the topics that have been discussed here at GR, dealing with controversial leaders, issues of abuse and a general feeling of people coming to terms with their life outside the organization. It seems that anyone who joins, lives and then leaves an organization that changes their philosophical worldview and life practices, will share many similar experiences and problems that all ex-member’s of various spiritual institutions go through in coming to terms with their life outside the organization and their reintegration into society at large.



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he new light that is now leading the TM movement…His Majesty, Maharaja Nadar Raam.

He resembles Voltron, the Sontaran King in an early Doctor Who episode.

I am thankful to the Maharishi for settling his school in Fairfield, Iowa, because I took advantage of their health food store when I was living in Keokuk, sixty miles away.

My half-sister was going to enroll in the school but that fell through when she entered a depressive episode.

I met a family there that took her in, and all in all they seemed very much like devotees. I can see how one would make the leap from TM to ISKCON or vice versa.

So I was introduced to TM by my High School art teacher. It was in the 11th grade 1971-2. This man thought himself to be playing the part of my father, thinking I came from a broken home and had no protector. I remember coming to school tripping on acid, maybe four hours on, not peaking but incredible immersion nonetheless. Since I think I had heard about Leary through him I went to his art room as soon as I got there. He knew I was tripping. He gave me paper and colored crayons and chalk. I stayed in his back room all day, with him visiting me from time to time, and I drew very flowing pictures as I could do in those days.
A couple of weeks later he suggested TM as he himself was into it, then. He showed me movies at his house of the Maharishi giving talks, surrounded only by thousands of flowers. Then after abstaining from smoking and drugs for two weeks I paid the $35 and was I given the mantra (mine was the seed-bija of Guru-gayatri) along with some ceremony and pictures of gurus whose names were not mentioned. Actually no philosophy or education was given, maybe a brief statement, only that you should sit and internally pronounce the mantra for 20 minutes at a time, twice a day, and that within 12 years or so you would attain ‘cosmic consciousness’ which Maharishi Mahesa Yogi had already attained and this ‘cosmic consciousness’ was the goal of life. That was the way I understood it.
And I knew this beautiful, 29 year old, female teacher of Public Speaking at the same school, who was also a TM teacher. She once allowed a big student party at her house one time. She was also into Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and Carlos Casteneda. I remember talking about Krishna with her. She said she could accept Krishna as Godhead but not Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. I did not understand why she should mention that but it put the question in me.
Yep, it seemed to me then that TM people were really good people, mostly vegetarian too. I really didn’t practice it correctly for all that long, there was too much pot and acid available at the time, what to speak of associations, and I got bored with it, became infatuated by Krishna, and all that it entails.
And that narrator of Prabhupada’s books named Amala Bhakta. I met him in the NY Temple in 1976. He said he had been a ‘sanyasi’ disciple of Maharishi for 7 years I think, but he rejected him as Guru and he spoke of the reasons. He told me that Maharishi secretly worshipped Radha-Krishna Deities. That was what he said.

An old friend of mine from my TM days sent me this e-mail letter about the Maharishi's death from a friend of his, who was a former Transcendental Meditation teacher. It was very interesting to read and see the similarities (outside of the ending where he proclaims the truth in Christ) between his critical look at the personal experience he had with his guru, and comparing that to what critical former devotees say about their relationship with Prabhupada and ISKCON.

______________________________________________________________


I spent 13 years with Maharishi. Several friends wrote to tell me of his passing. I wrote a few words in reflection.

MMY died today. He had been predicting it for a few weeks. Missed a few "drop the body" dates, and finally succumbed to whatever ailed him. He was 91.

A huge part of my life. I feel about him the way Dean Martin did about Jerry Lewis. Best thing that ever happened to me was meeting him. The second best thing was leaving him. I met him in 1971, was "initiated" personally by him into the teaching profession in 1972, taught around 500 people "the technique" and established several centers, and was program manager at the 'TM TV station' in Los Angeles, spent several 6-months retreats with him, and left the movement (as we called it) in 1985.

He was an enigma. Claiming to be a world teacher, his real aim was to re-elevate Indian culture and influence. He often spoke in harsh terms about the Chinese, and was dismissive of any claims from other traditions until they had been veda-ized. Even science, which he used to underpin his meditative practice, was seen as the sterile though poetic expression of the Life Force -"The Science Of Creative Intelligence." In the last 15-20 years, all of the programs were explicitly "Indian" - from foods and dress codes, to program names. Schools have been set up in India to train young boys into the priesthood. They must be genetic Indians to have the pure sage-capacity, it seems.

He never taught morals or ethics, and often gleefully counseled us to break laws if it served the purposes of world enlightenment. It was thought that meditation would naturally cause one to live in harmony with nature - and that proper civil laws were derived from nature. Therefore, any requirements or ethics were a "waste of time." When enlightenment dawned, you would naturally be a good citizen.

"Lie to them!" he told us when he made us teachers of TM. "An elephant has two sets of teeth: one to show and one to chew with!" So we lied about the matras - the names of Shiva - and how we selected them - simply by age - and the goals of meditation, thinking we were serving a higher truth. An odd man.

"Move the money from SIMS to IMS (two training organizations set up in the early 1970's) until the audit is complete, then move it back." When we told him that this was illegal, he snapped, "It's my money!"

"Go past the passport gate and then hand your passports through the fence to those still here," he told us, when many of us had exhausted our six month visas in Switzerland . Those who were leaving would pretend to be those who were staying. This was pre-9/11 and very easily accomplished.

"Start being late and losing their videotapes," he told us at KSCI - the TM TV station - when we wanted valuable air-time back from the Koreans, to whom we had sold it months earlier. We now wanted the prime hours for our own broadcasts, but had signed contracts. "Make them responsible for breaking the contract. They're only Koreans."

He was very conservative in the 1970's, telling us to cut our hair, allow ourselves to be drafted, and "listen to your parents." As time went on he drifted to the left, mostly due to health-food concerns that irradiation and genetically modified food was vibrationally damaging to the soul, and the accompanying conspiratorial charges that big government and big corporations were intending to enslave people by weakening them with altered foods. Queue the Twilight Zone music.

Most of his big initiatives were accompanied by wild esoteric prophesies. If we don't get 1000 people to move to Iowa, nuclear war will start. A demon is just outside the solar system, and is about to move the world into "Kali Yuga" (the dark ages) unless we have a facility built in India . He would simultaneously inspire the faithful with declarations that "The Age of Enlightenment has dawned!" or is in "Full Sunshine!" which we could see if we could only open our eyes. Visiting the various Maharishi websites reveal that there is a currency and a King of the Enlightened world, to which other meditators must bow and pay homage. One staggers under the audacity of the enterprise.

I should write about the good times I had - which would be like the starry-eyed idealists who became Marxists until they started seeing the bodies pile up. Yes, yes, lots of days sipping coffee until dawn in a bohemian apartment, reading utopian poetry, and chasing coeds with Daddy issues. Waking up at dawn to paint signs and march against "the machine," throwing rocks, the tang of tear gas, and the wild glee of having the press bringing pressure to have charges dropped.

So there were days with the other flower children, feeling we were saving the world. Sipping herb teas and reading Upanishads until dawn, but the same coeds. Giving lectures on meditation, and chanting in an exotic foreign language, chided by the world in their “ignorance” of the beauty of our message. We felt anointed.

In the end, like the radicals who grew up and rejected Marxism and revolution – I wish I would have joined the Army, gotten married much younger, and taught more kids how to throw a curve ball. Spent those wild years in domesticity and talking to my father.Listening to him. And wish I would have read the book of John, and followed the carpenter from Galilee much earlier.

This isn’t regrets. Just a statement of acknowledgment of where the truth lives.

Maybe you would have ended up like David Lynch, anyhow. Make some interesting yet odd films and then go on worldtours adevertising the virtues of TM?

I like you the way you are with the experiences you have gotten.

(sp?) rotten

Johnny?

I do like David Lynch's offbeat films and artworks, but his advertising tour for TM was almost a parody of a character in one of his films. I guess he finally found religion late in life!


Thanks Zanardi, and I think that this applies to you and so many others here, for no matter how strange, negative and surreal some of our experiences may have been in life, it was all grist for the mill that makes us these unique individuals that took a road less traveled and are richer for it.

job?

Sex Pistol?

And how could MMY and TM hook people up, if it was just an initiation into a mantra? How did they made people stay around for more, to go to programs, to join an organization? One would think, "once initiated, always initiated", and the initiatee could easily meditate throughout his/her life without even meeting other TMers again.

You mean the biblical Job? He got smitten with some kind of rot, didn't he?

you're viscious, gegenverkehr

Before a person became initiated (a rather loose term compared to being initiated into KC for example) into practicing TM in the 70’s, you would attend an introductory lecture and a follow up lecture. All a person would have to do was pay the $35, bring a white handkerchief, fruit and some fresh flowers to your initiation session. You would go into a nice room, usually something small inside a house, where you were asked to kneel with the TM teacher in front of a picture of MMY’s spiritual guru, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankarachara of Jyotimath, called then simply Guru Deva. They would then use your hanky, fruit and flowers as part of the offering that included incense and water, while they chanted their pranam prayers to the lineage of Shankarachara, though they would never explain the whole thing to you, just saying it was a formality and that no more Vedic references would be given outside of hearing your mantra given to you very quietly, where you would then repeat it in a low tone for a few seconds before you were told to say it silently, then led into another room, where you would proceed to do your first silent meditation for 20 minutes. There were about 3 follow up meetings that included group meditations with your teacher and all those initiated on the same day you were, after that, you were let go into the world to meditate on your own.

The TM program hooked many people by organizing a system that encouraged every new meditator to come to their local center for monthly checkups called Checking. You would sit with the TM teacher and meditate for about 10 minutes, then he or she would ask you a series of questions as to the ease and comfort to the practice, having set answers to guide the newbie if any problems popped up in their practice. This supposedly adjusted the experience to be positive and working correctly. Of course, while you visited the center, they would tell you about daily or weekly group meditations that you could attend at the center, for it was widely advertised within the movement that the meditation experience would exponentially improve and make one evolve more quickly by practicing in a group. Once you did this for a while, you were encouraged to attend weekend or weeklong meditation courses, where one would learn hatha yoga postures and breathing pranayam techniques to go along with the regular meditation. Soon your 20 minutes turned into 30 or 40-minute sessions.

With time, they introduced advanced mantras that one could receive (for a price) after meditating after so many years. They would also encourage you to take part in the center and help out for initiations or group programs. One could learn to be a checker, the person who guided people in meditation in order to see that it worked properly. This would usually lead to a recommendation to become a teacher, where you would go to Switzerland and be around MMY for a month or two, meditating for hours a day while learning how to dispense out mantras to the public and learn the Puja ceremony.

TM would evolve in the late 70’s, introducing the practice of the Sidhi’s of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s, where one would learn to levitate, become invisible, develop the strength of an elephant…etc. This changed things within the movement, taking the emphasis off their simple meditation technique and introducing a set of practices that once learned, turned your 20 minutes twice a day into 1 1/2 hours twice a day, plus the cost of learning the siddhi’s were a few thousand dollars back then. They also developed a permanent course for men and women called Mother Divine and Purusha, where you became a practicing celibate monk, though without the robes.

One did not have to do all that though, one could take their meditation and never go back to the center or even think about their organization again, and I’ve met a few people that just did that. I was mostly that way by nature, not trusting authority due to my drug induced Marxist youthful past, but my peers and girlfriend at the time talked me into taking advanced classes and a few week long courses that lead eventually to spending a few months in Israel doing group meditation and flying (hopping really) while trying to supposedly bringing peace to the Middle East. It was that experience that led to some dissatisfaction with the whole process, thinking I needed a more in-depth look into the culture and tradition behind all the scientific, political application of meditating. Because at the time there were few if hardly any institutions teaching the tradition of Shankcharya, it was Gaudiya Vaisnavism that caught my attention and that was the direction I took after the TM experience. TM lead to KC and in some ways that totality took 25 years out of my life pursuing unobtainable spiritual perfection, though much hard learned direction that led back to the unique self that we all are and manifests in so many creative surprising ways. I am sure many still in both camps would argue that I probably did not practice it correctly or purely enough to leave both institutions, but it was what it was, just like we all have some unique way or road to travel in order to arrive at the destination of who we are at this distinct precious moment, whatever and wherever that may be.

kali, were you very good at the levitating aka frog hopping?

And you seem to have swallowed a German dictionary, at the same time getting rid of your English spellchecker.

ende des uberholverbots

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read one authoritative-looking "Teach Yourself Levitation" books a while ago which actually contained serious pranayama techniques to enable levitation. It made the specific point that levitation was not a siddhi, which is why anyone could do levitation (theoretically) if they mastered the pranayama techniques.

Did they teach in TM that levitation was a siddhi? And is this mentioned as such in the Yoga Sutras?

Eat beans and lentils and stuff and use natural jet propulsion. Nothing yogic here. If it doesn't lift you up it sure will knock others to the ground.

LOL

I am not an expert on such matter’s anymore and it has been around 25 years since I practiced the TM sidhi’s, but I did a web search of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s and came up with a sutra and its commentary from Swami Vivedanada. It was part of a whole series of practices that were meant to be used in the conquest of Prakriti in order to get spiritual liberation through various yogic techniques.



PATANJALI'S YOGA APHORISMS
(Commentary by Swami Vivekananda)

CHAPTER III
POWERS

(Verse 43.) By making Samyama an the relation between the Akasha and the body and becoming light as cotton-wool etc., through meditation on them, the yogi goes through the skies.

(Commentary) This Akasha is the material of this body; it is only Akasha in a certain form that has become the body. If the Yogi makes a Sanyama on this Akasha material of his body, it acquires the lightness of Akasha, and he can go anywhere through the air. So in the other case also.

(Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms)


In my experience of the TM levitation technique, one internally repeated the words "Relationship of body and akasha - lightness of cotton fiber." while flopping around 6 inch foam rubber slabs covered by bed sheets for around 10 to 15 minutes.

All TM mantra's and Siddhi Technique wording

Yes, indeed, I once did hop, flop, lurch, skip, leap and spring for world peace…and by the looks of things, it sure worked.

I think you've really got something here, plus it will probably get people further off the ground while being totally vegetarian!

Let's start opening up Flatulence Centers for World Peace all across the planet!!!!

We'll call the new movement "Flatulence Adagio Realization for Transcendence"...or...F.A.R.T.

No, let's call it Scientology.

lol