COMMENTS?: purnakama at gmail.com
Press Conference, New Delhi airport, 24DEC1963:
"Journalist: 'Why did you choose to propagate this system in foreign countries rather than in India?'
Maharishi: For India I went out! (laughter)" P. 542, Thirty Years Around the World – Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment
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Maharishi (13APR2005) : "As Indian national consciousness rises in coherence -- which is the basis of invincibility for the nation then world consciousness will rise in coherence which is the basis of permanent world peace...One sun rises, but its innumerable rays spread light everywhere...So it's natural for the influence of coherence to spread from India to the whole world." In the press conference 26 June 2002, Maharishi said: "India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda, with this total knowledge of Natural Law, the Will of God. And everything is possible under the protective nature of the Will of God, invincible God."
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"India is a country where Truth matters most and Indians are a people to whom God matters most. Indian soil has witnessed many times the revival of life's true philosophy. The people of India have never hesitated to return once more to the right path whenever it was convincingly pointed out to them that their way of life had taken a wrong course. This receptiveness to Truth of the Indian people has always been a source of inspiration and a signal of hope to all movements aiming at the revival of true life and living." MMY, preface to his Gita commentary, p. 9
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"The whole purpose of life is to gain enlightenment. Nothing else is significant compared to that completely natural, exalted state of consciousness. So always strive for that. Set your life around that goal. Don't get caught up in small things, and then it will be yours." -Maharishi Mahesh Yogi "The wise ones seek liberation alone."
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"India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda, with this total knowledge of Natural Law, the Will of God. And everything is possible under the protective nature of the Will of God, invincible God."
Maharishi, Press Conference 26 June 2002
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Also via Google books.
Purnakama meaning: Brahman (Lord Krishna) is said to be one in whom all desires are constantly in a state of fulfillment because he is always the same and non-exposable to change.
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Compassion and good behavior towards others is recognized as good in every culture, but the real truth is that there simply are no "others." Krishna alone exists as every form, and good behavior toward all is simply a matter of being good to oneself, recognizing that the appearance of a created world requires some level of drama just as a drama on stage requires input from a variety of characters:
"There is no friend nor enemy in this world for anyone. It is only on account of the Lord's deluding power (maya) that a man considers another as a friend, an enemy, or a neutral. In truth, the self is one in all beings. Only fools perceive diversity. From the point of view of the omnipresent self, there is neither union nor separation..."
"... there is no such thing as creation."
"In the case of gold, it may be said that, at a certain time, and at a certain place, it gave rise to an ornament. But from the self (which is absolute peace), nothing is created, and nothing ever returns to it. Brahman rests in itself. Hence, it is neither the seed nor the cause for the creation of the world which is a matter of mere experience. Apart from this experience nothing exists which could be referred to as the world or the ego-sense. Therefore, the infinite consciousness alone exists.....The essence of existence is pure experiencing, which is therefore the essence of consciousness. Just as liquidity exists inseparable from water, consciousness and unconsciousness exist together. There is no rationale for such existence, for what is is as it is.Since there is neither a contradiction nor a division in consciousness, it is self-evident. If the infinite consciousness is the cause of something else, then how can it be regarded as indescribable and incomparable? Hence, Brahman is not a cause or a seed. What then shall we regard as the effect? It is therefore inappropriate to associate the creation with Brahman, and to associate the inert with the infinite consciousness. If there appears to be a world or ego-sense, these are but empty words meant to entertain. Consciousness is not destroyed. However, if such destruction can be comprehended, the consciousness that comprehends it, is free from destruction and creation. If such destruction can be comprehended, it is surely the trick of consciousness. Hence, consciousness alone exists, neither one nor many! Enough of this discussion. When thus there is no material existence, thinking does not exist either. There is neither a world nor the ego-sense. Remain well established in peace and tranquility, free from mental conditioning, whether you are embodied or disembodied. When the reality of Brahman is realised, there is no room for worry and anxiety."
"He did this out of compassion for his own peaceful forms who were harassed by his own other forms."
"...the diversity of creation needed the principles of darkness that promote diversification"
Lord Krishna said "The twice-born, cows and all helpless beings are my own bodies. They who, blinded by ignorance, treat them as different from me, are torn to pieces by the gods of punishment appointed by me....All this has taken place in accordance with the Lord's will, which even the masters of yoga find difficult to understand." Concise Srimad Bhagavatam
Creation is only play, which means that Krishna tolerates misbehavior until it gets too nasty, as it is increasingly in the Kaliyuga, which inspires Him to rein in the wrongdoers who have gone too far. "How can it be said that the Lord created the universe playfully?"
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1000 Names of Vishnu: (653)"Desire is an expression of an inherent sense of incompleteness and this insufficiency unto oneself is called ignorance of the Self. The non-apprehension of Reality gives rise to endless misapprehensions of the same. Sree Narayana is the Self, the Reality, and so all non-apprehensions must end in Him, then no desires can ever remain in Him demanding fulfillment."
"Realize: 'All this is pervaded by me for I am omnipresent and devoid of body and such other limitation', and dwell in peace and supreme happiness." "The infinite forever remains infinite, even as space is never affected by the presence or absence of clouds. Creation is considered the 'sport of the Lord', because he who is ever full needs nothing, lacks nothing and desires to achieve nothing by this sportive activity. Yet, this has a purpose -- to protect the forces of light."
"The seer does not become the object of perception because the latter does not exist. The seer alone is all this -- the one mass of consciousness." Maharishi: "The self knows only itself."
Though the inner controller or the spirit dwells in the body, it is not tainted by the latter's experiences (pleasure and pain). It is devoid of doership, and is beyond the reach of the three qualities of nature (prakrti). It is but a totally free witness of nature. Yet, on account of the spell cast by the play of these qualities of nature, the self imagines that he is the doer of actions, he loses his peace of mind on account of this delusion, and in that self-imposed state of ignorance undergoes birth and death. The objects do not exist as such, except in the imagination of the subject. Yet, so long as one thinks of these objects, and is attached to them, he cannot escape the wheel of birth and death, just as even non-existent events cause unhappiness to the dreamer. Therefore, one should practise the yoga of devotion, and gradually bring the mind under control....The intellect thus purified, the spiritual aspirant at once perceives the self directly. He is not deluded by appearances, just as the reflection of the sun in a pot of water in the house is discovered by the light shining on the wall, the reflection of the light of the self in the ego is discovered in the functioning of the mind and the senses.one who has awakened is not deluded by a nightmare which frightened him while asleep....By my grace he realises the self, his doubts are dispelled by the vision of the self, and he attains to that state known as kaivalya (total independence), from which there is no return....Meditation destroys all that is undivine within oneself.
"...the Lord does not bestow on the devotee the pleasures of the three worlds, which only promote hatred, fear, vanity and suffering. On the contrary, our Lord obstructs his devotees' worldly and heavenly ambitions so that they may be single-mindedly devoted to him. By such obstructions one should infer the Lord's grace."
"Infinity is that thing which no one can harm."
Lord Krishna:
"...beings undergo birth and death all the time; but on account of the speed and subtlety of time, this is not so perceived. Just as the flame of a candle is constantly renewed and the waters of a stream are continually changed -- and yet people regard them as the same flame and the same stream -- even so with the body. Again, the jiva neither takes birth nor dies: fire exists forever though it seems to appear and disappear."
Sage Suka:
"...sages declare that everyone experiences perpetual dissolution - nitya pralaya - inasmuch as there is continuous creation and dissolution of the elements that constitute this universe, like sparks in a flame, or waters of a river. Give up the foolish notion that you were born, and that you will die. All this takes place in the dream state of the ignorant jiva, not in truth. Mind alone creates, perpetuates, and dissolves; and mind is a product of maya. The body, its birth and its death are all illusory projections of this maya. Remain established in this truth: 'I am Brahman the infinite, the supreme abode, I am Brahman, the highest goal.' Thus have I narrated to you, my own self, the holy actions of lord Hari. What else is there worth hearing?"
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Maharishi: Our effort is to educate man to take advantage of the grace of God already present everywhere
"It's not the Avatār, it's not the flash of divine grace, it's not the flashy blessing of some almighty, God, but the knowledge about the potentiality of life and a technique to live integration of life in the daily routine of all the people that is needed for the world for all times to be really worthwhile. It should be a place worthwhile for all the people. No agency from outside could ever revolutionize all the people of all the generations. Education has to be for every man in every generation so that he starts to live his potentiality fully, well.
So our effort is not a preparation for the divine grace but an education to man so that he may derive maximum advantage of the grace of the almighty God which is already present everywhere.
What I feel is that almighty God cannot bless mankind more than what He has already blessed: bliss consciousness is made present everywhere -- omnipresent Being, bliss, eternal life everywhere -- and the ability of the mind to live it in day-to-day life belongs naturally to every mind. Both things are there. With such great spirit of the grace of God, we have only to educate our people around us in the art of enjoying that grace which is already there.
We don't have to seek for grace, we don't have to ask for grace, we don't have to wait for some angels from heaven to dawn and bring us the light of grace. Nothing like that. Only [we have to] make use of the natural situation within us: Being (infinite bliss), mind in search of bliss, and the unity of the two spontaneously brought about. Just this knowledge and this technique of Transcendental Meditation, and the world will be established for thousands of years in the living grace of God. This is our effort.
We are aware that our speed could be faster, I mean should be faster, but unfortunately there are only twenty-four hours in a day (laughter) and they don't seem to be enough for our most speedy progress. But our plan to train more teachers of Transcendental Meditation everywhere is a very great hope. It's a very, very great hope. Such a huge population of the world and so few [TM teachers]."
~Maharishi
~Rishikesh, India (audiotape) -- March 1969
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From the Varaha Purana: The sage stood between the huntsman and the deer and stopped the huntsman from shooting his arrow, saying, "If you want to kill, kill me and not the deer." The huntsman stopped and laughed and said "Sir, I am happy you are extremely kind towards all creatures; that is certainly a noble quality, quite praiseworthy. But you do not know the other side of the picture, the bright, higher and nobler side than this side. Please tell me "Am I the killer or the non-killer of the deer? What is your knowledge for if you do not realize this? The child makes an ox out of the mud and at once breaks it and mixes it with the mud. The small boy builds a toy house with sand and at once destroys it. It is his play. In the same way, Ishwara makes all creation and unmakes it just like a boy, to whom it is a plaything. The world is an appearance, not reality. It is an appearance of a change, wicked to some and fair to some, of the changeless Brahman, the absolute One; it has no change; it has no form; the appearing changes and forms are only mirages. Please learn that nothing kills nothing; nothing verily creates nothing; it is the height of ignorance to get disturbed or perturbed at the actions and non-actions of beings in the world; the deer is his creation; you and I are his creation; death and life are his creation; everything is He. One who knows this fact does not grieve."-- recounted on p. 55, Lives of Ancient Indian Saints, vol. 6 by Vidvan Bulusu Venkatewarulu.
Srutadeva said [to Lord Krishna]:
From Book 2 Chapter 5 The Concise Srimad Bhagavatam :
"Brahma, the creator, said: my son, I welcome your question which enables me to sing the glories of the Lord, who is the real creator of the universe -- not I! Foolish people think I am the creator: and foolish people think of the body as the self and that which is associated with the body as 'mine.' In truth, nothing exists except Lord Krishna : there is no substance, no activity, no time, no nature nor a living soul! Only the Lord exists." (p.27)
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More quotes from Maharishi and the Vedic literature
Fans of the Transcendental Meditation movement have been dismayed for years about the apparent ineptness of TM management which has resulted in very slow growth for the movement. But the transition from an epoch of total disorder and unhappiness to one of bliss and peace (termed the "Kaliyuga" and the "Satyuga" respectively in Sanskrit) simply cannot be accomplished quickly.
As Maharishi notes in a booklet published in 1962 titled "The Divine Plan" (reprinted in Bantam Books Meditations of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi), only a gradual approach to enlightening the world can be successful when people live at such a low level of life:
"When the objectivity [man's material life] overtakes subjectivity [the divine intelligence in man] completely then the only way left for the subjectivity is that it should gradually rise up in such a way that its regeneration does not in any way tend to overthrow the validity of material life. On the other hand, the manner of spiritual regeneration should be such that instead of creating fear and havoc to material life, the growing spiritual values should supplement and reinforce the values of material existence. This is the working policy of the Divine Plan. The Spiritual Regeneration Movement is carrying this out." p. 164, Meditations
At Seelisberg, Switzerland, in 1979 Maharishi said: "Only a ridiculous movement can survive. Otherwise our adversaries would destroy us to the last extent. The time will come, where I will show my real face. Go ahead and do your work!"
During the press conference of 24Aug2005, Maharishi talks again about the difficulty of quickly overcoming a negative atmosphere in the world: " ...the destiny of the people doesn`t allow us to light the big lamp so quickly so that immediately the deep darkness simply disappears. It is the fate of the people."
It is the fate of the people because trying to change from mental impurity to pure tendencies is always something which requires slow-going: "The impure ones have to be abandoned gradually and the mind turned away from them little by little, lest there should be violent reaction." (Vasistha's Yoga , p. 28).
Bringers of light always have to be cautious in how they approach a world plunged in darkness -- Jesus: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."
In 2005, Maharishi puts TMO activities in England on hold, saying that feeding nectar to a snake would only increase its destructive tendencies. But this is no new policy -- MMY long ago made it clear that the TMO could only proceed by fits and starts in an ignorant and dark world, whether by open announcements like this one about the suspension of TM activities in England, or by simply employing the notoriously fatuous Western managers of the TMO who guarantee slow or no growth. The early adopters of TM in the West who make up TM management have skewed eccentric and incompetent, since fringe elements in society are disproportionately represented amongst early adopters in general; but TM is the mainstream of India's traditional culture, so Indian managers should be more competent -- although Maharishi had no illusions about the level of life in India, describing the average Indian as being "like an American on drugs" (heard by this author during MMY's course at Humboldt State College, CA in August 1970). Maharishi: 58 minutes into the press conference of 8Dec2004, Maharishi, saying that he gets excited talking about India, puts the blame where it belongs: "India is the greatest enemy of the world" because its leaders, educated in Britain and slaves of foreign influence, are ignoring India's Vedic tradition.
Maharishi goes on at one hour and 21 minutes to say that:
"If India was India the world would have been heaven."
-- "for years I am working in India," but the people there are stupid -- but it's all right, because India has seen many dangerous times and this is just another one of them.
A prime example of how Maharishi selected managers who fit into the Divine Plan because of personality or intelligence deficits of one sort or another is found in Rhoda Orme-Johnson's book Inside Maharishi's ashram: "I have to tell a Lillian story, although it is not my story; it is Charlie Donahue's story. Charlie was our regional coordinator for the Eastern U.S. First, you have to understand that sometimes people would take Maharishi's knowledge and gather a following about them. They would pretend to have some consciousness and standing that they may or may not have had, and instead of referring all gratitude and deserving to Maharishi and Guru Dev, from where the knowledge had come, they would accept flowers from their little group, and have an undue influence over them. Maharishi called them cuckoo gurus. OK, the Lillian story: One day Charlie asked Maharishi, why Lillian? She was such a terror...Why choose Lillian of all people to be the one advanced technique teacher in the U.S.? Charlie asked. Maharishi replied, I wanted someone no one would follow [someone who couldn't develop a following of their own]. Charlie smiled broadly and said that if that was your intention, Maharishi, you chose very well. Charlie says that Maharishi almost fell off his couch laughing." (pp. 148-9) ) Another illuminating anecdote comes from longtime TM teacher Stanley G. Lewis:
"Governors get "enlightened" by teaching. Nearly none of us came to TM as humble beings or we would not have attracted the people who need TM the most. I remember on a course on the East coast when a Japanese teacher got up and thanked His Holiness for the opportunity to be a teacher and asked what wonderful Karma we all must have to be teachers of TM in this life. Maharishi started laughing and continued to laugh until we were all laughing...but we didn't know why! Maharishi could hardly get his breath but when he finally did, he said "You were the ones who messed it up last time!" (the last Kaliyuga)
Really, naming England is only symbolic, as little or no TMO activity is taking place anywhere in the West, because only India can support the transition to Vedic civilization. After the pundits have purified the atmosphere sufficiently in India, the people will embrace TM and other aspects of Vedic culture and serve as a lighthouse to the world.
I regard the comatose state of the TM movement in the West as OK, because the focus of the TM movement is going, and should go, to India, the natural home of Vedic culture that only needs the water of higher consciousness to cause Vedic civilization to bloom again, despite the bad character of the Kaliyuga. MMY says that it is possible for SatYuga to intrude in the lifespan of the Kaliyuga, because the wrongdoing of this age makes it weak, and possible to end its life early, just as a human whose life is full of wrongdoing can come to an early end of life.
In his press conference of 13Apr2005, Maharishi said that "As Indian national consciousness rises in coherence -- which is the basis of invincibility for the nation then world consciousness will rise in coherence which is the basis of permanent world peace...One sun rises, but its innumerable rays spread light everywhere...So it's natural for the influence of coherence to spread from India to the whole world." In the mou.org Press Conference 26 June 2002, Maharishi said: "India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda, with this total knowledge of Natural Law, the Will of God. And everything is possible under the protective nature of the Will of God, invincible God."
I am realizing that it really does not matter that the TMO is flunking out in the West. In fact, this was the strategy all along (carried out both deliberately and otherwise), inspired not by any ordinary human analysis of what would work for the TMO in the West or not, but a strategy guided by Divine intelligence. The real reason that MMY came to the West was to delay the onset of enlightenment so that a Vedic India would not be too much of a shock for the world. If MMY had stayed in India without lighting a few candles around the world, the onset of a Vedic India would have created "fear and havoc" in material life around the world. The TMO will be wildly successful in a few years in India -- the people of India have always responded to a genuine revival of Vedic culture.
Press Conference, New Delhi airport, 24DEC1963:
"Journalist: 'Why did you choose to propagate this system in foreign countries rather than in India?'
Maharishi: For India I went out! (laughter)" P. 542, Thirty Years Around the World – Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment
Maharishi did say that "I-AM" -- "India-America", linked in importance. But this does not mean that America could be the basis for a revival of Vedic culture, but rather, that American creativity and know-how, in addition to the work of the Vedic pundits in India, are necessary to overcome the inertia and ignorance which has kept the people of India from embracing TM (which is, of course, what MMY always thought about America's role ). Specifically, TM needs to be promoted in an effective way in India by means of advertising on cable TV to the 61 million households in India that receive TV this way, and not just as a means of increasing national consciousness in India. The current economic model of the TM movement relies on donations from a few rich Westerners, like the Settles who have given around $100 million over the last few years up to 2013. But funding like this is not reliable: the Settles are now no longer capable of that level of giving, with immediate impacts on the Vedic City project. It's far better to have a large meditator population (and a large number can only be achieved in India) making a lot of small donations than seeking the help of a few rich -- in any event, a wide net cast in India would naturally bring in donations from India's billionaires.
Instead of using satellite which broadcasts to all of India, brief (15-30 second) ads in prime time should be run on cable TV in target cities, when TM teacher infrastructure is in place for that city. It would be a mistake to create an unfulfillable demand for TM nationally, since there are no shortage of people in India who (incorrectly) think that they know how to teach proper meditation, and they would be glad to eat the TM movement's lunch if people turn to faux providers out of frustration that TM instruction is not available due to lack of teachers.
MMY says in the preface to his Gita commentary that "India is a country where Truth matters most and Indians are a people to whom God matters most. Indian soil has witnessed many times the revival of life's true philosophy. The people of India have never hesitated to return once more to the right path whenever it was convincingly pointed out to them that their way of life had taken a wrong course."
Everything that is happening now in the West, the crowns and titles and political fantasies and all that, is just designed to hold a shell of an organization in place until TM is successful in India, where there have been no exclusionary price increases for TM instruction as there have been in the West. After Deepak Chopra's arrogance swept him out of the TM movement, MMY was determined not to let this sort of defection happen again if possible, so he loads up the TM movement with fancy clothes and titles so that managers will stick around in the movement until Vedic India is restored, and the TMO's success in India can become a worldwide success. Until then, exercise patience and good humor:
"In order to establish order, disorder has to be shaken; and for shaking to remain under control, we who are at the basis, at the level of Para, have to be Para — that is, unreachable by the surface turmoil [Para, "the supreme" : this level of consciousness is the transcendental Self which is the ground Being of all objects]. In that integrated state, the fast moving chaos and change will pass away in a steady manner. So we have to be very steady. We have to be very careful not to get upset by little or big things. If we lose our basis, our dignity, the phase transition will take much longer. Don't give importance to things which may upset us. This is a very precious time for the world. Everything depends on how our awareness is; just don't let it be shaken. Our awareness is the basis of all these transformations. More than ever before, time demands we remain completely ourselves. It is a very tender, delicate time for us — we should not become angry, indifferent, or sad; we should just be like an ocean. The evolutionary power is waking up. We shake it, then leave it; then after some time shake it again. Each time a new level of purity, awakening is added." Maharishi 1992
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Somebody didn't get the memo: In the 11 Dec 2002 issue of the MUM Review the dean of the MUM College of Arts and Sciences says about an MUM Study Abroad program: "Greece is a very beautiful place to go," Dr. Grant said. "It is the cradle of western civilization and the values we hold dear such as individualism and democracy." -- although MMY has condemned democracy (Dr. Grant and MUM parted ways soon after this). Finally, in answer to a question from the press, Maharishi condemns "wild" monarchs and dictators, too (about minute 45 into the conference), saying the key element in governance is operating from the value of supreme awareness.
Since, as Maharishi says, the government is an "innocent mirror" of the national consciousness, this means that a higher national consciousness will produce better leaders in any system of government, although democracy would not be chosen by the people if good leaders were available.
One of the many absurdities engendered by democracy is reported by Business Week (March 19, 2007, p.51) in its article "The trouble with India":
" 'If you have to build a road in China, just a handful of people need to make a decision,' says Daniel Vasella, chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Novartis. 'If you want to build a road in India, it'll take ten years of discussion before you get a decision.' Blame it partly on India's revolving-door democracy. Political parties typically hold power for just one five-year term before disgruntled voters, swayed by populist promises from the opposition, kick them out of office. In elections last year in Tamil Nadu, for instance, a new government was voted in after it pledged to give free color TVs to poor families. 'In a sanely organized society you can get a lot done. Not here,' says Jayaprakash Narayan, head of Lok Satta, or People Power, a national reform party."
Democracy developed because people were tired of being exploited by despots -- only a higher level of national consciousness will bring about conditions that will allow inefficient democracy to fade away. 42 years ago, in his Science of Being and Art of Living, MMY said: "It is the governments of the democratic countries that hold the faith and goodwill of their people." ("Generation after Generation," ~p. 300), and that is still the case -- MMY is just speaking out of frustration with the slow progress of his mission to enlighten the world. Or, given the likelihood of his death within a few years, Maharishi is just making it clear that democracy is not a desirable system of governance, but just something unfortunate that came about because people were tired of being abused by wild kings and despots.
The coming Sat Yuga (Golden Age) will produce leaders who will have the confidence of the people, so democracy, with its many problems and inefficiencies, will simply melt away in the light of higher consciousness in the Sat Yuga, when leaders who can operate from the supreme level of awareness are available. Every government is really a de facto democracy, because the average value of consciousness in a country is what determines the quality of governance: 'National consciousness is the motivator for every action of a government,' Maharishi said. 'A government cannot do anything other than what is dictated by national consciousness. So, if we want government to be free from problems, then we have to improve the quality of national consciousness.'
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Maharishi blasts Israel and the U.S.:
"Israel is a child of America. I have forgotten about Israel because when people are murderers, who can bother about them? All that is happening in Israel is the doing of America. Wherever there is destruction, it's the doing of America. For the sake of politeness, one may not say that, but those are my thoughts."If the Pope were to say this, there would certainly be a furor and possibly a change in policy, but, really, outside of a few people in the TM movement, who cares what Maharishi says? There are many disputes over territory throughout the world -- if you are not regarded by at least of some of the principals in the dispute as an authority, there is simply no point in discussing one of them (even one that, in an absurd re-make of the Crusades by proxy, ties the fortunes of the world's only superpower to the homicidal Israeli state which appears headed for a future as a radioactive parking lot). The TM movement needs to get back to its core business, and raise consciousness, not issues...
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Early in 2007 the TMO had announced that 10,000 students would be
attending a new TM school, Central University, in Smith Center, Kansas in the Fall of 2007, an impossible task to achieve in a few months, that once again brings into question the competence of TM managers. Maharishi could, of course, always go outside the movement to hire competent help, but it turns out, paradoxically, that this is not indicated because of the dense ignorance in which the planet is cloaked. Back in the 60s, Maharishi wrote that enlightenment values could only be unfolded gradually to avoid causing "fear and havoc" among the benighted denizens of this brutal epoch.
The old gibe, "if they had any brains, they would be dangerous," is quite literally true for TM administrators, since a too-effective promotion of TM would cause a populace used to darkness to panic at the onset of the light of awareness and disable the Divine Plan of gradual unfoldment of enlightenment values.
At a more abstract level, Maharishi's tolerance of fantastic thinking is based upon an understanding of the true nature of human capacity when it opens to cosmic life, expressed throughout the ages in sayings by many prophets and seers: "...you will say to this mountain,'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you."
Although the announcement that Central University will have 10K students by the Fall of 2007 is merely stupid, because administrators of the TMO do not operate from the level of life that would enable something like that to be accomplished, MMY's work is all about reminding people of a practical way (TM and other Vedic technologies) to accomplish anything in life, by operating from a level of life that is cosmic, so tolerance for TMO knuckleheads proposing impossible ideas has a symbolic value in challenging the long-held notion that life can only be a struggle.
Maharishi: 'The world is administered by infinite creativity, enormous self-referral affluence, which is the Unified Field in the world of science, and which is Veda—the expression of Total Knowledge. In the Vedic terms, there is only affluence. 'Poverty is imaginary. Real is affluence. So if someone is leading an unnatural life in poverty, suffering is unnatural. Pains are unnatural. Natural is health, infinity. Whether it is infinite magnitude of life or point value of life, they is both on the same level — point is made of infinity. 'It's the point of infinity.
And infinity is made of points, so for a point it is natural to bask in the sunshine of infinity. If a point begins to be poor, then it is understandable how he can be poor. If he's only himself, he knows that he is a point of infinity. 'The individual — we have been talking from house-tops loudly for all these years — the individual is cosmic. Cosmic is the potential of the individual. For many years it was found we seemed to be only idealistic in principle, but practically the situation is different. 'People are suffering, so today's topic is how to eliminate suffering. The word how makes it difficult.
Suffering is in essence not a reality. Dr Hagelin, it is such a beautiful point of knowledge, that suffering is imaginary. Only imaginary. It is imposed on oneself. 'The real is total, infinite, and on that reality of infinite, [there is] only affluence, invincibility, harmony, totality, all possibility. These are natural to life. Poverty is imaginary. But if someone has fallen into a dream of poverty, we shake him up and say 'You are not poor, but if you are feeling poverty, fine, here is the treasury of the Global Country of World Peace.'
'The Global administration beats [the drum] — the principle that only affluence is real; only cosmic status is real. But in case someone has fallen into that kind of situation, then take the principle and understanding from here, and realize that you are not poor.'... 'There is a great time now for transformation. We are sponsoring their education so that no one will be unhappy or sick or anything; all these are wrong things. Every religion has always held that the man was made in the image of God. In different words people have said it, but the fact was 'Man was made in the image of God', and the son of God is the son of God — the son of a king is a prince, he is a ruler.
'So tell everyone that tomorrow it is possible that all the poor countries can ring the bell of eureka that there are no more poor [people]; they can shake hands with all the rich people. It's a practical thing we are talking." 27Mar2007
The TM movement in India is asking English-speaking TM teachers to come to India to help instruct the increasing numbers of people who want to learn TM. However, response to this call is likely to be limited, since teachers have to bear their own expenses entirely, which amounts to about $2500/month plus travel costs. Clearly, if the stated goal of 10 million Indians learning TM soon is to be reached, some other means of imparting instruction is going to be necessary -- if one is thinking of achieving that goal of one crore people learning TM within ten years, it requires initiation of 20,000 a week, well beyond what current TM-teaching infrastructure could accommodate, even if there was a strong response to the call for teachers from around the world (as of Dec 2013, ~900 people a week are learning TM in India).
What I think TM leaders will soon recognize is that Indian TMers who want to help can be quickly trained to be TM teachers, without the need to call for Westerners to come to India. People who want to attend current TM teacher-training courses pay large fees for courses that last many months, but this is not really necessary. When Maharishi started training teachers in the 60s, the courses were much shorter, and they could readily be shortened again to meet the need of the times.
Learning how to impart TM instruction is very simple, and the process for checking the progress of the student does not require much more memorization of procedure. As far as lecturing, there is no need for teachers to be good speakers about TM -- they can just pop a DVD in a player and present a canned lecture better than 99% of TM teachers could deliver. My guess is that about a part-time two-week course would be enough to train Indians to be TM teachers, who could continue in their current line of work without needing to be supported by the TMO.
Maharishi said that the job of a TM teacher is to teach knowledge of the infinite, not infinite knowledge. As long as a teacher can impart that effortless access to the infinite available through the TM technique, then the TM teacher's job is done -- the huge body of Vedic knowledge left in recordings and print media by Maharishi can then fill in the details of creation.
Promotion of TM should probably also be done on a city-by-city basis, with those TM teachers who can travel moving on to the next target city to augment local TM-teaching staff, after teaching those who have responded to TM promotion activities. Instead of using satellite which broadcasts to all of India, brief (15-30 second) ads should be run on cable TV in target cities, when TM teacher infrastructure is in place for that city. It would be a mistake to create an unfulfillable demand for TM nationally, since there are no shortage of people in India who (incorrectly) think that they know how to teach proper meditation, and they would be glad to eat the TM movement's lunch if people turn to faux providers out of frustration that TM instruction is not available due to lack of teachers.
The hotel attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 make it even more unlikely that Western TM teachers will be able to respond to the call to come to India, and underscore the need to bring India up to Vedic status quickly with indigenous resources. Maharishi has noted that "We cannot underestimate the urgency; action cannot be overestimated. Misery anywhere breeds trouble for us all." (p. 47, David Verrill's book).
But the readiness of so many young men to embark on suicide missions also shows the importance of not making the TM movement a target of the aggrieved. In the April 2009 issue of Atlantic Monthly, an Indian historian notes that "The Hindu-Muslim divide here is worse than at any time since the partition."
Muslims around the world feel under siege, watching their brethren suffer from the foolhardy and criminally stupid Zionist occupation of Israel backed by the world's current holders of power, who have foolishly chosen a remake-by-proxy of the Crusades. I guess it really does not make sense to talk about right and wrong when discussing what land belongs to which people, given the brutal history of the human race for thousands of years, but sensible people don't get wedded to policies that are simply impossible. Watching human behavior in the current epoch is like watching ant armies meet each other -- nobody would assign moral judgments to creatures that operate at a low level of awareness. In an era when talk about morality is pointless, it's just a matter of what you can get away with, and Zionism is simply not workable, although the support of the U.S. has given a temporary appearance of viability. The European occupation of the Americas was enabled chiefly by the introduction of diseases which eliminated 90% of the indigenous population. However, the demographics of the Middle East will never be favorable for the Zionist fantasy -- it's just a matter of how many people have to suffer before this attempt to put the toothpaste back in the tube expires.
India is Israel's biggest customer for arms, allowing India to tap into Israel's acquisition of top military technology through its relationship with the U.S. -- this transfer of technology even goes for weapons-savvy Russia.
US plans to give India access to top military technology as part of plan to contain China.
Another sore point for Muslims is the unending war over Muslim-majority Kashmir, a dispute which should have been resolved long ago by India.
The Indian TM leadership's goal of instructing ten million Indians into TM is a figure which can only be reached in a reasonable amount of time with the reach of TV advertising, which would create a high profile for the TM movement. And those ads and that resulting high profile should be pitched to Hindus only, in order to avoid inflaming the already volatile, dangerous sectarian strife in India which will continue to see more Mumbai-type attacks and worse for some time in that sickening cycle of retaliatory violence that is old news (several Indian states have found it necessary to create anti-proselytizing laws in an attempt to help minimize anxiety over religious identity). In the U.S., people who are offended by TM shout and file lawsuits; in India, those Muslims who are pitched TM are more likely to throw bombs (again, Hindus have certainly not been shy about acts of violence against Muslims -- the most disgusting display of communal violence was probably seen during Partition, a parting gift of idiotic British imperialism ).
Only a tiny percentage of India's one billion Hindus need to learn TM to tip the balance in favor of restoration of Vedic civilization among Hindus in India; not one Muslim in India needs to learn TM to accomplish this change. When Yogic Fliers actually fly, then any and all can hop on this magic carpet ride of fulfillment in life, but until that unequivocal demonstration of the power of expanded awareness, no attempt should be made to pitch TM to non-Hindus in India, where the atmosphere is simply too rife with sectarian anxiety.
Maharishi noted back in the 60s that the Divine plan was to unfold enlightenment for the earth gradually, to avoid causing "fear and havoc" among the benighted. It's not that a lot of people are going to survive the transition to the Satyuga whether that transition is sooner or later (Maharishi said only "a few will survive" because you cannot stop people who are hellbent: "It is not necessary to be angry on them because, if a man is rushing on to the hell, you can`t stop him. He is running and rushing to get into the gates of hell. What you can do?" -- MMY -- Global Press Conference, 24Aug2005), but gradualness and caution have to be the keynote of the TM movement in order to keep ignorant people from trying to stomp out the light à la the Jesus story: "Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region."
Jesus said, "Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces." In order to achieve success in enlightening a world absolutely dominated by brutality and stupidity, that highest knowledge about life that TM and the Vedic tradition represents can't be quickly mass-marketed, or the TM movement will be hounded out of existence.
Of course the light of God cannot be extinguished, but God only comes to earth to protect the righteous, and when righteousness is at low levels, there's nothing to protect and so the Kaliyuga continues on its usual course of increasing disorder until its allotted 432,000 years is up (MMY says that it is possible for SatYuga to intrude in the lifespan of the Kaliyuga, because the wrongdoing of this age makes it weak, and possible to end its life early, just as a human whose life is full of wrongdoing can come to an early end of life). Krishna: "To protect the righteous and destroy the wicked, to establish dharma firmly, I take birth age after age." (Ch.4, v.8 of the Bhagavad Gita -- see MMY's commentary -- about halfway down this link).
Regardless of the Yuga cycle, Nature is always prodding humans to seek wisdom by visiting disaster on the unhappy, in order to create receptivity to wisdom. And when prodding does not work, the natural order of creation repeatedly recycles the unhappy to reduce the burden on the earth: "...when the people become predominately sinful, Yama the god of death sometimes engages himself in meditation for some years, during which the population increases and explodes. The gods, frightened by this population explosion, resort to various devices to reduce it. All this has happened again and again countless times." (Vasistha's Yoga , p.397).
From Susan Shumsky's book, Maharishi and Me: "Why is there a population explosion?" [Maharishi:] "If a man follows the natural course of evolution, he eventually evolves into a celestial being. Similarly, the lower species evolve into human species. Now man is jammed up because he's not evolving fast enough. The lower species continue to evolve, but man remains stuck on the human level and doesn't evolve to the higher celestial levels." (p.34)
The TM movement, in order to survive and enable the Sat Yuga transition, needs to create a base of righteous people without annoying those comfortable with living in the darkness of low consciousness. I am, of course, not implying that the level of righteousness or consciousness in India's Muslim community is lower than it is in the Hindu community, but merely noting that the TM movement should avoid becoming a target of those whose feel oppressed by the unfortunate tangle of religion and politics in India (in Muslim countries where there are a negligible number of Hindus, and therefore no religion-based political struggle, it's unlikely that TM teachers would have to exercise the caution that they would in India, but Jihadist groups are threatening the life of the "Art of Living" spokesman. for what they see as Hindu proselytizing in Iraq, Iran, 6% Hindu Malaysia and 2% Hindu Pakistan).
What looks like a struggle between religious beliefs is really a story of the tendency to put identity and group loyalty ahead of actual beliefs. One of the countless examples of how human identity/loyalty trumps sweet reason and politicizes religious beliefs is seen in the last 40 years of the 16th Century in France, during which time 3 million people died in the Wars of Religion, which started off with a dispute over tenets of Catholicism vs. Calvinism, but quickly became a matter of us vs. them, our guys against your guys, until King Henri IV switched religions for the last time, installing Catholicism as the official French religion while giving some measure of religious freedom to Protestants. It would be extremely foolish for the TM movement in India to challenge the loyalty and identity of the 150 million Muslims in India with advertising that claims that TM does not involve any allegiance to the Hindu religion, a claim which, while true, can't work in India. The TM movement should avoid breaking itself on the hard rocks of ignorance by taking the path of least resistance in India and avoiding the whole issue of politico-religious identity, which is really just an inheritance from chimpish ancestors wired to violently promote the interests of their group.
Politics, which is all about who gets what, when, and why, always trumps religion and all other considerations -- a clear inheritance from chimpish ancestors who had to fight over limited resources (bonobos are more pacific -- they have an easier time making a living because they live in an environment with more abundant food).
The TM movement is a friend to everybody, and it will be seen that way when yogic fliers who can really fly are on the TV screens of the world to provide a clear demonstration of the power of expanded awareness to improve the quality of human life without harming or infringing on anyone's culture, including religion.
•••
In December 1957, Maharishi began the TM movement in Madras after a five-minute ovation showed the enthusiasm of the people for spiritual regeneration. Echoing that historic moment, the people of India have again shown their enthusiasm for that message of fullness of life at the 2008 Guru Purnima celebrations in Jabalpur:
Describing the event, Raja Harris said, 'Yesterday there was a very large celebration that captured the entire country of India. Dr Girish Varma, National Director of the Global Country of World Peace in India, had a beautiful plan to create another wing of the Global Country of World Peace that would inspire the imagination of all of India. 'Yesterday he had 1,500 people come to an enormous pandal in Jabalpur, and it was there that the Chief Minister of the state and all the leading educators of the state, leading politicians from the towns and cities, all came with the Chief Justices. 1,500 people gathered to celebrate the great fortune that Maharishi had come from that area of Madhya Pradesh very near Jabalpur. 'There was a wildly enthusiastic response, described by Dr Girish Varma as a 'fire of a response'. Nine television stations were there, including two national television stations. One television station broadcast the entire nine hours of the celebrations. They broadcast the beautiful address and blessings from Maharaja Adhiraj Raja Raam, First Ruler of the Global Country of World Peace, as well as a beautiful talk by Dr Bevan Morris, Prime Minister of the Global Country of World Peace. Dr Morris gave a global perspective of India and Maharishi's Vedic Pandits in the context of his total plan for enlightenment for every individual and invincibility for every nation.
'It was thrilling to hear that every major newspaper of India has a story today with beautiful large pictures and the wave that came out of that is absolutely wonderful,' Raja Harris said.
Praising the leaders of the Global Country of World Peace in India, Raja Harris said, 'I thought of the greatness of all the dear Indian leaders.' Raja Harris quoted Maharishi, writing in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, Chapters 1-6 :
''Whether surroundings and circumstances are favourable or unfavourable, men of honour and grace always act in a way that leads them to glory here on earth and in heaven.'' 'and these are all the leaders of our dear Indian movement,' Raja Harris said.
Raja Harris then summarized the main theme of the announcement which Dr Girish Varma had given to those gathered in Jabalpur on Guru Purnima day. These highly laudable plans for India include instruction in Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Programme for one krore (10 million) people, and instruction in Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme, including Yogic Flying, for 100,000 people. Raja Harris said that Dr Girish Varma had already laid out very precise measures to implement these plans in each state so that day by day and month by month the numbers enjoying Maharishi's programmes will be increasing.
•••
There has been some concern expressed in the TM community about the persistent economic downturn currently topping the U.S. news and also the uptick in natural disasters, particularly the Iowa floods, despite the increased number of Yogic Fliers and Pundits in Vedic City.
Maharishi spoke about the rise in disorder despite the increase of coherence-generating YF groups as being like washing a very dirty shirt: patches of dirt are going to come out, but not be eliminated totally because the coherence effect is not enough to eradicate all the dirt quickly.
I'd like to propose two ways of looking at this issue. It may be that the fact that Maharishi is no longer walking on planet earth may have had a profound effect on the world's well-being. With the departure of this great saint, maybe we just need to create much larger groups of Yogic Fliers and Pundits meditating together in order to compensate for this. I should note that I personally have never been a fan of the magic number proposed by TM managers (the claim is that if the number of Yogic Fliers meditating together in one place exceeds the square root of 1% of a nation's population, then national invincibility is assured, and we should see a reduction in all negative trends, natural and man-made). I just don't think that this threshold value can be quantified, although there is certainly some point at which Nature yields the earth to the happy. A alternate way of looking at the rise in disaster and dislocation is to consider what needs to happen in order for the Sat Yuga to begin. As Maharishi says: "There has not been and there will not be a place for the unfit. The fit will lead, and if the unfit are not coming along, there is no place for them. In the place where light dominates there is no place for darkness. In the age of Enlightenment there is no place for ignorant people. The ignorant will be made enlightened by a few orderly, enlightened people moving around. Nature will not allow ignorance to prevail. It just can't. Nonexistence of the unfit has been the law of nature." (Maharishi, 1975, Inauguration of the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, MIU Press, p. 47)
The transition from the Kali Yuga to the Sat Yuga always involves the removal of disorderly people. Maharishi has noted that happiness and unhappiness are incompatible -- you can't have an orderly society with unhappy people always throwing a wrench into the works, and an increase in disaster can be seen as the ill omens prefiguring the removal of the disorderly. It doesn't matter whether the onset of the Sat Yuga is imminent or far in the future -- the reaction of Nature to the unhappiness created by disorderly people is a constant part of creation, so there's nothing new under the sun here. And it's not as if there is any real change in the status or lifestyle of the unhappy folks who are removed -- instead of living hell on earth, the temporarily unfortunate will live hell elsewhere for a while until they get tired of doing so and become receptive to wisdom.
The current apparent disconnect between increased numbers of Yogic Fliers and Pundits together in Vedic City and the increase in negative trends in the U.S. may be seen as analogous to the situation created when cold air masses run into warm air masses. The cold air and warm air do not mix, but begin to revolve around one another, creating a vortex that, under certain conditions, will form tornadoes, which are stronger when the contrast in temperature between air masses is greater. In a like fashion, we might consider the increased bliss generated by Yogic Fliers in Vedic City as not mixing in with the atmosphere generated by the ignorant and unhappy, but challenging the dominance of ignorance -- as MMY notes above, "Nature will not allow ignorance to prevail. It just can't."
If the bliss generated by people meditating together met no resistance, then it would be like masses of air meeting like-temperatured masses, but there is a huge gap between the way the world is and the world in the Sat Yuga, and that difference can only be resolved when unhappy people are gone. As Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." Maharishi: "Nonexistence of the unfit has been the law of nature." So if this second way of looking at the situation is correct, then we should not be surprised to see an increase in disaster and dislocation along with the strongly contrasting rise of bliss-enabling forces in the world.
Nature is always declaring war on people. In the 20th Century, about 100 million people died in armed conflict, but just one disease accounted for three times as many deaths during that same period of time -- actually less than a century, since smallpox has only existed in labs since 1980. From the ignorant point of view, this sort of natural selection is inexplicable, something that heroic scientists in lab coats will eventually abolish (good luck with that...).
But from a consideration of the real potential of human life, it's an act of kindness by Nature to act against people living ignorant lives (Concise Srimad Bhagavatam: "Those who are deluded by the Lord's maya come under the rod of corrective punishment" p.83). Since every person is capable of knowing his own nature, sat chit ananda ("concentrated happiness of absolute status and permanent nature"), it's the worst possible loss and suffering not to live that unbounded happiness in life, and it would be cruel for Nature not to use a stick to encourage people to unfold their own nature, which is the Nature of the entire existence:
Maharishi -- "Just as a mountain of snow is nothing but water, so also the whole of the universe is nothing but ananda (bliss)."
One day Jesus, hungry, went up to a fig tree, but not finding any fruit, cursed the tree, and the tree withered away. When people live in suffering, not producing the expansion of happiness that is the purpose of creation, it's only natural that they will get negative feedback from the environment: Jesus -- "For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away."
Yogavasistha:
There are no two things here in this universe: the one infinite consciousness alone shines in all names and forms. It naturally seems to the narrow awareness of an ignorant mind that the universe is chaotic and antagonistic, a point of view that embraces the idiot slogan "Every man for himself, and God against all." But it is all really the play of one consciousness, and when that consciousness is tired of allowing too much ignorant play on earth, then that desire to make order predominant will be fulfilled, as it has countless times in the recurring cycle of creation.
If duality is only imaginary, then nothing is lost when vision is restored to wholeness and unity: "When a dream-object perishes nothing is lost: when 'the world' or 'the I' is lost, nothing is lost. There is no sense even in condemning this world and the egosense. Who will extol or condemn an hallucination?" Concise Srimad Bhagavatam, p. 189: "Salutations to that Lord who is without form, yet dwells in all forms, and who himself manifests as all forms through the mysterious illusory potency, maya."
Concise Srimad Bhagavatam, p.191: "Periodically, embracing the qualities of satva, rajas, and tamas, one after the other, he promotes the welfare of all embodied beings in his own mysterious ways." The fascinating tale in the Srimad Bhagavatam about the kidnapping of the cowherds by Brahma illustrates the play-nature of reality: "The Lord demonstrated the scriptural declaration: 'All this is indeed Vishnu,' by himself becoming the calves and their adornments, and the cowherds with all their belongings. A complete replica of the calves and cowherds kidnapped by Brahma had been brought into being, with the same size and colour, the same age and characteristics, the same name and mentality. Krsna himself had become all these." (Book 10, Ch. 12)
Since play is the only reason-for-being for phenomenal reality, play pervades all, even the search for the infinite which men undertake. MMY notes in his Science of Being and Art of Living (ch.3, v. 11) that the mantras assigned to people learning Transcendental Meditation "please the world of gods":
"The Lord wishes that by way of yagya, the act of coming to the Transcendent, men should simultaneously please the world of gods. This is possible only if the means of gaining transcendental consciousness is such that the influence produced by it supports the stream of evolution and wins the favour of the deities presiding over the laws of nature, the gods. We take a word which produces such an influence of harmony in creation and experience its subtle states until the mind transcends even the sublest and gains the state of transcendental consciousness. This is how the Lord wants us to create and maintain a mutual harmony with the higher powers of nature on the way to becoming one with the transcendental eternal Divine."
MMY does note that pleasing the gods "does not imply surrender to them or coming under their subjugation," but why is it necessary to please the gods in order to transcend? Because as part of the way the game of creation is played, the gods will try to obstruct the path of one who is seeking transcendence unless the seeker helps out the gods on the way: "The gods try to obstruct the path of one who endeavours to transcend their realms and thus to reach your [Krisha's] abode; they, however, do not do so if one propitiates them at the same time." The Concise Srimad Bhagavatam (Book Eleven, Ch. 4, p. 342)
Maharishi describes in SBAL, p.274, the complete involvement of God in the created world: "All the innumerable decisions that are apparently the result of natural laws in the process of evolution are the innumerable decisions of the almighty personal supreme God at the head of creation. He governs and maintains the entire field of evolution and the different lives of innumerable beings in the whole cosmos."
This expression is not contrary to the scientific community's thinking about evolution if we blackbox the process -- whether it is a divine being or a natural law responding to a behavior, the outcome looks the same.
And, of course, even the people who consider themselves to be stalwarts of the TM movement should not think that they are immune from this weeding-out process in the restoration of order on earth. As Arjuna notes after Lord Krishna engineered the destruction of Krishna's relatives:
"O king, you asked about our kith and kin in Dvaraka. He [Krishna] had used the powerful Yadava to destroy the wicked ones; in the end He brought about internecine hostility to destroy them [the Yadavas]. Having accomplished his mission he left, even as one extracts a thorn with another thorn and throws that away, too. Such are the Lord's mysterious ways that sometimes he appears to promote love and at others destruction." From the Concise Srimad Bhagavatam, p. 16 -- Book one, Ch 15. More fortunate than the post-war Yadavas were those who died on the Kurukshetra plain: "...[Krishna's] gaze fell on all those on the battlefield so that those who were killed (whether they were 'friend' or 'foe') would attain freedom from mortal existence with a form similar to the Lord's."
The real truth of the recurrent cycles of high-life and low-life on earth is that it really makes no difference compared to the possibility of living life from that seat of infinite consciousness which makes all of creation, good or bad, just a trivial thing not really worth worrying about. From the Srimad Bhagavatam:
"In this material universe distinctions between joy and sorrow, heaven and hell, are arbitrary and ignorant...they who are devoted to lord Narayana have no fear anywhere -- in heaven, in hell or in liberation they see no difference. Curses and blessings are seen to be different only by the ignorant and deluded souls who long for pleasure and are averse to pain. They who are devoted to lord Vasudeva do not crave for anything."
Devotion to the Lord means regular practice of Transcendental Meditation until one achieves that permanent witness consciousness which is not bothered by any sort of display in the created world ( Maharishi on the path of devotion) -- in the language of the Vedic literature, "the whole universe appears to be worth less than a blade of grass." and "One should diligently engage oneself in spiritual practice until one reaches the state in which one's contact with the objects provokes the same reaction that it would if one were asleep." and "There is no fear of destruction in the battle painted on a canvas: even so when the knower of truth is established in inner equanimity, activity does not affect him" -- "...the purified mind is able to observe life without being involved one way or the other."
Maharishi has described gaining enlightenment, Cosmic Consciousness, as "like waking from a bad dream." When we say that we "awake" from a bad dream and realize that there is really no problem and are no longer overcome by dream-phenomena, what we are experiencing is an increase in awareness from REM-state to the higher levels of awareness found in waking state, which disallows one from being overcome by phenomena.
Increases of awareness in the waking state alone are the best medicine for overcoming the confusion and grief we experience in the long dream of creation. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita (Ch. 2, v. 46) that all the Vedas are of no more use to an enlightened man than is a small well in a place surrounded on all sides by water.
Going beyond sorrow is not a matter of getting what one wants in the material world -- a child's joy at getting a toy can only be a short-lived thing. Maharishi:
" 'Sorrows' arise in the mind through want of understanding. When one understands only so much and no more of life, then one feels sorrow. But the man who understands both the unchanging eternal phase of life and the unending nature of the ever-changing cycle of life and death will recognize the ephemeral nature of sorrow and not be overwhelmed by it. The feeling of sorrow in the heart, as distinct from the mind, is due to lack of fulfillment, lack of love, lack of happiness. One who practices transcendental meditation experiences the bliss which fills the heart and brings eternal contentment, which leaves no room for any negative emotion, for sorrow, depression, fear or the like. Neither does it leave room for waves of joy or other positive emotions because the heart is by nature full and contented. It is like the heart of a grown man remaining unaffected by the toys which create great emotions in the hearts of children." (MMY's Gita commentary, Ch. 2, v. 56)
"The notions 'This is happiness' and 'This is unhappiness' do not arise in the liberated ones. When they have realised the truth that there is is neither 'the world' nor 'the self' and that the one is the all, 'happiness' and 'unhappiness' are seen as meaningless words. Their grief is superficial, for they are free from sorrow." Vasistha's Yoga, p. 612.
Devotion does not necessarily imply any notion of a personal God, because anything one could say about God is inherently not true, since no words or images with their limitations could possibly convey the nature of the unlimited -- "To your devotee you reveal your transcendental nature without attributes, name and form. Unasked, final liberation seeks him."
Concise Srimad Bhagavatam, p. 156:
"Salutations to the Lord of infinite glory. You reveal yourself as supreme bliss when, through the practice of devotion, the ignorance which veils you within is destroyed. Unaided and unaffected, you create, sustain and dissolve the entire universe, which is difficult for us to understand. In truth, we do not quite know whether you also have the emotional experiences associated with the creation, sustenance and dissolution of the universe, as we do, or whether you are their silent and unaffected witness. Maybe both these contradictory states blend in you, since you transcend our understanding which asserts that these contradictions preclude each other. Nothing can be attributed to you, since you are transcendent; at the same time, everything may be attributed to you since you are the sole reality."
The beauty of the mechanical technique of Transcendental Meditation is that no particular quality of mind or heart or belief system is needed to live the infinite. What the mechanical technique of TM can do for you can be briefly explained by the obviously limiting nature of the senses. One sees a dog pick up its ears at a high-frequency sound that humans can't hear -- this is because a small predator needs to hear the squeaky sounds of its small prey. The senses of all creatures have evolved over time, by conferring selective evolutionary advantage, to serve as filters of the environment. In a similar way, awareness/intelligence/consciousness can, for practical purposes, simply be considered as another signal coming in from the environment, and the mind/brain, acting as a "sixth sense," filters the awareness signal from the environment, allowing signal throughput according to the mind's purity and transparency -- awareness is not constructed:
"Self-knowledge is not within the reach of the senses. It arises when the senses and the mind,
which is the sixth sense, cease." From The Concise Yoga Vasistha , p.269
So the Lord sometimes promotes destruction because that is the way necessary at that time and place to promote devotion to living infinite life: "In fact, man has no other duty in this world." So people in the TM movement who are disturbed by incidents of disorder in the world -- despite TM-movement efforts to promote a benign influence in the world with the practice of TM and the efforts of the Pundits -- need to realize that God is always working to promote attachment to transcendental consciousness (unless that growth of awareness would tend to destabilize creation by making beings disinterested in playing their roles in the management of the world-illusion), and that transcendental witness consciousness does not rely on any condition of the created world to enjoy its own blissful nature -- it doesn't really matter whether it's the order of the 1.7-million-year Sat Yuga, or the ugliness of the 432,000-year Kaliyuga. The world-illusion is only meant to be play, not to be taken seriously, and "this creation has been brought about only by ignorance and stupidity." Because of the necessity of stupidity and ignorance in keeping the Divine play-world going, sometimes the Lord, paradoxically, discourages beings from gaining enlightenment:
LORD VISHNU thought: "Since Prahlada is immersed in the transcendental state of consciousness, the leaderless demons have lost their power. In the absence of a threat from the demons, the gods in heaven have nothing to fear and hence nothing to hate. If they have nothing to fear or hate, they will soon rise to the transcendental state of consciousness, beyond the pairs of opposites, and attain liberation!...This universe, which ought to exist till the natural cosmic dissolution, will thus abruptly cease to be. I do not see any good in this: hence, I think that the demons should continue to live as demons. If the demons function as the enemies of the gods, religious and righteous actions shall prevail in this creation: and thus will this creation continue to exist and flourish, not otherwise."
Concise Srimad Bhagavatam, p.156: "Almighty Lord! Even these diabolical beings (known as daitya and danava) are in reality your own manifestations. Yet, when they indulge in their destructive activities at other than their allotted time, you yourself incarnate (by means of your own maya) as gods, human beings, beasts or aquatic creatures, seemingly to punish them and thus to restore dharma."
Vasistha's Yoga, p. 201: "This seemingly unending world-appearance is sustained by impure (rajasa) and dull (tamasa) beings, even as a superstructure is sustained by pillars." -- "The very nature of the mind is stupidity." If it seems that the Lord is supporting ignorance, it's because the world cannot exist without considerable input from the ignorant, which is why the 4.32M-year Yuga cycle does not increase in light and bliss, but increases in entropy until either no life can be sustained at the end of 432,000 years of the Kali Yuga and the Sat Yuga resets the cycle, or (as now, apparently) the ignorant put too much pressure on the righteous/happy and the Sat Yuga starts early.
Disaster and dislocation should not necessarily be regarded as unfortunate in terms of cultivating attachment to the infinite. Wealth and smooth sailing is ordinarily regarded as a good thing, but as Jesus states, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." Vasistha: "Misfortune is the best fortune." ; "O sorrow, salutations to you; you spurred me on my quest for self-knowledge and it is by your grace that I have attained this self-knowledge; hence you are indeed the bestower of delight."
People tend to think less about infinity when they are satisfied with material possessions, a mindset which is the worst fortune of all, and amounts to swapping a diamond for spinach. Krishna: "My mission is not yet complete, for the powerful and invincible yadava are still left behind. They have my protection. They enjoy prosperity, which has created in them a sense of immense power. I myself will have to bring about their extermination before I leave for my realm."
Generally, earth's history seems to be driven by extinction -- the great K-T event enabled mammals and birds to replace dinosaurs as the dominant land vertebrates -- so it doesn't seem realistic to bemoan the inevitable extinction event which allows the onset of the Sat Yuga. TM movement leaders frequently extol the beautiful time on earth when Lord Rama ruled for 10,000 years from Ayodha, but this was ~900,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Treta Yuga, when life was lived at a level only slightly lower than in the Sat Yuga, so Lord Rama only had to eliminate Ravana and a few other demonic types -- the current situation can only transition to the Sat Yuga after the elimination of nearly all of the human biomass.
•••
Brahmachari Satyanand speaking c1967 about Guru Dev's mahasamadhi: When in 1953 Guru Dev left this mortal frame and attained nirvana*, I was at Benares, another place of pilgrimage for Hindus, and at that moment I was staying in the ashram of Guru Dev. Everybody knew that I am very attached to Guru Dev and devoted to Guru Dev, and then news came to Benares that Guru Dev has attained nirvana. I was sitting somewhere with a group of my friends and the news was relayed there.
When my friends heard that Guru Dev was no more they were very anxious about me and when they conveyed that news, they were rather alert to appraise whatever reaction is and what happened, I simply, when I heard that news I became very sad, very sorry and I just kept my head on the table before me. And all of them were very anxious what will become of me.
But soon after, while I was very morose, sorrow, sad, entire world was empty for me and I did not understand what to do without Guru Dev, just a half a minute or two seconds after, a flash came and it appeared to me that Guru Dev was scolding me: 'What a fool you are! You have been with me for all these many months and years, and you heard my discourses too. Is it a moment of feeling sorry? Why should you be sorry today? And you think that I am gone, where am I gone? Till now whenever you wanted to meet me, you had, you had to come to the place where I was, and today when I have attained nirvana, I am everywhere, I am omnipresent. Where have I gone? Very foolish for you to mourn on this occasion. I am with you, here, there, everywhere. Why should you be sorry?' And the moment this flash came, my face became very brilliant, I became very cheerful. And when I raised my head, my friends who were standing there, very anxious and held in suspense, they were upset to see my brilliant and cheerful face.
And then they said, 'What has happened to you?' I said, 'No you can't understand, nothing has happened to me, I am alright, now let me go back to the ashram and make the necessary arrangements.'
*[nirvana means "freedom from craving," freedom from the cycle of birth and death caused by unfulfilled desires -- when one gains the total awareness of Cosmic Consciousness, bliss consciousness, then all desires are in a constant state of fulfillment in that unconditioned bliss, and death, a mere dropping of the body, does not bring re-birth .
•••
Although MUM-Fairfield is enjoying success with its computer professional program (in which students, mainly from 3rd-world countries, get an advanced degree in Computer Science -- or a few other disciplines-- while working for American companies at market wages), there is a huge market available in India for Maharishi schools, because education infrastructure is completely inadequate in that country, forcing even the Indian Prime Minister to lament that fact.
Since you get more bang for the buck in India, TMO resources should be allocated there preferentially to get a maximum effect on world consciousness. The Maharishi schools in India are the largest private-school chain there, with 80K students in 143 schools, but this is only a very small part of the market there. It's not just a matter of numbers, of course, since Maharishi has noted that "India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda." It's good to promote M-schools in every country, but it's essential for world peace and happiness that M-schools in India get the most attention.
The M-schools in India are financially successful and not at all a burden on the TM movement, but given that there are more than 800 million Hindus in India, it would only be necessary to get 1% to give $100/year in order to fund a larger school and pundit program and other TM initiatives in India, something that could readily be accomplished with heightened public awareness in India of Maharishi's revival of Vedic culture.
The TMO broadcasts on a satellite channel in India, but this is just preaching to the choir, to people who have already learned TM. In order to inform the hundreds of millions of Indians who are not aware of MMY's work, it's necessary to go to where the people are watching and let them know. 61 million households in India have cable TV, reaching about a quarter of the population.
Although most people in India are poor, earning less than $100/mo, there is enough of a middle-and-upper class to contribute significantly to the TMO and help change poor and violent India into Vedic India, a lighthouse for the world (India is the 6th wealthiest country in the world). How to reach the Indian public? Well, definitely not the jittery TM ads made by David Lynch (you might want to cut back on those 20 cups of coffee a day, David; hopefully his planned feature-length film on Maharishi will have a more calm and dignified air), but artistic presentations of the Vedic wisdom on brief TV ads in primetime should quickly bring Maharishi's work to the attention of the Indian public and then the "5000 Club" (donors of 5000 rupees/year) would enable an revenue stream of $800+ million USD/year.
Brief TV commercials featuring Guru Dev may be one way to reproduce the experience of Maharishi when he first met Guru Dev:
"As a thirsty man arrives at a well, so I arrived at the feet of my Master. The quest of a perfect Master was there. The first sight of his personality was enough to make me surrender at his feet. He was the most highly revered sage in India and was held as the embodiment of Divine Consciousness.
One day someone in the street whispered to me, "There has come a great saint, but he does not want to be known by the people. If you wish, then we shall go quietly one night." I said, "There could be nothing better than that."
Maharishi then described his first vision of Guru Dev, in the deep darkness of the night, illumined only by a brief flash of light from a car some distance away. But that glimpse was all that was needed: "In that one moment, the whole life was surrendered."
It's not necessary to produce long infomercials about TM if all it takes one look at Guru Dev to win the hearts of the Indian public. Some of the color video of Guru Dev captures that powerful influence that he was famous for, and if that doesn't work for everybody, then other ad approaches can work.
•••
After a very odd allegation of sexual harassment was lodged against Girish Varma, Director of the TM movement in India, King Tony asked Girish to step down, but this did not happen. In his report in July 2013 on the movement in India delivered along with the reports of other national leaders, Girish only referred to an "unfortunate incident," but did not say anything more about it. Whatever the fact situation, it has not impaired Girish's ability to interact with the highest levels of Indian society. Unfortunately, this may change as Girish was arrested in late December 2013. The accusation against Girish is ludicrous, of course, but since India is an even more loopy legal and public opinion mess than the U.S., it's hard to predict what the outcome will be.
Unacknowledged rumors have it that Girish and other Indian leaders tried to depose King Tony. Tony said let the Shankaracharya decide. So the Indian leaders and Bevan, representing Tony Nader, went to the Shankaracharya, who reviewed the legal documents and heard their arguments. He sided with Bevan and upheld King Tony. But the rift remains, and reportedly Girish is refusing to send more pundits to the USA. There are as of May 2014 about 190 pundits in Maharishi Vedic City, a significant drop from the peak numbers of more than 1000.
I don't see this as a problem, but as an opportunity for Western TM leaders to accept the nudging of Nature -- a more serious fire in the pundit compound occurs in March 2014.
The diminution of charitable giving by the Settles is another one of those nudges, as is the fact that the Director of the TM movement in India has been jailed -- and there may be some problems with U.S. immigration authorities over the 130 pundits who opted for rumspringa; actually, rather than a naïve sort of rumspringa, it's probably just an economic motive: "Although Dr. Sayeed said that the Consulate General was in the process of ascertaining full facts of the case, what is evident is that unprecedented numbers of R-1 visa holders have been vanishing from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi institutions since they began coming here for their training since 2006.
In messages sent to The Hindu earlier, William Goldstein, Dean of Global Development and General Counsel to the Maharishi University of Management, based in Fairfield, Iowa, said that the Global Country of World Peace (GCWP), the U.S. organisation sponsoring the pandits’ R-1 visas and their stay in this country, had not received any prior communication from the scholars before they went “AWOL” (Absence Without Leave).
Mr. Goldstein said that while they did not know for sure what they pandits were doing after their departure from the Vedic city, but suspected that many of them were “working simple jobs in restaurants as the ones who have returned or the few we have information on seem to have followed that pattern”.
He added that it could be that, “Someone is misinforming them about the financial opportunities and the legal implications, and their prime motive appears to be to generate more money for their families,” and there could be an “organised racket brokering the operation”.
Further, Mr. Goldstein said that few, if any, of the pandits spoke English at all, and allegations made by the Chicago-based Hi India newspaper that the pandits’ initial contract signed with the Maharishi institutions for travel to the U.S. had not been translated from English to Hindi were “untrue”." The pundits who jump ship appear to be acting from a feeling of responsibility to their poor familes back in India. Unfortunately, an American "stop-and-rob" is a dangerous place.
TM movement managers should acknowledge that, as MMY said, "India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda, with this total knowledge of Natural Law, the Will of God. And everything is possible under the protective nature of the Will of God, invincible God." Let American know-how and can-do attitude aid the TM movement in India, but give up the idea that there can or should be a sustainable pundit group in the USA until Indian pundit groups are better established, established at the levels envisioned by Maharishi:
“The whole physical universe is the expression of Vedic sounds.
Total Natural Law reverberates in these sounds.
We want to establish and properly maintain in India several groups
of 8,000 Vedic Pandits reciting these Vedic sounds
to enliven the evolutionary power of Total Natural Law
in every grain of creation to soothe our stress-ridden world
and bring order to the disorderly state of world consciousness."
Maharishi - Global Press Conference January 22, 2003
"As Indian national consciousness rises in coherence -- which is the basis of invincibility for the nation then world consciousness will rise in coherence which is the basis of permanent world peace...One sun rises, but its innumerable rays spread light everywhere...So it's natural for the influence of coherence to spread from India to the whole world." -- "India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda, with this total knowledge of Natural Law, the Will of God. And everything is possible under the protective nature of the Will of God, invincible God."
It doesn't make any economic sense to support a large group of pundits in the USA, and it is also inconsistent with MMY's statement about the leadership role of India in restoring Vedic culture. After the pundits leave, the Vedic City facilities in the U.S. can be used by meditators to be a self-sustaining group, using a business model like the Trappists or other like groups. Although the "laser monks" have gone out of business, it seems likely that there are enough meditators who would be interested in buying office supplies from a YF group to make this a viable option. It would almost certainly be necessary to start multiple small businesses for a YF group of substantial size, but there are many niche-market products that could be sold relying on the support of North American meditators -- like Ayurvedic chutney, which MAPI publishes recipes for, but does not sell. In fact, since MAPI-USA is now near Vedic City, Iowa, I don't see any reason why the operation could not be configured to be staffed by yogic-flying monks.
It's not, of course, strictly a matter of economics, although the TM movement's current reliance on a handful of rich westerners clearly is not enough. More important to the future of the movement is the recognition that "India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda." India's long history as the home of Vedic culture makes it "good ground" -- the people are much more likely to be receptive to Vedic wisdom and stick with it, in contrast to the appalling drop-out rate of initiates in other countries, which means resources should now be maximally allocated to India. A few people practice TM outside of India -- that's enough to allow the regeneration of Vedic culture in India without a backlash from a world embraced by darkness.
As Jesus said in the parable of the Sower and the Seed:
"8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold."
Although India is certainly a mess now, the seed of knowledge applied there is much more likely to be productive long-term, while spurts of enthusiastic reception of TM in the West are subject to the drop-out phenomena alluded to by Jesus:
"19 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side.
20 But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it;
21 Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.
22 He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
23 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."
Riot at the pundit compound in Vedic City
The underlying causes for the protest/riot have not been explained by MUM, but hopefully the goofy MUM management of the project will produce a minimum of bad publicity for the movement until the shrinking pundit population in Vedic City is down to zero (pundits number about 50 as of Sept 2015, a sharp drop from the 1050 at peak numbers) -- at least next time a pundit leader is expelled, those genius MUM managers won't call the local cops for assistance! Pundits continue to be expelled...Iowa's leading newspaper on pundit issues
Actually, as frustrating as it is to see more stupid human tricks from MUM management, if the goal of Nature is to remove the pundits from Vedic City, and have them work in India, then this current episode of as-stupid-as-it-gets from MUM managers can be seen as promoting that goal as it highlights the apparent fish-out-of-water character of the pundit presence in Vedic City.
Maharishi has noted that a hand works because the fingers are of different lengths -- like that, humans are of different levels of intelligence and it is absolutely necessary to the success of the movement that dummies run it for the time being, as nauseating as the stupidity is. It seems logical that you would want to have the best possible managers for any enterprise, but a good fit for the people and the situation frequently requires that the unqualified be seen as the best qualified.
The first President Bush was clever enough in his war on Iraq to not push on to Baghdad and oust Saddam, which he knew would destabilize the country. His dimwit son was so angered by the brutal Saddam regime that he killed him, which led to the horrifying mess -- really a problem with no solution -- that we see in Iraq 2014. Only a thug could hold a country like Iraq together and it was terribly irresponsible for Dubya to eliminate Saddam without a follow-through plan that had any chance of success and not just a lot of sloppy thinking about exporting American values of democracy and all that nonsense in a region locked in medieval violence over communal differences.
Maharishi's embrace of incompetent management is not a fluke, but part of the Divine Plan to deep-six the Kaliyuga in the only way that it can be eliminated: gradually. Another example of gradualism is seen in the architecture of the meditation halls on the MIU campus -- Maharishi signed off on round shapes, because these domes would limit the expansion of awareness experienced by users, although he was of course fully cognizant of the Vastu guidelines.
When Bevan was at Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh back in the 60s, MMY asked him to meditate less and perform some task for him. Bevan ignored the request until a workman came around to his meditation hut with a sledgehammer and started knocking it down, which got Bevan into a compliant mood. Perhaps Bevan has insulated himself since then to a point that has reduced his ability to get the message, but it seems clear enough that it's time for the pundits in Vedic City to go back to India, where they belong, in order to create a very strong breakout influence at the Brahmastan in the home of Vedic culture, rather than scattering groups of pundits around the globe. 23MAR2014
“As long as Vedic wisdom remains powerful in India, from that one land tremendously powerful coherence in the world consciousness can be generated by the daily routine of the Vedic Pandits in India itself. And the world will be a beautiful world.”
— Maharishi, May 18, 2005
In a laughable tacit acknowledgement that Girish Varma is not allowing any more pundits under his control in India to be sent to the U.S., MUM officials proudly announce that "Our Movement organizations in America are unified in their support for this program" --
a program which calls for bringing in would-be pundits to MUM on student visas instead of the current system of utilizing R-1 (religious) visa holders in Vedic City, Iowa who are already competent in Vedic performances.
This move is proposed in order to workaround Girish's vision of placing primary emphasis on the development of a large pundit group at the Brahmastan of India. This is almost certainly the correct vision given Maharishi's guidance and the volatile situation in India, where the recent election of a Hindu nationalist could be great for the restoration of Vedic culture or embroil the country in civil war with an undesirable outcome if the radiation of peace, or more importantly, progress, from the pundits in the Brahmastan is inadequate.
An undesirable outcome means as opposed to the U.S. Civil War which had a desirable outcome, including a large death toll which reduced the burden on the earth, just as Krishna engineered such a reduction as described in the Mahabharata -- "Narada also revealed to Krsna that the Lord (Krsna) would soon destroy all the demons, including Kamsa, that the Lord would rule from Dvaraka, and that he would preside over the destruction of millions of people in the Mahabharata war" War, as Maharishi notes, is a natural phenomenon and there will be plenty of time for peace after this inevitable phenomenon, if war or some other destructive natural phenomenon is a coming attraction of the divine plan.
Maharishi loaded praise and titles on Western TM leaders to keep them from jumping ship like Deepak Chopra -- not because Maharishi thought for a second that the dim bulbs in TM management were really resplendent royal rulers -- but really, India alone counts from here on out -- whatever the inclinations and abilities of Indian TM leaders -- and Tony and other Western TM leaders should recognize that soon, despite their limitations. And if there is no such recognition, it doesn't really matter. No matter who thinks that they are in charge of the TM movement, the latent potential of India's one billion Hindus is going to be in the driver's seat.
There is simply no chance that a powerful enough influence of orderliness can be created in a country other than India, an influence enough to dispel the Kaliyuga, and if the TM movement does not dispel the Kaliyuga, then it will dispel the TM movement.
The current president of Brazil practices TM, and is promoting TM, but Brazil is in its worst drought for 50 years, and the stress caused by this and other issues that bedevil all politicians could easily put Rousseff out of office in this fall's elections, and that could easily spell the end of most governmental implementation of TM teaching (Rouseff's approval rating is down to 8% as of Sept 2015). It's the same throughout Latin America, where there are apparently impressive numbers of initiations into TM and group YF practice -- but most of those instructed are in a custodial situation (students, military, etc.) and when the custody ends, practice of TM is likely to end too. And, unfortunately, as laudable and desirable --
-- as the numbers of people learning TM in South and Central America is, I think that there's eventually going to be some sort of pushback from the Church (even with its liberalizing Pope Francis) and other elements who see the TM movement as a threat to their power and influence.
As far as pointing to TM as the reason for any improvements that are noted in Latin America, there is unlikely to be any payoff here (unless some of the Yogic Fliers actually fly, which would certainly have the effect of erasing all doubts about TM's efficacy), since there are no shortage of actors claiming responsibility for improvements in social order. In the Oct 2015 issue of Scientific American, for instance, the former mayor of Cali claims his social and policy changes brought a 35% reduction in homicides (p.47).
Since the TM movement is dead in the water in many places -- Iowa's Vedic City and Fairfield are shrinking -- one has to ask why Latin America is so expansive (for the time being) for the TM movement, and researchers suggest that this receptivity to happiness is common in Latin America: "It's a culture of positive outlook," he said. "It permeates Latin America." But, as Jesus pointed out, seeing enthusiastic spiritual growth doesn't mean it can last -- the weeds of stress and ignorance can quickly choke growth, which is why only India can be a basis for the revival of Vedic culture to the point where the Sat Yuga can be enabled. Many TMers think that this TM movement is just a temporary thing -- a vacation from the Kali Yuga, but the only way that people can live happily on earth for any length of time is to extirpate the Kali Yuga completely, and then the long-lived Sat Yuga will be the reality of life on earth. And the only thing that can end the life of the Sat Yuga, once established, is the long lapse of time with its inevitable entropic influence. Maharishi has said "Free will is the greatest gift of God to man" and those don't want to live in the Sat Yuga will just have to go elsewhere, as the end of the Kali Yuga is always an extinction event for the unhappy -- we can decry the poor choice of living an ignorant life, but every individual has that greatest gift of free will and can do what he wants. When I was a child, I used to go to the amusement park and ride the roller coaster for many hours at a time -- it was what I wanted -- as unamusing as it is to me as a adult -- and those who want to ride the ups and downs of ignorant life can certainly do so even though Guru Dev has enabled an early end to the lifespan of the Kali Yuga.
Even for those in the West who learn TM in a non-custodial setting, the drop-out rates will continue to be so high that growth is simply not sustainable. And although there is a puff of publicity about TM from celebrities, many of them are too confused to be reliable as a means of promoting TM (not that TM administrators have a great record for being reliable -- think Chopra, Domash, and numerous others). Hip-hop musician and businessman Russell Simmons, for instance, who is widely promoted by the TM movement as a celebrity practitioner of TM, has a new book in which he recommends that people sit for 20 minutes thinking the mantra "Rum."
Simmons is trying to be helpful here, hoping to bring the benefits of TM practice to those who cannot afford the hefty instructional fees, but he lacks the background knowledge which would have informed him that TM simply cannot be taught by a book -- the "results will not be good," says the ancient text, the Srimad Devi Bhagavatam.
By all means teach TM wherever you can, but India alone is an environment which could prove friendly to the large scale flowering of Vedic culture. The cultural support for Vedic life is there in India -- the weeds of ignorant life make it impossible for Vedic culture to grow anywhere else, at least until Vedic culture blossoms fully in India.
Any rational person would throw up his hands at the slovenly thinking involved in TM officialdom, but, once again, I have to nod to the Kaliyuga and say "Stupid is good" when it comes to TM management -- let's not let the world freak out from turning up the dimmer switch of enlightenment too quickly. Anyway, stupid may be underrated.
MUM's plan to build their own pundits in Iowa looks like a non-starter, and it's not only because of finances -- the current pundits in residence at Vedic City, Iowa have been students of Vedic recitation since early childhood, but MUM can't bring children into the U.S., and introducing 18-year-olds to Vedic chanting routines in Iowa is unlikely to work well.
Severe beating of Maharishi College student in Bhubaneshwar shows the need to create a greater evolutionary influence in India. Snack wars...definitely not a sign of the rising tide of expanded awareness. More conflict:"There were incidents of violence and bombing at Maharishi College campus yesterday." It doesn't matter if the TM movement falters outside of India, but failure to thrive in India means that the Kaliyuga will continue on its sorry course for the next 427,000 years. Only India can lend the cultural support necessary for the TM movement to thrive. It's good to see the big numbers happening in Latin America, but big numbers and good news in other areas have happened before, only to be shown to be a flash in the pan, like Mozambique.
In February 2015 the TM movement hosted a conference on re-establishing a Vedic India, which was a very encouraging presentation on the progress toward that goal. There was one kind of off-putting note: the nightly TM movement production "Global Family Chat" reported that one of the presenters offered up a birth date of 5114 B.C. for Lord Rama based on an astronomy software search of the sky parameters mentioned in the Vedic literature. However, Lord Rama was the 7th incarnation of Lord Vishnu, and this happened in the latter part of the Treta Yuga, ~900,000 years ago, so it's simply not possible for 5114 B.C. to be the correct time of birth of Rama, although King Tony jokingly told the conference attendees it must be correct, since his own 20th-century birthdate is the same (Jan 10th) as suggested by the planetarium software for Lord Rama.
Maybe TM administrators did not correct the time for fear of being seen as unscientific -- modern humans are currently thought to be only ~200,000 years old, although there has been a steady lengthening of such estimates of modernism in humans over the past decades clearly humans were making tools a long time ago(10 million-year-old teeth could re-write human history). But it would have been better to say nothing than to give credence to information that is clearly inconsistent with the Vedic literature.
Many Indian government officials attended the conference, but TM-practicing Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not, and it's interesting to note that Modi supports GMO agriculture as a means of providing a second "green revolution," so TM leaders should definitely soft-pedal anti-GMO rhetoric in India.
If GMO ag is no good, Modi will find out soon enough -- better for the TMO to emphasize meditation and groups of Yogic Fliers and Pundits rather than antagonizing a national leader who's trying to be pragmatic.
In our effort to reverse the downward spiral of the Kaliyuga and enable the Satyuga, let's not mistake the characteristics of the Satyuga with the path of least action that will allow the Satyuga to happen well before its usual time. Maharishi has described the beautiful purity of the Satyuga: "For invincibility to be real and lasting, its basis must be purity...purity of food, purity of water, purity of environment, purity of all...nothing that is harmful to life should be allowed."
And this purity which is the basis of the long-lasting Satyuga will certainly happen (it's always just a question of time before the restoration of purity and long life on earth, since the 4+ million year Yuga cycle is eternal, like a snow globe that is regularly turned over), but insisting on purity first in terms of environment is not a policy which could be successful on an earth marked by total lack of purity. Let the purity of mind, gained by repeated exposure to that always-pure field of being, lead naturally and easily to general environmental purity. People who learn TM are not required to quit smoking, drinking, eating meat -- in that same spirit, let's not get too invested in insisting on absolute purity in food at present -- people will make better choices when consciousness has expanded and it doesn't make a lot of sense to wear ourselves out in the public arena over difficult-to-achieve food and environmental purity.
Everybody should remember that Jenner was heavily ridiculed when he introduced smallpox vaccination to Europe, but the value of vaccination is overwhelmingly clear despite the fact that in about 1% of cases, vaccination can have adverse effects. But, given the fact that smallpox killed 300 million people even in the 20th Century, no occasional adverse effects could nullify the value of vaccination.
It should be noted that the TM movement skews toward crackpot thinking -- the vaccination rate at the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment is only 47% compared to the usual 90+ percent rate in Iowa. This culture of crackpot thinking should not be allowed to influence TMO policy-making -- obstructionism is not advocated by Maharishi: we don't try to stamp out the darkness, just introduce the light. (Fortunately for Maharishi School students, the State of Iowa is implementing mandatory vaccination for both public and private schools.)
I'm familiar with the TMO's position on GM, and how it differs from previous modification procedures, so no need to email me about this. Here's a statement from Maharishi about GM:
"The sequential evolution of Natural Law from unmanifest to manifest is the key point to understand. This sequential evolution is displayed in the sequential evolution of richas [verses], words, and gaps of the Vedic literature from Ṛk [Veda] to Sama [Veda] to Yajur [Veda] to Atharva Veda and on to unfold all forty aspects of the Vedic literature.
Sequential evolution is the eternal flow of evolution -- Navo-Navo bhavati. It is the sequential evolution of the holistic value of Natural Law. Starting from the holistic value of infinity in the unmanifest, it unfolds sequentially to eventually be the holistic value of the manifest. The sequence that is free from any problems, free from any inhibition of the evolutionary process; that is a sequence of evolution.
It is very, very important -- genetic engineering disturbs this sequence. It disturbs the sequence. That is why it is unnatural. Unnatural means disallowing the natural process of renewal of life -- Navo-Navo bhavati.
Obstruction in evolution is obviously and clearly damaging to life. That's how life gets problems and disease; balance is broken. Sequential evolution is deprived of its natural, direct flow of evolution. Interference in the sequential progression of life is damaging."
I acknowledge the truth of what Maharishi says about evolution, but tremendous damage to evolution is already done by the criminal, unnatural, environment-damaging way of life that the great majority of humans live now, which creates an epigenetic influence that may dwarf any possible negative contributions by genetic modification:
The human body is subject to many types of damage already, never mind GMO contributions -- it's just the price of doing business in a highly dynamic creation: high-speed electrons crash into cells 10,000 times per second (primarily from beta decay of Potassium 40), doing damage that the infinitely resourceful and dynamic powers of Nature contend with countlessly.
Certainly the argument over "junk DNA" illustrates how sketchy scientific knowledge is about genomes, and it's almost certainly the case that you can't fool Mother Nature (“When insecticides overlay transgenic technology, the economic and environmental advantages of rootworm-protected corn quickly disappear,” the scientists wrote.), and GM tinkering will not be useful in the long run, but GMO may be useful in achieving certain short-term goals, so the TMO should not stand in a principled opposition given the utter chaos that prevails in India (and elsewhere, of course). Let expanded awareness do its work in improving the quality of life rather than getting hung up in complaining about technologies that appear to be offering some immediate benefits.
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The ludicrous charges against Girish Varma are dropped.
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When it comes to promoting TM, certainly what works is good: efficacy is the only standard we should apply in bailing out an ignorant and unhappy planet. But it's puzzling to see TM rajas promoting the "human society is better than ever" work of Harvard professor Steven Pinker as if it were somehow supportive of the claims of the TM movement. Pinker says that humans are more peaceful than ever, citing several reasons why he thinks this is true -- but all of these claimed reasons substantially predate the TM movement, so what is the point of latching on to Pinker's ideas?
It doesn't even matter that Pinker's thinking is widely ridiculed in academic circles -- it's just useless and silly to try to ride Pinker's coattails when this Harvard professor, ignorant of the Yuga cycle which always heads in the direction of increasing disorder until the Sat Yuga resets everything in total bliss and purity for a while (1.7+ million years), does not support the TM movement's claims in any way, attributing the claimed diminution of violence to a centuries-old “civilising process” which has come about largely as a result of the increasing power of the state. Other causes cited by Pinker for the claimed decline in violence include the invention of printing, the empowerment of women, enhanced powers of reasoning and expanding capacities for empathy in modern populations, and the growing influence of Enlightenment ideals (not TM enlightenment, but the European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries).
More from political philosopher John Gray on why it is not true that "...modernization and civilization are advancing hand in hand."
The direction of the Yuga cycle has to be in the direction of increasing entropy, increasing disorder and unhappiness. If the Yuga were to proceed in the direction of increasing bliss, it would quickly make the long dream of creation impossible -- a game of hide and go seek in which all is known right off the bat, thus putting an end to the fun and games.
Instead of grasping at straws in an effort to show how nifty TM is, TM rajas should accept the role of increasing disorder in the Yuga cycle, and the inevitability of mass extinction as a means of resolving intolerable levels of disorder. Lord Krishna comes at the end of the Kaliyuga prompted by the pressure that evildoers -- exercising that free will that is the greatest gift of God -- put on the righteous (see Maharishi's commentary on Ch. 4, v. 7-8 of the Gita), so there is simply no way around elimination of unhappy people in order to enable the Sat Yuga. The natural order of creation repeatedly recycles the unhappy to reduce the burden on the earth: "...when the people become predominately sinful, Yama the god of death sometimes engages himself in meditation for some years, during which the population increases and explodes. The gods, frightened by this population explosion, resort to various devices to reduce it. All this has happened again and again countless times."
Although the Natural Law Party was the high water mark for silly in the TM movement (Maharishi noted that we were just wasting our time on political fantasy when he shut down the NLP), this support of Pinker's ideas can't do any good for a movement that needs from TM managers practical and realistic thinking that is also consonant with Vedic natural order and history in order to improve the world and enable the Sat Yuga earlier than usual.
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Three members of the TM community have stepped in front of a train within the last year or so in Fairfield, the most recent being Ronald Hall.
If suicide were OK, then really, everybody should do it -- who would tolerate the misery and stupidity of unenlightened human life if all could disappear simply by destroying the body? But the end of the body does not mean the end of the mind, which is where all the misery resides.
During the TM-teacher training course that I attended at Humboldt State College in August of 1970, somebody asked Maharishi about the fate of a suicide, to which Maharishi replied "It's so bad I don't want to talk about it." In her book All you need is love, Nancy Cooke de Herrera quotes Maharishi: "It is the worst sin against life. It is the most terrible thing you can do to your soul. If a person takes his own life, his bodiless soul is doomed to wander in a state of nothingness until the day when the body would have died naturally. And it is such a waste -- the soul will be reborn to the same test. It will have to relive them, only they will be harder." (p.141 --p.153 in original edition titled Beyond Gurus)
The sage of Jyotish, Parashara, also wrote the Dharmasastra, a guide to behavior in the Kaliyuga, in which he said:
1. Whether from excessive pride, excessive wrath, or from affection, or from fear, should a man or a woman hang one's self, — then this is the destiny that awaits him or her. 2. He or she sinks into a region utterly dark, and filled to the brink with pus and blood; that torment is suffered for sixty thousand years. 3. For such a being there should be no impurity, no libation of water, no cremation, nor any shedding of tears.
From page 28, CHAPTER IV, the Parashara Dharma Shastra
Apparently Nature heavily sanctions suicide because destroying the innocent body solves nothing (it's the mind that needs to become non-existent by purifying it through TM, making it so sattvic -- transparent to the infinite awareness -- that it amounts to no-mind) and it's necessary to sting those who commit suicide so heavily that they never do it again and don't get locked in a pointless series of suicides. It's a hard thing to hear about the fate of one's loved ones, which is why Maharishi was reluctant to discuss it (although it's possible that it's a case of a saint from the Himalayas seeing all ignorant human life as being lived in a pit of muck and not therefore seeing any reason to spend much time differentiating suicide), -- but somebody should say words of warning so that others,
(and there will be others, given the aging and/or at-loose-ends meditator population in Fairfield, some of whom, failing to understand how a spiritual regeneration movement proceeds at a necessary halting pace in the Kaliyuga, are disheartened by their appraisal of the movement's status in Fairfield as well as their own personal problems)
overwhelmed by circumstances, don't make this unfortunate choice because they wrongly see it as a victimless act with no consequences.
In the eternity of time, nearly everybody has spend substantial amounts of time in the many hells, but whatever discomfort people are going through embodied beats living in some ugly hell.
I'm certainly not a one-pointed saint, but the one-pointed do point out that one can gain enlightenment even in a short span of time, especially when imminent death or great misery focuses our attention. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, it's recounted how King Parikshit gains enlightenment when he seeks counsel from sages after being cursed to die from a snake bite within a week. Better to live with grief and listen to Vedic wisdom than throw away a body that could be a vehicle to enlightenment even at the bitter end. Fortunately for all parties, it is possible to rescue one's kin from hell by gaining enlightenment: a famous account of such a rescue is in the Srimad Bhagavatam, in which it is recounted that Prahlad saved his demonic father from hell by automatically sending a pulse of liberation to kin from Prahlad's own liberation.
"The whole purpose of life is to gain enlightenment. Nothing else is significant compared to that completely natural, exalted state of consciousness. So always strive for that. Set your life around that goal. Don't get caught up in small things, and then it will be yours." -Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
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Crackpot management of an Australian Maharishi School underscores the fact that "India is the only country which can assume a parental role for every country of the world with this knowledge of the Veda"
Only India can provide the cultural support that will allow the TM movement to enable the Sat Yuga. The TM movement outside of India is canted heavily to crackpot thinking and is readily susceptible to disabling influences by people unduly concerned with the "otherness" of cultural values brought in by the TM movement. Even if TM management outside of India was always level-headed, it will continue to be a struggle to create an enlightened world unless India leads the way with a large group in the Brahmastan and at least 1% of India's billion Hindus practicing TM -- India alone can reach the critical mass necessary to end the Kaliyuga.
The world certainly needs a bail-out from India -- despite Raja Luis's marvelous efforts in creating YF groups in Mexico, the country is facing a huge crime problem. -- Mexico homicides reach record levels -- (U.S. not so wonderful either, of course -- although the U.S. looks relatively good when you consider the rest of the world: "Not a day in April passed without a terror attack.") Of course, nobody could overlook the chaos that rules in India, moving any solution to the nation's staggering problems far beyond the reach of Prime Minister Modi without a large input from a large number of Transcendental Meditators and yagya-performing pundits, which can only be enabled by advertising the benefits of TM effectively to a wide Indian audience.
And some of that wide audience certainly can easily contribute to a well-funded TM movement in India -- There are 219,000 USD millionaires in India, and India is the 6th wealthiest country in the world.
15 or 30 second TM ads on Indian cable TV (avoiding national satellite, in order to avoid overwhelming the inadequate TM-teaching infrastructure) which illustrate the invincibility benefits for the individual are likely to be the most effective way to bring a large number of people into TM centers. The TM movement is fond of pitching TM primarily in terms of national invincibility -- insisting to an uninterested audience that research shows that TM brings world peace -- but that pitch does not appear to be successful, given the decades that the TM movement has tried to present itself as a World Peace Government and the lackluster results. People need to hear a hyper-localized reason to learn TM, not talk about some utopia. How can I protect myself against the demands of a high-stress world? This is the question that stressed minds want to deal with, and it should be the primary focus of an Indian (or any country, really) TM-ad campaign: Invincibility and happiness to the individual should be 95% of the message -- 4% for the Vedic literature roadmaps to creation and physiology (for Indian ads only, of course), 1% for utopia. And this message is best delivered in a few seconds, not only because stressed minds can't follow a lot of logic, but because it only takes a few seconds to attract those ready to make a giant leap in their evolution. Maharishi's description of his first meeting with Guru Dev:
"We quietly went up, there was nothing to see, it's all dark and somehow we felt someone was sitting on a sort of chair or something, reclining, comfortable. We sat down quietly, we found two or three other men were also sitting. No one was talking, whispering, it was all dark, everything. It so happened, about maybe fifteen, twenty minutes passed and it happened that far distance a car was coming and it showed the light on the terrace, and that was the first sight of Guru Dev. Just on the flash of the car, maybe a mile away from the car, but it just turned, it just turned for a moment and I was.. it was just enough to have a glimpse of him. And then I thought, "Yes, it seems the time has come." That one glimpse of a flashy light and that was enough to take decisions."
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TM administrators are trying to figure out how to run the IAA group in Fairfield, now that the Settles' generous support is no longer possible. One of the options floated is to charge money to meditate in the dome, a counterproductive move that was tried before.
There are other problems with the IAA grant program. Since many people receiving the grant were sleeping during their time in the dome, administrators decided to monitor grant recipients so that they were not paying people to "doze for dollars." This monitoring does not contribute to a healthy atmosphere in the dome -- being watched while you are meditating is an inherently uncomfortable thing, and falling asleep in meditation is a sometimes necessary thing.
Also, many people receiving the grant, which is not means-tested, don't need the financial support, having other sources of income like Social Security or income from work or investments, inheritances, etc.
IAA grants should be re-structured to feature only a very small cash grant, with participants living in the virtually empty Pundit campus trailer park in Vedic City, and eating meals provided on site. With no rent or food obligations, participants should be able to get by on a small ($100/month ?) cash grant instead of the current $800/month. Those receiving this $100 could work a few hours a week in food service or some other task in the Pundit campus (all the time saved by not having to cook for themselves enabling such work) -- others with income from outside jobs could choose to not do such work and not receive a cash grant at all. Or, possibly, if means testing is implemented, those with outside incomes could pay a low rate for rent and food at the campus. These steps would eliminate the need to monitor meditators in the Dome, and also solve the shortfall in donations used to support the IAA grant program.
Another option to make the IAA sustainable is to do what groups like the Trappist monks have done for centuries: meditate full-time and work part-time making something or providing some service that people need (one Trappist group makes caskets, for instance), a hybrid approach enabled by communal living and dining.
Of course, the real answer to a more affluent (in terms of both money and consciousness) approach to the IAA situation is to have a lot more people meditating in the U.S. Since TM administrators have never shown much aptitude for effective marketing of TM (most TM administrators still regard a sick puppy like the Natural Law Party as a rip-roaring success while ignoring the 50,000 initiations a month inspired by the Merv Griffin show in 1975), this is unlikely to happen until that day when some foam bunny lifts off in a convincing way..."If the needs and desires of a devotee are fulfilled without much exertion and trouble then closeness to God is verified on the material level." Maharishi's commentary on Ch. 9, v. 22 of the Gita.
But, as always, one has to consider the Divine Plan, which calls for a gradual increase in enlightenment values in order to avoid a fear and havoc response in the world. An effective TM promotion campaign in the US would quickly bump up against hard rocks of ignorance in a population unable to parse the difference between TM and Hinduism (the Malnak decision has no chance of being overturned). The David Lynch Foundation is teaching TM in a few schools, but these are schools in poor neighborhoods where the parents do not have the education, money, or inclination to challenge school authorities -- an expansion to schools in middle-class neighborhoods can't possibly be successful, no matter the results the DLF finds in its at-risk cohort projects. Because of this fundamental cultural incompatibility, only India could be home to a TM movement of enough size to turn the tide of the Kaliyuga.
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Maharishi: Don't Speak Ill, Remain Pure, 1964
Everyone has to discharge one's duty towards himself and towards spreading of this meditation in whatever capacity one can. And never undermine any other's attempt or desires in whatever humble way it may be.
One thing of very great importance: that now when you have been meditating for some time, purity has grown in life quite a lot. As the mind gains more and more of the Being, mind becomes more and more pure.
But one thing which you have to be very cautious about is that you don't think evil of anyone, don't speak ill of anyone. Otherwise speaking ill and thinking ill of someone, dwelling on the weaknesses of someone, all their bad qualities come to your heart; [this way] you get your heart and mind spoiled.
So when through meditation, purity is growing in life, we don't invite this mud from outside to make us impure anymore. We have to be cautious against our thoughts that we don't think ill of anyone, and we don't do ill to anyone naturally.
Speaking ill of others is a very bad.... We say it makes the cloth dirty, makes the whole personality very dirty and impure. That we have to guard against in our dealings and feelings with people. Very important; very, very important. It is as important as daily practice of meditation.
In the olden days in India, there was a practice that if some man did some great sin, then the way to repent it was that he would cover his body with a cloth like that and will go to any village. Standing out of the village, he would shout out: my name is such and such, and I come from that village, and I happened to be doing like that and like that and like that. He would just announce it and go ahead, and keep on announcing from village to village.
And the effect was: all the people who heard him, if in their evening meetings with their fellow men, they talk about that, then the contention is that they partake of his sin and after some time he becomes pure. Just by talking about the sinner, the people who talk about him share his sin.
This is very dangerous. Someone has done something wrong and if we dwell on that and talk it over with someone, we have been affected by that sin and we spread that sin; we partake of his sin and take it upon us.
Anyone who has done any mistake there or there or there, we just don't speak of it. Otherwise we will only be shrouding ourselves with the sins of others. Very important, especially now when through this Transcendental Meditation we are making ourselves more and more full with Being, means more and more full with purity, then we have to guard against this thing which is very dangerous.
No one thinks that if I am talking ill of someone, then no one thinks that I am taking over his sin. It is a common practice in the world to simply talk something wrong done by others. It is just very harmful for us.
Question (inaudible, about newspaper writers?)
They do a great service as far as amending of the wrong is concerned, but as far as partaking of his sin is concerned, they do partake. They help the sinner by spreading the news about him and everybody talks about him, and then all of them partake of the sins. As far as partaking of the sin is concerned, that is helpful for the sinner.
In Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna said to Arjuna at one point [Gita 9:1, see below] that I am giving you this most secret wisdom because, one condition out of many that He said was, that you never speak ill of others (anasuya). That is you don't speak ill of others, for this quality in you I think you deserve this wisdom, so I give this wisdom to you. Just this quality of not speaking ill of others.
Out of my own experience, I tell you, in the ashram of my Guru Dev, there were 100s of people, all good disciples. And everyone after all is a human being. No aspirant is ever perfect. They come to the feet of the master for that perfection. So everyone has his own failing there and there and there. I had my own failings, I never knew what were they, but must be because no human is ever perfect.
One thing I was famous about is that I will not speak ill of anyone. I would always cherish a hope of his becoming better sooner or later. I would always cherish a hope.
If someone says: that man has done like that and such a bad man. [I would say:] “Now that he is in the ashram he will improve.” Always I cherish a hope against all the wrongs done by all the people.
And the effect that you find today is all this world Movement to bring peace to every man all around the world; it is a very great thing in the long history of the world. This great force of purity and strength for spiritual regeneration of entire mankind, no surprise [that it] is based on the faculty of mind that will not cherish into the wrongs of others.
Bhagavad Gita 9:1
The Blessed Lord said:
Now I shall fully declare to you, who do not cavil, this the greatest secret, the knowledge combined with the experience, having known which you will be freed from evil.
“Anyone who has done any mistake there or there, we just don't speak of it. Otherwise we will only be shrouding ourselves with the sins of others.” -- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
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Maharishi on Behavior and Surroundings
"If someone makes an ill-humored remark, a joyful mind that is fully developed and full of love and contentment responds to it with forgiveness. The joyful man does not mind the wrong, because his is a strong mind. a strong mind has the ability of tolerance; a weak mind takes upon itself all the insult and all the ill-humor of the utterance.
Another point may be made in this connection: If someone has already had doubts regarding another man's behavior, even if that man expresses something of love and joy, the doubter keeps on having doubts because his doubts were present before the conversation started. So a doubting or unkind mind, even if there have been reasons for the doubts in the past, fails to enjoy the joyfulness and sincerity of the other. Thus, it is not the present behavior of the man that is causing the other to be doubtful; rather it is the state of his own mind.
So as far as the influence of the atmosphere upon the individual is concerned, the state of mind is of primary value. The nature of the atmosphere turns and takes shape according to the state of mind of the individual. If one puts a red glass to his eye, he sees everything as red; if he looks through a green glass he sees everything as green. Whatever the individual's state of mind, it reflects itself. But due to ignorance, generally, the atmosphere is held to be responsible for it.
The individual is responsible for the atmosphere. True it is that the individual creates the atmosphere and the atmosphere in turn has its influence on the individual. But when the mind of the individual is strong, functioning at its full potential, then he is able to make the best use of the surroundings and circumstances. This is the art of behavior with others. The art of action and the art of behavior lie in making things favorable for us and in not making them unfavorable. The atmosphere is there for us to use and not for making us miserable. If someone has said something, it is his action, his responsibility in saying it. If it is useful to us, we enjoy it, accept it, think about it, act on it, and derive benefit from it. But if it is not useful and elevating or favorable to us, then we do not think of it again and again; we do not attend to it. If it happens to be an expression of something bad, and if we are not responsible for it, and the speaker thrusts the responsibility for the wrong on us, then he is in the wrong. We do not bring that wrong to mind and mull it over and over. If we do so, we are putting a bad thought in our mind, which was not our own fault in the first place.
Therefore, once and for all, we must make our mind such that it becomes a principle of life that we naturally think and act in a way that is elevating and beneficial to us. This way we derive great benefit and advantages for ourselves and others. We do not go for damaging or malicious thoughts, either to reject or accept; indifference is the weapon be used against any negative situation in life.
This is the art of behavior. If someone has done us an injustice, we do not harbor it or think about it. Perhaps it was a mistake. If we permit it to affect our future actions toward him, we are not giving him the opportunity to improve in his relations with us, and we also suffer. Even if he does harbor ill-feelings toward us, we will benefit him and ourselves if we still behave toward him with love and tolerance. In this way, we help the atmosphere to improve, and, with an improved atmosphere, we are better served." SBAL, pp. 178-179
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