TM - Maharishi School speaker - introduced to Maine schools
Posted by:
Martin Adanac
()
Date: June 17, 2006 11:01PM
Hi, Toni & Peppermint -- maybe I need to revise my thinking that the manipulative little weasel is scarrier than any possible side effects from TM. There are some really scarry side effects that I have seen: [i:51e2e46c60]you must have been doing something wrong[/i:51e2e46c60] is the always-and-only explanation.
[b:51e2e46c60]TM cannot do harm. Mahesh is the greatest good. Mahesh known best.[/b:51e2e46c60] This seems to permeate what Eric Hoffer called "the true believer", the person for whom [i:51e2e46c60]the leader[/i:51e2e46c60] is sole decision-maker, thus freeing the individual from any worldly responsibility other than living, enjoying the fantasy.
Just how people can make this shift from a world-view they have directly experienced into one that is total fantasy (as least, fantasy from the perspective of that former view) is beyond my ability to grasp. I have seen it in a couple of friends, however, so I know it is real.
This "event" occurs in almost all human activity and, for the most part, goes unnoticed as, for example, people change political alliances, become involved in clubs, social endeavours, charities, hobbies or, most likely to be noted, religions.
TM and Maheshism is not a conventional religion, but is a religion nonetheless. It is destructive in that, as one of Mahesh's own close followers observed behind closed doors: he sucks you dry like an orange and throws away the peel.
People not directly involved in the cult-activity of TM-groups may not be able to or willing to observe this, but extensive observation reveals an organization of benign enough appearance with an armoured underbelly and intentions an ebola virus could be proud of. (OK, that last image is a little over the top.)
But TM/Maheshism is dangerous, do not forget this ever. Its saving grace is that like many a megalomanical undertaking, it is full of disorganized planning, followers trained not to think, muddled goals and grandiose ambitions with little to guide them other than Mahesh's own self-agrandising ambitions and overestimation of his own worth.
Mahesh admired Adolph Hitler and even had one of his followers read,[i:51e2e46c60] Mein Kampf[/i:51e2e46c60] to him (probably because he was too vain to get spectacles). Konrad Heiden, in his introduction to a modern printing of [i:51e2e46c60]Mein Kampf[/i:51e2e46c60] recalles a court case [not totally explained] in which Hitler declared, in part, [i:51e2e46c60]... foreign policy in itself is merely a means to an end. In questions of foreign policy[,] I shall never admit that I am tied to anything. ...[/i:51e2e46c60] -- This idea of foreign policy occurs in the book and seems interpreted by Mahesh as "foreign policy" [or The Holy Tradition] is what I say it is whenever I say it is. -- This is a reflection on how Mahesh and by extension his organization operates. Happily, it is a formula destined for the junk heap, hobbled by its own ineptitude. Unhappily, there will be many innocent lives wasted along the way.
Solution? None, really. Don't get involved. Stand back. (Warn your friends.) Watch if you must; let nature take its course. A friend with a nicely developed personality said that the whole organization was like watching a train wreck: too horrible to contemplate, yet impossible not to watch.