Corboy wrote...
"
Collins-Smith reported meeting other artists who took up TM and discovered they were unable to care about or enjoy the arts they'd formerly loved. And even in her early years with Maharishi, Collins-Smith noticed a very high turn over among the support staff: over time, meditators became passive, zoned out, inefficient - and had to be replaced"

Let's see, John, Paul, George and Ringo did TM. HMMMM??? Maybe that's why they broke up!!! Lost their artisitc ability!!!

Stevie Wonder did it too!!! Listen to Jesus Children of America to hear what he thought about TM. Here is a hint, he liked it. That song was from the album Inner Visions, one of his most critically acclaimed.

Maurice White, Phillip Bailey and the rest of Earth, Wind and Fire had a group Trancendental Meditation session before every concert!! They were hot in the seventies!!!

I could go on and on......

Really Corboy, where do you come up with some of this stuff!!!

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Liebnitz,

You really must get a clue.

NOT EVERYONE IS THE SAME. We are not all like the same model of car. We have different biologies. Basically, we are not all like you.

Also, whether or not TM practice damages a person's ability to think clearly depends on how many years someone did TM, how many hours a day, etc.

You are not sufficiently distinguishing, recognizing or perceiving DIFFERENCES among people.
Keep working on that 'critical thinking' idea.

Sylvia

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Sylvia wrote above....

NOT EVERYONE IS THE SAME. We are not all like the same model of car. We have different biologies. Basically, we are not all like you.

Also, whether or not TM practice damages a person's ability to think clearly depends on how many years someone did TM, how many hours a day, etc.

I agree. We're all different. I usually am not a victim of the choices I make. That's why I make them.

The Beatles went to India and spent weeks meditating with the Maharishi. George Harrison wrote the song "Across the Universe" while on this extensive "Residence course."

Just as it is foolish to attribute all good things that happen to one to a particular religious experience (i.e. TM, LGATs, Religions) it is equally foolish to attribute every negative experience one has to these experiences also.

That's simply thinking critically.

Keep the ad hominen attacks coming!! You're really hurting my feelings, you know!!!

liebnitz is just a flamer who only wants to discredit us. It's more than obvious from his posts that all he wants to do is plug Sterling. Obviously since he loves them so much, he must try to discredit our knowledge anyway he can. Apparently educating himself is beyond his reach since he's in brainwash mode thanks to Sterling.

Really, liebnitz, don't think we haven't read all the crap you've posted or tried to post before from other 'tweeners? You all sound alike. Instead of gaining converts, your rhetoric only proves what we say all the more.

Hey Liebnitz,

FYI, I'm what used to be called a "Movement Brat" or one of the first "Children of the Age of Enlightenment", bopped around while my Mom was bopping around the world to attend courses with Maharishi. As a kid, I'd had exposure to all the 'early days' of the TM Movement. I call them the Early Daze!

FYI, yes the Beatles got in trouble for being off the program on those early TM residency courses. They weren't meditating 'like they were supposed to', they were busy playing music and having fun.

Let's see "Dear Prudence" was written to Prudence Farrow (Mia's sister) who was meditating as she was told to, and wouldn't 'come out to play'. The last I'd heard is that Prudence and her husband Al Bruns are still high up in the TM Movement; but I lost track many years ago.

"The Fool on the Hill" is about Maharishi.

Other well known and wonderful music produced by the Beatles at that time, but cannot think of them this moment. They wrote a lot of music on that one course in Rishikesh India - INSTEAD of meditating! And many lyrics are TM -insider parables.

Earth Wind and Fire meditated before performing for a few years. But they did not meditate twice per day as they were 'supposed to', nor did they honor other lifestyle guidelines set out by Maharishi.

When I was a young TM-Principessa, I was asked out by Mike Love (Beach Boys), Andy Kaufman, Ned Beaty (and I declined all three, btw). The Beach Boys' beautiful Santa Barbara property, ocean view, had LOTS of non meditating-type activities going on! Except that Prudence was 'on the program', and often quietly fixing delicious vegetarian meals for all.

Trust me, for each of them, their incredible creativity was NOT due to their regular practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique, as it was taught. :wink:

I was tricked by reading "Autobiography of a Yogi" when I was a lot younger, and naive. Then I read most of Yogananda's other books as well, and even signed up for the correspondence Kriya Yoga course, and went to a few meditation meetings.
The meditation practice really did nothing for me, and the meetings did nothing as well. I just found them incredibly boring.
I did order some tapes of Yogananda speaking, and he was a damn good speaker!

(I still get mail to this day from their center, from ordering something 15 years ago!!!!)

What did catch me for a while, were some of Yogananda's writings on "success".
He has a little booklet called "The Law Of Success", and many of his other writings touch upon those same "western" ideas. (Paramahansa Tony Robbins).

I wonder if Yogananda was self-deluded?
Do you think he really believed his own stories?
After all, what he was talking about is pretty much in line with Hinduism and the Atman.
Do you think he knew it was BS, but felt he had to do this to attract a western audience and then bring them to "God".

If he was having sex with young women, then he was a blatant conman.
But I do wonder if he was "sincere" in his Hindu beliefs. There are countless millions who believe most of what he talked about.
A part of me thinks the guy really did believe his own advertising, but that could be because I do not have the facts on him.

He certainly could NOT do any "miracles", and showed no evidence for this.
But don't most religions hold out "miracles" to attract an audience?

I can see how there would still be many believers in Yogananda around. He was very persuasive, and I could see people structuring their entire life on his teachings.
If you realize that he was a fraud, your entire internal structure of reality would feel like its collapsing.

Coz

(PS: please don't let "liebnitz" (Leibniz) spoil this fantastic thread with a bunch of nonsense. Just ignore him)

Cosmophilospher wrote:

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I was tricked by reading "Autobiography of a Yogi" when I was a lot younger, and naive. ... I did order some tapes of Yogananda speaking, and he was a damn good speaker!

A year ago or so I was corresponding with someone who was recovering from SRF involvement. He had a really sharp mind and was able to hammer out in fiery and inspiring detail on how silly many of the concepts were that captivated him so much. It seemed that such a person was well beyond the point of possible relapse.

Going through the books to decide if he should throw them away or keep them for reference, he started reading and then something unexpected and terrible happened -- he got sucked in by the siren's call of submission to spiritual authority that promised the world and beyond. Even with a firm understanding of the many problems that arise when we submit ourselves to the projection of an external, all-knowing mystical parental figure, he nevertheless relapsed fully into the SRF fantasy world with its hierarchical zoo of magic saints and flying gurus.

Yogananda was very charismatic and a good writer and orator. [Although, he relied heavily on SRF editors to give a decent readable form to his material; and before SRF attracted skilled writers to their staff, he had partners (Dhirananda and Nerode) that helped him out with many early works, who later tried to sue Yogananda for taking all the credit.] I hate to use this over played out example, but it's very appropriate here -- Hitler was a very charismatic speaker just like Yogananda. That doesn't mean that he had any special spiritual insight or even a basic sense of morality.


Cosmophilospher wrote:

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I still get mail to this day from their center, from ordering something 15 years ago!!!!

A lot of ex-SRF people have mentioned this. Jokes have been made about how much paper and expense they waste on this. I still get mail myself.


Cosmophilospher wrote:

Quote

I wonder if Yogananda was self-deluded? Do you think he really believed his own stories?

I personally don't think so. He spoke of the importance of subsisting on just enough of a vegetarian diet to keep the body healthy and to rely more and more on 'direct' [i:784edcb381]pranic[/i:784edcb381] energy to sustain the body. If he really believed this, why was he clearly overweight? He even spoke of people that had no need of food whatsoever. Being an advanced yogi himself, why could he not even control his own overactive appetite? If he really believed what he was preaching, I feel that he would at least have controlled his voracious appetite enough to try to live what he was teaching, at least to a slight degree, but it appeared that he even didn't try.

He also spoke of limiting the amount of sleep we get and to use this time for meditation and such. Limiting the amount of food and sleep we get is a very old technique for breaking down a person's will. Yogananda also taught meditation practices that incorporated oxygen and sensory deprivation techniques. To me, it appears that he was attacking our critical thinking abilities on all fronts.

Yogananda had his personal quarters surrounded by young nuns (the older ones were housed further away). SRF even admits that nuns were in and out of his bedroom at all hours of the night, but they claim that they were merely taking dictation as he had inspirations which many times came to him during the night. He spoke of the spiritual value of abstinence, but appears to have followed that as closely as the meager diet he taught.

Yogananda was a swami which is a Hindu monk (and then later supposedly got promoted to paramahansa, although some contend that he simply gave the title to himself). Like most monastics of various religions, the men and women are suppose to be housed separately for obvious reasons. If Yogananda truly believed in the value of the religion he preached, what was he doing violating this basic practice that he himself even enforced for his own SRF monastics?

In my opinion, Yogananda is a text book example of a cult leader. Just because he has written romantic religious lullabies, doesn't make him spiritual or even a decent human being.


Cosmophilospher wrote:

Quote

After all, what he was talking about is pretty much in line with Hinduism and the Atman.

He created a strange mix of Christianity and Hinduism to attract a wealthy western crowd. But they really only mix superficially. Hinduism allows for deification of all kinds of saviors while Christianity only allows for one -- Jesus. By mixing the two, he took the fanatical devotion of the Christian mentality and projected it onto himself and his line of gurus. He got the best of both worlds, but I personally don't feel that the two religions are anything alike.

To make things worse, the concept of the Atman from the Upanishads is opposed to projected spiritual authority, even within the Hindu religion itself. I don't feel that the ideas of the Atman even mix with its parent religion, let alone Christianity:

Quote

... Now, if a man worships another deity, thinking: ‘He is one, and I am another’, he does not know. He is like an animal to the gods. As many animals serve a man, so does each man serve the gods. Even if one animal is taken away, it causes anguish to the owner; how much more so when many are taken away! Therefore it is not pleasing to the gods that men should know this. -- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, I. iv. 10

But Yogananda states that through worship you can reach a type of oneness described as the Atman/Brahman/Self and erroneously equates these concepts with 'God'. But in the Upanishads from which he pulled these concepts from, it's stated that worship of spiritual authority figures creates a division preventing the proposed perception of oneness.

Yogananda took ideas from different schools of Hinduism and then mixed in some Christianity to make the dish appear more palatable to a Western audience. What all these different elements share is that they're all emotionally charged concepts. They're all contradictory concepts as well allowing them to bypass reason, hitting you directly emotionally. Like a commercial, if they can hit you emotionally and bypass your reason, they got you. It's a marketing tactic and Yogananda like many others, played it well.

The idea of submitting to a spiritual authority figure as the answer to life's problems is very appealing because it's easy (or at least appears that way). It offers the answers to all our questions and offers a snug little womb to crawl back into. This is why people like Yogananda are so successful; they've learned how to reach people on this level. Reason goes out the window when people hear of a cosmic parental figure that's going to rock them in their arms for all eternity. This is why we can pick up a Yogananda [or insert your particular spiritual flavor of the month here] book and fall head first back into the fantasy world.

We need to examine our need for cosmic super-parents if we wish to truly recover from our cult involvement. We may become disillusioned with our particular cult, but if our need is still there, we'll just find another (one that hides their ugly side better perhaps).

Toni wrote:

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... "Dear Prudence" was written to Prudence Farrow (Mia's sister) who was meditating as she was told to, and wouldn't 'come out to play'.

I tend to go with this view of the event:

“At some point, Mia Farrow's sister Prudence lapsed into something like meditation-induced autism (another almost inevitable result of offering a trance-inducing exercise to all comers), and was brought out from her seclusion by John and the others singing the tune that bears her name. When one technique is prescribed for everyone, such cases are bound to occur... bootleg listeners will recall how Lennon tells the story over the coda of the widely available "Dear Prudence" demo tape.”

[www.trancenet.org]

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We need to examine our need for cosmic super-parents if we wish to truly recover from our cult involvement. We may become disillusioned with our particular cult, but if our need is still there, we'll just find another

Here is an excerpt from article that examines exactly the process Yellowbeard describes:

[www.deikman.com]

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So we are left with a pressing questions, "How can one separate the genuine from the counterfeit?", "How can one judge a spiritual or utopian group and its leader?"

The first step in answering the questions is to realize that confused with intimations of the spiritual are longings and impulses derived from childhood. Thus, although a person may wish to find meaning and certainty, to serve God and humanity, he or she may also want to be taken care of, to find a home, to be praised and admired, protected and loved. These latter yearnings are seldom acknowledged because adults are not supposed to be motivated by them. Nevertheless, in seeking to gratify those wishes we are drawn to join groups that seem to be new families and to accept leaders as surrogate parents. Covertly, the "bliss" that is sought and frequently experienced is that of children who have been rescued from uncertainty and responsibilities, who have found a home.

If you want to examine this process, you may find it fascinating (and perhaps very upsetting) to compare what you've learned about Yogananda with what people have learned about the career of Carlos Castaneda. CC he appropriated material from ancient spiritual traditions, reported it as factual, but gave it his own covert twist, and presented the material in such a way as to pander to people's craving for magic and for magical parent figures.

Castaneda eventually started a group called Tensegrity and after his death, people broke silence and reported that CC had been leader of a cultic inner circle, and a lot of people were harmed. Five members of the inner circle vanished after he died and are presumed dead.

All this is described in Amy Wallaces' memoir 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' (you can read the reviews on Amazon.com) and in an article here:

[www.magicalblend.com]

The amazing thing is one member of the inner circle left the group for ten years(!), then returned. Apparently she just couldnt give up on the craving to be special, and perhaps couldnt give up the intensity of being a member of a high pressure group. All this is remarkably similar to the episode described by Yellowbeard in which the former SRF member relapsed.

Finally Yellowbeard's observations that the need for magic the need for magical authority figures must be examined otherwise you can just go through one guru after another:

Mark Miller calls this 'myth making' and discusses this in relation to a guru named Da Free John (DFJ). He has changed his name since Miller wrote his letter and is currently known as Adi Dam Samiraj.

Many of us use a myth as a way to access our deepest hopes and mobilize our energy. To question the myth is to question our own capacity for hope--which is why people often panic or get furious when attempts are made to warn them that the person they love or worship may be unsafe..

[lightmind.com]

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Once people have become involved in the practice of myth-making, all kinds of abuses and inappropriate developments are possible, both intentional and unintentional.

'This myth-making activity becomes habitual and unconscious in those who are most closely involved with DFJ. [i:2a1a79187c]I have also seen this process operating in people who've never even met DFJ, but who've deeply bought into the image created in his books and tapes.[/i:2a1a79187c]

As I see it, everything associated with DFJ, including his books, his talks, his manner of living and his evolution into a religious icon over the past 5 years or so all work together to justify and recruit people into the "esoteric" practice of DFJ mythologization.

'the essence of what makes the whole phenomenon of DFJ and his community possible is the collective commitment of all involved to mythologizing everything associated with DFJ.... Devotees inject their spiritual fantasies and expectations into their perceptions of DFJ and his behavior in a habitual way that gets reinforced by others in the community. Their vision becomes clouded and their discrimination is compromised because of this. The degree to which individuals do this, and the way they do it varies, but it is a fundamental characteristic of those within the group.'

Miller uses an interesting choice of words when he calls this process of myth making an 'esoteric practice'. Shared hero-worship becomes a powerful glue that binds a group together. If group members tacitly agree to keep thier veneration of the guru a secret, this binds them even closer to each other--and makes it much harder for anyone outside of the group to identify what has happened to their loved one. The shared intensity of keeping custody of this secret is very difficult to give up.

Miller then makes another observation:

Quote

You mentioned that you didn't understand how all the things I said about the group and DFJ could be true if intelligent people like your cousin and myself were involved.

'What happens is that you develop a blind spot when dealing with anything relating to DFJ, and to some extent in ancillary areas. With respect to most aspects of your life, you continue to be a largely "normal" and rational person. So it's not like you have to be a glassy-eyed automaton to be trapped in a cult. That's the popular picture of cult members, but I doubt it's true of very many people in ANY cult. There's a few people like this in DFJ's group, but most people are relatively ordinary, albeit with a blind spot that obscures their discrimination regarding DFJ

A high IQ and an excellent education may offer no protection.

People can remain high functioning in many ways, earn good livings, enjoy respect and trust in society at large, yet be completely mesmerized by a charismatic leader. Its similar to the way fine and intelligent persons will tolerate horrendous abuse from a spouse or partner and stay involved with that person, much to the dismay of thier friends and relatives.

It is true that Yogananda was quite chubby in photos.
I am sure the faithful have some sort of excuse for that.

Just like the nutty "proof" that his body rotted slower than a mere mortal when he "left his body", that is, when he DIED like the rest of us mere mortals will.

Also, i can't recall, did Yogananda make claims to be able to perform "miracles" himself?
I can't recall right now, as its been a while, but i am quite sure he did.

Yogananda did teach the "Christ Consciousness" idea, that we can all achieve the miraculous superpowers of Christ if we use his methods. This brings in the folks who want to have a super-Grandiouse Self to worship. That is also a part of his teaching. That the Self can become this super-powerful thing, that is basically God. You can become a God.

I have his little book "The Law Of Success" in front of me. Its an interesting little book.
His ideas about Will Power are actually quite fanatical, that is, he says you can achieve anything in life by exercising your Will Power. He actually displays an extreme, fanatical belief in the Power of Will to achieve anything in life, even using some violent metaphors. (of course there is SOME truth to this).

Here is a quote from Yogananda which shows something interesting.

"There are always two forces warring against each other within us. One force tells us to do the things we should not do; and the other urges us to so the things we should do, the things that seem difficult. One voice is that of evil, and the other is that of good, or God".

I find that very interesting.
He seems to be stating that he has an "evil" force inside of him telling him to do the things "he should not do".
This is what can happen to people who are fanatics, and extremists. For instance, because they believe "sex is evil", then they end up thinking about it 24/7, and commiting abnormal sexual acts. Whereas a person who sees sex as normal and healthy, often doesn't have that pathological split in their psyche.

I don't know about you guys, but i sure don't hear the "force of evil telling me to do bad things"!!
I think that tells you a lot about Yogananda right there.
Perhaps he was a disturbed individual, with a WAR going on in his psyche between Good and Evil, with the force of Evil telling him to do bad things?

Coz