Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Martin
()
Date: March 18, 2005 07:29AM
Toni, Campos - Mahesh gives everyone and everything "spiritual" a bad name. The up side is that the legitimate ones simply go on being legitimate.
I paid $60 (US, I think) to learn tm. I paid for a residence course and for the two parts of the teacher training course; I had a good job at the time, so it wasn't a financial strain. Then I got some money from having been in an auto accident; it was just enough to go to Mallorca at the end of '71 for my first ATR and everything after that was free. I have no idea why Mahesh apparently liked me. He always made sure I had a nice room. He gave me advanced techniques (which were experimental by the looks of the info at TranceNet and Minet.org).
One of my closest friends (living in California) and I were in the same room with Mahesh at the same time he blasted the rather large group of heavy unstressers we were carrying around (because they were simply behaving too bizarrly to let go home) "these people are a nuisance" ... we both remember the incident. But we only met on the Internet many, many years later in a tm discussion forum that was fashioned by lucifer himself in the manner of hell. Funny that.
I know Prudence Farrow. She married a friend of mine, before Al. We all lost touch years and years ago and she and John apparently broke up. Prudence was funny in a different way. I remember her telling me she was pregnant. She said it in her tiny little girl's voice. She said she was surprised because she and John and only been married "just a little while". She went on to tell me that she thought it took a real long time. :shock:
I knew Keith Wallace well, I suppose, at least well enough to say hello to. I knew Bevin, too. Bevin was a nice, sweet kid then, not the moronic, sycophantic butterball he seems to have turned into.
I was having breakfast one beautiful early morning in Seelisberg with a lovely English lady who was wearing a long string of glass beads. Later Edna turned out to be Lady Edna Linell and the glass beads were probably $40,000 worth of diamonds. You just never knew in those days.
I knew Vincent Snell and his wife Peggy very, very well. They were lovely people but I doubt Vincent was much in the US. He is in the Lake Louise film, but just standing there. Vincent and Peggy were really nice. I would never think to cast them as tm-ers :D (I usually don't like to use Smilies, but they just seem to fit now)
Then, yes, there's the sex. Discrete, I suppose, but remember I was that odd combination of cynic and trubeliever. And I was very busy on projects for Mahesh and really paid little attention to others except at the dinner table. We had some great laughs. Maybe they why I didn't get any crazier than I did there for a while.
Only recently it came to light via a private e-mail forum originating in Fairfield about Mahesh's screwing the ladies. This was no urban legend. I had often watched several women, well they were barely more than new young adults then, trailing out of the lecture hall late at night following Mahesh to his room. I knew he had business with them. What kind never occurred to me. Cynical, truebelieving, naive.
Billi (as he liked to spell it) Clayton and another skin boy thought they were summoned to Mahesh's room because the buzzer went off. This is second hand and was after I had left. Billi and I were good friends and if I knew how to reach him, I am sure he would tell me all the details, but the book I have referred to coming out this spring/summer and might disclose as well. Anyway Billi and Rob McCutcheon walked in and there was Mahesh in bed with someone (of the female persuasion) whose name I didn't recognize. Mahesh had apparently rolled over onto the buzzer which was on the bed.
Other women have come forward and, as I mentioned, Joyce Collins-Smith recounts her suspicions back in the early 60's.
I have written more about the origins of tm [i:f8829399b1]etc.[/i:f8829399b1] but will leave that for now. It isn't quite as much fun as we've been having, but I think it's an important look at what Mahesh did, as a very, very clever, brilliant, intelligent person, [b:f8829399b1]not[/b:f8829399b1] as anyone with the best spiritual interests of [i:f8829399b1]anyone[/i:f8829399b1] in mind. Best fiduciary interests for his own personal narcissistic self, of course. But the buck stopped there.
More tomorrow ... M
I paid $60 (US, I think) to learn tm. I paid for a residence course and for the two parts of the teacher training course; I had a good job at the time, so it wasn't a financial strain. Then I got some money from having been in an auto accident; it was just enough to go to Mallorca at the end of '71 for my first ATR and everything after that was free. I have no idea why Mahesh apparently liked me. He always made sure I had a nice room. He gave me advanced techniques (which were experimental by the looks of the info at TranceNet and Minet.org).
One of my closest friends (living in California) and I were in the same room with Mahesh at the same time he blasted the rather large group of heavy unstressers we were carrying around (because they were simply behaving too bizarrly to let go home) "these people are a nuisance" ... we both remember the incident. But we only met on the Internet many, many years later in a tm discussion forum that was fashioned by lucifer himself in the manner of hell. Funny that.
I know Prudence Farrow. She married a friend of mine, before Al. We all lost touch years and years ago and she and John apparently broke up. Prudence was funny in a different way. I remember her telling me she was pregnant. She said it in her tiny little girl's voice. She said she was surprised because she and John and only been married "just a little while". She went on to tell me that she thought it took a real long time. :shock:
I knew Keith Wallace well, I suppose, at least well enough to say hello to. I knew Bevin, too. Bevin was a nice, sweet kid then, not the moronic, sycophantic butterball he seems to have turned into.
I was having breakfast one beautiful early morning in Seelisberg with a lovely English lady who was wearing a long string of glass beads. Later Edna turned out to be Lady Edna Linell and the glass beads were probably $40,000 worth of diamonds. You just never knew in those days.
I knew Vincent Snell and his wife Peggy very, very well. They were lovely people but I doubt Vincent was much in the US. He is in the Lake Louise film, but just standing there. Vincent and Peggy were really nice. I would never think to cast them as tm-ers :D (I usually don't like to use Smilies, but they just seem to fit now)
Then, yes, there's the sex. Discrete, I suppose, but remember I was that odd combination of cynic and trubeliever. And I was very busy on projects for Mahesh and really paid little attention to others except at the dinner table. We had some great laughs. Maybe they why I didn't get any crazier than I did there for a while.
Only recently it came to light via a private e-mail forum originating in Fairfield about Mahesh's screwing the ladies. This was no urban legend. I had often watched several women, well they were barely more than new young adults then, trailing out of the lecture hall late at night following Mahesh to his room. I knew he had business with them. What kind never occurred to me. Cynical, truebelieving, naive.
Billi (as he liked to spell it) Clayton and another skin boy thought they were summoned to Mahesh's room because the buzzer went off. This is second hand and was after I had left. Billi and I were good friends and if I knew how to reach him, I am sure he would tell me all the details, but the book I have referred to coming out this spring/summer and might disclose as well. Anyway Billi and Rob McCutcheon walked in and there was Mahesh in bed with someone (of the female persuasion) whose name I didn't recognize. Mahesh had apparently rolled over onto the buzzer which was on the bed.
Other women have come forward and, as I mentioned, Joyce Collins-Smith recounts her suspicions back in the early 60's.
I have written more about the origins of tm [i:f8829399b1]etc.[/i:f8829399b1] but will leave that for now. It isn't quite as much fun as we've been having, but I think it's an important look at what Mahesh did, as a very, very clever, brilliant, intelligent person, [b:f8829399b1]not[/b:f8829399b1] as anyone with the best spiritual interests of [i:f8829399b1]anyone[/i:f8829399b1] in mind. Best fiduciary interests for his own personal narcissistic self, of course. But the buck stopped there.
More tomorrow ... M
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Toni
()
Date: March 19, 2005 12:19AM
Buongiorno...
Yes, all, we know this is gossipy, hope the readers are finding it interesting rather than totally boring.
Yes, Mahesh, and ALL the cult leaders are brilliant psychopaths. They flatter w/ such sincerity to build up the insecure and keep them hooked. then slowly make their followers afraid of functioning outside their little protected bubble. Whatever the method used for hypnosis or dissociation... long meditatoins, LGATs, hyperkinetic dancing for extended time... it's all about wearing down the individual in order to make the followers identical in spirit, if not in form 'and they all are little boxes and they all look just the same'. then the money is given over, with great honor to the big donors... sigh. One of my dearest friends slowly gave her entire inheritance; she was highly honored at the "Celebrations" for years... Until she had not money left, of course. She died a pauper of a brain tumor.
You wrote of the diamond beaded necklace.. yes, so much emphasis on jewelry! BTW, at one point I'd managed the store "The Crest Jewel". Selling expensive beaded necklaces, with the mandatory 108 beads plus the 'guru bead', for the devout to enhance their spiriutal growth. Years later, Chopra had copied my store design for his store. All have changed since though. oh sheesh.. the memories you are invoking in me! :D
Yes, Prudence was always so sweet, gentle, soft spoken. "She must have incredible God Conscious experiences". She was a great vegetarian cook at the Beach Boys' Santa Barbara property.
The acting out that happens in such crazy societies is pretty amazing. And the true believers turn a blind eye. Or just say that it's from the lack of awareness of the followers, not from the leader/godhead. Believe me, I've heard it all from my parents to justify their continued involvement in such nutsness.
Yes, Martin, as you wrote the sexual acting out in the TM movement was more discrete. I saw so much as a teen living w/ o a guardian but with the TM movement. I'm sure it was illegal, I registered myself for the local high schools wherever we happened to be, no adult signatures, etc. I asked my (MUCH older) boyfriend to call school for me whenever I wanted to be absent. No one ever contacted any authorities. I suppose because the sexual stuff was discrete, I wasn't 'forced' into much, there was lots of coercion, but nothing forced in the early days.
When I was sixteen, 1974, I had a miscarriage, alone, in the basement bathroom of the last 'frat house'. At the time the last row of frats were pretty run down. That's where I lived. Those were later renovated (rather than condemned) quite gloriously, and my old place is now "Maharishi's frat"... with gold leafed bathroom sink, etc.
About the time I left late '80s, and beyond... a lot of the 40something husbands/fathers were playing around w/ teenage babysitters. I know of several parents who discouraged their daughters from reporting traumatic sexual incidents - the perpetrators were in powerful positions, and the families believed they could not hold up against that money and influence. Of course therapy was out of the question. If a person had any thereapy, they could be kept off a course or not given advanced techniques or the sidhis, as were deemed psychologically unstable. Only 'healthy' people (e.g. not getting real help, and therefor more maleable...) were allowed onto courses.
We all know (to the tune of Mr. Ed)... " A couse is a course unless of course you were not allowed on the course, of course.."
The leader was not the only corrupt person. Most of the business men were equally corrupt, all justified in the name of Enlightenment, World Peace... blah blah blah... I used to work for Ed Beckley untangling some business messes; I'd stormed into his executive meeting one day, telling him how manging the business this way is illegal and unethical! Later that week he tried to seduce me. oi! :roll: Ed was lauded for his high level of consciousness as he donated so much to the group, and also created jobs for others who donated. A few years later he was in jail for white collar crime. He began the entire info-mercial industry.
I know about that FF email group you mention, I did not bother to join. Am glad they are beginning to talk about what really went on.
And yes, I agree w/ you wholeheartedly! Those early courses were so well done, the food was incredible! The sense of connection to others was so sweet, the bubble was wonderful. No one could have talked me out when I was young! Of course, what else did I know? and, for all the dysfunction, there is STILL a sweet naivete community w/ being in that town. All part of the cult manipulation and crazy head trips. But, as you know, if you really try to talk meaningfully with people, or deeply on ANY topic, it all becomes the cirucuitous non-logic.
And yes, like you, I enjoyed the technique. I still very occassionally do TM..... it does feel great..... and works for me (in very very small doses).... maybe once a month, when I'm stressed out about something or other.... but I know it's not bringing me Enlightenment or God or anysuch... that I'm just doing a 10 minute self hypnosis dissociation break, in the middle of stressed out nuts day at my office. My mother truly concerened for me that I do not meditate daily. My parents OK about my brother's Christian cultish group because "at least he's seeking God in hiw own way" oi!
After leaving the group at age 30 and moving 2000 miles away, it was hard to self teach how to interact w/ everyone else. The lingo, life paradigm, etc. That is part of how any cultic group keeps their followers hooked. When I do (maybe once or twice per year) talk w/ someone from there, at whatever level, they talk w sweet conviction of the evil in the outside world. Their fear of functioning without their coccon. What a wacko society!
Yes, as you'd said Charlie was of the lunatic fringe. Martin, they ALL were of the lunatic fringe - heralded with such reverance!
Yes, also about bringing a bad name to spirituality. I still have a hard time w/ any 'brand' of spirituality. And I'm content w/ that. Just live a good life, give back however I can, and be careful of accolades and silver tongued manipulators!
Yes, please describe the invention of this self hypnosis method - that was written up in Scientific American w/ documented brain wave studies!
What a soap opera!
Tks! :D
Yes, all, we know this is gossipy, hope the readers are finding it interesting rather than totally boring.
Yes, Mahesh, and ALL the cult leaders are brilliant psychopaths. They flatter w/ such sincerity to build up the insecure and keep them hooked. then slowly make their followers afraid of functioning outside their little protected bubble. Whatever the method used for hypnosis or dissociation... long meditatoins, LGATs, hyperkinetic dancing for extended time... it's all about wearing down the individual in order to make the followers identical in spirit, if not in form 'and they all are little boxes and they all look just the same'. then the money is given over, with great honor to the big donors... sigh. One of my dearest friends slowly gave her entire inheritance; she was highly honored at the "Celebrations" for years... Until she had not money left, of course. She died a pauper of a brain tumor.
You wrote of the diamond beaded necklace.. yes, so much emphasis on jewelry! BTW, at one point I'd managed the store "The Crest Jewel". Selling expensive beaded necklaces, with the mandatory 108 beads plus the 'guru bead', for the devout to enhance their spiriutal growth. Years later, Chopra had copied my store design for his store. All have changed since though. oh sheesh.. the memories you are invoking in me! :D
Yes, Prudence was always so sweet, gentle, soft spoken. "She must have incredible God Conscious experiences". She was a great vegetarian cook at the Beach Boys' Santa Barbara property.
The acting out that happens in such crazy societies is pretty amazing. And the true believers turn a blind eye. Or just say that it's from the lack of awareness of the followers, not from the leader/godhead. Believe me, I've heard it all from my parents to justify their continued involvement in such nutsness.
Yes, Martin, as you wrote the sexual acting out in the TM movement was more discrete. I saw so much as a teen living w/ o a guardian but with the TM movement. I'm sure it was illegal, I registered myself for the local high schools wherever we happened to be, no adult signatures, etc. I asked my (MUCH older) boyfriend to call school for me whenever I wanted to be absent. No one ever contacted any authorities. I suppose because the sexual stuff was discrete, I wasn't 'forced' into much, there was lots of coercion, but nothing forced in the early days.
When I was sixteen, 1974, I had a miscarriage, alone, in the basement bathroom of the last 'frat house'. At the time the last row of frats were pretty run down. That's where I lived. Those were later renovated (rather than condemned) quite gloriously, and my old place is now "Maharishi's frat"... with gold leafed bathroom sink, etc.
About the time I left late '80s, and beyond... a lot of the 40something husbands/fathers were playing around w/ teenage babysitters. I know of several parents who discouraged their daughters from reporting traumatic sexual incidents - the perpetrators were in powerful positions, and the families believed they could not hold up against that money and influence. Of course therapy was out of the question. If a person had any thereapy, they could be kept off a course or not given advanced techniques or the sidhis, as were deemed psychologically unstable. Only 'healthy' people (e.g. not getting real help, and therefor more maleable...) were allowed onto courses.
We all know (to the tune of Mr. Ed)... " A couse is a course unless of course you were not allowed on the course, of course.."
The leader was not the only corrupt person. Most of the business men were equally corrupt, all justified in the name of Enlightenment, World Peace... blah blah blah... I used to work for Ed Beckley untangling some business messes; I'd stormed into his executive meeting one day, telling him how manging the business this way is illegal and unethical! Later that week he tried to seduce me. oi! :roll: Ed was lauded for his high level of consciousness as he donated so much to the group, and also created jobs for others who donated. A few years later he was in jail for white collar crime. He began the entire info-mercial industry.
I know about that FF email group you mention, I did not bother to join. Am glad they are beginning to talk about what really went on.
And yes, I agree w/ you wholeheartedly! Those early courses were so well done, the food was incredible! The sense of connection to others was so sweet, the bubble was wonderful. No one could have talked me out when I was young! Of course, what else did I know? and, for all the dysfunction, there is STILL a sweet naivete community w/ being in that town. All part of the cult manipulation and crazy head trips. But, as you know, if you really try to talk meaningfully with people, or deeply on ANY topic, it all becomes the cirucuitous non-logic.
And yes, like you, I enjoyed the technique. I still very occassionally do TM..... it does feel great..... and works for me (in very very small doses).... maybe once a month, when I'm stressed out about something or other.... but I know it's not bringing me Enlightenment or God or anysuch... that I'm just doing a 10 minute self hypnosis dissociation break, in the middle of stressed out nuts day at my office. My mother truly concerened for me that I do not meditate daily. My parents OK about my brother's Christian cultish group because "at least he's seeking God in hiw own way" oi!
After leaving the group at age 30 and moving 2000 miles away, it was hard to self teach how to interact w/ everyone else. The lingo, life paradigm, etc. That is part of how any cultic group keeps their followers hooked. When I do (maybe once or twice per year) talk w/ someone from there, at whatever level, they talk w sweet conviction of the evil in the outside world. Their fear of functioning without their coccon. What a wacko society!
Yes, as you'd said Charlie was of the lunatic fringe. Martin, they ALL were of the lunatic fringe - heralded with such reverance!
Yes, also about bringing a bad name to spirituality. I still have a hard time w/ any 'brand' of spirituality. And I'm content w/ that. Just live a good life, give back however I can, and be careful of accolades and silver tongued manipulators!
Yes, please describe the invention of this self hypnosis method - that was written up in Scientific American w/ documented brain wave studies!
What a soap opera!
Tks! :D
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Martin
()
Date: March 19, 2005 05:21AM
Hi, Toni and anyone else brave enough to wade through our tales of the old days.
I am going to take just the teensiest exception to this in that I don't think the snake oil salesman we know and thought we loved was actually sociopathic. Sociopaths usually hurt rather directly and malignantly because they have no conception of the feelings and harm done others. They only know how to use others to sate their needs. Of course, Mahesh certainly used others but he was very careful about hurting them (if he needed them). Sociopaths don’t make this distinction.
With our snake(oil salesman), the issue was keeping his narcissism constantly fed/stroked. Unlike many narcissists who can be rather nasty to be around and painful to work with, Mahesh had incredible charm, charisma, allure and a kind of dignity (laughing at his own jokes, as he did, should have been a red flag ... at least a shocking pink one). He was magnificently intelligent and could manage the tactic of appearing to know everything (not altogether unlike the gypsy fortune teller who reads others well and feeds them what they want to hear).
Mahesh's charm is partly to blame for his own downfall (as we see his bizarre behaviour and equally loony organization). After the Beatles, when he needed more people (international staff) to help him manage his huge courses, he really did not make any effort to make a cult. Since people wanted to behave in certain ways that didn't interfere with his self-image of his organization (you could be a bliss ninny and talk psycho-trash in the name of god-consciousness, but you couldn't dress funny), he let them, but only so long as it didn't interfere with his constant need to be doing something.
To some extent, Mahesh was hyperactive (I think the scientific term is "attention deficit"). I am on shaky ground here, because I don't have much experience in this area. It seems to me, from watching Mahesh day after day, interacting with him daily, that he kept busy almost to avoid quiet and silence. The times we had group meditation were rare and very short. I never heard him speak outside the confines of the courses and the international staff. On courses he had a kind of time frame (yes, he always came late and always went on too long … except at Estes Park). But with the international staff in Seelisberg, he would sometimes begin in the late morning (after seeing people privately for some clandestine purpose from early morning on) and go until dark. We practically had to beg to break to eat and sometimes people would just leave, eat and come back. He’d sometimes go until really, really late at night and then some of the women would follow him out and to his room where he’s (supposedly) continue talking. But, and actually this is the point, there was really no point. He didn’t say anything new, there were no revelations, there was actually no evidence of a sharp mind organizing anything, it was just momentary sharpness leading off onto brilliant tangents one after the other with no sense into the bargain.
Perhaps someone with a more complete grasp of psychological phenomena than I can put some kind of a frame on Mahesh’s behaviour.
He really, really hated doing the lectures for the s.c.i. course because, great actor that he was (more about which later), he had to follow a rehearsed script. He was more or less included in the organization of the lecture material, but in reality (he knew and was careful not to let too many others know) he was being told what to say and the order in which to say it.
He got quite sick during the course and "went into silence" for almost two weeks! A person like Mahesh who "goes into silence" doesn't really shut himself away from people, however. He continued meetings (with one or two people) all day, just at his little house on the hill [in Fiuggi, this time, not Rishikesh where and about which the Beatles wrote the song].
One time in Seelisberg when he "went into silence" Billi and Rob said they heard him talking to someone. After his silence, he announced that Vaishista had come to him. (is there a smiley for [i:f430a21338]oooooookkkkaaaaaaayyyy[/i:f430a21338]) But we were our own little society of post-hippie looney newagey fringe so we just nodded knowingly. (A couple of years later when he told the 108 that Patanjali had come to him, I guess they just accepted it too … it meant they were finally getting something more for their money than just paying him to work for him, so what did it really matter.)
I have often wondered if his "need" to keep busy, keep moving, keep talking and at the same time keep others busy and distracted was some kind of reaction to his time with Guru Dev. That time is a better kept secrets and any of his others. My friend who is publishing this spring/summer says that he has contacted a swami who was there then. Mahesh still, apparently, keeps making audio/video tapes. He uses makeup (narcissism and vanity are fairly compatible if I remember my psych 101 correctly). But he doesn't interact directly with any but a very, very select few. I doubt even Bevan or Hegelan [how spel?] meet him face to face anymore.
Howard Hughes? Unibomber?
But my point, because I really had a point, is that Mahesh is just a little unique amongst the cult leaders. Cults aren't new although the Eastern guru in America was newish when we were young in the 60's. He hasn't directly done bad things (like Jim Jones, Daved Koresh). He also hasn't been caught like Jim Baker or Rajneesh. He doesn't particularly care about people unless they can directly effect his well-being. He never seemed out to actually hurt anyone or maliciously destroy any enemies, real or imagined. Yes, letting people indiscriminately give him all their money is actually hurting them. But Mahesh is so deeply in admiration of maharishiness that he is actually unable to notice this distinction or puzzle it out. He actively sucks people in, definitely ... but he also lets people suck themselves in and is clever enough to know this very big distinction ("you must be doing it wrong" and "you should have your meditation checked" and "you are unstressing" and "something good is happening").
Culpability? Certainly not. How shocking. 8-[
Oh dear. You missed my point. Edna wasn't being ostentatious. She was British Aristocracy slumming with the reformed hippies. :wink: -- No, she was just Edna, a really lovely, very, very nice lady who was probably sincerely devoted to Mahesh most probably because he had a better eye for jewelry than I did and was happy to lead her in letting her lead herself on (see, cult leaders can be sorted out, it only takes 15 or 20 years of distance and persistence).
It certainly was around Mahesh. Of course, he was being discrete too, and almost no one knew; I really doubt he could have charmed his way out of being found out by Billi and Rob if they had talked or any of the women had talked. It was just too dangerous to talk about these little things because Mahesh was very, very powerful. I only saw him blow his cork twice: once in the lecture hall in La Antilla and once in Seelisberg. In La Antilla the whole room (actually a huge tent holding 1500 people) felt it. He was not a person to be messed about with, he had given proof and we were all sufficiently in toon with him to not tempt fate in our personal direction. [no, I really meant toon] - The time in Seelisberg was in a much smaller gathering and there was a much smaller blow out. The effect was the same, however. Maybe it was an act. It was an effective act.
There was a story about Mallorca. He discovered some new initiators had been discussing mantras and advanced techniques. He called them into a room (I was outside, there must have been 2 or 3 hundred in there) and gave them the royal reaming out. The intensity outside was palpable. I left and later heard that the glass doors had shattered (which I have always thought an urban legend, but at the time it seemed a likelihood).
Did we walk in fear of Mahesh? Sort of: we were in fear of screwing up, of letting him down. We definitely had merged our self-image with the appearance of his happiness. Did he manipulate us into this? Well, he certainly opened the door, hell, he made the damn door. We walked in of our own accord. I guess our snake had read Genesis and that bit about the other snake.
I have heard stories about paedophilia in the MUM schools. I have hoped it was malicious gossip. But you kind of confirm my back-of-the-brain suspicion that not only is the "movement" home to whatever the new-age term is for blissninnies, there are bad people there too. As long as they make Mahesh's dreams come true, I guess he'll keep them. There were always people around Mahesh whom he relied upon but wouldn't spend private time with, would actually avoid (indirectly, of course). Someone else would tell them that Mahesh really regretted that he could see them now. They had to discuss their business in public where, apparently, Mahesh felt shielded from them.
Yes. I really miss that, actually. There is a Buddhist group I associate with. Really great people, my age, similar pasts. Very similar pasts in that we know what cults are about and wouldn’t touch one now with a sterile barge pole, even if we had one or a place to keep it. We get on well. It's really nice and I often catch myself making suggestions, suggestions based on making it more like those early courses and the way the Centres used to be. I never knew any SRM-ers so I am only going by the one really great Centre I knew in the old days ... pre-s.c.i. and World Plan and that crap. (And, no, I am not turning my Buddhist group into an old-time tm centre. Wouldn’t, couldn’t, won’t.)
I hope you won't take offence, but you sound like a very good Buddhist. HH the Dali Lama would certainly approve. I hereby take the liberty to pronounce you cult free: your recovery is complete and successful. :o
Oh, yes, the "more about that later" bit: at my teacher training course Mahesh often said [i:f430a21338]the actor can play god better than god[/i:f430a21338]. I am not altogether sure now exactly what context this was in or what elevated purpose it was serving, but it was years before I began to think he was talking about himself. He was a great actor. I can't remember if I already told this bit or if it ended up with the cyber fairies when the screen went blank: at that course in Estes Park, when Mahesh made me an initiator, he pronounced each of the mantras for me (he had written them out on air-mail paper, there was a stack of pages face down but I could tell that at least the next one was the same and suspected they all were). Then he had me go and memorize them. When I returned he had me say them for him and then he folded the paper, put it in my hands, held my hands in his [he has huge hands] and told me how much he loved me, what a wonderful thing I was doing.
I suspect, now, that he was taking the edge off my discovery that I had gone through Poland Springs and Estes Park (4 or 5 months of supposed training) only to learn that there wasn't anything at all special to learn. [i:f430a21338]plop[/i:f430a21338] and [i:f430a21338]dippidoo[/i:f430a21338] are just as secret and just as special as [i:f430a21338]shyama[/i:f430a21338] [i:f430a21338]mangalinga[/i:f430a21338] if I want them to be.
As I told my students in La Antilla: if you really understand the introductory material to the checking notes you know everything there is to know about tm.
---
I have another post I am going to post, some stuff I wrote yesterday, but I wanted to explain why. (It’s long and much more tedious than this has been, so be warned.)
Sure, I'm having a great time Mahesh-bashing. Except, funny as it all is now, its effects then and for a couple of decades after, weren't at all funny. I developed a problem with anxiety attacks that had no apparent trigger. Well, no apparent trigger lets Mahesh off the hook, but still. I do not doubt or underestimate that others have had similar and/or worse. I am hoping that anyone who reads this can see that a very careful examination of what happened, how it came about, what was really going on and what wasn't, anyone able to make the difficult distinction between what was belief then and what is a more acceptable explanation now will be able to look without fear, without remorse, without regret and just see experience for what it is/was, just experience. No matter how emotional the love scene or how many times we threw up after the blood and guts scene, all the scenes were just images on a screen, just thoughts in our heads, just experiences.
Yes, yes, I'm being a Buddhist here. But it's just some good sense: seeing the coiled rope for what it is rather than for the snake [i:f430a21338][b:f430a21338]you believe it to be[/b:f430a21338][/i:f430a21338] is just good and often, very, very often really difficult sense. I know how painful, how difficult, how stressful, how depressing and how miserable it was for me, so please do not think I am being flippant or dismissive. I am trying to share.
If I'm out of line, let me know. I can delete the post if that would be better.
M
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Yes, Mahesh, and ALL the cult leaders are brilliant psychopaths.
I am going to take just the teensiest exception to this in that I don't think the snake oil salesman we know and thought we loved was actually sociopathic. Sociopaths usually hurt rather directly and malignantly because they have no conception of the feelings and harm done others. They only know how to use others to sate their needs. Of course, Mahesh certainly used others but he was very careful about hurting them (if he needed them). Sociopaths don’t make this distinction.
With our snake(oil salesman), the issue was keeping his narcissism constantly fed/stroked. Unlike many narcissists who can be rather nasty to be around and painful to work with, Mahesh had incredible charm, charisma, allure and a kind of dignity (laughing at his own jokes, as he did, should have been a red flag ... at least a shocking pink one). He was magnificently intelligent and could manage the tactic of appearing to know everything (not altogether unlike the gypsy fortune teller who reads others well and feeds them what they want to hear).
Mahesh's charm is partly to blame for his own downfall (as we see his bizarre behaviour and equally loony organization). After the Beatles, when he needed more people (international staff) to help him manage his huge courses, he really did not make any effort to make a cult. Since people wanted to behave in certain ways that didn't interfere with his self-image of his organization (you could be a bliss ninny and talk psycho-trash in the name of god-consciousness, but you couldn't dress funny), he let them, but only so long as it didn't interfere with his constant need to be doing something.
To some extent, Mahesh was hyperactive (I think the scientific term is "attention deficit"). I am on shaky ground here, because I don't have much experience in this area. It seems to me, from watching Mahesh day after day, interacting with him daily, that he kept busy almost to avoid quiet and silence. The times we had group meditation were rare and very short. I never heard him speak outside the confines of the courses and the international staff. On courses he had a kind of time frame (yes, he always came late and always went on too long … except at Estes Park). But with the international staff in Seelisberg, he would sometimes begin in the late morning (after seeing people privately for some clandestine purpose from early morning on) and go until dark. We practically had to beg to break to eat and sometimes people would just leave, eat and come back. He’d sometimes go until really, really late at night and then some of the women would follow him out and to his room where he’s (supposedly) continue talking. But, and actually this is the point, there was really no point. He didn’t say anything new, there were no revelations, there was actually no evidence of a sharp mind organizing anything, it was just momentary sharpness leading off onto brilliant tangents one after the other with no sense into the bargain.
Perhaps someone with a more complete grasp of psychological phenomena than I can put some kind of a frame on Mahesh’s behaviour.
He really, really hated doing the lectures for the s.c.i. course because, great actor that he was (more about which later), he had to follow a rehearsed script. He was more or less included in the organization of the lecture material, but in reality (he knew and was careful not to let too many others know) he was being told what to say and the order in which to say it.
He got quite sick during the course and "went into silence" for almost two weeks! A person like Mahesh who "goes into silence" doesn't really shut himself away from people, however. He continued meetings (with one or two people) all day, just at his little house on the hill [in Fiuggi, this time, not Rishikesh where and about which the Beatles wrote the song].
One time in Seelisberg when he "went into silence" Billi and Rob said they heard him talking to someone. After his silence, he announced that Vaishista had come to him. (is there a smiley for [i:f430a21338]oooooookkkkaaaaaaayyyy[/i:f430a21338]) But we were our own little society of post-hippie looney newagey fringe so we just nodded knowingly. (A couple of years later when he told the 108 that Patanjali had come to him, I guess they just accepted it too … it meant they were finally getting something more for their money than just paying him to work for him, so what did it really matter.)
I have often wondered if his "need" to keep busy, keep moving, keep talking and at the same time keep others busy and distracted was some kind of reaction to his time with Guru Dev. That time is a better kept secrets and any of his others. My friend who is publishing this spring/summer says that he has contacted a swami who was there then. Mahesh still, apparently, keeps making audio/video tapes. He uses makeup (narcissism and vanity are fairly compatible if I remember my psych 101 correctly). But he doesn't interact directly with any but a very, very select few. I doubt even Bevan or Hegelan [how spel?] meet him face to face anymore.
Howard Hughes? Unibomber?
But my point, because I really had a point, is that Mahesh is just a little unique amongst the cult leaders. Cults aren't new although the Eastern guru in America was newish when we were young in the 60's. He hasn't directly done bad things (like Jim Jones, Daved Koresh). He also hasn't been caught like Jim Baker or Rajneesh. He doesn't particularly care about people unless they can directly effect his well-being. He never seemed out to actually hurt anyone or maliciously destroy any enemies, real or imagined. Yes, letting people indiscriminately give him all their money is actually hurting them. But Mahesh is so deeply in admiration of maharishiness that he is actually unable to notice this distinction or puzzle it out. He actively sucks people in, definitely ... but he also lets people suck themselves in and is clever enough to know this very big distinction ("you must be doing it wrong" and "you should have your meditation checked" and "you are unstressing" and "something good is happening").
Culpability? Certainly not. How shocking. 8-[
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You wrote of the diamond beaded necklace.. yes, so much emphasis on jewelry!
Oh dear. You missed my point. Edna wasn't being ostentatious. She was British Aristocracy slumming with the reformed hippies. :wink: -- No, she was just Edna, a really lovely, very, very nice lady who was probably sincerely devoted to Mahesh most probably because he had a better eye for jewelry than I did and was happy to lead her in letting her lead herself on (see, cult leaders can be sorted out, it only takes 15 or 20 years of distance and persistence).
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... the sexual acting out in the TM movement was more discrete
It certainly was around Mahesh. Of course, he was being discrete too, and almost no one knew; I really doubt he could have charmed his way out of being found out by Billi and Rob if they had talked or any of the women had talked. It was just too dangerous to talk about these little things because Mahesh was very, very powerful. I only saw him blow his cork twice: once in the lecture hall in La Antilla and once in Seelisberg. In La Antilla the whole room (actually a huge tent holding 1500 people) felt it. He was not a person to be messed about with, he had given proof and we were all sufficiently in toon with him to not tempt fate in our personal direction. [no, I really meant toon] - The time in Seelisberg was in a much smaller gathering and there was a much smaller blow out. The effect was the same, however. Maybe it was an act. It was an effective act.
There was a story about Mallorca. He discovered some new initiators had been discussing mantras and advanced techniques. He called them into a room (I was outside, there must have been 2 or 3 hundred in there) and gave them the royal reaming out. The intensity outside was palpable. I left and later heard that the glass doors had shattered (which I have always thought an urban legend, but at the time it seemed a likelihood).
Did we walk in fear of Mahesh? Sort of: we were in fear of screwing up, of letting him down. We definitely had merged our self-image with the appearance of his happiness. Did he manipulate us into this? Well, he certainly opened the door, hell, he made the damn door. We walked in of our own accord. I guess our snake had read Genesis and that bit about the other snake.
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... the perpetrators were in powerful positions ...
I have heard stories about paedophilia in the MUM schools. I have hoped it was malicious gossip. But you kind of confirm my back-of-the-brain suspicion that not only is the "movement" home to whatever the new-age term is for blissninnies, there are bad people there too. As long as they make Mahesh's dreams come true, I guess he'll keep them. There were always people around Mahesh whom he relied upon but wouldn't spend private time with, would actually avoid (indirectly, of course). Someone else would tell them that Mahesh really regretted that he could see them now. They had to discuss their business in public where, apparently, Mahesh felt shielded from them.
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... Those early courses were so well done ...
Yes. I really miss that, actually. There is a Buddhist group I associate with. Really great people, my age, similar pasts. Very similar pasts in that we know what cults are about and wouldn’t touch one now with a sterile barge pole, even if we had one or a place to keep it. We get on well. It's really nice and I often catch myself making suggestions, suggestions based on making it more like those early courses and the way the Centres used to be. I never knew any SRM-ers so I am only going by the one really great Centre I knew in the old days ... pre-s.c.i. and World Plan and that crap. (And, no, I am not turning my Buddhist group into an old-time tm centre. Wouldn’t, couldn’t, won’t.)
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Yes, also about bringing a bad name to spirituality. I still have a hard time w/ any 'brand' of spirituality. And I'm content w/ that. Just live a good life, give back however I can, and be careful of accolades and silver tongued manipulators!
I hope you won't take offence, but you sound like a very good Buddhist. HH the Dali Lama would certainly approve. I hereby take the liberty to pronounce you cult free: your recovery is complete and successful. :o
Oh, yes, the "more about that later" bit: at my teacher training course Mahesh often said [i:f430a21338]the actor can play god better than god[/i:f430a21338]. I am not altogether sure now exactly what context this was in or what elevated purpose it was serving, but it was years before I began to think he was talking about himself. He was a great actor. I can't remember if I already told this bit or if it ended up with the cyber fairies when the screen went blank: at that course in Estes Park, when Mahesh made me an initiator, he pronounced each of the mantras for me (he had written them out on air-mail paper, there was a stack of pages face down but I could tell that at least the next one was the same and suspected they all were). Then he had me go and memorize them. When I returned he had me say them for him and then he folded the paper, put it in my hands, held my hands in his [he has huge hands] and told me how much he loved me, what a wonderful thing I was doing.
I suspect, now, that he was taking the edge off my discovery that I had gone through Poland Springs and Estes Park (4 or 5 months of supposed training) only to learn that there wasn't anything at all special to learn. [i:f430a21338]plop[/i:f430a21338] and [i:f430a21338]dippidoo[/i:f430a21338] are just as secret and just as special as [i:f430a21338]shyama[/i:f430a21338] [i:f430a21338]mangalinga[/i:f430a21338] if I want them to be.
As I told my students in La Antilla: if you really understand the introductory material to the checking notes you know everything there is to know about tm.
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I have another post I am going to post, some stuff I wrote yesterday, but I wanted to explain why. (It’s long and much more tedious than this has been, so be warned.)
Sure, I'm having a great time Mahesh-bashing. Except, funny as it all is now, its effects then and for a couple of decades after, weren't at all funny. I developed a problem with anxiety attacks that had no apparent trigger. Well, no apparent trigger lets Mahesh off the hook, but still. I do not doubt or underestimate that others have had similar and/or worse. I am hoping that anyone who reads this can see that a very careful examination of what happened, how it came about, what was really going on and what wasn't, anyone able to make the difficult distinction between what was belief then and what is a more acceptable explanation now will be able to look without fear, without remorse, without regret and just see experience for what it is/was, just experience. No matter how emotional the love scene or how many times we threw up after the blood and guts scene, all the scenes were just images on a screen, just thoughts in our heads, just experiences.
Yes, yes, I'm being a Buddhist here. But it's just some good sense: seeing the coiled rope for what it is rather than for the snake [i:f430a21338][b:f430a21338]you believe it to be[/b:f430a21338][/i:f430a21338] is just good and often, very, very often really difficult sense. I know how painful, how difficult, how stressful, how depressing and how miserable it was for me, so please do not think I am being flippant or dismissive. I am trying to share.
If I'm out of line, let me know. I can delete the post if that would be better.
M
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Martin
()
Date: March 19, 2005 06:40AM
This is a long post that looks at some of the details that have made Mahesh rich (he had the dosh to back his own currency, the raam). I don't really know if it is useful or not. I wrote it yesterday and it seemed meaningful to me, so I'll share it. - M[/color:e1da464758]
Toni and friends
Mahesh and his brilliant mind.
He could see things others simply didn’t. He could see relationships between ideas. And we, moths drawn to his flame, couldn’t tell whether or not what he could see was meaningful or not, the flame was so bright for us.
We will never know what Guru Dev (Swami Brahmananda Sariswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, sort of like the Hindu archbishop of the north) taught Mahesh. On my teacher training course at Estes Park, Mahesh mentioned how Guru Dev had been very hard on him. I had heard this before from other teachers. I suspect that Mahesh Chandra Shrivastava was very difficult to keep in line and probably always knew better than Guru Dev. I do not think anyone “in” tm will possibly agree with me, but it seems to me that Mahesh had something to prove to Guru Dev. Whether or not he had had anything to do with Guru Dev’s suspicious death, the tampered-with will or the disappearance of money (Mahesh told us about the box: “you could just put your hand in and there would be enough for what you needed”) we will never know unless my friend’s book, coming out this spring/summer, reveals something. Still, the rumours do not go away.
Guru Dev was sort of like the pope. Everyone who was anyone and everyone who could as well, came to see him. There is an old photo of Mahesh and Nehru taken after Nehru’s “audience” with Guru Dev. I suppose many saints and yogis (precisely what the distinction is there is anyone’s guess, India is India, after all) came as well. Mahesh was friends with Tatwallababa (whom I met when I was in Rishikesh in ’73).
My gut suspicion now is that Mahesh could do things, set up loud speakers, set up microphones, get a trip organized, run a mimeograph. Mahesh made a little book called Amrit Kan (no longer sure of the spelling). It means Pears or Drops (the kan part) of nectar (amrit). It was a collection of Guru Dev’s sayings. I have never been able to locate a copy. Guru Dev was a man of the ancient past. A real yogi from the old days and Mahesh met him on the cusp of the technological age. So Mahesh made himself useful. Guru Dev may not have actually liked Mahesh, but needed him. I have often suspected that their relationship was not unlike that of the male/female hourglass spider. The female needs the male and the male has to be extremely careful. I have seen Mahesh around actually important figures (a couple of Africa’s heads of state visited a couple of times as well as “Brahmarishi” someone or another, a very old man who could recite the whole of the Rig Veda. Mahesh could demonstrate for all to see how respectful he could be, the great dignity he could carry. [i:e1da464758]The actor can play god better than god[/i:e1da464758]. Mahesh said it was from the Rig Veda.
What did Mahesh actually beguile out of Guru Dev? Can I really accept Guru Dev was that shallow? I met people who knew Guru Dev. I look at his picture and say to myself, you just didn’t mess with this guy, you never tried it. But I’ll bet Mahesh did and it may account for some of his behaviour.
I doubt very much that Mahesh didn’t get the people who came to see Guru Dev to one side and try to find out everything he could about what they themselves taught, what Guru Dev had said to them, what secrets he [Mahesh] was obviously ready to receive! I think my category of Saints/Yogis also has to include Lamas fleeing the Chinese in Tibet. In 2001 Rangjung Yeshe, publisher of Tibetan translations, published “Clarifying the Natural State” a sort of abbreviated handbook of a much larger 16th century text called, in the curious way Tibetans have of naming things, “Moonbeams of Mahamudra”. This little handbook, also 16th century, clearly outlines and clarifies basic Buddhist meditation. The brief instructions, something part of standard lama training, certainly sound vaguely like what we know as tm. They come with “pointing out” instructions [[i:e1da464758]do this, what do you experience, yes, that’s it, now you understand[/i:e1da464758] … very much like checking notes].
In Joyce Collins-Smith’s book “Call No Man Master” she mentions an audio tape sent her from Scandinavia. Mahesh was reminiscing and didn’t know he was being recorded. He mentions the inspiration for tm coming at a Lakshmi (appropriately the “goddess” of wealth) temple in the south of India.
I suspect that that was when it all fell into place for him. Someone said to someone else: ‘it’s as easy as thinking’ and the penny dropped. It isn’t only the Hindus who uses mantras. The Tibetans and the Buddhists of South East Asia do as well. Mahesh saw a unique twist on this and the even more essential uniqueness of “as easy as any thought” made it work.
It is also significant, I think, that Mahesh went to the south of India after Guru Dev died. Apparently the whole of India knew Guru Dev or knew about him. What they didn’t know was who Mahesh was. Guru Dev dies. Mahesh is invisible until he appears in the south of India and proclaims HIS spiritual regeneration movement for which Guru Dev was the smokescreen PR. And suddenly Mahesh is out of India and on his way to the West. If he had nothing to do with Guru Dev’s demise, the falsification of Guru Dev’s will, the disappearance of money, why is this period the greatest of all the tm secrets?
A long-time friend at the circus who had been with Mahesh on many of the old time teacher training courses in India said that after Guru Dev’s death Mahesh had put up a sign that said ‘who wants instant enlightenment?’ – those who did received shaktipat, he touched their foreheads and they swooned. You can still see this on tv faith healing programmes … Benny Hinn, I think. Joyce Collins-Smith also talks about this under the heading of Subud. She doesn’t involve Mahesh in this, but it is obvious that it is hardly something exclusive. One of the first people I taught tm showed up on an ATR I was leading some years later in Switzerland. He told me had suddenly become able to zap people. I tried not to scoff, but, even though I was a truebeliever, I was a cynical one. Later he zapped me and I had no doubts. I still remember and still have no doubts.
So, maybe this story about Mahesh is real and maybe he was up to something like this before he had got it all sorted out in the south of India. Mahesh never zapped/shaktipatted me, but it happened with one of the “saints” who visited him in Switzerland and it happened to me in the marketplace in Haridwar when I was in India. Curious. That’s all it can be evaluated as is curious. An experience to be sure, but no more than that.
After the age of enlightenment techniques and the ‘sidhi’ crap, after my last experience with Mahesh, I felt so increasingly tired and totally unmotivated that I finally just gave up and called it quits with tm. Why did it take so much and so long? First of all it was free because I was for unknowable reasons just there at the right time and somehow courted the right favour. And because Mahesh was always nice to me and because truebelievers don’t give up easily. Those of us who have “escaped” cultishness know how impossible it is to “reason” with someone “inside”.
But I had had that experience in 1964 and “knew” that there was something that I couldn’t learn the conventional way – so I decided to try SRF, Self-Realization Fellowship, Yogananda’s stuff. [As I write this, my eyes are rolling up, too. I actually do know how this sounds.] One of our teachers (“Bob”) had done all of Yogananda’s teachings prior to tm. Mahesh had told him it was OK to continue, but to do it after tm. So I thought it was the next step, perhaps.
Shallow does not begin to describe what Yogananda had to share. But when I learned the Kriya technique I immediately remembered that Bob had told Mahesh everything about Kriya Yoga. He had told me so (and I already knew first hand that Mahesh could charm the birds out of the trees, never mind milking a mark for all she/he was worth).
My age of enlightenment technique had been a composite of Kriya and the Gayatri mantra!
Later, when the Internet became available to me I discovered www.trancenet.org and that my string (10 or so) of advanced techniques was not like the ones there and that there was an age of enlightenment technique listed there that was different from mine (mine not being there). The one at TranceNet was also a Yogananda technique but not a Kriya technique!
Then I was really determined to find out everything I could about tm and what Mahesh had done. I began with the Yoga Sutras (Yogadarshana). I used I. K. Taimni’s “The Science of Yoga” which gives a word-by-word translation, M. Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit Dictionary and Sanskrit Grammar as well as Apte’s Sanskrit Dictionary. I literally looked up every word in the yoga sutras and made a dictionary for each word. I checked each grammar ending (Sanskrit about which I learned quite a bit over an almost 10 year period, is considerably like Latin using word endings to indicate to, from, for, by, of, with, through and so on).
Therapy? You bettcha.
What I finally was NOT able to do was make the yoga sutras say what Mahesh said! Of course, the flying sutra gets all the attention … mainly because it lets you do something besides drift off into a fog of mussy-minded numbness.
Mahesh’s flying sutra: this sutra, in the Yogadarshana text, more clearly has to do with awakening (akasha gamana, literally, “undertaking the unbounded” – going [gamana] into the sky [akasha] would be kind of like taking the Lord’s Prayer fundamentally literally “our father who art in heaven”, some do, of course, but …). The author says that this awakening is actually quite easy (laghutula, light as dandelion fluff) because it comes from the Samyama that joins both kaya and akasha.
Kaya, literally, means collection or body in the sense of body of stuff. When I say the body politic I do not, however mean “body” as in actual, specific flesh and blood, guts and designer jeans. Here, my opinion, of course, body means that collection of experiences, ideas, thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, preferences and aversions we call “I” or “me”. That stuff I call me merges with the vastness, the boundless, the akasha. It’s easy as laghutula, light as dandelion fluff. But only because you’ve done all the stuff [followed the advice of all the sutras] before.
A couple of sutras [b:e1da464758]before[/b:e1da464758] Mahesh’s flying sutra (those who call it the lying sutra know of what they speak, although they probably don’t know how badly he lied because I doubt even he knows the point he missed … or maybe he does; selling “greed for” levitation, even if it never works, makes more money than selling enlightenment, he already knew that), is the sutra that comes actually close to being about “levitation”. Mahesh skips it altogether. This sutra, however, seems to me to focus more on how to pass through the trials and tribulations of life without getting caught up in them than it does on levitation, flying carpets or Indian rope tricks. The word used there (III.40 in most translations) is utkranti which means departure or passing over. This sutra also uses the word udana which can be construed to be a kind of breathing technique (probably why Mahesh had people bellowsbreathing and hopping like frogs). Udana means up-going but here more likely means ‘rising above’ (as in overcoming, rising above the influence of former cult behaviour).
One of my favourites is the invisibility sutra. I am told that people are known to have had real psychological problems with this. It isn’t one I learned, so I don’t know what they are/were doing. It vanished like Mahesh’s other failures (night technique [also a South Asia Buddhist technique of dubious origins], most of the advanced techniques, the age of enlightenment techniques, s.c.i. and a couple of others from TranceNet and Minet.org I don’t recall just now). The sutra is complicated and basically says that vanishing (antardhana, literally being absorbed into) is the result of removing the seeable from the ability of others to see it. Hide in plain sight, blend into the background, don’t be a target, don’t draw attention to yourself, keep your head down. If you are practising the maintenance of vigorous states of awareness and attentiveness, this is good advice. If you think you’re leaning a parlor trick, well, look forward to a life of self-medication and psychotropics, I guess.
Another of my favourites is the funny translation of III:33 “by concentration on the light in the head one gets visions of the great masters” (my paraphrase). Siddha darshana: darshana as in yogadarshana, the teachings/blessings/fruitionb of yoga; siddha, the accomplished ones (those who know things just as they are, the awakened ones, those with siddhi, the power to grasp the reality of things). So, it seems to me to read more like this: the teachings of the awakened ones (to paraphrase Toni, the honest ones) is in the murdhan jyotis (literally, the light in the head). As in French, the modifier comes after the word it modifies pomme rouge, apple red, for example. Murdhan is the supreme, the highest. Jyotis is light. Thus: The teachings of the honest ones is in the great light. Not helpful?
Curious. The yoga sutras were collected as we know them today at about the same time the Brahmanical religious leaders began to rebel against the Buddhists who had (around 700-800 CE) been in ruling power for some time. But everything in India is both religion and politics, sacred and profane, secular and spiritual with boundaries being nonexistent. So much that is Buddhist is actually incorporated into what we have now as the yoga sutras. In Buddhist-speak, supreme light, luminous bliss refers to your mind – not your greymatter brain, but the mind, that which is aware of thoughts, experiences.
The light in the head idea is very consistent in almost all yoga sutra translations, so I have no problem being kind of out of sync with standard yogasutra translations. Additionally, it might explain the night technique, although a couple of years ago I ran across a fringe Buddhist web site that was trying to revive a South India Buddhist sect that taught focusing on the middle of the forehead and seeing the internal light. Sattyanand told me, because I asked about the origins of the night technique and he told me (everyone thought that Mahesh thought I was special, apparently Sattyanand too) that originally it had been to put the attention between the eyes, then it was changed to the forehead, then in front of the nose, then out in front, over the knees. Then, of course, it was quietly dropped, not only because it didn’t work, but because the whole world was too negative. What a hoot. Actually, I had wonderful experiences with profound deep sleep until the next technique and then the night technique stopped working. This is also another good example of Mahesh’s “playing around” trying to get something to work. This is a GREAT example of Mahesh being just another bright guy trying to make a buck, NOT the “maha” Rishi he styled himself to be.
The last of the more or less interesting sutras is III:31 in Mahesh’s system of delusional thinking we repeated “trachea” … the sutra really says “stability is in the turtle tube” – I never bothered to learn anything about Hindu medicine, but it’s translated trachea in most texts by most Indians, so it’s obvious. (OK, duh?)
I was trained as a special techniques teacher – and no, I have no idea what Mahesh expected from me. Maybe I was on some future agenda and bailed before we got to that page. However, I was loyal, devoted, one-pointed and always there when he wanted me – so maybe that’s why.
Anyway, the turtle tube: This is one of the special techniques. I learned two, actually used for several purposes. If you gave one person the same technique for two different reasons you had to charge two fees and do two pujas.
Puja; worship; flowers, incense, candle, burn camphor, chant in Sanskrit … very scientific, tm won’t work without it … oh yes, it certainly will. I taught lots of people without the puja or ever mentioning anything more than Mahesh once or twice in passing.
For overeating, you asked the person to do ten minutes of tm and then put her/his attention in the pit of the throat, this at the table in front of a plate of food. Many said it worked for a while. It was also used to quite smoking, same results “for a while”. It was also used for drug addiction. This I never tried, nor would I. People with drug addictions are no less deserving of kindness and considerations than smokers, but drug addiction is more serious in different and maybe more immediate ways. Generally, no one dies of over smoking, overdosing is something else. I would never try to treat drug addiction with Mahesh’s snake oil. I was a cynical true believer maybe Mahesh’s worst nightmare, but not some fool. Alcohol came in the same category as drug addiction. So did my opinion of it.
The other special technique was for unstressing. Ten minutes of tm and then shift the attention to the palms of the hands. Same results “for a while”.
Before I left the Circus I asked Mahesh to make me an M group initiator (teach monks and nuns who take s.c.i.). He wrote out for me aying for monks and ayim for nuns. If you go to [minet.org] you find that he gives these mantras to 18-20 and 20-22 year olds. I didn’t know this, of course, until the Internet came along. When I was doing Mahesh’s letters someone asked a question along these lines: what about the person who is on the cusp say 20, which mantra do you give. Mahesh told me to say “it doesn’t matter”.
The following year I was on ATR, tired, exhausted more like, depressed and fed up. I asked Mahesh for something to make me stronger. He quipped, “first get stronger then ask”.
I am very strong and just maybe a good if somewhat long winded teacher! I hope this has somehow been useful. I just don’t have something else to offer except to say, as I have before, that in similar yet different ways I have been there, I have experienced the joys that form really indelible bonds and I have experienced the bad things that still can tempt the guts to churn, like Neptune stirring the mighty seas.
M
Toni and friends
Mahesh and his brilliant mind.
He could see things others simply didn’t. He could see relationships between ideas. And we, moths drawn to his flame, couldn’t tell whether or not what he could see was meaningful or not, the flame was so bright for us.
We will never know what Guru Dev (Swami Brahmananda Sariswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, sort of like the Hindu archbishop of the north) taught Mahesh. On my teacher training course at Estes Park, Mahesh mentioned how Guru Dev had been very hard on him. I had heard this before from other teachers. I suspect that Mahesh Chandra Shrivastava was very difficult to keep in line and probably always knew better than Guru Dev. I do not think anyone “in” tm will possibly agree with me, but it seems to me that Mahesh had something to prove to Guru Dev. Whether or not he had had anything to do with Guru Dev’s suspicious death, the tampered-with will or the disappearance of money (Mahesh told us about the box: “you could just put your hand in and there would be enough for what you needed”) we will never know unless my friend’s book, coming out this spring/summer, reveals something. Still, the rumours do not go away.
Guru Dev was sort of like the pope. Everyone who was anyone and everyone who could as well, came to see him. There is an old photo of Mahesh and Nehru taken after Nehru’s “audience” with Guru Dev. I suppose many saints and yogis (precisely what the distinction is there is anyone’s guess, India is India, after all) came as well. Mahesh was friends with Tatwallababa (whom I met when I was in Rishikesh in ’73).
My gut suspicion now is that Mahesh could do things, set up loud speakers, set up microphones, get a trip organized, run a mimeograph. Mahesh made a little book called Amrit Kan (no longer sure of the spelling). It means Pears or Drops (the kan part) of nectar (amrit). It was a collection of Guru Dev’s sayings. I have never been able to locate a copy. Guru Dev was a man of the ancient past. A real yogi from the old days and Mahesh met him on the cusp of the technological age. So Mahesh made himself useful. Guru Dev may not have actually liked Mahesh, but needed him. I have often suspected that their relationship was not unlike that of the male/female hourglass spider. The female needs the male and the male has to be extremely careful. I have seen Mahesh around actually important figures (a couple of Africa’s heads of state visited a couple of times as well as “Brahmarishi” someone or another, a very old man who could recite the whole of the Rig Veda. Mahesh could demonstrate for all to see how respectful he could be, the great dignity he could carry. [i:e1da464758]The actor can play god better than god[/i:e1da464758]. Mahesh said it was from the Rig Veda.
What did Mahesh actually beguile out of Guru Dev? Can I really accept Guru Dev was that shallow? I met people who knew Guru Dev. I look at his picture and say to myself, you just didn’t mess with this guy, you never tried it. But I’ll bet Mahesh did and it may account for some of his behaviour.
I doubt very much that Mahesh didn’t get the people who came to see Guru Dev to one side and try to find out everything he could about what they themselves taught, what Guru Dev had said to them, what secrets he [Mahesh] was obviously ready to receive! I think my category of Saints/Yogis also has to include Lamas fleeing the Chinese in Tibet. In 2001 Rangjung Yeshe, publisher of Tibetan translations, published “Clarifying the Natural State” a sort of abbreviated handbook of a much larger 16th century text called, in the curious way Tibetans have of naming things, “Moonbeams of Mahamudra”. This little handbook, also 16th century, clearly outlines and clarifies basic Buddhist meditation. The brief instructions, something part of standard lama training, certainly sound vaguely like what we know as tm. They come with “pointing out” instructions [[i:e1da464758]do this, what do you experience, yes, that’s it, now you understand[/i:e1da464758] … very much like checking notes].
In Joyce Collins-Smith’s book “Call No Man Master” she mentions an audio tape sent her from Scandinavia. Mahesh was reminiscing and didn’t know he was being recorded. He mentions the inspiration for tm coming at a Lakshmi (appropriately the “goddess” of wealth) temple in the south of India.
I suspect that that was when it all fell into place for him. Someone said to someone else: ‘it’s as easy as thinking’ and the penny dropped. It isn’t only the Hindus who uses mantras. The Tibetans and the Buddhists of South East Asia do as well. Mahesh saw a unique twist on this and the even more essential uniqueness of “as easy as any thought” made it work.
It is also significant, I think, that Mahesh went to the south of India after Guru Dev died. Apparently the whole of India knew Guru Dev or knew about him. What they didn’t know was who Mahesh was. Guru Dev dies. Mahesh is invisible until he appears in the south of India and proclaims HIS spiritual regeneration movement for which Guru Dev was the smokescreen PR. And suddenly Mahesh is out of India and on his way to the West. If he had nothing to do with Guru Dev’s demise, the falsification of Guru Dev’s will, the disappearance of money, why is this period the greatest of all the tm secrets?
A long-time friend at the circus who had been with Mahesh on many of the old time teacher training courses in India said that after Guru Dev’s death Mahesh had put up a sign that said ‘who wants instant enlightenment?’ – those who did received shaktipat, he touched their foreheads and they swooned. You can still see this on tv faith healing programmes … Benny Hinn, I think. Joyce Collins-Smith also talks about this under the heading of Subud. She doesn’t involve Mahesh in this, but it is obvious that it is hardly something exclusive. One of the first people I taught tm showed up on an ATR I was leading some years later in Switzerland. He told me had suddenly become able to zap people. I tried not to scoff, but, even though I was a truebeliever, I was a cynical one. Later he zapped me and I had no doubts. I still remember and still have no doubts.
So, maybe this story about Mahesh is real and maybe he was up to something like this before he had got it all sorted out in the south of India. Mahesh never zapped/shaktipatted me, but it happened with one of the “saints” who visited him in Switzerland and it happened to me in the marketplace in Haridwar when I was in India. Curious. That’s all it can be evaluated as is curious. An experience to be sure, but no more than that.
After the age of enlightenment techniques and the ‘sidhi’ crap, after my last experience with Mahesh, I felt so increasingly tired and totally unmotivated that I finally just gave up and called it quits with tm. Why did it take so much and so long? First of all it was free because I was for unknowable reasons just there at the right time and somehow courted the right favour. And because Mahesh was always nice to me and because truebelievers don’t give up easily. Those of us who have “escaped” cultishness know how impossible it is to “reason” with someone “inside”.
But I had had that experience in 1964 and “knew” that there was something that I couldn’t learn the conventional way – so I decided to try SRF, Self-Realization Fellowship, Yogananda’s stuff. [As I write this, my eyes are rolling up, too. I actually do know how this sounds.] One of our teachers (“Bob”) had done all of Yogananda’s teachings prior to tm. Mahesh had told him it was OK to continue, but to do it after tm. So I thought it was the next step, perhaps.
Shallow does not begin to describe what Yogananda had to share. But when I learned the Kriya technique I immediately remembered that Bob had told Mahesh everything about Kriya Yoga. He had told me so (and I already knew first hand that Mahesh could charm the birds out of the trees, never mind milking a mark for all she/he was worth).
My age of enlightenment technique had been a composite of Kriya and the Gayatri mantra!
Later, when the Internet became available to me I discovered www.trancenet.org and that my string (10 or so) of advanced techniques was not like the ones there and that there was an age of enlightenment technique listed there that was different from mine (mine not being there). The one at TranceNet was also a Yogananda technique but not a Kriya technique!
Then I was really determined to find out everything I could about tm and what Mahesh had done. I began with the Yoga Sutras (Yogadarshana). I used I. K. Taimni’s “The Science of Yoga” which gives a word-by-word translation, M. Monier-Williams’ Sanskrit Dictionary and Sanskrit Grammar as well as Apte’s Sanskrit Dictionary. I literally looked up every word in the yoga sutras and made a dictionary for each word. I checked each grammar ending (Sanskrit about which I learned quite a bit over an almost 10 year period, is considerably like Latin using word endings to indicate to, from, for, by, of, with, through and so on).
Therapy? You bettcha.
What I finally was NOT able to do was make the yoga sutras say what Mahesh said! Of course, the flying sutra gets all the attention … mainly because it lets you do something besides drift off into a fog of mussy-minded numbness.
Mahesh’s flying sutra: this sutra, in the Yogadarshana text, more clearly has to do with awakening (akasha gamana, literally, “undertaking the unbounded” – going [gamana] into the sky [akasha] would be kind of like taking the Lord’s Prayer fundamentally literally “our father who art in heaven”, some do, of course, but …). The author says that this awakening is actually quite easy (laghutula, light as dandelion fluff) because it comes from the Samyama that joins both kaya and akasha.
Kaya, literally, means collection or body in the sense of body of stuff. When I say the body politic I do not, however mean “body” as in actual, specific flesh and blood, guts and designer jeans. Here, my opinion, of course, body means that collection of experiences, ideas, thoughts, feelings, emotions, desires, preferences and aversions we call “I” or “me”. That stuff I call me merges with the vastness, the boundless, the akasha. It’s easy as laghutula, light as dandelion fluff. But only because you’ve done all the stuff [followed the advice of all the sutras] before.
A couple of sutras [b:e1da464758]before[/b:e1da464758] Mahesh’s flying sutra (those who call it the lying sutra know of what they speak, although they probably don’t know how badly he lied because I doubt even he knows the point he missed … or maybe he does; selling “greed for” levitation, even if it never works, makes more money than selling enlightenment, he already knew that), is the sutra that comes actually close to being about “levitation”. Mahesh skips it altogether. This sutra, however, seems to me to focus more on how to pass through the trials and tribulations of life without getting caught up in them than it does on levitation, flying carpets or Indian rope tricks. The word used there (III.40 in most translations) is utkranti which means departure or passing over. This sutra also uses the word udana which can be construed to be a kind of breathing technique (probably why Mahesh had people bellowsbreathing and hopping like frogs). Udana means up-going but here more likely means ‘rising above’ (as in overcoming, rising above the influence of former cult behaviour).
One of my favourites is the invisibility sutra. I am told that people are known to have had real psychological problems with this. It isn’t one I learned, so I don’t know what they are/were doing. It vanished like Mahesh’s other failures (night technique [also a South Asia Buddhist technique of dubious origins], most of the advanced techniques, the age of enlightenment techniques, s.c.i. and a couple of others from TranceNet and Minet.org I don’t recall just now). The sutra is complicated and basically says that vanishing (antardhana, literally being absorbed into) is the result of removing the seeable from the ability of others to see it. Hide in plain sight, blend into the background, don’t be a target, don’t draw attention to yourself, keep your head down. If you are practising the maintenance of vigorous states of awareness and attentiveness, this is good advice. If you think you’re leaning a parlor trick, well, look forward to a life of self-medication and psychotropics, I guess.
Another of my favourites is the funny translation of III:33 “by concentration on the light in the head one gets visions of the great masters” (my paraphrase). Siddha darshana: darshana as in yogadarshana, the teachings/blessings/fruitionb of yoga; siddha, the accomplished ones (those who know things just as they are, the awakened ones, those with siddhi, the power to grasp the reality of things). So, it seems to me to read more like this: the teachings of the awakened ones (to paraphrase Toni, the honest ones) is in the murdhan jyotis (literally, the light in the head). As in French, the modifier comes after the word it modifies pomme rouge, apple red, for example. Murdhan is the supreme, the highest. Jyotis is light. Thus: The teachings of the honest ones is in the great light. Not helpful?
Curious. The yoga sutras were collected as we know them today at about the same time the Brahmanical religious leaders began to rebel against the Buddhists who had (around 700-800 CE) been in ruling power for some time. But everything in India is both religion and politics, sacred and profane, secular and spiritual with boundaries being nonexistent. So much that is Buddhist is actually incorporated into what we have now as the yoga sutras. In Buddhist-speak, supreme light, luminous bliss refers to your mind – not your greymatter brain, but the mind, that which is aware of thoughts, experiences.
The light in the head idea is very consistent in almost all yoga sutra translations, so I have no problem being kind of out of sync with standard yogasutra translations. Additionally, it might explain the night technique, although a couple of years ago I ran across a fringe Buddhist web site that was trying to revive a South India Buddhist sect that taught focusing on the middle of the forehead and seeing the internal light. Sattyanand told me, because I asked about the origins of the night technique and he told me (everyone thought that Mahesh thought I was special, apparently Sattyanand too) that originally it had been to put the attention between the eyes, then it was changed to the forehead, then in front of the nose, then out in front, over the knees. Then, of course, it was quietly dropped, not only because it didn’t work, but because the whole world was too negative. What a hoot. Actually, I had wonderful experiences with profound deep sleep until the next technique and then the night technique stopped working. This is also another good example of Mahesh’s “playing around” trying to get something to work. This is a GREAT example of Mahesh being just another bright guy trying to make a buck, NOT the “maha” Rishi he styled himself to be.
The last of the more or less interesting sutras is III:31 in Mahesh’s system of delusional thinking we repeated “trachea” … the sutra really says “stability is in the turtle tube” – I never bothered to learn anything about Hindu medicine, but it’s translated trachea in most texts by most Indians, so it’s obvious. (OK, duh?)
I was trained as a special techniques teacher – and no, I have no idea what Mahesh expected from me. Maybe I was on some future agenda and bailed before we got to that page. However, I was loyal, devoted, one-pointed and always there when he wanted me – so maybe that’s why.
Anyway, the turtle tube: This is one of the special techniques. I learned two, actually used for several purposes. If you gave one person the same technique for two different reasons you had to charge two fees and do two pujas.
Puja; worship; flowers, incense, candle, burn camphor, chant in Sanskrit … very scientific, tm won’t work without it … oh yes, it certainly will. I taught lots of people without the puja or ever mentioning anything more than Mahesh once or twice in passing.
For overeating, you asked the person to do ten minutes of tm and then put her/his attention in the pit of the throat, this at the table in front of a plate of food. Many said it worked for a while. It was also used to quite smoking, same results “for a while”. It was also used for drug addiction. This I never tried, nor would I. People with drug addictions are no less deserving of kindness and considerations than smokers, but drug addiction is more serious in different and maybe more immediate ways. Generally, no one dies of over smoking, overdosing is something else. I would never try to treat drug addiction with Mahesh’s snake oil. I was a cynical true believer maybe Mahesh’s worst nightmare, but not some fool. Alcohol came in the same category as drug addiction. So did my opinion of it.
The other special technique was for unstressing. Ten minutes of tm and then shift the attention to the palms of the hands. Same results “for a while”.
Before I left the Circus I asked Mahesh to make me an M group initiator (teach monks and nuns who take s.c.i.). He wrote out for me aying for monks and ayim for nuns. If you go to [minet.org] you find that he gives these mantras to 18-20 and 20-22 year olds. I didn’t know this, of course, until the Internet came along. When I was doing Mahesh’s letters someone asked a question along these lines: what about the person who is on the cusp say 20, which mantra do you give. Mahesh told me to say “it doesn’t matter”.
The following year I was on ATR, tired, exhausted more like, depressed and fed up. I asked Mahesh for something to make me stronger. He quipped, “first get stronger then ask”.
I am very strong and just maybe a good if somewhat long winded teacher! I hope this has somehow been useful. I just don’t have something else to offer except to say, as I have before, that in similar yet different ways I have been there, I have experienced the joys that form really indelible bonds and I have experienced the bad things that still can tempt the guts to churn, like Neptune stirring the mighty seas.
M
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Campos
()
Date: March 19, 2005 09:30AM
[code:1:7278a929e3]Mahesh gives everyone and everything "spiritual" a bad name. The up side is that the legitimate ones simply go on being legitimate. [/code:1:7278a929e3]
Yup, just need to find the legitimate ones by seeking guidance within.
[code:1:7278a929e3]Yes, all, we know this is gossipy, hope the readers are finding it interesting rather than totally boring[/code:1:7278a929e3]
I don't know about interesting. Definitely informative. Lots of lives destroyed here. Very sad!!
Yup, just need to find the legitimate ones by seeking guidance within.
[code:1:7278a929e3]Yes, all, we know this is gossipy, hope the readers are finding it interesting rather than totally boring[/code:1:7278a929e3]
I don't know about interesting. Definitely informative. Lots of lives destroyed here. Very sad!!
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Toni
()
Date: March 21, 2005 04:11AM
Hi again Martin :
Am sorry to hear of the prolonged period of anxiety attacks as you adapted to post cult life. It is hard to readjust to life when all your adapted ways of assuming life's organization are now reshuffled to be in 'normal society' That is why people on the 'inside' are so resisitant to facing their manipulation and stepping out. Even to the point of your conversations on the other internet chat group, w/ the devotees attacking you on minor typos, etc. They are not capable of logic and have a knee jerk protectionist reaction.
You were in much deeper than I was, also had 'chosen' of sorts to be there, vs. I was just raised in it. The anxiety and sense of betrayal must have gone deeply to your very core. I hope you had family or others to help you as you went through post-cult reentry.
IMHO, sharing your knowledge of the inside happenings here w/ others is probably a healthy way to use your experience. These behaviors happen inside so many groups, not just with 'ours'. Many benefit from learning. Your postings reveal a level of history that is so important. TM history for 'us', but also the TM movment, and then Eastern Spriituality was such a part of the baby boomer generation. To learn that 'all you need is love' was really about conmen is an eye opener for a whole generation.
Your strength and courage to speak forth is admirable!
Just two clarifications of my earlier postings, r.e. responses quoted below :
My turn to take the teensiest exception to something you wrote : that our beloved "MMY" was not a sociopath/psychopath, and yet the descriptions of his behavior, IMHO, fit completely w/in the defining criteria of either a sociopath or psychopath. He did know of the malignant behaviors w/in the origanization. Many of the behaviors were fostered by his own guidelines. And he did not care if it injured anyone. It was just about feeding his own need for power and wealth. No remorse, no regret, no conscience from his side.
Anyway, we're not here to argue the fine points of psychiatric diagnoses of someone whose behaviours affected our lives, even long after we'd departed from the circus. We agree it was a crazy stage-show! :lol:
Also, regarding the jewelry, my apologies for not being clear about my remark. I was not clear in my remark about Edna's diamond bead necklace, not referring to being ostentatious. Sorry. Yes, there were many kind caring spiritual people there.
My reference was to memory about the standard acceptance that beaded gemstones would influence a person's level of consciousness and spiritual development. Rudraksha beads to support celibacy and spiritual energy upward toward the crown chakra.. the more rare rudraksha beads had different number of 'faces' on the beads. White coral developed the intellect. Red coral developed the heart. Pink coral had a softening effect. Crytal (rock, not lead) to attract the attention of the Master. Then there were the combination necklaces, and other gems had other influences.
Then w/ the advent of Ayurveda, the Joytishi docs reommended other, much more expensive and gaudy, gems for various reasons. My mother wears a large yellow sapphire over hear heart because some ayurvedic astrologer prescribed it to help her in some way. She naturally purchased it through someone within in the movement who specializes in these things.
Now, remember, as the once-upon-a-time manager of the Crest Jewel, I sold these to people (pre ayurvedic times, by the the time the ayurvedic stuff was the rave, I was fed up).
Even though it was my job, I still thought it was ridiculous (but I had to make a living to support myself and only one daughter at the time). The devotees spent Soooo much time oohing and aaahing, trying on the various necklaces etc (ranging in price from under a $100 to several thousand$, per strand), closing their eyes and 'feeling' the effects of the gems on their consciousness. The really devout bramacharyas could sometimes be seen, beneath the collar of their white button down shirts, with many strands of beads. They were REALLY serious about enlightenment. The devotees who were really serious about enlightenment often had their beads placed on 18 K gold links. The less wealthy has their beads knotted on silk or linked in silver.
My mother described how she once had Mahesh in Switzerland publicly bless her jewelry (all on 18 K, w/ various assorted other faceted gems), as he ran his hand along the strands, w/ the various rings, etc hooked on, he commented to her "hmmm..... verrry nice...."
Later she was called in for a personal audience w/ him about something or other. I wonder how much she donated, or for which special course she signed up, after that special meeting where he praised her devotion, and how much the world would benefit from her gifts to this world, of spreading this technique for Enlightement for world peace.
Are diamond beads more effective than crystal to attract the attention of the Master?
Am sorry to hear of the prolonged period of anxiety attacks as you adapted to post cult life. It is hard to readjust to life when all your adapted ways of assuming life's organization are now reshuffled to be in 'normal society' That is why people on the 'inside' are so resisitant to facing their manipulation and stepping out. Even to the point of your conversations on the other internet chat group, w/ the devotees attacking you on minor typos, etc. They are not capable of logic and have a knee jerk protectionist reaction.
You were in much deeper than I was, also had 'chosen' of sorts to be there, vs. I was just raised in it. The anxiety and sense of betrayal must have gone deeply to your very core. I hope you had family or others to help you as you went through post-cult reentry.
IMHO, sharing your knowledge of the inside happenings here w/ others is probably a healthy way to use your experience. These behaviors happen inside so many groups, not just with 'ours'. Many benefit from learning. Your postings reveal a level of history that is so important. TM history for 'us', but also the TM movment, and then Eastern Spriituality was such a part of the baby boomer generation. To learn that 'all you need is love' was really about conmen is an eye opener for a whole generation.
Your strength and courage to speak forth is admirable!
Just two clarifications of my earlier postings, r.e. responses quoted below :
My turn to take the teensiest exception to something you wrote : that our beloved "MMY" was not a sociopath/psychopath, and yet the descriptions of his behavior, IMHO, fit completely w/in the defining criteria of either a sociopath or psychopath. He did know of the malignant behaviors w/in the origanization. Many of the behaviors were fostered by his own guidelines. And he did not care if it injured anyone. It was just about feeding his own need for power and wealth. No remorse, no regret, no conscience from his side.
Anyway, we're not here to argue the fine points of psychiatric diagnoses of someone whose behaviours affected our lives, even long after we'd departed from the circus. We agree it was a crazy stage-show! :lol:
Also, regarding the jewelry, my apologies for not being clear about my remark. I was not clear in my remark about Edna's diamond bead necklace, not referring to being ostentatious. Sorry. Yes, there were many kind caring spiritual people there.
My reference was to memory about the standard acceptance that beaded gemstones would influence a person's level of consciousness and spiritual development. Rudraksha beads to support celibacy and spiritual energy upward toward the crown chakra.. the more rare rudraksha beads had different number of 'faces' on the beads. White coral developed the intellect. Red coral developed the heart. Pink coral had a softening effect. Crytal (rock, not lead) to attract the attention of the Master. Then there were the combination necklaces, and other gems had other influences.
Then w/ the advent of Ayurveda, the Joytishi docs reommended other, much more expensive and gaudy, gems for various reasons. My mother wears a large yellow sapphire over hear heart because some ayurvedic astrologer prescribed it to help her in some way. She naturally purchased it through someone within in the movement who specializes in these things.
Now, remember, as the once-upon-a-time manager of the Crest Jewel, I sold these to people (pre ayurvedic times, by the the time the ayurvedic stuff was the rave, I was fed up).
Even though it was my job, I still thought it was ridiculous (but I had to make a living to support myself and only one daughter at the time). The devotees spent Soooo much time oohing and aaahing, trying on the various necklaces etc (ranging in price from under a $100 to several thousand$, per strand), closing their eyes and 'feeling' the effects of the gems on their consciousness. The really devout bramacharyas could sometimes be seen, beneath the collar of their white button down shirts, with many strands of beads. They were REALLY serious about enlightenment. The devotees who were really serious about enlightenment often had their beads placed on 18 K gold links. The less wealthy has their beads knotted on silk or linked in silver.
My mother described how she once had Mahesh in Switzerland publicly bless her jewelry (all on 18 K, w/ various assorted other faceted gems), as he ran his hand along the strands, w/ the various rings, etc hooked on, he commented to her "hmmm..... verrry nice...."
Later she was called in for a personal audience w/ him about something or other. I wonder how much she donated, or for which special course she signed up, after that special meeting where he praised her devotion, and how much the world would benefit from her gifts to this world, of spreading this technique for Enlightement for world peace.
Are diamond beads more effective than crystal to attract the attention of the Master?
Quote
I am going to take just the teensiest exception to this in that I don't think the snake oil salesman we know and thought we loved was actually sociopathic. Sociopaths usually hurt rather directly and malignantly because they have no conception of the feelings and harm done others. They only know how to use others to sate their needs. Of course, Mahesh certainly used others but he was very careful about hurting them (if he needed them). Sociopaths don’t make this distinction.
You wrote of the diamond beaded necklace.. yes, so much emphasis on jewelry! ....
Oh dear. You missed my point. Edna wasn't being ostentatious. She was British Aristocracy slumming with the reformed hippies. :wink: -- No, she was just Edna, a really lovely, very, very nice lady who was probably sincerely devoted to Mahesh most probably because he had a better eye for jewelry than I did and was happy to lead her in letting her lead herself on
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Toni
()
Date: March 21, 2005 08:16AM
Quote
Toni
That is why people on the 'inside' are so resisitant to facing their manipulation and stepping out. Even to the point of your conversations on the other internet chat group, w/ the devotees attacking you on minor typos, etc. They are not capable of logic and have a knee jerk protectionist reaction.
Let me rephrase that.....
To function in the realm of logic would call into question their entire construct of reality. They ARE capable of logic, but could only follow a logical discourse, if able to set aside the skewed paradigm of life/cult/spirituality/ reality.
And that is what corboy has called an 'existential crises'. The devout will do anything they can to avoid the pain of such an internal crises.
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Martin
()
Date: March 22, 2005 01:50AM
Toni - I am in a rush here and won't have real time until tomorrow. I have no argument against Mahesh as sociopath. I have met a couple of really nice sociopaths (when I worked briefly in a prison project). It just seemed to me that Mahesh's dominant pathology was narcissism.
That said, I also have to say that I really do not have the background, academic or otherwise to have any meaningful assessment abilities in this area. Mahesh and Ted Bundy could be twins in that neither is/was what he seemed. That may be all that there is that needs to be said.
Also, Mahesh/Beatles: I think the real thing he learned from them (and would never in a billion years dream of crediting them for) was the "insight" that the best way to fame/fortune was to sell people what they wanted to buy. Sounds so dumb. You were there, as was I, so we know how brilliantly it worked! And he had the mystique to do it. He was the arch purvayor of SECRETS.
M
That said, I also have to say that I really do not have the background, academic or otherwise to have any meaningful assessment abilities in this area. Mahesh and Ted Bundy could be twins in that neither is/was what he seemed. That may be all that there is that needs to be said.
Also, Mahesh/Beatles: I think the real thing he learned from them (and would never in a billion years dream of crediting them for) was the "insight" that the best way to fame/fortune was to sell people what they wanted to buy. Sounds so dumb. You were there, as was I, so we know how brilliantly it worked! And he had the mystique to do it. He was the arch purvayor of SECRETS.
M
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Martin
()
Date: March 23, 2005 03:42AM
Well, for what it may be worth, I have some time today and want to respond to your comments just a little more:
One of the people with whom I used to talk was a "survivor" of Jehovah's Witnesses. Of all the cult groups here and there, the JW's seem to be the most successfully inoculated against the outside world. If we can be dispassionate about these things, then it's a very interesting study in belief and how mind makes reality. But it's very hard to be dispassionate in these areas.
I had the very curious experience of being "chosen" by Mahesh in an almost public way. There was, really, no one to help with the re-entry, actually. One day I just put my keys in the drawer and walked out. Hearing the door lock itself behind me was both liberating and devastating at the same time. I simply knew that I couldn't do it any more. (Oh, "do it" refers to teaching tm and being part of a "world plan" centre. It was just to bizarre.) I supposed that what really helped was not having anyone but myself to rely upon. I had to get a real job amongst real people who not only didn't do tm, but mostly had never heard of it. I was suddenly a stranger in a strange land, a foreigner in my own city.
I cried a lot.
Sharing is really difficult, of course. Mostly it's a huge issue of trust, isn't it. Right now, as I have mentioned, I am part of a local Buddhist group. I cautiously opened up to one of our members one day and was surprised to discover that she knew an old-time tm-er I knew. Another of our members heard I had done tm and confessed (funny word, sort of) that she, too, had done tm. It turns out that many of our Sangha (Sanskrit word basically meaning group) once did tm. Suddenly I am some kind of hero! I can answer their questions (which are many). The point being: acceptance, trust and sharing has turned out to be rewarding.
But I am sure that many people, perhaps ex-JW's, ex-Scientologists, ex-Moonies do not find themselves in a comforting position.
As you observe, tm was important for our generation. Many cults sprang up in response to the angst of the young-adult boomer. Most, of course, were malicious in one or another insidious way. But tm had a level of purity that "transcended" [oh, like you didn't know it was coming] the times.
I still tend to think that, although Mahesh was sociopathic/narcissistic from the beginning, he held it in check until his encounter with the Beatles let him run wild with his darker nature. He felt justified, I guess, being rescued from obscurity, that he could do what he wanted, as he pleased.
One of his most recent things is printing his own money, the Raam. As some know, "ram" was one of the very first mantras he used; so making money selling mantras takes on a curious context, doesn't it. -- To have enough money to back actually printing your own money must, in that Hindu way of measuring success, really prove to Mahesh that he has proved something to the world.
My own darker side suggests that he has always been proving to Guru Dev that he is not the selfish, self-centred miscreant Guru Dev knew him for. Yes, Mahesh was handy to have around, a great worker, a great organizer. I wonder if Guru Dev, however, kept him around in the same way we say to keep our friends close and our enemies closer. If my friend's book does reach publication this spring/summer, hopefully his research will clarify this.
I think I responded a little before, but in giving it more thought, I just do not know how to sort this out. Mahesh was a master of divide and conquer. He never let the right hand know what the left was up to. He manipulated secrets/secrecy with the consummate skill of a seasoned politician. I doubt anyone ever saw the whole picture. Maybe Jerry Jarvis began to get a whiff of it by the time we were in Fiuggi (in Italy). He disappeared after that. Mahesh certainly didn't actually care about individuals, but he was the master of "the actor can play god better than god" when it came to beguiling what he wanted/needed/craved from anyone who could provide it.
Nancy Cooke de Herrera in [i:0018176684]Beyond Gurus[/i:0018176684] talks about his staff being out of line. I doubt he wanted to know. He could get very angry about not being told good news! As long as people were fulfilling his fantasy they were basically on their own to engage in whatever blissninnidome they felt most at home with.
As I have often said, I simply lack the academic background to know how to put a meaningful face, words, on this situation. Maybe we can say that as long as he was being fed the lies I chose to believe, he was the benevolent guru of everyone's dreams. When the dream stopped working for him, then it stopped for everyone. To keep the dream going, he had to keep everyone busy and had to keep inventing new programmes, new sources of income for him/new sources of inspiration for the punters.
What I suspect is that he simply couldn't face the rigors of public teaching any more. After saying he had failed and was retiring to the Himalayas or wherever, the Beatles resuscitated him, so to speak. He taught the Estes Park course, and participated in the Mallorca and Fiuggi courses but the s.c.i. course really drained him. After that he let others do his bidding under a tight reign, but I think he very gradually went ahead with his retirement from the public (which he couldn't have enjoyed as I don't think he actually liked people ... individuals, maybe, people, no).
His retirement was glamorous from his perspective: devotees doing his bidding, money flowing in like dreams come true. Adulation, reverence, attention flowing in, too, like dreams come true. He controlled, so to speak, the spigot that turned the dreams on and the reality off.
What may have been happening (and please be aware that I am speaking my opinions here and they probably won't measure up to anyone else's experienced opinions simply because Mahesh didn't let one group of people know what the other was doing), but what I think was happening was that Mahesh was satisfying himself through all of this that he was showing Guru Dev a thing or two about what being successful was really all about.
I wonder if we this is some kind of helpful measure when we look at other cults: to whom is the leader proving what?
Now, yes, without question. At the time and for a long time after it was something I simply couldn't get my head around.
[[size=9:0018176684]quote]Also, regarding the jewelry, my apologies for not being clear about my remark. I was not clear in my remark about Edna's diamond bead necklace, not referring to being ostentatious. Sorry. Yes, there were many kind caring spiritual people there.
My reference was to memory about the standard acceptance that beaded gemstones would influence a person's level of consciousness and spiritual development. Rudraksha beads to support celibacy and spiritual energy upward toward the crown chakra.. the more rare rudraksha beads had different number of 'faces' on the beads. White coral developed the intellect. Red coral developed the heart. Pink coral had a softening effect. Crytal (rock, not lead) to attract the attention of the Master. Then there were the combination necklaces, and other gems had other influences. [/quote][/size:0018176684]
Oh! Ha, ha, ha. Yes. I had completely forgotten that. At Estes Park, Mahesh had made fun of the mentality that saw how the guru tied his goat to a tree so went about also tying its goat in a similar knot to a similar tree.
By the time the "international" staff was beginning to populate the 6-month courses and the "movement" (for those who don't know, Mahesh's first organization in the West was called the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, SRM. The short form just became "movement" to cover ever thing [i:0018176684]we[/i:0018176684] were doing, [i:0018176684]accomplishing[/i:0018176684]!) Mahesh apparently found we worked better towards his goals of self-fulfilment if we were happy pretending to be all spiritual and smarmy. I had (still have) a nice string of rudraksha and some nice coral.
You mention Crest Jewel. I remember buying some beads from them/you. I still have them. Good quality stuff.
Well, diamonds prove something, don't they. Anybody can get a string of nice crystal, but diamonds! Edna's were probably her great grandmothers. Probably the sort of thing an aristocratic Lady wore to the social event of the season. Funny, they seemed like every-day wear that nice morning in Seelisberg.
Well, I don't ever seem to reign in the babbling, do I. But, as Mahesh survivors (tm, international staff, 'sidhis', mantras, world plan, it was all Mahesh always and only about Mahesh) we have a unique insight into the machinations of a cult-leader who was different in almost every way from every other cult leader. He probably knew about each and every one in the most intimate details because everyone flocked to him and told him everything he wanted to know. He made that possible by going everywhere, I suspect, looking for answers himself. But the answers always came to him, which doubtless proved to him how right he was.
Great old shaggy dog story about the minister, the priest and the rabbi. They are fishing or something. The minister and the priest fall in the lake, but the rabbi walks across the water. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
He knew where the rocks were.
Mahesh was quick to find out where the rocks were. He was on a mission: I think two missions -- the one we saw and thought was so good, the other, to prove something to Guru Dev.
Y'work with what'y'got. Mahesh was really good at it.
M
Quote
It is hard to readjust to life when all your adapted ways of assuming life's organization are now reshuffled to be in 'normal society' That is why people on the 'inside' are so resistant to facing their manipulation and stepping out. Even to the point of your conversations on the other Internet chat group, w/ the devotees attacking you on minor typos, etc. They are not capable of logic and have a knee jerk protectionist reaction.
One of the people with whom I used to talk was a "survivor" of Jehovah's Witnesses. Of all the cult groups here and there, the JW's seem to be the most successfully inoculated against the outside world. If we can be dispassionate about these things, then it's a very interesting study in belief and how mind makes reality. But it's very hard to be dispassionate in these areas.
Quote
You were in much deeper than I was, also had 'chosen' of sorts to be there, vs. I was just raised in it. The anxiety and sense of betrayal must have gone deeply to your very core. I hope you had family or others to help you as you went through post-cult reeentry.
I had the very curious experience of being "chosen" by Mahesh in an almost public way. There was, really, no one to help with the re-entry, actually. One day I just put my keys in the drawer and walked out. Hearing the door lock itself behind me was both liberating and devastating at the same time. I simply knew that I couldn't do it any more. (Oh, "do it" refers to teaching tm and being part of a "world plan" centre. It was just to bizarre.) I supposed that what really helped was not having anyone but myself to rely upon. I had to get a real job amongst real people who not only didn't do tm, but mostly had never heard of it. I was suddenly a stranger in a strange land, a foreigner in my own city.
I cried a lot.
.Quote
IMHO, sharing your knowledge of the inside happenings here w/ others is probably a healthy way to use your experience
Sharing is really difficult, of course. Mostly it's a huge issue of trust, isn't it. Right now, as I have mentioned, I am part of a local Buddhist group. I cautiously opened up to one of our members one day and was surprised to discover that she knew an old-time tm-er I knew. Another of our members heard I had done tm and confessed (funny word, sort of) that she, too, had done tm. It turns out that many of our Sangha (Sanskrit word basically meaning group) once did tm. Suddenly I am some kind of hero! I can answer their questions (which are many). The point being: acceptance, trust and sharing has turned out to be rewarding.
But I am sure that many people, perhaps ex-JW's, ex-Scientologists, ex-Moonies do not find themselves in a comforting position.
Quote
These behaviors happen inside so many groups, not just with 'ours'. Many benefit from learning. Your postings reveal a level of history that is so important. TM history for 'us', but also the TM movement, and then Eastern Spirituality was such a part of the baby boomer generation. To learn that 'all you need is love' was really about conmen is an eye opener for a whole generation.
As you observe, tm was important for our generation. Many cults sprang up in response to the angst of the young-adult boomer. Most, of course, were malicious in one or another insidious way. But tm had a level of purity that "transcended" [oh, like you didn't know it was coming] the times.
I still tend to think that, although Mahesh was sociopathic/narcissistic from the beginning, he held it in check until his encounter with the Beatles let him run wild with his darker nature. He felt justified, I guess, being rescued from obscurity, that he could do what he wanted, as he pleased.
One of his most recent things is printing his own money, the Raam. As some know, "ram" was one of the very first mantras he used; so making money selling mantras takes on a curious context, doesn't it. -- To have enough money to back actually printing your own money must, in that Hindu way of measuring success, really prove to Mahesh that he has proved something to the world.
My own darker side suggests that he has always been proving to Guru Dev that he is not the selfish, self-centred miscreant Guru Dev knew him for. Yes, Mahesh was handy to have around, a great worker, a great organizer. I wonder if Guru Dev, however, kept him around in the same way we say to keep our friends close and our enemies closer. If my friend's book does reach publication this spring/summer, hopefully his research will clarify this.
Quote
My turn to take the teensiest exception to something you wrote: that our beloved "MMY" was not a sociopath/psychopath, and yet the descriptions of his behavior, IMHO, fit completely w/in the defining criteria of either a sociopath or psychopath. He did know of the malignant behaviors w/in the organization. Many of the behaviors were fostered by his own guidelines. And he did not care if it injured anyone. It was just about feeding his own need for power and wealth. No remorse, no regret, no conscience from his side.
I think I responded a little before, but in giving it more thought, I just do not know how to sort this out. Mahesh was a master of divide and conquer. He never let the right hand know what the left was up to. He manipulated secrets/secrecy with the consummate skill of a seasoned politician. I doubt anyone ever saw the whole picture. Maybe Jerry Jarvis began to get a whiff of it by the time we were in Fiuggi (in Italy). He disappeared after that. Mahesh certainly didn't actually care about individuals, but he was the master of "the actor can play god better than god" when it came to beguiling what he wanted/needed/craved from anyone who could provide it.
Nancy Cooke de Herrera in [i:0018176684]Beyond Gurus[/i:0018176684] talks about his staff being out of line. I doubt he wanted to know. He could get very angry about not being told good news! As long as people were fulfilling his fantasy they were basically on their own to engage in whatever blissninnidome they felt most at home with.
As I have often said, I simply lack the academic background to know how to put a meaningful face, words, on this situation. Maybe we can say that as long as he was being fed the lies I chose to believe, he was the benevolent guru of everyone's dreams. When the dream stopped working for him, then it stopped for everyone. To keep the dream going, he had to keep everyone busy and had to keep inventing new programmes, new sources of income for him/new sources of inspiration for the punters.
What I suspect is that he simply couldn't face the rigors of public teaching any more. After saying he had failed and was retiring to the Himalayas or wherever, the Beatles resuscitated him, so to speak. He taught the Estes Park course, and participated in the Mallorca and Fiuggi courses but the s.c.i. course really drained him. After that he let others do his bidding under a tight reign, but I think he very gradually went ahead with his retirement from the public (which he couldn't have enjoyed as I don't think he actually liked people ... individuals, maybe, people, no).
His retirement was glamorous from his perspective: devotees doing his bidding, money flowing in like dreams come true. Adulation, reverence, attention flowing in, too, like dreams come true. He controlled, so to speak, the spigot that turned the dreams on and the reality off.
What may have been happening (and please be aware that I am speaking my opinions here and they probably won't measure up to anyone else's experienced opinions simply because Mahesh didn't let one group of people know what the other was doing), but what I think was happening was that Mahesh was satisfying himself through all of this that he was showing Guru Dev a thing or two about what being successful was really all about.
I wonder if we this is some kind of helpful measure when we look at other cults: to whom is the leader proving what?
Quote
We agree it was a crazy stage-show! :lol:
Now, yes, without question. At the time and for a long time after it was something I simply couldn't get my head around.
[[size=9:0018176684]quote]Also, regarding the jewelry, my apologies for not being clear about my remark. I was not clear in my remark about Edna's diamond bead necklace, not referring to being ostentatious. Sorry. Yes, there were many kind caring spiritual people there.
My reference was to memory about the standard acceptance that beaded gemstones would influence a person's level of consciousness and spiritual development. Rudraksha beads to support celibacy and spiritual energy upward toward the crown chakra.. the more rare rudraksha beads had different number of 'faces' on the beads. White coral developed the intellect. Red coral developed the heart. Pink coral had a softening effect. Crytal (rock, not lead) to attract the attention of the Master. Then there were the combination necklaces, and other gems had other influences. [/quote][/size:0018176684]
Oh! Ha, ha, ha. Yes. I had completely forgotten that. At Estes Park, Mahesh had made fun of the mentality that saw how the guru tied his goat to a tree so went about also tying its goat in a similar knot to a similar tree.
By the time the "international" staff was beginning to populate the 6-month courses and the "movement" (for those who don't know, Mahesh's first organization in the West was called the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, SRM. The short form just became "movement" to cover ever thing [i:0018176684]we[/i:0018176684] were doing, [i:0018176684]accomplishing[/i:0018176684]!) Mahesh apparently found we worked better towards his goals of self-fulfilment if we were happy pretending to be all spiritual and smarmy. I had (still have) a nice string of rudraksha and some nice coral.
You mention Crest Jewel. I remember buying some beads from them/you. I still have them. Good quality stuff.
Quote
Are diamond beads more effective than crystal to attract the attention of the Master?
Well, diamonds prove something, don't they. Anybody can get a string of nice crystal, but diamonds! Edna's were probably her great grandmothers. Probably the sort of thing an aristocratic Lady wore to the social event of the season. Funny, they seemed like every-day wear that nice morning in Seelisberg.
Well, I don't ever seem to reign in the babbling, do I. But, as Mahesh survivors (tm, international staff, 'sidhis', mantras, world plan, it was all Mahesh always and only about Mahesh) we have a unique insight into the machinations of a cult-leader who was different in almost every way from every other cult leader. He probably knew about each and every one in the most intimate details because everyone flocked to him and told him everything he wanted to know. He made that possible by going everywhere, I suspect, looking for answers himself. But the answers always came to him, which doubtless proved to him how right he was.
Great old shaggy dog story about the minister, the priest and the rabbi. They are fishing or something. The minister and the priest fall in the lake, but the rabbi walks across the water. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
He knew where the rocks were.
Mahesh was quick to find out where the rocks were. He was on a mission: I think two missions -- the one we saw and thought was so good, the other, to prove something to Guru Dev.
Y'work with what'y'got. Mahesh was really good at it.
M
Mahesh and money
Posted by:
Martin
()
Date: March 24, 2005 04:50AM
I don't want to belabour the issue any more; who can take that kind of punishment!
I want to sort of draw this long discussion of Mahesh and his curious use of mind candy together by quoting [parapharasing, actually] one of my more recent teachers, something I think I might have done in the early stages of this thread, but it might be more meaningful now:
[b:61b35d71b0]Take what is and has been best for you from all of your experiences. Examine closely and find what opens your heart, what gives you joy and peace. Don't close your heart, especially to yourself.[/color:61b35d71b0][/b:61b35d71b0][/size:61b35d71b0]
I am happy to answer (well, try to answer) questions about Mahesh, tm, 'sidhis' and stuff like that. I am happy to talk about my experiences if you ask and if you think I might have something useful for you.
I attended a lecture many years ago by the Author of the then very popular book: [i:61b35d71b0]Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?[/i:61b35d71b0]. At the end of his talk he said: if anything I have said is useful to you, it is yours. If anything I have said is not, then forget about it, we will still be friends.
I want to sort of draw this long discussion of Mahesh and his curious use of mind candy together by quoting [parapharasing, actually] one of my more recent teachers, something I think I might have done in the early stages of this thread, but it might be more meaningful now:
[b:61b35d71b0]Take what is and has been best for you from all of your experiences. Examine closely and find what opens your heart, what gives you joy and peace. Don't close your heart, especially to yourself.[/color:61b35d71b0][/b:61b35d71b0][/size:61b35d71b0]
I am happy to answer (well, try to answer) questions about Mahesh, tm, 'sidhis' and stuff like that. I am happy to talk about my experiences if you ask and if you think I might have something useful for you.
I attended a lecture many years ago by the Author of the then very popular book: [i:61b35d71b0]Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?[/i:61b35d71b0]. At the end of his talk he said: if anything I have said is useful to you, it is yours. If anything I have said is not, then forget about it, we will still be friends.
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