Ex-Premie.Org

Forum I Archive # 1

From: Apr 12, 1997

To: May 2, 1997

Page: 4 Of: 5


Mili Baba -:- The Real You -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 19:08:39 (EDT)
___Anon -:- Re: The Real You -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 22:16:48 (EDT)
___Mili Baba -:- Re: The Real You -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 06:59:58 (EDT)
___Anon -:- Re: The Real You -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 09:40:03 (EDT)
___Mili -:- Re: The Real You -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 16:08:10 (EDT)
___Anon -:- Re: The Real You -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 18:50:40 (EDT)
___Mili -:- Re: The Real You -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 20:13:02 (EDT)
___Anon -:- Re: The Real You -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 20:18:15 (EDT)

Anne -:- Mili is being childish -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:56:19 (EDT)
___Mili Baba -:- Re: Mili is being childish -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 06:57:51 (EDT)
___Anne -:- Re: Mili is being childish -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 10:12:04 (EDT)
___Mili -:- Re: Mili is being childish -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 05:16:53 (EDT)

Mili Baba -:- Awakening -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:27:24 (EDT)

Mili Baba -:- The Role of a Guru -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:22:20 (EDT)

Mili Baba -:- Drama -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:19:36 (EDT)

Mili Baba -:- Serious Questions -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:16:23 (EDT)

Mili Baba -:- The Nature of Consciousness -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:19:32 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: The Nature of Consciousness -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:48:16 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: The Nature of Consciousness -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 21:20:13 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: The Nature of Consciousness -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 16:10:44 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: The Nature of Consciousness -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 20:36:27 (EDT)

Jim -:- Another Cave Story -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 16:57:06 (EDT)

Matt C. -:- This ever happen 2u -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 16:49:00 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:17:53 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 22:24:30 (EDT)
___Matt C. -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 01:00:45 (EDT)
___Matt C. -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 01:26:52 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Tues, Apr 22, 1997 at 00:32:36 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 02:55:59 (EDT)
___Matt C. -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 15:10:53 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 18:27:06 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 18:45:34 (EDT)
___op -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 19:44:29 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 20:10:12 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 21:40:15 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 21:47:29 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 22:48:19 (EDT)
___op -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 23:09:46 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Fri, Apr 25, 1997 at 09:48:41 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: This ever happen 2u -:- Fri, Apr 25, 1997 at 09:50:12 (EDT)

Anon -:- Please Please... -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 19:08:21 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: Please Please... -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 21:05:42 (EDT)
___Hi Anne! -:- Re: Please Please... -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 09:58:12 (EDT)
___Anon-not Anne,sorry.... -:- Re: Please Please... -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 10:05:08 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: Please Please... -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:19:53 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: Please Please... -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 23:47:21 (EDT)

Jim -:- If we only had a Judge -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 17:46:24 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: If we only had a Judge -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 10:07:21 (EDT)

Jim -:- Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 13:31:45 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 19:52:46 (EDT)
___op -:- Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 21:24:13 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 23:04:41 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 23:29:45 (EDT)
___op -:- Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 00:30:47 (EDT)
___x -:- Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 01:22:21 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 11:04:38 (EDT)

JW -:- The Plane -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 19:47:53 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: The Plane -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 22:10:05 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: The Plane -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 22:27:37 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: The Plane -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 01:08:32 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: The Plane -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 09:47:54 (EDT)
___interested parties -:- Re: The Plane -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 21:12:08 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: The Plane -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 19:29:26 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: The Plane -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 19:41:58 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: The Plane -:- Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 21:41:49 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 05:55:33 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 10:50:08 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 11:40:02 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 11:42:58 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 13:03:10 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 20:34:53 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 20:51:44 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:10:59 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:12:07 (EDT)
___Bobby -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:41:11 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:44:20 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 22:42:18 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: The Plane -:- Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 23:45:48 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: The Plane -:- Tues, Apr 22, 1997 at 14:16:11 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: The Plane -:- Tues, Apr 22, 1997 at 20:12:15 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: The Plane -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 16:36:24 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: The Plane -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 20:29:11 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: The Plane -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 23:59:49 (EDT)

Phil -:- Sheldon Nidle Updates -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 12:20:59 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: Sheldon Nidle Updates -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 14:52:08 (EDT)

flocki -:- new -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 11:52:07 (EDT)

Deena -:- LET'S TALK ABOUT... -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 09:52:54 (EDT)
___Brian -:- Re: LET'S TALK ABOUT... -:- Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 21:27:56 (EDT)

Deena -:- Thanks you guys/gals -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 03:08:48 (EDT)

Deena -:- More Quotes -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 02:48:03 (EDT)

David -:- Can anyone... -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 15:57:05 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: Can anyone... -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 16:43:59 (EDT)

Anonymous -:- ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 13:49:37 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 14:49:20 (EDT)
___David -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 15:35:48 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 16:41:25 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:29:08 (EDT)
___Bobby -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:44:20 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:55:08 (EDT)
___Bobby -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:01:50 (EDT)
___Douche -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:16:50 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:22:02 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:48:46 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:52:41 (EDT)
___Bobby -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 19:07:07 (EDT)
___Anonymous -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 19:39:12 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 22:33:21 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 22:39:36 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 23:33:39 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 02:24:15 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 10:07:59 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 11:34:16 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 21:56:51 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 23:35:24 (EDT)
___Deena -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 02:27:14 (EDT)
___Deena - to old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 08:55:29 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 14:26:23 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:15:20 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:26:56 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:29:51 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:46:44 (EDT)
___old premie -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 17:00:31 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 17:57:03 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 19:29:05 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 19:47:49 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 20:24:52 (EDT)
___Jim -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 21:43:29 (EDT)
___op -:- Re: ANONYMITy -:- Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 01:27:09 (EDT)

Another Anonymous -:- VIVA THE REVOLUTION! -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 13:45:08 (EDT)
___Chris -:- Re: VIVA THE REVOLUTION! -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 15:14:23 (EDT)

JW -:- Quotes from Guru Papers -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 12:32:27 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: Quotes from Guru Papers -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 12:52:24 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: Quotes from Guru Papers -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 13:04:07 (EDT)

David -:- rubber stamp -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 04:31:47 (EDT)
___David P. -:- Re: rubber stamp -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 04:45:28 (EDT)
___David -:- Re: rubber stamp -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 16:02:32 (EDT)

Jim -:- Moral obligation to speak up -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 00:00:00 (EDT)
___JW -:- Re: Moral obligation to speak up -:- Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:39:28 (EDT)

JW -:- ZITS -:- Tues, Apr 15, 1997 at 12:10:53 (EDT)
___Douvid -:- Re: ZITS -:- Tues, Apr 15, 1997 at 17:40:50 (EDT)


Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 19:08:39 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: The Real You
Message:
You see, the problem is this. We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. We have a certain number of actions that we define as voluntary, and we feel in control of those. And then over against that, there is all those things that are involuntary. But the dividing line between these two is very arbitrary. Because for example, when you move your hand, you feel that you decide whether to open it or to close it. But then ask yourself how do you decide? When you decide to open your hand, do you first decide to decide? You don't, do you? You just decide, and how do you do that? And if you don't know how to do it, is it voluntary or involuntary? Let's consider breathing. You can feel that you breathe deliberately; you don't control your breath. But when you don't think about it, it goes on. Is it voluntary or involuntary?

So, we come to have a very arbitrary definition of self. That much of my activity which I feel I do. And that then doesn't include breathing most of the time; it doesn't include the heartbeats; it doesn't include the activity of the glands; it doesn't include digestion; it doesn't include how you shape your bones; circulate your blood. Do you or do you not do these things? Now if you get with yourself and you find out you are all of yourself, a very strange thing happens. You find out that your body knows that you are one with the universe. In other words, the so-called involuntary circulation of your blood is one continuous process with the stars shining. If you find out it's YOU who circulates your blood, you will at the same moment find out that you are shining the sun. Because your physical organism is one continuous process with everything else that's going on. Just as the waves are continuous with the ocean. Your body is continuous with the total energy system of the cosmos, and it's all you. Only you're playing the game that you're only this bit of it. But as I tried to explain, there are in physical reality no such thing as separate events.

So then. Remember also when I tried to work towards a definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it. You don't have to translate it into language. Supposing that when you got up in the morning, you had to switch your brain on. And you had to think and do as a deliberate process waking up all the circuits that you need for active life during the day. Why, you'd never get done! Because you have to do all those things at once. That's why the Buddhists and Hindus represent their gods as many-armed. How could you use so many arms at once? How could a centipede control a hundred legs at once? Because it doesn't think about it. In the same way, you are unconsciously performing all the various activities of your organism. Only unconsciously isn't a good word, because it sounds sort of dead. Superconsciously would be better. Give it a plus rather than a minus.

Because what consciousness is is a rather specialized form of awareness. When you look around the room, you are conscious of as much as you can notice, and you see an enormous number of things which you do not notice. For example, I look at a girl here and somebody asks me later 'What was she wearing?' I may not know, although I've seen, because I didn't attend. But I was aware. You see? And perhaps if I could under hypnosis be asked this question, where I would get my conscious attention out of the way by being in the hypnotic state, I could recall what dress she was wearing.

So then, just in the same way as you don't know--you don't focus your attention--on how you make your thyroid gland function, so in the same way, you don't have any attention focused on how you shine the sun. So then, let me connect this with the problem of birth and death, which puzzles people enormously of course. Because, in order to understand what the self is, you have to remember that it doesn't need to remember anything, just as you don't need to know how you work your thyroid gland.

So then, when you die, you're not going to have to put up with everlasting non-existence, because that's not an experience. A lot of people are afraid that when they die, they're going to be locked up in a dark room forever, and sort of undergo that. But one of the interesting things in the world is--this is a yoga, this is a realization--try and imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Think about that. Children think about it. It's one of the great wonders of life. What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, it will pose the next question to you. What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can't have an experience of nothing; nature abhors a vacuum. So after you're dead, the only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience as when you were born. In other words, we all know very well that after other people die, other people are born. And they're all you, only you can only experience it one at a time. Everybody is an I, you all know you're you, and wheresoever all being exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference. You are all of them. And when they come into being, that's you coming into being.

You know that very well, only you don't have to remember the past in the same way you don't have to think about how you work your thyroid gland, or whatever else it is in your organism. You don't have to know how to shine the sun. You just do it, like you breathe. Doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing, and that you're doing all this and you never had any education in how to do it? Never learned, but you're this miracle? The point of it is, from a strictly physical, scientific standpoint, this organism is a continuous energy with everything else that's going on. And if I am my foot, I am the sun. Only we've got this little partial view. We've got the idea that 'No, I'm something IN this body.' The ego. That's a joke. The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. It's like the radar on a ship. The radar on a ship is a troubleshooter. Is there anything in the way? And conscious attention is a designed function of the brain to scan the environment, like a radar does, and note for any troublemaking changes. But if you identify yourself with your troubleshooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety. And the moment we cease to identify with the ego and become aware that we are the whole organism, we realize first thing how harmonious it all is. Because your organism is a miracle of harmony. All these things functioning together. Even those creatures that are fighting each other in the blood stream and eating each other up. If they weren't doing that, you wouldn't be healthy.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level. And you begin to realize that, and you begin to be aware too, that the discords of your life and the discords of people's lives, which are a discord at one level, at a higher level of the universe are healthy and harmonious. And you suddenly realize that everything you are and do is at that level as magnificent and as free of any blemish as the patterns in waves. The markings in marble. The way a cat moves. And that this world is really OK. Can't be anything else, because otherwise it couldn't exist.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 22:16:48 (EDT)
Poster: Anon
Email:
To: Mili Baba
Subject: Re: The Real You
Message:
Did Woody Allen write this 'Real You' article by any chance? When I read it I heard his voice saying the words in my head. Can anyone else hear him too?
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 06:59:58 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Anon
Subject: Re: The Real You
Message:
I thought you were a serious seeker of truth, man. And here you are - you almost died laughing.
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 09:40:03 (EDT)
Poster: Anon
Email:
To: Mili Baba
Subject: Re: The Real You
Message:
I havn't yet completely lost my sense of humour over all this, it's true.
As for being a sincere seeker... Well, I don't know what gave you that idea.
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 16:08:10 (EDT)
Poster: Mili
Email:
To: Anon
Subject: Re: The Real You
Message:
I havn't yet completely lost my sense of humour over all this, it's true.
As for being a sincere seeker... Well, I don't know what gave you that idea.


Can there be peace between us, brother, regardless of everything? Maybe that'll be the butterfly effect that will prevent the next riot somewhere? ;) - Mili
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 18:50:40 (EDT)
Poster: Anon
Email:
To: Mili
Subject: Re: The Real You
Message:
Can there be peace between us, brother, regardless of everything? Maybe that'll be the butterfly effect that will prevent the next riot somewhere? ;) - Mili

Of course, you sweet-hearted maniac you. I think there is peace between us. To argue is also healthy. I'll buy you a drink anyday, just promise not to break open my face!
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 20:13:02 (EDT)
Poster: Mili
Email:
To: Anon
Subject: Re: The Real You
Message:
Can there be peace between us, brother, regardless of everything? Maybe that'll be the butterfly effect that will prevent the next riot somewhere? ;) - Mili

Of course, you sweet-hearted maniac you. I think there is peace between us. To argue is also healthy. I'll buy you a drink anyday, just promise not to break open my face! Look, I'm only human, O.K.?
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 20:18:15 (EDT)
Poster: Anon
Email:
To: Mili
Subject: Re: The Real You
Message:
Look, I'm only human, O.K.?

O.K .So when we meet for a drink I'll wear full armour just in case I offend you ,if you don't mind.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:56:19 (EDT)
Poster: Anne
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Mili is being childish
Message:
This site works great until somebody like this MiliBaba comes along. He childishly hopes to create a distraction from the honest and refreshing posts that are to be found here(if you search). He does this by emptying sackfuls of tiresome pro-guru type literature (that he didn't even write himself) onto this page. How typical. How sad.
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 06:57:51 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Anne
Subject: Re: Mili is being childish
Message:
I'll tell you what's childish. It's childish to blame anyone else for your own problems - be it you mother, father, God or Guru Maharaj Ji. My personal experience is that Maharaji never imposed himself on me. Yet, he made sure that he was around IF and WHEN I needed him. THAT, dear Anne, Jim, JW, Deena Anon,etc., falls into the category of rivers, saints and trees. The fruit is there for the picking - IF you want it.

We ALL have a BIG problem - we are going to die someday. Maybe today. No amount of argumentation is going to remove that fact. Do you want to live forever? Try cloning.
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 10:12:04 (EDT)
Poster: Anne
Email:
To: Mili Baba
Subject: Re: Mili is being childish
Message:
I'll tell you what's childish. It's childish to blame anyone else for your own problems - be it you mother, father, God or Guru Maharaj Ji. My personal experience is that Maharaji never imposed himself on me. Yet, he made sure that he was around IFand WHEN I needed him. THAT, dear Anne, Jim, JW, Deena Anon,etc., falls into the category of rivers, saints and trees. The fruit is there for the picking - IF you want it. We ALL have a BIG problem - we are going to die someday. Maybe today. No amount of argumentation is going to remove that fact. Do you want to live forever? Try cloning. No, it's not childish to clearly understand that someone else has been a problem for you and to attribute blame to that person, to a certain extent, for their misdeeds.

Mili, YOU never experienced Maharaji's closed 'Ashram satsangs' so you don't appreciate the degree of abuse that we're talking about.
Yea,yea MJ was/is always there like the the Church or any other religion's always there. Of course he is.
The 'trees, saints, rivers' bit is a glossy analogy.

What is your point about death? Aha! I see it's just a dramatic interlude.
Personally, being reminded of my mortality spurs me on to be more discriminate about the way I spend my short time here on earth. Basically not to allow myself to be tricked into a situation where I can be conned by cultish and deluded spiritual leaders, no matter how genuinely convinced they are of their divinity.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 05:16:53 (EDT)
Poster: Mili
Email:
To: Anne
Subject: Re: Mili is being childish
Message:
Suit yourself.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:27:24 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Awakening
Message:
In last night's session, I was discussing an alternative myth to the Ceramic and Fully Automatic models of the universe, I'll call the Dramatic Myth. The idea that life as we experience it is a big act, and that behind this big act is the player, and the player, or the self, as it's called in Hindu philosophy, the _atman_, is you. Only you are playing hide and seek, since that is the essential game that is going on. The game of games. The basis of all games, hide and seek. And since you're playing hide & seek, you are deliberately, although you can't admit this--or won't admit it--you are deliberately forgetting who you really are, or what you really are. And the knowledge that your essential self is the foundation of the universe, the 'ground of being' as Tillich calls it, is something you have that the Germans call a _hintergedank_. A _hintergedank_ is a thought way, way, way in the back of your mind. Something that you know deep down but can't admit.

So, in a way, then, in order to bring this to the front, in order to know that is the case, you have to be kidded out of your game. And so what I want to discuss this morning is how this happens. Although before doing so, I must go a little bit further into the whole nature of this problem.

You see, the problem is this. We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. We have a certain number of actions that we define as voluntary, and we feel in control of those. And then over against that, there is all those things that are involuntary. But the dividing line between these two is very inarbitrary. Because for example, when you move your hand, you feel that you decide whether to open it or to close it. But then ask yourself how do you decide? When you decide to open your hand, do you first decide to decide? You don't, do you? You just decide, and how do you do that? And if you don't know how to do it, is it voluntary or involuntary? Let's consider breathing. You can feel that you breath deliberately; you don't control your breath. But when you don't think about it, it goes on. Is it voluntary or involuntary?

So, we come to have a very arbitrary definition of self. That much of my activity which I feel I do. And that then doesn't include breathing most of the time; it doesn't include the heartbeats; it doesn't include the activity of the glands; it doesn't include digestion; it doesn't include how you shape your bones; circulate your blood. Do you or do you not do these things? Now if you get with yourself and you find out you are all of yourself, a very strange thing happens. You find out that your body knows that you are one with the universe. In other words, the so-called involuntary circulation of your blood is one continuous process with the stars shining. If you find out it's YOU who circulates your blood, you will at the same moment find out that you are shining the sun. Because your physical organism is one continous process with everything else that's going on. Just as the waves are continuous with the ocean. Your body is continuous with the total energy system of the cosmos, and it's all you. Only you're playing the game that you're only this bit of it. But as I tried to explain, there are in physical reality no such thing as separate events.

So then. Remember also when I tried to work towards a definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it. You don't have to translate it into language. Supposing that when you got up in the morning, you had to switch your brain on. And you had to think and do as a deliberate process waking up all the circuits that you need for active life during hte day. Why, you'd never get done! Because you have to do all those things at once. That's why the Buddhists and Hindus represent their gods as many-armed. How could you use so many arms at once? How could a centipede control a hundred legs at once? Because it doesn't think about it. In the same way, you are unconsciously performing all the various activities of your organism. Only unconsciously isn't a good word, because it sounds sort of dead. Superconsciously would be better. Give it a plus rather than a minus.

Because what consciousness is is a rather specialized form of awareness. When you look around the room, you are conscious of as much as you can notice, and you see an enormous number of things which you do not notice. For example, I look at a girl here and somebody asks me later 'What was she wearing?' I may not know, although I've seen, because I didn't attend. But I was aware. You see? And perhaps if I could under hypnosis be asked this question, where I would get my conscious attention out of the way by being in the hypnotic state, I could recall what dress she was wearing.

So then, just in the same way as you don't know--you don't focus your attention--on how you make your thyroid gland function, so in the same way, you don't have any attention focused on how you shine the sun. So then, let me connect this with the problem of birth and death, which puzzles people enormously of course. Because, in order to understand what the self is, you have to remember that it doesn't need to remember anything,just as you don't need to know how you work your thyroid gland.

So then, when you die, you're not going to have to put up with everlasting non-existance, because that's not an experience. A lot of people are afraid that when they die, they're going to be locked up in a dark room forever, and sort of undergo that. But one of the interesting things in the world is--this is a yoga, this is a realization--try and imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Think about that. Children think about it. It's one of the great wonders of life. What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, it will pose the next question to you. What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can't have an experience of nothing; nature abhors a vacuum. So after you're dead, the only thing that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience as when you were born. In other words, we all know very well that after other people die, other people are born. And they're all you, only you can only experience it one at a time. Everybody is I, you all know you're you, and wheresoever all being exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference. You are all of them. And when they come into being, that's you coming into being.

You know that very well, only you don't have to remember the past in the same way you don't have to think about how you work your thyroid gland, or whatever else it is in your organism. You don't have to know how to shine the sun. You just do it, like you breath. Doesn't it really astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing, and that you're doing all this and you never had any education in how to do it? Never learned, but you're this miracle? The point of it is, from a strictly physical, scientific standpoint, this organism is a continuous energy with everything else that's going on. And if I am my foot, I am the sun. Only we've got this little partial view. We've got the idea that 'No, I'm something IN this body.' The ego. That's a joke. The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. It's like the radar on a ship. The radar on a ship is a troubleshooter. Is there anything in the way? And conscious attention is a designed function of the brain to scan the environment, like a radar does, and note for any troublemaking changes. But if you identify yourself with your troubleshooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety. And the moment we cease to identify with the ego and become aware that we are the whole organism, we realize first thing how harmonious it all is. Because your organism is a miracle of harmony. All these things functioning together. Even those creatures that are fighting each other in the blood stream and eating each other up. If they weren't doing that, you wouldn't be healthy.

So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level. And you begin to realize that, and you begin to be aware too, that the discords of your life and the discords of people's lives, which are a discord at one level, at a higher level of the universe are healthy and harmonious. And you suddenly realize that everything you are and do is at that level as magnificent and as free of any blemish as the patterns in waves. The markings in marble. The way a cat moves. And that this world is really OK. Can't be anything else, because otherwise it couldn't exist. And I don't mean this in a kind of Pollyanna Christian Science sense. I don't know what it is or why it is about Christian Science, but it's prissy. It's got kind of a funny feeling to it; came from New England.

But the reality underneath physical existence, or which really is physical existence--because in my philosophy there is no difference between the physical and the spiritual. These are absolutely out-of-date cetagories. It's all process; it isn't 'stuff' on the one hand and 'form' on the other. It's just pattern-- life is pattern. It is a dance of energy. And so I will never invoke spooky knowledge. That is, that I've had a private revelation or that I have sensory vibrations going on a plane which you don't have. Everything is standing right out in the open, it's just a question of how you look at it. So you do discover when you realize this, the most extraordinary thing that I never cease to be flabbergasted at whenever it happens to me. Some people will use a symbolism of the relationship of God to the universe, wherein God is a brilliant light, only somehow veiled, hiding underneath all these forms as you look around you. So far so good. But the truth is funnier than that. It is that you are looking right at the brilliant light now that the experience you are having that you call ordinary everyday consciousness--pretending you're not it--that experience is exactly the same thing as 'it.' There's no difference at all. And when you find that out, you laugh yourself silly. That's the great discovery.

In other words, when you really start to see things, and you look at an old paper cup, and you go into the nature of what it is to see what vision is, or what smell is, or what touch is, you realize that that vision of the paper cup is the brilliant light of the cosmos. Nothing could be brighter. Ten thousand suns couldn't be brighter. Only they're hidden in the sense that all the points of the infinite light are so tiny when you see them in the cup they don't blow your eyes out. See, the source of all light is in the eye. If there were no eyes in this world, the sun would not be light. So if I hit as hard as I can on a drum which has no skin, it makes no noise. So if a sun shines on a world with no eyes, it's like a hand beating on a skinless drum. No light. YOU evoke light out of the universe, in the same way you, by nature of having a soft skin, evoke hardness out of wood. Wood is only hard in relation to a soft skin. It's your eardrum that evokes noise out of the air. You, by being this organism, call into being this whole universe of light and color and hardness and heaviness and everything.

But in the mythology that we sold ourselves on at the end of the 19th century, when people discovered how big the universe was, and that we live on a little planet in a solar system on the edge of the galaxy, which is a minor galaxy, everybody thought, 'Uuuuugh, we're really unimportant after all. God isn't there and doesn't love us, and nature doesn't give a damn.' And we put ourselves down. But actually, it's this funny little microbe, tiny thing, crawling on this little planet that's way out somewhere, who has the ingenuity, by nature of this magnificent organic structure, to evoke the whole universe out of what otherwise would be mere quanta. There's jazz going on. But you see, this ingenious little organism is not merely some stranger in this. This little organism, on this little planet, is what the whole show is growing there, and so realizing it's own presence. Does it through you, and you're it.

When you put a chicken's beak on a chalk line, it gets stuck; it's hypnotized. So in the same way, when you learn to pay attention, and as children you know how all the teachers were in class: 'Pay attention!!' And all the kids stare at the teacher. And we've got to pay attention. That's putting your nose on the chalk line. And you got stuck with the idea of attention, and you thought attention was Me, the ego, attention. So if you start attending to attention, you realize what the hoax is. That's why in Aldous Huxley's book 'Island,' the Roger had trained the myna birds on the island to say 'Attention! Here and now, boys!' See? Realize who you are. Come to, wake up!

Well, here's the problem: if this is the state of affairs which is so, and if the conscious state you're in this moment is the same thing as what we might call the Divine State. If you do anything to make it different, it shows that you don't understand that it's so. So the moment you start practicing yoga, or praying or meditating, or indulging in some sort of spiritual cultivation, you are getting in your own way.

Now this is the Buddhist trick: the buddha said 'We suffer because we desire. If you can give up desire, you won't suffer.' But he didn't say that as the last word; he said that as the opening step of a dialogue. Because if you say that to someone, they're going to come back after a while and say 'Yes, but now I'm desiring not to desire.' And so the buddha will answer, 'Well at last you're beginning to understand the point.' Because you can't give up desire. Why would you try to do that? It's already desire. So in the same way you say 'You ought to be unselfish' or to give up you ego. Let go, relax. Why do you want to do that? Just because it's another way of beating the game, isn't it? The moment you hypothesize that you are different from the universe, you want to get one up on it. But if you try to get one up on the universe, and you're in competition with it, that means you don't understand you ARE it. You think there's a real difference between 'self' and 'other.' But 'self,' what you call yourself, and what you call 'other' are mutually necessary to each other like back and front. They're really one. But just as a magnet polarizes itself at north and south, but it's all one magnet, so experience polarizes itself as self and other, but it's all one. If you try to make the south pole defeat the north pole, or get the mastery of it, you show you don't know what's going on.

So there are two ways of playing the game. The first way, which is the usual way, is that a guru or teacher who wants to get this across to somebody because he knows it himself, and when you know it you'd like others to see it, too. So what he does is, he gets you into being ridiculous harder and more assiduously than usual. In other words, if you are in a contest with the universe, he's going to stir up that contest until it becomes ridiculous. And so he sets you such tasks as saying-- Now of course, in order to be a true person, you must give up yourself, be unselfish. So the lord steps down out of heaven and says 'The first and great commandment is `Thou shalt love the lord thy god.' You must love me.' Well that's a double-bind. You can't love on purpose. You can't be sincere purposely. It's like trying not to think of a green elephant while taking medicine.

But if a person really tries to do it--and this is the way Christianity is rigged--you should be very sorry for your sins. And though everybody knows they're not, but they think they ought to be, they go around trying to be penetant. Or trying to be humble. And they know the more assiduously they practice it, the phonier and phonier the whole thing gets. So in Zen Buddhism, exactly the same thing happens. The Zen master challenges you to be spontaneous. 'Show me the real you.' One way they do this getting you to shout. Shout the word 'moo.' And he says 'I want to hear YOU in that shout. I want to hear your whole being in it.' And you yell your lungs out and he says 'Pfft. That's no good. That's just a fake shout. Now I want to hear absolutely the whole of your being, right from the heart of the universe, come through in this shout.' And these guys scream themselves hoarse. Nothing happens. Until one day they get so desperate they give up trying and they manage to get that shout through, when they weren't trying to be genuine. Because there was nothing else to do, you just had to yell.

And so in this way--it's called the technique of reductio ad absurdum. If you think you have a problem, and you're an ego and you're in difficulty, the answer the Zen master makes to you is 'Show me your ego. I want to see this thing that has a problem.' When Bodidharma, the legendary founder of Zen, came to China, a disciple came to him and said 'I have no peace of mind. Please pacify my mind.' And Bodhidharma said 'Bring out your mind here before me and I'll pacify it.' 'Well,' he said, 'when I look for it, I can't find it.' So Bodhidharma said 'There, it's pacified.' See? Becuase when you look for your own mind, that is to say, your own particularized center of being which is separate from everything else, you won't be able to find it. But the only way you'll know it isn't there is if you look for it hard enough, to find out that it isn't there. And so everybody says 'All right, know yourself, look within, find out who you are.' Because the harder you look, you won't be able to find it, and then you'll realize it isn't there at all. There isn't a separate you. You're mind is what there is. Everything. But the only way to find that out is to persist in the state of delusion as hard as possible. That's one way. I haven't said the only way, but it is one way.

There is another possibility, however. But this is more difficult to describe. Let's say we take as the basic supposition- -which is the thing that one sees in the experience of satori or awakening, or whatever you want to call it--that this now moment in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity. That although we have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary, and that we may not feel very well, we're sort of vaguely frustrated and worried and so on, and that it ought to be changed. This is it. So you don't need to do anything at all. But the difficulty about explaining that is that you mustn't try and not do anything, because that's doing something. It's just the way it is. In other words, what's required is a sort of act of super relaxation; it's not ordinary relaxation. It's not just letting go, as when you lie down on the floor and imagine that you're heavy so you get into a state of muscular relaxation. It's not like that. It's being with yourself as you are without altering anything. And how to explain that? Because there's nothing to explain. It is the way it is now. See? And if you understand that, it will automatically wake you up.

So that's why Zen teachers use shock treatment, to sometimes hit them or shout at them or create a sudden surprise. Because is is that jolt that suddenly brings you here. See, there's no road to here, because you're already there. If you ask me 'How am I going to get here?' It will be like the famous story of the American tourist in England. The tourist asked some yokel the way to Upper Tuttenham, a little village. And the yokel scratched his head and he said 'Well, sir, I don't know where it is, but if I were you, I wouldn't start from here.'

So you see, when you ask 'How to I obtain the knowledge of God, how do I obtain the knowledge of liberation?' all I can say is it's the wrong question. Why do you want to obtain it? Because the very fact that you're wanting to obtain it is the only thing that prevents you from getting there. You already have it. But of course, it's up to you. It's your privilege to pretend that you don't. That's your game; that's your life game; that's what makes you think your an ego. And when you want to wake up, you will, just like that. If you're not awake, it shows you don't want to. You're still playing the hide part of the game. You're still, as it were, the self pretending it's not the self. And that's what you want to do. So you see, in that way, too, you're already there.

So when you understand this, a funny thing happens, and some people misinterpret it. You'll discover as this happens that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior disappears. You will realize that what you describe as things under your own will feel exactly the same as things going on outside you. You watch other people moving, and you know you're doing that, just like you're breathing or circulating your blood. And if you don't understand what's going on, you're liable to get crazy at this point, and to feel that you are god in the Jehovah sense. To say that you actually have power over other people, so that you can alter what you're doing. And that you're omnipotent in a very crude, literal kind of bible sense. You see? A lot of people feel that and they go crazy. They put them away. They think they're Jesus Christ and that everybody ought to fall down and worship them. That's only they got their wires crossed. This experience happened to them, but they don't know how to interpret it. So be careful of that. Jung calls it inflation. People who get the Holy Man syndrome, that I suddenly discover that I am the lord and that I am above good and evil and so on, and therefore I start giving myself airs and graces. But the point is, everybody else is, too. If you discover that you are that, then you ought to know that everybody else is.

For example, let's see in other ways how you might realize this. Most people think when they open their eyes and look around, that what they're seeing is outside. It seems, doesn't it, that you are behind your eyes, and that behind the eyes there is a blank you can't see at all. You turn around and there's something else in front of you. But behind the eyes there seems to be something that has no color. It isn't dark, is isn't light. It is there from a tactile standpoint; you can feel it with your fingers, but you can't get inside it. But what is that behind your eyes? Well actually, when you look out there and see all these people and things sitting around, that's how it feels inside your head. The color of this room is back here in the nervous system, where the optical nerves are at the back of the head. It's in there. It's what you're experiencing. What you see out here is a neurological experience. Now if that hits you, and you feel sensuously that that's so, you may feel therefore that the external world is all inside my skull. You've got to correct that, with the thought that your skull is also in the external world. So you suddenly begin to feel 'Wow, what kind of situation is this? It's inside me, and I'm inside it, and it's inside me, and I'm inside it.' But that's the way it is.

This is the what you could call transaction, rather than interaction between the individual and the world. Just like, for example, in buying and selling. There cannot be an act of buying unless there is simultaneously an act of selling, and vice versa. So the relationship between the environment and the organism is transactional. The environment grows the organism, and in turn the organism creates the environment. The organism turns the sun into light, but it requires there be an environment containing a sun for there to be an organism at all. And the answer to it simply is they're all one process. It isn't that organisms by chance came into the world. This world is the sort of environment which grows organisms. It was that way from the beginning. The organisms may in time have arrived in the scene or out of the scene later than the beginning of the scene, but from the moment it went BANG! in the beginning, if that's the way it started, organisms like us are sitting here. We're involved in it.

Look here, we take the propogation of an electric current. I can have an electric current running through a wire that goes all the way around the Earth. And here we have a power source, and here we have a switch. A positive pole, a negative pole. Now, before that switch closes, the current doesn't exactly behave like water in a pipe. There isn't current here, waiting, to jump the gap as soon as the switch is closed. The current doesn't even start until the switch is closed. It never starts unless the point of arrival is there. Now, it'll take an interval for that current to get going in its circuit if it's going all the way around the Earth. It's a long run. But the finishing point has to be closed before it will even start from the beginning. In a similar way, even though in the development of any physical system there may by billions of years between the creation of the most primitive form of energy and then the arrival of intelligent life, that billions of years is just the same things as the trip of that current around the wire. Takes a bit of time. But it's already implied. It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn. And so in any lump of rock floating about in space, there is implicit human intelligence. Sometime, somehow, somewhere. They all go together.

So don't differentiate yourself and stand off and say 'I am a living organism in a world made of a lot of dead junk, rocks and stuff.' It all goes together. Those rocks are just as much you as your fingernails. You need rocks. What are you going to stand on?

What I think an awakening really involves is a re-examination of our common sense. We've got all sorts of ideas built into us which seem unquestioned, obvious. And our speech reflects them; its commonest phrases. 'Face the facts.' As if they were outside you. As if life were something they simply encountered as a foreigner. 'Face the facts.' Our common sense has been rigged, you see? So that we feel strangers and aliens in this world, and this is terribly plausible, simply because this is what we are used to.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:22:20 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: The Role of a Guru
Message:
So then, when you're in the way of waking up, and finding out who you are, you meet a character called a guru, as the Hindus say 'the teacher,' 'the awakener.' And what is the function of a guru? He's the man that looks you in the eye and says 'Oh come off it. I know who you are.' You come to the guru and say 'Sir, I have a problem. I'm unhappy, and I want to get one up on the universe. I want to become enlightened. I want spiritual wisdom.' The guru looks at you adn says 'Who are you?' You know Sri-Ramana-Maharshi, that great Hindu sage of modern times? People used to come to him and say 'Master, who was I in my last incarnation?' As if that mattered. And he would say 'Who is asking the question?' And he'd look at you and say, go right down to it, 'You're looking at me, you're looking out, and you're unaware of what's behind your eyes. Go back in and find out who you are, where the question comes from, why you ask.' And if you've looked at a photograph of that man--I have a gorgeous photograph of him; I look by it every time I go out the front door. And I look at those eyes, and the humor in them; the lilting laugh that says 'Oh come off it. Shiva, I recognize you. When you come to my door and say `I'm so-and-so,' I say `Ha-ha, what a funny way God has come on today.''

So eventually--there are all sorts of tricks of course that gurus play. They say 'Well, we're going to put you through the mill.' And the reason they do that is simply that you won't wake up until you feel you've paid a price for it. In other words, the sense of guilt that one has. Or the sense of anxiety. It's simply the way one experiences keeping the game of disguise going on. Do you see that? Supposing you say 'I feel guilty.' Christianity makes you feel guilty for existing. That somehow the very fact that you exist is an affront. You are a fallen human being. I remember as a child when we went to the serves of the church on Good Friday. They gave us each a colored postcard with Jesus crucified on it, and it said underneath 'This I have done for thee. What doest thou for me?' You felt awful. YOU had nailed that man to the cross. Because you eat steak, you have crucified Christ. Mythra. It's the same mystery. And what are you going to do about that? 'This I have done for thee, what doest thou for me?' You feel awful that you exist at all. But that sense of guilt is the veil across the sanctuary. 'Don't you DARE come in!' In all mysteries, when you are going to be initiated, there's somebody saying 'Ah-ah-ah, don't you come in. You've got to fulfill this requirement and that requirement, THEN we'll let you in.' And so you go through the mill. Why? Because you're saying to yourself 'I won't wake up until I deserve it. I won't wake up until I've made it difficult for me to wake up. So I invent for myself an eleborate sytem of delaying my waking up. I put myself through this test and that test, and when I convince myself it's sufficiently arduous, THEN I at last admit to myself who I really am, and draw aside the veil and realize that after all, when all is said and done, I am that I am, which is the Name of God.'
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:19:36 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Drama
Message:
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ALAN WATTS: THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS, part 2 of 3
Originally broadcast on KSAN radio, San Francisco
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Well now, in the first session this afternoon, I was discussing two of the great myths or models of the universe, which lie in the intellectual and psychological background of all of us. The myth of the world as a political, monarchical state in which we are all here on sufferance as subject to God. In which we are MADE artifacts, who do not exist in our own right. God alone, in the first myth, exists in his own right, and you exist as a favor, and you ought to be grateful. Like your parents come on and say to you, 'Look at all the things we've done for you, all the money we spent to send you to college, and you turn out to be a beatnik. You're a wretched, ungrateful child.' And you're supposed to say, 'Sorry, I really am.' But you're definitely in the position of being on probation. This arises out of our whole attitude towards children, whereby we don't really acknowledge that they're human. Instead, when a child comes into the world, and as soon as it can communicate in any way, talk language, you should say to a child, 'How do you do? Welcome to the human race. Now my dear, we are playing a very complicated game, and we're going to explain the rules of it to you. And when you have learned these rules and understand what they are, you may be able to invent better ones. But in the meantime, this is the thing we're doing.'

Instead of that, we either treat a child with a kind of with a kind of 'blah-blah-blah' attitude, or 'coochy-coochy-coochie,' y'know? and don't treat the thing as a human being at all--as a kind of doll. Or else as a nusiance. And so all of us, having been treated that way, carry over into adult life the sense of being on probation here. Either the god is somebody who says to us 'coochy- coochy-coochie,' or 'blah-blah-blah.' And that's the feeling we carry over. So that idea of the royal god, the king of kings and the lord of lords which we inherit from the political structures of the Tigris-Euphrates cultures, and from Egypt. The Pharoah, Amenhotep IV is probably, as Freud suggested, the original author of Moses' monotheism, and certainly the Jewish law code comes from Hammurabi in Chaldea. And these men lived in a culture where the pyramid and the ziggurat--the ziggurat is the Chaldean version of the pyramid, indicating somehow a hierarchy of power, from the boss on down. And God, in this first myth that we've been discussing, the ceramic myth is the boss, and the idea of God is that the universe is governed from above.

But do you see, this parallels--goes hand in hand with the idea that you govern your own body. That the ego, which lies somewhere between the ears and behind the eyes in the brain, is the governer of the body. And so we can't understand a system of order, a system of life, in which there isn't a governer. 'O Lord, our governor, how excellent is thy name in all the world.'

But supposing, on the contrary, there could be a system which doesn't have a governor. That's what we are supposed to have in this society. We are supposed to be a democracy and a republic. And we are supposed to govern ourselves. As I said, it's so funny that Americans can be politically republican--I don't mean republican in the party sense--and yet religiously monarchial. It's a real strange contradiction.

So what is this universe? Is it a monarchy? Is it a republic? Is it a mechanism? Or an organism? Becuase you see, if it's a mechanism, either it's a mere mechanism, as in the fully automatic model, or else it's a mechanism under the control of a driver. A mechanic. If it's not that, it's an organism, and an organism is a thing that governs itself. In your body there is no boss. You could argue, for example, that the brain is a gadget evolved by the stomach, in order to serve the stomach for the purposes of getting food. Or you can argue that the stomach is a gadget evolved by the brain to feed it and keep it alive. Whose game is this? Is it the brain's game, or the stomach's game? They're mutual. The brain implies the stomach and the stomach implies the brain, and neither of them is the boss.

You know that story about all the limbs of the body. The hand said 'We do all our work,' the feet said 'We do our work,' the mouth said 'We do all the chewing, and here's this lazy stomach who just gets it all and doesn't do a thing. He didn't do any work, so let's go on strike.' And the hands refused to carry, the feet refused to walk, the teeth refused to chew, and said 'Now we're on strike against the stomach.' But after a while, all of them found themselves getting weaker and weaker and weaker, because they didn't realize that the stomach fed them.

So there is the possibility then that we are not in the kind of system that these two myths delineate. That we are not living in a world where we ourselves, in the deepest sense of self, are outside reality, and somehow in a position that we have to bow down to it and say 'As a great favor, please preserve us in existence.' Nor are we in a system which is merely mechanical, and which we are nothing but flukes, trapped in the electrical wiring of a nervous system which is fundamentally rather inefficiently arranged. What's the alternative? Well, we could put the alternative in another image altogether, and I'll call this not the ceramic image, not the fully automatic image, but the dramatic image. Consider the world as a drama. What's the basis of all drama? The basis of all stories, of all plots, of all happenings--is the game of hide and seek. You get a baby, what's the fundamental first game you play with a baby? You put a book in front of your face, and you peek at the baby. The baby starts giggling. Because the baby is close to the origins of life; it comes from the womb really knowing what it's all about, but it can't put it into words. See, what every child psychologist really wants to know is to get a baby to talk psychological jargon, and explain how it feels. But the baby knows; you do this, this, this and this, and the baby starts laughing, because the baby is a recent incarnation of God. And the baby knows, therefore, that hide and seek is the basic game.

See, when we were children, we were taught '1, 2, 3,' and 'A, B, C,' but we weren't set down on our mothers' knees and taught the game of black and white. That's the thing that was left out of all our educations, the game that I was trying to explain with these wave diagrams. That life is not a conflict between opposites, but a polarity. The difference bewteen a conflict and a polarity is simply--when you think about opposite things, we sometimes use the expression, 'These two things are the poles apart.' You say, for example, about someone with whom you totally disagree, 'I am the poles apart from this person.' But your very saying that gives the show away. Poles. Poles are the opposite ends of one magnet. And if you take a magnet, say you have a magnetized bar, there's a north pole and a south pole. Okay, chop off the south pole, move it away. The piece you've got left creates a new south pole. You never get rid of the south pole. So the point about a magnet is, things may be the poles apart, but they go together. You can't have the one without the other. We are imagining a diagram of the universe in which the idea of polarity is the opposite ends of the diameter, north and south, you see? That's the basic idea of polarity, but what we're trying to imagine is the encounter of forces that come from absolutely opposed realms, that have nothing in common. When we say of two personality types that they're the poles apart. We are trying to think eccentrically, instead of concentrically. And so in this way, we haven't realized that life and death, black and white, good and evil, being and non-being, come from the same center. They imply each other, so that you wouldn't know the one without the other.

Now I'm not saying that that's bad, that's fun. You're playing the game that you don't know that black and white vi each other. Therefore you think that black possibly might win, that the light might go out, that the sound might never be heard again. That there could be the possibility of a universe of pure tragedy, of endless, endless darkness. Wouldn't that be awful? Only you wouldn't know it was awful, if that's what happened. The point that we all forget is that the black and the white go together, and there isn't the one without the other. At the same time, you see, we forget, in the same way as we forget that these two go together.

The other thing we forget, is that self and other go together, in just the same way as the two poles of a magnet. You say 'I, myself; I am me; I am this individual; I am this particular, unique instance.' What is other is everything else. All of you, all of the stars, all of the galaxies, way, way out into infinite space, that's other. But in the same way as black implies white, self implies other. And you don't exist without all that, so that where you get these polarities, you get this sort of difference, that what we call explicitly, or exoterically, they're different. But implicitely, esoterically, they're one. Since you can't have the one without the other, that shows there's a kind of inner conspiracy bewteen all pairs of opposites, which is not in the open, but it's tacit. It's like you say 'Well, there are all sorts of things that we understand among each other tacitly, that we don't want to admit, but we do recognize tacity there's a kind of secret between us boys and girls,' or whatever it may be. And we recognize that. So, tacitly, all of you really inwardly know--although you won't admit it because your culture has trained you in a contrary direction--all of you really inwardly know that you as an individual self are inseparable from everything else that exists, that you are a special case in the universe. But the whole game, especially of Western culture, is to coneal that from ourselves, so that when anybody in our culture slips into the state of consciousness where they suddenly find this to be true, and they come on and say 'I'm God,' we say 'You're insane.'

Now, it's very difficult--you can very easily slip into the state of consciousness where you feel you're God; it can happen to anyone. Just in the same way as you can get the flu, or measles, or something like that, you can slip into this state of consciousness. And when you get it, it depends upon your background and your training as to how you're going to interpret it. If you've got the idea of god that comes from popular Christianity, God as the governor, the political head of the world, and you think you're God, then you say to everybody, 'You should bow down and worship me.' But if you're a member of Hindu culture, and you suddenly tell all your friends 'I'm God,' instead of saying 'You're insane,' they say 'Congratulations! At last, you found out.' Becuase their idea of god is not the autocratic governor. When they make images of Shiva, he has ten arms. How would you use ten arms? It's hard enough to use two. You know, if you play the organ, you've got to use your two feet and your two hands, and you play different rhythms with each member. It's kind of tricky. But actually we're all masters at this, because how do you grow each hair without having to think about it? Each nerve? How do you beat your heart and digest with your stomach at the same time? You don't have to think about it. In your very body, you are omnipotent in the true sense of omnipotence, which is that you are able to be omni-potent; you are able to do all these things without having to think about it.

When I was a child, I used to ask my mother all sorts of ridiculous questions, which of course every child asks, and when she got bored with my questions, she said 'Darling, there are just some things which we are not meant to know.' I said 'Will we ever know?' She said 'Yes, of course, when we die and go to heaven, God will make everything plain.' So I used to imagine on wet afternoons in heaven, we'd all sit around the throne of grace and say to God, 'Well why did you do this, and why did you do that?' and he would explain it to us. 'Heavenly father, why are the leaves green?' and he would say 'Because of the chlorophyll,' and we'd say 'Oh.' But in he Hindu universe, you would say to God, 'How did you make the mountains?' and he would say 'Well, I just did it. Because when you're asking me how did I make the mountains, you're asking me to describe in words how I made the mountains, and there are no words which can do this. Words cannot tell you how I made the mountains any more than I can drink the ocean with a fork. A fork may be useful for sticking into a piece of something and eating it, but it's of no use for imbibing the ocean. It would take millions of years. In other words, it would take millions of years, and you would be bored with my description, long before I got through it, if I put it to you in words, because I didn't create the mountains with words, I just did it. Like you open and close your hand. You know how you do this, but can you describe in words how you do it? Even a very good physiologist can't describe it in words. But you do it. You're conscious, aren't you. Don't you know how you manage to be conscious? Do you know how you beat your heart? Can you say in words, explain correctly how this is done? You do it, but you can't put it into words, because words are too clumsy, yet you manage this expertly for as long as you're able to do it.'

But you see, we are playing a game. The game runs like this: the only thing you really know is what you can put into words. Let's suppose I love some girl, rapturously, and somebody says to me, 'Do you REALLY love her?' Well, how am I going to prove this? They'll say, 'Write poetry. Tell us all how much you love her. Then we'll believe you.' So if I'm an artist, and can put this into words, and can convince everybody I've written the most ecstatic love letter ever written, they say 'All right, ok, we admit it, you really do love her.' But supposing you're not very articulate, are we going to tell you you DON'T love her? Surely not. You don't have to be Heloise and Abyla to be in love. But the whole game that our culture is playing is that nothing really happens unless it's in the newspaper. So when we're at a party, and it's a great party, somebody says 'Too bad we didn't bring a camera. Too bad there wasn't a tape recorder. And so our children begin to feel that they don't exist authentically unless they get their names in the papers, and the fastest way to get your name in the paper is to commit a crime. Then you'll be photographed, and you'll appear in court, and everybody will notice you. And you're THERE. So you're not there unless you're recorded. It really happened if it was recorded. In other words, if you shout, and it doesn't come back and echo, it didn't happen. Well that's a real hangup. It's true, the fun with echos; we all like singing in the bathtub, because there's more resonance there. And when we play a musical instrument, like a violin or a cello, it has a sounding box, because that gives resonance to the sound. And in the same way, the cortex of the human brain enables us when we're happy to know that we're happy, and that gives a certain resonance to it. If you're happy, and you don't know you're happy, there's nobody home.

But this is the whole problem for us. Several thousand years ago, human beings devolved the system of self-consciousness, and they knew, they knew.

There was a young man who said 'though
It seems that I know that I know,
What I would like to see
Is the I that sees me
When I know that I know that I know.

And this is the human problem: we know that we know. And so, there came a point in our evolution where we didn't guide life by distrusting our instincts. Suppose that you could live absolutely spontaneously. You don't make any plans, you just live like you feel like it. And you say 'What a gas that is, I don't have to make any plans, anything. I don't worry; I just do what comes naturally.'

The way the animals live, everybody envies them, because look, a cat, when it walks--did you ever see a cat making an aesthetic mistake. Did you ever see a badly formed cloud? Were the stars ever misarranged? When you watch the foam breaking on the seashore, did it ever make a bad pattern? Never. And yet we think in what we do, we make mistakes. And we're worried about that. So there came this point in human evolution when we lost our innocence. When we lost this thing that the cats and the flowers have, and had to think about it, and had to purposely arrange and discipline and push our lives around in accordance with foresight and words and systems of symbols, accountancy, calculation and so on, and then we worry. Once you start thinking about things, you worry as to if you thought enough. Did you really take all the details into consideration? Was every fact properly reviewed? And by jove, the more you think about it, the more you realize you really couldn't take everything into consideration, becauase all the variables in every decision are incalculable, so you get anxiety. And this, though, also, is the price you pay for knowing that you know. For being able to think about thinking, being able to feel about feeling. And so you're in this funny position.

Now then, do you see that this is simultaneously an advantage and a terrible disadvantage? What has happened here is that by having a certain kind of consciousness, a certain kind of reflexive consciousness--being aware of being aware. Being able to represent what goes on fundamentally in terms of a system of symbols, such as words, such as numbers. You put, as it were, two lives together at once, one representing the other. The symbols representing the reality, the money representing the wealth, and if you don't realize that the symbol is really secondary, it doesn't have the same value. People go to the supermarket, and they get a whole cartload of goodies and they drive it through, then the clerk fixes up the counter and this long tape comes out, and he'll say '$30, please,' and everybody feels depressed, because they give away $30 worth of paper, but they've got a cartload of goodies. They don't think about that, they think they've just lost $30. But you've got the real wealth in the cart, all you've parted with is the paper. Because the paper in our system becomes more valuable than the wealth. It represents power, potentiality, whereas the wealth, you think oh well, that's just necessary; you've got to eat. That's to be really mixed up.

So then. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death--or shall I say, death implies life--you can conceive yourself. Not conceive, but FEEL yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as someone here on sufferance, on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. So, say in Hindu mythology, they say that the world is the drama of God. God is not something in Hindu mythology with a white beard that sits on a throne, that has royal perogatives. God in Indian mythology is the self, 'Satchitananda.' Which means 'sat,' that which is, 'chit,' that which is consciousness; that which is 'ananda' is bliss. In other words, what exists, reality itself is gorgeous, it is the fullness of total joy. Wowee! And all those stars, if you look out in the sky, is a firework display like you see on the fourth of July, which is a great occasion for celebration; the universe is a celebration, it is a fireworks show to celebrate that existence is. Wowee.

And then they say, 'But, however, there's no point in just sustaining bliss.' Let's suppose you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could for example have the power to dream in one night 75 years worth of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say 'Well, that was pretty great. But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control, where something is going to happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be.' And you would dig that, and come out of it and say 'That was a close shave, now wasn't it?' Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further gambles as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now. You would dream the dream of the life that you are actually living today. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of the choices you would have. Of playing that you weren't God. Because the whole nature of the godhead, according to this idea, is to play that he's not. The first thing that he says to himself is 'Man, get lost,' because he gives himself away. The nature of love is self-abandonment, not clinging to oneself. Throwing yourself out, for instance as in basketball; you're always getting rid of the ball. You say to the other fellow 'Have a ball.' See? And that keeps things moving. That's the nature of life.

So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama. When you come into the theater, there is an arch, and a stage, and down there is the audience. Everybody assumes their seats in the theater, gone to see a comedy, a tragedy, a thriller, whatever it is, and they all know as they come in and pay their admissions, that what is going to happen on the stage is not for real. But the actors have a conspiracy against this, because they're going to try and persuade the audience that what is happening on the stage IS for real. They want to get everybody sitting on the edge of their chairs, they want you terrified, or crying, or laughing. Absolutely captivated by the drama. And if a skillful human actor can take in an audience and make people cry, think what the cosmic actor can do. Why he can take himself in completely. He can play so much for real that he thinks he really is. Like you sitting in this room, you think you're really here. Well, you've persuaded yourself that way. You've acted it so damn well that you KNOW that this is the real world. But you're playing it. As well, the audience and the actor as one. Because behind the stage is the green room, offscene, where the actors take off their masks. Do you know that the word 'person' means 'mask'? The 'persona' which is the mask worn by actors in Greco-Roman drama, because it has a megaphone-type mouth which throws the sound out in an open-air theater. So the 'per'--through--'sona'--what the sound comes through--that's the mask. How to be a real person. How to be a genuine fake. So the 'dramatis persona' at the beginning of a play is the list of masks that the actors will wear. And so in the course of forgetting that this world is a drama, the word for the role, the word for the mask has come to mean who you are genuinely. The person. The proper person. Incidentally, the word 'parson' is derived from the word 'person.' The 'person' of the village. The 'person' around town, the parson.

So anyway, then, this is a drama, and what I want you to is-- I'm not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it; I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities. I'm not trying to prove it, I'm just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, this means that you're not victims of a scheme of things, of a mechanical world, or of an autocratic god. The life you're living is what YOU have put yourself into. Only you don't admit it, because you want to play the game that it's happened to you. In other words, I got mixed up in this world; I had a father who got hot pants over a girl, and she was my mother, and because he was just a horny old man, and as a result of that, I got born, and I blame him for it and say 'Well that's your fault; you've got to look after me,' and he says 'I don't see why I should look after you; you're just a result.' But let's suppose we admit that I really wanted to get born, and that I WAS the ugly gleam in my father's eye when he approached my mother. That was me. I was desire. And I deliberately got involved in this thing. Look at it that way instead. And that really, even if I got myself into an awful mess, and I got born with syphilis, and the great Siberian itch, and tuberculosis in a Nazi concentration camp, nevertheless this was a game, which was a very far out play. It was a kind of cosmic masochism. But I did it.

Isn't that an optimal game rule for life? Because if you play life on the supposition that you're a helpless little puppet that got involved. Or you played on the supposition that it's a frightful, serious risk, and that we really ought to do something about it, and so on, it's a drag. There's no point in going on living unless we make the assumption that the situation of life is optimal. That really and truly we're all in a state of total bliss and delight, but we're going to pretend we aren't just for kicks. In other words, you play non-bliss in order to be able to experience bliss. And you can go as far out in non-bliss as you want to go. And when you wake up, it'll be great. You know, you can slam yourself on the head with a hammer because it's so nice when you stop. And it makes you realize how great things are when you forget that's the way it is. And that's just like black and white: you don't know black unless you know white; you don't know white unless you know black. This is simply fundamental.

So then, here's the drama. My metaphysics, let me be perfectly frank with you, are that there the central self, you can call it God, you can call it anything you like, and it's all of us. It's playing all the parts of all being whatsoever everywhere and anywhere. And it's playing the game of hide and seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets involved in the farthest-out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself. And when you're ready to wake up, you're going to wake up, and if you're not ready you're going to stay pretending that you're just a 'poor little me.' And since you're all here and engaged in this sort of enquiry and listening to this sort of lecture, I assume you're all in the process of waking up. Or else you're pleasing yourselves with some kind of flirtation with waking up which you're not serious about.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 18:16:23 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Serious Questions
Message:
I think there are four or five serious philosophical questions. The first one is 'Who started it?' The second is 'Are we going to make it?' The third is 'Where are we going to put it?' The fourth is 'Who's going to clean up?' And the fifth, 'Is it serious?'

But still, should you or not commit suicide? This is a good question. Why go on? And you only go on if the game is worth the gamble. Now the universe has been going on for an incredible long time. And so really, a satisfactory theory of the universe has to be one that's worth betting on. That's very, it seems to me, elementary common sense. If you make a theory of the universe which isn't worth betting on, why bother? Just commit suicide. But if you want to go on playing the game, you've got to have an optimal theory for playing the game. Otherwise there's no point in it. But the people who coined the fully automatic theory of the universe were playing a very funny game, for what they wanted to say was this: all you people who believe in religion--old ladies and wishful thinkers-- you've got a big daddy up there, and you want comfort, but life is rough. Life is tough, as success goes to the most hard- headed people. That was a very convenient theory when the European and American worlds were colonizing the natives everywhere else. They said 'We're the end product of evolution, and we're tough. I'm a big strong guy because I face facts, and life is just a bunch of junk, and I'm going to impose my will on it and turn it into something else. I'm real hard.' That's a way of flattering yourself.

And so, it has become academically plausible and fashionable that this is the way the world works. In academic circles, no other theory of the world than the fully automatic model is respectable. Because if you're an academic person, you've got to be an intellectually tough person, you've got to be prickly. There are basically two kinds of philosophy. One's called prickles, the other's called goo. And prickly people are precise, rigorous, logical. They like everything chopped up and clear. Goo people like it vague. For example, in physics, prickly people believe that the ultimate constituents of matter are particles. Goo people believe it's waves. And in philosophy, prickly people are logical positivists, and goo people are idealists. And they're always arguing with each other, but what they don't realize is neither one can take his position without the other person. Because you wouldn't know you advocated prickles unless there was someone advocating goo. You wouldn't know what a prickle was unless you knew what a goo was. Because life isn't either prickles or goo, it's either gooey prickles or prickly goo. They go together like back and front, male and female. And that's the answer to philosophy. You see, I'm a philosopher, and I'm not going to argue very much, because if you don't argue with me, I don't know what I think. So if we argue, I say 'Thank you,' because owing to the courtesy of your taking a different point of view, I understand what I mean. So I can't get rid of you.

But however, you see, this whole idea that the universe is nothing at all but unintelligent force playing around and not even enjoying it is a putdown theory of the world. People who had an advantage to make, a game to play by putting it down, and making out that because they put the world down they were a superior kind of people. So that just won't do. We've had it. Because if you seriously go along with this idea of the world, you're what is technically called alienated. You feel hostile to the world. You feel that the world is a trap. It is a mechanism, it is electronic and neurological mechanisms into which you somehow got caught. And you, poor thing, have to put up with being put into a body that's falling apart, that gets cancer, that gets the great Siberian itch, and is just terrible. And these mechanics--doctors--are trying to help you out, but they really can't succeed in the end, and you're just going to fall apart, and it's a grim business, and it's just too bad. So if you think that's the way things are, you might as well commit suicide right now. Unless you say, 'Well, I'm damned. Because there might really be after all eternal damnation. Or I identify with my children, and I think of them going on without me and nobody to support them. Because if I do go on in this frame of mind and continue to support them, I shall teach them to be like I am, and they'll go on, dragging it out to support their children, and they won't enjoy it. They'll be afraid to commit suicide, and so will their children. They'll all learn the same lessons.'

So you see, all I'm trying to say is that the basic common sense about the nature of the world that is influencing most people in the United States today is simply a myth. If you want to say that the idea of God the father with his white beard on the golden throne is a myth, in a bad sense of the word 'myth,' so is this other one. It is just as phony and has just as little to support it as being the true state of affairs. Why? Let's get this clear. If there is any such thing at all as intelligence and love and beauty, well you've found it in other people. In other words, it exists in us as human beings. And as I said, if it is there, in us, it is symptomatic of the scheme of things. We are as symptomatic of the scheme of things as the apples are symptomatic of the apple tree or the rose of the rose bush. The Earth is not a big rock infested with living organisms any more than your skeleton is bones infested with cells. The Earth is geological, yes, but this geological entity grows people, and our existence on the Earth is a symptom of this other system, and its balances, as much as the solar system in turn is a symptom of our galaxy, and our galaxy in its turn is a symptom of a whole company of other galaxies. Goodness only knows what that's in.

But you see, when, as a scientist, you describe the behavior of a living organism, you try to say what a person does, it's the only way in which you can describe what a person is, describe what they do. Then you find out that in making this description, you cannot confine yourself to what happens inside the skin. In other words, you cannot talk about a person walking unless you start describing the floor, because when I walk, I don't just dangle my legs in empty space. I move in relationship to a room. So in order to describe what I'm doing when I'm walking, I have to describe the room; I have to describe the territory. So in describing my talking at the moment, I can't describe it as just a thing in itself, because I'm talking to you. And so what I'm doing at the moment is not completely described unless your being here is described also. So if that is necessary, in other words, in order to describe MY behavior, I have to describe YOUR behavior and the behavior of the environment, it means that we've really got one system of behavior. Your skin doesn't separate you from the world; it's a bridge through which the external world flows into you, and you flow into it.

Just, for example, as a whirlpool in water, you could say because you have a skin you have a definite shape you have a definite form. All right? Here is a flow of water, and suddenly it does a whirlpool, and it goes on. The whirlpool is a definite form, but no water stays put in it. The whirlpool is something the stream is doing, and exactly the same way, the whole universe is doing each one of us, and I see each one of you today and I recognize you tomorrow, just as I would recognize a whirlpool in a stream. I'd say 'Oh yes, I've seen that whirlpool before, it's just near so-and-so's house on the edge of the river, and it's always there.' So in the same way when I meet you tomorrow, I recognize you, you're the same whirlpool you were yesterday. But you're moving. The whole world is moving through you, all the cosmic rays, all the food you're eating, the stream of steaks and milk and eggs and everything is just flowing right through you. When you're wiggling the same way, the world is wiggling, the stream is wiggling you.

But the problem is, you see, we haven't been taught to feel that way. The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it--aliens. And we are, I think, quite urgently in need of coming to feel that we ARE the eternal universe, each one of us. Otherwise we're going to go out of our heads. We're going to commit suicide, collectively, courtesy of H-bombs and global warming. And, all right, supposing we do, well that will be that, then there will be life making experiments on other galaxies. Maybe they'll find a better game.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:19:32 (EDT)
Poster: Mili Baba
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: The Nature of Consciousness
Message:
Hi guys! Just in case you've missed me, I am sharing with you here something nice that I 've been reading lately:

The Nature Of Consciousness
by Alan Watts
Originally broadcast on KSAN radio, San Francisco

I find it a little difficult to say what the subject matter of this seminar is going to be, because it's too fundamental to give it a title. I'm going to talk about what there is. Now, the first thing, though, that we have to do is to get our perspectives with some background about the basic ideas that, as Westerners living today in the United States, influence our everyday common sense, our fundamental notions about what life is about. And there are historical origins for this, which influence us more strongly than most people realize. Ideas of the world which are built into the very nature of the language we use, and of our ideas of logic, and of what makes sense altogether.

And these basic ideas I call myth, not using the word 'myth' to mean simply something untrue, but to use the word 'myth' in a more powerful sense. A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world. Now, for example, a myth in a way is a metaphore. If you want to explain electricity to someone who doesn't know anything about electricity, you say, well, you talk about an electric current. Now, the word 'current' is borrowed from rivers. It's borrowed from hydrolics, and so you explain electricity in terms of water. Now, electricity is not water, it behaves actually in a different way, but there are some ways in which the behavior of water is like the behavior of electricty, and so you explain it in terms of water. Or if you're an astronomer, and you want to explain to people what you mean by an expanding universe and curved space, you say, 'well, it's as if you have a black balloon, and there are white dots on the black balloon, and those dots represent galaxies, and as you blow the balloon up, uniformly all of them grow farther and farther apart. But you're using an analogy--the universe is not actually a black balloon with white dots on it.

So in the same way, we use these sort of images to try and make sense of the world, and we at present are living under the influence of two very powerful images, which are, in the present state of scientific knowledge, inadequate, and one of the major problems today are to find an adequate, satisfying image of the world. Well that's what I'm going to talk about. And I'm going to go further than that, not only what image of the world to have, but how we can get our sensations and our feelings in accordance with the most sensible image of the world that we can manage to conceive.

All right, now--the two images which we have been working under for 2000 years and maybe more are what I would call two models of the universe, and the first is called the ceramic model, and the second the fully automatic model. The ceramic model of the universe is based on the book of Genesis, from which Judaism, Islam, and Christianity derive their basic picture of the world. And the image of the world in the book of Genesis is that the world is an artifact. It is made, as a potter takes clay and forms pots out of it, or as a carpenter takes wood and makes tables and chairs out of it. Don't forget Jesus is the son of a carpenter. And also the son of God. So the image of God and of the world is based on the idea of God as a technician, potter, carpenter, architect, who has in mind a plan, and who fashions the universe in accordance with that plan.

So basic to this image of the world is the notion, you see, that the world consists of stuff, basically. Primoridial matter, substance, stuff. As parts are made of clay. Now clay by itself has no intelligence. Clay does not of itself become a pot, although a good potter may think otherwise. Because if you were a really good potter, you don't impose your will on the clay, you ask any given lump of clay what it wants to become, and you help it to do that. And then you become a genious. But the ordinary idea I'm talking about is that simply clay is unintelligent; it's just stuff, and the potter imposes his will on it, and makes it become whatever he wants.

And so in the book of Genesis, the lord God creates Adam out of the dust of the Earth. In other words, he makes a clay figurine, and then he breathes into it, and it becomes alive. And because the clay become informed. By itself it is formless, it has no intelligence, and therefore it requires an external intelligence and an external energy to bring it to life and to bring some sense to it. And so in this way, we inherit a conception of ourselves as being artifacts, as being made, and it is perfectly natural in our culture for a child to ask its mother 'How was I made?' or 'Who made me?' And this is a very, very powerful idea, but for example, it is not shared by the Chinese, or by the Hindus. A Chinese child would not ask its mother 'How was I made?' A Chinese child might ask its mother 'How did I grow?' which is an entirely different procedure form making. You see, when you make something, you put it together, you arrange parts, or you work from the outside in, as a sculpture works on stone, or as a potter works on clay. But when you watch something growing, it works in exactly the opposite direction. It works from the inside to the outside. It expands. It burgeons. It blossoms. And it happens all of itself at once. In other words, the original simple form, say of a living cell in the womb, progressively complicates itself, and that's the growing process, and it's quite different from the making process.

But we have thought, historically, you see, of the world as something made, and the idea of being--trees, for example-- constructions, just as tables and houses are constructions. And so there is for that reason a fundamental difference between the made and the maker. And this image, this ceramic model of the universe, originated in cultures where the form of government was monarchial, and where, therefore, the maker of the universe was conceived also at the same time in the image of the king of the universe. 'King of kings, lords of lords, the only ruler of princes, who thus from thy throne behold all dwellers upon Earth.' I'm quoting the Book of Common Prayer. And so, all those people who are oriented to the universe in that way feel related to basic reality as a subject to a king. And so they are on very, very humble terms in relation to whatever it is that works all this thing. I find it odd, in the United States, that people who are citizens of a republic have a monarchial theory of the universe. That you can talk about the president of the United States as LBJ, or Ike, or Harry, but you can't talk about the lord of the universe in such familiar terms. Because we are carrying over from very ancient near-Eastern cultures, the notion that the lord of the universe must be respected in a certain way. Poeple kneel, people bow, people prostrate themselves, and you know what the reason for that is: that nobody is more frightened of anybody else than a tyrant. He sits with his back to the wall, and his guards on either side of him, and he has you face downwards on the ground because you can't use weapons that way. When you come into his presence, you don't stand up and face him, because you might attack, and he has reason to fear that you might because he's ruling you all. And the man who rules you all is the biggest crook in the bunch. Because he's the one who succeeded in crime. The other people are pushed aside because they--the criminals, the people we lock up in jail--are simply the people who didn't make it.

So naturally, the real boss sits with his back to the wall and his henchmen on either side of him. And so when you design a church, what does it look like? Catholic church, with the alter where it used to be--it's changing now, because the Catholic religion is changing. But the Catholic church has the alter with it's back to the wall at the east end of the church. And the alter is the throne and the priest is the chief vizier of the court, and he is making abeyance to the throne, but there is the throne of God, the alter. And all the people are facing it, and kneeling down. And a great Catholic cathederal is called a basilica, from the Greek 'basilikos,' which means 'king.' So a basilica is the house of a king, and the ritual of the church is based on the court rituals of Byzantium.

A Protestant church is a little different. Basically the same. The furniture of a Protestant church is based on a judicial courthouse. The pulpit, the judge in an American court wears a black robe, he wears exactly the same dress as a Protestant minister. And everybody sits in these boxes, there's a box for the jury, there's a box for the judge, there's a box for this, there's a box for that, and those are the pews in an ordinary colonial- type Protestant church. So both these kinds of churches which have an autocratic view of the nature of the universe decorate themselves, are architecturally constructed in accordance with politcal images of the universe. One is the king, and the other is the judge. Your honor. There's sense in this. When in court, you have to refer to the judge as 'your honor.' It stops the people engaged in litigation from losing their tempers and getting rude. There's a certain sense to that.

But when you want to apply that image to the universe itself, to the very nature of life, it has limitations. For one thing, the idea of a difference between matter and spirit. This idea doesn't work anymore. Long, long ago, physicists stopped asking the question 'What is matter?' They began that way. They wanted to know, what is the fundamental substance of the world? And the more they asked that question, the more they realized the couldn't answer it, because if you're going to say what matter is, you've got to describe it in terms of behavior, that is to say in terms of form, in terms of pattern. You tell what it does, you describe the smallest shapes of it which you can see. Do you see what happens? You look, say, at a piece of stone, and you want to say, 'Well, what is this piece of stone made of?' You take your microscope and you look at it, and instead of just this block of stuff, you see ever so many tinier shapes. Little crystals. So you say, 'Fine, so far so good. Now what are these crystals made of?' And you take a more powerful instrument, and you find that they're made of molocules, and then you take a still more powerful instrument to find out what the molocules are made of, and you begin to describe atoms, electrons, protons, mesons, all sorts of sub-nuclear particles. But you never, never arrive at the basic stuff. Because there isn't any.

What happens is this: 'Stuff' is a word for the world as it looks when our eyes are out of focus. Fuzzy. Stuff--the idea of stuff is that it is undifferentiated, like some kind of goo. And when your eyes are not in sharp focus, everything looks fuzzy. When you get your eyes into focus, you see a form, you see a pattern. But when you want to change the level of magnification, and go in closer and closer and closer, you get fuzzy again before you get clear. So everytime you get fuzzy, you go through thinking there's some kind of stuff there. But when you get clear, you see a shape. So all that we can talk about is patterns. We never, never can talk about the 'stuff' of which these patterns are supposed to be made, because you don't really have to suppose that there is any. It's enough to talk about the world in terms of patterns. It describes anything that can be described, and you don't really have to suppose that there is some stuff that constitutes the essence of the pattern in the same way that clay constitutes the essence of pots. And so for this reason, you don't really have to suppose that the world is some kind of helpless, passive, unintelligent junk which an outside agency has to inform and make into intelligent shapes. So the picture of the world in the most sophisticated physics of today is not formed stuff--potted clay--but pattern. A self-moving, self-designing pattern. A dance. And our common sense as individuals hasn't yet caught up with this.

Well now, in the course of time, in the evolution of Western thought. The ceramic image of the world ran into trouble. And changed into what I call the fully automatic image of the world. In other words, Western science was based on the idea that there are laws of nature, and got that idea from Judaism and Christianity and Islam. That in other words, the potter, the maker of the world in the beginning of things laid down the laws, and the law of God, which is also the law of nature, is called the 'loggos ?,.' And in Christianity, the loggos is the second person of the trinity, incarnate as Jesus Christ, who thereby is the perfect exemplar of the divine law. So we have tended to think of all natural phenomena as responding to laws, as if, in other words, the laws of the world were like the rails on which a streetcar or a tram or a train runs, and these things exist in a certain way, and all events respond to these laws. You know that limerick,

There was a young man who said 'Damn,
For it certainly seems that I am
A creature that moves
In determinate grooves.
I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram.'

So here's this idea that there's kind of a plan, and everything responds and obeys that plan. Well, in the 18th century, Western intellectuals began to suspect this idea. And what they suspected was whether there is a lawmaker, whether there is an architect of the universe, and they found out, or they reasoned, that you don't have to suppose that there is. Why? Because the hypothesis of God does not help us to make any predictions. Nor does it-- In other words, let's put it this way: if the business of science is to make predictions about what's going to happen, science is essentially prophecy. What's going to happen? By examining the behavior of the past and describing it carefully, we can make predictions about what's going to happen in the future. That's really the whole of science. And to do this, and to make successful predictions, you do not need God as a hypothesis. Because it makes no difference to anything. If you say 'Everything is controlled by God, everything is governed by God,' that doesn't make any difference to your prediction of what's going to happen. And so what they did was drop that hypothesis. But they kept the hypothesis of law. Because if you can predict, if you can study the past and describe how things have behaved, and you've got some regularities in the behavior of the universe, you call that law. Although it may not be law in the ordinary sense of the word, it's simply regularity.

And so what they did was got rid of the lawmaker and kept the law. And so the conceived the universe in terms of a mechanism. Something, in other words, that is functioning according to regular, clocklike mechanical principles. Newton's whole image of the world is based on billiards. The atoms are billiard balls, and they bang each other around. And so your behavior, every individual around, is defined as a very, very complex arrangement of billiard balls being banged around by everything else. And so behind the fully automatic model of the universe is the notion that reality itself is, to use the favorite term of 19th century scientists, blind energy. In say the metaphysics of Ernst Hegel, and T.H. Huxley, the world is basically nothing but energy--blind, unintelligent force. And likewise and parallel to this, in the philosophy of Freud, the basic psychological energy is libido, which is blind lust. And it is only a fluke, it is only as a result of pure chances that resulting from the exuberance of this energy there are people. With values, with reason, with languages, with cultures, and with love. Just a fluke. Like, you know, 1000 monkeys typing on 1000 typewriters for a million years will eventually type the Encyclopedia Britannica. And of course the moment they stop typing the Encyclopedia Britannica, they will relapse into nonsense.

And so in order that that shall not happen, for you and I are flukes in this cosmos, and we like our way of life--we like being human--if we want to keep it, say these people, we've got to fight nature, because it will turn us back into nonsense the moment we let it. So we've got to impose our will upon this world as if we were something completely alien to it. From outside. And so we get a culture based on the idea of the war between man and nature. And we talk about the conquest of space. The conquest of Everest. And the great symbols of our culture are the rocket and the bulldozer. The rocket--you know, compensation for the sexually inadequate male. So we're going to conquer space. You know we're in space already, way out. If anybody cared to be sensitive and let outside space come to you, you can, if your eyes are clear enough. Aided by telescopes, aided by radio astronomy, aided by all the kinds of sensitive instruments we can devise. We're as far out in space as we're ever going to get. But, y'know, sensitivity isn't the pitch. Especially in the WASP culture of the United States. We define manliness in terms of agression, you see, because we're a little bit frightened as to whether or not we're really men. And so we put on this great show of being a tough guy. It's completely unneccesary. If you have what it takes, you don't need to put on that show. And you don't need to beat nature into submission. Why be hostile to nature? Because after all, you ARE a symptom of nature. You, as a human being, you grow out of this physical universe in exactly the same way an apple grows off an apple tree.

So let's say the tree which grows apples is a tree which apples, using 'apple' as a verb. And a world in which human beings arrive is a world that peoples. And so the existence of people is symptomatic of the kind of universe we live in. Just as spots on somebody's skin is symptomatic of chicken pox. Just as hair on a head is symptomatic of what's going on in the organism. But we have been brought up by reason of our two great myths--the ceramic and the automatic--not to feel that we belong in the world. So our popular speech reflects it. You say 'I came into this world.' You didn't. You came out of it. You say 'Face facts.' We talk about 'encounters' with reality, as if it was a head-on meeting of completely alien agencies. And the average person has the sensation that he is a someone that exists inside a bag of skin. The center of consciousness that looks out at this thing, and what the hell's it going to do to me? You see? 'I recognize you, you kind of look like me, and I've seen myself in a mirror, and you look like you might be people.' So maybe you're intelligent and maybe you can love, too. Perhaps you're all right, some of you are, anyway. You've got the right color of skin, or you have the right religion, or whatever it is, you're OK. But there are all those people over in Asia, and Africa, and they may not really be people. When you want to destroy someone, you always define them as 'unpeople.' Not really human. Monkeys, maybe. Idiots, maybe. Machines, maybe, but not people.

So we have this hostility to the external world because of the superstition, the myth, the absolutely unfounded theory that you, yourself, exist only inside your skin. Now I want to propose another idea altogether. There are two great theories in astronomy going on right now about the origination of the universe. One is called the explosion theory, and the other is called the steady state theory. The steady state people say there never was a time when the world began, it's always expanding, yes, but as a result of free hydrogen in space, the free hydrogen coagulates and makes new galaxies. But the other people say there was a primoridial explosion, an enormous bang billions of years ago which flung all the galazies into space. Well let's take that just for the sake of argument and say that was the way it happened.

It's like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it's dense, isn't it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually--if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning-- you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as--Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so--I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I'm that, too. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it.

And so what I would call a basic problem we've got to go through first, is to understand that there are no such things as things. That is to say separate things, or separate events. That that is only a way of talking. If you can understand this, you're going to have no further problems. I once asked a group of high school children 'What do you mean by a thing?' First of all, they gave me all sorts of synonyms. They said 'It's an object,' which is simply another word for a thing; it doesn't tell you anything about what you mean by a thing. Finally, a very smart girl from Italy, who was in the group, said a thing is a noun. And she was quite right. A noun isn't a part of nature, it's a part of speech. There are no nouns in the physical world. There are no separate things in the physical world, either. The physical world is wiggly. Clouds, mountains, trees, people, are all wiggly. And only when human beings get to working on things--they build buildings in straight lines, and try to make out that the world isn't really wiggly. But here we are, sitting in this room all built out of straight lines, but each one of us is as wiggly as all get-out.

Now then, when you want to get control of something that wiggles, it's pretty difficult, isn't it? You try and pick up a fish in your hands, and the fish is wiggly and it slips out. What do you do to get hold of the fish? You use a net. And so the net is the basic thing we have for getting hold of the wiggly world. So if you want to get hold of this wiggle, you've got to put a net over it. A net is something regular. And I can number the holes in a net. So many holes up, so many holes across. And if I can number these holes, I can count exactly where each wiggle is, in terms of a hole in that net. And that's the beginning of calculus, the art of measuring the world. But in order to do that, I've got to break up the wiggle into bits. I've got to call this a specific bit, and this the next bit of the wiggle, and this the next bit, and this the next bit of the wiggle. And so these bits are things or events. Bit of wiggles. Which I mark out in order to talk about the wiggle. In order to measure and therfore in order to control it. But in nature, in fact, in the physical world, the wiggle isn't bitted. Like you don't get a cut-up fryer out of an egg. But you have to cut the chicken up in order to eat it. You bite it. But it doesn't come bitten.

So the world doesn't come thinged; it doesn't come evented. You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. The ocean waves, and the universe peoples. And as I wave and say to you 'Yoo-hoo!' the world is waving with me at you and saying 'Hi! I'm here!' But we are consciousness of the way we feel and sense our existence. Being based on a myth that we are made, that we are parts, that we are things, our consciousness has been influenced, so that each one of us does not feel that. We have been hypnotized, literally hypnotized by social convention into feeling and sensing that we exist only inside our skins. That we are not the original bang, just something out on the end of it. And therefore we are scared stiff. My wave is going to disappear, and I'm going to die! And that would be awful. We've got a mythology going now which is, as Father Maskell?, put it, we are something that happens between the maternity ward and the crematorium. And that's it. And therefore everybody feels unhappy and miserable.

This is what people really believe today. You may go to church, you may say you believe in this, that, and the other, but you don't. Even Jehovah's Witnesses, who are the most fundamental of fundamentalists, they are polite when they come around and knock on the door. But if you REALLY believed in Christianity, you would be screaming in the streets. But nobody does. You would be taking full- page ads in the paper every day. You would be the most terrifying television programs. The churches would be going out of their minds if they really believed what they teach. But they don't. They think they ought to believe what they teach. They believe they should believe, but they don't really believe it, because what we REALLY believe is the fully automatic model. And that is our basic, plausible common sense. You are a fluke. You are a separate event. And you run from the maternity ward to the crematorium, and that's it, baby. That's it.

Now why does anybody think that way? There's no reason to, because it isn't even scientific. It's just a myth. And it's invented by people who want to feel a certain way. They want to play a certain game. The game of god got embarrassing. The idea if God as the potter, as the architect of the universe, is good. It makes you feel that life is, after all, important. There is someone who cares. It has meaning, it has sense, and you are valuable in the eyes of the father. But after a while, it gets embarrassing, and you realize that everything you do is being watched by God. He knows your tiniest innermost feelings and thoughts, and you say after a while, 'Quit bugging me! I don't want you around.' So you become an athiest, just to get rid of him. Then you feel terrible after that, because you got rid of God, but that means you got rid of yourself. You're nothing but a computer. And your idea that you're a computer is just a computer program, too.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:48:16 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Mili Baba
Subject: Re: The Nature of Consciousness
Message:
Mili, Would you please not confuse this page with your own? This isn't the Mili Satsang forum. You've got that. While you bring him up though, Alan Watts was just an alcoholic wordsmith. I was so impressed with him once. When I was a lot younger and, like my whole generation, enamoured with things Eastern. At York University I took a course in 1971 called 'Man in Search.' We read 'The Book' and other such fare. It was very sixties and very groovy. Our grade was based on one final exam. I entered the exam hall with about 500 other kids. It was a large class. I looked at the exam and it was, true to the subject matter of the course, unconventional. Make that 'conventionally unconventional.' The only question was: 'How should we live?' We were supposed to express some sort of lite philosophy based on the course materials over the next three hours. My tutorial instructor was a fellow named John Blazina. What I did was draw a picture of a guy sitting on a toilet below which I wrote: "John Blazina Now I've seen ya' Sitting in the lieu, John Blazina Does it mean ya' Like to take a poo?" I'm whimsically proud of the fact that I was one of two people in the entire class -- all sections -- to get an 'A'. How zen. How sixties. How stupid. My best example of the sixties mentality is the fact that UCLA gave a PHD to Carlos Castenada for bullshit. No field notes, nothing. Just a fanciful story. He could have been writing about tinkerbell for all it mattered. The young turks on the anthro faculty pressured the older guys into awarding the doctorate just because, well, you don;t need no 'because' such were the anti-intellectual sentiments at large back then. Mili, you could have gotten a PHD then too!
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 21:20:13 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: Mili Babble
Subject: Re: The Nature of Consciousness
Message:
Oh yeah, Mili... That's "something nice" alright... ...probably even some meaning in there somewhere. Back in '72 I spoke with someone who once had the job of picking up your recent wise man at the airport. Watts was so shit-faced that he almost had to be carried to the car. The had to sober him up so he could keep his speaking engagement - enlightening the pre-paid audience. Great seers are under so much stress...
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 16:10:44 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Nature of Consciousness
Message:
Oh yeah, Mili... That's 'something nice' alright... ...probably even some meaning in there somewhere. Back in '72 I spoke with someone who once had the job of picking up your recent wise man at the airport. Watts was so shit-faced that he almost had to be carried to the car. The had to sober him up so he could keep his speaking engagement - enlightening the pre-paid audience. Great seers are under so much stress... A friend of mine recently read Watts last book 'Tao : The Watercourse Way' and found that it had a very nice message. So you never drank a bottle of Red Mountain - g? CD
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 20:36:27 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: The Nature of Consciousness
Message:
Very nice, Chirs, very nice.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 16:57:06 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Another Cave Story
Message:
Remember the Pied Piper of Hamlin? A medieval "Music Man", he entranced all the kids in town to leave home and hearth and follow him wherever. In fact he took them into the forest and, as I recall, lead them all into some cave behind a big rock. The only kid who didn't go was the one on crutches. Every poor fool under the age of 12 was suckered into that parade. Now, imagine the aftermath. Imagine that Mr. PP wasn't arrested, charged, tried, convicted and hung but instead kept some part of his following, kept a low profile and was largely unthought of. Even most of the kids who escaped his miserable rain parade stopped talking about him and moved on with their lives. Mr. PP laid so low that when Heaven's Gate happened none of the press or commentators even thought to make the connection. So one day this ex-PP lover (?) runs into one of the current followers, a guy who'd also been in the original parade (or 'Soul Rush') but who'd never left. They get to talking. Soon they're arguing. The ex-PP man is pissed off about all the time he'd spent in that stupid cave. Eight years for him seemed a long time. His old friend, however, would have none of it. First, he denied that there'd ever really been a cave thing. "Oh that," he shrugged "That was just a metaphor. Mr. PP hasn't talked about the cave for years. Where've you been anyways? You sound like Rip Van Winkle!" To which the ex-PP lover rightfully answered that Rip only slept under a tree. Mr. PP, he insisted, had actually gotten them all to do this cave thing. Then the PP-lover tried another defence: "You know something? Mr. PP never really wanted us to take that cave thing so seriously anyways. The proof of that, of course, is that I never did. See, while some of you guys moved right in, went right in to the backof the cave, I, in my subtle by apparently infinite wisdowm, had the foresight to know that wasn't where it was at. I hung out just outside the cave. You idiots spent all that time in there and have only yourselves to blame for it. You certainly can't blame Mr. PP. As I said, he doesn't even TALK about the cave anymore." The ex-PP lover starts to lose it. Wasn't this guy there with him? Didn't he remember the march itself? This was beginning to seem like an old Twilight Zone episode, the one where the guy goes back to his old hometown and everything's the same except him. He's been erased. "Come on, man!" he cries. But to no avail. The PP lover smiles the satisfied smile of someone enjoying a good dream, someone who ain't about to wake up for anyone. And then the ex-PP lover realizes that this is really quite a bit like Rip Van Winkle. Holy cow!
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 16:49:00 (EDT)
Poster: Matt C.
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Many Heartfelt Greetings to All, It has been 22 years since I last knowingly had any type of contact with a Premie of any kind. I received knowledge On October 23, 1973 in Houston TX. It was at the old three story Premie house that was used to house all the guests & artists that were assembled for the Millennium 73 celebration @ the Astrodome. I have many distinct memories, as well as cloudy ones, from that period. I was 19 at the time. Although I have managed to avoid contact with DLM & associates since 1975 I have not altogether renounced my involvement w. GMJ. Depending on how you want to value things it could be easily said that I took GMJ for a ride just as much as he took me. During my involvement w. DLM I always had a roof over my head & good meals. Yes, good meals. I was a cook at the Ersatz Ashram and we ate well. I also never made a whole lot of money so he never got much out of me. And the entire scene from 1973 - 1975 was full of entertaining events. I met some really great people, traveled & received meditation techniques which I use to this day. Just visit a wellness/stress management seminar and watch them prescribe breath meditation. All in all, not too bad of a deal. So it is difficult for me to totally repudiate GMJ. I was never seriously victimized by him or the DLM leadership. I also never lost my critical faculties of doubt. I doubted all the claims then & I doubt them now. But how do you prove that someone is or is not cosmically connected w. you? I did indeed try the ashram way of life & I did profess him as my Guru. Yes, sometimes tongue in cheek, Lawd. I always got a kick out of telling someone that I was going to see the Lord give satsong. But enough people outside DLM questioned my convictions to the point that I wanted more proof before I could just sign up for life as a monastic premie. But my point in all this is to ask those of you who have had Knowledge if you had any of the same experiences or phenomenons occur to you as they seemed to occur to me. For example, GMJ always seemed to glow. I mean, I saw a golden/yellow glow surround him. Not all of the time but certainly very often. I saw this glow around him as he lectured us. I saw the glow as he walked by me several times. (please note, I never bowed down to him as he passed by. Pranam I think it was called. I had to see what this guy looked like.) I saw this halo like aura or whatever around him whenever he sat on a royal throne at festivals. The glow would grow in intensity as I centered myself in meditation. Was I just tricking myself ? Was it some sort of optical illusion? Many other Premies at the time stated they saw the glow too. But Premie testimony is suspect. & not all Premies saw it. I have seen other people glow as I focused attention on them. Many were certainly not DLM members. But no one to this day has ever emanated as much light as this guy did. I did not have to really focus on him to see it. A glow does not a perfect master make but it was unusual. Anyone ever have similar experiences? The other experience worth note was when I first received darshan from him. It was in Chicago Feb. 1974. The place was an old Ballroom where hundreds of followers came to see him and receive darshan & if you were lucky....holy breath. Well I kissed his feet & offered him my gift (a loaf of bread !) & he just blew at me and waved his hand. Then as I got up I felt a noticeable sense of exhilaration. Not fear or adrenaline but childlike happiness. And I was not they only one to experience this wave of joy, and sense of .... Oh Gawd, I hate to say it, bliss. I & my protegees were intoxicatingly blissed out for hours. We could not stop grinning. Store clerks At checkout lines noticed it...Boy you guys are sure happy. The residual effects of darshan lasted three days. We just returned to our normal adult state of mind It has been 23 years since I was blasted by that wave of joy. No singular event has ever equaled or exceeded it. It is this one experience that i had that makes it difficult for me to completely doubt GMJ s veracity as a guru. Again, anyone else out there have similar experiences? Was I just caught up in a powerful suggestion? Shri - Matt
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:17:53 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Matt C.
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Matt, Once, I was in a rstaurant with two friends. Actually, it was that expensive beach place, Splash, on Zuma beach just down the hill from Maharaji's. Coincidence. The restaurant had hired a magician to entertain guests. It was dusk and no one else was there yet so this guy spent a fair bit of time entrancing our party. He did this one thing that amazed me. He took a bill from one of us, crumpled it into a ball, and made it float right before our eyes. Just over our table,right in front of us. It was incredible. Then, he took two of our water goblets and circled the floating money ball with them. The ball just hovered in the chamber created by the two glasses. Right in front of us. It was startling. If the guy wasn't wearing a tux, if he didn't readily admit that he was just a magician, if I'd never heard of such a craft, what would I have thought? That he was really MAGICAL, I guess. Thankfully, I just knew otherwise. Similarly, I think the thing you ahve to do with Maharaji is work on the premise that he's just another fake Lord of the Universe and work up from that. It's like testing a hypothesis. Everything seems to fit quite nicely on it. Even his sleight of hand. In particular, I certainly thought I saw the flow of the godman in him. That is, when my mind wasn't saying 'what is this shit?' For example, he might have looked all glowy on film in Who is Guru Maharj Ji? during the darshan line phase out at the campsite, but I remember seeing him at the Ally Pally and thinking 'no way, man, this ain't no Lord. This ain't nothing." Still, when I got a little closer to him in Seattle, the one time I got to do a bit up-close service in the ashram when he was there, he did seema little glowy. A little other-worldly. My little sister used to think that about David Cassidy too. Different context, different glow? Do you think you'd still see the glow if you had a few drinks with him? I remember how his whole family was supposedly divine, jsut like him. Well, years later I DID have that drink with Raja Ji. No glow. As for 'holy breath' that one's easy. I felt nothing.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 22:24:30 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: Matt C.
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Hi Matt! Yes, I do relate to some of what you're talking about. Twenty-three years ago, I met my first premies, and over the summer they befriended me. I didn't know I was listening to Satsang. I didn't understand very much at all actually. All I knew was that these people seemed as if they were stoned on something and I liked the feeling I had when I was around them. I took a 1500 mile ride with them back to my home, and the next thing I knew, I was at a program. I understood MJ was their Guru but I wasn't prepared for what happened. It was a bit freaky for me because as much as I liked these people the scene at the time did not attract me. For one thing, people throwing their bodies down on the cold concrete scared me. The other thing was the PA system was so poor that MJ's voice was this squeaky, completely inaudible irritation. I was a bit disappointed, seeing how these people spoke so highly of him. I was wandering around looking for a familiar face when one of the premies I knew, grabbed me into a line and gave me a battered grapefruit saying that here was my offering. I didn't fully understand what was happening until I saw the stage with all these people sitting on it. I barely remember what MJ looked like because I was so floored at what people were doing. No one told me what Darshan was about. When I realized that it was my turn and the person in front of me was actually kissing his feet, I went into shock. I thought to myself, 'Hey I can do this, after all, I'm an actress by proffesion.' So I bent over and quickly kissed his feet. Someone told me as I walked away that he had given me Holy Breath, (whatever that was). What followed was bizarre. I wandered confused and lost around the hall, trying desperately to remember where the shoes I took off before Darshan, were. I also attempted to call my brother but after trying several times, I couldn't remember the phone number. I was beginning to be frightened by the whole thing when a premie found me. Of course they had that big blissed out smile and when I tried to tell them how I felt, they laughed and said 'Isn't Darshan incredible?'. For seven years following this, I never met another premie. Reflecting on it all, I thought that some kind of weird gas had been released around his feet but I dismissed that notion and soon adopted a belief that he was truely powerful. I had had a dream about him prior to this event and I'm sure that is why the premies thought it was appropriate to do what they did. When I did run into premies again, there was that natural high and that feeling again. Only thing is, I forgot that in Rochester, New York, at a Zen Centre, I had met followers of the fellow who wrote 'Three Pillars of Zen' (What was his name?). That feeling was there too. I'm sure it would have been in lots of places where people are devoted to whatever. But I thought this was so exclusive, and dove in. I could have followed AppleWhite in his early days, and ended up a follower of Heaven's Gate I suppose......did you see any of the videos of these followers? Sure reminded me of premies, especially ones in the ashram.
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 01:00:45 (EDT)
Poster: Matt C.
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Jim, You might see the glow in me if he (GMJ) bought the drinks. But seriously, I 'm not the same person I was 24 years ago and neither is he. So who knows If he glows any more. I never get the chance to see him because he is so reclusive. Its like a marriage gone astray. Unless he has some super-natural power that lets him manipulate my life from afar I have nothing more to do with him. My real interest is just touching base with other persons who shared the same experiences. We are the ones who have something in common. Call it nostalgia or curiosity but when Deena writes that she could have experienced the same feeling from other groups or organizations then i know that all that stuff about GMJ being THE only one puts him in a very poor light.
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 01:26:52 (EDT)
Poster: Matt C.
Email:
To: Deena
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Deena, Thank you for your hummourous story about darshan. I recall that my darshan happened very fast & with little warning. You said that you were an actress, I am a stage lighting designer. Something about light I cannot escape. But I wish I knew more about this strange darshan reaction. Why do some get it and others do not? For me it was an awfully profound change and an altered state that lasted days. Very pleasant too. I did see Heaven's Gate news shots & videos. They reminded me so much of DLM ashram's that I went out to search the net for info. on my old cult,DLM. The inexplicable conviction of those folks was scary. I also related to the barracks style of housing. Ashrams had away of being so attractive on the outside but on the inside, after they schmoozed you in it was basic training tactics 24hrs. I was a renagade premie of sorts. and those brothers & sisters that I lived with were very close. I lived in a Premie house in Chicago on Armitage St. circa 1974. We had great times. Great meditations too. Yet the whole structure of DLM in the early seventies promoted drifting around. I lost contact with some really great folks. It could have been that just having a communal experience with people you were akin with was the catalyst for my bliss & not directly attributable to GMJ. What do you think?
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Date: Tues, Apr 22, 1997 at 00:32:36 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: Matt C.
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Hi Matt... Iike the idea you posted about getting the communal high. The reason I do is because even today the thing the premies in the past year that received knowledge have their most memorable EXPERIENCES (Jim, I do know how much you dislike that word but it works) when they relate trips to see MJ. Sure the videos and practise aren't to be discounted but it's the aspirant meeting prior to receiving and the events after that really do it. I mean it's not one on one we are talking here but I am sure after the aspirant process which makes a person feel so very special that a one on one would be loaded with anticipation of this being an evolved soul or wise one, if nothing else, given the build up of being told that he is THE MASTER, emphasis on THE. Anyway, you saw the same similarities I did when I watched Heaven's Gate. I feel like a broken record but I'd love if you or someone else would read Captive Hearts, Captive Minds because it answers so many of these questions. I honestly was convinced that anything else might very well be a cult but this was the truth. This was different. This was being put down just like in Jesus's time so that made it even more real. I refused to look at the cult like behavior . Buy the way, I was an actress for only a year, I wasn't cut out for the lifestyle so I got out. Also I believe the explaination for some people having mind blowing etc's and others not is directly dependent on how far into the acceptence of whose feet you were kissing. I mean for me, I had a definate shock reaction to a concept being blown that my lips would not touch a strangers feet (who would deem that normal unless you had a non Judeo-Christian upbringing )and yet because of my dream this could be a great teacher so confusion insued. If you listen to the disciples or devotees of other Guru's ( I have a couple of friends who had darshan too from different guru's) but the key is they were not THE MASTER so I discounted their experiences even though the descriptions of what occured were similiar to premie experiences. And then there is the Doe followers who saw him as Christ like and because of that they hung on every word and movement the same way premies do with MJ. It is just uncanny isn't it? I found that I automatically sat up and practised as soon as woke up and it took a while to break that habit. I chose to do this so I might find out what life without it was like. Amazingly enough it only got richer and more vibrant than eve...and I thought it was? The release from the cult and effects of meditation on my ability to think critically again so I could judge what was really happening is probably the reason the past 2 months have been so incredable. But not without fallout too...shock, anxiety, etc. all explained as normal upon leaving a cult. It's worth it though. Definately.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 02:55:59 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Matt C.
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
I believe that many people had very good feelings and interesting experiences. I did and have heard personally the same thing from many other people.
What was the cause? You have to trust your own feelings. Anything can be denied or explained away.
Was it just an ingenious hypnotism? I certainly don't think so.
I still remember a beutiful feeling I had listening to a song being sung in London in 9172.
I still remember the experience of the Knowledge session.
There are very fiew things that I can recall that far back but these things stand out for some reason.
And yes, I do have some positive recollections of darshan.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 15:10:53 (EDT)
Poster: Matt C.
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Thanks for responding to this post. I know that it is really far down on the stack now. Lotsa of stuff coming through.
From what I can tell right now GMJ did not have the market cornered on feel good meditations. So there is probably something to the art of meditating and living communally with folks akin to you.
I am still amazed though. How did it happen? How & why was that darshan rush so profound & unique. Who else is going around distributing sensations like that
Inquiring MINDS want to know.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 18:27:06 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Matt C.
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
One way to try to get an answer is to get a good solid hour to practice the Knowledge in a quiet place.
Suprising what you can experience!
Is there really a conciousness inside which is us? Or are we just the ideas running around in our heads and what our clothes and image make us out to be?
How does the tree grow out of that little seed? What do you see when you crack open the seed? What can happen if you plant it, water it and have some patience? Does anybody really have answer?
CD
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 18:45:34 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
There are other questions that center on the mind's ability to project. I remember when Mahatma Tejeshwaranand gave knowledge to three groups one night in Nelson, B.C. This was after a very heady program that the whole local hippie community came out for. (You might remember Nelson as the place the Divine Times once featured as a kind of Canadian premie Sedona).

Anyway, Tej gave such powerful satsang -- 'I tell you now, I was WITH Jesus!! -- that we were buzzing bigtime. This is before Starbucks, before Crack, before Ecstacy. All we had was our breath and staguru. It was enough.

That night almost everyone receiving Knowledge saw Maharaji, Shri Hans or some other deity in the light. Or claimed to. What do you think that was all about Chris?

I grant that Tej was very realized then. This was when he stayed with us in Vancouver for a while and we really got to know him. He moved all the ashramies out of one house (we had two side by side) and secretly flew his girlfriend from Philly in. He was also fucking a couple of local premies too. One started giving 'star' satsang. You know she was centered out as someone who had actually realized the Knowledge and saw Maharaji's face everywhere. And that was just what Tejeshwaranand was able to do. Ah memories, memories. Now why doesn't Maharaji put out a Mahatma commemorative coin series? Who wouldn't buy a few Gurucharand's? But I digress.

My point is to ask you, Chris, what all those visions were about? Was that a dollop of speical grace? Or, perhaps, something else?

While I remember, my old buddie Garnet Dupuis travelled with Mahatma Ji back then. Garnet had Special Premie status and I had a little, tiny sliver of it cause I was his friend. I was assigned to the service of ironing his shirts. He gave satsang everynight. He was supposed to be a mahatma. Maybe, one day, he still will.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 19:44:29 (EDT)
Poster: op
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
You knew Garnet? Do you have any idea whatever happened to Shelley (Garnet's wife)? Any idea where she might be now?
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 20:10:12 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Jim: 'My point is to ask you, Chris, what all those visions were about? Was that a dollop of speical grace? Or, perhaps, something else? '

Who knows? I wasn't there and have no idea what actually occured. Maybe something nice did take place. Do you have a problem with that?

I can only relate my own personal experiences. We all have told tales and exagerrated at times. I would agree with you that it is not a good idea to trust too much in other peoples stories. Don't overdo it is what I mean.

My Knowledge session experience was memorable to me. Thats it. I could never explain it so you could live it.

Do you ever have any special feelings with your girlfriend or is it all mechanical?
CD
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 21:40:15 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: op
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
We were all from Windsor, Ontario originally. I lost touch a long time ago. But not without looking Garnet up once when I was living in Santa Monica and going to law school.

We met at McGinty's for lunch, Garnet, me and my old buddy Steve, the long time summer camp friend who, along with Dave Wiener (who hung himself becuase of Maharaji), gave me my first satsang. Garnet, if you're reading this, you were a real asshole to us there. Like you'd gotten a bit too much of the Malibu premie snob fever and couldn't bother with your old friends. Really pissed me off bud. And after all those shirts I ironed!

Oh no! This IS going to degenerate into a forum for all our old gripes. Chris, it's all your fault.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 21:47:29 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Oh no you don't! Get your own!

Chris, you avoid hard questions at every step. I mentioned all those 'visions' to see if you'd consider that MAYBE people were deluded by their own minds. Why don't you ever give a little weight to such psychological explanations?

I mean even on the 'x files' , a show I don't have any time for, they come up with a little more than 'maybe something nice did take place.'
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 22:48:19 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Oh no you don't! Get your own!

Chris, you avoid hard questions at every step. I mentioned all those 'visions' to see if you'd consider that MAYBE people were deluded by their own minds. Why don't you ever give a little weight to such psychological explanations?

I mean even on the 'x files', a show I don't have any time for, they come up with a little more than 'maybe something nice did take place.'

Yes. I will agree that people can be deluded by the own minds.

I used to dabble in hypnotism when I was young. Shows that funny things can happen.

I have had some experiences that could have been delusion but were very strong and peaceful. Who knows!

I have studied enough science to know that for people to propose theories to explain away all sorts of occurances is BS. There are plenty of unexplained things existing. This ufo (the earth) for one. Yes it does seem pretty solid - g. Must be the vibes in Southern California!
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Date: Thurs, Apr 24, 1997 at 23:09:46 (EDT)
Poster: op
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
but Jim [whine, whine] - you never DID tell me if you saw Shelley or if you have any idea where she is. The last I heard, she had supposedly dyed her hair blue and was wearing studded dog collars and leather miniskirts.
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Date: Fri, Apr 25, 1997 at 09:48:41 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: op
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Yes, I'm sure. She was cute enough -- 30 years ago!
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Date: Fri, Apr 25, 1997 at 09:50:12 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: This ever happen 2u
Message:
Oh really Chris? What science is that?
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 19:08:21 (EDT)
Poster: Anon
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Please Please...
Message:
Please, please write in and share your stories. I know for a fact there are many premies out there who are reading these posts who would love to tell about the injustices and abuses they have witnessed and been subjected to , as perpetrated by Maharaji and his follwers (yes, we have some responsibility too). Unfortunately many of us are too timid or uncertain to write in so far. I have just been heartily thanked by some premies to whom I showed some of these posts. I was very moved as I was feeling rather guilty about it. A lot of people don't have access to computers but really sympathise with the views expressed here. They know that the truth is being told. Many people close to Maharaji suffer terribly in their consciences from what they see Maharaji do and hear him say. I have recently come to realise that writing here is really a moral responsibility for me. There is a mental block about joining in on these 'expose' type enterprises with that motivation.. We have been told to practice a selfish religion for so long that we turn a blind eye to abuses and we protect Maharaji from reality. If you have been around Maharaji for some time it feels very disloyal to 'trash' him so publically. Many of us feel that Maharaji sincerely believes in himself even if he is deluded. Somehow this makes us feel sorry for him. I feel very sad myself to have to write in here, and yet I now know I have to. I thought I had let it all go and had moved on, but I hadn't. I found myself reading these posts and feeling more and more like this was the awaited opportunity to bring about change. I practised Knowledge and followed Maharaji UNCOMPROMISINGLY and my integrity will only be salved when I feel that the injustices that I have seen have been set straight. This certainly includes the responsibility I feel about alerting newcomers to the full facts about what they are getting into. This is our human moral responsibility. There are too many lies and cover-up's going on in Maharaji's world. We must put aside our feelings of loyalty to Maharaji and really question our consciences. I trusted and prayed that I was serving the one ultimate Truth when I surrendered myself to Maharaji . I thought he was my prayer answered. I now suspect , after 24 years, that in a circuitous way , by writing in here I am at last sincerely serving a more Truthful cause and who knows ? Maybe this opportunity is my prayer answered (eventually.) Be that as it may, to me my pressing conscience is an urgent Reality. I have to respond. I need to cast off the shackles of indoctrination. Please all of you who have things to say or who are sitting on the fence. Remember why you came to Maharaji..the pure desire to serve Truth. Be scrupulously honest. Can you really now say, in the light of your experiences and in ALL honesty , that this man Maharaji is truly the trustworthy Master who he says he is? This is very important. You have the power to help alleviate the suffering of those who have also been hurt. We only have this one life to enjoy. Let's be honest and get all of our doubts and misgivings about Maharaji out into the open. Don't let anyone put you off!
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 21:05:42 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: Anon
Subject: Re: Please Please...
Message:
My experience with Maharaji is probably more typical of most people who might be sneaking forbidden peeks into this forum. I had none. I saw him from the little-people perspective. I never spoke to him. He has never spoken to me. He was whatever I chose him to be. I chose for him to be whatever he said he was. Most of what he said he was came to me 2nd-hand through other people who he did speak to. These were the people I was actually trusting. The information was sometimes in print, sometimes verbal. When I did as most of you have done to find this site (search "maharaj"), I had to weed through the results to skip over the guy from Nigeria, the old dead Indian, etc. Finally found the right Maharaji. What I wanted to result from my search was a chance to connect with people who had received Knowledge, and from the correct Perfect Master. Mostly just to have a chance to review the experience and see if I could somehow re-play the games I played before. Not so much for the Devotee part (I was never very good at that...), but for the family part. For the chance to sit around at night and share satsang again with my brothers and sisters. Hmmm... maybe I'd even move nearer to an ashram... get back in touch... Found this page instead [laugh]. Populated by disgruntled ex-insiders. I'm now remembering what drove me away on my previous successful attempts to "connect" - the organization surrounding Maharaji. Only difference is now there is none that isn't personally directed by him. And from OP's description apparently structured as: "don't call us, we'll call you". My favorite line so far is the one where those who receive Knowledge now are encouraged to participate by buying videos. Oh yeah... I wanna sit around and watch tv with the family. This is not the only page available on the web, of course. Check out premie.com and its syrupy, brain-dead posts. Then browse on over to clearview.com for the chance to purchase "lucky horse shoes", cool headbands, sparkly crystals, and to leave a number to find out about their neat Guru. (See "don't call us" above.) They cover all the bases. There's also Mili's Satsang Page. Somewhere in all of these I actually ran across a quote posted by Mili that was right from the feet of Hans Christian Anderson. Really. If you haven't found it yet, keep browsing. Contains real insight probably. What keeps bringing me back to this site is that the other people posting here have had personal contact with Maharaji himself, and then also taken the Mishler Trail out of town. I find it an eye-opener. Not only into the inner workings of DLM/Elan Vital/whatever, but into my own inner workings that would drive me to try to re-connect with something that has constantly disappointed me since Montrose. (Sorry about the fire ants, Peppermint Patty... looked like a dry place to lay out the sleeping bag...) I hope Deena can hold her marriage together. When mine was failing, we tried the re-connect thing (just the opposite of her situation). Moved back to Denver and discovered the house on Race street (which once served as North American headquarters for DLM) now dark and sporting ironwork that completely barred access to the porch. Guess the new owners had a problem with pilgrims... Also found that the unlisted-number-you-gotta-know-someone phase of bringing-Knowledge-to-the-World-propagation had begun. So why re-connect at all? I was raised to believe that the good things in my life were a result of other-intervention. God, or some other external entity, was the reason. The problems in my life resulted from my own blind efforts. Toss off good Christian up-bringing, and I have to plug some new "external" into the equation if I want good results. I want good results. The value I place in what I "recieved" from Knowledge must have been derived from the external Guru Maharaji. Toss off Maharaji and now I gotta go find Jesus again. He never spoke to me either. But something has to explain me to me. I am apparently still driven to derive meaning in my own life from some "other" context. Keep posting, people. I have a lot to learn. I'm not looking for dirt here, just the truth - however soiled it may be.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 09:58:12 (EDT)
Poster: Hi Anne!
Email:
To: Anne
Subject: Re: Please Please...
Message:
Hi...It's Deena here and I just read your post...it is written exactly in a way that I imagined someone joining in would. I just knew that there were people like yourself who were reading and wanted to get involved but they weren't sure. As far as I am concerned you are an extremely brave person because I can relate totally to what you are talking about! It is our moral obligation. I for one welcome you with open arms and look forward to reading what has happened to you that caused your doubts. Thanks for clearing the way for others with your honesty.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 10:05:08 (EDT)
Poster: Anon-not Anne,sorry....
Email:
To: Anon
Subject: Re: Please Please...
Message:
Hi...It's Deena here and I just read your post...it is written exactly in a way that I imagined someone joining in would. I just knew that there were people like yourself who were reading and wanted to get involved but they weren't sure. As far as I am concerned you are an extremely brave person because I can relate totally to what you are talking about! It is our moral obligation. I for one welcome you with open arms and look forward to reading what has happened to you that caused your doubts. Thanks for clearing the way for others with your honesty. I obviously need to wear glasses reading here..oh well if you want to call yourself Anne that is ok with me and it is more fun than Anon. I know the conflict because I regretted for a while that I originally used my real name but now I fiqure who cares if they know who I am...all the better. Besides whoever they are probably don't give a hoot. They are just looking for ways to do damage control in the furture and protect their master.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 17:19:53 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: Please Please...
Message:
Read the Moral Animal by Robert Wright. :)
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 23:47:21 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Anon
Subject: Re: Please Please...
Message:
Okay, Anon, I'm with you BUT, well, can I do all this and still 'leave no room for doubt in my mind'? Just kidding. I respond with humour when I just feel like emoting but have nothing to add. I'm getting so floored by you and the other newcomers to our coven of hatred and evil mind. This really is beautiful. Jim
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 17:46:24 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: If we only had a Judge
Message:
If we had a judge in this on-going debate all the believers would lose quickly and decisively. They would have to admit that: 1) Maharaji claimed to be God. 2) He promised to save the world. 3) He owes an explanation for 1 & 2. Unfortunately, without a judge, we're stuck with our individual integrity. New-agers, whether premies or not, have certain beliefs that seriously undermine that. For one thing, they have a very confused attitude towards rationality. They like it enough if it doesn't pinch, but if it does start to squeeze their ideas a bit they just take it off. They never stop to think that maybe it's their ideas that are getting too fat. Likewise, they like words enough, so long as the words fit their 'fat' ideas. If the words challenge their ideas, they only think of redifining or-- as Maharaji loves to do -- 'undefining' the words. They never think for a moment that, once again, maybe their ideas are just too fat. OP, you really need to take a look at yourself. Somewhere above you stand for the wisdom of 'considering al possibilities.' What a joke. Let's see you consider the possibility that Maharaji's a fraud for a change. Go ahead, think on that premise for a while and see how it feels. I warn you though, it feels great.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 10:07:21 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: If we only had a Judge
Message:
...it does feel great...
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 13:31:45 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
If you have a moment please check out Lance Tane and my current discussion over on alt.support.ex-cult . To his limited credit Lance at least responded one by one to the various quotes I've asked about. Complete obfuscation, of course. Still, it's a start. Problems? First, Lance refuses to attribute any responsibility to guruji for anything any else ever said. Well, we can all judge that as we would. I say 'bullshit', but hey, what do I know? Second, Lance gets so tied down in words that go nowhere... well, check it out. Anyway, it got me thinking. Would any of you other apostates be so kind as to comb your references for telling quotes by Mr. G himself? He said so many times that he was the God in human form we'd all be waiting for. Perhaps we could collect a few choice examples and then they simply be on hand for new people, old people and Mili. Thanks, Jim
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 19:52:46 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
Here's a neat quote from Maharaji on his 14th birthday party (after a bunch of kids broke a pinata with toys in it): 'This fly was broken; in the same way, the mind has to be broken. First of all, man has to close his outer carnal doors so that he may concentrate his heart on his devotion. [One way to do this is to find a very sweet, voluptuous blond woman and close the outer door with a 'do not disturb' sign on it]. Devotion is the stick, and with his devotion and meditation he has to kill this crazy damn fly. In the same way, mind, too, is strong; it is very big. To a man it seems very pretty, but of course it is a fly.' [A little further on] 'So remember. We have to find that God, that person who is perfect; He is our sand we are His, and we have to find Him. To whom do we belong? We have to find Him, and get together and be one with Him, because if we are two we have got duality. Where ver there is duality there is darkness. Wherever there is darkness there is frustration. Wherever there is frustration there is ego. Man is completely surrounded by it and he is put into prison by the chains of his mind. ' So remember: we are part of Him who has manifested Himself as Guru and who has come into this earth, and now we have to be one with Him. We have to completely merge and make our souls one with Him becuase He is perfect, and once we merge with Him we will also be perfect.'
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 21:24:13 (EDT)
Poster: op
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
No comment about the quote itself for the moment, but just for the record: Maharaji was the one who swung the bat and broke the pinata. Also, there were no toys in it, just candy. If you remember the reason for the shape of the pinata it does give some context: in Boulder the previous summer, someone who had been on the whole tour asked Maharaji, rhetorically: 'Why have you come?' Maharaji's answer, slightly annoyed at the rhetorical question: 'I've come to kill flies.' Then he went on to compare the mind to a fly that keeps buzzing around and bothering us.
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 23:04:41 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: op
Subject: Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
Was the pinata at the event in India where the duet of Over the Rainbow was played on the violins?
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 23:29:45 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
Here's a neat quote from Maharaji on his 14th birthday party (after a bunch of kids broke a pinata with toys in it): 'This fly was broken; in the same way, the mind has to be broken. First of all, man has to close his outer carnal doors so that he may concentrate his heart on his devotion. [One way to do this is to find a very sweet, voluptuous blond woman and close the outer door with a 'do not disturb' sign on it]. Devotion is the stick, and with his devotion and meditation he has to kill this crazy damn fly. In the same way, mind, too, is strong; it is very big. To a man it seems very pretty, but of course it is a fly.' [A little further on] 'So remember. We have to find that God, that person who is perfect; He is our sand we are His, and we have to find Him. To whom do we belong? We have to find Him, and get together and be one with Him, because if we are two we have got duality. Where ver there is duality there is darkness. Wherever there is darkness there is frustration. Wherever there is frustration there is ego. Man is completely surrounded by it and he is put into prison by the chains of his mind. ' So remember: we are part of Him who has manifested Himself as Guru and who has come into this earth, and now we have to be one with Him. We have to completely merge and make our souls one with Him becuase He is perfect, and once we merge with Him we will also be perfect.' Jim, you did dig up a couple nice quotes. You seem to have mixed in a few editorial comments. The mind has also been compared to a bucking bronco that needs a bit of training. An athlete needs to focus the mind to achieve top results. When you are out in the wilderness you have to shut up to experience the depth of the beauty. There is beauty in the stillness of an early morning or a starlit night in the desert. There is beauty in the silence between 2 lovers. The ideas of the mind have their purpose but are not the source of ultimate beauty. You see your reflection in the lake when the ripples stop and the surface becomes glassy. To experience your inner life force the mind has to become very quiet. Maharaji was very clear even at the young age of 14. CD
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 00:30:47 (EDT)
Poster: op
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
I can't seem to locate 'alt.support.ex-cult'. What is the complete address? Or is there a different path to get there?
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 01:22:21 (EDT)
Poster: x
Email:
To: op
Subject: Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
news:alt.support.ex-cult
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 11:04:38 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: OP and Chris and everyone
Subject: Re: Pin the Tale on the Donkey
Message:
Yes, that is true, when you experience something you want to feel, hear, taste, see, smell it completely. In nature or making love etc it is to be experienced. But when you are in this experience of living life fully and your mind is busy with daily exercises of brain living, there is nothing wrong with it's need to express itself also. Making love with someone you love can be an incredable experience but if that person were to say something that in your gut and in your so called mind, let you know, that this was becoming something else other than lovemaking (ie: controlling abuse ) than warning bells would sound and you would back off with the very MINDY comment 'I don't trust you". Now you may be mistaken, but the point here is that the brain's mental gymnastics that you want to quiet DO serve an essential purpose of survival. Trusting a sunset or tranquil lake is not the issue...of course we all want to just be in the moment called now and not think ourselves into past and future with worry and fear. But that system that the mind is so adapt at is nescessary to sanity. Women in abusive relationships can attest to that. The charm and wonderful feelings they experience with these men turns so slowly to something else. Warning lights and alarms go off quietly at first as teeny doubts and uneasiness. Over time they rationalize what is happening to them...you know the story. There is a direct similarity to what I'm describing here and putting your trust in someone to be your master. A few months ago I would have responded to myself with premie rhetoric but I would have been positive that I was speaking from my own experience. Jim shared a quote that says it all...it is not a good thing to rid oneself of mind for any extended period of time. A few moments perhaps at the lake staring at the stars etc. awed at being alive. But what MJ is talking about back then and now is not that simple. Here is a quote.. 'I am not saying that everone who meditates has problems. I have spoken with many persons who find brief meditation relaxing and who are enthusiastic about their personl quiet time. These persons did not become members of cults, however, nor were they part of tight social groups of meditators in which, no matter how uncomfortable their reactions, they felt socially coerced into continuing the practises or were instructed to do even more meditating... The problem arises when, as we see happening today, a number of cultic groups use the rationale that their program of procedures is 'good for mankind' and thus can be applied to everyone. In this millieu, participants who complain that a certain procedure produces a negative dffect on them ar diverted and shushed. The group accomplishes this diversion by telling these individuals that they should do more, that they're not meditating correctly, and that their complaints are a sigh of their 'badness' (substitute mind here). By this time, those with the distressing symptoms sre usually dependent on the organization (substitute master ), so they simply curb their expressions of distress for fear of being excluded. In short, among othe misdeeds, cultic groups ignore the importance of individual differences. History is replete with occasions on which persons or groups have tried to apply one panacea to all humankind's ills. In our era, we see cultic groups applying their brand of meditation to all takers, the assembly-line approach to meditation .(MJ always says if you want knowledge you will have it) For centuries, meditation practices were taught within specific cosmologies of knowledge and beliefs. In contrast to these time honored traditions, in which teachers watched and guided thier pupils so that harmful oucomes could be avoided, meditation today is being sold by mass marketing. As the examples here have shown,(another post maybe) there are dangers to individuals in the mass application of a process known to have a range of destabilizing emotional and mental effects. However, as is usual in cults, the cult leader thinks only of himself and his successes. How great it must be to say that millions are practicing 'my' meditation technique(s)! ..ignoring the detrimental effects on specific followers. ...Meditation, in itself, is not good or bad, But when a venal person wants to sell you courses and persuade you to turn over your life to him, you must beware' .(I know it is free...that is if you don't ever see him and need money to travel or buy vids or give because you feel so connected and after all it was given without any strings). Ex-premies know what surrendering their lives means (rational and critical thinking so that like Anon described one does not ignore certain things, as OP admitts to having done herself) These quotes were from Cults in our midst by M.T. Singer.In brackets were my additions.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 19:47:53 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: The Plane
Message:
I have a few topics that people might want to jump in on: I still haven't heard what happened to the Boeing 707 that I helped raise millions of dollars for. I think I have a right to know how my investment ended up. Doesn't anybody know? Surely someone must have heard. Also, someone mentioned a Penhouse article about Pat Haley and the incident in Detroit where he hit the lord in the face with some kind of cream pie and then got hit in the head with a hammer by Mahatma Fakiranand for doing it. Did someone say it was on a webbsite? Also,-- is there still charnamarit (feet water) and do premies still drink it? Do premies still sing Arti, even at festivals? When's the last time GMJ wore a krishna outfit? Is it also true that One Foundation still sings at festivals? Finally, I would be interested in hearing from Deena or anyone else who knows, how aspirants and interested people, to the extent there are any, are handled in the Maharaj Ji cult these days. Thanks to everyone for participating in this site, I find it very invigorating. JW
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 22:10:05 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
My guess is your money got used up by fuel and reinvested in the newer airplanes. There was a Lear Jet, a Challanger or 2 and now a chartered plane. They all got quite a bit of use. M uses them to travel around the world to programs. He just had a 3 day event in India. Maybe he will do some stuff in the US soon. That is what some people think. The list of countries that he went to last year is quite extensive. Interested people are kept informed of the use of the plane. There is no news blackout. I did see a website about the pie incident but have been unable to find it again. On that site the claim was that the M pie incident was not the only pie throwing done by the guy. In fact the site was a bit of an advertisement of pie throwing exploits. Interested people watch videos and are told about the Knowledge process. The only 'handling' is that they can sign up to be informed about any special events for them or Knowledge sessions. Video events happen daily around the world. There are about 3 recent CDs of premie music that you can buy from Visions. Some pretty good songs. One CD has some remakes of really old stuff. I don't like all the remakes as well as the originals. There is music at the festivals. Yes, many of the original people perform. I like 'at the feet of the master'. Same guy singing. Ms daughter is a real good singer. Lately it has been a bit Karoake style. I prefer to have the whole live band performing. I would not be suprised that it happens again. I am looking forward to a new music CD being released. I have heard a lot of real good songs floating around.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 22:27:37 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Was there only one plane? I never kept track but I thought he went through a couple in thos efirst few years of the Millenium. I remember the Penthouse article. Sometime in '74, I'm pretty sure. I was in the ashram doing my regular service down at the local laundromat. Mahatma Tejeshwaranand was in Vancouver for an extended stay. There was a LOT of grace. I skipped over to the local Safeway for some soap or something and SOMETHING pulled my eye to the magazine rack where SOMETHING made me look at the cover of Penthouse. There was a leader about Maharaji. How could I not look? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Hadn't done this in years. Hadn't had a sexual experience OF ANY KIND -- that's right -- for months and months. Was twenty years old. I slowly made my way to the article. Such blasphemy! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. That night, under my sheet, I remembered the whole thing. Charnamrit? I have a holy water cellar which, as you'll recall, is a wise investment. Under the premie-accpeted principles of homeopathy it's impossible to run out. This shit is intense. Too much and you are BLISSED fucken out! Krishna outfit? Yes, good question. I've been out so long I certainly don't know. I can say that One Foundation has a regular gig at Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral and that Kim still sings for her Lord when Maharaji's daughter doesn't hog the stage. I've seen a recent video or two. So should you. You won't believe how insipid they are. Incredible. As for aspirants, Deena?
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 01:08:32 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Arti is sung only in India. Darshan lines basically take place only in India (and in some Indian communities in other parts of the world). Charanamrit is not distributed to Western premies. I did not see it in India either, but Maharaji did play Holi with about 60,000 people, adding rose petals to the water. The rose petals were very avidly collected by the Indian premies. The westerners mostly stuck the rose petals in their wallets or wore them on their foreheads for a while. I would presume that very few of those who have received Knowledge in the past 10 years have any idea of Charanamrit, darshan lines, arti. Maharaji did show some videos with darshan lines in them at the large events, but there is no view of people actually bowing down to him. He does not encourage people to pay any kind of physical homage. The aspirant process consists of: an introductory video event or an event at which Maharaji speaks; there is an announcement to the effect that if one is interested in finding out more, there will be a follow up event. At the follow up event, there are usually two videos and an announcement that if you want to continue coming, you are welcome to attend any event except those cited as specifically for those who have received Knowledge only. In many areas, there are special aspirant events. At those events, videos of Maharaji answering questions or some shorter videos made especially for aspirants are shown. There is no 'aspirant seminar' as such. In a lot of communities there are no specific aspirant events, but about once a week a video is shown where Maharaji was speaking to aspirants. If someone has questions, they are encouraged to wait until they can see an instructor. Premies are discouraged from expounding on their interpretation of Knowledge, to avoid giving people expectations that may or may not be realistic, and to avoid comparisons between experiences. This is not to say that they always comply. At the aspirant meetings, an announcement is made that there are index cards in the back. If a person would like to be called when Maharaji comes to the area, or when an instructor is sent to meet with aspirants, he or she may sign the card and leave a phone number. These cards are used only for that purpose, and no one has access to them except the person running the aspirant program in the area. When Maharaji sends an instructor, those who signed the cards are called and informed of the meeting and also asked if they want to remain on the list. If they say they don't want to be called any more, they are removed from the list. The word aspirant is still used a lot, but there is an attempt not to define a person as an aspirant, as only the person her/him self will know if the label fits. Instructors meet with 'interested people' usually in a session only for those people. The instructor will show a video or two, speak to the aspirants about the process, and usually answer questions. Knowledge pre-selections also are done by instructors - they ask questions of the aspirants, and sometimes let them know whether they will be able to ask Maharaji himself for Knowledge at the next session. The main requisite for receiving Knowledge is having listened to videos for at least 5 months. This is to show that you have a commitment to the process. The videos can have been seen at local events or at home. There are a few other questions. 'Do you believe Maharaji is the Lord' and 'Will you give all your personal property to Maharaji' are not among the questions. (sorry, I just had to throw that in) When a Knowledge session will happen, only those who have been pre-selected are told where the session will take place. They meet with Maharaji and then he runs the Knowledge session. He uses video to show the techniques, and has instructors in the room to help anyone who is not clear on how to do them. Anyone who has questions during the Knowledge session is free to ask Maharaji at that time. There have been one or two Knowledge sessions where Maharaji was not able to stay for the whole session. He has done Knowledge sessions with anywhere from one person to over 2000. The aspirants sit in comfortable easy chairs and are given pillows to help support their arms while they practice. In India and other third-world nations, Maharaji provided breakfast for the aspirants before the Knowledge session. Maharaji asks people to promise three things: not to divulge the techniques to anyone, to give Knowledge a fair chance (by practicing), and to stay in touch. No one is asked to bring a token offering or to make a contribution before a Knowledge session. Staying in touch can be done by buying videos directly from Visions (the production company) and watching them at home. After the Knowledge session, there has been an opportunity for each of the recipients to speak personally to Maharaji. I don't know how this was handled in the very large sessions in India. If this all sounds very cut and dry, I made it so on purpose. The emphasis is that each person has their own experience (I hate using the plural pronoun to avoid sexist reference, but I'm tired of the he-she game - pls forgive). As I said above, interpretation and comparing experiences are very much discouraged. The emphasis is on Knowledge, on knowing oneself fully. There are still a number of videos on the Master - on some of them Maharaji speaks about what it means to him to have a master, on others he speaks more abstractly about what the Master is. Perhaps in another post I'll tell you how contributions are handled these days, if you're interested. Clear enough?
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 09:47:54 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Great that you outlined the process of receiving knowledge OP ...then I can inform from an insiders vantage point. First off, there has been darshan in the west recently and it wasn't just in the Indian community.New people coming to public events are deceived into believing this is some sort of way to help themselves (newage self-help without the books) when in fact the next vids will mean they have to choose if they want to pursue further now that the bait is set for finding contentment in their lives, but the only catch is you need a master (old days GURU) for this to happen..., hinted much more subtly in the public vids then outrightly spoken of in the aspirant ones...the definate stages and what is off limits to whatever stage sets the deception in place.Takes a few vids and your sold...after all there is no catch, it's FREE! I still maintain that if they saw MJ dancing and blessing the crowds( even today respectfully in a suit )that they would run for the hills. That and the obvious possibility of darshan which he does use more and more in his vids. Also the love relationship is not obvious. One just has to watch premie vids to see what would scare off public....vids that are not shown for a reason.Premie perspective...it is a gentle unfolding, like a flower, planting of a seed....DECEPTION is a more honest explaination. I was contact person in my city and regionally co-ordinated info for a few other areas. I was also aspirant contact person for the whole region. Not a big task because the pop is small. Still it was service I enjoyed and not too many others were interested in pitching in. I also did service in our city for public events and the aspirant events were in our home. I had many conversations over the years with the national and regional organizers. A few years ago I was informed organizers no longer existed...but the calls and service continued. I was excited that even though I no longer had a label that I was doning directly what MJ instructed a handful of premies to do. Every phone feed, fax, info letter, video, call from instructors, contact people and oraganizers was under his scrutiny. Gone were the days of wondering whose idea this next bit of info was. Perhaps thats when the glaring obvious truth of what is going on here became blantant. It use to be so easy to blame crazy premies or the old days ( how it use to be done and was the cause of why it got so far from what MJ wanted ie:blaming people like Mishler etc. ) But now it was clearly laid out...instructions straight from the horses mouth. I had detailed page after page of how to do everything concerning aspirants and public events as well as fund raising and inspiring old premies to come out of the wood work and get involved again. It was very proffessional and not at all weird like the old days. ... Despite this, the info would change constanly in it's refinement and the push was still evident in the requests for stats which one always had the impression were needed yesterday. I was told many times that I was functioning the way MJ liked.....everyone that I dealt with encouraged me to continue and made a point of the fact they wished other cities carried on as we did here. I did not feel this was me being complemented but the acknowledgement of my efforts to do service. Instructors were few, hand picked out of the many from the past and they were strictly mouthpieces of MJ. The person who handles MJ's money requests is an eloquent speaker, extremely devoted in his service and willing to do anything MJ asks of him. I got to witness it all first hand. Even in a small meeting of contact people prior to being told we no longer have that label, The point here is I am speaking from a different perspective than some premies because I was priviy to certain info that was not always shared. But realizing that MJ was the force, thrust and power no different than before was something that took time to understand. I know exactly what Mishler was speaking of. It hit me in the gut so hard I was breathless reading what he said. But the real kicker for me is the experience of one aspirant come to knowledge in the last year. Under his direction and control she went through so much of the same crap as anyone use to. Sincerely making an effort to see him, watch videos and practise, she even felt this was so important in her life she ( unknown to me ) planned to leave her husband, new home and job to rip her son from the security that he just had grown accustomed to, and move to a major centre to be closer to where their is more service opportunities and where MJ more frequenly visits. I was floored to find this out after I had already walked away. She never went through with it, though she told (as wel as hurt and confused ) her husband. It was when she told her 8 year old son looked in his eyes she realized how detached she was becoming from everything in her attraction to MJ. Yes, this doesn't happen to everyone that comes to MJ But even today as simple and kosher as the presentation is it is still effecting some premies this way. If she had made the move no one would have thought it was anything but wow...I mean Tulsidas own wife made him realize his love for her was greater than for God so he left. Mira left her husband and riches to follow her master. Kabir was persecuted and banished. Surdas poked out his eyes to make a point of what true sight is. Maharaji travels more than spends time with his family because, as he explains, this is his priority and is his life - propagation being his life. At least for now. He cautiously writes in a safety net reminding premies that a master doesn't have to teach...ie; if he disappears for awhile or forever for that matter, well thats also understood. But in the meantime, as in the crazy days he refers to, if he sneezes everyone jumps and whatever he wants everyone ( as if it were needed yesterday ) jumps too. It is amazing to witness. So all these premies at his every wish and whim gratefully his slaves and that is a fact. They choose to be. They don't deny it. They don't feel they lose themselves. They sound exactly the same as the members of Heaven's Gate when they speak of their involvement. They are no different than alot of other cult members in relation to their leader. It's documented again on video and in text. You jokingly referred to me (OP) as not missing a beat concerning when I commented on your reference to mind and heart. In fact I skim so quickly what is written due to tim e constraints on the net. Some of the things that literally jump out at me as cult-like would to you too if you informed yourself about what it is you have been involved with all these years. The level of rationalization is astounding on these pages.... if we ex-premies lose it sometimes it's in frustration of how obvious the mind numbing effect of MJ's trip has on PEOPLE like yourself...PEOPLE, PERSON THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE.....even PREMIE and EX-PREMIE terminology is glaringly obvious as cult. Without blessings or grace I am very happy that I am free of this cult and aware of what a cult is. Maybe you should investigate more so you can understand what we are speaking of. You ask why you are still here. I believe it is a part of you that is sighing with relief... a part that has been struggling to be heard for some time now. Doubts and confusion that you've never allowed yourself to hear. Sound arrogant to you? Sorry if it does. Not looking for an arguement here. I probably would write all this even if no one ever read it. Although JIM, JW, Scott etc. I do enjoy your input....you too OP.
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 21:12:08 (EDT)
Poster: interested parties
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Maharaji just gave knowledge to 6300 people in India in two knowledge sessions. So I guess my old calculation of 'over 2000' no longer holds.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 19:29:26 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Deena
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Thank you, Deena. It sure is refreshing to get the straight scoop.
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 19:41:58 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Sounds like the Lord of the Universe is now promoting an EST-like, Transendental Meditation-like new-age self-help group. If that was theway it (whatever "it" is, it seems to change) was being sold in 1973, I would have never gotten involved, since that has never been what I was looking for. So, OP, what _WAS_ all that stuff then? Was it just a phase GMJ was going through -- with worship and surrender and ashrams and kissing his feet and charnamarit and all that stuff? What WAS that all about, since it seems, from your explanation (which I think has been edited heavily to present the PR version of the way GMJ is packaged now and not the real experience of an aspirant) that it has all been eradicated? Does he ever discuss it? The gopi premies must be truly yearning and longing with no darshan, but at least MJ will save time by not having to wash the lipstick off his toes. JW
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Date: Sun, Apr 20, 1997 at 21:41:49 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
"Clear Enough?" Yes, frightningly so. "Premies are discouraged from expounding on their interpretation of knowledge, to avoid giving people expectations." Huh? First Amendment freedom of speech? What is the problem of people sharing "their interpretations of knowledge?" If you have something wonderful, you would think that the teacher who gave it to you would want you to tell people about it, but maybe they would use pesky words that the guru now wants to hide, like lord, savior, surrender and devotion, which, according to your"s and Deena's explanations, there is an elaborate bureaucratic plan to keep that stuff from them or they would be scared off. It is the provence of con-men to reel you in a little bit at a time and never let you know everything at the beginning. It's one of the oldest sales tricks in the book! I guess I would never make it to knowledge these days. His videos are so boring and incoherent, that having to listen to them for five months would be hell. Also, since one's only contact with GMJ is a knowledge sessions with up to 2000 (or more people) and at programs, how can anyone have the kind of one-on-one experience with the satguru that you had. Especially since you maintain that that contact you had with him 25 years ago is the cornerstone of your experience and faith in Guru Maharaj Ji? But Guru Maharaj Ji staying far away from his followers most of the time is nothing new and similar to what other cult-leaders do to preserve their image of divinity. I guess that is what these cult leaders have to do to keep people following them. They can't ever spend much time with them or the facade will fade away. JW
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 05:55:33 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
I don't know if in some earlier post you've explained where you get your information, but I have to wonder. This is pretty much what I went through before when I was involved in DLM - repeated stories that require trusting a middle-voice. What is the source of your information? How do you say that 6300 people received Knowledge in India in 2 sessions? I missed that on the news. My frustration with the subject (and the thing that I meant to see resolved from searching the web/libraries/bookstores) keeps coming down to the lack of a statement from, and access to, Maharaji himself - without having to go through someone who makes a decision as to whether I get that access. How do you know that there were 1 or 2 sessions that Maharaji didn't sit through in their entirety? Were there maybe 3 or more? Does he ever stay? Does it matter? You posted a lot of information, but you don't say how you came by it. In this day and age, especially in the West, I should be able to log onto Elan Vital's site and get quotable information directly. That's what I was expecting from someone claiming to have as the purpose of their life the bringing of this Knowledge to the entire world. I am not able to stop by the video store on my way home and pick up the latest video on this subject. Seems a bit short-sighted to me. It's not like the funds aren't available, or there is a shortage of people who can teach themselves web-maintenance through a vast personal library. So who are you, OP? Jane Patterson? Is Bill feeding you information? Is any of it reliable? Can I ever find these things out for myself, or do I still have to go through some insider for permission - ala the WPC? In the age of satellite feeds, and 24-hour cable news, I'm reduced to feeding on hearsay on the street from anonymous sources, hoping to shortcut around all that "divine play" and maybe place myself in a position where I can make a personal decision about a big part of my past. I truly doubt that 6300 Indians spent the last 5 months watching videos shown by, or purchased thru, tight-lipped premies. Call me skeptical...
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 10:50:08 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
If I were Jane Patterson, I'd be sending messages from the other side, unfortunately. You'd be surprised at the amount of information available to those who are practicing knowlege. It's not as tight-lipped as you think. About 'not encouraged to share their own interpretations of Knowledge' - yes, we all like to hang out, we all like to be part of a magical inner circle. We all like to compare notes on our experiences and feel that one or another of us has seen more and had a 'higher' experience. But if we're the one who doesn't have any cosmic adventures to share - don't we either make up a few or feel like we're so out of the loop we should crawl into a hole? This is what Maharaji is trying to avoid.
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 11:40:02 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Brian, I couldn't agree more and I think you have hit the nail on the head. Access to Guru Maharaj Ji, even access to information about him, is intentionally kept extremely controlled and limited. What has he got to hide, you might ask, if he is just offering a free experience of truth? Why, if he is who he has allowed himself to be protrayed to be, and says himself, whatever that is this year, can't the access be open and forthcoming? Because then you would get to see him for what he is, and that would never do for someone with a an opulent lifestyle that demands followers and the income they generate.
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 11:42:58 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Oh, please. Are the premies all liars about their experiences? Is that the problem that GMJ is trying to avoid? That might indicate that the examples of those who have received the experience he offers, references really, are not the greatest. What does that say about the guru himself?
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 13:03:10 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
People travel around India showing the videos at events. Some even take a portable generator with them. Apparently in Nepal there has even been some competition to get the videos shown at the local towns. Maharaji gave some talks last year discussing Knowledge session mechanics. He also presented statistics on usage of the plane: days flown, mileage, cities visited. Instructors who helped out at large sessions also gave some talks. There is still a lot of phone tree type information. I called a friend in NYC Saturday about the recent India event and he said about 20 people he knew went. He hasn't seen any of them since the trip but is going to give me some info and their impressions. Maharaji himself even said that many people seem to find out about upcoming programs before he even announces them. There are also Elan Vital people who travel around and give talks and anwer questions about what is going on with Elan Vital and Maharaji's travels. The next really big event on the horizon is supposed to be the mega event on the 4000 acres of land near Brisbane Australia late this year or next. Theres the info. People who are into Maharaji as a teacher have quite a few ways of keeping in touch and getting info. No real big secrets. CD
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 20:34:53 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
If I were Jane Patterson, I'd be sending messages from the other side
"the other side"? Coin-toss says this translates into "she died". If so, I'm sorry to have referenced her lightly. I liked her a lot. Had a crush on her once too. She was a sweet person.
You'd be surprised at the amount of information available
I'm surprised at the amount of information that's NOT available.
It's not as tight-lipped as you think.
Where would I get an idea like that you may be wondering. See your post above. I misinterpreted your words to mean that those who have Knowledge are discouraged from talking about their experience with those that haven't received Knowledge.
we all like to hang out we all like to be part of a magical inner circle We all like to compare notes on our experiences [we all like to] feel that [we've] had 'higher' experience
Speaking in the first-person-singular, "I" remember when "I" hung out, felt part of a magical experience, shared "my" notes, and felt that "I" had had a "higher experience". I'm a nostalgic kinda guy. I remember ALL that. But tonight it's just me here. So I'll sit around and tell myself some whoppers to impress me with my own obvious wisdom. But I'm gonna have to leave the phone off the hook, or this woman I know is gonna call me up and cry to me AGAIN about the personal pain that she's going through.How her kids would be better off without her. Her brother had the bad luck to die a long painful death, and she's a bit concerned that God ignored the prayer vigil that was held around his hospital bed for those weeks. I have nothing to say to her other than "Too bad you didn't know me back in '72, cause I was part of an inner circle then. You would be surprised at what was freely available to people that hurt inside during those days..." Another good reponse would be "Get a computer and browse on over to this forum page I know about and see if OP or Chris feel like giving you straight insider answers". You wanna take the call, OP? Being an insider and all?
This is what Maharaji is trying to avoid.
And THIS is what is getting avoided. I remember a picture in "And It Is Divine" that haunts me still. A shot of some children looking out of a window in a ghetto. The caption read "Broken Windows, Broken Dream. Who will put them back together?" Perhaps I was misinterpreting at that time, but I kinda thought help was on the way. Thought I knew who the "who" was. Now you gotta know someone, and PULL TEETH to get past the "I know, but I'm just gonna play coy and dole out the benefits of my personal insider knowledge a little bit at a time to you outsiders" crap that you're dishing out here.
YOU are tight-lipped, OP.
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 20:51:44 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Dude, Apparently Bill Patterson got as fired on Maharaji as we are years ago and left in gross disgust. This was all news to me but came to light when Mili posted an old Patterson satsang on his Silly Mili page. He was replying to Mishler, he thought. How embarrasing for Maharaji to have Mili riding point for him. What about the one-to-one laying on of hands thing, by the way? Am I just a stickler for details? OP? Maharaji?
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:10:59 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Did Jane Patterson die? He was a terrific person, funny and sweet, and I'm very sorry to hear that, if that is true.
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:12:07 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Very embarrassing. SHE was a terrific person, SHE>>.
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:41:11 (EDT)
Poster: Bobby
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Yes, Jane was a wonderful person. Please tell me more about her. I remember her well from the early days. New York and India 1971. Is Bill still a devotee?
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 21:44:20 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
I got the "SHE" part in your followup already. As for what "the other side" means, beats me. OP chose this vague term herself. Jim's response below indicates that Bill got fed up, so maybe Jane did too. Perhaps "the other side" refers to the place in OP's mind where her own doubts are hidden, although it probably refers to the informational brick wall existing between "insiders" and "outsiders".
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 22:42:18 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Very cool, man. I'm turning into an ex-premie lover. I'm truly humbled all over again by what we put on the table -- as well as hid under it -- when we came to Maharaji. But, tell me why - oh wy - has no one commented on my 'cave'story?
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Date: Mon, Apr 21, 1997 at 23:45:48 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
The fact that people don't brag about their adventures with higher consciousness doesn't stop them from being human. I experience much more compassion, much more human to human contact than I did when we were all caught up in trying to be the best premie ever. Sorry if you think I'm tight-lipped. I'm no saint - I don't even really know what I'm doing here, except that I when I first stopped off here, I saw a lot of questions and I THOUGHT I might be able to share some personal perspective on some of them. So I make a lot of mistakes, I say the wrong thing, I misinterpret what people mean to say to me - just like any other human being. And I do have a great deal of faith, as I've said over and over, in the human spirit. In that part that IS connected to the real thing. FOR ME, Maharaji is the amazing mirror that has been presenting bits of myself back to myself for 26 years. If it doesn't work for you, no problem. I could get cosmic. But I won't - that's true: it's the tight-lipped part. But seriously, couldn't you give SOME empathetic response to your friend who lost her brother? Can't you seek inside your heart and give her a bit of human warmth? Of course she's angry, confused, weary. One of my best friends (premie) died of ovarian + cancer just about a year ago. She died in her daughter's arms (also a premie). Her husband (not now, nor ever premie) was mad enough to shoot God, if he could. He was resentful, guilty, ready to give up on his own life. He's still going through it. All I could do for him was tell him it was ok to cry and be angry. He cried with me for the first time - while she was still alive, but barely. Did it do him any good? I hope so - at least it let him know that he is still a feeling being. I got to spend some time with her and we talked about dying. It was not an easy death - she was very toxic and in a lot of pain. But she was not afraid of dying - she welcomed our talk. It was hard on her daughter, Knowledge or no Knowledge. BUT having that place inside to go to helped. It helped all of us - even her husband, because he finally saw that there is something quite real in what we've been saying all these years. Yes, it's automatic for me to go inside and search for that contact with my deeper self when the outside world is full of thorns. It's not escapism, it's touching base with what's real to me, and then I can cope with the slings and arrows that fortune keeps throwing my way.
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Date: Tues, Apr 22, 1997 at 14:16:11 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
other side == after death place
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Date: Tues, Apr 22, 1997 at 20:12:15 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
other side == after death place I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't know Jane long or even well, but she was a part of a group of people who I felt strongly connected to. More so than the "family" I grew up in. Sometimes I feel frustrated in trying to communicate with you all via text like this, and can choose words that are far sharper to read than I intended. For what it's worth, I am very glad to have this forum to express myself in regarding Knowledge, etc, and am only willing to do so in the first place because I know that the people who are reading this forum are the only ones that I want to be expressing this to. Agreement or not, you're still the few people out there who can understand. So if you see something here from me that seems to be hurtful, know that the hurt is mine, and I'm just expressing it to people I feel comfortable about reading it.
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 16:36:24 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Brian: 'Agreement or not, you're still the few people out there who can understand.'
I agree with you on this point. I have also met a lot of people that I like/liked quite a lot through my association with M. A very diverse group with an unusual openness.
I attended a 3 day Microsoft NT developers conference in Long Beach in November of 1996. It was pretty glitzy and people were enthusiastic. Then in December 1996 in the very same convention center in Long Beach I attended the Maharaji 3 day event. It had some glitz and people were enthusiastic. But I tell you, there was a big difference in the depth of the event. You are the type of person that can understand what I am saying.
CD
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 20:29:11 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
"I attended a 3 day Microsoft NT developers conference in Long Beach in November of 1996. It was pretty glitzy and people were enthusiastic. Then in December 1996 in the very same convention center in Long Beach I attended the Maharaji 3 day event. It had some glitz and people were enthusiastic. But I tell you, there was a big difference in the depth of the event. You are the type of person that can understand what I am saying."

Yes I can. I look forward to reading these posts every evening, although the volume overtakes me at times.

But I can't pass up the opportunity to wisecrack that you went from The Anti-Christ to the Lord Of The Universe in the process :)

I bailed out of Seattle to get away from all those MS roller-bladers. That and to find a parking space...
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 23:59:49 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Brian
Subject: Re: The Plane
Message:
Brian: 'But I can't pass up the opportunity to wisecrack that you went from The Anti-Christ to the Lord Of The Universe in the process :) '
It was a curious combination. I had a great time in Long Beach.
I wonder how many people attended both events besides me? I was saved - g.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 12:20:59 (EDT)
Poster: Phil
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Sheldon Nidle Updates
Message:
Have you checked out Sheldon Nidle Updates on the web? Wouldn't this be wonderful?
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 14:52:08 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Phil
Subject: Re: Sheldon Nidle Updates
Message:
Have you checked out Sheldon Nidle Updates on the web? Wouldn't this be wonderful? Does this mean that the Heaven's Gaters really blew it? If they'd been patient, they wouldn't have had to leave their 'containers' behind and spend the rest of eternity hitch-hiking behind comets?
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 11:52:07 (EDT)
Poster: flocki
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: new
Message:
Yesterday for the first time in my life i got an internet provide (sorry, my english is not so good). Just by fun I surfed around and by tiping maharaj ji, I thought, maybe, maharaj ji himself would have any message here. You should also know, that 1 have been with maharaj ji (not personally) for more than 23 years, and there was not one day, I was not glad, that I found him and got knowledge. I was once coordinator, lived in an ashram, left, found a wife, got two really nice kids (10 and 13)and I hope, one day they will like to find out, what it is, that knowledge still gives me every day. When the kids where young, I lost contact to maharaj ji, but after a few years again I searched for him, flew to a program and fell in love again. I am very sorry, that so many people (as I found now out) have problems. I can`t help you with your problems, but I want to tell you, that maharaj ji still is spending most of his live by giving, what he has to give, and he has changed so much things that caused problems in the earlier times. Who ever there is, that has problems with his past with maharaj ji, I wish you could see him again (his touring a lot and the programs are more than beautiful, his doing most of the organisation by himself, no money is requested for joining the programs, and so on....)and I also wish you, that you find peace with yourself and find within you the beauty, that you really are. If you wish to communicate, please send me your e-mail. But please accept, that I am not interested in negativity because I try to keep my life free from that.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 09:52:54 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: LET'S TALK ABOUT...
Message:
I know, beginning three threads of my own is a bit much, it's just no one is on at this time to chat with. Which reminds me, I'm really enjoying Mili not being here. He took up so much space to have to ignore...now there is only the odd post difficult to stomach.. Let's talk about getting gone...blissing out. Why? Because I sense ex-premies may still hold that altered state in some higher esteem. Just guessing though, maybe it's not spoken of because it's just too silly to talk about. I thought it may be because the belief still exists that, as MJ says, being conscious and plugged into the truth one attains bliss ie:TRUTH CONSCIOUSNESS BLISS. Well since we are all in agreement that it wasn't the truth, that in fact we were deceived, then it is awareness of a lie that yeilds the fruit of a 'really gone' state. A 'feeling' treasured by premies (including MJ himself). Of course, this isn't a great way to be if you need to make a descision or try to put into words what is occuring. Service backstage etc. doesn't encourage this total 'bliss' but advertises for a more energetic, upbeat, works well with others type person. (I'm referring to a recent fax of page after page of service required at events for those interested in applying. Could have been job applications for McDonalds). And your payment is the outcome of your effort in true service...the 'experience' as premies are still fond of calling it. But totally blissing out would not be productive, so perhaps that could occur during the event itself. Premies sitting in a pool of ahhhhh...(La-La Land) and then leaping to their feet to swoon and sway in their maste'rs presence...perhaps even 'Dance Dance Dance' I mock this now...but I was the worst of offenders. And if I began to 'get gone' during service I would compensate as best as I could. There were always a few others to share a stupid grin and bewildered laugh with. Then MJ himself would appear backstage to survey our efforts and everyone looked frozen in time not knowing how to be. That was the ultimate. Talk about a rush or drug like high! I was a junkie of the worst kind. I planned and almost succeeded three times in leaving my son (at ages 9, 13 and 16) because opportunitys of service arose. The addiction to being completely blissed out for any length of time comsumed me. Then I realized that MJ was saying I could 'experience' this in my life even if I'm not with him. But that implied complete surrender...every breath, every action, etc. And the means to 'remember' were practise of knowledge, gping on tour with him ie: watching every video released, or for the rich actually going on tour. And of course, most important of all, falling in love with my master. A love that can not be compared to any other...Thus the same duality of this is real and everything else is illusion. This is perfect. This is truth. Follow the heart and not the mind. Have no doubt. Bliss was my drug of choice. I didn't know that the altered state induced was suspension of rational and critical thinking ( so necessary for survival) . And that it was acturally an anxiety coping tactic of my brain to deal with this unnatural state of affairs. In both the books I've kept telling everyone about and I'm not trying to be a pain when I do it's just they are incredable books. They explain what I thought was exculsive to knowledge (lots of other cults have the same thing happen) and what I always thougfh was beyond words is in fact very explainable! Now that goofy look on a premie's face scares me...I saw the same look in the faces of the Heaven's Gate followers. That really brought it home to me. Especially since the two are so completely different on the surface. I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this; I know I'm living with a bliss junkie and so all this is not something I can ignore. Fortunately for me, I see little of it. Jim, if you have any quotes from the Guru Papers that would apply please post. I wanna say I love you guys (gals included when I say guys) But it seems like such a strong word...still I do love you guys!
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Date: Wed, Apr 23, 1997 at 21:27:56 (EDT)
Poster: Brian
Email:
To: Deena
Subject: Re: LET'S TALK ABOUT...
Message:
You refer to your son in a couple of posts. How did/does all this appear to him?

My children were spared this since DLM had closed up shop when my ex and I went looking for our "roots". But I felt at the time that I would have been connecting them with something far more beneficial than the Lutheranism I grew up with.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 03:08:48 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Thanks you guys/gals
Message:
I just wanted to let everyone who welcomed me back that it means alot to me. This forum is a sanity check for me. In the Great Book thread I have an entry to Daviche dated April 16 at 9:32 and I don't know if anyone read it but please do. My marriage is not going to be one more of the causalties of MJ's world . I'll fight so he doesn't win, if it's possible that is. I didn't live in an ashram and yet because of my involvement I experienced the same loss as ashram premies...I know I would have had a family (I have one 17 year old from a previous marriage) But my husband and I were more devoted to serving MJ and saw that the time money and energy would mean less given to him. So in a sense we created a ashram life for our selves...we were responding to his wish to propogate, to buy planes to come and see him.etc. (sure he never said sacrifice but when you are a devotee of the master your priorities get set by what is most important, and pleasing him was everything. He was all the family we needed. We even became less physically involved as the years went on. At 42 I have regrets..painful ones. I have few friends, alienated family and now my marriage is at risk because I woke up and realized that what I thought was TRUTH was a lie. If any EX-PREMIES have anything to share jump in I'd especially like to hear if anyone has anything similar to share.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 02:48:03 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: More Quotes
Message:
Thanks for the Guru Papers quotes. Says it all for me. Another book that you all may like (no, not CAPTIVE HEARTS CAPTIVE MINDS:FREEDOM AND RECOVERY FROM CULTS AND ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS BY M. TOBIAS AND J. LALICH 1994 IN PAPERBACK) but another book from 1995/96 called CULTS IN OUR MIDST: THE HIDDEN MENACE IN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES BY M.T. SINGER WITH J. LALICH. I thought it funny that the secret of the knowledge techniques was an issue still when in this book on page135-136 they describe 2 of them. Of course MJ changed the names of the techniques and even the way they are shown but that is another thread. ' BODY MANIPULATIONS Unusual physiological effects can be produced by a person acting either alone or with others to perform body manipulations. Leaders of cults and thought-reform groups employ a number of these manipulations and interpret the experiences to mean what they want followers to think. PUSHING ON THE EYEBALLS. Former members report that in the Divene Light Mission the lights would be dimmed and the guru would pass among the followers bestowing 'divine light' on individuals by pressing on their eyes until the pressure on the optic nerve caused them to see flashes of light. This was reframed as Divine Light. PRESSING ON EARS. In this same group, members were instructed to plug their ears with their fingers, pushing until they heard a buzzing sound which was interpreted as hearing Divine Harmony.' Unfortunately when you look up Maharaji in the index you do not find anything, it is only if you look up Divine Light Mission that you do. I find that unfortunate because someone invited to a video who has doubts and wonders if this is a cult and researches in the latest books out there will not find this information because as is typical of cults they are chameleon-like which helps to keep out of the scrutiny of these watchdog efforts.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 15:57:05 (EDT)
Poster: David
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Can anyone...
Message:
Can anyone read these messages without having to stay on line? My ISP has this incredably infuriating tendency of cutting me off after a few minutes inactivity. I know there are programs which search the entire web site and keep it in memory. Does anyone know of one for Windows 95 that would work for this bulletin board (and have any idea where I could get it)? Any advice would be very much appreciated. David P.S. Scott, if you're reading this, I like the shortened version, and the idea of a clean slate. Personally, I'd vote for a slate-clean every two weeks at the most. It seems to sharpen the debate, bringing a welcome end to arguments that have gone nowhere.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 16:43:59 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: David
Subject: Re: Can anyone...
Message:
I've been cutting and pasting the messages onto simple text documents. I'm not a cybernut - my knowledge is mostly in word processing programs, so maybe that's too simplistic. But maybe a temporary solution.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 13:49:37 (EDT)
Poster: Anonymous
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: ANONYMITy
Message:
The fact that so many people wish to remain anonymous speaks volumes as to the oppressiveness and insidiousness of the CULT of Maharaji.. This Website is revolutionary, because you can t speak your real feelings in Maharaji s court and expect anything other than to be ignored or worse. A very extreme case of this is the reporter who, after throwing a custard pie at Maharaji, was calculatingly brained by one of Maharaji s Indian Instructors. Apparently he died from the brain damage he got after the aforesaid Instructor beat him over the head with a monkey-wrench as punishment for his disrespectful action. If these administrators of divine retribution are the type of people we re dealing with it s considerably healthier to remain anonymous. Besides, the way this website is set up , anyone can write in and tell their story without being victimised or socially rejected by their premie friends or relatives.. Yes, the downside is that people can spread lies. Unfortunately at this time it is the lesser of two evils. It is essential that until people are no longer victimised for publically criticising Maharaji, they should have this unique opportunity to write publically and anonymously. Otherwise they will not tell their truths at all and the downside of Maharaji s whiter than white world will never be told. How do you distinguish truth from lies? By finding out for yourself through further investigation?. By using your brain for once? By checking Maharaji out with a balance and discrimination ? REMEMBER There is no smoke without fire. Another Anon
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 14:49:20 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Anonymous
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
> 'Apparently he died from the brain damage he got after the aforesaid Instructor beat him over the head with a monkey-wrench as punishment for his disrespectful action. ' I recently saw a web site by a guy who claims to have been the person that threw the pie and got a plate in his head. Are you sure it was a custard pie? > 'The fact that so many people wish to remain anonymous speaks volumes as to the oppressiveness and insidiousness of the CULT of Maharaji.. ' The fact that you can come to such a strong conclusion on such little evidence speaks volumes.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 15:35:48 (EDT)
Poster: David
Email:
To: Chris
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Odd though, isn' it CD, that Mr Anonnymouse should feel such paranoia? There's definitely a feeling of anger mixed with fear around these parts. Why do you think that is, CD? Why should Maharaji, who espouses complete love and peace, engender such opposite reactions in just so many people? I'd be interested in your views as to why that should be. David
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 16:41:25 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: anonymous
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Why is it that people examine every crumb, but never look for the whole loaf? I don't like to gloss things over. I see when Maharaji makes a grammatical mistake, and I don't always agree with every word he says. But I can't stand back and see him blamed for things he definitely did not do. Maharaji recently said: everyone has to take responsibility for his own actions. I'm the only exception. Other people do things, and I get blamed for them. After the pie in the face incident, Maharaji gave a very clear directive: 'don't do anything to this person.' I was not at the site of the incident, but the directive came to us as well. No, I'll begin earlier. This is possibly a story no one has ever told any of you. I was at a residence when Maharaji came through. A certain instructor left the tour he was on to come see M at the residence. After playing with him for a while, Maharaji said, Ok, now go back to your tour. Maharaji was about to do a tour from Boston to the West Coast. The instructor begged and pleaded, could he please come on tour with Maharaji. M said, 'no way. You have your own tour.' The istructor continued to plead, beg, and cajole. After two days of this, Maharaji finally said, 'Ok, do what you want.' The instructor went on the tour. Boston went without a hitch. I don't remember if there was a program in Chicago next, but at any rate, then came Detroit. Pie in the face. Maharaji did not call off the tour at that point. I don't know if it was custard or shaving cream, I don't know if he was amused or angered by the incident - after all, the guy's quip was something like: 'I've always wanted to throw a pie at God' - because the outcome changed the face of the incident completely. After 'giving' his life to Maharaji, after acting like a spoiled child begging for a toy, this instructor went on to completely disregard what Maharaji said. When Maharaji found out about the beating, he called this instructor and said to him: I can't stop you from being a Mahatma, because Shri Maharaji gave you that service. But I NEVER want to lay eyes on you again in my life. If that instructor had received a life sentence in prison, the punishment couldn't have been worse. I don't know what the legal ramifications were. I know only about this side of the incident. Maharaji cancelled the tour and went back to LA. I was at the residence that whole time. I know he was deeply affected by the whole matter. That people should imply that Maharaji ordered henchmen to take care of that guy is beyond belief. But this is what happens when the media get ahold of a few crumbs.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:29:08 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Mr. Old, you are attacking straw men. Anonymous never claimed that GMJ ordered Pat Haley to be knocked in the head with a hammer by Mahatma Fakiranand. What anonymous was saying was that if that is what GMJ's followers can do, he/she is a little wary of crossing people who believe (although they no longer will say it publicly) that he is the Lord of the Universe. [I will add that I think asking for total devotion and surrender creates an environment where people can think that such violent acts are justified. Ever hear of religious wars?] JW
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:44:20 (EDT)
Poster: Bobby
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
[I will add that I think asking for total devotion and surrender creates an environment where people can think that such violent acts are justified. Ever hear of religious wars?] I lived in the ashram at the time of the incident. No one that I knew thought such an attack was justified. It was Mahatma Fakiranand and another premie, at least as what was reported. I knew this guy some. Mr. "super meditator", he was, at the time I knew him in India. I heard they both left the country. Situation never did get to a court of law. Interestingly, an ex-premie friend of mine just gave me a copy of *Penthouse* from that time period. In it is an article by one of Pat Haley's comrades on Maharaj Ji and the shaving cream incident.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:55:08 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Bobby
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Yes, well apparently Fakiranand and at least one other premie thought it was justified (and I think that feeling was more common that you might think). In any event, do you think it was justified to secret away Fakiranand so that he didn't have to be arrested for what he did? I was in the Chicago ashram after the pie incident. Mahatma Fakiranand was brought in from Detroit as Mahatma Fakiranand and was hustled out on an airplane to India as "Mr. Fakir." MJ knew all about that an approved of it. That way, a mahatma of the Lord of the Universe did not have to stand trial for what he did, and GMJ and DLM avoided some messy and negative publicity.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:01:50 (EDT)
Poster: Bobby
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
You're right. I don't think it was justified to secret him away at all.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:16:50 (EDT)
Poster: Douche
Email:
To: Bobby
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
>Interestingly, an ex-premie friend of mine just gave me a copy of *Penthouse* from that time period. In it is an article by one of Pat Haley's comrades on Maharaj Ji and the shaving cream incident Maybe I shouldn't ask, but what shaving cream incident?
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:22:02 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Bobby
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
You're right. I don't think it was justified to secret him away at all. You have a lead on the story. How about the details? I vaguely remember the Penthouse article. I did see a web site by the pie thrower. Did he die? What is the actual story from the police point of view? Might as well get the story hashed out. It seems that some people who claim M incites people are in fact attempting to incite people by inuendo indicating that M was the cause of the incident. The 'moral' people transform into the grand inquisitors.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:48:46 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Bobby
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
You're right. I don't think it was justified to secret him away at all. Really, does your opinion that violent assault should not be prosecuted come from all the love and bliss with which GMJ has filled your heart?
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 18:52:41 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Bobby
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
You're right. I don't think it was justified to secret him away at all. Sorry, Bobby, please forgive me. I just re-read your message and I realize I missed the "don't." Thank you for your opinion, which I agree with, and please ignore my sarcastic response. mea culpa.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 19:07:07 (EDT)
Poster: Bobby
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
OK. Forgiven.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 19:39:12 (EDT)
Poster: Anonymous
Email:
To: Chris & OldPremie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
YOU MISERABLY STUPID ARSES! HONESTLY! Chris wrote: It seems that some people who claim M incites people are in fact attempting to incite people by inuendo indicating that M was the cause of the incident. Can t you read? Are you completely brain-dead too? I never once suggested that Maharaji was in any way resposible for the actions of this lunatic murderer. As for old premies I can't stand back and see him blamed for things he definitely did not do You-can-fucking-well-wake-up-as-well-you-dreary-old-barking-end le ssy-up-the-wrong-tree-person. Anonymous
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 22:33:21 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Anonymous
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
YOU MISERABLY STUPID ARSES! HONESTLY! Chris wrote: It seems that some people who claim M incites people are in fact attempting to incite people by inuendo indicating that M was the cause of the incident. Can t you read? Are you completely brain-dead too? I never once suggested that Maharaji was in any way resposible for the actions of this lunatic murderer. As for old premies I can't stand back and see him blamed for things he definitely did not do You-can-fucking-well-wake-up-as-well-you-dreary-old-barking-end le ssy-up-the-wrong-tree-person. Anonymous Your only real excuse for being Anon seems to be so you can have a good swear. Let it all hang out! Enjoy the worldwide bullhorn. I read your stuff. You pull out one extreme incident to prove your point. What BS! > 'Administrators of Divine Retribution' Nice tag. A new movie you are dreaming up ? What is 'brain-dead'? Any good? I would agree that anonyminity on this page might not be such a bad idea. Have fun. No hard feelings, CD
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 22:39:36 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
You're right. I don't think it was justified to secret him away at all. Sorry, Bobby, please forgive me. I just re-read your message and I realize I missed the 'don't.' Thank you for your opinion, which I agree with, and please ignore my sarcastic response. mea culpa. Don't worry, your sarcastic response should only be visible for a couple months (or years). A lot of us probably miss a few points on these pages at times
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 23:33:39 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: anonymous
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Thanks. I too love those ever-so-hyphenated-lists-of-everything-you-can-call-a-person names. Seriously, I didn't mean to accuse you personally. I was actually talking about media. And how, in general, we (note: that includes myself) tend to reach our conclusions based on a few shreds and grapevine comments. I also would like to know the details about the whole pie incident. I was writing a post about the rest of what I do know - I got a phone call, pushed the wrong button, and lost what I was writing. I don't know if I'm up to repeating it now. Perhaps tomorrow - and if anyone has more details... I probably should have chosen another screen name - old premie because I've had knowledge since Maharaji's first trip to the US. But I don't look or feel old as in body old. I look 20 years younger than I am and have thought about writing a book about the Peter Pan syndrome in my generation. You can figure out my age if you read my first post under Who is Guru Maharaji? Good night.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 02:24:15 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: EVERYONE
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Interesting thread...one point not debated worth mentioning I thought was the quote from MJ that he couldn't take the service of instructor from this initiator because MJ's master (his dad) made this guy a mahatma...that seems to sum it all up for me. This power of the master stuff is unquestionable even if attempted murder is involved! I don't know about you guys but that, whatever the master wants shit disturbs me.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 10:07:59 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Deena
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Strange how different viewpoints manifest themselves. I really felt, when Maharaji said that, such a feeling of the respect he had for his father. Whether Fakiranand should have been above the law because of his standing in DLM is another matter. I'm sure it was resolved somehow, because I did speak to the other premie involved. That's what my post was about - the one that got lost. Basically this: Fakiranand went to Europe and tried to keep on being a devotee. He would work with the premies who were setting up a program for Maharaji, then leave the country. I don't know if Maharaji was told about his activities. The family split came about less than a year later, and Fakiranand went to Mataji, who, I heard, welcomed him with open arms. I have heard that he has since died, but I can't confirm that. What I would really like to know is what role Mataji played in all this. Something tells me she was instrumental in at least part of what went on, because Fakiranand was always one of her favorites. I saw the premie who helped Fakiranand in the assault about a year later, and we spoke at length about the incident itself. He was in the US then - I don't know if he ever left the country. What we spoke about was his own feelings - he was more than repentant. He himself couldn't figure out how he had allowed himself to be led by Fakiranand's form of fanaticism. There were some legal issues, but we didn't speak about them at length. I do know that the matter was settled by DLM, but don't know the details. I knew Fakiranand well. I traveled with him considerably. I saw a lot of other mistakes he made. Personally, I think he should never have been a representative of Maharaji in this country - I think the only reason he was here was that he spoke English. Ironically, he was also one of the reasons I do have so much faith in Maharaji. It was while travelling with Fakiranand, having to put up with so much of his shit day in and day out, that I realized that I could not look at any one else for guidance - not other premies, not members of Maharaji's family. My relationship is with Maharaji. Yes, perhaps I was wrong not to speak up when I saw some of the things Fakiranand was doing - that's what those days were like. I trusted that his devotion would see him through, even though I disagreed with a lot of how it manifested. A point that might seem off the question, but is of the same nature. I also travelled with Rajeshwar. In one city (about 6 months before the pie incident) we were accosted by a group of Hare Krishna freaks. When Rajeshwar mentioned Maharaji to them, they informed us that Maharaji is a dog (this is what Prabupad had told them). Rajeshwar was livid. I could see an anger that was way beyond anything I'd experienced rising up inside him. He got into the car and refocused himself before speaking. He said he would love to smash those people - but he knew it wouldn't be right. What stopped him but let Fakiranand proceed? Which do you think Maharaji approved of? I still believe that Maharaji has always wanted us to use our heads when necessary. Blind faith leads only to people falling into wells - the only kind of faith I've ever heard Maharaji ask for has open eyes.
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 11:34:16 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
You know, I hate to say this because I can feel the sincerity in what you say. However.......I can't help but think that you are truly an example of someone who will go to extremes, including contradictory mental gymnastics, to refrain from ever seeing anything negative in GMJ. [For a psychological explanation of this behavior, see the quotes from the "Guru Papers" previously quoted here.] If you live in the programming in which you do, there is no rational way to have a discussion with you about GMJ. It is currently impossible for you to be objective about GMJ. Until you can be, which, by the way, you probably want to avoid because it is a painful process, you will not be free again. [But I also know that from your perspective you don't want to be free from him. I know this because, as they say: "been there, done that" myself for many years.]
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 21:56:51 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
I'm in agreement with JW. You are sincere... it amazes me that you can say that he was one of MJ's favorites and yet it was obvious he was very screwed up!?! Doesn't that send off an alarm inside you now after all these years? But honestly, JW is correct when says how impossibile it is to discuss rationally with you about this stuff. It is like my husband...when it comes to MJ LOVE IS BLIND and IGNORANCE IS BLISS!
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Date: Thurs, Apr 17, 1997 at 23:35:24 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Deena
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
please read carefully: Mata Ji's favorites. Not Maharaji's favorites. I don't know if what happened to me when I first received Knowledge puts me in a special situation. I think that if I had to deal only with DLM and the premies of the era, I wouldn't have stayed either. I had experiences with Maharaji that cannot be denied. I'm not talking about cosmic rays coming out of his eyes or darshan dreams in which he took me to heaven. I'm talking about moment to moment, person to person contact - him speaking to me, him involved in actions when I was present that gave me a perspective on who he is for me that I cannot ever deny. Sorry if it sounds mystical and otherworldly. I can't go back to living my life as though Maharaji and Knowledge don't exist, because he showed me my connection to the power that moves the universe. Knowing is knowing, no matter how much you guys try to deny it. I always thought that Maharaji gave me so much in those early days BECAUSE I was such a hard nut to crack. I had at least as many doubts and as much cynicism as you all do. I never TOLD Maharaji. In fact, I did very little talking. But he showed me in no uncertain terms that he knew me very well indeed. He knew things about me that I had never admitted to anyone. He knew things that had happened to me - inside and outside - that I had never spoken about. I'm sorry so many of you feel that HE is the one who betrayed you. Again I'll say - I don't think he is bodily perfect. I don't think he never makes mistakes because I think that trial and error is part of the play. But I am sure that he doesn't intentionally go about trying to fool people into believing he is something that he isn't. I know that his purpose is not to con people into giving up their lives so that he can live high and mighty. People see that in him because that's what they've been made to fear. What makes these people who write all the fancy books correct? Because they know how to pigeonhole experience and give it a tag? Because there are a lot of them? Because they use scientific method? Because they have read a lot of other books and have been able to deduce and collect and codify information? Because they can convince your mind at least as well as Maharaji used to be able to convince your heart? I haven't read the quotes you posted, but I will right now, and I'll get back to you once I have. One final word. I realize that a lot of very heavy items have been raised on this forum. If someone chose to live in an ashram because he or she interpreted devotion as having only one way of manifesting, that's one thing. The suicides, the insanity, the weird acts of fanaticism such as Fakiranand's - those are something else altogether. Jim obviously feels a great deal of pain over what he experienced. I don't presume to know the answer to those situations. Understand - this is not avoidance. I simply refuse to jump to conclusions because someone else has a few crumbs that look suspicious. I believe conclusions can be reached only when you see the WHOLE picture. And I don't think any one of us has.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 02:27:14 (EDT)
Poster: Deena
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Sorry, my eyesight isn't great, one of the things about being 42 I quess, I wear glasses for reading but on the computer I find it difficult. I'll read slower in future. Still, the fact that MJ protected him after what happened because his father liked him doesn't make any sense. Does that mean if he had sexually abused little children and MJ found out that he'd just banish him as punishment? I wish you would elaborate on what you mean when you say that it was being with him etc that made you trust him. Karish, Applewhite, Jim Jones Maharishi Yogi etc. all had and/or have very charismic and seemingly powerful personalities. They could see through their followers, they could charm and hypnotise. I use to think the people must have been very weak willed to get involved with what I called a cult ( or course denying that I was in one myself) It turns out these people were educated normal backrounds and mental health prior to involvement. That is the scary thing about cults...the way they are does manipulate people's beliefs and effects their rational jugdment.But alot of the suseptablity was created by the already present belief that the leaders were like Christ, Buddha or Krishna etc. and that is heady stuff. The very presence of anyone you give that label of- God manifested in human form- to, puts a person witnessing that, in an altered state. Your statement that 'Because they can convince your mind at least as well as Maharaji used to be able to convince your heart?' That says it all. The duality created with mind and heart is a receipe for insanity...you cannot hear what MJ says with the mind, we are constantly reminded, it is a message for the heart. That is the most obvious evidence of cult mind control that there is. There is no such animal...If it doesn't make sense to their abilty to think about what is said, and that person has a "feeling" they can't articulate at the same time, that doesn't mean that they are experiencing the truth. Clarity is just that...clear, complete, awake, human thinking feeling being. Not duality or separation. That is just a way to explain the confused minds of the person attempting to think rationally and critically which is suspended (and discouraged by saying have no doubts) during the time that this so called heart is being spoken to. How many times I've heard people tell me that they want to know more about this and they have this confused look on their faces and a dazed look in their eyes. I use to love the aspirant process because it seemed so magical. But I've seen it described over and over in black and white about many different masters and other kinds of leaders. It was a shock to me to find that out as well as the meditation explained in a way I could not deny- with my WHOLE being..not Mind or Heart...I feel like I've said all this before. Chalk it up to you've been living this reality of mind and heart so long now that you can't see it isn't real. That doesn't deny your sense of fullfillment or peace...just that the source of that is being wrongly attributed. MJ was a child, so maybe he is still a victim of his fathers putting him in this position years ago. He's now bought into the whole eastern thing even though he embraces western culture. With a foot in both worlds hisonly thing in life is to fullfill his master's wish to bring this knowledge to the world., at any cost. So you and I have been party to this. And you admit ignoring stuff that perhaps you shouldn't have. I'm writing all this not to convince you of anything but to get my thoughts out again. Each time I do it becomes clearer and clearer. I beleve if you want to understand what we're talking about on this forum you would have to read The Guru Papers etc. and then maybe you'd have some idea. We've been where you are but you've not walked away from this and really looked at it without the concept of master and devotee.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 08:55:29 (EDT)
Poster: Deena - to old premie
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
I do have one question for you old premie...if say, hypothetically speaking, MJ was drinking during the time you were in the residence, how do you see this in relation to him being who you seem to experience him to be? I'm curious as to how you would answer this.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 14:26:23 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
My understanding of your views is that because of your personal experiences with GMJ and because you believe he "showed [your] connection to the power that moves the universe," you continue to be devoted to him, despite the fact that his organization and some of his followers drove you nuts. You also seem to imply that GMJ is less than perfect in that he makes mistakes (although I am not sure you don't really believe that those "mistakes" are/were just part of his perfect plan) and isn't bodily perfect (well that's obvious). It seems to me that what you are saying is that you are relating to all of this with your "heart" instead of your "mind." I think what Deena and I are saying is that we have found that we had to incorporate both our hearts and our minds into this experience in order to have fulfilled lives. I also believe that receiving knowledge "showed me my connection to the power that moves the universe" (although I wouldn't use those words) but, as GMJ said in the early days, that is inside of me, not GMJ and could have been shown to me by many other teachers. The damaging part came after that. Instead of just receiving knowledge, and maybe if possible, having personal contact with GMJ and moving on, we got stuck in trying to devote our lives to GMJ because he asked (really demanded) total surrender to him. Those of us who did what he asked may feel we were damaged by wasting our lives for a number of years with all the negative financial, familial, emotional/psychological, and career implications that had, may well feel ripped off, I know I do. I don't think these damages can be placed on anyone's doorstep besides Maharaj Ji. He is the one who demanded surrender. He is the one who did not just freely give knowlege and hang out with us but who demanded more. Now whether he planned and set out to rip people off, I really don't know. I tend to think he was raised as a child to fill that role and he did it by watching his father and others do it, and I think that, at least off and on, he really believed that he was satguru, perfect master, lord and master and even god (was there ever anyone around him, besides Mishler maybe, who every questioned him about who he was an what he was doing. I would think not many,and that, in addition to being worshiped by thousands of people at festivals, this scenario would tend to give anyone grandiose opinions about themselves and their importance.) I think by the time he realized he had gone too far, he also realized that to admit that would mean losing many, if not most, of his devotees and consequently his opulent lifestyle,(remember 1976? I think that was a real lesson for him), as well as his very identity, which had been cultivated since he was a young child. So, he went headlong in the opposite direction and began what I call the "devotional period" of DLM (1977 - 198_), when devotion and surrender to MJ became more important that knowledge, practicing knowledge, or any sort of internal experience. Remember the resulting population explosion in the ashrams and the hundreds, if not thousands of premies who uprooted themselves and that dedicated their entire lives to such boondoggles as converting a Boeing 707 to a lavish sheik-like ego trip for GMJ who wanted it much like a child wants a new toy? Ther were also a multide of programs and GMJ wanted more homes/planes/boats/tours/cars. The thrones got bigger, Holi festival got bigger fire hoses, the dancing got longer and more gopi-like, the darshan got more frequent (and more and more people fainted) and the initiators got more intense. At the same time there were fewer and fewer aspirants as they were scared away because it got harder to cover up the fact that the whole trip was more blatantly devotional to one person. So, the damage is not knowledge or personal contact. It's what he did after that. But, oOnce you break away from the mind/heart dichotomy, I found you can move on with your life, incorporating the good experiences and freeing yourself from the rest. All I can say is that I felt so so so so so much better when I did that. It was like a smoky screen was lifted from my eyes. JW
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:15:20 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Deena
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
I don't believe in hypotheticals. I think they demean the person who is under presumption. I believe in being ready for all possible realities. It is very real that my car might be stolen when I park it in a big city, so I have a contingency plan. It is very real that now that my body is 50 years old, I might develop breast cancer, so I have the necessary tests. It is conjecture that I might become a middle-aged junkie. So should I check out all the local rehabs? Seeing Maharaji's daily behavior, all this stuff about heavy alcoholism is conjecture. You might want to see what I just wrote to Bill Cooper under Who Is ... below.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:26:56 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
JW, What you call the 'devotional period' I've been calling the 'catholic period' but we're talking about the same phase. My summary fix on the matter is that before 1976 we had relatively little collective baggage as devotees, good or bad. We thought of oursleves as innocents not unlike the child protagonists in the Narnia series (pathetic how that's the best analogy I can think of, eh?) or your average kid-with-a-dog from some Disney flick. After Essen, however, when Maharaji assembled all the national coordinators to redirect the increasingly secular premies back down the devotional chute ('But what about your Guru Maharaj Ji?'), we were all caught as impure, mentalites. Forget the fact that Maharaji himself had encouraged the loosening period of 1976. He now blamed us for losing direction and chastised us in spades. So, thus, we entered the particularly dark period of '77 to '80 or '81 when the only good premie was one who could give satsang in a practically catatonic cadence saving any emotion for heartfelt whines of self-loathing and mistrust. Like Brian McDermott. Like any of them. 'Good' satsang no longer emphasized the beauty of the knowledge. 'Good ' satsang now centered on how wretched we all were. Maharaji drove this point home mercilessy. Remember Kissimee? Remember how all but the most committed thought of just plain leaving, it was all so intense? Remember how we had to do some emergency 'premie maintenance' at the gates to stem the escape? I do because I was in charge of 'premie assistance' that year. (Yes, you have to ask me for my Tim Gallway story some time). This was when Maharaji berated the premies as losers basically. 'Guru Maharj Ji could turn you blue and lift you up in the sky' he bellowed. And don't you forget it. If we were so miserable, having almost gotten right back into the world in '76, how could we maintain? Easy. Non-stop mind-numbing satsang. Hour after hour, day after day. I wasn't then, but now I'm so glad that I DIDN'T get picked for one of those initiator 'training sessions.' Those poor fools spent literally months sometimes cooped up in a little house giving each other 'satsang' day in and day out. Well, at least they didn't have to work 'in the world.' And what was the satsang? Just an endless confession about our helplessness. Endless disclosure of the persistant nature of our doubting mind. By the way, this was AFTER the evil Bob Mishler and his Gang of Four, whoever they might have been, had left. After the family. Who else can Maharaji blame for this period? It better be someone because it certainly flies in the face of his claim to have seen through the unnecessary Indian trappings and freed us from them all as soon as he extricated himself form the evil influence of Mishler, his mummy and perhaps old Bal Bhagwan Ji. Funny, how Maharaji never talks about this time. To hear him and his minions, it was all one clear path out of the woods of Hindu ritual from 1973 on. Am I wrong?
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:29:51 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: old premie
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Your 'disbelief' in hypotheticals is both misguided newage silliness and a misuse of the English language. What don't you believe? That hypotheticals exist? Or that you have an obligation as someone ostensibly committed to a fair discussion to entertain and respond to them?
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 16:46:44 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Deena
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
'Because they can convince your mind at least as well as Maharaji used to be able to convince your heart?' You're absolutely right. I was so caught up in how well the words sounded that I didn't even think about what meaning I was putting out. I could simply say, 'You don't miss a trick, do you?' but I won't even do that. I misspoke, plain and simple. My point is that we trust whoever sounds most logical to us at the time. I firmly believe we have to really trust ourselves. And so few people know who they are - they seem to just be a conglomerate of all they've heard and been fed all their lives. I think we are in agreement about this - yes? Which means that if you KNOW who you are at this point, not because you've just switched sides in an argument, or because you've heard some words that sound right on to you, that's great. The only paradox that still emerges is - which you? We all have many many levels of existence. I'm not talking about mind/heart dichotomy. I'm talking about whether we can perceive ourselves at the most profound level of our being. On this there is a lot of disagreement. The saints and mystics will assure you that no matter how deep you have gone, there is still another level - and they've reached it but you haven't. And the down-to-earth level-headed pychology masters will swear to you that all those other levels are just so much bullshit. In my book it comes down to: each one of us goes as far as we can with the knowledge and understanding that we have. We are all in a process of evolution and growth and who the hell am I to tell a daisy that it should aim toward becoming a rose? My objection is that I don't think anyone should try to stop a rose that's trying to become a pear tree, either, if that's its goal. In other words, I have a great deal of faith in the human spirit and that real urge for self-knowledge. It doesn't mean that all human beings are going to become instant saints. In fact, damn few of us will. But the drudges are ok as drudges, if that's all they can see. It DOESN'T make them any less human or valuable. Here I go again - I could go on for hours, so I'll stop here. [I mentioned in a note to JW that I really can't divulge the very personal side of my communications with M. I'm sure you read it. I can tell you that it would get into the realm of 'prove this miracle', and I really don't want to cheapen those experiences. Nor do I feel I should divulge things that are really personal from Maharaji's point as well.]
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 17:00:31 (EDT)
Poster: old premie
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
>Your 'disbelief' in hypotheticals is both misguided newage silliness and a misuse of the English language. Sorry Jim, I didn't realize we were being copy edited here. I thought we were allowed free expression and, at times, I enjoy making up my own grammatical constructs. I'll try to have more respect for the language in the future, but only if every poster run her/his message through a spell check before posting.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 17:57:03 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Jim, It gives me the creeps to think about it now because I can remember that claustraphobic feeling I had then, but I basically agree with you about what happened during that devotional/catholic period. Yikes did it suck. I have no idea what really happened after 1983 (when I left) but I know the ashrams closed and there was some sort of loosening up from the devotional grip. I was community coordinator in Miami during part of that dark devotional/catholic period, and was at DECA working on the Boeing 707 part of that time also. GMJ was around a lot, and appeared fairly miserable most of the time. We were continually hearing stories that he was going around the residence on _________ island (I forget the name, but I can picture the house) screaming and yelling, but I know that blissful premies would say he was just a "mirror" of my own condition. I was pretty miserable too, but I thought I was blissed out, at least I knew I was supposed to be. I also had an initiator application in, but I secretly hoped I would never be selected, as the stories from the initiators of the induction process sounded to me like being in a concentration camp. I had opportunities to be around GMJ, but I often avoided them because I was so unattracted to him, and basically I found him repulsive in one-on-one situations, that it really depressed me when I had them. It was only at the big programs when the "crowd mentality" took over that I experienced the GMJ "high", but even that got more difficult to get, not matter how much I meditated and prayed. [This was also the period when GMJ said he was looking at land in Florida for a "divine city" or something similar (at least he said that at an ashram meeting in 1980 at the Kissimee swamp). This set off alarms somewhere in my brain and I had images of the paranoia that could develop there, but I guess that never went anywhere; I think GMJ spent all the money on himself and there was never anything left to buy the land with, thank god.] I also saw some other premies whom I knew well and loved "flip out" during this period under all the pressure to do service constantly and to be 100% surrendered and devoted. They were usually packed off to their parents or to some remote ashram never to be seen again. I could see much easier in them how destructive the whole process was, than I was ever able to see it in myself. I finally pulled all the strings I could to get sent to another community (again to be community coordinator) thinking I could get back the love and devotion I felt if I just got away from Miami. It didn't work. I also know that this was the period when we had a number of programs at the Miami Convention Center and we charged sometimes $70 or more per person to get in, even though we got the convention center for free. [It was not in big demand in July in Miami Beach, which is part of the reason we had programs there in the steaming summer.] The hundreds of thousands of dollars raised, much of it at least, went straight to the plane project and the rest straight to GMJ. I remember prior to one program it was a big deal because GMJ offered the DECA project the money raised in the darshan line (which many times exceeded the 10% AMP (Active membership program, remember that?) donations that went to DLM and the local communities), for the plane instead of taking it for himself, because he was so anxious to have it finished, although he continually changed the plans, such that it took years to get it done and cost thousands more than it otherwise would have, but then he's the lord, right, and entitled to change his mind. He also, I think in an attempt to get what he wanted, told us at DECA that we were the most devoted of all his premies, which made us feel special. However, while I was at DECA I asked a number of difficult questions and was kicked out; I was told by that crazy guy from New Jersey who ran the place that I didn't know how to serve GMJ and I should leave. However, then I was made community coordinator in Miami, which was like going from the frying pan into the fire. We also raised money all over the country for the plane during this period, and GMJ blatantly lied to his devotees (and I followed his direction and lied too), saying the money was for a "world tour" and not for his personal plane, since it would have been illegal to raise money for GMJ's personal plane through DLM under IRS rules, and might not have passed the PR test either. As for MJ being an alcoholic, I think there is plenty of evidence he is/was, but for me, that has nothing to do with my views about him; to me he is just a regular human being who got put into a very weird role and got stuck into it, much like many of the rest of us did. Lots of people have drinking problems, that's the least of the things about him that bothered me. JW
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 19:29:05 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Also, I would like to hear the Tim Gallway story if you are inclined to tell it. JW
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 19:47:49 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Oh, I'm really making too big a deal about this. Like I say, I'd reached my zenith (nadir?) as a premie service-wise. I was in charge of on-site premie maintenance at one of the Kissimee pressure fests. Fell in love with this girl I was working with from Philly. Beth was her name. (Beth you out there? We could have had fun. Oh to all you sisters from way back when - we could have had fun, we could ahve had fun). Where was I? Yeah, I was so stoked on my responsibility I hung around at the premie fix-it booths all night long. (See, everytime I got close to getting really good service [i.e. something that would have freed me from the drudgery of work in 'the world'] my mouth got me in trouble. Yes, I gave good satsang at times. Yes, I wrote and sang okay premie songs. Yes, I had intermittent enthusiasm. But, all the same, I used to fuck around too much. Unlike the cardboard characters who thrived so well in his grace) So, like I say, this was a bit of a moment for me. Isn't this pathetic? So one night Tim Gallway drops by, wrapped in a blanket and as dour as Mata Ji but as looney as Fakiranand in heat. I counselled him. On and on......drone! He glazed but was that the light of Maharji I saw in his eyes or was it Mr. Mind? I kept on going. All along I was watching to see if Beth, who was also doing a voluntary midnight shift, was impressed by my smooth delivery, my compassionate command of the cosmic circumstances, my thrust, my parry. Tim, bless his heart, never forgot his station in life. Okay, he was freaking out just like all those other losers who needed our services from time to time. But he was still Mr. Malibu and his mind was, after all, a Mister Malibu Mind. Sorry, JW. That's it. That's the entire story. Unless, Tim, you're reading this and you have anything to add. How about you, JW? Any equally earth-shattering experiences? What do you do now? What, by the way, do you think of Chris?
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 20:24:52 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Do you know whatever happened to Brian McDermott? He was nuttier than a fruitcake, but I thought he could be really funny at times.
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Date: Fri, Apr 18, 1997 at 21:43:29 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Do you know whatever happened to Brian McDermott? He was nuttier than a fruitcake, but I thought he could be really funny at times. I don't know but that asshole looped me out bigtime. I left the ashram after the Toronto festival in 75 or whenever. For six months I wandered in the dessert. At last I did some mushrooms with some friends and had a 'vision' that man was the only species born so physically unprotected. What could it mean but that we were born for love? Therefore, of course Maharaji was the Lord and I immediately moved into a 'serious' premie house -- stricter than the ashram -- for afew months before Maharaji finally let me back in his womb. Eventhen I almost didn't make it as I had the audacity to fly down to a Holi festival UNINVITED with a few other people from our premie house. There was so much grace there. Somehow, we even stayed in the same hotel as Maharaji and I got to open a door for Durga Ji. Oh my heart! Nontheless, I got in shit when I got back to Toronto. There is devotion and then there's the MIND's facsimile. I learnt a lesson. After I was back in the ashram for a while I still had trouble feeling that same old thang. So, in a moment of institutionally encouraged weakness, I 'consulted with an initiator'. Like it wasn't really a big thing, you know? I just wanted more. So Brian McDermott was in Ottawa and I told him, in passing, during our interview that I'd done the mushrooms. Without hesitation he told me it would take a full seven years to recover adn get back to where I'd been. No, OP, I'm not saying Maharaji's responsible for this garbage. He's not responsible for anything.
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Date: Sat, Apr 19, 1997 at 01:27:09 (EDT)
Poster: op
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: ANONYMITy
Message:
Brian MacDermott is on the security roster. His wife is the head of ushering at large events. He is still nuttier than a fruitcake and incredibly funny. He is much in demand as a speaker at service meetings because he always lightens the mood. On a different note, I ran into him last year when he was being torn down by an ex-ashram premie who was in the 'married ashram' at the time Brian was telling parents to give their children to the care of nannies and go out and do fulltime servie. This woman had spent about two months without her infant in an attempt to follow Brian's directive at that time, and she finally gave up, got her child back, and stayed home with the baby. Brian was a bundle of apologies about how stupid he'd been in those days. How uncaring and insensitive. I haven't worked with him directly, so don't know how sensitive and caring he is these days. But yes, he's still around. You might try writing to him - he might apologize to you too.
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 13:45:08 (EDT)
Poster: Another Anonymous
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: VIVA THE REVOLUTION!
Message:
I am writing because I moved into in the Ashram in 1978 and stayed until they closed. I really thought it was what Maharaji wanted me to do. I believed Maharaji was my Lord and I followed his instructions completely sincerely and closely. I am still coming to terms with the painful realisation that it was a TRAGIC waste of my youth. I still feel so let down and disillusioned. I hoped for years that Maharaji would meet with those who had given their lives to him and offer some conciliatory words at least. I attended programs, watched endless videos, practiced, practiced, practiced.... clung on , always giving Maharaji the benefit of the doubt, hoping that I would feel clearer about things. Instead of helping me and others to reconcile these problems he has brushed ASIDE the whole matter, along with his so-called LOVE & concern for MY LIFE. His flippant attitude towards my past (along with many other things he has said and done that I can no longer condone ), has made me fundamentally mistrust him and his teaching. He has only got time for sycophants. I feel that he stole part of my youth that I can never retrieve. I am now making up for lost time and feel essentially much happier for it. However I still carry a huge resentment towards him for persuading me in my innocence to devote my life for years to him in his ashrams. He IMPOSED ON ME a lifestyle which promised much but in reality was EXTREMELY psychologically unhealthy for me. I am not going to waste my time arguing with blinkered premies who feel differently. I know now that I need to express MY WRATH about this and I agree that an effort should be made to get Maharaji to face it. It was too devastating an experience to move on from without feeling any sense that there should be some retribution. I feel that Maharaji is getting away without having to take responsibility for those words and actions of his that directly caused so much suffering. That s what this site is all about. If it means offending him or being disrespectful. Well that s tough. He led me astray and I will never have those years back. But does he care? Why should he? HE THINKS HE S GOT A DIVINE RIGHT TO WRECK A FEW LIVES. Got to break a few eggs to make an omelette, right ? WRONG. NOT IF IT MEANS PLAYING WITH MY LIFE. I am damned if I am going to sit back and let him be as flippant as he has been about people like me without speaking up. Why are Maharaji and premies incapable of any human sympathy for those who have suffered at Maharaji s hands ? Because they have an unspoken agreement to perpetuate the myth, in their own minds, that any casualties along the way were self-inflicted. Maharaji can do no harm. It must be doubting-Thomas-like premies Turning away from Knowledge and suffering The consequences of their actions . They believe in the dualism of the Mind versus the Heart. A convenient myth that accords them a simplistic and blinkered view of human existence. All the premies I have met who still forlornly cling to their dependence on him are very obviousLY suffering from CRIPPLING Arrested development. A sad state in which they are encouraged to remain through the oppressive medieval brainwashings of the Satguru and his autocratic and hierarchical regime. I am more dedicated to the Truth than ever. SO Viva the Revolution of real Truth! Another Anonymous
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 15:14:23 (EDT)
Poster: Chris
Email:
To: Another Anonymous
Subject: Re: VIVA THE REVOLUTION!
Message:
>'All the premies I have met who still forlornly cling to their dependence on him are very obviousLY suffering from CRIPPLING Arrested development. A sad state in which they are encouraged to remain through the oppressive medieval brainwashings of the Satguru and his autocratic and hierarchical regime. ' So what is your new specialty these days, psychology or politics? >'I am more dedicated to the Truth than ever. SO Viva the Revolution of real Truth! ' Are you a political lobbyist these days? Remember the SDS, Peyote?
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 12:32:27 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Quotes from Guru Papers
Message:
Doucid asked for some quotes from "The Guru Papers -- Masks of Authoritarian Power." I hadn't looked at the book in quite a while, but last night I flipped through and got a couple of quotes. It really is a great book. (the authors are Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad) "By holding gurus as perfect and thus beyond ordinary explanations, their presumed specialness can be used to justify anything. Some deeper, occult reason can always be ascribed to anything the guru does...The guru is obsese or unhealthy because he is too kind to turn down offerings; besides, he gives so much that a little excess is understandable...He lives an opulent life to break people's simplistic preconceptions of what ego-loss should look like; it also shows how detached and unconcerned he is about what others think. For after all, "Once enlightened, one can do anything." Believing this dictum makes any action justifiable." (Page 52) "People justify and rationalize in gurus what in others would be considered unacceptable because they have a huge emotional investment in believing their guru is both pure and right. Why? [because] it would be difficult to surrender to one whose motives were not thought to be pure, which has come to mean untainted by self-centeredness. How can one surrender to a person who might put his self-interest first? Also, it is difficult to surrender to someone who can make mistakes, especially mistakes that could have significant impact on one's life. Consequently, the guru can never be wrong, make mistakes, be self-centered, or lose emotional control. He doesn't get angry, he "uses" anger to teach." (pp.52-53) I'll quote one other section in a new "thread". JW
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 12:52:24 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: Quotes from Guru Papers
Message:
The second section I wanted to quote from "The Guru Papers" is under a section entitled "Recognizing Authoritarian Control." "Surrendering to a guru brings instant intimacy with all who share the same values...Acceptance by and identification with the group induce loosening of personal boundaries. This opening consequently increases the emotional content of one's life, bringing purpose, meaning, and hope. It is no wonder that those who join such groups rave about how much better they feel than previously. But this quick, one-dimensional bonding is based solely upon a shared ideology. No matter how intense and secure it feels, should one leave the fold, it evaporates as quickly as it formed." (page 55) "Surrender is the glue that binds guru and disciple. Being a disciple offers the closest approximation (outside of mental institutions) to the special configuration of infancy. Surrender is a route that enables disciples to experience again, at least partially, the conflict-free innocence that is the source of their atavistic longings. Among these, perhaps most important is the feeling of once again being totally cared for. Surrendering to any authority brings this about to some extent, but with a guru it reaches vast dimensions. The guru reinforces this by letting it be known that all who follow him are and will be especially protected. For the follower, this feels like being protected by God." "This dependent state satisfies other longings that stem from infancy. Once again, one experiences being at the center of the universe--if not directly (the guru occupies that space), at least closer to the center than one would have thought possible. The guru also puts out the image of the totally accepting parent--the parent one never had but always wanted. So disciples believe they are loved unconditionally, even though this love is conditioned on continued surrender. Disciples in the throes of surrender feel they have given up their past, and do not, consciously at least, fear the future. In addition, they feel more powerful through believing that the guru and the group are destined to greatly influence the world. Feeling totally cared for and accepted, at the universe's center, powerful, and seemingly unafraid of the future are all achieved at the price of giving one's power to another, thus remaining essentially a child." (page 56.)
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 13:04:07 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: Quotes from Guru Papers
Message:
One final quote continuing on from previous post: "Disciples usually become more attached to the psychological state that surrender brings than to the guru, whom they never really get to know as a person. Repudidation of the guru (or even doubt and questioning) means a return to earlier conflict, confusion,and meaninglessness. The deeper the surrender, and the more energy and commitment they put into the guru, the greater their emotional investment is. Disciples will thus put up with a great deal of contradictory and aberrant behavior on the guru's part, for doubting him literally means having their world fall apart." "This is why many who are involved in authoritatian surrender adamantly deny they are. Those who see the dissembling in other gurus or leaders can find countless ways to believe that their guru is different. It is not at all unusual to be in an authoritarian relationship and not know it. In fact, knowing can interfere with surrender. Any of the following are strong indications of belonging to an authoritarian group: 1.No deviation from the party line is allowed. Anyone who has thoughts or feelings contrary to the accepted perspective is made to feel wrong or bad for having them. 2.Whatever the authority does is regarded as perfect or right. Thus, behaviors that would be questioned in others are made to seem different or proper. 3.One trusts that the leader or others in the group know what's best. 4.It is difficult to communicate with anyone not in the group. 5.One finds oneself defending actions of the leader (or other members) without having firsthand knowledge of what occurred. 6.At times one is confused and fearful without knowing why. This is a sign that doubts are being repressed." (page 57) Any of the above sound familiar? JW
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 04:31:47 (EDT)
Poster: David
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: rubber stamp
Message:
In the Belsize Park office of DLM 1978, i saw a rubber stamp of GMJ's signature on one of the desks. No wonder so much bullshit was rife within the premie scene. I wonder if GMJ knew about this or indeed even authorised it!!!
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 04:45:28 (EDT)
Poster: David P.
Email:
To: David
Subject: Re: rubber stamp
Message:
I posted the above 'Rubber Stamp' as 'David'. To avoid confusion I shall post future comments as 'David P.'
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 16:02:32 (EDT)
Poster: David
Email:
To: David
Subject: Re: rubber stamp
Message:
I'm sorry Jim, but I'm going to have to reserrect/resurect/resirect Douche. At least there's only one Douche. David's are just too thick on the ground! Douche (oh, I enjoyed that!)
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 00:00:00 (EDT)
Poster: Jim
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: Moral obligation to speak up
Message:
At this point there have to be a good handful of ex-premies lurking here. I think you have a moral obligation to contribute any proof you might have that Maharaji's a fraud. Don't you? Think of all the satsang we gave, all the people we pulled in this way and that, all the lives we affected. If these people had asked you then if you would ever get back to them if you discovered that your zealotry was misguided, what would you have said? I can't imagine any of us hesitating to promise to undo whatever damage we'd done. Sure, Maharaji was the puppet master but we were his unwitting henchmen. Want to truly absolve yourself of any blame? Beats me. I don't know how. But I DO know that the least you can do is help fill in the real picture. Got a piece to the puzzle? Please don't hoard it. Were you an instructor? Did you see or hear Maharaji say stuff that dwarfs his public statements? Please don't be scared or selfish. There are some here who are really wrestling with their thoughts and feelings about Maharaji. (Not me. I'm pretty well through that phase, I think. Who knows? Maybe I'll never be. Kind of like a vietnam vet.) But the point is there are a bunch of people who you could really help in a direct, significant way. Right? Thanks, Jim
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Date: Wed, Apr 16, 1997 at 17:39:28 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Jim
Subject: Re: Moral obligation to speak up
Message:
You got my vote. I agree. But each person should be able to come forward at his/her own speed. I sense some trepidation and fear of some ex-premies to do that. I would just like to say that it is very empowering to speak out and express your feelings. You also see the the emperor really has no clothes, just like you always thought! JW
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Date: Tues, Apr 15, 1997 at 12:10:53 (EDT)
Poster: JW
Email:
To: Everyone
Subject: ZITS
Message:
After reading Deena's recent posting, it reminded me that one of the best ways for me to deal with the realization that I have been ripped off by GMJ was humor -- at least that really helped me. Anyway, on a lighter note: I have a good friend who worked at SHIP (Shri Hans International Productions) for a number of years. As you probably know, SHIP put out "And It Is Divine" and later, "Elan Vital," those garish, slick, magazines with dozens of pictures of GMJ in Krishna crowns, etc. Well, anyway, she said that in the photo department, there was one premie whose job it was to remove the many zits from the Lord's face so they could use the pictures in the magazine. They also had active discussions about how to photograph him and what angle to use to make his face look less obese. Like Joan Rivers would say "he had more chins than the Hong Kong phone book!" Maybe you had to be there, but that struck me funny. JW
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Date: Tues, Apr 15, 1997 at 17:40:50 (EDT)
Poster: Douvid
Email:
To: JW
Subject: Re: ZITS
Message:
Zits; nothing. I had to remove men's private dangly parts in a picture of an Aboriginal cave painting when I designed and pasted up Divine Times several life times ago. It was thought the sight of all that exagerated masculinity might over-excite the housemothers. Happy days! Douvid
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