productive?

Reaching a point of productivity. But there is always a worry that this is incompatible with the rest of life.

On another note:
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has passed away. I will perhaps write more later.
I had just resumed my reading of Mikael Rothstein's book about comparing the TM and Hari Krishna attitudes and approaches towards science.

more tm stuff

Continuing on this transcendental mediation thread, I just noticed a post about TM at Cosmic Variance.
Also, I recently bought Paul Mason's biography of the Maharishi, and have continued following the blog TM-Free. Oh, also, I watched a video by Steve Hassan (from TM-Free) about his approach to getting people out of cults. I'm still uncomfortable with this issue of new religion vs. cult. I apreciate the approach Hassan describes. He says often that he doesn't try to take anything away from people, only give them options. But at the same time he sees the situation as a war. Why am I so reluctant to be a warrior? Sometimes I feel like its weakness, sometimes strength. Maybe for me the reason is that most of the wars (be they family/work/politics etc.) that I feel pulled into choosing sides over just aren't important enough to me. Fighting in that war would screw up a bunch of other stuff that I find equally important.

Considering this question of being a warrior reminds me that the Maharishi focuses TMers on the first 6 books of the Baghavad Gita, with his own interpretation that the text refers to consciousness. The beginning involves Krishna urging Arjuna to fight against his family. I suppose this encourages TMers to see the struggle to enlighten the world through TM as an epic battle where individuals consciousnesses (even within a family) are fighting it out.

One way I think about TM is as a little like a micro-version of America. The people are mainly well-meaning and really believe they are doing good for the world. But the perspective is so narrow and solutions so simplistic that they often do more harm than good, while a few people actually get rich from the whole thing. So, basically, if it weren't for the arrogant megalomania that accompanies the whole thing, I'd be happy to call them spiritual/cultural/life style pioneers, trying to find meaning out of the complex world that doesn't usually fit very well into simple boxes.

tm-free

Hmm. I recently discovered the blog tm-free. I'd known about some of these people previously in my web searches for alternative information on TM. Anyways, I posted a few comments, and they put one on the front page, which is pretty cool, except that its a bit confusing out of context from the original comment. (They added a bit more context now, so its ok. But all the original comments were lost when they recently updated their comment system..)

I'm still coming to terms with my opinion of TM. I really appreciate the work these people do, but because they are basically a force to counter-balance all the false TM propaganda, reading that material makes it pretty difficult to not have a really negative view of TM and makes it quite tempting to just cut connections to things like meditation, religion, etc. which I think would be a loss.
Anyway, I'd like to be on the side of peace. I'd like to encourage finding common ground, a middle way to things. I don't want to be drawn into a war.
But for the most part, I think that blog is a really good thing. A number of different voices with differing opinions. A broader perspective than was available from the individual web-sites such as Trance-net and other anti-cult sites.
Wow. This is a pretty charged area. I thought that hanging out on the pro/con string theory sites was rough!

new age

I'm finally reaching the end of "Heaven on Earth". Speaking of the writing of Ananda leader J. Donald Walters in the concluding chapter of the book, D'Antonio writes

This way of thinking does not point to the creation of a "new" age. Rather, it implies a return to an idealized version of an old New England village, a community of believers striving to live in relative simplicity, with God not far from their minds. Ananda suggests self-sufficiency, modesty, plainness, and rectitude--the bedrock Protestant values of early America. It may be difficult for those who regard the New Age as flaky, avant garde, or irresponsible to consider, but after my experience at Ananda, I became intrigued by the notion that the New Age is as much a revival of old American values as it is an embrace of the counterculture. Indeed, the villagers seem to reflect perfectly the Protestant ethic described by the great historian and sociologist Max Weber. They were industrious, Godly, communal, and ascetic--all qualities Weber identified in his analysis of the utilitarian successes of Protestant societies. Ananda has survived, and thrived, because of its old-fashioned work ethic, and a piety that discourages materialism, competitiveness, and jealousies.

I see a similar element in TM. My step-dad reads Emerson and has said that Maharishi admires the American founders. He and my mom read a lot of biographies of early American presidents. Anyway, there is at least an attempt to connect to what tradition we do have in this country, which perhaps is in some sense necessary for a transplant to thrive.

middle ground?

Quote from Heaven on Earth by Michael D'Antonio p. 286 (note that MIU is Maharishi International University, the previous name of MUM):

But the deception I uncovered at MIU was more disturbing, on a personal level, because the people I met there
were somewhat like me. They were educated, seemingly open-minded, and idealistic adults. They were well aware of the challenges that science and reason posed for religion, but they still ached for spiritual comfort. So they had sought a middle ground, a spiritual practice supported by empirical fact. Such a middle ground would appeal to me. I, too, have been disillusioned by the conflict of reason and religion, and I also feel the hunger for spiritual comfort and community. I would have welcomed the discovery of a middle way, a path to spirituality that was consistent with reason.

But TM, as it is practiced at MIU, isn't a middle ground. It is like the worst of religion: unreasonable, repressive, authoritarian. And knowing this, I had to acknowledge that these people, my peers, were vulnerable and fragile human beings. They were as vulnerable as any of the born-again Christians who were duped by TV evangelists in the 1980s. They were just as fragile as the frightened, impoverished believers who sent millions of dollars to the Depression-era radio priest Father Coughlin, who preyed on the fear and disillusionment of his time.
...
... Whatever the reason, like the others, Orsatti has followed his leader into a retreat from reality. With the Maharishi, they have turned Transcendental Meditation, the tap root of the New Age, into a grandiose, narcissistic dream, a form of intellectual bondage, which they call enlightenment.

This is so far some of the most neutral writing I've found on TM. I guess there was a book about the sociology of new religious movements, that I unfortunately lost.
My hope for TM is that it will become less isolated. To do this, it would have to be less guru-centric, because one person is just not enough. I wonder what will happen after the Maharishi is gone? Will he become like Joseph Smith for the Mormons? I imagine that he can't maintain his hold on the day to day life any more, but it will be interesting to watch.

physics of religion (religion of physics)

Here's two examples:

Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler of Tulane University.

and

Restructuring Physics from its Foundation in Light of Maharishi's Vedic Science by John Hagelin who used to teach at Maharishi University of Management.

I might also add Fritjof Capra's "Tao of Physics" to this genre. The thing to understand about these writings is that they work on a metaphorical level. They basically relieve, at a surface level, some of the cognitive dissonance for people for whom both science and religion has a hold. Its a set of word games so that when, on a breezy afternoon (or late at night?), one's mind roams freely around its different regions, there are word bridges connecting one to the other. The problem is that the bridges don't actually go where they claim to go.

I won't go into the reasons why these bridges don't go where they claim to go. Maybe I'll think about it in more detail some other time.
The game is just to build something that has an anchor in each world and then to call it a bridge. For Tipler, these structures are "God" and "resurrection". He has taken these religious concepts and defined them in physics language. "God" is what happens to life and complexity when (and if) the universe collapses on itself, and "resurrection" is the possibility that at that highly technologically advanced time, the same set of atoms that compose you could be brought into the same configuration again.

For Hagelin, he identifies the "unified field" of hypothetical physics models with subjective consciousness in a sort of Hindu (Maharishi-ized) perspective which identifies consciousness with God.

I don't object to this type of intellectual pursuit. What I object to is the lack of honesty. I think that in both these cases, the audience is mainly someone who doesn't understand much of the physics and can't really check the arguments. The role of the technical appendix in each case is just to ward off technical questions from someone who almost knows enough to counter the arguments. "Its all in the appendix" would be the response. But how the appendix relates to the text is where the dishonesty occurs. Really, a neutral language that is broad enough to include both physics and religion is needed. Or lacking that, a statement limiting the scope of the investigation to a metaphorical level is required. Some of their power derives from the over-hyped claims from physicists themselves. To explain why Hagelin is wrong, to sort of get to the other side of his thinking, as it were, one has to be able to concieve of physics as metaphor. We're used to thinking of religion as metaphor, but not science. At its most speculative level, physics requires metaphors to fill in the many technical unknowns and to ground mathematical concepts. By overselling superstring theory as more solid than it really is, people are more likely to find its connections to other areas as causal, rather than metaphorical. Perhaps Hagelin himself is confused on this issue and this is what allows him to continue selling "The Maharishi Effect" to the public. But my feeling is that its more out of intellectual exaustion and a sort of revenge on those who fed him the over-hyped string theory claims to begin with.

(
One interesting thing I found in reading Peter Woit's "Not Even Wrong" was that Maharishi's posters connecting the unified field theory to consciousness were popular among physicists at one point (I don't know whether seriously, or as a joke).
)

gurus and miracles

Main questions I'm trying to answer in reading "Autobiography of a Yogi" (AY):
1) Did Maharishi get his ideas about selling TM through misrepresentation of science by reading AY and its description of kriya yoga? There seem to be many parallels.

2) How does one read a book full of descriptions of "miracles"? Assuming one doesn't believe them, what do you do with the words of someone you believe to be lying? I understand that its probably some complex mix of self-deception and telling of "sweet truths"- embellished stories to make them easier to consume for the beginner before the more complete story is in place. But some other parts of the writing may ring true. Can I trust it? I guess you just have to take everything to be on a metaphorical level. And he admits that he wasn't such a good student. So just assume that details may be wrong. Something like that.