Let It Be?
The Beatles got together for a reunion set today.
As a big fan of the Beatles, this would please me, except for a couple of minor details.
Two of the four Beatles are now dead, and it's hard to think of the two surviving members (Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr) - no matter how talented or impactful in the world of music - as the Beatles.
Secondly, the point of the get together was to support transcendental meditation (TM), something that the Beatles studied together in India under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. More specifically, the concert was to benefit the David Lynch Foundation, which exists to promote TM to youth.
In the words of McCartney today, "It started for us when we met the Maharishi in India, and it's going to get bigger and bigger and rule the world." Maharishi was a savvy guy, and wasn't content to just sit around tutoring stoned musicians. He turned TM into a product, a product which has been aggressively marketed for almost 50 years.
Lynch's program aims to teach one million at risk youth TM as a method for focusing their minds, easing or eliminating stress from their lives, and allowing them to essentially be all that they can be. this is referred to by the Foundation as 'consciousness-based education', and is the goal of the Foundation - along with world peace.
The Foundation takes time to reassure the skeptical person that TM is "not a religion or philosophy". I'm sure this is helpful when attempting to convince schools to allow the TM program to be offered. The problem is, it's not true.
TM is a religion - or perhaps more accurately, based on the oldest holy writings of Hinduism, which are known as the Vedas. While the Foundation asserts that TM is not a religion, the goal of TM is to experience the "source of thought, pure consciousness - the unified field- the source of the unlimited creativity and intelligence expressed in human life and in nature". That certainly sounds a lot like a religion to me. It certainly sounds a lot like the Hindu concept of reality as an expression of an impersonal (depending on the branch of Hinduism you're dealing with) creative 'god' or 'spiritual reality' called Brahman. Everything is part of Brahman - including the human spirit. By meditation, the individual attempts to transcend the misleading distractions of this world that lead us to believe that all is not one, and experience the true oneness of Brahman. This experience is believed ultimately to lead to liberation from the cycle of life and death and suffering, to the final reunification of the personal spirit (atman) with Brahman.
So it irks me that this watered down form of Hinduism is being promoted as a non-theological, non-philosophical solution for impressionable minds, and that schools are allowing (or potentially allowing) this indoctrination while preventing other religious traditions (aka Christianity) from such access. I'm unable to determine whether or not there are actually any schools currently implementing the Foundation's program. It's false advertising of the most perfidious kind, and that always gets my boxers in a bunch.
I recently spent six hours in a car with a woman who identified herself as a follower of Rajneesh, who was a Indian guru/mystic who gained popularity in the 60s through the 80s. She, too, claimed that hers was not a religion, although she did assert that it was a philosophy.
As she described her "philosophy," it became clear to me that it was indeed a religion, mostly drawing from Hindu thought. The ego is bad, and we must, by looking within ourselves, free ourselves from this ego, connecting with the divinity within us and around us. We are all divine, all of us, as well as all of creation.
I think she called it a philosophy for convenience, because nowadays the term religion too readily puts the issue in politically incorrect territory. Like the TM that you discussed, it is more convenient to take it out of that risky realm and hiply call it philosophy or "consciousness-based education."
What a bunch of bologna. I agree with you, Paul. This stuff absolutely is a religion. Pantheism is still a form of theism. Of course, the educators will probably jump all over it, because it allows their schools to make claims about diversity and tolerance. In America's educational system, the issue is not about keeping religion out of school, but about keeping Christianity out, simply because enough minority groups complain that the dominant religion is getting preference. Remember Kwanzaa anyone?
In the process, though, the baby is thrown out with the bath water. What results is reverse discrimination.
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The attack on religion - even by practices such as these that are both derived from and based upon religion - continues. Lynch's Foundation both denies and confirms that TM can be considered a 'spiritual' practice - handily redefining the term 'spiritual' to mean basically something that feels nice and has perceivable physiological benefits. Curious definition in my book.
But the pattern isn't new. To be accepted under the precepts of tolerance, religion must not claim to be truth and must justify itself in terms of secular benefits such as world peace or better 'health'. Biblical Christianity is foolish enough to say that these things are not the measure of truth, and are far shallower goals than what the harsh reality of the cross and the empty tomb proclaim. Therefore, Christianity can't be tolerated. You mention Kwanzaa, and Kwanzaa could gain such quick acceptance and adoption precisely because it's goal was not Truth, but rather a sense of cultural connection - even if that connection was an invented one. Kwanzaa can be promoted and tolerated because it doesn't pose a threat, since it makes no assertions about reality.
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On a side note, further research into the guru Rajneesh revealed that he taught about free sex, that he maintained a collection of 93 classic Rolls-Royce automobiles, and that some of his followers (his involvement is not proved nor disproved) were involved in the first confirmed instance of chemical or biological terrorism to have occurred in the United States.
My driving buddy left out these details in her portrait of this so-called "philosophy."
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Ohhhhh...it's that Rajneesh. I remember he and his followers from the early-mid 80's after they had set up shop in Oregon. I remember it primarily via the hilarity of Berkeley Breathed's glorious comic strip, " Bloom County ", which lampooned the cult by having erstwhile catatonic Bill the Cat end up as a brainwashed member, prompting a rescue by his good buddies.
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