In which I wish I was there.
Bghead just texted me to tell me that the Big M has died. I’m at work, so I googled it immediately (while on the phone with a customer laboriously explaining why she probably doesn’t want to install the lastest version of Outlook Express on her 11-year-old Windows 95 box)…
…and holy cow. Maharishi’s dead.
I spent 15 years, give or take, living in Fairfield directly and indirectly because of the Transcendental Meditation movement. Nearly everyone I know in that town was a meditator or sidha, and even if they weren’t they’d been around people who were for so long that they knew all the vocabulary.
It’s indirectly because of TM that I met Amma – and that was the single most profound event of my entire life, bar none.
Because of TM I’ve met people from all over the world, I’ve traveled, I’ve grown from being a weird little white middle class creature to being… well, whatever the hell it is that I am now.
TM fascinated me, drew me, embraced me, infuriated me, and pushed me out. I despised the Movement for a long time after I got off campus, until I realized that all organized religion is that way: only little folks – pencil pushers and bureaucrats – will stay to run institutions once based on real transformative shit, but their idiocy doesn’t necessarily make the seed knowledge any less profound. No doubt all the biggies would have apoplexy if they had to try to navigate their own institutional legacies today. Pretty much everyone agrees that Christ wouldn’t have anything to do with Christianity if He returned.
Anyway.
So we roos have all been waiting for Maharishi to die for some time now. We’ve none of us been able to answer with any kind of emphasis whether TM – as an organization, not as a technique – was good, bad, or both. (Nearly every meditator – except those who bugged all the way out to TM-ex, that is – will say the technique was good. At the very least, it cured headaches.) And now he has and I’m here in Washington, too far away from what are undoubtedly amazing conversations, tears, knee-jerk reactions, random drunken ramblings, residence courses, policy switchbacks, conference calls in the dome, and confused press releases…
Will the University survive? Will the TM community survive? Will the town – as we know it, at least – survive? How will Movement policy change? Will it get better? Worse? Will people still learn TM? (Most importantly, will the Beach Boys or the remaining Beatles say anything?) (I’m being facetious.) (No, really.) What’ll happen to the Movement’s already wonky monetary structure? Who owns all those TM centers around the world? What will happen to all those multi-million dollar Stapathya-vedic ‘homes’ around Fairfield, once there’s no market for them? Will birds live in them?
Gawd, I really wish I could be in Fairfield this week. I really do. Someone should fly me out so I can get drunk at the Dead Cock and make John Bloch cry. And where the hell is Harold Turner when you need a pink purse?
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A death in the family, if even once removed, definitely has the power to make one homesick.
Yeah, this is the patriarch dying. Throws the whole family. -m
Yep, you’ve summed things up pretty nicely here. Really wish I was in Fairfield right now too.
Nothing like being in Fairfield for a non-critical crisis! Whee! -m
For me, personally, it’s a little like I imagine it’d be if one’s ex died. A little unexpected sadness, but also a sense of freedom–as though one last thin bond that one never knew persisted had just dissolved. Yesterday we also found out our neighbor died and, for me, it had a much more visceral hit. Today the whole town is hushed, blanketed in snow and ice. (You’d have a heck of a time flying in.) And it feels appropriate somehow. I wonder, though, what the feeling is among the TM faithful. The official line, of course, is ‘with his life’s work complete, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi “is welcomed with open arms into Heaven.‒ Some say it occurred 7 hours after NASA blasted “Across the Universe” into space. Someone else said it happened last week, but they waited to announce it…. Already the rumors abound. 😉
Wow, nice analogy! …and yeah, I wonder about that, too, like maybe they’re getting groovy bodiless satsang before he goes. Gawd, love the rumor mill. -m
I’ve been so out-of-touch with the whole thing for so long now. Haven’t officially “done my program” in many years. Even so, it seems strange for him to be gone gone.
In the everlasting Fairfield word for all situations, Blown. Daddy.
Blown is right. And I can just barely remember my TM mantra, let alone those sutras. -m
How do you like the weather on the Left-Coast?
It’s freakin’ overcast ALL THE DAMN TIME. Plus this is where I’m from, you know, so I already knew it would be this way. 😉 How the holy fuck are YOU? -m
everyone knew but me I was out of the loop i read about it here but with the hellish snow storm we just had I think everyone is morning at home I havent see or heard anything but I’m not one of you so maybe they just aren’t telling me
I ain’t missin’ the hellish winter wonderland that is the Midwest, but I DO miss YOU. *smooch* -m
Am I the only one doing a little happy dance now that he’s dead? I wasted 2 years at MIU back in the early 90s, along with tens of thousands of dollars for mostly nontransferable credits, and indoctrination thrown into the bargain. Yeah, I was a fool to do it, but hey, I was young.
I do feel like a tiny weight has lifted. Hopefully, the movement will start to disintegrate and they won’t be able to fleece as many suckers now that Maha has kicked it.
The Dead Cock? What happened to the Barn Stormer and the Den?
Which years? Do I know you?
The Barnstormer is now a truly crappy bar/restaurant, and The Den is closed several years ago after Mike got popped for stealing anhydrous. GAWD I miss The Den. Best bar EVAR. -m
I’m still like…..”did this shit really just happen?” Not MMY’s death so much but…….like the last 43 years.
*lol* -m
I’m not part of the movement, but just living in Fairfield I’ve been touched by how much his death has affected so many people around me.
I still wish I was there to gauge the general mood. -m
Hey, Mush. I was there somewhere around 92-94. I couldn’t agree more about The Den, it was a classic dive bar. And it was even better when there were MIU people there getting shit faced. At the time, the incongruity of that amused me to no end. I’m not surprised about The Barn Stormer, it kinda sucked even back then. Well, at least The Den had a good run, they could have been written up any number of times for serving underage roos.
I, for one, am glad I’m not there right now. I know I’d just sneer at these poor people for grieving over a shifty, egomaniacal con artist they’d probably never even met.
Holy crap, I just looked at your “about me” page. I don’t know if you know me, but I think I remember you if you’re the girl who sang at The Den occasionally. We had a few mutual acquaintances, but we never actually knew each other. I was the Asian girl with the page boy hair cut, usually dressed in black. I think we were in one of those rounding courses (?) together, the kind where they played VHS tapes of Maha at us for about 5 hours a day and assigned us extra meditation.
This is fun–pomp and circumstance in India. Might even see a few faces you know.
http://tinyurl.com/3ah2wr
Woah. The early 90’s roo invasion of Den? That was classic. I loved that era. Trying to remember asian girl with page boy haircut……Can we have another hint?