And you are still falling!
The next point during your fall down the TM rabbit hole may be "Teacher Training", where you learn the highly ritualized and completely rote procedure of planting suggestions and inducing trance in TM students. You also learn how to explain TM dogma of "unstressing" in order to talk people out of quitting the practice even when it is hurting them (but you won't see it that way, of course).
Or the next stage may be joining up as an underpaid staff member at Maharishi University of Management (MUM) in Fairfield, Iowa. Or you may move to Fairfield and run a business there while practicing the sidhis in one of the two Golden Domes every day.
Actually, different people hit different stages in different orders while falling down the TM rabbit hole. You may become a poorly paid worker at MUM first, become chronically dissociated on the equivalent of frequent "residence courses", until you eventually save up enough work credits to learn the sidhis or go to Teacher Training. Or you may be able to become a students at MUM, earning a degree while staying on what otherwise is much like a 4-year residence course.
It doesn't really matter in what order these things happen to you. The result is chronic intense dissociation and absolute conviction that Mahesh's teachings are the highest spiritual teachings that have ever existed. You dedicate your entire life to these teachings.
The basic TM technique and the sidhis are not the only practices and teachings:
- As has been mentioned, you believe that you can physically levitate.
- You believe that by having become a "yogic flyer" you are literally at a higher evolutionary level than the rest of mankind.
- You may become a celibate TM monk or celibate TM nun.
- You believe that even if only "the square root of 1%" of a population practice the TM and the sidhis, then this "Maharishi Effect" (ME) will create powerful positive effects for that entire population.
- You believe that when an entire nation reaches the square root of 1% mark, then that entire nation will become "invincible." (Check out the "Uncle Sam Wants You!" poster here.)
- You believe that as more and more communities, and then nations, achieve this percentage of meditators that this will create World Peace under the guidance of the "Global Country of World Peace." This Country already exists in order to guide the world to this era of peace, and is governed by Maharaja Nader Raam, Sovereign Ruler of the Country of World Peace.
- You believe that Mahesh's teachings and practices will not only create World Peace, but will eventually create a literal "Heaven on Earth."
- You believe that the "puja" that is performed when a person is instructed in the basic technique invokes the literal presence of the "Holy Tradition of Masters." This is the lineage of spiritual Masters who have preserved the TM teachings since the first day of Creation. When they are thus invoked it is their presence during instruction that gives the mantra it's spiritual power.
- You believe that, in addition to cosmic beneficent forces such as the Holy Tradition, that demons also literally exist. Yes, demons!!! Not just any type of demon, but specifically Hindu "rakshasas". And sometimes "rakshasas incarnate." When a multi-millionaire TMer who had donated over a million dollars to TM realized that he had been taken, and then publically denounced Mahesh, Mahesh declared that the man was in fact a rakshasa.
- You will move to Fairfield, Iowa, home of
Mahesh's own private university ("MUM"), in order
to become one of the following:
- If you can swing it you will become a full-time MUM student (click on "What will I gain from Consciousness-Based education?").
- Otherwise you might become a lowly paid MUM staffer, slowing earning points towards being eligible for, for example, Teacher Training.
- Or you might have the means to just become a private citizen of Fairfield.
- In all cases, one gigantic benefit of being in Fairfield is that you can fly twice daily in one the "Golden Domes" (see top picture). Because of the "Maharishi Effect" you will be thereby simply basking in positive influences, which will benefit you not only in the present, but which will greatly speed up your progress toward CC.
- You spend as much money as you can scrape together on the following
(none of which are cheap):
- You will spend money on Mahesh's trademarked brand of "Ayurvedic medicine." Not only will you buy expensive periodic consultations with an Ayurvedic practitioner, but you will also spend lots of money on Ayurvedic remedies, preferably those carrying the "Maharishi" trademark.
- You will spend money on "Maharishi"-branded astrologers. (Hindu astrology is called "jyotish", and Hindu astrologers are called "joytishi.")
- Your jyotishi will undoubtedly recommend that you buy expensive gemstones (find "gems").
- And he will recommend that you buy expensive "Maharishi"-branded "yagyas" (which have to be bought periodically rather than just once) which will create strong positive effects on your life.
- Once you have moved to Fairfield, you will buy only homes that are built according to the strict requirements of vastu (a sort of Hindu feng shui).
You are still falling, but is there a bottom to the TM rabbit
hole?