Abschied

Earl Kaplan war der wichtigste oder einer der wichtigsten Geldgeber des Maharishi. Ohne solche Spender wäre der Maharishi-Kult längst in der Bedeutungslosigkeit versunken. Es gehört zu den Merkwürdigekeiten dieses Kultes, dass Maharishi zwar einerseits als "steinreich" gilt, andererseits aber offenbar nicht gewillt ist, sein eigenes Geld zu investieren. Motor seiner ständigen Spenden-Kampagnen sind die wenigen Großspender.
Kaplan schreibt in seinem Brief vom 16.4.2004: "Ich wollte niemals irgendwelche öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit und viele Jahre lang wusste niemand, dass ich der wichtigste Geldgeber der Bewegung war." Im Maharishi-Konzern trat er tatsächlich nur sehr zurückhaltend auf. Auch in dieser Website wurde Kaplan eher beiläufig genannt, so im Zusammenhang mit Maharishis Disneyland, mit dem Angebot eines Friedenspalastes in Leipzig,

der totalitären Reorganisation 2000, bei der Kaplan als Minister eingesetzt wurde, und zuletzt durch die Aktion "Bomben oder Frieden?" 2001, bei der mittels Massenmeditation durch 100.000 "fliegende Pandits" der Weltfriede herbeigezwungen werden sollte. Kaplan erwähnt diese Pandits in seinem Brief, allerdings spricht er nur von 7000.

The Truth

April 16, 2004

Dear residents of Fairfield, Heavenly Mountain, the Spiritual Center,and whomever else may want to read this letter:

Over the past several years my brother, his family and I have been attacked verbally, emotionally, spiritually and financially for leaving the TM movement.

I have not said anything during this time, not wanting to fight with anyone.However, I have now come to realize, for the sake of those who want to listen and for my sake as well, to clear my conscious of all that I have learned, heard and known, that I must share the knowledge that has come to me. We should all be free to listen to our hearts, to follow our own inner voice and not to be subject to a movement and a so-called "spiritual master" who rules through lies, fear and deceit. This letter is really for those of you who have been feeling that something is wrong. Remember in the Matrix when Trinity told Neo they had been looking for him because they knew that he could just feel there was something missing, something out of order but he just couldn't figure out what. Well, that is how it started to be for me and TM. I knew something was wrong.

I remembered that when I started I was promised enlightenment in 5-7 years. I remember in 1975 Maharishi promising that now that there were all these governors that there would be world peace. I remember in 1977 at the end of the siddhis course Maharishi saying that is was just the hard knots of stress in the environment that needed to be cracked before we all started to fly and that he would call us back in a few years when we were ready to take off.

I remember in the early 90's, Maharishi told my brother that if we built the spiritual center that he would fill it up with 1000 Purusha and 1000 Mother Divine. He said as soon as we finished the buildings and he moved Purusha and Mother Divine there that people would start to fly, they would go into enlightenment. He also told me that if I gave him enough money for his India project that he would create a 10,000 group that would bring world peace right away. For 30 years I listened and responded and devotedly donated more money to Maharishi's project than anyone ever had. I had this deep yearning to try to help mankind. I wanted to help create a peaceful world and I wanted to gain my own inner enlightenment. I never wanted any public attention and for many years no one even knew I was the leading donor for the movement. After I had given all this money and waited patiently for the results that Maharishi had promised,

I started to wake up. I started to realize that I had been misled.

WE ALL HAD!

Where are the 7000 pundits Maharishi had raised hundreds of millions of dollars for and had repeatedly promised to bring to the U.S.? Where is the world peace he promised us all those years. Where is there one person who has gotten enlightened in the TM movement? Maharishi said eve a person in Cosmic Consciousness can perform the siddhis successfully and fly. In unity consciousness the prescriptions of Patanjali are not needed to get the results, they just happen. Please show me one or two people who can fly, who can perform the siddhis successfully, who are truly enlightened and I will admit that I am wrong.

But really, no one in the TM movement can do so. The true believers in the TM movement actually become incensed when you ask them to give you a concrete demonstration of their abilities. The truth that I have come to realize is that the enlightenment that some of these TM people think they have is just a total delusion. There is no real substantive proof because there is no valid spiritual experience. The TM experience is an illusory experience, a sort of dream state brought about by using a technique that traps one in one's own mind.

Since I retired three years ago I have been researching spiritual techniques.

I have spoken with a number of holy men from various traditions. I have traveled to India and met with enlightened Swamis and visited many of the sacred and holy cities. I have spoken with pundits who were in charge of the pundit groups.

I have spoken with Dr. Triguna and other individuals who had been high in the TM Organization. I interviewed members of Guru Dev's family. I spoke with people in the TM movement who had looked at some of the financial records of the TM organization and I have spoken with investment people who said they have been in charge of investing some of the movement's assets. I have spoken with old time skin boys (Maharishi's personal assistants) and old course participants who were involved with Maharishi sexually (verified by the old skin boys). I have had the good fortune to come across wonderful alternative healing practices that really work and wonderful spiritual practices that are taught by the real representatives of age-old traditional lineages. I have been shocked to discover the secrets behind the real TM organization and the secrets behind Guru Dev's death. I have read an extended interview from the real Shankaracharya in which the true traditional spiritual teaching of jyotir math is discussed. I have talked with many higher up people from the TM movement and many people outside the TM movement and all the discussions point to the same thing.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has pulled off the biggest spiritual scam in modern history. He has successfully diverted a large group of sincere spiritual seekers from the real spiritual path.

He has accumulated hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in assets for his family, the Shrivastavas. He has not only made up his name (he is not a Maharishi) but he has made up a meditation practice which is a mechanical and repetitive in nature and which leads to brain washing by occult powers and a siddhi practice which has nothing to do with Patanjali.

He has brought to the west a watered down version of ayurveda and a skewed version of Shtapatya Veda. Finally, if you look at all the poor people on Purusha and Mother Divine who are anemic and have advanced stages of osteoporosis, you will know that he has ruined many lives. The true believers in the TM movement will tell you these are all lies. They will tell you that even though they may be suffering from cancer or be penniless, they maybe 50 years old, childless and living with their parents, they may have had much better experiences 25 years ago than they do today, they will insist to you that Maharishi is a God and it is their shortcomings that have caused them to be in such a predicament. Well let me tell you, these poor people are totally rainwashed. I feel bad for all of them. But sympathy is no longer acceptable. I want to share my experiences so that maybe you can wake up. You don't need to be trapped in the Matrix. There are so many wonderful, loving people in the world and so many spiritually advanced souls walking the earth. Unfortunately, there aren't too many in the TM movement.

This version of my story really starts about three years ago. I was sitting with Maharishi privately, because at the time I had an open invitation to come to Vlodrop and sit with Mahesh whenever I wanted to. At that time I knew that Mahesh had many tens of millions of dollars, the money he needed to create a 10,000 group. He was talking about building big buildings, buying airlines, etc. etc.

I said, Maharishi, since you have the money and supposedly you have enough pundits, why don't you create a 10,000 group in India and then the world will experience peace and the TM movement will gain great support of the laws of nature and our other activities will work out. Mahesh looked at me like I was crazy and said "Earl, if we created the group then we don't know if it would create world peace or not. We would have to have the group and then see what the effect it has.

I have to tell you, this sort of shocked me after Mahesh for years had been raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his world peace groups. To be perfectly honest, though, this response was somewhat in line with the other responses he had been making to me. When I would ask him spiritual questions he never had answers more than what he offered in the seven steps. Or he might launch into one of his hour long circular discussions of the Ved and creation or the Ved and human physiology. I finally started to realize, Mahesh doesn't really understand the spiritual process and if I wanted to get enlightened I better take responsibility for the process and seek out people who had been successful in getting others enlightened and who really knew what was going on.

So, I started to read and research the subject (two things Mahesh told us never to do, otherwise we might confuse ourselves) and I spoke with numerous people and these are the things I have learned that I think are the most important:

Even though Guru Dev, he never gave Mahesh spiritual instruction and he never taught him to teach others. In fact, he told Mahesh he would never have anything to do with anything other than material success.

There are many strange events around Guru Dev's death. The real current Shankaracharya and Guru Dev's nephew and two Swami's ndependent of each other had very similar stories. It is believed that Mahesh had Guru Dev poisoned. During the funeral he then went back to Jyotir Math and stole the most powerful spiritual artifact Guru Dev had created, a gold and jeweled Shri Yantra. Mahesh, after traveling throughout India, found a man who could activate the outer portions of the Shri Yantra. This gave Mahesh certain occult powers and control over certain astral beings. Mahesh then created a meditation technique and certain mantras that would help people blank their minds. In this blank state (which has nothing to do with transcendence that is talked about in the yoga sutras) these astral beings would brainwash these meditators into certain beliefs and certain actions. In addition, Mahesh would put blocks on people's nervous systems to block their Kundalini from firing and to siphon off their energy.

Now I know this sounds pretty wild but think about it for a while. Why do so many meditators have such a dazed and confused look about them? Why do meditators find it so hard to focus? Why do most people who have been in the movement for thirty years admit that their best experiences in TM were in the seventies and since then meditations have been going downhill? Why are so many people asleep in the dome? Why do you need to lie down and rest 10-30 minutes after you have meditated? Why is there so much unstressing? Why are so many meditators so sensitive? They have to go to sleep on time. They can't watch movies; they have to be careful about their diet. They can't stand loud noises. They get tired in the middle of the day.It is not for the reasons you have been told. It is not because you are experiencing a refinement of the nervous system. Your physiology is getting weaker. It is because the process of TM is sucking you very life energy out of you. After you meditate in the dome you have to lie down just to recover.

When you do proper spiritual practice as discussed in the yoga sutras (and which I have studied), you jest need a minute or two to regain an outward direction and then you can get on with your activity with a very clear mind and very good energy.

Part ll

TM is not really a spiritual practice. It does give good rest to a lot of people who lead busy lives, but it does not necessarily rejuvenate the physiology. To understand this point you have to start to read the spiritual texts. You have to understand the yoga sutras and you have to study the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the major treatise on Hatha Yoga. Many older TM meditators (from the seventies) started TM and were interested in getting enlightened. They were interested in spiritual evolution. Mahesh with his practice and teaching has done an amazing thing. He has diverted the focus and efforts of a large group of spiritual seekers and made it so impossible for them to have spiritual progress that most of them have really lost interest in the idea of getting enlightened. This was one of Mahesh's true purposes in teaching TM (his other two being to make billions of dollars and suck energy from his followers). He has succeeded very well. In studying the basic Hindu texts and various other Tantric texts, I have come to understand that spiritual evolution is not a complicated process. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika talks about eh eight limbs of yoga. The first two, Yama and Niyama are really about living a good life. That is the basis for spiritual evolution. You live a loving, purposeful life. You are directed in your activity, you look after your family and friends, and you do good. In terms of spiritual practice, you have a balance of proper asana positions, pranayama techniques, hand mudras (which enliven certain brain centers) and meditation practice to bring about a holistic growth. The whole point of these practices is to enliven or wake up your kundalini shakti. This term is basic to any discussion of spiritual evolution. Every person has this latent energy in them referred to as kundalini (not creative intelligence, please!). This energy, which lays dormant in the lower chakra, needs to be awakened. It needs to travel up the sushumna enlivening the various charkas until it travels to the crown chakra and reunites with Shiva (pure consciousness). This is the real experience of unity, the reuniting of Shiva and Shakti. It is an experience beyond space and time. It is not the experience of silence moving into silence that the million dollar course participants and Mahesh talk about. It is the genuine spiritual experience discussed in all the scriptures of eternal bliss consciousness.

The proper physical breathing and mental practices, done diligently, have a holistic effect in improving one's life very quickly. The purpose of spiritual practice is to improve one's life, not to make one a slave to that spiritual practice. Most of the long term meditators I have talked to tell me that TM has not brought them good experiences for many years. The ones who have branched out and learned good yoga practices and found good alternative healers seem to be making some progress, a lot more than those who are diligently following Mahesh's programs.

In traditional spiritual teaching in India, an enlightened teacher takes on a few students and gives them a very unique and particular set of practices (asanas, pranayama, hand mudras and meditation techniques) that are geared just for that person. Each person has a different set of practices because each person has a unique physiology, psychology and spiritual make up. The teacher's responsibility is to help the student with his practices so that both his worldly life and spiritual life improve quickly. The spiritual practices a person is given are like a combination that allow the kundalini shakti to be directed up the sushumna and reach makara point, the chakra of the upper brow.

This is the beginning of a seeker's spiritual life because only the 6th and 7th chakras are considered the spiritual chakras and have to do with spiritual experience. The first five chakras have to do with material life so experience dealing with chakras is material experience. Because most TM meditators have not had this type of kundalini rising, they are still caught in the material world and have not really begun their spiritual transformation. What brings about spiritual transformation and the refinement of a person's physiology, psychology and overall life is the infusion of divine light into their being. The establishment of the kundalini shakti at makara creates a situation whereby the shakti, each person's own inner divine goddess, starts to take over and direct a person's growth. Only then is real spiritual progress possible. Only when the divine light begins to be seen and infused into a person does real progress take place.

In the yoga sutras of Patanjali yoga is defined as spiritual absorption.

When one meditates properly they do not experience blank mind. What happens is that a person learns to turn their attention within (pratyahara) and then through one pointed focus on a proper mantra (dharana) they quickly start to become absorbed in the divine light, the self-effulgent self. With the rightpractice this progress takes place in a matter of days, weeks or months, not decades. If you do not have the right practice then it will take lifetimes to have real progress.

I cannot prove this, but I have spoken with a number of people high up in the TM organization and with investment advisors of the TM organization and they have all told me the same thing, Mahesh has accumulated billions of dollars in assets for his family.

Mahesh is not a spiritually enlightened Vedic master. I know this is a really hard one to believe and the last one I let go of, but it is the truth. First of all, the darshan which people experience and the experience people have around Mahesh has nothing to with how spiritually enlightened people are. It is true that Mahesh has strong presence, but so do movie actors and famous athletes. Enlightened people usually don't project energy like Mahesh does. They keep it more to themselves. Also, people have amazing visual experiences and bliss experiences around Mahesh. But I have now come to see they are illusory. They are an occult trick Mahesh uses to brainwash his disciples. In reality, Mahesh is not interested in spiritual things. In the sixties and early seventies he had sex with a series of girlfriends. I have spoken with some of them in detail. Why do you think the Beatles left? It was because Mahesh put a move on Mia Farrow. She didn't make it up; he really went after her. Mahesh has been interested in power, in the accumulation of money, and in women.Why does he live in a big house, own helicopters, airplanes, etc? Why does he spend most of his time involved in business planning about making money? It is because he is a businessman who has the desires that other wealthy businessmen have. His spiritual front is his scam and the way he gets people to give him their time and money.

The TM-Sidhi program has nothing to do with Patanjali's teaching. I was on the course when Mahesh made up the program. He simply experimented with different sutras until he came up with something he thought would work. Do you really think that Patanjali had people do the sutras in English? It is not Mahesh's genius that he figured it all out. If you really want to know about the yoga sutras why don't you buy four or five of the translations and see what the top scholars have to say. The first thing you will find out is that the proper mantra to be repeated in meditation practice (and this is exactly Swaroopanand, the real Shankaracharya after Guru Dev says) includes the pranava, which is Om, at the beginning and end with the name of your personal deity in between. There is nothing wrong with the repetition or saying the word Om, it is the holiest of sounds and only brings good to life. Mahesh is the only so-called spiritual master I know of who has instilled fear in his disciples about saying Om. I think the problem Mahesh had in people repeating Om is that in the presence of its repetition astral beings lose their power and any evil influence is redirected back to its source. One other important point is that the mechanical repetition of a mantra without meaning or devotion brings no spiritual progress whatsoever. This point is referred to in the yoga sutras and in many discussions of great spiritual teachers. The mechanical repetition of some meaningless word brings no opening of the heart, no love in one's life, and no unfoldment of true spiritual values. Haven't you ever wondered why so many people in the TM movement seemed so heartless, especially the administrators the early courses? It was because their mechanical repetition of a meaningless word was actually closing their heart, not opening it. That is why so many people in the TM movement have suffered a sort of disassociation with so much of their life where they don't have the same feelings they used to. It's not because they are more highly evolved, it is because they are disconnected from their hearts.

There are no pundits and there will never be a group coming over to the U.S. I spoke with people who had helped organize the early group that was actually in existence but was disbanded long ago. I also spoke with one of the pundits who were in charge of training the pundit boys (the students). There are hardly any real pundits (there used to be around 15) because the movement would use them and then not pay them. I even spoke with Mahesh who personally told me he would never send real pundits to the U.S. because once they got here they would get better paying jobs. He said they would only send the pundit boys because then they could control them. It turns out several years ago my brother actually got approval from the U.S. State Department to bring a group of one or two thousand pundits to Heavenly Mountain. When it came time for the TM movement in India to give the U.S. Embassy the names of the pundits who would be coming over, we got word back that Maharishi had changed his mind and felt it was not a good time to send them. We realized then that the pundit thing was just a scam to raise money and since have had this verified by a number of different people.

Mahesh installed his own Shankaracharya keeps him on the payroll. This way when he sends people to India he sends them to his own Shankaracharya who tells people whatever Mahesh wants them to hear. The real Shankaracharya was chosen by the other Shankaracharyas and sits at important spiritual meetings with them. They will not even allow themselves to be seen in the same hall with Mahesh's Shankaracharya, lest someone get the wrong idea.

Mahesh wants your money and he wants it badly. After I had donated so much money and fulfilled all of my commitments, a friend of mine heard Mahesh ranting about the fact that he had not gotten the last half of my fortune. I warn you all, Mahesh will keep milking you for every penny he can get from you until he bleeds you dry and then he will discard you as so much dead wood.

The TM organization will stop at nothing to protect their secrets and to smear anyone who tries to get in their way. My brother is now the number one enemy of the movement. Before that, Deepak was the number one enemy. There is always a number one enemy. If you really want to understand the dealing of Mahesh and the TM movement, please read "The Guru Papers, Masks of Authoritarian Power" by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. Reading this one book will go a long way to helping you liberate yourself from the years of brainwashing and mental anguish you have suffered at the hands of the TM movement.

Mahesh has told everyone never to talk to psychics. I have finally realized why. My brother and I have talked to a number of very well known psychics in the U.S. and we have been amazed. Most of them have never even heard of Maharishi and when they put their attention on him they say the same thing. They find he is a very dark and evil being. They talk about his greed, his sexual liaisons and his need for power and to control his disciples. They talk about astral beings he controls who are able to control other people's minds. These same psychics can tell you all about your life and things that have happened. I am not into talking to psychics but I think it is interesting how Mahesh always steered us clear of them. We thought it was for our protection, when in reality it was because Mahesh didn't want you to hear what they had to say about him. Mahesh deals with psychic and occult powers as opposed to the celestial realms and gaining real knowledge. He doesn't want you to know about this.

Finally, I have known some very enlightened children who, upon meeting Mahesh, would comment that what they saw was an evil demon in disguise. At the time I thought they were unstressing. But now I see what was really happening. Mahesh puts on this guise of being a warm and loving spiritual master when in reality he is after money, power and control. These children would actually see his real form, a form most of us are not able to see.

Why are people in the TM movement told that if they want to make some real spiritual progress then they have to meditate every day longer and longer periods of time, they have to be far away from normal people, they have to eat certain things, do certain things, live certain ways? It is because TM is not a real spiritual practice; it is a cult. In real practice you start to feel the brotherhood of all mankind. As you become more established in the Self you have more flexibility. Less and less affects you in a negative way. You become less dependent on your outside environment and more dependent on who you are. You are able to see the joy in all situations and be more and more in the moment.

Are you trapped in a cult? Are most of your friends TM meditators. Do you live in a Shtapatya Vedic house? Do you donate money to the TM movement? Do you not feel so good unless you go to the dome? Do you read other discussions of spiritual texts or do you feel that would be wrong to expose yourself to other's opinions. Do you feel a little funny about your family members because they don't meditate, they eat meat; they haven't come across the true knowledge yet? Do you feel TM is the highest knowledge and really the only way? Does your mind create circular arguments in discussing your own evolution or spiritual knowledge to make the point that everything Maharishi says is exactly right? Do you feel a little bit sorry for other people who haven't quite realized that TM is the truth, the light, the only way to God? Do you think that even though you haven't gotten enlightened yet that it is just around the corner and you know that some day it is coming. Or else, by now it doesn't matter because you know that some day Maharishi will take care of all that? Do you feel sorry for me that I have fallen off the path?! Fellow spiritual seeker, I say a prayer for you that one day you can wake up and take back the responsibility for your own spiritual progress and for your own life. The world is a wonderful place and there are so many wonderful people from so many different walks of life. There are so many successful paths to God to Love and to Self-Realization. Mahesh's influence and power have diminished significantly. So many people in Fairfield are starting to wake up from a thirty year dream to recapture their life and to enjoy what is left of this turn on earth. Good luck! With sincere prayers and an open heart everyone can find the truth. But you have to start to look! With love and gratitude to all my friends and acquaintances in Fairfield. One day may you say to yourself, for many years I was a seeker, but now I can honestly say I have become a finder.

Love,

Earl