VOLUME 5 |NUMBER 2 |2014 17
About the Author
Stephen Coleman
is currently working in the mental-health
field. He volunteers in prisons and
travels, teaching simple mental health in
poor nations. He is married and has four
children from his first marriage. ■
If any bad news came up, the explanation given was that the
world was unstressing. I struggled for about a month with what
unstressing could be. What is wrong with me? What’s missing? And
a thousand other questions to myself. It wasn’t making any sense.
Eventually I earned the reputation as a rabble-rouser because I
was complaining about the lousy classes. One of the teachers
called me into her office and told me I was unstressing for saying
the classes were garbage.
Suddenly, the answer to my question popped into my head, and I
replied instantly, “How can I tell the difference between
unstressing and my conscience?”This poor lady was
dumbfounded and actually broke into tears. She had no answer.
Telling people they are unstressing is the main method of mind
control they use at MIU and in the TM
movement. They say that you are
unstressing to get you not to pay attention
to your very own inner voice that is saying,
“Something is very wrong here.” So
anybody who buys unstressing is already
under their control. Victims can no longer
trust their own inner instincts and
thoughts. Now they can be controlled and
made to pay outrageous amounts of
money for advanced techniques or
Maharishi’s mercury-laced pills, which I
called “enlightenment in a bottle.”
I remember hearing a conversation that involved several TM
teachers who were taking the core courses. I heard them complain
for nearly fifteen minutes about how terrible the classes were.
Then one said, “Oh, we must be just unstressing. Anything
Maharishi has done is perfect.” A few agreed, and that was the end
of the conversation.
Some of my friends had entered into the TM-Sidhi program. When
they graduated from the program, their personalities had changed,
and I didn’t like what I saw. They were constantly complaining of
“lack of rest,” and they began to isolate themselves, leaving behind
their social lives. This couldn’t be good. But they all claimed they
felt great, and that the “Yogic Flying” was exhilarating.
I began telling all the students I could about my discovery. A
handful of them listened and left MIU, but the majority said I was...
you know... unstressing. Staff began to harass me. Security was on
my case. Suddenly, all my grades became Fs. I could not go
anywhere without staff or somebody hassling me. I no longer felt
safe and started saving up so I could get out of there.
A friend found one of my final exams randomly thrown on a
hallway floor. Tracked over and trampled, it was marked all over
with red ink. The teacher wrote that this was the worst exam he
had ever seen in his career.
This same friend took the very same class the next semester, and
the same teacher held up a photocopy my final exam as an
example of providing great answers, getting directly to the point,
and not wasting any words. My friend nearly fell off his chair in
laughter, much to the puzzlement of his classmates.
I quit the courses, but the finance office would not let me have my
money back (and MIU is not cheap the tuition is comparable to
an Ivy League school). So I continued to live on campus since I
couldn’t get my money back. I was working in the school cafeteria
as a townie, and then they fired me.
Near the end of the semester, I was called into a meeting with the
faculty. I was told higher education was not for me and I was... you
guessed it... unstressing. They counseled that I should find a trade
or something. The campus psychologist was actually siding with
me until he was corrected for unstressing. They expelled me from
MIU for speaking the truth. Certainly, I was quite pleased with
myself for standing up to them and figuring out how they were
brainwashing us. I wondered how PhD students could be duped
by such a simple yet evil and debilitating method of mind control.
In retrospect, the majority of MIU students and staff seemed to
me to be good people. I quickly made friends. Everybody there
was into self-improvement, and there were so many different and
interesting ideas to explore. Never did I see any drugs or alcohol. I
never saw any violence or gross misbehavior commonly seen on
campuses. I did, however, encounter a small cell of Satanists on
campus.
I had a nice racing bicycle and many times left it unlocked. It was
never stolen, and I never heard from anybody about their bicycles
being stolen. In some ways, MIU was a
paradise but underneath it all was a
stealth hell clutching at the souls of
innocent and good people.
Unfortunately, Maharishi took a lot of
good, sincere people to the cleaners and
screwed up their lives. Some of the town
folk who came into the TM movement
gave all they had for the never-ending
“new techniques” that came out every few
months or so.
It took nearly twenty years for my thoughts to become coherent
again and for me to shake the anxiety disorder that arose during
my time at MIU. The spaciness left quickly after I quit TM, but the
dissociation was the last to leave.
Many people involved in the TM movement were spacy and
pleasantly goofy. It was as if they were all on some sort of
tranquilizer. I began calling the town of Fairfield, Iowa (where MIU
is located) the “city of happy emptiness” and MIU “a bottom-rate
university with delusions of grandeur.”
Thank God that I only wasted 1 year there. Can you imagine
wasting 20 or 30 years getting your brains scrambled in a place like
MIU? Staff members were paid $50 per month plus room and
board. The PhD students were being paid just $100. In my opinion,
hundreds of these honest, sincere people are still unwittingly
wasting their lives, bank accounts, and talents in virtual slavery to
the ideas and memory of a dangerous charlatan, Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi. ■
Note
[1] Now Maharishi University of Management (MUM).
It took nearly
twenty years
for my thoughts
to become
coherent again…
About the Author
Stephen Coleman
is currently working in the mental-health
field. He volunteers in prisons and
travels, teaching simple mental health in
poor nations. He is married and has four
children from his first marriage. ■
If any bad news came up, the explanation given was that the
world was unstressing. I struggled for about a month with what
unstressing could be. What is wrong with me? What’s missing? And
a thousand other questions to myself. It wasn’t making any sense.
Eventually I earned the reputation as a rabble-rouser because I
was complaining about the lousy classes. One of the teachers
called me into her office and told me I was unstressing for saying
the classes were garbage.
Suddenly, the answer to my question popped into my head, and I
replied instantly, “How can I tell the difference between
unstressing and my conscience?”This poor lady was
dumbfounded and actually broke into tears. She had no answer.
Telling people they are unstressing is the main method of mind
control they use at MIU and in the TM
movement. They say that you are
unstressing to get you not to pay attention
to your very own inner voice that is saying,
“Something is very wrong here.” So
anybody who buys unstressing is already
under their control. Victims can no longer
trust their own inner instincts and
thoughts. Now they can be controlled and
made to pay outrageous amounts of
money for advanced techniques or
Maharishi’s mercury-laced pills, which I
called “enlightenment in a bottle.”
I remember hearing a conversation that involved several TM
teachers who were taking the core courses. I heard them complain
for nearly fifteen minutes about how terrible the classes were.
Then one said, “Oh, we must be just unstressing. Anything
Maharishi has done is perfect.” A few agreed, and that was the end
of the conversation.
Some of my friends had entered into the TM-Sidhi program. When
they graduated from the program, their personalities had changed,
and I didn’t like what I saw. They were constantly complaining of
“lack of rest,” and they began to isolate themselves, leaving behind
their social lives. This couldn’t be good. But they all claimed they
felt great, and that the “Yogic Flying” was exhilarating.
I began telling all the students I could about my discovery. A
handful of them listened and left MIU, but the majority said I was...
you know... unstressing. Staff began to harass me. Security was on
my case. Suddenly, all my grades became Fs. I could not go
anywhere without staff or somebody hassling me. I no longer felt
safe and started saving up so I could get out of there.
A friend found one of my final exams randomly thrown on a
hallway floor. Tracked over and trampled, it was marked all over
with red ink. The teacher wrote that this was the worst exam he
had ever seen in his career.
This same friend took the very same class the next semester, and
the same teacher held up a photocopy my final exam as an
example of providing great answers, getting directly to the point,
and not wasting any words. My friend nearly fell off his chair in
laughter, much to the puzzlement of his classmates.
I quit the courses, but the finance office would not let me have my
money back (and MIU is not cheap the tuition is comparable to
an Ivy League school). So I continued to live on campus since I
couldn’t get my money back. I was working in the school cafeteria
as a townie, and then they fired me.
Near the end of the semester, I was called into a meeting with the
faculty. I was told higher education was not for me and I was... you
guessed it... unstressing. They counseled that I should find a trade
or something. The campus psychologist was actually siding with
me until he was corrected for unstressing. They expelled me from
MIU for speaking the truth. Certainly, I was quite pleased with
myself for standing up to them and figuring out how they were
brainwashing us. I wondered how PhD students could be duped
by such a simple yet evil and debilitating method of mind control.
In retrospect, the majority of MIU students and staff seemed to
me to be good people. I quickly made friends. Everybody there
was into self-improvement, and there were so many different and
interesting ideas to explore. Never did I see any drugs or alcohol. I
never saw any violence or gross misbehavior commonly seen on
campuses. I did, however, encounter a small cell of Satanists on
campus.
I had a nice racing bicycle and many times left it unlocked. It was
never stolen, and I never heard from anybody about their bicycles
being stolen. In some ways, MIU was a
paradise but underneath it all was a
stealth hell clutching at the souls of
innocent and good people.
Unfortunately, Maharishi took a lot of
good, sincere people to the cleaners and
screwed up their lives. Some of the town
folk who came into the TM movement
gave all they had for the never-ending
“new techniques” that came out every few
months or so.
It took nearly twenty years for my thoughts to become coherent
again and for me to shake the anxiety disorder that arose during
my time at MIU. The spaciness left quickly after I quit TM, but the
dissociation was the last to leave.
Many people involved in the TM movement were spacy and
pleasantly goofy. It was as if they were all on some sort of
tranquilizer. I began calling the town of Fairfield, Iowa (where MIU
is located) the “city of happy emptiness” and MIU “a bottom-rate
university with delusions of grandeur.”
Thank God that I only wasted 1 year there. Can you imagine
wasting 20 or 30 years getting your brains scrambled in a place like
MIU? Staff members were paid $50 per month plus room and
board. The PhD students were being paid just $100. In my opinion,
hundreds of these honest, sincere people are still unwittingly
wasting their lives, bank accounts, and talents in virtual slavery to
the ideas and memory of a dangerous charlatan, Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi. ■
Note
[1] Now Maharishi University of Management (MUM).
It took nearly
twenty years
for my thoughts
to become
coherent again…
