“Schismogenesis”
Doug Hamilton
“Schismogenesis”
-quoted excerpts here come from: Communal Societies, Journal of the Communal Studies Association, V37 1, Spring 2017, Lane Atmore, Death of a Guru: An Analysis of the Postcharismatic Phase in the Transcendental Meditation Movement.
Quoting Atmore: “The idea of “schismogenesis” was first identified by Gregory Bateson to describe the ways in which relationship between individual or groups deteriorate. Schismogenesis occurs in several different ways: factional schismogenesis , in which a group splinters into two or more distinct group; apostatizing schismogenesis, in which an individual separates from the group; symmetrical schismogenesis, in which individuals from the group compete directly with each other, the severity of competition increasing equally on each side; and complementary schismogenesis, in which a rift forms between unequal partners playing the roles of dominant and submissive.
Bateson treats the events involved in schismogenesis as openly recognized by both parties. However, in my study of Fairfield, Iowa it became apparent that schisms are not always overt and recognized by those involved in them. In some cases, schism occur without the knowledge of one or more parties, which I will refer to as a covert schism or overt schismogenesis. This can often lead to overt schismogenesis (Batesons’ openly recognized schism) once the schism has progressed to a certain point. However, this does not mean schismogenesis is not occurring until it has become overt; there are still social rifts forming during the covert phase. This necessitates a slight redefinition of schismogenesis, in which the term encompasses all situations in which rifts form between people, whether overt, covert, or in a processual relationship from covert to overt.”
dbraff8 in comment writes:
Fascinating. I Googled the author and title to read the entire piece. I taught and practiced TM for over 35 years. It was invaluable earlier in my life. I look on my spiritual journey as starting with being a devout Catholic, experiencing spiritual malaise, finding TM, dissatisfaction, flirtation with New Age "vacuity", and finally transitioning to a more fulfilling Vedic teaching and practice. All the steps were valuable. It's sort of like taking a train to a certain point, then switching trains, then another. Each has its purpose and value.
Thanks,dbraff8. You give a good example that is noteworthy in aspects of where communal meditating Fairfield, Iowa has withdrawn or disaffiliated itself from the TM.org in Fairfield either covertly or overtly.
A Lot of people have come and are now gone away and yet there remains in community a diversity within a core set of values and practices in meditationist transcendentalism that stays on in Fairfield, Iowa. The next years in demography will be more telling about the remains.
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In “Schismogenesis”,
there is some, none and all of these gradation of schismogenesis apparent in meditating Fairfield, Ia. depending on where you look at it. Looking into the sub-communities, the University, The Global Country folks, the TM.org folks, MSAE, the Dome attenders, the meditating community young and old in town and describing them each relative to each other is a feature of Fairfield, Iowa. Parsing gradations of schismogenesis within and between them becomes narrative in a larger story.
Exampling Schismosis:
Factional schismogenesis, in which a group splinters
In what TM movement community meditators can recognize as creed, different with those who are seen as ‘devotee’ True-Believers’ with their orthodox ‘faith and belief’ in Maharishi or in ‘Maharishi’s Knowledge’, and then ‘practitioner meditators’ who are here in a state of experience otherwise gained from their practice. - the practitioners. Meditators.
A burning question of ‘sufficiency’ gets made of those meditators seen as ‘Off the Program’ (OTP) who otherwise had sought a company of healers or spiritual people of their own wellbeing. And, then there are those true-believers who have not.
ie., in driving administrative factional schismogenesis from deeper held cultural organizational jealousies over monies spent on and loyalty to ‘non-Maharishi’ jyotish, yagya and other products by an active decades- long administrative separation of meditator’s memberships from the communal group meditations such administration has created factions of the affiliated and the unaffiliated TM Fairfield meditator.
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Apostatizing schismogenesis, in which an individual separates
Deepak Chopra, Ravi Shankar, and others for example (See BATGAP interviews of old TM’ers now with their own separate spiritual .orgs).
Symmetrical schismogenesis, in which individuals from the group compete directly with each other,
For instance: Jerry Jarvis with SIMS/IMS with Charlie Lutes with SRM as factions. Also a pre1980’s older pre-Siddhis era of an organized meditation teaching movement and then an administrative Morris-Patterson era centralized guardian style over ‘Maharishi’s knowledge’.
Complementary schismogenesis, a rift forms between unequal partners playing the roles of dominant and submissive.
Socio-economic power differentials throughout: Money = access.
Old TM initiators and Governors.
Council of Rajas Patriarchy v Mother Divine.
The Dome badge membership.
Recertification/ de-certification of teachers.
India and the West.
TM of before the Vedic Science course in India 1993, and then after.
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In Fairfield, Iowa, meditator ‘conversations’..
Q: Schismogenesis in the Fairfield meditating community?
A: On the superficial level there is some but experientially not so much. There are going to be the whack-jobs like (..) that are fractured, the mentally fractured. There is mental fracturing as that is described, but yet again here he ( elderly demented returnee) is again. He came to Fairfield. An old TM 'er ( ), left went out angry upset, rejected, and he came back, why? Because experientially there is continuum here, there is understanding here built on that. Experience. There is experience.
In a community of idea or faith that is one thing in fracture or schism. This is different in a practice in experience here than a community of ‘faith’. To a community of faith that is one thing to have fracture in faith or schismogenesis or whatever.
a cultural framing..
"..Some types of schismogenic behavior are expressed, yes. But what we have here in community is.. ‘there is no schism is possible in consciousness’. (beware who is ‘the crack in consciousness’)
She, the author of the paper is not going to see that because she does not meditate, she is not going to understand what that means and the implication of it and that is what really is the profound quality of Fairfield, Iowa that sets it apart from any other community because you do have so many people that do have experience regardless of their faith or their belief structure, they are informed by an experience somewhat, wherever they are in it. That is why it is different. It just is.
Not just around which of some Mormon or some minister or someone whoever woo-haw fracturing of some group over some alignment, in congregations of Christians, literalists, or whatever they are it is all built on faith, it is just an idea. Of course they are going to have schism How they believe in hell, whether over foot washing or full immersion or other sillinesses of course there is going to be schisms with that."
“ ‘Schismogenesis’? What a hoot. Someone got their doctorate coming up with that term.”
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Q: In a communalism that is here in Fairfield, Ia. it is interesting to see that there has been overt and covert schismatic processes going on that is reflected in subsets of community that are here. Academic, global country, the meditating community in town.
A: Those are ideas, alignment of belief structure. This does not touch the commonality of the experience in this which is consciousness itself. It, the experience of state in transcendentalism, is like an ultimate unifier even when groups get together in Fairfield.
If you go around a room of the meditating community and really ask people and you will get people who are really deep TM’ers then to people who are ™’ers and Mahur Baba people, Ammachi, Mother Meera, Art of Living, whatever. They are exploring or have gone into; waking down, Artee, mystic Christianity, all of it is informed by the experience of this TM. In going around, in spite of that, we all can understand this because we all know what we are talking about because it is in the experiential. This is how deep does that TM community go. Does it have to be ‘schism’ or is it the expression of diversity in the community of the experience.
A: “Is not this diversity in community with the transcendent experience a good thing? That you could have such diversity exploring and such unified perspective. Avenues of teachings, pathways or faithways that relate. Informed by experience, is that diversity a schism or a healthy diversification?”
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Using “schismogenesis” as an anthropologist's social science vehicle for driving through the Fairfield, Iowa story becomes a whole different level of exploration into the story of community.
At the 2016 Communal Studies Association Annual Conference I presented a paper as an overview road-map interpretation for outsiders who would look in on meditating Fairfield, Ia. An irony is that locals are not themselves necessarily able to fathom the meditating community..
The Text of that paper is posted as:
Describing Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/Hbd4EfxrbU0
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“Is it necessary for something to be strong for everyone to act and behave in a similar way on a behavioral level? This is one of the amazing things about Fairfield, Ia. is that it proves ‘no you don’t have to be’. That you can have wildly different people who believe, have wildly different politics, different religions, all of it, and ask them and it is TM where they all started and are informed by. It is incredible.”
Q: Yet,
People, practicing meditators, were disaffiliated from the group?
A: Just on the intellectual level of belief by personality of administration. The naturally limiting value of beliefs is that not everyone is going to believe the same thing. Just like a forest of trees are not going to be all elms.
And yet disaffiliation has happened. Separating people over belief structures, over ‘devotion to the guru’, pressing an alignment to the guru. That is really what is under the TM Dome guidelines for membership and how they have been enforced for decades. A contriving of assertion that people made promises and that people are in violation and should be punished and separated.
For example,
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/PXOdRY1SlUY
“People, meditators are for getting done what needs are for themselves as what they are getting done communally.”
“Within the various meditator infused churches, temples, and spiritual groups, in
Fairfield, Iowa this has not just only to do with groups meditating, the transcendent is an important part of it, Maharishi got it off to a realy good start, Jai Guru Dev. It is fantastic. We have a transcendent practice, Jai Guru Dev. But the need to go beyond that in terms of how we are going to live it, that is what is happening in Fairfield. Group meditative practice wherever you find it. ..The Trillium people, the Art of Living people, the Oneness people, the meditators in the Liberal Catholic churches, the meditators in the Jewish, the St.Germain, Baha’i, and the Hindu Temples, the silent Quakers in Meeting, go for it.”
Meditator Quakers? ..
A history of Ff’s silent (meditating) Quaker meetings
Friends Journal article,
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The TM Diaspora...
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/385494
Q:The tru-beliver would look at it that there is a schism where people would go off to see other gurus or spiritual people and groups?
A: "That is their problem and it does not have to have anything to do with what people are doing out here in the meditating community. But it is in the complexion of the community that is here. That there was a falling apart in an aspect of the community. Falling away from the group experience and the reference point of that experience by administration."
Q: Cognitive dissonance, a TM v Yogic Flying Schismogenesis?
A: Schismosis? Asking around here about the ‘schism’ at the time that ‘yogic flying’ came out and people here are noting that a number of even their own TM initiators who taught TM in the mid and later 1960’s and the very early 1970’s did not make a hop over with the introduction of the sidhis and yogic flying in mid and late 1970’s to TM.
The published 1975 metrics of the TM movement from then catch a picture of a time right before the introduction of yogic flying. Some of the teachers who were then the experienced workhorses in a honed TM teaching movement stepped back, separating and went on to other things in their lives.
See the TM communal metrics from 1975, just before the advent of the TM-Siddhis and Yogic Flying:
1975..
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/438379
Whether it was with the coming of the sidhis and yogic flying or the ,org turning out of people at that time that happened organizationally right then also; it seemed then a time of effect by something like both ‘The Great Leap Forward’ and ‘Cultural Revolution’ in combination of short order.
I remember the older leader people of TM leaving, retired aside and a number of the boomer generation TM teachers turned out went back to graduate school. My own TM initiator who was on an early India teacher course with Maharishi went on to a longer career outside of TM as a university professor.
Jai Guru Dev,
Year 1975..
TM in the United States:
5799 Initiators
Initiations per Month: 16,000
440,000 meditators
World Plan Centers: 205
Satellite Centres: 173
ATR Courses given: 48
Residence SIMS Courses: Numerous
Etc.,
Source: World Plan Executive Council
First National Leaders’ Conference in the
Age of Enlightenment (1975) National Reports
In contrast, 1975:
Germany with 664 initiators doing 1000 initiations a month and 54,000 meditators,
England 305 initiators doing 1,400 initiations a month and 40,000 meditators,
France with 92 initiators initiating 250 per month & 5,577 meditators,
Sweden with 122 initiators initiating 400 per month and 27,000 meditators,
Canada with 553 initiators initiating 3,500 per month and 89,853 meditators.
..Etc.,
Within a couple of years of this 1975 report, Jerry Jarvis and other capable experienced teachers were turned out as that epoch ended in a great leap forward with ‘teams of four’ sent out usurping what was a then honed teaching organization. Thence in metrics in the 1980’s and 1990’s TM under a Morris-Patterson era of administration effectively disappeared from popular culture. By y-2006 initiations in the USA were running less than 200 per month and most assets of the teaching movement had been sold off. From 2006 others have struggled with what .org was in place to re-inflate something that was TM. Jai Guru Dev.
,
Office of the National Director
Raja John Hagelin
Maharishi Foundation USA
PO Box 670
Fairfield, IA 52556
March 17, 2018
In Honor of Our Dear Jerry Jarvis
Dear Governors,
It is with heartfelt love and fondest memories that we announce the sudden passing of dear Jerry Jarvis on Wednesday afternoon, at his Malibu home. In honor of Jerry and in lieu of flowers, we are pleased to announce a special fund to support Debby, his loving, devoted wife.
September 1961
In September of 1961, Jerry and Debby were instructed by Maharishi, and, after their first experience of the Transcendent, knew that the direction of their lives was forever transformed. They immediately began to study and work with Maharishi, helping him to create and grow the U.S. and international TM® organizations.
Science of Being and Art of Living
Jerry and Debby went on to become TM teachers in 1966 in Rishikesh, India. Both former journalists for the Congressional Quarterly, they later helped to transcribe and edit Maharishi’s Science of Being and Art of Living and his translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita. Over the next decade and a half, Jerry rose to become the national leader of the TM organization in the U.S., and was instrumental in developing over 400 TM Centers, which brought the TM technique to more than one million Americans.
Maharishi’s quest to spiritually regenerate the world
The story of Maharishi’s worldwide movement is the cosmic, eternal story of the unfoldment of pure knowledge. And there is perhaps no part of this ever-evolving story that is more beloved than the early days, when Maharishi first set out alone on his worldwide quest to spiritually regenerate the world. It was Jerry’s extraordinary heart and naturally wise and mature guidance that played such a vital role in shepherding the many newly trained, youthful TM teachers at this early stage of Maharishi’s quickly growing organization.
Our precious times with Jerry, his ever-present, bright, shining face, and the many wondrous, heartfelt stories, life-lessons, and beautiful examples of purity and devotion will always be a cherished part of our TM organization’s history.
Archives and special manuscripts of Maharishi that were donated by Jerry and Debby will become an invaluable treasure at MUM. Once these materials are sorted and curated, they will be available to Meditators, Sidhas, and Governors everywhere.
A passion for Maharishi’s knowledge
In addition to his enduring love for Debby, there was nothing that Jerry felt more passionate about than Maharishi’s knowledge. His commitment to Pure Knowledge took several forms: from personal study and scholarly research, to Advanced Lectures on Maharishi Vedic Science, and his transformational courses on Maharishi’s translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, which he shared with so many over the decades.
A very special memorial service for Jerry is being organized in California for early April. We hope that many will also be able to connect online. (Details to come.)
We send our deepest love and appreciation to his beloved Debby, who has been such a source of nourishment and wisdom for Jerry and all of us for more than 50 years.
Jai Guru Dev
Raja John
Maharishi Foundation USA