--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradhatu@> wrote: > > > > > > On Nov 24, 2008, at 6:41 PM, Peter wrote: > > > > > "...theoretical discussions of how it works..." > > > > > > It doesn't work. Nobody flys. There is no > > > empirical phenomena to explain. How can you > > > have a theoretical discussion about nothing? > > > > > > It's not about discussion Pete, it is about > > virally inseminating the web with the mind-virus > > that the Mahesh Effect is real. Wherever you > > search, that's the answer you come up with. > > > > Must be true. Or at very least the illusion > > appears true. And that's really all that > > matters. If you search for meditation and some health > > problem, what they want is for your search to bring > > up their name and their brand that they're selling. > > It must be true. Found it on the web. > > > > You''re not far off, I think. AN old friend of > mine, a Unitarian-Universalist minister with no > personal interest in TM, said he thought MMY wa > trying to cause a paradigm shift in the world > merely by talking up Yogic Flying so > much. > > Lawson
One thing the yogic flying meme has accomplished has been to reposition meditation in marketing terms. Before yogic flying, meditation had been equated with relaxation. After yogic flying, it was associated with hovering. You see it all the time in generic depictions of meditation: the person is sitting in a lotus position, hovering a few feet off the floor. These are images that have no association with Maharishi or the TM organization. For example: http://tinyurl.com/5ejwot Such a depiction suggests that meditation offers much more than mellowness, making it more desirable and justifying a higher instruction fee.