Nice talking points on George, I'm glad you took the time to post them. As food for thought it was certainly a success. I liked your comparison with literature and if he had presented it as a dramatic one man show he had created, I would feel differently about the whole thing. He is a creative guy and has a sense of drama. It would have impressed me more if that is how it had been presented.
But it wasn't. (BTW none of this is presented as a counter to anything you said. I am using your enjoyable post as a writing prompt without acknowledging all the points you made.) It was presented as being an actual discussion with the not so dead Maharishi on the other side. That claim needed an epistemological ramp for the rest of us and we never got one. It was sort of breezily addressed in the beginning that we could believe whatever we wanted. He also made the case that the quality of the information itself should be its own verification. I didn't hear anything that would require resorting to a supernatural source for these ideas and images. He seem perfectly capable on his own having written numerous books containing many of the ideas presented as coming from Maharishi. I could tell from talking with people at the event that George's business success was an influencing factor on people taking him seriously. I don't know how I feel about that. In general I am wary of even doctors writing diet books, since they receive so little nutrition training. I think people tend to get more credit than is deserved for being successful in one field and then trying to transfer the feeling of credibility to another unrelated area. It is one of our cognitive gaps probably created out of our social hierarchy aware primate nature. Our brains were really not built to deal with the kind of distinctions we are faced with today. Man has lots of bananas so must be alpha! The case for why we should take what he said seriously was for him to make. I find it curious that none of the smarty pants holy traditions dudes could anticipate that such an argument was missing but was deserved. It sort of put us in the position of unwarranted faith in a guy I didn't even know. That doesn't sound like respectful epistemological awareness to me. I told George that although I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, I could think of all sorts of ways to present this in a way that would be viewed with more credibility from the movement or from reasonable people. He didn't address my point but restated some of the history of presenting it to Hagelin. I told him that I thought it was Maharishi's responsibility to present it in a way the people he personally chose to run his movement could accept. By the time he gave it to George, it was too late. George thought the knowledge stood on its own as its proof. I told him that I thought any of us could have created these ideas, they did not require supernatural agency. Then we had to go. On one hand we have the possibility that it was all as George presented, a discussion with dead people about how we should view life. On the other we have all the vagaries of the human mind with its fantastic generative abilities within and outside our consciousness. Coming back to your example of literature, I know which one rings truest to me. I think he made way too much of a big deal about fear. Fear is my friend when I need it, and not a dominate emotion that rules my life otherwise. I don't have any complaints for how fear helps me keep my eye on the ball of survival and don't need any more or any less. I thought all those holy guys were way off the mark in its importance as something they needed to tell us. I would have preferred a cure for cancer! Thanks again for continuing the discussion. I find many levels of fascination concerning how people view this event. Any other perspectives you want to share would be welcome. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <seerdope@...> wrote : Possibly there is more to it. Or not. I watched the Hammond video last night. Its easy to dismiss him and cast him off as delusional(1). Yet art and literature are not real either, even still, they may open us up to new ways of viewing the world, and induce new ideas and internal hypotheses -- even if the artist was bat-assed crazy. My take away is that while his story is rather far-fetched, and he may be delusional, some useful points may have emerged, both directly and from subsequent pondering. One Hammond theme is that religious founders/leaders' messages and strategies were experimental attempts focused on incrementally improving a select set of problems for specific time, place and group of people, not universal truths applicable for all ages, problems and peoples -- and as such these targeted strategies had some unintended and unexpected negative consequences that continue through to today. And that attempts to apply such strategies to today's world are major steps backwards, not forward. He suggests righteous anger as an example of a method used in a particular era of the old testament -- focussed on combatting a perceived major problem of lethargy and laziness of a particular time and place. Not stated as such, increasing rajas to reduce tomas might be the yogic parallel. When tomas is reduced, the method is no longer applicable. But these focussed methods such as righteous anger endured past their usefulness, took on a life of their own, and create larger problems than the original ones intended to be solved. Second, he dismisses the notion that these strategies were created by an all-knowing all powerful deity. Rather he suggests that they were brainstormed and thought out by by good intentioned, smart, yet limited individuals. Jehovah is presented as a man -- who was inaccurately deified by later "faithful" generations and centuries. (And his premise that Jehovah and Allah are the same, in his model, suggests the violence-prone parallels of some sects of all of the Abrahamic religions.) Third, it was suggested that fear is the greatest block to social, individual and spiritual progress. My take is that irrational arguments and actions, particularly when networked across many nodes in a mob mentality situation, are driven by, are a response to, inner fear, particularly fear of change. For example, rapid change in culture adaptation of new technology, etc may cause many to cling to outdated traditions, self-help / religious models as antidotes to inner fear of change. Some good examples are the ones cited in your post on religious fundamentalism. And that while lashing out at the irrational is reasonable and rational, a personal trait -- and one which I observe many seem to share, the impetus towards such may be rooted in fear of irrational mindsets and groups, fear of loss when such gets out of hand, spirals out of control, the world run amuck by the irrational mob (too many examples to list). Ultimately decomposed also to a fear of change. Fourth, Hammond premises that the process of "turning within" whether TM, any meditation, prayer, any means that enable us to better know and understand our own minds -- both its limits and more limitless aspects, is the most efficient and perhaps singular antidote to fear. And he suggests that there are many effective methods to turn within (currently available and yet to be derived) devoid of traditional, cultural and religious trappings. (And that within traditional cultures and religions there are existing practices, such as prayer, which can (though not always) turn the mind within and quiet the chaos of more manifest chatter and "noise". Consequently, a solution path for reducing fear of change-- both among the irrational adherents to outdated cultural/religious practices and dogma as a, as well as fear by more the more rational -- who have (possibly unacknowledged) fear of the former -- the uncertainty and chaos of the irrational mob, may be deriving and applying, making more universally available and helping to support adaptation of such, cultural and dogma free methods of turning within. (1) I was surprised to read Hammond's bio -- 25 years as successful corporate lawyer working on global mergers and acquisitions -- clearly an odd career culmination for the alleged soul of Brighu, Jacob, one of Jesus' apostles, Plato, Johnathan Swift and Mark Twain. Yet the career, and his nominal clarity as a speaker distinguishes him from babbling street person babbling and run-of-the-mill new-age crazy.
