[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: what thype of rigorous requirements would you suggest for studies done on homeopathy? I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some of the recent attempts to demonize that practice in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me given what I know of the practice, is that con- trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor- ous requirement because every patient in home- opathy is treated differently, based on their own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com- plaining of the same primary symptom might be treated completely differently given their *other* symptoms. Not a problem. You can still double blind. Have a group of people with the same disorder (maybe migraine headaches). Have homoeopaths treat all of them, but some of the homeopaths, randomly assigned, will be dispensing placebos. Let them all see the patients over time so if they want to do some adjusting they can. They just won't have control over what is in the pill bottle. That's pretty much what I came up with, too. Thanks. I'm not really pushing homeopathy or anything, I was just curious. Still curious, I'm wondering how you ever get patients to *participate* in studies like this? Do you pay them? And do you tell them the truth about the protocols of the study? It seems to me that if you tell them the truth, and that only half of them are going to get real medicine, then they know ahead of time that they only have a 50% chance of getting relief from what ails them, so why participate? That's why I ask whether you pay them. On the other hand, if you lie to them and suggest that everyone is getting medicine, aren't you setting up your *own* placebo effect?
[FairfieldLife] The case for giving Europe back to the Basques
Before the Indo-Europeans arrived in Europe in the late Neolithic Europe was populated by other people. They got pushed to the margins and presently the sole surviving remnant seem to be represented by the Basque people of North West Spain and SW France. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language. Since the ancestors of the Basques must have inhabited Europe for a much longer time than the Indo-European invaders, then according to the legal precedent set by the UN in creating Israel; Europe should be awarded to the Basque people. Likewise all of America should be given back to the native Indians, and all of Australia to the native Australians. Native Americans even have legal documents granting them rights over various bits of land, though every treaty the Indians made with the white settlers was broken. Attempting to wind back 2000 years of conquest and reconquest by creating Israel out of land inhabited by people who had legal proof of ownership was the most stupid thing the British and the UN ever did.
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal l.shad...@... wrote: Where are the numbers? In South America, if the initiations we here of are true, and in India, based on what the TMO shows us about TMO money at work in India. Now I remember 20 years or more ago there were these missions to places like Thailand, where one could sponsor a meditator and a Governor for something like USD 30 a month. But that seems to have stopped. So we're left, I truly believe, with 10-50 thousand old time meditators, max. It's not a pop into enlightenment before you finish the 7 step program type of meditation. So I believe that Rick knows people who are quietly enlightened, but I'd imagine they represent a small portion of the 10-50K. Look at it this way. We're self-selected special. That's my whole point -- where are the enlightened? We are talking, after all, about an organization that used to promise enlightenment *in its brochures* in 5-8 years. It's 35-40 years later. Where are all these enlightened beings? The TMO has failed to point to even ONE and say, Here is the product we were advertising. It seems to me that the argument that they're really there, just living quietly it specious. To use your own analogy, it's like the developer of the Segway raised investment money for 40 years but failed to ever produce a Segway that actually worked. Sure, you'd still have a cadre of TB investors who still believed in the Segway because they believed in the charisma and the personality of the promoter, but there would be nothing that the promoter would be able to show off to prove that his theories were correct. THAT is the position I am suggesting that the TMO is in. Anecdotal stories about people living quietly in enlightenment and the TMO allowing it to happen because they are somehow protecting their privacy is specious. It's on the same level as someone saying, I saw a Segway run once in a lab, but being unable to prove it. I'm presenting the Where's the beef? argument. The TMO has been selling the beef of enlightenment for 40 years, but has failed to produce a single burger that it can point to and say, THERE is the result of buying our product. You want fries with yours? I have *no problem* with people still having faith and believing in what they were told originally. That is understandable, and no different than any other religion. It's just that I wish they'd be honest and own up to their faith *being* faith, and nothing else. I think that TB TMers have boxed themselves in by adhering to the We're not a religion party line. If they could admit that they believe in a religion, they could admit that they believe what they do based on faith and nothing more. But they can't do that, because they can't admit that they're part of a religion. So they have to come up with all these convoluted argu- ments and specious claims to justify their belief in something that even they have never seen. It's an entire religion based on the ongoing cognitive dissonance of denying that it's a religion. Wouldn't it be simpler to just admit to being a faith- driven person?
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote: all i am left with is suggesting you try TM for awhile, and draw your own conclusions. Fair enough. That is all anyone can do. the so called conventional wisdom is often just conventional, and not wisdom at all. go out on a limb, you might enjoy the view. I did and I didn't. I'm pretty sure that the argument being proposed is that there is something wrong with you because you didn't enjoy the view, Ruth. And there is something even *more* wrong with you if you say so in a public forum like this.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Something Bizarre...
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, shempmcgurk shempmcg...@... wrote: I got the super radiance numbers by copying and pasting the figures from: http://invincibleamerica.org/tallies.html However, for some reason, when I pasted it here, it pasted text that DOES NOT APPEAR ON THE WEBSITE! See the bottom where it has 2007 tallies and 2006 tallies. This does NOT appear on the website! How does something that is invisible get copied and then, when pasted, appears? Shemp, the hidden text was living quietly in the same place that all of the enlightened beings produced by the TMO are living. It isn't visible to most people because they don't have sufficient faith.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal l.shad...@... wrote: I predict that the TMO as we know it will reinvent itself. That Doctor Bevan Morris and Dr. John Hagelin will retire and quickly thereafter no longer be mentioned in the TMO. That thereafter, once the sycophant fools Maharishi had to suffer are gone, the rajas will increasingly take a cue from Ram Nader and speak with less exuberance, less florid speech and for shorter times. We all wish. It will take time. In the natural way of things there must be factions within the Vlodrop court and tension between the idealists and the pragmatists. Currently Bevan Hagelin in the idealist corner have the upper hand, with the pragmatists going along with their decrees in spite of private reservations. We know that Nader wants to cut the course fees by a large margin, but it hasn't happened, presumably because the Bevan-Haglinist faction is still holding out for a phase transition. In 5 to 10 years time the inevitable consequences of pissing off most of the people in the movement will become more apparent. There will be almost no new staff at MUM to take over when the current staff retire. No staff, no students and therefore MUM as an academic institution will have to fold. If CERN doesn't find the particles it's looking for then unified field theories will be very shaky and the intellectual justification for extracting large sums of money from people and sending it away to feed a ravenous international will be open to question. Nader might have a good tone, but his authority rests on ideas which are obviously trash. The movement can never have academic credibility while it promotes those ideas. Therefore the whole academic aspect of the movement will simply vanish. The Vlodrop court, like any regal court, requires a large population of obedient peasants to keep it going. The next generation of TMers isn't going to be large enough to maintain a regal court. The collapse of Vlodrop will simply follow the standard form set out in histories. There will be coups and counter coups as people fight over a diminishing pot of money. The Indians will break away as soon as they realize that the western empire can't support their lavish lifestyles and has no power to stop them. What happens after that will depend on who has the keys to the tape library. It could be that someone might have sufficient intelligence to realize that the good bits of Maharishi's message can only be saved from being dragged down with the collapse of Vlodrop's authority by copying the tape library as widely as possible. It could be that the extremist faction will do everything in their power to stop that happening, even unto burning the master tapes. People do go mad you know.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawke...@... wrote: It could be that someone might have sufficient intelligence to realize that the good bits of Maharishi's message can only be saved from being dragged down with the collapse of Vlodrop's authority by copying the tape library as widely as possible. It could be that the extremist faction will do everything in their power to stop that happening, even unto burning the master tapes. People do go mad you know. Just for the record, this has already happened many times, but with Maharishi's approval, and at his direction. In the Western Regional Office, I was in charge of the tapes to be sent out to centers for resi- dence courses and advanced lectures. Periodically, we would get a message from International Staff that one of them was being recalled. When that happened, we had to call all the centers and try to get them to send us any copies they had of these tapes, even if they had purchased them and not borrowed them from us. We were told to promise them that the tapes would be replaced with a new one in time. (Suffice it to say that never happened.) When all the copies of the tapes were sent back to Switzerland, I have it on good authority (the Regional Coordinator I worked for watching it happen) that the master tapes were destroyed. The thing they were trying to perform revisionist history on at the time fell into two categories. The first was tapes on which Maharishi said some- thing that could be construed to suggest that TM was a religion. (The court cases were still going on at this time and they didn't want any of these tapes subpoenaed.) The second, interestingly enough given recent threads on FFL, was any tapes on which Maharishi promised enlightenment as a result of doing TM, and within a fixed, promised period of time. After the 5-8 year period had clearly expired with no one being enlightened, Maharishi's and the TMO's first impulse was to make it appear as if the 5-8 year claim was never made. I heard that a similar recall was made of tapes distributed during the early days of the TM-siddhi program (during and prior to the first few courses) that promised explicitly that people would learn to levitate. I was on my TM-siddhi course at the time, however, and didn't see this one first-hand. The others I did. This is just presented as history, to show that your scenario is not unlikely in the least. The precedent for it was set by Maharishi himself during his lifetime.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
I remember the first tape recall that you mention, in the mid-1970's, prior to the release of the boxed tape of Humboldt lectures. Is that right that the tapes were actually destroyed? If so that is gross. Interestingly, it would make the contents of the mp3 recordings which are now circulating via www.spirualregeneration.org news even to people at TMO HQ, no wonder they are popular. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawkes91@ wrote: It could be that someone might have sufficient intelligence to realize that the good bits of Maharishi's message can only be saved from being dragged down with the collapse of Vlodrop's authority by copying the tape library as widely as possible. It could be that the extremist faction will do everything in their power to stop that happening, even unto burning the master tapes. People do go mad you know. Just for the record, this has already happened many times, but with Maharishi's approval, and at his direction. In the Western Regional Office, I was in charge of the tapes to be sent out to centers for resi- dence courses and advanced lectures. Periodically, we would get a message from International Staff that one of them was being recalled. When that happened, we had to call all the centers and try to get them to send us any copies they had of these tapes, even if they had purchased them and not borrowed them from us. We were told to promise them that the tapes would be replaced with a new one in time. (Suffice it to say that never happened.) When all the copies of the tapes were sent back to Switzerland, I have it on good authority (the Regional Coordinator I worked for watching it happen) that the master tapes were destroyed. The thing they were trying to perform revisionist history on at the time fell into two categories. The first was tapes on which Maharishi said some- thing that could be construed to suggest that TM was a religion. (The court cases were still going on at this time and they didn't want any of these tapes subpoenaed.) The second, interestingly enough given recent threads on FFL, was any tapes on which Maharishi promised enlightenment as a result of doing TM, and within a fixed, promised period of time. After the 5-8 year period had clearly expired with no one being enlightened, Maharishi's and the TMO's first impulse was to make it appear as if the 5-8 year claim was never made. I heard that a similar recall was made of tapes distributed during the early days of the TM-siddhi program (during and prior to the first few courses) that promised explicitly that people would learn to levitate. I was on my TM-siddhi course at the time, however, and didn't see this one first-hand. The others I did. This is just presented as history, to show that your scenario is not unlikely in the least. The precedent for it was set by Maharishi himself during his lifetime.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
I remember the first tape recall that you mention, in the mid-1970's, prior to the release of the boxed tapes of Humboldt lectures. Is that right that the tapes were actually destroyed? If so that is gross. Interestingly, it would make the contents of the mp3 recordings which are now circulating via http://www.spiritualregeneration.org news even to people at TMO HQ, no wonder they are so popular. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawkes91@ wrote: It could be that someone might have sufficient intelligence to realize that the good bits of Maharishi's message can only be saved from being dragged down with the collapse of Vlodrop's authority by copying the tape library as widely as possible. It could be that the extremist faction will do everything in their power to stop that happening, even unto burning the master tapes. People do go mad you know. Just for the record, this has already happened many times, but with Maharishi's approval, and at his direction. In the Western Regional Office, I was in charge of the tapes to be sent out to centers for resi- dence courses and advanced lectures. Periodically, we would get a message from International Staff that one of them was being recalled. When that happened, we had to call all the centers and try to get them to send us any copies they had of these tapes, even if they had purchased them and not borrowed them from us. We were told to promise them that the tapes would be replaced with a new one in time. (Suffice it to say that never happened.) When all the copies of the tapes were sent back to Switzerland, I have it on good authority (the Regional Coordinator I worked for watching it happen) that the master tapes were destroyed. The thing they were trying to perform revisionist history on at the time fell into two categories. The first was tapes on which Maharishi said some- thing that could be construed to suggest that TM was a religion. (The court cases were still going on at this time and they didn't want any of these tapes subpoenaed.) The second, interestingly enough given recent threads on FFL, was any tapes on which Maharishi promised enlightenment as a result of doing TM, and within a fixed, promised period of time. After the 5-8 year period had clearly expired with no one being enlightened, Maharishi's and the TMO's first impulse was to make it appear as if the 5-8 year claim was never made. I heard that a similar recall was made of tapes distributed during the early days of the TM-siddhi program (during and prior to the first few courses) that promised explicitly that people would learn to levitate. I was on my TM-siddhi course at the time, however, and didn't see this one first-hand. The others I did. This is just presented as history, to show that your scenario is not unlikely in the least. The precedent for it was set by Maharishi himself during his lifetime.
[FairfieldLife] More MANswers!
According to MANswers, Indian men have the shortest lingams (shepa's) on this planet! shepo romanvantau bhedau [...] icchati?
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Paul Mason premanandp...@... wrote: I remember the first tape recall that you mention, in the mid-1970's, prior to the release of the boxed tapes of Humboldt lectures. Is that right that the tapes were actually destroyed? If so that is gross. Interestingly, it would make the contents of the mp3 recordings which are now circulating via http://www.spiritualregeneration.org news even to people at TMO HQ, no wonder they are so popular. The fact that these MP3s exist at all is IMO due to the way that these recalls were handled. In the Regional Office we were clearly told to promise all the TM teachers that when they sent us the recalled tapes that they had paid for with their own money, they would be replaced with new tapes as soon as they were released, or that they would be compensated for what they originally paid for them. That never happened. So, once bitten, twice shy. In the future when we sent out a recall notice, many of the TM teachers lied and said that they didn't own any of the recalled tapes. They kept them instead. That is almost certainly where many of these tapes on the site you speak of came from. I've seen this same phenomenon in several different spiritual traditions since. It is *not* just TM- specific. But it seems to me to go hand in hand with the glorification of subjective experience that one finds in enlightenment traditions. If you believe that your current state of consciousness somehow defines reality more than reality does, you tend to believe that you can reinvent reality and change the past. I saw Rama - Frederick Lenz try to do this and get nailed for it on the TV show Dateline. He claimed to be a successful businessman whose money came from his software businesses. The reporter did a few minutes of research and proved that the claim was not true. He then asked Rama on camera to name a few of the Fortune 500 companies that he claimed were using his software products. He couldn't think of a single name. Some CEO, eh? :-) To some extent I associate this belief that you can reinvent history with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I associate some aspects of that dis- order with popular spiritual teachers. They exist in a cocoon of Yes Men, in which literally every- thing they say is accepted at face value *for no other reason than that they said it*. Spend a few years in an environment like this, and you'd start to believe that you really *can* reinvent history. You do it every day, and your followers fall for it. Personally, I think that a more honest approach, if one were a spiritual teacher, would be to preserve and make available *everything* one said along the way. Even the mistakes. *Especially* the mistakes. Yeah, I know that this would invalidate the dogma that the enlightened are perfect and can't *make* mistakes, but I don't believe that anyway. And to get caught trying to practice revisionist history over the mistakes only compounds them. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawkes91@ wrote: It could be that someone might have sufficient intelligence to realize that the good bits of Maharishi's message can only be saved from being dragged down with the collapse of Vlodrop's authority by copying the tape library as widely as possible. It could be that the extremist faction will do everything in their power to stop that happening, even unto burning the master tapes. People do go mad you know. Just for the record, this has already happened many times, but with Maharishi's approval, and at his direction. In the Western Regional Office, I was in charge of the tapes to be sent out to centers for resi- dence courses and advanced lectures. Periodically, we would get a message from International Staff that one of them was being recalled. When that happened, we had to call all the centers and try to get them to send us any copies they had of these tapes, even if they had purchased them and not borrowed them from us. We were told to promise them that the tapes would be replaced with a new one in time. (Suffice it to say that never happened.) When all the copies of the tapes were sent back to Switzerland, I have it on good authority (the Regional Coordinator I worked for watching it happen) that the master tapes were destroyed. The thing they were trying to perform revisionist history on at the time fell into two categories. The first was tapes on which Maharishi said some- thing that could be construed to suggest that TM was a religion. (The court cases were still going on at this time and they didn't want any of these tapes subpoenaed.) The second, interestingly enough given recent threads on FFL, was any tapes on which Maharishi promised enlightenment as a result of doing TM, and within a fixed, promised period of
[FairfieldLife] Re: Dome numbers Drop in FF
In a town of 9,500 people, these numbers are HUGE. Everyone deserves congratulations for doing what it takes to maintain superradiance, now in its 30th year. Yes, what is in their attendance number though? About a thousand hireling pujaris from India (out-sourced attendance), several hundreds of students, some faculty staff,and some few hundreds off- campus people from FF area. Evidently the domes do not draw so much from the local FF meditating community. Seems evidently they gots a problem of non-participation tepid support in the local meditating community. That seems does goes back a ways now. As a goal, they'd like to get 2,500 in the domes. What could be done to get folks back in? They evidently do have a problem. Festus, what do you think? Someone here even wants to have 10,000 people meditating together. yet, also is the thread: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/204131 Yeah, what a resounding success the Siddhis program has been, in spite of the fact it rendered the TM movement a laughing stock for the foreseeable future and diminished intiations by at least a thousand per cent. Had it not been for the marginally effective Siddhis program our TM organization may actually have vibrant centers in every major city today, but it's too late for that now. Competition you know. Big Shift, big-shots abandon their posts to big-wig 12Jan celebration in Europe. 11 January Fairfield/MVC 1711 1938 10 January Fairfield/MVC 1730 1936 09 January Fairfield/MVC 1759 2018 08 January Fairfield/MVC 1732 2063 07 January Fairfield/MVC 1806 2073 06 January Fairfield/MVC 1790 2088 05 January Fairfield/MVC 1816 2079 http://invincibleamerica.org/tallies.html o
[FairfieldLife] Re: More MANswers!
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister no_re...@... wrote: According to MANswers, Indian men have the shortest lingams (shepa's) on this planet! Interestingly, they testably also spend the least amount of time of any men on the planet in foreplay, and are second only to the Portuguese in the number of one-night stands that they have had. Obviously, there could be a link between the first two statistics and the third. :-) This data comes from a well-publicized study performed by Men's Health magazine, and cited numerous places on the Web: 3/4 of Indian men confess to having one-night stands http://forums.sulekha.com/forums/romance/Three-quarters-of-Indian-men-confess-having-had-a-one-night-stand.htm Indian men fastest http://www.asylum.in/2008/11/02/indian-men-fastest-portuguese-have-most-one-night-stands/ Philippines topped sex statistics http://salaswildthoughts.blogspot.com/2006/09/philippines-topped-sex-statistics.html All in all, it would seem that relying on a guy from the land of the Kama Sutra for your kicks in bed is as much a myth as relying on a teacher from India for your enlightenment. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: More MANswers!
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister no_re...@... wrote: According to MANswers, Indian men have the shortest lingams (shepa's) on this planet! shepo romanvantau bhedau [...] icchati? Well, just occurred to me, how many shepa's nowadays really want *romanvantau* bhedau? :D
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
As to the provenance of the tapes that have surfaced on mp3, the very oldest of those of Maharishi, and one of the most revealing was actually discovered on a long overlooked cassette tucked away in someone's belongings. Parts of the tape were discovered to have been recorded back-to-front (!) but thanks to the wonders of modern technology it was flipped and now all can hear Maharishi letting the kittens out to scamper about. Ironically, in spite of the fact that the contents contradict his later statements it makes for possibly the best and most compelling intro talk I ever heard him give. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Paul Mason premanandpaul@ wrote: I remember the first tape recall that you mention, in the mid-1970's, prior to the release of the boxed tapes of Humboldt lectures. Is that right that the tapes were actually destroyed? If so that is gross. Interestingly, it would make the contents of the mp3 recordings which are now circulating via http://www.spiritualregeneration.org news even to people at TMO HQ, no wonder they are so popular. The fact that these MP3s exist at all is IMO due to the way that these recalls were handled. In the Regional Office we were clearly told to promise all the TM teachers that when they sent us the recalled tapes that they had paid for with their own money, they would be replaced with new tapes as soon as they were released, or that they would be compensated for what they originally paid for them. That never happened. So, once bitten, twice shy. In the future when we sent out a recall notice, many of the TM teachers lied and said that they didn't own any of the recalled tapes. They kept them instead. That is almost certainly where many of these tapes on the site you speak of came from. I've seen this same phenomenon in several different spiritual traditions since. It is *not* just TM- specific. But it seems to me to go hand in hand with the glorification of subjective experience that one finds in enlightenment traditions. If you believe that your current state of consciousness somehow defines reality more than reality does, you tend to believe that you can reinvent reality and change the past. I saw Rama - Frederick Lenz try to do this and get nailed for it on the TV show Dateline. He claimed to be a successful businessman whose money came from his software businesses. The reporter did a few minutes of research and proved that the claim was not true. He then asked Rama on camera to name a few of the Fortune 500 companies that he claimed were using his software products. He couldn't think of a single name. Some CEO, eh? :-) To some extent I associate this belief that you can reinvent history with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I associate some aspects of that dis- order with popular spiritual teachers. They exist in a cocoon of Yes Men, in which literally every- thing they say is accepted at face value *for no other reason than that they said it*. Spend a few years in an environment like this, and you'd start to believe that you really *can* reinvent history. You do it every day, and your followers fall for it. Personally, I think that a more honest approach, if one were a spiritual teacher, would be to preserve and make available *everything* one said along the way. Even the mistakes. *Especially* the mistakes. Yeah, I know that this would invalidate the dogma that the enlightened are perfect and can't *make* mistakes, but I don't believe that anyway. And to get caught trying to practice revisionist history over the mistakes only compounds them. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawkes91@ wrote: It could be that someone might have sufficient intelligence to realize that the good bits of Maharishi's message can only be saved from being dragged down with the collapse of Vlodrop's authority by copying the tape library as widely as possible. It could be that the extremist faction will do everything in their power to stop that happening, even unto burning the master tapes. People do go mad you know. Just for the record, this has already happened many times, but with Maharishi's approval, and at his direction. In the Western Regional Office, I was in charge of the tapes to be sent out to centers for resi- dence courses and advanced lectures. Periodically, we would get a message from International Staff that one of them was being recalled. When that happened, we had to call all the centers and try to get them to send us any copies they had of these tapes, even if they had purchased them and not borrowed them from us. We were told to promise them that the tapes would be replaced with a new one
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
On Jan 13, 2009, at 10:15 PM, I am the eternal wrote: On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Vaj vajradh...@earthlink.net wrote: As far as I am aware, the pictures have been removed from the bottles. Quite right. Pay attention, people. How many times do I have to repeat this? I thought he might be mistaken (or lying).
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal l.shad...@... wrote: I predict that the TMO as we know it will reinvent itself. That Doctor Bevan Morris and Dr. John Hagelin will retire and quickly thereafter no longer be mentioned in the TMO. That thereafter, once the sycophant fools Maharishi had to suffer are gone, the rajas will increasingly take a cue from Ram Nader and speak with less exuberance, less florid speech and for shorter times. If Bevan and John are replaced, they will be replaced with more simply speaking people. People who take their cue in presenting themselves from Ram Nadir. Bevan and Hagelin will never retire. Their world, their highly inflated egos are completely based on this role they play as tmo world saviors (sexual conquests being a distant 2nd for their egos). MMY didn't have to suffer them, he made them, he promoted them, he put them where they are and loved how they mimic him. To not see this plain fact is to be in denial about MMY. Bulletins will contain less gold. The TMO will take less credit for world affairs and jump in less to save the world with just some more sidhas on Wall Street or in Fairfield. Dark colored suits will once again be in style in the TMO. Fresh, new blood will be recruited from the sidha community. Established and demonstrated talent in business. Heaven is Descending will no longer be the IA theme song and the Maharishi Channel will quietly quash the worship of gods and goddesses. Maybe but who cares? Maybe the US and India tmos slowly divide with the US becoming more secular, but they'll both still be based on MMY worship. Maybe what you're saying is the US will go back to remembering MMY as he was in his simple secular past of the 60s and emulating that, not the reality of the past 20 yrs. That's possible, but I don't see anyone to lead that. Maharishi gave instructions that these and many other things be done in the fullness of time. Again, why the fear of facing the truth about MMY. You believe MMY spent every hour of his life promoting one thing and one group of people only to have secretly given instructions to do the opposite after he died? What weird things people believe to keep up personality cults.
[FairfieldLife] Some things can make you go 'WOW!'
Thinking small: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdGJxSDgWlo
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
Guy, is a good quick reading of the tea leafs. In watching, the Bevanistic-Haglinist faction are not joined at the hip. Yes, both are idealistic but Morris is the still powerful bull dogmatist inside and Hagelin calculated moving TM practically forward outside in a secular way. Each with a gravitational pull and attracting their people to them. And yes as Boo points out, there is the Indian family movement but also add in to the equation the Europeans. As with the recent Subpoenas for Beven to a Federal court, more likely his portfolio will get limited as he gets more subps against him for other things. He has been in the middle handling a lot of things with Maharishi for the last number of years he'll proly end up being unable to travel outside of certain countries, like Maharishi. Would probably be an excellent prime subpoena to the US Senate Finance Committee for collecting testimony over the inner workings of 'charitable non- profit educational institutions' moving money around. More likely he'll be seen less in America and get exiled to someplace like, Australia. Or a log cabin on some property in Holland. Or they'll build him a special place in the middle of India where TM-tru- believers can pilgimage to him there. He is a mighty big guy that will be around somehow. Hagelin by nature will give it a good go for a while. If there becomes too much Raja baggage to carry around, then he'll probably say 'F-it' and go be a famous talking-head personality in his own right. In the meantime, they have a name out in the marketplace that is theirs to use somehow. So many of them have presided over the decline of the TM-movement, and now it is theirs. The good, the bad and the ugly of TM too. Is a tough thing to get given their reputation on the internet and the immediacy transparency that the internet gives compared to before. Is a different world that way to work in. There are a lot of people interested in how they do with it. To succeed they will probably come to doing their business differently from the way it was done in the past, of necessity. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawke...@... wrote: We all wish. It will take time. In the natural way of things there must be factions within the Vlodrop court and tension between the idealists and the pragmatists. Currently Bevan Hagelin in the idealist corner have the upper hand, with the pragmatists going along with their decrees in spite of private reservations. We know that Nader wants to cut the course fees by a large margin, but it hasn't happened, presumably because the Bevan-Haglinist faction is still holding out for a phase transition. In 5 to 10 years time the inevitable consequences of pissing off most of the people in the movement will become more apparent. There will be almost no new staff at MUM to take over when the current staff retire. No staff, no students and therefore MUM as an academic institution will have to fold. If CERN doesn't find the particles it's looking for then unified field theories will be very shaky and the intellectual justification for extracting large sums of money from people and sending it away to feed a ravenous international will be open to question. Nader might have a good tone, but his authority rests on ideas which are obviously trash. The movement can never have academic credibility while it promotes those ideas. Therefore the whole academic aspect of the movement will simply vanish. The Vlodrop court, like any regal court, requires a large population of obedient peasants to keep it going. The next generation of TMers isn't going to be large enough to maintain a regal court. The collapse of Vlodrop will simply follow the standard form set out in histories. There will be coups and counter coups as people fight over a diminishing pot of money. The Indians will break away as soon as they realize that the western empire can't support their lavish lifestyles and has no power to stop them. What happens after that will depend on who has the keys to the tape library. It could be that someone might have sufficient intelligence to realize that the good bits of Maharishi's message can only be saved from being dragged down with the collapse of Vlodrop's authority by copying the tape library as widely as possible. It could be that the extremist faction will do everything in their power to stop that happening, even unto burning the master tapes. People do go mad you know. om
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
OK, finishing up on this reply... --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip FWIW, I'm a skeptic on both the personal improvement and objective measurement of enlightenment counts. I'm not sure personal improvement is an inevitable feature of enlightenment, such that lack of same can be said to be proof that one is *not* enlightened; and I'm highly dubious that any conclusive objective proof of enlightenment (including EEG, etc.) is possible. That seems like a position I can relate to. The question comes, where do you go for information about enlightenment? If anyone takes Maharishi as an expert they have to ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to reconcile King Tony as the most evolved person in the movement with what we have experienced from other brilliant people in our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true believerness from his speeches yet. Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping statement based on *your* personal reaction to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone, but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just for one thing, I don't think listening to a few of Tony's speeches tells you much about how brilliant he is or isn't, let alone whether he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment as I understand it doesn't have to do with brilliance in any case. snip The burden is on the people making the claim, not the people saying where's the beef? I think the only person who gets to say, Where's the beef? is the individual who isn't satisfied with their own experience. But by the same token, they don't get to demand that the people making the claims prove anything. All they get to say is, I didn't get no beef. snip I can evaluate how people function and I notice when someone is extra smart or exceptional in some way. According to your standards. How could it be any other way? But according to Maharishi's own standards it has also failed. He set the bar high at mastery of sidhis and never retracted this objective test for enlightenment. That was for Unity consciousness. And in any case, taken with the rest of his teaching, performance of siddhis is at Nature's behest. And saying that guys like Tony can fly but don't choose too is not going to cut it. Again, it's Nature's choice, not Tony's. That may not satisfy you, but it could be that what would satisfy you just isn't what enlightenment is *about*. We've been talking a bit at cross-purposes here. You're more interested in the question of benefits, but I'm really addressing the narrower issue of whether one can say TM does or does not produce enlightenment as a distinct, permanent state. I don't see any way to determine that on an objective basis. Again, you are departing from how Maharishi viewed it I'm departing from what MMY *said* about it. snip Now outside Maharishi's teaching the concept of enlightenment seems more interesting to me. What is your personal view of what it would mean, if you care to articulate it? I think half the problem is the attempt to articulate anything about it other than one's own experience. ed11 had a great comment in post #204887: i am not sure there is any commonality at all, any intersection at all, between the things we hear, read, and observe about enlightened monks and recluses and spiritual teachers, and how enlightenment plays out for us average, daily go to work, do the dishes and laundry, go to the movies, type of folks. no template. I suspect that more than we realize, there's no real template for recluses and spiritual teachers either. My current thinking is that the templates are not much more than bait to draw you onto the path, and from then on it's a DIY project, as I said to ed11. My working hypothesis is still that MMY had the mechanics of the process of development of consciousness right, but his notions of what it would look like from the outside were just hopeful guesses. And from the inside, you have to *be* enlightened to know what it looks like.
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal L.Shaddai@ wrote: Where are the numbers? In South America, if the initiations we here of are true, and in India, based on what the TMO shows us about TMO money at work in India. Now I remember 20 years or more ago there were these missions to places like Thailand, where one could sponsor a meditator and a Governor for something like USD 30 a month. But that seems to have stopped. So we're left, I truly believe, with 10-50 thousand old time meditators, max. It's not a pop into enlightenment before you finish the 7 step program type of meditation. So I believe that Rick knows people who are quietly enlightened, but I'd imagine they represent a small portion of the 10-50K. Look at it this way. We're self-selected special. That's my whole point -- where are the enlightened? We are talking, after all, about an organization that used to promise enlightenment *in its brochures* in 5-8 years. It's 35-40 years later. Where are all these enlightened beings? The TMO has failed to point to even ONE and say, Here is the product we were advertising. It seems to me that the argument that they're really there, just living quietly it specious. To use your own analogy, it's like the developer of the Segway raised investment money for 40 years but failed to ever produce a Segway that actually worked. Sure, you'd still have a cadre of TB investors who still believed in the Segway because they believed in the charisma and the personality of the promoter, but there would be nothing that the promoter would be able to show off to prove that his theories were correct. THAT is the position I am suggesting that the TMO is in. Anecdotal stories about people living quietly in enlightenment and the TMO allowing it to happen because they are somehow protecting their privacy is specious. Hmm, I haven't heard any such anecdotal stories, have you? snip I have *no problem* with people still having faith and believing in what they were told originally. That is understandable, and no different than any other religion. It's just that I wish they'd be honest and own up to their faith *being* faith, and nothing else. Barry reminds me of a horse attached to a capstan that turned a mill or a pump in pre-electricity days, walking endlessly in a circle. The angle of view changes depending on where he is in the circle, but the view itself is limited to what he can see as he plods around the path, wearing it ever deeper into the ground. And that view never *evolves*, it never incorporates any new input; it just repeats over and over. One can certainly *make* a religion of what MMY taught, but it takes a whole lot more (and less) than having confidence that there is such a thing as enlightenment and that TM is a particularly effective way to get you there. As I pointed out earlier, TM critics like Barry use the terms faith and religion as pejoratives; and they apply the terms to anything that isn't validated by objective proof. There's no middle ground involving personal experience or reasoned intellectual analysis. As far as they're concerned, if there's no objective proof, it's nothing more than believing what one was told without question. So limited, so barren.
[FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal l.shad...@... wrote: On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: As far as I am aware, the pictures have been removed from the bottles. Quite right. Pay attention, people. How many times do I have to repeat this? Maharishi made ammendments to the Constitution of the Universe. The TMO is to become not a religion, mainstream (anybody wonder WHY DOJ recently decided to become an independent defender of the faith?), and palatable to the larger public. MAPI products will slowly undergo more iterations of starting to look like Crest toothpaste so's the products can sell next to the vitamin display of your local pharmacy/chemist shop. MAPI products are nowhere close to having the brand name and volume to warrant pharmacy placement, they're not even in most health food stores. You're living in dream land reg. retail business. Does DOJ refer to orme johnson? He didn't decide to become independent, he was kicked out of MUM due to improper advances on a student (which he sadly blames on unstressing), and is trying to keep himself busy I guess. Now as far as Triguna needing money from Maharishi. Last time I looked, Triguna-ji valued his world wide practice at about USD 2 Million. When I first visited triguna's practice in 1980 when he teamed up with MMY, it was not valued at $2 million, it was not valued at 2 million rupees. It grew in value due to his partnership with the guru with the marketing IN in US, which was the whole pt. PAY attention, grow up and shake hands with the real world. Why has triguna dumped the declining tmo and switched to up and coming shri shri ravi shakar now? Couldn't have anything to do with marketing?
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote: all i am left with is suggesting you try TM for awhile, and draw your own conclusions. Fair enough. That is all anyone can do. the so called conventional wisdom is often just conventional, and not wisdom at all. go out on a limb, you might enjoy the view. I did and I didn't. I'm pretty sure that the argument being proposed is that there is something wrong with you because you didn't enjoy the view, Ruth. And there is something even *more* wrong with you if you say so in a public forum like this. Notice that in Barry's limited view, there's no way ed11 can disagree with Ruth without its being taken as evidence that there's something wrong with *ed11*.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: snip To some extent I associate this belief that you can reinvent history with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I associate some aspects of that dis- order with popular spiritual teachers. They exist in a cocoon of Yes Men, in which literally every- thing they say is accepted at face value *for no other reason than that they said it*. Spend a few years in an environment like this, and you'd start to believe that you really *can* reinvent history. You do it every day, and your followers fall for it. Interesting that Barry associates narcissistic personality disorder with reinventing history, given that the latter is his specialty.
[FairfieldLife] Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=0c4jhBY22dAfeature=channel_page
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
i have no argument with what Ruth says. she does draw some conclusions based on her lack of experience with TM, just as Barry does. i don't see anything like the same arrogance and nastiness that i see in him, however. and she never trolls like he does. as to your earlier post about Barry being a horse yoked to a capstan- perfect, except he's leading with the other end of the horse-lol this is why i have referred to him as the disease of FFL- he will try to generate conflict at any time, trying to resolve his failed spiritual goals with TM and the Maharishi. he implores, where are all of the enlightened people???, as he continues to plod around in circles, watching movies, and doing his ineffective meditation. what can you say to someone like that except, take off your blinders? --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote: all i am left with is suggesting you try TM for awhile, and draw your own conclusions. Fair enough. That is all anyone can do. the so called conventional wisdom is often just conventional, and not wisdom at all. go out on a limb, you might enjoy the view. I did and I didn't. I'm pretty sure that the argument being proposed is that there is something wrong with you because you didn't enjoy the view, Ruth. And there is something even *more* wrong with you if you say so in a public forum like this. Notice that in Barry's limited view, there's no way ed11 can disagree with Ruth without its being taken as evidence that there's something wrong with *ed11*.
[FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 13, 2009, at 10:15 PM, I am the eternal wrote: On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: As far as I am aware, the pictures have been removed from the bottles. Quite right. Pay attention, people. How many times do I have to repeat this? I thought he might be mistaken (or lying). In the first place, Lawson doesn't lie (as Vaj knows). In the second place, Vaj snipped what I am the eternal wanted us to pay attention to: that MMY had made ammendments to the Constitution of the Universe and was to become not a religion. It's not clear from his post that he's definitively confirming the pictures' removal from the labels. He might want to clarify this. FWIW, the last time I bought anything from MAPI was in late 2006. I still have the Amrit Nectar jar, which I cleaned out and am using to hold brown sugar. For all I know, the pictures may have been removed from the product labels since then, but the Amrit jar I have does feature the pictures on the side. If you look at it from the front, you can't see them. So the photos on MAPI's site, at any rate, don't tell us anything one way or another.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Richard J. Williams willy...@yahoo.comwrote: L. Shaddai wrote: MAPI products will slowly undergo more iterations of starting to look like Crest toothpaste so's the products can sell next to the vitamin display of your local pharmacy/chemist shop. Well, yes, L., that would make sense - put the Marshy vitamins next to all the other vitamins at the local pharmacy. At Whole Foods, they used to put the Marshy Kapha Tea next to the Yogi Tea. Go figure. Whole Foods World Headquarters, Austin Texas: http://www.rwilliams.us/archives/images/foods03.jpg Thanks for the picture, Dick. I'm in the process of buying a skyrise condo a few blocks from Whole Foods. Yes, I'm covered just in case Whole Foods decides to move to Poland as Dell computer in Ireland just announced it would.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
Nice find. Nothing like Jerry, who was always a pleasure to listen to. You immediately got a sense of genuine integrity and peace when he spoke. Too bad the video is so short. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony...@... wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=0c4jhBY22dAfeature=channel_page
[FairfieldLife] Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek -- copywrite morals?
ruthsimplicity wrote: Reproducing an entire article without permission of the author is copyright infringement, even if you give the author credit. Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek, I would be grateful if you folks would do some posting about the copyright issue. I have read about this online, but each of you have some credentials that pertain, so I'm asking you if each of you have come to terms with your own morality about this. I think Ruth told the above to our Osho dude to smack him for his morals -- calling attention to the fact that he is using the words of others for spamming us, but how much does she ACTUALLY resonate with the copyright laws? Ruth? I don't have clarity about my own stance on this since I am an owner of copyright material that enjoys a cash flow from the Internet, but I will cut and paste just about anything from anyone if it suits me, say, for public posting purposes. Many here do this. However, I would never pass off the writing of others as my own or try to include copyrighted material in any money making effort without getting full permission from the author. My worse sin: I sometimes do not always included a copyright notice with my cut and pastes. My morals are shaky at best, eh? Hard to toss a stone at our newest spammer therefore. Stone him for spamming, yes, but for copyright infringement? Eh, not so much. When I google my copy-written material, almost never do I find that the unauthorized online use of it is offensive to me -- even if someone is deriding it or not including my name as the author. I figure, while the stealing is at its present low level, it serves mainly to advertise and build my brand. That said, if any of my stuff got hot, and suddenly everyone was using it, then I would begin to fret that this over-use was diverting paying-customers to where they can get my stuff for free. What to do? Practically speaking, I've opted to put stuff out there and let the material be used in any way -- brand building -- and if an audience is discovered, then, I will still have my brain and will still be able to produce yet more NEW material that can be more tightly controlled and sold -- this is the porn industry strategy, yes? Tease 'em, then sell 'em. However, those kids who enjoy cash flow from, say, a parent's one-hit-wonder would disagree since they would have no new material to sell. I'm still at odds for how I would set up today's laws. I really want creative artists to own their material, but I think they have to be far more liberal in how their stuff is used. There's tons of artists like that graffiti guy who literally painted on buildings for free but finally got discovered and now can get boo-koo bux for his original, NEW, material. I like this model, because those who have the chops can build a market and then finally make a decent living, whereas others who do not get an audience will have to see their material being used without any permission. This way, the world decides what is valuable enough, tells the author so, and the author then can stop the flow of freebies and start cashing in. For instance, at youtube, I've put up trikking videos using popular songs for the background music. So far, four of those have been contested by the copyright owners. Okay, fair enough, so I don't use those songs again, but is this a solution -- no harm/no foul but cease use of material upon demand? No, I can think of loop holes in that scenario too. I'm using songs that long ago were marketed so the main profits were gained when the song first hit the streets, but they still enjoy some revenues from various sources, and the estate owners issue thereby arises, so, yep, I'm possibly reducing their cash flow, but not really, because I would never be their customer and put out the bux they'd want for the small use I have for their songs. And, there's scant mechanism to buy limited use rights from most of the owners out there. If there was some sort of set-up where I could purchase use for up to, say, 50,000 youtube views, for, say, $10, I'd pay it! So there my solution -- a micro-marketing, penny collecting, system. I've actually done that, by the way. I paid thousands for the use of a few dozens photographs, so I have been legal when dollars were afoot. Trying to be legal and fair, but I feel that the present laws are not fit for today's massive communication structures and the present state of democracy on the Internet. Also, it's a spiritual problem in that authorship rights becomes questionable in certain scenarios -- who really owns their thoughts that arise from nowhere? -- and, if I discover a cancer cure, and I only dole out the medicine for a million dollars a dose, I might be legal, but surely I am immoral, yes? Suggestions? Edg
[FairfieldLife] Question for Paul Mason
You have posted on the textual pieces that make up the TM initiation puja. I'd also heard the story of the pundit-poet who composed a tribute to SBS, which on reading it, he asked MMY to throw away. Are these two stories connected? i.e. is the TM puja connected to this same tribute?
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: what thype of rigorous requirements would you suggest for studies done on homeopathy? I'm asking out of curiosity because a friend of mine is a homeopath, and has clued me in to some of the recent attempts to demonize that practice in the UK. Their stance, which makes sense to me given what I know of the practice, is that con- trol groups are an inappropriate form of rigor- ous requirement because every patient in home- opathy is treated differently, based on their own *particular* symptomology. Two patients com- plaining of the same primary symptom might be treated completely differently given their *other* symptoms. Not a problem. You can still double blind. Have a group of people with the same disorder (maybe migraine headaches). Have homoeopaths treat all of them, but some of the homeopaths, randomly assigned, will be dispensing placebos. Let them all see the patients over time so if they want to do some adjusting they can. They just won't have control over what is in the pill bottle. That's pretty much what I came up with, too. Thanks. I'm not really pushing homeopathy or anything, I was just curious. Still curious, I'm wondering how you ever get patients to *participate* in studies like this? Do you pay them? And do you tell them the truth about the protocols of the study? It seems to me that if you tell them the truth, and that only half of them are going to get real medicine, then they know ahead of time that they only have a 50% chance of getting relief from what ails them, so why participate? That's why I ask whether you pay them. On the other hand, if you lie to them and suggest that everyone is getting medicine, aren't you setting up your *own* placebo effect? People participate for a variety of reasons. For experimental drugs for serious illnesses people really try to get on board on the chance that they might get a helpful treatment. And the treatment (or non-treatment) is free. Sometimes people are paid to participate in research. College and med students make a little extra money doing this. For example, I got paid once to be a participate in hypothermia research. Got immersed nearly naked in a tank of frightfully cold water. For something like fifty bucks. :)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old-school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony...@... wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=0c4jhBY22dAfeature=channel_page
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony...@... wrote: Guy, is a good quick reading of the tea leafs. In watching, the Bevanistic-Haglinist faction are not joined at the hip. Yes, both are idealistic but Morris is the still powerful bull dogmatist inside and Hagelin calculated moving TM practically forward outside in a secular way. Each with a gravitational pull and attracting their people to them. And yes as Boo points out, there is the Indian family movement but also add in to the equation the Europeans. Yes, I was just lumping Bevan-Hagelin together for convenience of expression rather than correctness in analysis. Hagelin is the brighter of the two and certainly inclined to be more practical in his outlook. Though he'll be in deep doodoo if CERN don't find super-symmetric particles and all the UF charts have to be recalled. Bevan relishes the role of authoritarian dictator and for the time being is the alpha male at Vlodrop whom all the others take their cues from. Nutjobs like Schiffgens gravitate to Bevan, and the camp komandant types like Konhaus also feel more attracted to the role of hatchet men for Bevan. But the brick wall cometh. At some point the decades of work Bevan co have put into flushing the goodwill of the movement down the toilet will show their results and ideals will make contact with reality. How things fall apart makes for interesting speculation and it depends a lot on personalities and courtly intrigues. But fall apart it must because there isn't going to be a large enough population of obedient TMers to keep the regal court going. Whether Bevan ever gets to wear handcuffs is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that someone should have the sense to get the contents of the tape library out and into the public domain before the nutcase faction wreck it.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek -- copywrite morals?
I have little or nothing to say, Edg. I am torn on the issue. On the one hand, the creator of the material deserves to make some money from it, if it is in fact good enough to generate income. On the other hand, nothing galls me more than artists who whine about people stealing from them because someone else found a way to distribute their material that the original creator of it was too stupid or too locked into old distribution methods to think of. IMO copyrights should work the way physical evo- lution does -- use it or lose it. They should die when the creator of the material does, and at that point pass into the public domain; they should *not* be inheritable. And if the creator allows the work to languish and does nothing with it during his or her lifetime, I think they should lose their copyright. More specifically, I don't see a big issue with cutting and pasting more than the legal fair use amount and posting it on an Internet chat board. If one tried to do the same on a for- profit website, that's another issue. I have no idea what the legalities involved are. I just know that I'd react to some author losing it because someone reposted his or her work on a not-for-profit site the way most people reacted to Carl Sagan suing Apple for using his name as the code name for one of their projects. ( When he sued, Apple changed the code name of the project to BHA, which they refused to con- firm stands for Butt Hole Astronomer. :-) With regard to music, I always liked the stance taken by the Grateful Dead. They always felt that almost by definition when they played something live, by virtue of the performance being an in- the-moment thing, they relinquished all rights. Thus they not only allowed fans to record their concerts and distribute them for free, they allowed those fans to plug their recorders into the band's sound board. As a result, the Grateful Dead is by far the most-recorded group of musicians in human history. Literally every performance since the early Seventies is available for free some- where. Call me an old hippie, but I like that. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_re...@... wrote: ruthsimplicity wrote: Reproducing an entire article without permission of the author is copyright infringement, even if you give the author credit. Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek, I would be grateful if you folks would do some posting about the copyright issue. I have read about this online, but each of you have some credentials that pertain, so I'm asking you if each of you have come to terms with your own morality about this. I think Ruth told the above to our Osho dude to smack him for his morals -- calling attention to the fact that he is using the words of others for spamming us, but how much does she ACTUALLY resonate with the copyright laws? Ruth? I don't have clarity about my own stance on this since I am an owner of copyright material that enjoys a cash flow from the Internet, but I will cut and paste just about anything from anyone if it suits me, say, for public posting purposes. Many here do this. However, I would never pass off the writing of others as my own or try to include copyrighted material in any money making effort without getting full permission from the author. My worse sin: I sometimes do not always included a copyright notice with my cut and pastes. My morals are shaky at best, eh? Hard to toss a stone at our newest spammer therefore. Stone him for spamming, yes, but for copyright infringement? Eh, not so much. When I google my copy-written material, almost never do I find that the unauthorized online use of it is offensive to me -- even if someone is deriding it or not including my name as the author. I figure, while the stealing is at its present low level, it serves mainly to advertise and build my brand. That said, if any of my stuff got hot, and suddenly everyone was using it, then I would begin to fret that this over-use was diverting paying-customers to where they can get my stuff for free. What to do? Practically speaking, I've opted to put stuff out there and let the material be used in any way -- brand building -- and if an audience is discovered, then, I will still have my brain and will still be able to produce yet more NEW material that can be more tightly controlled and sold -- this is the porn industry strategy, yes? Tease 'em, then sell 'em. However, those kids who enjoy cash flow from, say, a parent's one-hit-wonder would disagree since they would have no new material to sell. I'm still at odds for how I would set up today's laws. I really want creative artists to own their material, but I think they have to be far more liberal in how their stuff is used. There's tons of artists like that graffiti guy who literally painted on buildings for free but finally got discovered and now can get boo-koo bux for his original, NEW, material. I like this
[FairfieldLife] Re: The case for giving Europe back to the Basques
guyfawkes wrote: Likewise all of America should be given back to the native Indians... There are no 'native Indians' in America because Indians are from India. Many of the native inhabitants of South America came from islands in the Caribbean. But it would probably be a mistake to give South America to the Jamaicans, wouldn't it? North American native inhabitants came over from Siberia, but it would probably be a mistake to give North America to the Siberians. ...and all of Australia to the native Australians. Most native Australians came from Micronesia, but most of Micronesia is under water now. Native Americans even have legal documents granting them rights over various bits of land... Maybe so, but around here the Apaches and the Cammanches invaded Texas and caused hell, so we killed most of them and sent the rest of the invaders to live in Oklahoma. though every treaty the Indians made with the white settlers was broken. There are no American 'treaties' with India. And there is no 'America' - if there was, an Italian banking family owned by the Vespucci family would be the owner of North and South 'America'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci Christopher Columbus was standing on the beach near Port Royal, exchanging gifts with some of the native inhabitants. One of the natives said: But Chris, why do you call us 'Indians'? Attempting to wind back 2000 years of conquest and reconquest by creating Israel out of land inhabited by people who had legal proof of ownership was the most stupid thing the British and the UN ever did. There is no evidence that modern Israel was once 'invaded' by Jews descended from an Abraham of Ur, thousands of years ago. The modern Judeans are the descendants of the Caananites. The only known invaders of Judea were the Philistines, the 'boat people' that probably came over from the Aegean. Anyone living in Judea could be termed a 'Palestinian', but it is a fact that most of the so-called 'Palestinians' are Arabs from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, who invaded Judea long before the modern state of Israel was founded. There are no 'native' Palestinians. Based on your logic, the 'Gaza strip' should be given back to the Egyptians. Read more: Subject: Selective Theology Author: Willytex Newsgroups: alt.meditation.transcendental Date: Mon, Aug 12 2002 http://tinyurl.com/7g3sg2 Titles of interst 'The Mythic Past' Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel by Thomas L. Thompson Basic Books, 2000 http://tinyurl.com/9husvl 'The Bible Unearthed' Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein Free Press, 2002 http://tinyurl.com/6v99d4 'Who Wrote the Bible?' by Richard E. Friedman HarperOne, 1997 http://tinyurl.com/8xuwhh
[FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Paul Mason
Vaj, a Sanskrit Poet of Benares, an Ashu Kavi (spontaneous poet), Pt. Veni Madava Sastri 'Shashtrartha Maharathi' wrote verses about Guru Deva in about 1952. But, Guru Dev asked for them to be taken to the river. 'Tie it down with a big stone, heavy, put it in the Ganges!' However, there still exist five verses of Sanskrit verse by this same poet, dedicated to Guru Dev, the fourth of which Maharishi included in the TM puja. These are to be found in Sanskrit and translated into Hindi and English at:- http://www.paulmason.info/gurudev/praarthanaa.htm Also posted there is a transcript of the story of the poet the puja as told by Maharishi on a course in Rishikesh 1969. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: You have posted on the textual pieces that make up the TM initiation puja. I'd also heard the story of the pundit-poet who composed a tribute to SBS, which on reading it, he asked MMY to throw away. Are these two stories connected? i.e. is the TM puja connected to this same tribute?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek -- copywrite morals?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_re...@... wrote: ruthsimplicity wrote: Reproducing an entire article without permission of the author is copyright infringement, even if you give the author credit. Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek, My info is pretty narrow but thanks for including me. Half my CD's songs are covers of old blues songs and I pay the royalties for every CD pressing ahead of time through the Harry Fox agency (http://www.harryfox.com/index.jsp) that handles most song royalties for the estates of my blues heroes. They have a great website to look up who gets paid. It costs me a little over $600. per 1000 CDs, around 9 cents per song per CD. Many artists who sell their own CDs in the small numbers I do don't bother with it because no industry lawyer is gunna chase such small fish. But since my whole schtick is honoring the early bluesmen and giving them credit for their contribution to modern music...well, you get the picture. I only paid for the rights to sell CDs in this country and do not sell any of my covers in an electronic format like MP3s which I have not paid for. I can sell my own songs that way. There are already Websites claiming to sell MP3s of my songs without any permission from me or the original artists but I think they just steal the short clips of my stuff from CDBaby and rip people off with a short section. I tried to get to the bottom of who was doing it but it is a big shell game and is kind of scary. My Youtube videos pop up in strange places too. Nothing is secure on the Web! When I perform other people's songs in a club, the club owner has already paid a yearly usage fee based on estimates for his performers. One funny thing is that many times I will end up paying the artist's estate who had the most aggressive people registering the song, knowing full well that they didn't write it. I pay Muddy Water's estate for Rock Me on my first CD but it goes back before his time. On the Smithsonian CD recorded by Alan Lomax around 1940 at the Stoval Plantations before Muddy went to Chicago, he asks Muddy where he got the song Walking Blues. I made it up my own self Mudddy claims. Alan then asks But didn't Robert Johnson record that in 1937? catching Muddy flatfooted in his lie. The early bluesmen stole from each other all the time, changing a few verses and making a song their own until at one stage the lawyers got involved. Now there have been several successful lawsuits against rockers who lifted blues songs without payment or credit. Led Zeppelin was a big one for claiming a Robert Johnson song was a traditional song in the public domain. The Rolling Stones were more conscientious about giving proper credit. I don't know if any of this info helps but that's what I know. I would be grateful if you folks would do some posting about the copyright issue. I have read about this online, but each of you have some credentials that pertain, so I'm asking you if each of you have come to terms with your own morality about this. I think Ruth told the above to our Osho dude to smack him for his morals -- calling attention to the fact that he is using the words of others for spamming us, but how much does she ACTUALLY resonate with the copyright laws? Ruth? I don't have clarity about my own stance on this since I am an owner of copyright material that enjoys a cash flow from the Internet, but I will cut and paste just about anything from anyone if it suits me, say, for public posting purposes. Many here do this. However, I would never pass off the writing of others as my own or try to include copyrighted material in any money making effort without getting full permission from the author. My worse sin: I sometimes do not always included a copyright notice with my cut and pastes. My morals are shaky at best, eh? Hard to toss a stone at our newest spammer therefore. Stone him for spamming, yes, but for copyright infringement? Eh, not so much. When I google my copy-written material, almost never do I find that the unauthorized online use of it is offensive to me -- even if someone is deriding it or not including my name as the author. I figure, while the stealing is at its present low level, it serves mainly to advertise and build my brand. That said, if any of my stuff got hot, and suddenly everyone was using it, then I would begin to fret that this over-use was diverting paying-customers to where they can get my stuff for free. What to do? Practically speaking, I've opted to put stuff out there and let the material be used in any way -- brand building -- and if an audience is discovered, then, I will still have my brain and will still be able to produce yet more NEW material that can be more tightly controlled and sold -- this is the porn industry strategy, yes? Tease 'em, then sell 'em. However, those kids who enjoy cash flow from, say, a parent's one-hit-wonder would disagree
[FairfieldLife] Global warming: a hallucinatory cult
[From Camille Paglia's column of today at salon.com ] Have you noticed how much the call for combating global warming crusade has in common with how we got into the Iraq war? In both cases, there are experts who tell us that evidence justifying action is undeniable. They say, The risk of doing nothing is too great for us to do nothing. And as a fallback position they say, Even if we're wrong, we'll still be doing some good in the world. Kind of makes me think man-made CO2 emissions will turn out to be the biggest case of nonexistent WMD since Saddam Hussein's nukes. (Or maybe even bigger!) What do you think? Jim Carroll Wonderful letter! I became a vocal opponent of the onrushing Iraq incursion when I was shocked by the flimsiness of evidence presented by Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations in 2003. Similarly, I have been highly skeptical about the claims for global warming because of their overreliance on speculative computer modeling and because of the woeful patchiness of records for world temperatures before the 20th century. In the 1980s, I was similarly skeptical about media-trumpeted predictions about a world epidemic of heterosexual AIDS. And I remain skeptical about the media's carelessly undifferentiated use of the term AIDS for what is often a complex of wasting diseases in Africa. We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Paul Mason
Vaj, it is the fifth verse that is included in the puja and it is likely these five verses are all that survived the submersion, probably re-written with the help of the poet. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Paul Mason premanandp...@... wrote: Vaj, a Sanskrit Poet of Benares, an Ashu Kavi (spontaneous poet), Pt. Veni Madava Sastri 'Shashtrartha Maharathi' wrote verses about Guru Deva in about 1952. But, Guru Dev asked for them to be taken to the river. 'Tie it down with a big stone, heavy, put it in the Ganges!' However, there still exist five verses of Sanskrit verse by this same poet, dedicated to Guru Dev, the fourth of which Maharishi included in the TM puja. These are to be found in Sanskrit and translated into Hindi and English at:- http://www.paulmason.info/gurudev/praarthanaa.htm Also posted there is a transcript of the story of the poet the puja as told by Maharishi on a course in Rishikesh 1969. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote: You have posted on the textual pieces that make up the TM initiation puja. I'd also heard the story of the pundit-poet who composed a tribute to SBS, which on reading it, he asked MMY to throw away. Are these two stories connected? i.e. is the TM puja connected to this same tribute?
[FairfieldLife] Re: Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek -- copywrite morals?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_re...@... wrote: ruthsimplicity wrote: Reproducing an entire article without permission of the author is copyright infringement, even if you give the author credit. Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek, I would be grateful if you folks would do some posting about the copyright issue. I have read about this online, but each of you have some credentials that pertain, so I'm asking you if each of you have come to terms with your own morality about this. I don't have the credentials, I am only said what I know from writing papers and from lawyers at work.
[FairfieldLife] Copyright morals and the Fair Use Doctrine
Not to be confused with the Fairness Doctrine (which, in a way, is its polar opposite), the Fair Use Doctrine is a federal law which outlines the rules under which one is allowed to reproduce, without permission, copyrighted materials belonging to another. My understanding is that all of the principles that make up the doctrine first developed through the common law and was then codified into law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_doctrine .
Re: [FairfieldLife] Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek -- copywrite morals?
Duveyoung wrote: ruthsimplicity wrote: Reproducing an entire article without permission of the author is copyright infringement, even if you give the author credit. Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek, I would be grateful if you folks would do some posting about the copyright issue. I have read about this online, but each of you have some credentials that pertain, so I'm asking you if each of you have come to terms with your own morality about this. I think Ruth told the above to our Osho dude to smack him for his morals -- calling attention to the fact that he is using the words of others for spamming us, but how much does she ACTUALLY resonate with the copyright laws? Ruth? I don't have clarity about my own stance on this since I am an owner of copyright material that enjoys a cash flow from the Internet, but I will cut and paste just about anything from anyone if it suits me, say, for public posting purposes. Many here do this. However, I would never pass off the writing of others as my own or try to include copyrighted material in any money making effort without getting full permission from the author. My worse sin: I sometimes do not always included a copyright notice with my cut and pastes. My morals are shaky at best, eh? Hard to toss a stone at our newest spammer therefore. Stone him for spamming, yes, but for copyright infringement? Eh, not so much. When I google my copy-written material, almost never do I find that the unauthorized online use of it is offensive to me -- even if someone is deriding it or not including my name as the author. I figure, while the stealing is at its present low level, it serves mainly to advertise and build my brand. That said, if any of my stuff got hot, and suddenly everyone was using it, then I would begin to fret that this over-use was diverting paying-customers to where they can get my stuff for free. What to do? Practically speaking, I've opted to put stuff out there and let the material be used in any way -- brand building -- and if an audience is discovered, then, I will still have my brain and will still be able to produce yet more NEW material that can be more tightly controlled and sold -- this is the porn industry strategy, yes? Tease 'em, then sell 'em. However, those kids who enjoy cash flow from, say, a parent's one-hit-wonder would disagree since they would have no new material to sell. I'm still at odds for how I would set up today's laws. I really want creative artists to own their material, but I think they have to be far more liberal in how their stuff is used. There's tons of artists like that graffiti guy who literally painted on buildings for free but finally got discovered and now can get boo-koo bux for his original, NEW, material. I like this model, because those who have the chops can build a market and then finally make a decent living, whereas others who do not get an audience will have to see their material being used without any permission. This way, the world decides what is valuable enough, tells the author so, and the author then can stop the flow of freebies and start cashing in. For instance, at youtube, I've put up trikking videos using popular songs for the background music. So far, four of those have been contested by the copyright owners. Okay, fair enough, so I don't use those songs again, but is this a solution -- no harm/no foul but cease use of material upon demand? No, I can think of loop holes in that scenario too. I'm using songs that long ago were marketed so the main profits were gained when the song first hit the streets, but they still enjoy some revenues from various sources, and the estate owners issue thereby arises, so, yep, I'm possibly reducing their cash flow, but not really, because I would never be their customer and put out the bux they'd want for the small use I have for their songs. And, there's scant mechanism to buy limited use rights from most of the owners out there. If there was some sort of set-up where I could purchase use for up to, say, 50,000 youtube views, for, say, $10, I'd pay it! So there my solution -- a micro-marketing, penny collecting, system. I've actually done that, by the way. I paid thousands for the use of a few dozens photographs, so I have been legal when dollars were afoot. Trying to be legal and fair, but I feel that the present laws are not fit for today's massive communication structures and the present state of democracy on the Internet. Also, it's a spiritual problem in that authorship rights becomes questionable in certain scenarios -- who really owns their thoughts that arise from nowhere? -- and, if I discover a cancer cure, and I only dole out the medicine for a million dollars a dose, I might be legal, but surely I am immoral, yes? Suggestions? Edg The Mickey Mouse Law or what is known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) took away
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_re...@... wrote: What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old- school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq http://www.youtube.com:80/watch? v=0c4jhBY22dAfeature=channel_page he was recently guest speaker at an event commemorating the Maharishi's birthday in san francisco, california.
[FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 13, 2009, at 8:32 PM, sparaig wrote: As far as I am aware, the pictures have been removed from the bottles...but I haven't purchased any MAPI products on moral grounds (and for safety reasons) in a while. Since Balraj specifically requested that MMY never use the formulations he kindly shared, out of the kindness of his own heart, for PROFIT, clearly there's a reason these guys wanted nothing to do with Mahesh Varma, the self- proclaimed Maharishi. I believe his most recent Vaidya, Dr. Mishra, left as well. If I was third world musician would I let my music be published for the west at the expense of a Hindu businessman-cum-guru? Sure I would. And then I'd move on...like they all have. It's a sad situation Willy, but don't mire yourself in your own denial. Since MAPI is owned by a non-profit org, your cliam is misleading, at best. If you believe that, that's fine. I tend to not believe criminals and their accomplices, esp. ones who hide their monies and offer no transparency. YMMV. Could you please point me to their non-profit accountability provisions and WHOM they issue their grants to? What country are they incorporated in? Looking at the latest IRS listing, I found a number of faux TMO Non-profit shelters, but sadly none for Maharishi Ayurveda Products International. I'm sure this must be a mistake of some kind. As I said, the company is OWNED BY a non-profit. From the license at the bottom of the mapi.com homepage: © 1999 - 2009 Maharishi Ayurveda Products International, Inc. ⢠All rights reserved. The following service marks and trademarks are licensed to Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation and are used under sublicense: Maharishi Ayurveda, Maharishi Gandharva-Ved, TM, Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Amrit Kalash, Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Raam Raj Production⢠is a trademark of Maharishi Ayurveda Products. MAPI.com Terms of Use. And, since the latest bottle of MAK on my shelf has the pictures still on it, its downright false, to boot. Great. So they still use the man's likeness whose formulas they stole. Another is dead. How noble. Don't see their pictures on the web site bottles. Are they hidden on the back? Were they ever on the front? Lawson
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawke...@... wrote: Bevan relishes the role of authoritarian dictator and for the time being is the alpha male at Vlodrop whom all the others take their cues from. Nutjobs like Schiffgens gravitate to Bevan, and the camp komandant types like Konhaus also feel more attracted to the role of hatchet men for Bevan. snip How things fall apart makes for interesting speculation and it depends a lot on personalities and courtly intrigues. And from where do you get this nonsense ? Ah, sorry, forgot: speculation
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: OK, finishing up on this reply... --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltablues@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip FWIW, I'm a skeptic on both the personal improvement and objective measurement of enlightenment counts. I'm not sure personal improvement is an inevitable feature of enlightenment, such that lack of same can be said to be proof that one is *not* enlightened; and I'm highly dubious that any conclusive objective proof of enlightenment (including EEG, etc.) is possible. That seems like a position I can relate to. The question comes, where do you go for information about enlightenment? If anyone takes Maharishi as an expert they have to ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to reconcile King Tony as the most evolved person in the movement with what we have experienced from other brilliant people in our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true believerness from his speeches yet. Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping statement based on *your* personal reaction to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone, but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just for one thing, I don't think listening to a few of Tony's speeches tells you much about how brilliant he is or isn't, let alone whether he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment as I understand it doesn't have to do with brilliance in any case. snip The burden is on the people making the claim, not the people saying where's the beef? I think the only person who gets to say, Where's the beef? is the individual who isn't satisfied with their own experience. But by the same token, they don't get to demand that the people making the claims prove anything. All they get to say is, I didn't get no beef. snip I can evaluate how people function and I notice when someone is extra smart or exceptional in some way. According to your standards. How could it be any other way? But according to Maharishi's own standards it has also failed. He set the bar high at mastery of sidhis and never retracted this objective test for enlightenment. That was for Unity consciousness. And in any case, taken with the rest of his teaching, performance of siddhis is at Nature's behest. And saying that guys like Tony can fly but don't choose too is not going to cut it. Again, it's Nature's choice, not Tony's. That may not satisfy you, but it could be that what would satisfy you just isn't what enlightenment is *about*. We've been talking a bit at cross-purposes here. You're more interested in the question of benefits, but I'm really addressing the narrower issue of whether one can say TM does or does not produce enlightenment as a distinct, permanent state. I don't see any way to determine that on an objective basis. Again, you are departing from how Maharishi viewed it I'm departing from what MMY *said* about it. snip Now outside Maharishi's teaching the concept of enlightenment seems more interesting to me. What is your personal view of what it would mean, if you care to articulate it? I think half the problem is the attempt to articulate anything about it other than one's own experience. ed11 had a great comment in post #204887: i am not sure there is any commonality at all, any intersection at all, between the things we hear, read, and observe about enlightened monks and recluses and spiritual teachers, and how enlightenment plays out for us average, daily go to work, do the dishes and laundry, go to the movies, type of folks. no template. I suspect that more than we realize, there's no real template for recluses and spiritual teachers either. My current thinking is that the templates are not much more than bait to draw you onto the path, and from then on it's a DIY project, as I said to ed11. My working hypothesis is still that MMY had the mechanics of the process of development of consciousness right, but his notions of what it would look like from the outside were just hopeful guesses. And from the inside, you have to *be* enlightened to know what it looks like. i completely agree. enlightenment has so much to do with silence and how it moves that to try and generalize or draw conclusions solely from outward activity will get you in the same trouble as the major (failed) religions face-- superficial activity, and codified actions have nothing to do with enlightenment. damn, this is probably 50 for me this week...so i'll just do a shout out to lurkernomore2000 and say that he is consistently the funniest poster on here, bar none. humor as dry as a martini, and just as intoxicating. and i sure hope shaddai's predictions for the TMO happen-- that they become an
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal L.Shaddai@ wrote: Where are the numbers? In South America, if the initiations we here of are true, and in India, based on what the TMO shows us about TMO money at work in India. Now I remember 20 years or more ago there were these missions to places like Thailand, where one could sponsor a meditator and a Governor for something like USD 30 a month. But that seems to have stopped. So we're left, I truly believe, with 10-50 thousand old time meditators, max. It's not a pop into enlightenment before you finish the 7 step program type of meditation. So I believe that Rick knows people who are quietly enlightened, but I'd imagine they represent a small portion of the 10-50K. Look at it this way. We're self-selected special. That's my whole point -- where are the enlightened? We are talking, after all, about an organization that used to promise enlightenment *in its brochures* in 5-8 years. It's 35-40 years later. Where are all these enlightened beings? The TMO has failed to point to even ONE and say, Here is the product we were advertising. [...] I'm presenting the Where's the beef? argument. The TMO has been selling the beef of enlightenment for 40 years, but has failed to produce a single burger that it can point to and say, THERE is the result of buying our product. You want fries with yours? http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL_udi=B6T4T-470V0HV- 1_user=10_rdoc=1_fmt=_orig=search_sort=dview=c_acct=C50221_versi on=1_urlVersion=0_userid=10md5=aceb1f61bfe6810c76c0c34c8e9a344d OR http://preview.tinyurl.com/9aug52 Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative variation characterize the integration of transcendental and waking states There are others, but this is the one with the complete article available online via pub med. Lawson
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:55 AM, sparaig lengli...@cox.net wrote: Were they ever on the front? Yes. Here's an old picture. http://www.amritdirect.com/images/amrit_180.jpg
[FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, I am the eternal l.shad...@... wrote: On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 11:55 AM, sparaig lengli...@... wrote: Were they ever on the front? Yes. Here's an old picture. http://www.amritdirect.com/images/amrit_180.jpg OK. somewhere I have an original tincan for MAK nectar direct from INdia (AFAIK), from the early/mid 80's. 'll dredge it up and see if the pictures are on the front on that one too. I think its full of nails or something. Lawson
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MMY's Interpretation of the Rig Veda
On Jan 14, 2009, at 12:55 PM, sparaig wrote: Great. So they still use the man's likeness whose formulas they stole. Another is dead. How noble. Don't see their pictures on the web site bottles. Are they hidden on the back? Were they ever on the front? Last time I bought it (years ago).
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 no_re...@... wrote: thanks for sharing this. the true state of enlightenment- quite a mouthful. though i think we are talking apples and oranges. although Hsuan Hua appears to be a very evolved person, and probably a nice enough guy, does it really make sense that we should all emulate him, any more than we should all emulate the Maharishi, or Mother Teresa, or pick your saint? who knows what the world we live in becomes, and what our world becomes with the injection of enlightenment? none of us comes from a recluse or monk tradition, and so there is no template to determine how we express enlightenment in the everyday world. everyone has some idea of how enlightened spiritual teachers act, based on the process of observation you describe. but enlightened people living in the world, who don't want to be teachers? no way. no way at all to assess them. i am not making excuses or trying to justify anything, one way, or the other. just making the point that what works for recluses doesn't work for us. i am not sure there is any commonality at all, any intersection at all, between the things we hear, read, and observe about enlightened monks and recluses and spiritual teachers, and how enlightenment plays out for us average, daily go to work, do the dishes and laundry, go to the movies, type of folks. no template. I think this is interesting and thoughtful, so I mean no disrespect with my comments. If we have no idea how enlightenment plays out for the ordinary person, then why are you meditating? There must be some assumptions you make about enlightenment and what it is. What are your assumptions? My next issue is the most problematic. You comment that we don't know how enlightenment will play out for average folks. Others have commented that we cannot know whether someone like King Tony is enlightened because we don't know how enlightenment plays out and we aren't King Tony. Some have even said that the actions of the enlightened person may not appear enlightened or even good. But it isn't the Nazi version of enlightenment because you do not have to agree with the enlightened person. It comes back to the unseen force of Nature. The problem with this theory is that it is essentially religious or faith based. It is fine if you have faith, but troublesome for those that don't. There is nothing really that can be discussed or studied. Even history is of limited help because history is rewritten all the time, especially religious history. Look at the discussion of the MMY tapes. I have no real problem with having faith. The need for belief in More is peculiarly human. It may be because there is More (after all, I can't prove that there isn't). It may be be for evolutionary reasons. It may be one of many coping mechanisms humans have. However, let us not mix up faith with science and use mumbo jumbo to try to convince others that what has not been proved is proved. Vedic science is not science. There also is nothing wrong with doubt. I cannot prove King Tony is not enlightened. But no one has proved he is. Apparently the flying thing is a no go and under your theory we don't know how enlightenment plays out. But I can doubt that KT is enlightened. I can even say that his writings are kooky pseudo-science. I can also doubt enlightenment exists at all. I can also explore theories about why people have what others find to be strange beliefs. We all have to make decisions in our life. Accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior? Keep kosher? Wear a burka? Go to a scientolgy meeting? Do TM? Give away all your worldly goods to the poor? Lots of competing ways to live your life. Some I respect more than others. I respect action. I value doing doing the best your can and helping others. We live in a relative world where people feel real pain and people can do good things based on knowledge of the facts. MMY said: Right action came to be regarded as a means to gain nirvana, whereas right action is in fact the result of this state of consciousness in freedom.. . The teaching of right action without due emphasis on the primary necessity of realization of Being is like building a wall without a foundation. I don't accept this. My faith is that doing good is good. It is a primary necessity. This primary theoretical difference is where I part from MMY and from many religions.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
On Jan 14, 2009, at 1:02 PM, sparaig wrote: Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative variation characterize the integration of transcendental and waking states There are others, but this is the one with the complete article available online via pub med. As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition. It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and people who buy the marketing spiel. This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning or nature of the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than 'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental consciousness becasue we say it is'. As the Cambridge Handbook comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking, dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and large, underwhelmed by these type of claims. It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science.
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 1:02 PM, sparaig wrote: Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative variation characterize the integration of transcendental and waking states There are others, but this is the one with the complete article available online via pub med. As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition. It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and people who buy the marketing spiel. Transcendental experience--the term used in the abstract of the article--can never be anything *but* self-defined. The most the neurological researcher can do is cite objectively measurable correlates of self- reports of the experience. You could pose the same objection to anyone who came up with a definition of transcendental consciousness. If there *were* a standard neurological definition, whoever first posed it would be subject to the same objection; if such an objection invalidated the definition, there would never *be* a standard definition. The subjects characterize their experience as transcendental because it seems to match descriptions of the state called transcendental in the enlightenment literature. As with dreaming, there's no way to put the state on the table and measure it; it will always be subjective. All that can be measured are physiological and behavioral correlates. Here's the abstract (I don't know how to get the full text--Lawson??): Long-term meditating subjects report that transcendental experiences (TE), which first occurred during their Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice, now subjectively co-exist with waking and sleeping states. To investigate neurophysiological correlates of this integrated state, we recorded EEG in these subjects and in two comparison groups during simple and choice contingent negative variation (CNV) tasks. In individuals reporting the integration of the transcendent with waking and sleeping, CNV was higher in simple but lower in choice trials, and 6-12 Hz EEG amplitude and broadband frontal EEG coherence were higher during choice trials. Increased EEG amplitude and coherence, characteristic of TM practice, appeared to become a stable EEG trait during CNV tasks in these subjects. These significant EEG differences may underlie the inverse patterns in CNV amplitude seen between groups. An 'Integration Scale,' constructed from these cortical measures, may characterize the transformation in brain dynamics corresponding to increasing integration of the transcendent with waking and sleeping. This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning or nature of the state attained. Note that no such claims are made in the abstract. It's clearly stated that the reported experiences are subjective; all the study does is measure external characteristics of subjects who have reported the experience. It doesn't really tell you anything other than 'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental consciousness becasue we say it is'. As the Cambridge Handbook comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological context of that knowledge. Irrelevant, because, again, no such claims are being made, at least in the abstract of this article. You *could* make a reasonable objection by explaining why you don't think the subjects' descriptions of the transcendental experience really do match the descriptions in the enlightenment literature. But the objection you posed instead is obviously bogus.
[FairfieldLife] Re: G i v e
---Not practical. Does this mean I'm supposed to give $100 to the next street person I meet? In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Arhata Osho arhatafreespe...@... wrote: G i v e Unconditionally, with no expectation! Give from feelings to anyone, with no expectation of response. To give from the heart is a divine experience of joy. To give from the heart is to be able to receive with graciousness and gratitude. The little things of life create a spirit of euphoria for those keeping and living a simple life blessed by the love of whatever nature unfolds. Give more hugs! A miser with giving will receive little but calculated offerings of expectations (at best) - everything becomes conditional. Life without giving is mechanical and selfish with no meaning. Everything becomes numbers and calculation while this attitude becomes hardwire so much that all other options of sensitivity become waved off as ¡foolish¢ and, a waste of time. The man whose plate is full of the material of hoarding, and constant accumulation, is a person who ¡is soulless¢. The ¡taker who believes in entitlement¢ is a person to avoid. ¡Manipulation, domination, and control¢ are the tools of the bandit who steals from the joy of living. Attachment to the expectation of giving by others is a confrontation and burden to the mind as well as a blockage to curtail giving positive thoughts to another, in other words, it becomes a type of ¡taking¢. Begging need not be overt but can be a ¡drug on the mind¢. Giving back to society and others who have benefitted one, will contribute to making it a better world, not to mention, create an opportunity for growth of all. Not that long ago, the handicapped, had no benefits of movement. Today, the handicapped are given everything from energy powered wheel chairs to street corner talking lights to alert them to safe crossing times. Give, and the world changes. Give to the greatest giver ... life! Give peace a chance! Yesss Self Love Center arhatafreespe...@... 310 880-2020 Port Townsend, Washington USA Copyright January 14, 2009
[FairfieldLife] Re: Superconsciousness Words from the Master
Interesting person. 30 years old! Wow. Video results for Nithyananda{var m=window.document.images[window.document.images.length-1];var n=m.src.indexOf('/ThumbnailServer2');if(n=0)m.src='http://video.google.com'+m.src.substr(n);}Living Enlightenment - 1st Samadhi Experience ... 52 min www.youtube.com{var m=window.document.images[window.document.images.length-1];var n=m.src.indexOf('/ThumbnailServer2');if(n=0)m.src='http://video.google.com'+m.src.substr(n);}Paramahamsa Nithyananda - Quotes 4 min 35 sec www.clipser.comSri Nithyananda - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaParamahamsa Nithyananda (January 1, 1978), born Rajasekaran, is an Indian spiritual guru who teaches meditation and hosted various meditation retreats, ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramahamsa_Sri_Nithyananda - 27k - Cached - Similar pages - --- On Wed, 1/14/09, Melitta K melitta_0...@yahoo.com.au wrote: More wise Words from the Master Swamiji, what about love between a mother and a child? Is it not self less love? Even motherly love comes with expectations, ma. Many times, people have confronted me with arguments when I say this. Let me tell you, a mother loves her son alright. But at the end of the day, there is a non-perceivable, unwritten expectation written on that love. If the son rubs her on the wrong side just once, the first words that would come out would be those telling the things that she had done for him since his childhood. A small dent in the relationship is enough to bring the whole thing out. Real love, is the expression of the Existential Energy in you and this love can never think of any such arguments. It only knows to flow without a reason. It doesn’t know to maintain any track record. It doesn’t know to keep track and connect with the past and argue. It flows because it overflowed, that’s all! It never questions because it does not know to question! The moment you cite incidents from the past, it means that expectations were always there hidden behind your love and when it is this way, it can never be real love. Understand that. It is the same way when it comes to the son also. The son loves the mother, expecting her to look after him, expecting her to wake up at five and pack his lunch for him, expecting her to maintain his clothes for him, without missing a single day. He adores the mother because he enjoys the care and concern, the luxury. A small story: A boy was learning fractions in his school. One day, the teacher asked him, “If there was a cake and we divided it into 5 portions and gave it to each of your family members, what fraction of the cake will you get?” The boy replied, “2/5 Ma’am.” The teacher asked, “How? Haven’t you studied your fractions well?” The boy replied, “Ma’am, my mother will give her piece to me if I like the cake.” You see, mothers want to sacrifice for their children, alright, but the attitude with which they sacrifice is what we are talking about. They should do it out of simply an overflowing in them, not out of any hidden expectations. These events will never get recorded in them if they do it out of overflowing. And even if they get recorded, they will not surface with a vengeance when things like this happen. Only when they do it as a duty-bound love, they will record these incidents and recall them also. Common love always thrives on expectation. No one can deny this, although everyone may vehemently try to. The expectation in love is so well woven into it that it is hard to perceive it and very hard to believe when someone talks about it. Actually, as long as things go smoothly, it is difficult to believe this. But we hear of so many cases where sons and daughters are written off from the family for simple reasons! Simply because they married outside the community, or simply because there was some feud in the family. Where did all the love disappear suddenly? Until such incidents happened, the son or daughter would have been loved very much in the family. The so-called love would have reigned supreme. What happened suddenly? Why did it suddenly disappear? How can it suddenly disappear if it was real love? This is not the kind of reaction that real love will generate. Real love can never confuse itself with anything else because nothing can make it stop from flowing! It is not bound by any cause-effect cycle. Even in subtle family issues, if you are deeply aware, you will understand how bound your love is. Just try to re-arrange a few things in your life, and watch how your own family will react to it. With your children, as long as you provide for them in the name of love, they also enjoy living out of your graciousness, in the name of love. As long as you don’t rub each other the wrong way, it is alright. If either of you behaves in an unexpected fashion, the mood of the love changes; the whole flavour changes. It doesn’t take much time or effort for the flavour to change,
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_re...@... wrote: We all have to make decisions in our life. Accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior? Keep kosher? Wear a burka? Go to a scientolgy meeting? Do TM? Give away all your worldly goods to the poor? Lots of competing ways to live your life. Some I respect more than others. I respect action. I value doing doing the best your can and helping others. We live in a relative world where people feel real pain and people can do good things based on knowledge of the facts. MMY said: Right action came to be regarded as a means to gain nirvana, whereas right action is in fact the result of this state of consciousness in freedom.. . The teaching of right action without due emphasis on the primary necessity of realization of Being is like building a wall without a foundation. I don't accept this. My faith is that doing good is good. It is a primary necessity. This primary theoretical difference is where I part from MMY and from many religions. Actually, Ruth, I doubt that you will find many religions that agree with Maharishi. His is a pretty lone voice shouting out in a sea of preaching the value of service and good works. I agree with you 100%. All I have to do to come to that decision is to look at the lives of those who believed Maharishi's ideas on this, and see what they did with their lives and whether they are happy or not *in* those lives. The spiritual traditions I tend to put credence in *all* speak of the value of service and good works, both for the world and for the seeker. There is very little in the world of religions or spiritual practice that can shift your state of consciousness *more* than doing something for someone else when you didn't have to. Doing so really *IS* a technique for shifting one's state of consciousness to a higher place, and IMO those who pooh-pooh it and claim it isn't a viable technique are IMO missing out on one of the most important tools available to them in the spiritual warehouse. If for no other reason, performing service and good works works to shift your state of atten- tion because it *takes your mind off of your self*. Whereas endless rounding and spending money on one add on product after another to supposedly hasten your *own* enlightenment merely serves to focus you more and more intently on your self. There is much in Maharishi's dogma that I think is valuable. However, there is much that is missing, and I think the value of selfless service -- *not* just for your spiritual teacher, but for the world at large, and for everyday people in your everyday life, every day -- is the thing that is most missing. You've probably seen on this forum the absolute *disdain* that some people seem to have for performing good works. That attitude did not magically appear; it was carefully cultivated IMO. And I think you need go no further than watching the everyday behavior of those in whom it *was* cultivated to see what such a belief system produces. I've met quite a few individuals from spiritual trad- itions whose very practice is *founded* on selfless service. They teach that it is far more important to do good works than to meditate, or at the very least that the two pretty much *have* to be practiced simul- taneously. And I have to say, in all honesty...no bullshit, no slams intended...these were by far the happiest people I have ever encountered in the world of spiritual prac- tice. Whereas, speaking from 40+ years of experience, as a general rule, those who focused the most on their *own* enlightenment were the unhappiest.
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: snip Curtis: That seems like a position I can relate to. The question comes, where do you go for information about enlightenment? If anyone takes Maharishi as an expert they have to ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to reconcile King Tony as the most evolved person in the movement with what we have experienced from other brilliant people in our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true believerness from his speeches yet. Judy: Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping statement based on *your* personal reaction to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone, Agreed. I can't speak for everyone. I was ruling out that someone else might find him exceptional in some way. There might be someone who hears him and thinks: this guy is living the full potential of his creative intelligence. I am inspired by his example to spend hours developing the state of mind he is functioning from. But I doubt you would find such a person outside the small group of people who are already very involved with the beliefs. Most of the movement spokespersons don't come off to the non meditating public as being mentally advanced. It is quite the opposite from my experience listening to journalists describe their experiences with top movement people. but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just for one thing, I don't think listening to a few of Tony's speeches tells you much about how brilliant he is or isn't, Here I disagree. I've heard enough from him to assess that. A person's intelligence shows up pretty quickly in their speech for me. I get more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking in his speech and consider that a sign of a very uninteresting mind. Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full human potential, (remember people are using 10% of their brains and now with TM we can use 100%?) So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique mind and for me this would be obvious in hearing him speak pretty quickly. An example would be listening to Bill Clinton who I view as being extra intelligent. It shows. let alone whether he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment as I understand it doesn't have to do with brilliance in any case. Then this is a personal take on enlightenment. For Maharishi the full development of creative intelligence included measurable enhancements of both. The claim is so lofty, that this state is the purpose of human life, that it isn't too much to expect some evidence of it. Maharishi made the rules of how to judge it so this is all fair. He claimed to be able to tell a person's state of consciousness from a single spoken word. snip The burden is on the people making the claim, not the people saying where's the beef? I think the only person who gets to say, Where's the beef? is the individual who isn't satisfied with their own experience. But by the same token, they don't get to demand that the people making the claims prove anything. All they get to say is, I didn't get no beef. I disagree. The movement is making public claims and among those is that it is involved in science. Challenging claims for no evidence is legitimate. People can interpret their internal experiences as living in a state of enlightenment, but the movement's claims include objectively verifiable aspects of a person. This is the difference from say the claim I am saved by Jesus H. Christ. This claim doesn't include any outward manifestations. So it would not be proper to say prove you are saved, to me. But if a person is claiming to be living in a special state of mind that could be said to be the full potential of human life, I can expect a 16 ounce prime New York Strip, or I should rightfully conclude that perhaps the person was a bit deluded about their special mental state. I am only talking about Maharishi's definitions. Once we are out of his system then claims of enlightenment can be of the I am saved nature and don't have to display any enhanced mental functioning. snip I can evaluate how people function and I notice when someone is extra smart or exceptional in some way. According to your standards. How could it be any other way? But according to Maharishi's own standards it has also failed. He set the bar high at mastery of sidhis and never retracted this objective test for enlightenment. That was for Unity consciousness. And in any case, taken with the rest of his teaching, performance of siddhis is at Nature's behest. I can't remember anytime he used this caveat. When he spoke of the sidhis when I was in the movement it was in terms of being at will. He specifically claimed that people in the movement would be flying through the air. I never heard him say only if nature wants you to. In any case he has had yogic flying demonstrations so it seems obvious that if anyone
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: G i v e
I'll send you my address ---Not practical. Does this mean I'm supposed to give $100 to the next street person I meet? In FairfieldLife@ yahoogroups. com, Arhata Osho arhatafreespeech@ ... wrote: G i v e Unconditionally, with no expectation! Give from feelings to anyone, with no expectation of response. To give from the heart is a divine experience of joy. To give from the heart is to be able to receive with graciousness and gratitude. The little things of life create a spirit of euphoria for those keeping and living a simple life blessed by the love of whatever nature unfolds. Give more hugs! A miser with giving will receive little but calculated offerings of expectations (at best) - everything becomes conditional. Life without giving is mechanical and selfish with no meaning. Everything becomes numbers and calculation while this attitude becomes hardwire so much that all other options of sensitivity become waved off as ¡foolish¢ and, a waste of time. The man whose plate is full of the material of hoarding, and constant accumulation, is a person who ¡is soulless¢. The ¡taker who believes in entitlement¢ is a person to avoid. ¡Manipulation, domination, and control¢ are the tools of the bandit who steals from the joy of living. Attachment to the expectation of giving by others is a confrontation and burden to the mind as well as a blockage to curtail giving positive thoughts to another, in other words, it becomes a type of ¡taking¢. Begging need not be overt but can be a ¡drug on the mind¢. Giving back to society and others who have benefitted one, will contribute to making it a better world, not to mention, create an opportunity for growth of all. Not that long ago, the handicapped, had no benefits of movement. Today, the handicapped are given everything from energy powered wheel chairs to street corner talking lights to alert them to safe crossing times. Give, and the world changes. Give to the greatest giver ... life! Give peace a chance! Yesss Self Love Center ArhataFreeSpeech@ ... 310 880-2020 Port Townsend, Washington USA Copyright January 14, 2009
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 1:02 PM, sparaig wrote: Patterns of EEG coherence, power, and contingent negative variation characterize the integration of transcendental and waking states There are others, but this is the one with the complete article available online via pub med. As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition. It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and people who buy the marketing spiel. This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning or nature of the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than 'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental consciousness becasue we say it is'. As the Cambridge Handbook comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking, dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and large, underwhelmed by these type of claims. It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science. Unlike the BUddhist meditation researchers, natch... Lawson
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
On Jan 14, 2009, at 2:35 PM, sparaig wrote: As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition. It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and people who buy the marketing spiel. This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning or nature of the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than 'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental consciousness becasue we say it is'. As the Cambridge Handbook comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking, dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and large, underwhelmed by these type of claims. It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science. Unlike the BUddhist meditation researchers, natch... As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that sell and market their form of meditation using research, either legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research. But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC) meditation.
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity no_reply@ wrote: snip MMY said: Right action came to be regarded as a means to gain nirvana, whereas right action is in fact the result of this state of consciousness in freedom.. . The teaching of right action without due emphasis on the primary necessity of realization of Being is like building a wall without a foundation. I don't accept this. My faith is that doing good is good. It is a primary necessity. This primary theoretical difference is where I part from MMY and from many religions. Actually, Ruth, I doubt that you will find many religions that agree with Maharishi. His is a pretty lone voice shouting out in a sea of preaching the value of service and good works. Actually, faith vs. works has been a controversy within Christianity almost from the beginning. Put faith vs. works into a search engine and see what you come up with (41,600 hits in Yahoo). Martin Luther (founder of Protestantism) said (paraphrased): Good works do not a good person make, but a good person will do good works (the implication being that while good works don't make you good, if you aren't doing good works, you aren't a good person). snip If for no other reason, performing service and good works works to shift your state of atten- tion because it *takes your mind off of your self*. Tricky, though, because it can also foster a sense of pride in one's selflessness, thus canceling out that effect. snip You've probably seen on this forum the absolute *disdain* that some people seem to have for performing good works. Funny, I haven't seen anyone expressing absolute *disdain* for good works. I suspect Barry's fantasizing again. snip I've met quite a few individuals from spiritual trad- itions whose very practice is *founded* on selfless service. They teach that it is far more important to do good works than to meditate, or at the very least that the two pretty much *have* to be practiced simul- taneously. And you're sure they were not already well on their way to enlightenment and doing their selfless service entirely spontaneously as a *result* of their development of consciousness?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
On Jan 14, 2009, at 10:33 AM, pranamoocher wrote: Nice find. Nothing like Jerry, who was always a pleasure to listen to. You immediately got a sense of genuine integrity and peace when he spoke. Too bad the video is so short. No kidding. Somebody articulate, intelligent and with an actual sense of humor. Can't have that! No wonder he got booted. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony...@... wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 no_re...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_reply@ wrote: What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old- school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq http://www.youtube.com:80/watch? v=0c4jhBY22dAfeature=channel_page he was recently guest speaker at an event commemorating the Maharishi's birthday in san francisco, california. Wish I could have been there. Jerry was able to somehow be completely devoted to MMY and yet remain compassionate and real. As far as starting his own breakoff group based on knowing the real Maharishi I cannot see how that could happen. The real MMY fired him, and then we also saw the real MMY for the last 30 years. He was both the sweet saint and whatever happened after that. He loved Jerry and also Bevan and John. Lots of extreme sides to it all and there is no way to make rational sense of much of it. There just isn't. Most of the stories we hear over the years and here on FFL and from friends and also from our own experiences have a great deal of truth to them - both the good and the bad, the blazing light and the dark sounding stuff. I cannot put it all together or imagine what it all means. It is a mystery.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Ruth - Curtis - Turq - Marek -- copywrite morals?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu noozg...@... wrote: [snip] The Mickey Mouse Law or what is known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) took away a lot of the fair use rights. Some still remain. It really depends on the rights holder and many of the rights holders are not the author whose article you are quoting but the big corporation they work for. Depending on the corporation they can act just like Nazis or be wise and note that if you are posting the article (even the full one) that you are doing some advertising for them. Mostly I post a teaser or a few lines of the article and then the link to the full article. Now note there are some sites, mainly political that allow you to post the full article as long as you give credit and a link. Some will just blatantly tell you to post the article on your blog or group. If I had a website in which people were doing a lot of copying and pasting from it I would only mind if I had advertising and they didn't also copy and paste the advertising as, often, websites make money from the click-through on the advertising. So, I suppose that would mean that if I were copying an article to FFL I would want to use Rich-Text Editor (Beta). I'd also want the copier to provide a link to my website. Copyrights and patents for that matter have gotten a little out of hand. The DMCA adding ridiculous lifespans to copyrights. That's why we call it the Mickey Mouse Law because it was Disney who lobbied for the changes because their copyright was about to expire on Mickey Mouse. It used to be that you were granted a copyright for 27 years and then you could renew once. The problem with patents has been mainly with software patents which should have never been granted. They were because the Patent Office simply didn't understand them. If you took a bunch of programmers, isolated them individually and gave them the problem which the software patent was supposed to solve, the majority would probably come up with the same solution. IOW, these patents were granted for just the way that software works. All those patents should be revoked. It's all about greed and control by the rich. I tell you time and time again, the rich are the root of the problem. Oh yes, I do hold copyrights and I was involved in securing patents for a software company even those I was opposed to the idea (the board of directors wanted it).
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
And from where do you get this nonsense ? History. That's how these things typically pan out. The present TMO is an authoritarian regime grafted on top of a collection of well meaning and oftimes very good people. All authoritarian regimes require a large pool of submissive fearful people. They can be quite stable for a long time. But only as long as people fear them. While they last people who are good at the authoritarian thing will rise to the top. We know there are quite a few bad apples in the movement who genuinely enjoy the exercise of power over other people. When the regime crumbles those people fall quite a long way. That's how it always has been and always will be. There is very little real affection for the present crop of leaders in the TMO because they mostly look after their own interests rather than the interests of those below them. Once the number of people willing to take on the role of submissive fearful peasant drops below a critical value the regal court can't maintain itself. On present form there will not be enough new entrants into the TMO who will also accept the role of submissive peasant to keep the regal court going. Therefore at some point in the future it will have to crumble. That much is probably not open to speculation since it's a simple extrapolation of where the TMO is now, the direction it's heading and knowing from history what comes next. The speculative part is how people will behave when the crunch comes. Who will gang up with whom to fight over the remains. Most of us will be dead by that time so we'll never get to find out. But the transition from this set of rulers to the next generation of TMO leaders is likely to be turbulent to say the least. If the TMO crumbles without the contents of the tape library being duplicated into the public domain then Maharishi's knowledge will be lost. Since it is inevitable that the present structure will crumble the long term survival of a complete record of Maharishi's lectures will depend on the courage and insight of a small number of people with access to the tape library. People with access to the tape library are not selected for courage and insight.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
---thx ...below - e-mailed to Jerry just now. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunsh...@... wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 10:33 AM, pranamoocher wrote: Nice find. Nothing like Jerry, who was always a pleasure to listen to. You immediately got a sense of genuine integrity and peace when he spoke. Too bad the video is so short. No kidding. Somebody articulate, intelligent and with an actual sense of humor. Can't have that! No wonder he got booted. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
This has been an excellent thread, thanks to both of you. ** --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip Curtis: That seems like a position I can relate to. The question comes, where do you go for information about enlightenment? If anyone takes Maharishi as an expert they have to ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to reconcile King Tony as the most evolved person in the movement with what we have experienced from other brilliant people in our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true believerness from his speeches yet. Judy: Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping statement based on *your* personal reaction to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone, Agreed. I can't speak for everyone. I was ruling out that someone else might find him exceptional in some way. There might be someone who hears him and thinks: this guy is living the full potential of his creative intelligence. I am inspired by his example to spend hours developing the state of mind he is functioning from. But I doubt you would find such a person outside the small group of people who are already very involved with the beliefs. Most of the movement spokespersons don't come off to the non meditating public as being mentally advanced. It is quite the opposite from my experience listening to journalists describe their experiences with top movement people. but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Just for one thing, I don't think listening to a few of Tony's speeches tells you much about how brilliant he is or isn't, Here I disagree. I've heard enough from him to assess that. A person's intelligence shows up pretty quickly in their speech for me. I get more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking in his speech and consider that a sign of a very uninteresting mind. Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full human potential, (remember people are using 10% of their brains and now with TM we can use 100%?) So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique mind and for me this would be obvious in hearing him speak pretty quickly. An example would be listening to Bill Clinton who I view as being extra intelligent. It shows. let alone whether he validates MMY's teaching. Enlightenment as I understand it doesn't have to do with brilliance in any case. Then this is a personal take on enlightenment. For Maharishi the full development of creative intelligence included measurable enhancements of both. The claim is so lofty, that this state is the purpose of human life, that it isn't too much to expect some evidence of it. Maharishi made the rules of how to judge it so this is all fair. He claimed to be able to tell a person's state of consciousness from a single spoken word. snip The burden is on the people making the claim, not the people saying where's the beef? I think the only person who gets to say, Where's the beef? is the individual who isn't satisfied with their own experience. But by the same token, they don't get to demand that the people making the claims prove anything. All they get to say is, I didn't get no beef. I disagree. The movement is making public claims and among those is that it is involved in science. Challenging claims for no evidence is legitimate. People can interpret their internal experiences as living in a state of enlightenment, but the movement's claims include objectively verifiable aspects of a person. This is the difference from say the claim I am saved by Jesus H. Christ. This claim doesn't include any outward manifestations. So it would not be proper to say prove you are saved, to me. But if a person is claiming to be living in a special state of mind that could be said to be the full potential of human life, I can expect a 16 ounce prime New York Strip, or I should rightfully conclude that perhaps the person was a bit deluded about their special mental state. I am only talking about Maharishi's definitions. Once we are out of his system then claims of enlightenment can be of the I am saved nature and don't have to display any enhanced mental functioning. snip I can evaluate how people function and I notice when someone is extra smart or exceptional in some way. According to your standards. How could it be any other way? But according to Maharishi's own standards it has also failed. He set the bar high at mastery of sidhis and never retracted this objective test for enlightenment. That was for Unity consciousness. And in any case, taken with the rest of his teaching, performance of siddhis is at Nature's behest. I can't remember anytime he used this caveat. When he spoke of the sidhis when I was
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--Brahmasthan, the TMO's Spiritual Center of America, will crumble with the crumbs being picked up by the Mormons, who will establish their own New Jerusalem in Missouri.: Joseph Smith received revelation in July of 1831 that the New Jerusalem and a temple would be built in Independence, Missouri and that the gathering of Israel would begin (Doctrine and Covenants 57:1- 3). Since the term Zion also refers to the pure in heart, when Christ comes again there could be many places in the world that would be referred to as Zion, because the people have accepted the gospel and follow the commandments, but the New Jerusalem is to be a center place or capital city for the pure in heart. The building of the New Jerusalem and the rebuilding of Jerusalem must happen before the second coming of Christ. A proclamation from the Twelve Apostles in 1845 states: He will assemble the Natives, the remnants of Joseph in America; and make them a great, and strong, and powerful nation: and he will civilize and enlighten them, and will establish a holy city, and temple and seat of government among them, which shall be called Zion. And there shall be his tabernacle, his sanctuary, his throne, and seat of government for the whole continent of North and South America for ever. In short, it will be to the western hemisphere what Jerusalem will be to the eastern . The city of Zion, with its sanctuary and priesthood, and the glorious fulness of the gospel, will constitute a standard which will put an end to jarring creeds and political wranglings, by uniting the republics, states, provinces, territories, nations, tribes, kindred, tongues, people and sects of North and South America in one great and common bond of brotherhood. Truth and knowledge shall make them free, and love cement their union. The Lord also shall be their king and their lawgiver; while wars shall cease and peace prevail for a thousand years. (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow, 1992, p.1010) Ultimately, however, the complete fulfillment of this prediction will not take place until Jesus Christ returns to reign, since He is the one whose right it is to rule from Zion. Retrieved from http://www.mormonwiki.com/New_Jerusalem; - In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawke...@... wrote: And from where do you get this nonsense ? History. That's how these things typically pan out. The present TMO is an authoritarian regime grafted on top of a collection of well meaning and oftimes very good people. All authoritarian regimes require a large pool of submissive fearful people. They can be quite stable for a long time. But only as long as people fear them. While they last people who are good at the authoritarian thing will rise to the top. We know there are quite a few bad apples in the movement who genuinely enjoy the exercise of power over other people. When the regime crumbles those people fall quite a long way. That's how it always has been and always will be. There is very little real affection for the present crop of leaders in the TMO because they mostly look after their own interests rather than the interests of those below them. Once the number of people willing to take on the role of submissive fearful peasant drops below a critical value the regal court can't maintain itself. On present form there will not be enough new entrants into the TMO who will also accept the role of submissive peasant to keep the regal court going. Therefore at some point in the future it will have to crumble. That much is probably not open to speculation since it's a simple extrapolation of where the TMO is now, the direction it's heading and knowing from history what comes next. The speculative part is how people will behave when the crunch comes. Who will gang up with whom to fight over the remains. Most of us will be dead by that time so we'll never get to find out. But the transition from this set of rulers to the next generation of TMO leaders is likely to be turbulent to say the least. If the TMO crumbles without the contents of the tape library being duplicated into the public domain then Maharishi's knowledge will be lost. Since it is inevitable that the present structure will crumble the long term survival of a complete record of Maharishi's lectures will depend on the courage and insight of a small number of people with access to the tape library. People with access to the tape library are not selected for courage and insight.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawke...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Guy, is a good quick reading of the tea leafs. In watching, the Bevanistic-Haglinist faction are not joined at the hip. Yes, both are idealistic but Morris is the still powerful bull dogmatist inside and Hagelin calculated moving TM practically forward outside in a secular way. Each with a gravitational pull and attracting their people to them. And yes as Boo points out, there is the Indian family movement but also add in to the equation the Europeans. Yes, I was just lumping Bevan-Hagelin together for convenience of expression rather than correctness in analysis. Hagelin is the brighter of the two and certainly inclined to be more practical in his outlook. Though he'll be in deep doodoo if CERN don't find super-symmetric particles and all the UF charts have to be recalled. Bevan relishes the role of authoritarian dictator and for the time being is the alpha male at Vlodrop whom all the others take their cues from. Nutjobs like Schiffgens gravitate to Bevan, and the camp komandant types like Konhaus also feel more attracted to the role of hatchet men for Bevan. But the brick wall cometh. At some point the decades of work Bevan co have put into flushing the goodwill of the movement down the toilet will show their results and ideals will make contact with reality. How things fall apart makes for interesting speculation and it depends a lot on personalities and courtly intrigues. But fall apart it must because there isn't going to be a large enough population of obedient TMers to keep the regal court going. Whether Bevan ever gets to wear handcuffs is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that someone should have the sense to get the contents of the tape library out and into the public domain before the nutcase faction wreck it. The Vlodrop vs. Shrivasta/Varma clan tussle over funds is the one that is ultimately going to blow the roof off the whole shebang.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
On Jan 14, 2009, at 2:50 PM, yifuxero wrote: ---thx ...below - e-mailed to Jerry just now. Wish he'd drop by here, would love to say thanks. Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: I disagree. The movement is making public claims and among those is that it is involved in science. Challenging claims for no evidence is legitimate. People can interpret their internal experiences as living in a state of enlightenment, but the movement's claims include objectively verifiable aspects of a person. This is the difference from say the claim I am saved by Jesus H. Christ. This claim doesn't include any outward manifestations. So it would not be proper to say prove you are saved, to me. But if a person is claiming to be living in a special state of mind that could be said to be the full potential of human life, I can expect a 16 ounce prime New York Strip, or I should rightfully conclude that perhaps the person was a bit deluded about their special mental state. I am only talking about Maharishi's definitions. Once we are out of his system then claims of enlightenment can be of the I am saved nature and don't have to display any enhanced mental functioning. Excellent post Curtis. If there is no proof except in the mind of the enlightened, the unenlightened mind is at risk of manufacturing its own proof. Then they do can what they please with the belief they have the support of nature. I know a person who is a bit this way, firmly believing she Knows the Cause of all sorts of mundane things. Shaddai hinted at the risk of the ego taking over. There is no guru to help when people lose their way.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, guyfawkes91 guyfawke...@... wrote: People with access to the tape library are not selected for courage and insight. HaHa Quote of the week !
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
yifuxero, If you're a real friend of Jerry, send him my earlier post, below. Challenge his ass, be a, you know, real friend. Let's see if even with you running as his shield he'll feel comfortable enough to react to my considerations. Betting he'll not opt so -- and despite his personal charisma and acumen, he'll betray that TB-protect-the-TMO-at-ANY-cost still being active in him. He knew. He fucking knew -- sooo much. To be silent even after his rude dismissal from the TMO, seems to indicate that he still has cash flow that's able to buy his silence, OR, hey, I'm open minded just a titch on him, let's see him justify the TMO's criminal activities based on his belief in Maharishi's absolute ability to do ad hoc morality that would at least be interesting for many reasons. His silence, the silence of so many who know so much, cannot be ignored when they're there on a platform enjoying their pedestal as if they're sinless and enlightened. If Jerry's still working the crowds -- then for what reason? If he's such a fucking great guy, let him explain his silence to us -- drag our asses into a greater clarity about relativism -- whatever -- but to let so much stay under the rug is proof enough for me that he's to be judged as a shuck and jive player and a potent and possible marauder. Hey, it's not like the guy never did shit to us TBers even when he was in charge. I have a story about what he did to me once, but it's so trivial that it would only be germane if he denies -- in general -- that he never told lies to the faithful or that he never ran roughshod over their rights in various ways or that he wasn't privy to a host of cloak-and-dagger movement policies and actions that would have invalidated the marketing of TM if it had become known. Fool me once, abuse me once, okay, I walked right into your fist, but shame on me for turning another cheek to one who smiles for reasons he will not state. Edg Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old-school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, yifuxero yifux...@... wrote: ---thx ...below - e-mailed to Jerry just now. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunshine@ wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 10:33 AM, pranamoocher wrote: Nice find. Nothing like Jerry, who was always a pleasure to listen to. You immediately got a sense of genuine integrity and peace when he spoke. Too bad the video is so short. No kidding. Somebody articulate, intelligent and with an actual sense of humor. Can't have that! No wonder he got booted. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 2:35 PM, sparaig wrote: As far as I am aware there is no standard neurological definition of transcendental consciousness, so they made up their own definition. It's self-defined--and therefore quite meaningless--beyond TB's and people who buy the marketing spiel. This is probably why the Cambridge Handbook of Neuroscience considered it a problem to make a claim about the ultimate meaning or nature of the state attained. It doesn't really tell you anything other than 'we're claiming this is significant because it's transcendental consciousness becasue we say it is'. As the Cambridge Handbook comments: Thus, from the vantagepoint of the researcher who stands outside the tradition, it is crucial to separate the highly detailed and verifiable aspects of traditional knowledge about meditation from the transcendental claims that form the metaphysical or theological context of that knowledge. It's not enough to say here is nirvana or here is witnessing. And it certainly demonstrates nothing outside of EEG correlates seen in the normal EEG's of waking, dreaming or sleeping humans. This is why neuroscientists are by and large, underwhelmed by these type of claims. It's also why the TMO needs to desperately to use high marketing spin to mask the ho-hum--or simply bad--science. Unlike the BUddhist meditation researchers, natch... As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that sell and market their form of meditation using research, either legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research. So, you think the only reason why the TM researchers are marketing TM is for the money? Nyah, and I['m pretty sure you know it too. Buddhist meditation researchers have every bit as much at stake, emotionally, as TM researchers. Likewise with those that report on the latest Buddihist or TM research. But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC) meditation. And TM has always been elligible (for the past few decades at least) for reimbursement with some insurance companies, and if you can get a VA doctor to recomend it, the VA will pick up at least part of the tab. L.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
Its no mystery, its just LIFE --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wayback71 waybac...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, enlightened_dawn11 no_reply@ wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_reply@ wrote: What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old- school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq http://www.youtube.com:80/watch? v=0c4jhBY22dAfeature=channel_page he was recently guest speaker at an event commemorating the Maharishi's birthday in san francisco, california. Wish I could have been there. Jerry was able to somehow be completely devoted to MMY and yet remain compassionate and real. As far as starting his own breakoff group based on knowing the real Maharishi I cannot see how that could happen. The real MMY fired him, and then we also saw the real MMY for the last 30 years. He was both the sweet saint and whatever happened after that. He loved Jerry and also Bevan and John. Lots of extreme sides to it all and there is no way to make rational sense of much of it. There just isn't. Most of the stories we hear over the years and here on FFL and from friends and also from our own experiences have a great deal of truth to them - both the good and the bad, the blazing light and the dark sounding stuff. I cannot put it all together or imagine what it all means. It is a mystery.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
--- Thx - I'm not his shield. Just now I forwarded the message below. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_re...@... wrote: yifuxero, If you're a real friend of Jerry, send him my earlier post, below. Challenge his ass, be a, you know, real friend. Let's see if even with you running as his shield he'll feel comfortable enough to react to my considerations. Betting he'll not opt so -- and despite his personal charisma and acumen, he'll betray that TB-protect-the-TMO-at-ANY-cost still being active in him. He knew. He fucking knew -- sooo much. To be silent even after his rude dismissal from the TMO, seems to indicate that he still has cash flow that's able to buy his silence, OR, hey, I'm open minded just a titch on him, let's see him justify the TMO's criminal activities based on his belief in Maharishi's absolute ability to do ad hoc morality that would at least be interesting for many reasons. His silence, the silence of so many who know so much, cannot be ignored when they're there on a platform enjoying their pedestal as if they're sinless and enlightened. If Jerry's still working the crowds -- then for what reason? If he's such a fucking great guy, let him explain his silence to us -- drag our asses into a greater clarity about relativism -- whatever -- but to let so much stay under the rug is proof enough for me that he's to be judged as a shuck and jive player and a potent and possible marauder. Hey, it's not like the guy never did shit to us TBers even when he was in charge. I have a story about what he did to me once, but it's so trivial that it would only be germane if he denies -- in general -- that he never told lies to the faithful or that he never ran roughshod over their rights in various ways or that he wasn't privy to a host of cloak-and-dagger movement policies and actions that would have invalidated the marketing of TM if it had become known. Fool me once, abuse me once, okay, I walked right into your fist, but shame on me for turning another cheek to one who smiles for reasons he will not state. Edg Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old-school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, yifuxero yifuxero@ wrote: ---thx ...below - e-mailed to Jerry just now. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunshine@ wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 10:33 AM, pranamoocher wrote: Nice find. Nothing like Jerry, who was always a pleasure to listen to. You immediately got a sense of genuine integrity and peace when he spoke. Too bad the video is so short. No kidding. Somebody articulate, intelligent and with an actual sense of humor. Can't have that! No wonder he got booted. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
Jerry used to do weekend Gita workshops around the U.S. He's starting to do them again. This YouTube video was from Seattle, I believe. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, yifuxero yifux...@... wrote: --- Thx - I'm not his shield. Just now I forwarded the message below. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_reply@ wrote: yifuxero, If you're a real friend of Jerry, send him my earlier post, below. Challenge his ass, be a, you know, real friend. Let's see if even with you running as his shield he'll feel comfortable enough to react to my considerations. Betting he'll not opt so -- and despite his personal charisma and acumen, he'll betray that TB-protect-the-TMO-at-ANY-cost still being active in him. He knew. He fucking knew -- sooo much. To be silent even after his rude dismissal from the TMO, seems to indicate that he still has cash flow that's able to buy his silence, OR, hey, I'm open minded just a titch on him, let's see him justify the TMO's criminal activities based on his belief in Maharishi's absolute ability to do ad hoc morality that would at least be interesting for many reasons. His silence, the silence of so many who know so much, cannot be ignored when they're there on a platform enjoying their pedestal as if they're sinless and enlightened. If Jerry's still working the crowds -- then for what reason? If he's such a fucking great guy, let him explain his silence to us -- drag our asses into a greater clarity about relativism -- whatever -- but to let so much stay under the rug is proof enough for me that he's to be judged as a shuck and jive player and a potent and possible marauder. Hey, it's not like the guy never did shit to us TBers even when he was in charge. I have a story about what he did to me once, but it's so trivial that it would only be germane if he denies -- in general -- that he never told lies to the faithful or that he never ran roughshod over their rights in various ways or that he wasn't privy to a host of cloak-and-dagger movement policies and actions that would have invalidated the marketing of TM if it had become known. Fool me once, abuse me once, okay, I walked right into your fist, but shame on me for turning another cheek to one who smiles for reasons he will not state. Edg Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old-school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, yifuxero yifuxero@ wrote: ---thx ...below - e-mailed to Jerry just now. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunshine@ wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 10:33 AM, pranamoocher wrote: Nice find. Nothing like Jerry, who was always a pleasure to listen to. You immediately got a sense of genuine integrity and peace when he spoke. Too bad the video is so short. No kidding. Somebody articulate, intelligent and with an actual sense of humor. Can't have that! No wonder he got booted. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis
MaribethMartell has replied to my comment on the Jerry Jarvis youtube clip on Jan 12 2009: I'm sorry, I only recorded these two minutes on my phone; they (the Palo Alto and/or the Sausalito Center) were doing an official recording but I don't know if they'll be making that available anywhere. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, william108wm william10...@... wrote: Jerry used to do weekend Gita workshops around the U.S. He's starting to do them again. This YouTube video was from Seattle, I believe. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, yifuxero yifuxero@ wrote: --- Thx - I'm not his shield. Just now I forwarded the message below. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung no_reply@ wrote: yifuxero, If you're a real friend of Jerry, send him my earlier post, below. Challenge his ass, be a, you know, real friend. Let's see if even with you running as his shield he'll feel comfortable enough to react to my considerations. Betting he'll not opt so -- and despite his personal charisma and acumen, he'll betray that TB-protect-the-TMO-at-ANY-cost still being active in him. He knew. He fucking knew -- sooo much. To be silent even after his rude dismissal from the TMO, seems to indicate that he still has cash flow that's able to buy his silence, OR, hey, I'm open minded just a titch on him, let's see him justify the TMO's criminal activities based on his belief in Maharishi's absolute ability to do ad hoc morality that would at least be interesting for many reasons. His silence, the silence of so many who know so much, cannot be ignored when they're there on a platform enjoying their pedestal as if they're sinless and enlightened. If Jerry's still working the crowds -- then for what reason? If he's such a fucking great guy, let him explain his silence to us -- drag our asses into a greater clarity about relativism -- whatever -- but to let so much stay under the rug is proof enough for me that he's to be judged as a shuck and jive player and a potent and possible marauder. Hey, it's not like the guy never did shit to us TBers even when he was in charge. I have a story about what he did to me once, but it's so trivial that it would only be germane if he denies -- in general -- that he never told lies to the faithful or that he never ran roughshod over their rights in various ways or that he wasn't privy to a host of cloak-and-dagger movement policies and actions that would have invalidated the marketing of TM if it had become known. Fool me once, abuse me once, okay, I walked right into your fist, but shame on me for turning another cheek to one who smiles for reasons he will not state. Edg Re: Youtube of Jerry Jarvis What was Jerry's reason to be doing this? Was he giving an advanced lecture or what? Maybe he's testing the waters for a coup or comeback? He's still the one TMO leader who could possibly pull it off -- he could represent that he knew the real Maharishi. Like that. That said, he'd better cough up a complete disclosure of the TMO's crimes before he gets me to think he some sort of saintly old-school TMer who should be given a chance to reformulate the TMO. Fat chance though that he'd be able to grab the market from the present thugs. He'll be sued if he gets too big. Edg --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, yifuxero yifuxero@ wrote: ---thx ...below - e-mailed to Jerry just now. In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Sal Sunshine salsunshine@ wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 10:33 AM, pranamoocher wrote: Nice find. Nothing like Jerry, who was always a pleasure to listen to. You immediately got a sense of genuine integrity and peace when he spoke. Too bad the video is so short. No kidding. Somebody articulate, intelligent and with an actual sense of humor. Can't have that! No wonder he got booted. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony2k5@ wrote: Recent Jerry Jarvis http://tinyurl.com/8ypwcq Sal
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jstein@ wrote: snip Curtis: That seems like a position I can relate to. The question comes, where do you go for information about enlightenment? If anyone takes Maharishi as an expert they have to ignore a lot of what he claimed about it to reconcile King Tony as the most evolved person in the movement with what we have experienced from other brilliant people in our lives. I haven't gotten more than a true believerness from his speeches yet. Judy: Geez, Curtis, that's an awfully sweeping statement based on *your* personal reaction to King Tony's speeches. You say anyone, Agreed. I can't speak for everyone. I was ruling out that someone else might find him exceptional in some way. Not what I'm disagreeing with... snip ...this is my disagreement: but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Seems to me it's apples and oranges. Just for one thing, I don't think listening to a few of Tony's speeches tells you much about how brilliant he is or isn't, Here I disagree. I've heard enough from him to assess that. A person's intelligence shows up pretty quickly in their speech for me. I get more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking in his speech and consider that a sign of a very uninteresting mind. Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that a person has to be intellectually brilliant to claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is concerned. Remember Trotaka? Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full human potential, Full potential of the *individual*. There's an almost infinite variation in what constitutes the full potential of each individual. (remember people are using 10% of their brains and now with TM we can use 100%?) (As you suggest later, that was always bogus.) So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique mind I think that's a standard you've set personally. The claim is so lofty, that this state is the purpose of human life, that it isn't too much to expect some evidence of it. Maharishi made the rules of how to judge it so this is all fair. Assuming you know exactly what he had in mind by the rules he set. snip I think the only person who gets to say, Where's the beef? is the individual who isn't satisfied with their own experience. But by the same token, they don't get to demand that the people making the claims prove anything. All they get to say is, I didn't get no beef. I disagree. The movement is making public claims This isn't to the point of what I'm getting at. I'm not defending either the movement's claims or MMY's along these lines. snip I can evaluate how people function and I notice when someone is extra smart or exceptional in some way. According to your standards. How could it be any other way? But according to Maharishi's own standards it has also failed. He set the bar high at mastery of sidhis and never retracted this objective test for enlightenment. That was for Unity consciousness. And in any case, taken with the rest of his teaching, performance of siddhis is at Nature's behest. I can't remember anytime he used this caveat. If the enlightened person is the innocent tool of nature, how could it be otherwise? When he spoke of the sidhis when I was in the movement it was in terms of being at will. He specifically claimed that people in the movement would be flying through the air. I never heard him say only if nature wants you to. Not necessarily a contradiction. Requires explanation, but I guess nobody ever asked him, which is kind of surprising. snip That may not satisfy you, but it could be that what would satisfy you just isn't what enlightenment is *about*. Again, Maharishi spent a lot of time making sure we did know what his version of enlightenment was about, and it included functioning at one's full potential. Don't know how you could tell if anybody else was functioning at their full potential. snip I suspect that more than we realize, there's no real template for recluses and spiritual teachers either. My current thinking is that the templates are not much more than bait to draw you onto the path, and from then on it's a DIY project, as I said to ed11. Too cynical for me. I don't think it was cynical. I think the whole business is--hate to use the term--ineffable. You can't make a two-dimensional template for something that exists in three dimensions. But if your goal is to have others become enlightened, you have to come up with *something* to draw people in. Maybe you make a rough approximation and figure that as folks' consciousness develops, they'll realize the templates are no more than approximations
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
On Jan 14, 2009, at 4:12 PM, sparaig wrote: As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that sell and market their form of meditation using research, either legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research. So, you think the only reason why the TM researchers are marketing TM is for the money? Nyah, and I['m pretty sure you know it too. I'm serious. I believe it's a way to sell TM--AND the researchers are dye-in-the-wool TB's so they do feel it is their mission. I feel their approach is more that of a religious zealot than that of an objective scientist. Religious zealots are always selling something. It might be Jesus on a wafer or Jehovah in a red wrist string, but the gateway drug of the TMO is clearly TM. In their case if they succeed in getting some marginal research some airtime, they could rake in the bucks for their church, the church of TM. Buddhist meditation researchers have every bit as much at stake, emotionally, as TM researchers. Likewise with those that report on the latest Buddihist or TM research. I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on the line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any scientist would appreciate. But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC) meditation. And TM has always been elligible (for the past few decades at least) for reimbursement with some insurance companies, and if you can get a VA doctor to recomend it, the VA will pick up at least part of the tab. That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the gravity of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer from these cretins.
[FairfieldLife] Re: The dismantling of the TMO as we know it
TurquoiseB wrote: In the Western Regional Office, I was in charge of the tapes to be sent out to centers for resi- dence courses and advanced lectures... Turq probably meant 'film' instead of 'tape', since recording to video tape for SCI didn't happen until the invention of the composite U-Matic by SONY in 1971. The first consumer videocassette recorders were launched in 1971. Apparently most of SCI was recorded on film in the early days and on videotape later, after 1972. But this is reaching way back into the mist of time, so I'm not sure. There were some Marshy TV stations back then around the L.A. area - Turq might know more about this. But I had a little 16MM Bolex back then, and I think I was one of the first people to record the Marshy on film. When Jerry Jarvis saw my film he wanted to create a whole series and call them 'SCI. BillyG may know something more about those early times. You must mean something other than SCI here. The Science of Creative Intelligence wasn't offered until 1972. Or are you just compressing time here? Read more: Subject: Re: Question-willytex From: Ken Hassman Newsgroups: alt.meditation.transcendental Date: 2000/01/30 http://tinyurl.com/a4bbjh
[FairfieldLife] Enlightenment according to Dattareya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3hM6LFzWlUfeature=related
[FairfieldLife] Apple now has the thinnest, lightest CEO on the market.
Steve Jobs announced in an email today to Apple Computer that he is taking off at least until June because his health issues are more complex than he first thought. Isn't Steve Jobs a meditator?
[FairfieldLife] Enlightenment is a gift from the Guru
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3-0lOWVKGwfeature=channel
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: snip ...this is my disagreement: but *I* sure don't feel I have to ignore a lot of what MMY claimed on that basis. Seems to me it's apples and oranges. Just for one thing, I don't think listening to a few of Tony's speeches tells you much about how brilliant he is or isn't, Here I disagree. I've heard enough from him to assess that. A person's intelligence shows up pretty quickly in their speech for me. I get more platitude stringing than evidence of thinking in his speech and consider that a sign of a very uninteresting mind. Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that a person has to be intellectually brilliant to claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is concerned. Remember Trotaka? That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in charge of the Math? In any case the reason the story worked was that although he appeared to be a big dope he actually was brilliant and it was his exposition on the meaning of the verse they were studying that was the big reveal in the story. So he appeared dumb but was actually really brilliant. The thing about King Tony is that he was chosen as the supreme guy. We aren't picking on him randomly, he is Mahariahi's choice as the best guy ever for the job. And with that tailwind I would expect some really interesting stuff from him. Instead I get the usual word salad Maharishis speak. When I was at MIU we used to get some really bright people like Domash teaching the knowledge. The guy dripped with superior intelligence IMO. Even Haglin in the early days was a brainiac until he went all zombie. Given Maharishi's description of enlightenment I would expect a whole bunch of people like that to emerge. Remember that the bar is set pretty high, full human potential, Full potential of the *individual*. There's an almost infinite variation in what constitutes the full potential of each individual. This one worked better before the decades rolled by. I used it a lot in teaching. But if you look at the group of long termers you would have to imagine that they all started pretty low on the scale to end up where they are now. And as a group I think TM practicers are pretty well educated and above average intelligence to even get involved with these concepts in the first place. I don't view them as mentally deficient as some TM critics might. I just don't find them much different from other bright people who really really believe something I don't. But this goes against Maharishi's claims that this group should really shine as a beacon for the rest of humanity doesn't it? (remember people are using 10% of their brains and now with TM we can use 100%?) (As you suggest later, that was always bogus.) But it illustrated the principle that with TM we would develop our full potential and that should be noticeable in a big group. So he really needs to show up as a pretty unique mind I think that's a standard you've set personally. The claim is so lofty, that this state is the purpose of human life, that it isn't too much to expect some evidence of it. Maharishi made the rules of how to judge it so this is all fair. Assuming you know exactly what he had in mind by the rules he set. He was kind of repetitious with his teaching. I spent years learning exactly what the rules were so I could teach them. Then he had me tested to make sure I knew them. Then he certified that I had it right. So yeah, I knew exactly what rules he set. And it isn't even really that subtle you didn't need to take TTC to know them. snip That was for Unity consciousness. And in any case, taken with the rest of his teaching, performance of siddhis is at Nature's behest. I can't remember anytime he used this caveat. If the enlightened person is the innocent tool of nature, how could it be otherwise? Well if we are using terms like innocent tool to describe King Tony then we may be in more agreement than I thought! We went around and around with Jim on this topic about being able to do magical things but Nature not wanting it. It just doesn't ring true to me. Maharishi did everything in his power to demonstrate yogic flying as a way to get people interested in TM. To say that if someone actually could fly but Nature would not let them just doesn't pass the sniff test for me. I think this is another area where if you really think about it, Maharishi's teaching sort of falls apart. it ends with the notion that even though TM improves your intelligence, nature might make you act like a dumbass for its own purposes. That is redefining self development beyond all reason. When he spoke of the sidhis when I was in the movement it was in terms of being at will. He specifically claimed that people in the movement would be flying
[FairfieldLife] False Enlightenment according to Dattatreya
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMjOavf6em0feature=related
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
On Jan 14, 2009, at 6:41 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote: Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that a person has to be intellectually brilliant to claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is concerned. Remember Trotaka? That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in charge of the Math? In any case the reason the story worked was that although he appeared to be a big dope he actually was brilliant and it was his exposition on the meaning of the verse they were studying that was the big reveal in the story. So he appeared dumb but was actually really brilliant. You're of course correct. In Vedanta-style realization, you must have BOTH absolute AND relative realization, which means you have not only complete relative knowledge of the path you've just realized, but continuing relative wisdom as life naturally unfolds around you. 100% just doesn't cut it. If Judy was really familiar with MMY's teaching, she'd know about 200% of life, not just 100%. So it's quite silly to argue that Trotaka remained some dumbkoff with only 100%--absolute knowledge. To this very day, the 200% criteria is a requirement for a possible Shankaracharya. You must be a legit jnani.
[FairfieldLife] Post Count
Fairfield Life Post Counter === Start Date (UTC): Sat Jan 10 00:00:00 2009 End Date (UTC): Sat Jan 17 00:00:00 2009 628 messages as of (UTC) Thu Jan 15 00:00:00 2009 50 enlightened_dawn11 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 47 authfriend jst...@panix.com 39 TurquoiseB no_re...@yahoogroups.com 37 Vaj vajradh...@earthlink.net 32 raunchydog raunchy...@yahoo.com 32 Arhata Osho arhatafreespe...@yahoo.com 31 I am the eternal l.shad...@gmail.com 28 sparaig lengli...@cox.net 23 ruthsimplicity no_re...@yahoogroups.com 21 Bhairitu noozg...@sbcglobal.net 21 Richard J. Williams willy...@yahoo.com 20 shempmcgurk shempmcg...@netscape.net 19 curtisdeltablues curtisdeltabl...@yahoo.com 18 yifuxero yifux...@yahoo.com 17 Sal Sunshine salsunsh...@lisco.com 15 nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 15 cardemaister no_re...@yahoogroups.com 15 Duveyoung no_re...@yahoogroups.com 13 do.rflex do.rf...@yahoo.com 11 Rick Archer r...@searchsummit.com 9 mainstream20016 mainstream20...@yahoo.com 9 dhamiltony2k5 dhamiltony...@yahoo.com 8 lurkernomore20002000 steve.sun...@sbcglobal.net 8 Richard M compost...@yahoo.co.uk 8 Paul Mason premanandp...@yahoo.co.uk 8 Marek Reavis reavisma...@sbcglobal.net 8 John jr_...@yahoo.com 7 guyfawkes91 guyfawke...@yahoo.com 7 arhatafreespe...@yahoo.com 6 Peter drpetersutp...@yahoo.com 6 BillyG. wg...@yahoo.com 5 Alex Stanley j_alexander_stan...@yahoo.com 4 gullible fool ffl...@yahoo.com 4 Nelson nelsonriddle2...@yahoo.com 3 boo_lives boo_li...@yahoo.com 3 billy jim emptyb...@yahoo.com 3 Richard Williams willy...@yahoo.com 2 feste37 fest...@yahoo.com 2 drpetersutphen drpetersutp...@yahoo.com 2 bob_brigante no_re...@yahoogroups.com 1 william108wm william10...@yahoo.com 1 wayback71 waybac...@yahoo.com 1 pranamoocher bh...@hotmail.com 1 nayakanayaka nay...@gmx.net 1 michael vedamer...@yahoo.de 1 martyboi marty...@yahoo.com 1 johnbloggs1080 j...@parsons-chiro.co.uk 1 geezerfreak geezerfr...@yahoo.com 1 claudiouk claudi...@yahoo.co.uk 1 bettyblue109 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 1 wle...@aol.com 1 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Posters: 52 Saturday Morning 00:00 UTC Rollover Times = Daylight Saving Time (Summer): US Friday evening: PDT 5 PM - MDT 6 PM - CDT 7 PM - EDT 8 PM Europe Saturday: BST 1 AM CEST 2 AM EEST 3 AM Standard Time (Winter): US Friday evening: PST 4 PM - MST 5 PM - CST 6 PM - EST 7 PM Europe Saturday: GMT 12 AM CET 1 AM EET 2 AM For more information on Time Zones: www.worldtimezone.com
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 4:12 PM, sparaig wrote: As far as I am aware there are no Buddhist meditation techniques that sell and market their form of meditation using research, either legitimate scientific research, pilot research or marketing research. So, you think the only reason why the TM researchers are marketing TM is for the money? Nyah, and I['m pretty sure you know it too. I'm serious. I believe it's a way to sell TM--AND the researchers are dye-in-the-wool TB's so they do feel it is their mission. I feel their approach is more that of a religious zealot than that of an objective scientist. Religious zealots are always selling something. It might be Jesus on a wafer or Jehovah in a red wrist string, but the gateway drug of the TMO is clearly TM. In their case if they succeed in getting some marginal research some airtime, they could rake in the bucks for their church, the church of TM. Buddhist meditation researchers have every bit as much at stake, emotionally, as TM researchers. Likewise with those that report on the latest Buddihist or TM research. I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on the line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any scientist would appreciate. Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research on it? L. But there were some earlier pilot studies, not unlike many pilot studies, which left something to be desired. I think the difference is they've now moved beyond the pilot level stage and towards more rigorous research that's bearing fruit. That's why insurers are beginning to reimburse for them when used as treatments for depression. It may also be why mindfulness-style meditation is/was increasing at a logarithmic rate--the research is showing some signs of promise, both in terms of meditative mastery and actual health benefits. There's also some new and interesting research on Hindu kundalini meditation as well as Christian (Benedictine IIRC) meditation. And TM has always been elligible (for the past few decades at least) for reimbursement with some insurance companies, and if you can get a VA doctor to recomend it, the VA will pick up at least part of the tab. That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the gravity of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer from these cretins. Right so the research that has been coming out for the last 20 years on TM is all useless, since, afterall, it was considered and debunked by the Cambridge Handbook on COnsciousness, right? L.
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity wrote: We have no idea as to whether TM successfully produces enlightenment or unity consciousness. Rick says there are dozens of Fairfielders claiming to be enlightened. Some post here. All either did TM for years, or still do.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
On Jan 14, 2009, at 7:50 PM, sparaig wrote: I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on the line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any scientist would appreciate. Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research on it? The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could be a benefit to modern life. That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the gravity of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer from these cretins. Right so the research that has been coming out for the last 20 years on TM is all useless, since, afterall, it was considered and debunked by the Cambridge Handbook on COnsciousness, right? No, that's just a prominent example, but yes, an important recent one. It's important to understand that scientists in general, if they think a body of research is BS will, instead of trying to demonize it or point out it's numerous shortcomings, simply ignore it. The idea is 'don't even give it the attention it clearly does not deserve.' I guess the saying might be get even by living well becomes for researchers get even by researching well. 'Stoop not down unto that darkly splendid world.' (of bad science).
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--My Kriya Yoga teacher. Enlightened, probably. Others, maybe not. http://www.sanskritclassics.com/aboutbaba.html - In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Patrick Gillam jpgil...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity wrote: We have no idea as to whether TM successfully produces enlightenment or unity consciousness. Rick says there are dozens of Fairfielders claiming to be enlightened. Some post here. All either did TM for years, or still do.
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 7:50 PM, sparaig wrote: I'd agree they have a lot at stake, for example the Shamatha Project scientists are not Buddhists at all. The reason they're willing to risk their careers--and these include some famous scientists like Elizabeth Blackburn--is numerous scientists have had first hand contact with legitimate yogis in the traditions they're studying. Not only was the advantages of their states of consciousness palpable, it was impressive enough for them to lay their significant careers on the line. That's saying something. They're so impressed with what they've seen, they're banking on the repeatability of these yogis sadhanas in new students. Not so much of a stretch when you realize these traditions have been repeatedly reproducing awakening century after century. And a strong suspicion of repeatability is what any scientist would appreciate. Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research on it? The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could be a benefit to modern life. A friend of mine at the time, Cliff Saron, who was part of the research group, offered me a weekend retreat at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts as a birthday gift. That was very generous of him and it put me in contact with an environment that was pretty much influenced by Buddhist meditation practices. No possible semblance of bias there... That's scary--not because it's TM--but because the research IMO certainly does not warrant it. In other words (unless I'm really missing something), it's insurance fraud. Sadly I believe that's well within the style of behavior I do associate with the Maharishi (money laundering, smuggling, shaking down poor Indians, bilking famous Indian professionals, etc.). I know you probably think that's some sort of thing I relish in (picking on TM), but really once the gravity of the situation dawned on me, what I was more interested in was taking action on the many, many people who could, would or did suffer from these cretins. Right so the research that has been coming out for the last 20 years on TM is all useless, since, afterall, it was considered and debunked by the Cambridge Handbook on COnsciousness, right? No, that's just a prominent example, but yes, an important recent one. It's important to understand that scientists in general, if they think a body of research is BS will, instead of trying to demonize it or point out it's numerous shortcomings, simply ignore it. The idea is 'don't even give it the attention it clearly does not deserve.' I guess the saying might be get even by living well becomes for researchers get even by researching well. 'Stoop not down unto that darkly splendid world.' (of bad science). Yes, that's how scientists deal with Scientific Creationism too... Lawson
[FairfieldLife] CRITICAL Phone Action: Your Chance to Put Chaney/Bush on the Stand!!
You don't like having no ability to speak out! Watch these 2 short videos, particularly one on Obama and George Stephanopolous and CALL IN! ARHATA We scored an amazing mass media victory this week, which we must immediately build on and expand, when first Keith Olbermann took note of the fact that the number one question on the Obama change site was asking about a special prosecutor for the torture and wiretap crimes of the Bush administration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPTHvMJYKLY Then George Stephanopoulos asked Obama himself to answer the question directly on This Week on Sunday. First, Obama tried to duck the question with a talking point that could have come straight out of Karl Rove's twisted mouth, that he was looking forward not backward. But, when pressed by Stephanopoulos, Obama also suggested that it would largely be up to Eric Holder, his attorney general nominee. http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/01/obama-leaves-do.html Bingo, that's it. We must now literally FLOOD the phones of key selected members of the Senate Judiciary Committee with calls for Eric Holder to answer how he will uphold the rule of law with respect to the crimes of the outgoing administration. The confirmation hearing starts this Thursday at 9:30 AM, so we have to jump all over this in the couple days between now and then. You can reach any Senator tollfree by calling either 800-828-0498 or 800-473-6711 and asking to be connected to them by name. During the confirmation hearings for Mukasey, and especially in subsequent hearings, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had some pointed and pithy things to say about accountability, and we need to remind them of the arguments they made before, and to hold Eric Holder to at least the same standard. Based on these past statements, the best prospects we have are these in roughly this order. 1) Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) 2) Senator Dick Durbin (IL) 3) Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) 4) Senator Russ Feingold (WI) Please call each of the four above if you can, and do some other Democrats if you have time. Other possible good advocates are Senator Ted Kennedy (MA), and even maybe Senator Chuck Schumer (NY). Though you will recall that the only Democrats who voted for Mukasey in committee were Schumer and Feinstein, otherwise he never would have made it to a vote in the full Senate, where he barely squeaked though with the smallest margin ever. And this was despite the fact that any fool could tell up front he would be nothing but a made man for the Bush crime family. Don't even bother calling the Republicans. OK, so here's the plan. Because the members of the Judiciary Committee represent the whole country you have every right to ask them to represent your concerns, even if you are not from their own state (but all the better if you are). We call each of the above, with SPECIFIC REFERENCE to their own past statements, as detailed in each of the sections further below, and appeal to them to simply make the same points they made in opposing Mukasey, and then Holder WILL be confirmed by standing for the proposition that nobody is above the law. Beside the points specific to each senator, our two general talking facts are that 1) the number one question on Obama's own site was a special prosecutor for torture and wiretapping by the Bush Administration, and 2) Obama said in response (to Stephanopoulos) that Eric Holder was the people's lawyer and that his job is to uphold the Constitution. So we need to lead in with, and find a way to weave both of these talking facts into ALL of our communications this week, in some paraphrase or another. The corporate media is already working to marginize both, so we must REPEAT them as much as possible. In this way we create a powerful mantra vibration. THIS LAST POINT IS ABSOLUTELY DROP DEAD CRITICAL If we can get at least one Senator to simply STATE these two facts on the record during the confirmation in their own questioning we are on our way to victory. If you are really motivated, call progressive radio shows and propagate the talking facts there too. If you click on the link for the Stephanopoulos interview above you will notice that the third section (about Eric Holder) has been CUT off the video, even though it is still on the page in the transcript. This is no accident. The whole thing was there in the video when first posted, and then it got cut short. Why? Because our the sworn enemies of the people in the corporate media will try to propagate only the look forward not backward talking point. But OUR talking fact from that Obama response is the Eric Holder responsibility thing, and we must emphasize and focus on that. Now for the specifics you will need to know Senator by Senator to talk to their offices. REMIND them of what they said before. We encourage you to watch the YouTube clips linked below
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Patrick Gillam jpgil...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, ruthsimplicity wrote: We have no idea as to whether TM successfully produces enlightenment or unity consciousness. Rick says there are dozens of Fairfielders claiming to be enlightened. Some post here. All either did TM for years, or still do. Let me guess, and in every case nature is taking a pass on any of them doing something so amazing that it would force the world to take Maharishi's teaching seriously. Like curing even one form of childhood cancer for example with Ritam. Or being able to perform at will ANY of the sidhis. Like for example they could use the finding lost things sidhi to find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I'd settle for one of them solving the world's energy needs with an eco friendly solution. Or like figuring out a way to turn tahini into an edible food without coating your teeth with that sesame sludge! I would even settle for them solving the problem of drunk people thinking they are more attractive to the opposite sex than they really are. That could really make my job in clubs easier! An exhibition like this would force the world to understand the power of Maharishi's knowledge and would allow his hoped for flying numbers and world peace would break out. I can see why nature's wisdom would not allow that and instead have the movement leaders mince about in grandiose self importance over nothing virtually guaranteeing that Maharishi's teaching will die out with the last of the ex hippie generation. Nature can be such a tool when it comes to actually using nature's tools!
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sparaig lengli...@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 7:50 PM, sparaig wrote: [...] Who is in charge of the Shamatha Project, and who is doing research on it? The PI is Cliff Saron (who is Jewish). If you saw the movie on the rediscovery of samadhi in humans, Monks, In the Lab LINK he's the pudgy guy who talks about the late great neuroscientific genius Francisco Varela, working with yogis and brainstorming just what type of research they might do in the future--and how that could be a benefit to modern life. A friend of mine at the time, Cliff Saron, who was part of the research group, offered me a weekend retreat at Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts as a birthday gift. That was very generous of him and it put me in contact with an environment that was pretty much influenced by Buddhist meditation practices. No possible semblance of bias there... Likewise: http://tinyurl.com/88f2jk The last member of the group was Dr. Clifford Saron, a pyychologist, neuroscientist, suber tech, and personal friend. CLiff, whose knowledge of the brain and of Buddhism far exceeds mine, was invited to provide no only the essential, high-quality audio recording of the conversation but also to provide with advice during the breaks on phrasing my questions about Buddhism. --Paul Ekman. From the forward: A Conversation Between The Dalai Lama and Paul Ikman, PhD. No possibility of bias there, seeing how he's touted as the expert on Buddhism by the guy writing the book on the subject who consult4ede him on how to properly ask questions about Buddhism (not scientific research) Lawson
[FairfieldLife] Re: Enlightenment according to Dattareya
Nablusoss1008, interesting video, do you subscribe to this fellow's point of view? Do you remember when Maharishi used to speak about the softening of the breath that occurs as the person grows in enlightenment? While I was watching this guy I remembered that and realized that I'd completely internalized that as a valid metric. And I'd have to say that it's proven itself to be true in my experience, at least for the very most part. Coarse people generally seem to have coarse breath, in my experience; it's not necessarily a class division but there seems to be (once again, in my own experience) a generous distribution of that characteristic among my client base, for instance. Again, I don't know that it's an accurate measurement of anything but when I listened to this gentleman speak I really noticed how much I heard him breathe, and that it seemed mildly labored. What's your take on that? Marek ** --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, nablusoss1008 no_re...@... wrote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3hM6LFzWlUfeature=related
[FairfieldLife] Re: abandoning thought
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On Jan 14, 2009, at 6:41 PM, curtisdeltablues wrote: Maybe we've heard different speeches; I've gotten more than that. But in any case, I don't buy that a person has to be intellectually brilliant to claim enlightenment as far as what MMY taught is concerned. Remember Trotaka? That is an interesting example and wasn't he put in charge of the Math? In any case the reason the story worked was that although he appeared to be a big dope he actually was brilliant and it was his exposition on the meaning of the verse they were studying that was the big reveal in the story. So he appeared dumb but was actually really brilliant. You're of course correct. In Vedanta-style realization, you must have BOTH absolute AND relative realization, which means you have not only complete relative knowledge of the path you've just realized, but continuing relative wisdom as life naturally unfolds around you. 100% just doesn't cut it. If Judy was really familiar with MMY's teaching, she'd know about 200% of life, not just 100%. (Holding my sides...poor Vaj! He really should learn how to use the Search feature here.) So it's quite silly to argue that Trotaka remained some dumbkoff with only 100%--absolute knowledge. To this very day, the 200% criteria is a requirement for a possible Shankaracharya. You must be a legit jnani. Of course, I never suggested Trotaka remained some dumbkoff [sic; best not to use foreign words unless you can spell 'em]. Send that straw man in for repairs, Vaj, he's lost his stuffing. OK, smart guys, straight from the horse's mouth: TROTAKACHARYA was one of the most outstanding of the four chief disciples of SHANKARA. The atmosphere around SHANKARA was always vibrant with waves of wisdom emanating from the conversations of his most learned and enlightened disciples, PADMA-PADA, HASTA-MALAKA and VARTIKA-KARA. TROTAKA, moving among them, provided an innocent foil to all that brilliance and, amid those tidal waves of knowledge, his mind and heart floated in the divine radiance of his master, preferring to enjoy it rather than annalyse it through the prism of discriminatory logic. The vast intellects of his fellow disciples tended to disregard his less cerebral virtues, but the one-pointedness of his heart and mind was unaffected by their less than full appreciation of him. ...TROTAKA responded at the feet of his master to his most pressing needs. He was a man of practical outlook and held fast to one thing - service to the master. He did not join in the other disciples' intellectual discussions with the master, but in full sincerity of purpose, undertook such duties as would justify his engagement in accordance with his nature - cleaning the floor, cooking meals and washing clothes. This freed the other, more learned, disciples from domestic duties and gave them more time to serve their master on an intellectual level ...This does not detract from the recognition and appreciation of those of more highly developed intellect since it is they who are more capable of comprehending and evaluating the philosophy and really enjoying the creative application of the whole philosophy in practical life. What is meant here is that, even those who are not so highly developed intellectually, can innocently become as tools in the hands of the divine, to work out His plan. And this seems to be the case in the tradition of JYOTIR MATH - not much learning is needed: just innocent surrender to the master. This gives us the key to success - we have simple sincere feelings, devotion, a sense of service - and wisdom dawns. (Y'all recognize the text, right?) King Tony is no dumbkoff, goodness knows. But it would make sense to me if MMY had picked King Tony for his less cerebral virtues, for his depth of devotion and one-pointedness of mind and heart, rather than for vastness of intellect.
[FairfieldLife] Pete Seger and Joan Baez -- You've got to walk that lonesome valley
http://www.4shared.com/file/80687968/aeb11d9e/Pete_Seeger__Joan_Baez_-_Lonesome_Valley.html http://tinyurl.com/9l9ptb