[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of people on this forum FALL for thought stoppers. The TM movement was not long on compassion. It never taught its followers that a person could be partly good, partly bad. The model invoked was always the clear-cut It's only the Pandavas and the Kauravas, the rakshasas and the perfect saints scenario we see in TM stories. Black and white, no middle ground. So if a person is characterized as black, they are ALL black. As a result IMO, many people who have come out of such an environment are easy prey for those who use thought stoppers as a tool of debate. And the people who *rely* on thought stoppers know this, and use the thought stoppers as often as they possibly can. They know that the audience they are talking to has been taught to *despise* shades of gray and the possibility of feeling compassion for someone who has been accused of being bad. They know that many people coming out of a TM environment will automatically consider George W. Bush ALL bad simply because Maharishi once characterized him as bad. Therefore they can springboard off of that and suggest that because someone *else* they want to demonize, like the Dalai Lama, once said something positive about Bush, he might be ALL bad, too. I think that the use of thought stoppers like this is the sign of a lazy intellect. The person who uses them frequently is demonstrating that they are incapable of thinking *past* a thought stopper, and that *their* thought processes stop at the first convenient label. And they want you to be just like them. yes, i agree many on this board use thought stoppers, not very effectively though. seems by your own example, you have some baggage left over from your cult days: You're just a cunt.- Barry Wright, October 14th, 2008
[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?
This is Barry's funniest post yet. And it will go right over the heads of most here. His *entire post* is one sweeping thought-stopper. He has achieved 100 percent self-reference. You are to dismiss immediately any point of view, Barry is telling you, that appears to conflict in any way with the views of the TM critics, because such points of view are obviously intended as thought-stoppers. Any evidence, for example, demonstrating that the Dalai Lama does not have perfect judgment is designed to make you stop having any thoughts that there is any good whatsoever to be found in the Dalai Lama. If he has any less than 100 percent perfect judgment, you are supposed to think that must mean he is All Bad. Any demonstration that anybody has a negative opinion of Meera Nanda's work is designed to lead you to believe that she is Completely Wrong About Everything. When you encounter such scurrilous thought-stoppers, therefore, you must Stop Thinking about them. You cannot allow any negative thoughts to enter your mind and pollute your positive views. And of course you must think of those who attempt to introduce such negative thoughts into your mind as people who themselves Do Not Think and don't want you to think either. There is no such thing as ambiguity or ambivalence or nuance in Barry's World, so anyone who attempts to suggest that all is not black or white is obviously No Good At All. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: Recently, following up like a mindless TM robot to a mention of the name of the Dalai Lama by someone she doesn't like, someone posted a quote from a Google Group. The quote indicated that the Dalai Lama had some positive things to say about former president George W. Bush. IMO, the person's intent in posting this was to interject a thought stopper into the conversation. The idea was that if the Dalai Lama said something good about someone we all know to be thoroughly bad, then the Dalai Lama couldn't possibly be good, either. This just days after doing exactly the same thing when the name of a scientist who wrote a book saying that in her opinion all the quantum consciousness nonsense was in fact nonsense came up. The same person posted what was clearly intended to be another thought stopper by pointing to a few anonymous reviews of the book on Amazon. Again, people with feeble minds were supposed to *stop thinking* positively about the author, and think negatively about her. Add to this a long history of this poster and other posters on this forum utilizing thought stoppers to demonize people they don't like. Call someone a liar and (in their minds) everyone is supposed to stop thinking of the person accused of lying as pos- sibly having any positive qualities and instead think of them as something less than human. Call someone a predator and again the readers are sup- posed to *stop thinking* and just write the accused person off. In this post what I'm suggesting is that those who use such thought stoppers are demonstrating, more than anything else, how quickly their own thought processes stop working. They lack breadth of vision and compassion. They cannot *conceive* of a person being George W. Bush and yet having positive qualities. To them, if Bush is bad, he is ALL bad; there can be no possible positive qualities in the man. Those positive qual- ities are not *possible* because he's bad, and if a person is bad, he's ALL bad. That's what they would have you believe. Therefore, if someone like the Dalai Lama is able to meet Bush and find something in him to praise -- anything -- then *he* must be linked to the bad Bush and be bad himself. Same with calling someone a liar. Science tells us that human beings tell on the average 25 lies a day. A self-honest person can look at themselves and realize that they tell lies, too, if only to themselves. Only an idiot would claim, I never lie. But some idiots not only claim this, they attempt to use the epithet Liar! as a thought stopper. Again, the implication is that by calling someone a liar, you can make people think of the person you are attempting to demonize as ALL liar. If they're a liar, the rationale of the thought- stopper-hurler goes, they are *complete* liars. They cannot possibly have any other qualities or attributes. *Stop thinking* of this person as human; only think of them as a 'liar.' Same with the epithet predator. It conjures up images of child molesters and worse. And it is *supposed* to. Hurling the term predator at some- one you don't like is designed to get people to *stop thinking* about that person as human. They are supposed to think of them the way YOU do, as one-dimensional, as ONLY a predator. Same with invoking Kali Yuga as a catch-all excuse for why things suck. The idea is that one can throw that term out and people will stop think- ing that there is anything they
[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?
P.S.: The additional irony of Barry complaining that any alternative view to that of the TM critics is by definition a thought-stopper and therefore Evil and Duplicitous and To Be Ignored is that the TM critics here are *by far* the most frequent users of thought-stoppers (Vaj being the champeen). The TMers are far more likely to suggest nuance and ambiguity and shades of gray; they typically attempt to inject *balance* into the discussion (not always, granted, just as not all criticism of TM necessarily involves thought-stoppers). My posts on the Dalai Lama and on Meera Nanda were both attempts to inject a bit of balance into what otherwise would be unrelievedly positive and uncritical evaluations by their fans. The Dalai Lama may be a great guy generally speaking, but to claim that George Bush is honest and straightforward suggests at the very least that the DL has not been following the ins and outs of U.S. politics and foreign relations all that closely. Meera Nanda may have some excellent points to make about Hindutva and its promotion of Vedic Science, but it may be that not all her insights are slam- dunks or all her research 100 percent accurate. Etc., etc., etc. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend jst...@... wrote: This is Barry's funniest post yet. And it will go right over the heads of most here. His *entire post* is one sweeping thought-stopper. He has achieved 100 percent self-reference. You are to dismiss immediately any point of view, Barry is telling you, that appears to conflict in any way with the views of the TM critics, because such points of view are obviously intended as thought-stoppers. Any evidence, for example, demonstrating that the Dalai Lama does not have perfect judgment is designed to make you stop having any thoughts that there is any good whatsoever to be found in the Dalai Lama. If he has any less than 100 percent perfect judgment, you are supposed to think that must mean he is All Bad. Any demonstration that anybody has a negative opinion of Meera Nanda's work is designed to lead you to believe that she is Completely Wrong About Everything. When you encounter such scurrilous thought-stoppers, therefore, you must Stop Thinking about them. You cannot allow any negative thoughts to enter your mind and pollute your positive views. And of course you must think of those who attempt to introduce such negative thoughts into your mind as people who themselves Do Not Think and don't want you to think either. There is no such thing as ambiguity or ambivalence or nuance in Barry's World, so anyone who attempts to suggest that all is not black or white is obviously No Good At All. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_reply@ wrote: Recently, following up like a mindless TM robot to a mention of the name of the Dalai Lama by someone she doesn't like, someone posted a quote from a Google Group. The quote indicated that the Dalai Lama had some positive things to say about former president George W. Bush. IMO, the person's intent in posting this was to interject a thought stopper into the conversation. The idea was that if the Dalai Lama said something good about someone we all know to be thoroughly bad, then the Dalai Lama couldn't possibly be good, either. This just days after doing exactly the same thing when the name of a scientist who wrote a book saying that in her opinion all the quantum consciousness nonsense was in fact nonsense came up. The same person posted what was clearly intended to be another thought stopper by pointing to a few anonymous reviews of the book on Amazon. Again, people with feeble minds were supposed to *stop thinking* positively about the author, and think negatively about her. Add to this a long history of this poster and other posters on this forum utilizing thought stoppers to demonize people they don't like. Call someone a liar and (in their minds) everyone is supposed to stop thinking of the person accused of lying as pos- sibly having any positive qualities and instead think of them as something less than human. Call someone a predator and again the readers are sup- posed to *stop thinking* and just write the accused person off. In this post what I'm suggesting is that those who use such thought stoppers are demonstrating, more than anything else, how quickly their own thought processes stop working. They lack breadth of vision and compassion. They cannot *conceive* of a person being George W. Bush and yet having positive qualities. To them, if Bush is bad, he is ALL bad; there can be no possible positive qualities in the man. Those positive qual- ities are not *possible* because he's bad, and if a person is bad, he's ALL bad. That's what they would have you believe. Therefore, if someone like the Dalai Lama is able to meet Bush and find something in him
[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?
I thought stopping thought was a good thing. or at a minimum a step towards a good thing. So you are complaining that some have developed a mahavakaya that can instantly stop thoughts? Wouldn't that actually be a good thing? :) --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB no_re...@... wrote: Recently, following up like a mindless TM robot to a mention of the name of the Dalai Lama by someone she doesn't like, someone posted a quote from a Google Group. The quote indicated that the Dalai Lama had some positive things to say about former president George W. Bush. IMO, the person's intent in posting this was to interject a thought stopper into the conversation. The idea was that if the Dalai Lama said something good about someone we all know to be thoroughly bad, then the Dalai Lama couldn't possibly be good, either. This just days after doing exactly the same thing when the name of a scientist who wrote a book saying that in her opinion all the quantum consciousness nonsense was in fact nonsense came up. The same person posted what was clearly intended to be another thought stopper by pointing to a few anonymous reviews of the book on Amazon. Again, people with feeble minds were supposed to *stop thinking* positively about the author, and think negatively about her. Add to this a long history of this poster and other posters on this forum utilizing thought stoppers to demonize people they don't like. Call someone a liar and (in their minds) everyone is supposed to stop thinking of the person accused of lying as pos- sibly having any positive qualities and instead think of them as something less than human. Call someone a predator and again the readers are sup- posed to *stop thinking* and just write the accused person off. In this post what I'm suggesting is that those who use such thought stoppers are demonstrating, more than anything else, how quickly their own thought processes stop working. They lack breadth of vision and compassion. They cannot *conceive* of a person being George W. Bush and yet having positive qualities. To them, if Bush is bad, he is ALL bad; there can be no possible positive qualities in the man. Those positive qual- ities are not *possible* because he's bad, and if a person is bad, he's ALL bad. That's what they would have you believe. Therefore, if someone like the Dalai Lama is able to meet Bush and find something in him to praise -- anything -- then *he* must be linked to the bad Bush and be bad himself. Same with calling someone a liar. Science tells us that human beings tell on the average 25 lies a day. A self-honest person can look at themselves and realize that they tell lies, too, if only to themselves. Only an idiot would claim, I never lie. But some idiots not only claim this, they attempt to use the epithet Liar! as a thought stopper. Again, the implication is that by calling someone a liar, you can make people think of the person you are attempting to demonize as ALL liar. If they're a liar, the rationale of the thought- stopper-hurler goes, they are *complete* liars. They cannot possibly have any other qualities or attributes. *Stop thinking* of this person as human; only think of them as a 'liar.' Same with the epithet predator. It conjures up images of child molesters and worse. And it is *supposed* to. Hurling the term predator at some- one you don't like is designed to get people to *stop thinking* about that person as human. They are supposed to think of them the way YOU do, as one-dimensional, as ONLY a predator. Same with invoking Kali Yuga as a catch-all excuse for why things suck. The idea is that one can throw that term out and people will stop think- ing that there is anything they can possibly *do* to *change* how things suck. You *can't* really change it, goes the thought stopper rationale, because it's Kali Yuga. Things *always* suck in Kali Yuga. I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of people on this forum FALL for thought stoppers. The TM movement was not long on compassion. It never taught its followers that a person could be partly good, partly bad. The model invoked was always the clear-cut It's only the Pandavas and the Kauravas, the rakshasas and the perfect saints scenario we see in TM stories. Black and white, no middle ground. So if a person is characterized as black, they are ALL black. As a result IMO, many people who have come out of such an environment are easy prey for those who use thought stoppers as a tool of debate. And the people who *rely* on thought stoppers know this, and use the thought stoppers as often as they possibly can. They know that the audience they are talking to has been taught to *despise* shades of gray and the possibility of feeling compassion for someone who has been accused of being bad. They know that many people coming out of a TM environment will
[FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradh...@... wrote: On May 6, 2009, at 3:04 AM, TurquoiseB wrote: I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of people on this forum FALL for thought stoppers. The TM movement was not long on compassion. It never taught its followers that a person could be partly good, partly bad. The model invoked was always the clear-cut It's only the Pandavas and the Kauravas, the rakshasas and the perfect saints scenario we see in TM stories. Black and white, no middle ground. So if a person is characterized as black, they are ALL black. You're missing one of the biggest TM org thought stoppers: Pure Consciousness. We were supposed to think wow, what could be better that PURE consciousness? I don't need to look and farther or look into this any more, if it's pure (and the experience they're telling me I will have is Pure Consciousness), then I need look no further. But what's happening is other meditation researchers are seeing through this screen of re-definition. the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, the standard textbook in neurological and consciousness research pointed this out several years ago. Before that neurologist and Zen master James Austin pointed out how the word was being used in a misleading kind of way, without any profound proof for this profoundly named experience. 'The phrase ��pure consciousness�� continues to sow confusion more than a decade after Forman pointed to its semantic pitfalls. When someone employs the term today, it remains unclear whether its usage describes an early moment, an intermediate step, or some ultimate stage among the several optional varieties of consciousness. He then goes on to describe in detail how the word is being used by TM researchers to claim an exalted state, when in fact they're actual attaching the thought-stopper (pun intended;-)) to a very rudimentary state. It looks like the tom-foolery has been exposed. Beyond the thought-stopper is the further tendency 'if you repeat a lie enough times, people will begin to believe it.' Despite being caught at their act, I'm certain TM researchers, teachers and professors will still continue to use Pure Consciousness as a description. The fact is, at this point in the game, if they were forced to abandon their use of this word, as applies to TM and it's results, they'd have to rewrite websites and revise the entire literature of TM, Maharishi Vedic Science--virtually ALL of the MUM curriculum! It's all based on this (LOL) thought-stopper! You're assuming that Austin has evidence of the more exhalted states, did you notice? And who decides which laternate state is exhalted in the first place? Lawson
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Thought stoppers -- the tool of choice of people whose thought stops?
On May 6, 2009, at 6:16 PM, sparaig wrote: You're missing one of the biggest TM org thought stoppers: Pure Consciousness. We were supposed to think wow, what could be better that PURE consciousness? I don't need to look and farther or look into this any more, if it's pure (and the experience they're telling me I will have is Pure Consciousness), then I need look no further. But what's happening is other meditation researchers are seeing through this screen of re-definition. the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, the standard textbook in neurological and consciousness research pointed this out several years ago. Before that neurologist and Zen master James Austin pointed out how the word was being used in a misleading kind of way, without any profound proof for this profoundly named experience. 'The phrase ��pure consciousness�� continues to sow confusion more than a decade after Forman pointed to its semantic pitfalls. When someone employs the term today, it remains unclear whether its usage describes an early moment, an intermediate step, or some ultimate stage among the several optional varieties of consciousness. He then goes on to describe in detail how the word is being used by TM researchers to claim an exalted state, when in fact they're actual attaching the thought-stopper (pun intended;-)) to a very rudimentary state. It looks like the tom-foolery has been exposed. Beyond the thought-stopper is the further tendency 'if you repeat a lie enough times, people will begin to believe it.' Despite being caught at their act, I'm certain TM researchers, teachers and professors will still continue to use Pure Consciousness as a description. The fact is, at this point in the game, if they were forced to abandon their use of this word, as applies to TM and it's results, they'd have to rewrite websites and revise the entire literature of TM, Maharishi Vedic Science--virtually ALL of the MUM curriculum! It's all based on this (LOL) thought-stopper! You're assuming that Austin has evidence of the more exhalted states, did you notice? Well, I'm taking his own extensive experience of higher states of consciousness as valuable. I personally found his accounts very believable, incredibly detail and insightful. And who decides which laternate state is exhalted in the first place? Well I don't believe that is specifically Austin's observation on PC. Austin's observation seems to me to be one common for people familiar with staged forms of meditation experientially who then encounter a single-stage meditation techniques which claim the ability to access very high stages: they experientially know and recognize the folly. His written comments, where he criticizes the ambiguous use of TM buzzwords like pure consciousness and cosmic consciousness are based both on his own direct experience of thought-free states back in the early part of his meditative retreat experience and how further higher more unitive states follow thereafter. He feels, as do many other experienced meditators, that the words used and research claims are not congruent with the actual experiences that are traditionally known to belong to them. Instead the states being described by TM researchers are shallow preludes of higher states of consciousness. This is hardly surprising since both TM/TMSPers and TM teachers are never really given any further stages of meditation beyond the most rudimentary (although one could say the original night technique is an exception).
