Possibly there is more to it. Or not. I watched the Hammond video last night. Its easy to dismiss him and cast him off as delusional(1). Yet art and literature are not real either, even still, they may open us up to new ways of viewing the world, and induce new ideas and internal hypotheses -- even if the artist was bat-assed crazy. My take away is that while his story is rather far-fetched, and he may be delusional, some useful points may have emerged, both directly and from subsequent pondering.
One Hammond theme is that religious founders/leaders' messages and strategies were experimental attempts focused on incrementally improving a select set of problems for specific time, place and group of people, not universal truths applicable for all ages, problems and peoples -- and as such these targeted strategies had some unintended and unexpected negative consequences that continue through to today. And that attempts to apply such strategies to today's world are major steps backwards, not forward. He suggests righteous anger as an example of a method used in a particular era of the old testament -- focussed on combatting a perceived major problem of lethargy and laziness of a particular time and place. Not stated as such, increasing rajas to reduce tomas might be the yogic parallel. When tomas is reduced, the method is no longer applicable. But these focussed methods such as righteous anger endured past their usefulness, took on a life of their own, and create larger problems than the original ones intended to be solved. Second, he dismisses the notion that these strategies were created by an all-knowing all powerful deity. Rather he suggests that they were brainstormed and thought out by by good intentioned, smart, yet limited individuals. Jehovah is presented as a man -- who was inaccurately deified by later "faithful" generations and centuries. (And his premise that Jehovah and Allah are the same, in his model, suggests the violence-prone parallels of some sects of all of the Abrahamic religions.) Third, it was suggested that fear is the greatest block to social, individual and spiritual progress. My take is that irrational arguments and actions, particularly when networked across many nodes in a mob mentality situation, are driven by, are a response to, inner fear, particularly fear of change. For example, rapid change in culture adaptation of new technology, etc may cause many to cling to outdated traditions, self-help / religious models as antidotes to inner fear of change. Some good examples are the ones cited in your post on religious fundamentalism. And that while lashing out at the irrational is reasonable and rational, a personal trait -- and one which I observe many seem to share, the impetus towards such may be rooted in fear of irrational mindsets and groups, fear of loss when such gets out of hand, spirals out of control, the world run amuck by the irrational mob (too many examples to list). Ultimately decomposed also to a fear of change. Fourth, Hammond premises that the process of "turning within" whether TM, any meditation, prayer, any means that enable us to better know and understand our own minds -- both its limits and more limitless aspects, is the most efficient and perhaps singular antidote to fear. And he suggests that there are many effective methods to turn within (currently available and yet to be derived) devoid of traditional, cultural and religious trappings. (And that within traditional cultures and religions there are existing practices, such as prayer, which can (though not always) turn the mind within and quiet the chaos of more manifest chatter and "noise". Consequently, a solution path for reducing fear of change-- both among the irrational adherents to outdated cultural/religious practices and dogma as a, as well as fear by more the more rational -- who have (possibly unacknowledged) fear of the former -- the uncertainty and chaos of the irrational mob, may be deriving and applying, making more universally available and helping to support adaptation of such, cultural and dogma free methods of turning within. (1) I was surprised to read Hammond's bio -- 25 years as successful corporate lawyer working on global mergers and acquisitions -- clearly an odd career culmination for the alleged soul of Brighu, Jacob, one of Jesus' apostles, Plato, Johnathan Swift and Mark Twain. Yet the career, and his nominal clarity as a speaker distinguishes him from babbling street person babbling and run-of-the-mill new-age crazy.
