I really enjoyed that, thanks for posting. Many good points I agree with and a few I don't. I do think that George had a brain event that is more than just imagination. I believe that his ability to distinguish between internal and external experience was drastically compromised. Just a guess.
I agree that he was a rambley speaker. In his defense so was Maharishi when he started. I spent a lot of time at MIU reading transcripts from Maharishi lectures in India and they were much more Hammondy. With unverifiable claims right and left like entering someone else's body after death by using yogic techniques if you hadn't reached enlightenment in your own body. Over the years he refined his pitch to basically be an intro lecture no matter what the topic under discussion. He would toss out a few Vedic terms, talk about how they related to his message of TM and close with a call to action for us to keep on doing his program. It was a formula that minimized challenges to assertions. His greatest speaking talent to me was to appear to have some new detail of interest to hook us in before we found ourselves back at the intro! And like those guys who sell the latest potato peeler sitting on a milk crate outside subway stations, he had the salesman ability to make every pitch as enthusiastically as his last, as if he was just discovering that TM WAS the solution to all problems in life, and he was just sharing his revelation as he was having it himself. I wonder if you have any thoughts on how we would be able to determine if someone was enlightened among the movement leaders? That seems like a step back into the world of subjectively reported experiences that George just provided a vivid cautionary tale against. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : Some reflections on George Hammond's November 30, 2014 Lecture: The following reflections are my own opinion only (I believe strongly that opinions should never be presented as facts). It was fun to see in the audience someone who played an important role in the Movement, and who was briefly my friend on our mutual TM-Sidha course. He looked like he found the talk entertaining, but I hope, like me, that he did not take it seriously. My impression of Hammond is that he doesn't act like a hoaxer, which unfortunately does not guarantee that he isn't one, or that his ideas are reliable or useful. He seemed like someone who was either very well-rehearsed or an experienced actor. He also impressed me as a very dull speaker, who uses only a monotone to spice up his presentation. He moves his hands like a robot. He tells pointless stories about Shankara, Vyasa, and other familiar names from the Shankaracharya tradition of India, and others like Jesus and Jehovah God. Not one of his off-hand stories has any possibility of verification, or any interesting depth. (Jesus told him that people in Manhattan should build more parking garages instead of praying to him for a parking space over and over again. Funny? Might depend on the listener's mood.) These qualities make me feel that I've wasted my time listening to him for three hours. I can only hope that this review is helpful for helping someone else avoid having to listen to the whole recording. I think his content is based on imagination. The whole concept of reincarnation, which seemed during one section to be the cornerstone of his beliefs, seems a waste of time to me. It has no physical evidence, no satisfying theoretical rationale, and is clearly motivated by the ego's desire to survive, which is based not on spirituality but on the separation of an alienated life and the identification with a limited mind and body. To discuss reincarnation as a personal fact, as Hammond did, along with other clues like his very limited descriptions of the nature of fear and transcending, reveals to me his limited personal state of consciousness. Why should we take the imagined reports of the words of Maharshi, Jesus, Socrates, and Jehovah seriously when the speaker knows so little about spiritual matters, such as the higher states of consciousness, and the nature of pure awareness? All is spiritual statements are compatible with Maharshi's views; there seems to be nothing new here. The funny thing is that Hammond's announcement promised important information for Movement leaders, TM teachers, and TM meditators, yet delivered nothing but his own recasting of Maharshi's principles and a whole bunch of imagined reports of events and people (either imagined or perhaps based on a dream he had around the time of his sister's death). Would Jehovah really spend time with a human medium discussing Elizabeth Smart and her significance for Mormon women? I doubt it. Is the message "Cruelty is the desire to gain happiness from someone else's pain; the Movement should explain how to transcend cruelty," really of vital interest to us or the Movement? I doubt it. I think he invented it, along with everything else. He ended the talk by singing a silly song. I think that was fitting. Everyone who has attended Maharshi's lectures knows that he could speak for hours without once saying anything that was not obviously natural, sensible, and correct so far as we could determine based on our own experience. This was clearly based on his own clarity of awareness and thinking, as well as his supreme talent as a teacher. We can see similar qualities in great teachers from other traditions today, such as Mooji and Rupert Spira, who both teach the Direct Path of nonduality. We do not see this wonderful quality of teaching in George Hammond; we merely see the polished speaking of a very well-educated man with a general background and a vivid imagination. He himself admits that his relationship with the Movement is slight--he listed the handful of people in the Movement who know him. He appears to have no deep understanding of Maharishi's knowledge or indeed of Buddhism or any other source of spirituality. His knowledge of the Bible and history, and of reincarnation, could have been picked up in conventional sources. I feel certain that most listeners took this lecture with a big 'grain of salt', not being won over by the free use of terms like 'the purity of the teaching' that are so important to many of us. There wasn't much actual content from people like Maharshi, Brighu/Shankara, and so on, and of this content, not much was significant for what we (or the Movement) should do in the world. I myself could give a very short talk that would provide useful suggestions for how the Movement could become more effective in reaching its/our goals; it's not very challenging. Hammond talked a lot of the fear of death. Yes, it's an important fear, but I doubt that it comes from incorrect thinking, as Hammond suggested. It comes primarily from identification with the body, which will die. The alternative is not reincarnation, as Hammond stated, but enlightenment (self-realization), which leaves one free to live the qualities of the Absolute in relative life. Freed from limitations, we are fulfilled, and not likely to have residual desires that would make us want the body or the mind to live forever. Instead, we are free to live as we wish, either in a body or free of a body. This is a much greater human possibility than envisioned by Hammond the self-proclaimed spirit medium. In the final analysis, what is important about spiritual knowledge is that it makes it easy for each person to discover their true nature, align themselves with that nature, and act in the world in accordance with that alignment. There is no need for discussion of angels, reincarnation, cruelty, or even of right and wrong. There is no need to discuss worry, fear, anxiety, or other feelings. There is no need to discuss thinking, or even problems associated with ego, as Hammond did. These are all relative concepts. Following Maharshi (or any other true spiritual teacher), we need only consider the fullness of the Absolute, our true nature. Aligning ourselves with unbounded and eternal awareness, we can easily act in harmony with our environment, helping others to reach and even exceed our own level of consciousness. I do not think any of this message came from a Maharshi who is still alive on an imperceptible plane of existence. But I do think it shows that there is a thirst among his followers to know more and to evolve quicker. We should address that thirst and provide more knowledge, both from Maharshi's own video-recorded words as well as from his enlightened teachers and leaders. Jai Guru Dev David Spector, Governor of the Age of Enlightenment, June, 1972 (not currently teaching TM) Maine, USA
