(The first one clears up a few more of Barry's lies about me and about Robin; the second one is more substantive, dealing with the book excerpt Barry linked to this morning.)
348834 --- In [email protected], turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "authfriend" <authfriend@> wrote: > > > > --- In [email protected], turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > > > Let's demonstrate: Judy, have you ever commented > > > negatively on this forum about a film you have never > > > seen, and about its director? > > > > Hmm, I think all I've said about this is that if > > anyone is interested, I'll be happy to point them > > to the relevant posts. > > Hmmmmmm. Why does this sound so familiar? Because this is the fourth time I've said it, perhaps? > Oh, I know. It's the same ploy that the guy Judy has > such a crush on tried before: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/340466 > > Translated, it means "Someone -- anyone -- reply to me, > PLEASE. Show that you CARE about me by "going back and > reading what I've written," and then arguing with me > about it. PLEASE, somebody do this." > > As it turns out, no one even bothered to reply to Robin's > ploy. He reacted by running away and hiding, the only > thing he seems to be good at. Interestingly--as Barry knows but doesn't dare mention-- *Curtis* "ran away and hid" after a *disastrous* series of exchanges with me that followed his exchanges with Robin. Robin wore him out, but I gave him the coup de grace. Now I'll ask Barry the same question I asked Share: Why do you lie when you know I'll expose the lie? As Barry knows, Robin promised not to post again unless Curtis responded to the four posts, which he knew Curtis wasn't going to do. And Robin was as good as his word. He wasn't under any illusions that anyone else was going to argue with him, either. Barry is an extremely poor "translator." (Sort of solipsistic, actually.) As to what I wrote, Barry is going absolutely bonkers because I won't engage him on his Apocalypto crap, having gone through it with him several times before. The facts haven't changed, so there's no point in doing it *again*. I don't expect for one second that anybody is going to want to go back and look at those posts, but if somebody does, I'll tell them where to look. There's no more to say about this ridiculous, worn-out old gambit of Barry's than I've already said, so there won't *be* any further argument about it. > Dare we hope that Judy will do the same? :-) :-) :-) Nope. But we can be sure that Barry will keep trying to get me to argue with him about Mel Gibson, since his attempts to lie about Robin have all been busted. We should all be asking if we dare to hope that Barry will pull a Curtis. At least Curtis knew when to give up. ;-) ;-) ;-) 348864 --- In [email protected], turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > I pass along here something sent to me by a lurker who preferred to have > someone else post it so as not to become a target for the "Robin > supporters." This is so impossibly dumb I have to assume Barry made it up in an attempt to cast discredit on Robin's supporters. > I cannot confess to having done all my Steinian Due Diligence on the > editors, but a quick glance at their other works seems to indicate that > they are scholars with an interest in religions, as opposed to someone > with an axe to grind. Well, we're only concerned with Humes, the author of the chapter on "Schisms Within Hindu Guru Groups," of course. But "interest in religions" isn't necessarily always opposed to "with an axe to grind," especially with regard to particular cases. Nor does the fact that a writer is a scholar guarantee objectivity (or even accuracy), especially in the field of religion. I don't think Humes has an axe to grind against Robin specifically, but it does seem clear that she doesn't have much respect for any of the competitors, including Maharishi. > I pass it along because it seems to be something > we don't get much of around here, a view of the whole Robin phenomenon > presented without emotion or allegiance to one "side" of the story or > another. It seems to present some contradictions to claims here about > how much Robin continued to "revere" Maharishi and his teachings during > his 15 minutes of fame. It doesn't look to me as if Humes really had much of a clue as to what Robin's crusade was about. She doesn't seem to have interviewed Robin himself (not her fault; he wasn't accessible when she was writing this chapter), or even any of his followers, so it isn't surprising that she couldn't shed light on any apparent contradictions. But we have Robin's testimony here on FFL. And it would be odd indeed for him to have *lied* about having revered Maharishi and his teachings back then given his adamant opposition to them now. If he were lying in his posts here, it would more likely be the reverse. In any case, as I understand it from his posts and various other writings of his, his crusade had to do with what he felt was the *abuse and misuse* of Maharishi's teachings and the fact that Maharishi wasn't doing anything about it, as well as the lack of understanding of how the teachings applied in the Western context. He was anti-TMO and anti-MIU; he was trying to wake Maharishi up to the fact, as he saw it, that the whole TM movement was going to go down the tubes if Maharishi didn't take steps to remedy what Robin felt had gone wrong. And Robin obviously believed he was just the person to help Maharishi out by taking over the Western side of the movement. As nutty as that may have been, Robin's interest was in preserving what he considered the sacred gift of Maharishi's knowledge and the benefits it could bring to humankind. The Luther parallel is apt only up to a point. If Robin was a latter-day Luther, the TMO/MIU were the pope and the church, and Maharishi was Jesus, whose teachings Luther felt were being distorted and misused, risking an end to Christianity. But Luther obviously couldn't appeal to Jesus to fix things himself, because Jesus was no longer around. So the analogy breaks down at that point. Plus which--and this is very much evident in Robin's posts--while he is fully aware and highly critical of Maharishi's failings as a human being, and has rejected the very basis of Maharishi's teaching, in some deeply conflicted sense *he still reveres Maharishi*. I'll have more to say later about the book excerpt. I want to read it again more carefully. I did spot one rather strange assertion: "Virtually all scientific study of the Transcendental Meditation technique concerns its effect on physiology and potential health disorders." Either she means to exclude from "scientific study" any research done by TMers, or she hasn't done her homework (which would make one wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the chapter).
