Lurking reporters, please note that in context (carefully snipped by Barry), the claims Steve and Ann were talking about are that "the age-old problems of mankind will be solved in one generation," including the complete disappearance of conflict. They've been saying you had to be kind of gullible to take those claims at face value. Steve says he doesn't think many were.
Barry says this couldn't be true because so many people took the TM-Sidhis course, making the unstated assumption that nobody who didn't take the claims above at face value would have done so. In fact, of course, it's entirely possible to have decided to take the course because one perceived that it would be of some benefit, but not necessarily expecting the complete fulfillment of the clearly extravagant claims above. IOW, Barry's analysis is illogical. He also misstates the history of the Maharishi Effect claim itself, and in the process contradicts himself. If it had been the case that the claim wasn't made until "long after" he'd left the TMO, that would mean that nobody until then would have taken the course on the basis of the "complete disappearance of conflict" claim. In fact, as has already been discussed here, the Maharishi Effect claim was current as of 1976 with reference to the reduction in crime found in cities with 1 percent meditating; and it wasn't more than a couple of years before it was also applied to large-group TM-Sidhis practice in the square-root-of-1-percent formula. And it would still have been possible to take the course on the basis of the belief that the practice would help reduce crime and conflict if not totally eliiminate it. It's also important to note that many took the course as much on the basis of what those who had already taken it said about their experience of it, as on the basis of the claims in isolation. (That would apply to the individual benefits, of course, rather than to the Maharishi Effect.) Bottom line, the situation was and is much more complex than Barry portrays it. He is a devotee of the fallacy of the excluded middle. Among other things, It is not necessarily the case that there are no possibilities between truth and fraud. Barry is certainly not in a position to say for sure whether Maharishi was deliberately perpetrating a fraud with his claims for the TM-Sidhis, or simply wildly overly optimistic and hopeful. Note also that in his penultimate paragraph below, Barry deliberately (and fatuously) misconstrues the quote provided by Steve. Obviously, Steve uses the quote in reference to how one deals with things in one's life not turning out as one had hoped, not to suggest that somehow he himself had "thought up" the TM-Sidhis. You make the point well, Ann. I don't know many who took these claims at face value, and thereby set themselves up for disillusionment. Well, I'd say that at least 5,000 did, because isn't that the number who paid thousands of dollars each first to learn the TM-Sidhis, and then even more money to attend the "Taste Of Utopia" course in Fairfield. Then there are all the people who have paid similar thousands of dollars to learn them in the years since, and even more to move to Buttfuck, Iowa to practice them in a group several hours a day. I'd suggest that the number of people who took the promise of the ME seriously was very large -- and very profitable -- indeed. Most put them in the context of a vision of possibilities and discounted accordingly. It appears to me that this "most" you're speaking about still refuse to challenge the basic idea of the ME to this day, and obviously because it's easier to claim that you never 'really' believed in it and spent all that time and money just for a 'vision of possibilities' than it is to admit that you have so little discrimination and common sense that you bought into an obvious fraud completely. And it seems strange to make the case that since, "we didn't eliminate the ago old problems of mankind in this generation" the whole program was a fraud. I wouild say instead that it "seems strange" to you because you don't want to admit that you were gullible enough to fall for an obvious fraud. It's not really that horrible a thing to do. Here, I'll show you: "Back when I paid thousands of dollars to learn the TM-Sidhis, the idea of the 'ME' was not even a gleam in the old con man's eye, and didn't appear until long after I had left the TM movement. Nevertheless, I *was* stupid enough to pay thousands of dollars for another kind of obvious fraud -- the promise that I would be able to learn to levitate. Shame on me for being so mind-numbingly gullible as to have done that." See? It isn't hard at all. I poured my heart and soul into achieving those goals. And at some point I too became a little disillusioned, but I never felt anyone owed me anything in this spiritual game. You certainly don't seem to feel that they owed you the truth. "Let a man raise himself, by himself. Let him not destroy himself. He alone is his own friend. He alone, his own destroyer" From the Bhagavad Gita. Maybe that is what helped me. If "you alone" are responsible for believing that bouncing on your butt would bring about world peace and end crime, how did you think up and promote the idea? And if "you alone" thought it all up, why did you pay thousands of dollars to the TM organization to learn how to do what "you alone" were responsible for? The word "fraud" is liberating, Steve. Learn to say it, and you might feel better.
