--- In [email protected], "Paul Mason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 29th September 1967 'The Frost Programme' included an interview > with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at London Airport. During the chat the > topic of mantras came up. His answer would give the listener the > idea that the TM movement used a palette of 'thousands' of mantras, > which, if it were not true, would amount to false advertising. > > Frost - Is that the same sound that you give to each person? > MMY - No, each person gets different but we don't have as many sounds > as we have men in the world. So they are grouped together. > Frost - How many sounds are there? > MMY - Oh there are lots of sounds. > Frost - I mean hundreds or thousands or ...? > MMY - You could say thousands.
Two points here. First, people aren't persuaded to learn TM because they are led to believe "thousands" of mantras are used, so to call this "false advertising" is a bit of a stretch. Second, certainly it's deceptive on its own terms. MMY surely knew Frost was asking specifically about mantras as used in TM, and that's what most listeners would have assumed he was asking about, so Paul is quite right, they would have interpreted MMY's response in that sense. But MMY responded as though Frost were asking about mantras generally. It's an instance of "plausible deniability"--i.e., if confronted, he could have claimed to have understood Frost's questions to be general rather than specific. In that context, his replies were perfectly accurate, so he wasn't "lying" per se. Obviously MMY didn't want to get into the specifics of the mantras in TM. If he'd said, "Oh, a dozen or so," that would have led to more questions: Why that particular dozen? and so on. He should just have said he'd rather not get into specifics and left it at that. Perhaps he would have if Frost had asked, "How many sounds do you use in TM?" rather than, "How many sounds are there?" But Frost's question was imprecise, and MMY took advantage of it so as not to appear to be withholding information. (Actually he gave a bit of a hint that he wasn't being entirely forthright: "*You could say* thousands," i.e., you could say that if you were referring to the number of mantras that exist, rather than the number used in TM.) To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
