--- In [email protected], "jim_flanegin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I suspect Barry is just f'ing around on this one
I'm *always* "just fucking around" on some level, Jim. And proud of it. Seriousness is for those who want to be perceived as serious, and I can't think of a sadder way to spend an incarnation. :-) > ...to negate the > teaching of name and form is pretty rediculous. Reminds me of an > experiment I did for my high school science fair, where I placed a > sheet of metal covered with iron filings on top of a speaker and > then by playing different frequencies through the speaker, different > patterns were formed by the filings. Different frequencies, > different effects. Same reason we like different kinds of music, and > Barry brings up his musical preferences here, so why is not all > music the same for him? Nah, he's jerking your chain... Actually, I'm not. Here you just parrot the same old same old jive analogizing the supposed effect of mantras to the effect of physical sounds on physical objects. I would suggest that the metaphor is a sales technique, and far from proven. My point was just a little "out of the box" thinking. In my opinion, EVERY case of a mantra leading to trans- cending or the chanting of particular sounds leading to a particular "result" can be explained via the placebo effect. The meditator is *TOLD* that the mantra has certain powerful Woo Woo Rays in it that make it more conducive to meditation as a sound than other sounds, and he chooses to *BELIEVE* what he is told. Therefore the meditation works for him. A spiritual sightseer (albeit a rather stupid one) plunks down his good money for a yagya to cure his genital warts. The pundits he's paid the money to chant a bunch of mumbo- jumbo that he doesn't understand a word of, and voila! his genital warts go away. It *could* be the effect of the particular sound that allows the meditator to experience transcendence (which, after all, is already present, and his natural state). It *could* be the effect of the particular sound of the chanting that makes his genital warts dry up and go away. Then again, it just as easily *could* all be due to the placebo effect -- the person was told what was going to happen, and *made* it happen by expecting it to happen. What I'm suggesting is that *very often* sparaig takes the intellectually LAZY route in his writings here, as do you. You *assume* that the things told to you by Maharishi or his representatives are true, and do not challenge them. I do. That's all. Some of them *may* be true. A great number of them are probably *not* true. But my nature is to challenge them ALL, just to see whether there are other, equally plausible explanations for why Effect X seems to happen in the vicinity of Cause X. It may *BE*, as so many choose to believe (never challenging what they were told) that the reason is that the Cause X mantra contains wily Woo Woo Rays that make Effect X happen. Then again, it may well be that the mantra isn't doing diddleysquat, and Effect X happens because the believer believes it will, and is willing Effect X into existence via the placebo effect. I am open-minded enough to consider the latter case a possibility, and to consider it no less noble or spiritual than other explanations. If you are offended by it, I might suggest that the person in this situation who is closed-minded is not moi. :-)
