Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Indeed. I remember working in the TMO Western Regional Office during the period when we had been instructed to round up and send back to Switzerland any unauthorized audio- and videotapes. This tape (Soma and the Gods) was top on the list. The fascinating thing is that none of these tapes were bootlegs. All of them had been *sold* to the TM teachers who owned them *at a substantial profit* earlier in TM history, before Maharishi decided to start practicing revisionist history and pretending that he hadn't really taught the things that he taught. We were told to tell the TM teachers who owned them that they *had* to return them, and that they would be compensated for them by WPEC in Seelisberg. That's what we were told...no one ever received a penny for any of the hundreds of dollars worth of tapes they turned in. We were also told to threaten them with expulsion from the TMO if they refused to turn them in. Later I saw the Rama guy do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason (revisionist history, trying to pretend to the press that he hadn't said the things that he'd said), and that was one of the tipping points that caused me to back away from him. The thing is, especially given my raps about increased production of Oxytocin yesterday, people on rounding courses were VULNERABLE to Neo-Hindu crap like this. They weren't allowed off the course premises because frankly many of them would not have been able to find their way back to their hotels if they had been...they were that spaced out. So *of course* they're going to believe any crap that's taught to them by the person who (in their minds) got them as high as they thought they were. On another level, Michael's revulsion at learning about Hindu gods supposedly being vampires feeding off of TMers' soma is understandable. I mean, what else are yagyas? The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. What a low-vibe philosophy/religion...it's right up there in the ignorant barbarism column with live animal sacrifice. (Which, of course, was *also* practiced extensively in supposedly pure and perfect Vedic India.) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods Cultmania 101. Isolation, mind altering practises, culturing a sense of uniqueness and superiority through revelation of secret and privileged knowledge... it's all there. The paranoid, controlling and utopianist leader is optional to cults but rather common. Soma and Xenu seem to be walking hand in hand here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation
Cultmania 103. Always paint anyone who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity as dead wood and as having something wrong with them. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Cultmania 102. Always paint the guru's abusive, controlling behaviour as a good thing. Thanks guys. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hardly a schism when perhaps as little as 2% of the active teachers left to teach on their own. He did get rid of 75% or more of the active teachers by raising the prices and through the rectification though, a lot of deadwood got sorted out that way very elegantly. You seem to have missed that that was very much what he wanted and while he was alive. That doesn't mean much of the deadwood isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : And yet, after he died, not a single one of the people who remained loyal left. All the people who were going to leave, already had left. That may not have been his intent, but that was the effect: the inevitable schism took place before he died, rather than after. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Maybe I didn't out that clearly enough, he put the prices up in 1999 and then again in 2002/3. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I have heard that too, but it seems unlikely that he would have waited from 1999 to what, 2005 to do so? I think he was just loopy - I mean after all who did his pronouncement hurt besides the teachers who had remained loyal to him - the rogues went on teaching authentic TM as if they didn't give a damn what Marshy thought. On Wed, 4/2/14, dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 4:28 PM
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was what was picked up by the press and extrapolated for the entire 8 week period. True Believers want the research to be true Skeptics are often as desperate to be sure that it is false. The reality is that the study was ambiguous, IMHO. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : Judy, I don't remember the details but that it was a national concern at the time on all the national news programs. It sure seems that there were more than just ten homicides. Might have been ten homicides and ten or twenty non lethal shootings in addition. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:10 PM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: This is a bit misleading, Mike. Rates of aggravated assault and rape decreased significantly from what would have been expected over the period of the study. Robberies stayed about the same. And the homicide rate (around 10 per week) over the eight weeks of the study was also about the same as normal. There was a spike of 10 homicides over one 36-hour period (there apparently was some sort of gang battle), but the following week there were only 4 homicides. So it evened out statistically. You just happened to be there the week of the spike. I think shootings would be included in the aggravated assault category; that rate declined significantly over the course of the study. One would, of course, have hoped that the homicide rate would have decreased, but no joy. OTOH, the homicide rate didn't increase, contrary to what some reporters claimed. Here's the text of the study as published in Social Indicators Research:: http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ Here's an article by one of the study's authors rebutting a very sloppy article attempting to debunk the study in Skeptical Inquirer: http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html It addresses the 36-hour homicide spike in some detail. I took my *flying* block in DC during the big campaign there. There was a huge spike in murders and shootings at the time. I guess the TM explanation was, *well you should have seen what it would have been like had we not been there.* On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 1:27 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Along with the mounting medical evidence of the various health benefits of meditation, research shows group meditation can actually reduce crime rates in the greater population. http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/research-shows-group-meditation-can-reduce-crime-rates/ http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/research-shows-group-meditation-can-reduce-crime-rates/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
That's got to be Cultmania 104. Always rationalise any contradictions in the guru's teaching, by pretending they don't exist if necessary. The lost Marshy tapes a fascinating story. When I worked at the academy one of my jobs was clearing out and cataloguing the video collection. There was a box of tapes marked Not to be watched that had all the Deepak stuff in - remember him? Poster boy for ayurveda and Marshy's favourite and ubiquitous vaidya, became public enemy number one overnight - but the box also contained some gems like Marshy lighting a cake for the Queen on her birthday and praising the wonderful British empire for all the great things it had done for the world. This was in the middle of his hatred for all things British and American - the start of Scorpionland perhaps. I wanted to sneak it onto the playlist for that weekend's course but they wouldn't let me. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Indeed. I remember working in the TMO Western Regional Office during the period when we had been instructed to round up and send back to Switzerland any unauthorized audio- and videotapes. This tape (Soma and the Gods) was top on the list. The fascinating thing is that none of these tapes were bootlegs. All of them had been *sold* to the TM teachers who owned them *at a substantial profit* earlier in TM history, before Maharishi decided to start practicing revisionist history and pretending that he hadn't really taught the things that he taught. We were told to tell the TM teachers who owned them that they *had* to return them, and that they would be compensated for them by WPEC in Seelisberg. That's what we were told...no one ever received a penny for any of the hundreds of dollars worth of tapes they turned in. We were also told to threaten them with expulsion from the TMO if they refused to turn them in. Later I saw the Rama guy do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason (revisionist history, trying to pretend to the press that he hadn't said the things that he'd said), and that was one of the tipping points that caused me to back away from him. The thing is, especially given my raps about increased production of Oxytocin yesterday, people on rounding courses were VULNERABLE to Neo-Hindu crap like this. They weren't allowed off the course premises because frankly many of them would not have been able to find their way back to their hotels if they had been...they were that spaced out. So *of course* they're going to believe any crap that's taught to them by the person who (in their minds) got them as high as they thought they were. On another level, Michael's revulsion at learning about Hindu gods supposedly being vampires feeding off of TMers' soma is understandable. I mean, what else are yagyas? The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. What a low-vibe philosophy/religion...it's right up there in the ignorant barbarism column with live animal sacrifice. (Which, of course, was *also* practiced extensively in supposedly pure and perfect Vedic India.) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods Cultmania 101. Isolation, mind altering practises, culturing a sense of uniqueness and superiority through revelation of secret and privileged knowledge... it's all there. The paranoid, controlling and utopianist leader is optional to cults but rather common. Soma and Xenu seem to be walking hand in hand here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: PHARRELL WILLIAMS - HAPPY (INDIA)
Perhaps people on this list should travel more. Because they don't wear dhotis or are filmed in front of Temples it can't possibly be from India :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : What was missing were sadhus dancing to this at Kumbha Mela. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 6:17 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Starting unstressing before we watch the video are we ? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : India? That looked like downtown Chicago. What a crock. You get that a lot. Misleading headlines, lead-ins that never materialize in the story. What a shame that they try to pull that crap on people. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Enjoy ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making the crime rate fall beyond the level by which they naturally fluctuate. An easily noted 80% drop for instance, that'd be more convincing. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was what was picked up by the press and extrapolated for the entire 8 week period. True Believers want the research to be true Skeptics are often as desperate to be sure that it is false. The reality is that the study was ambiguous, IMHO. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : Judy, I don't remember the details but that it was a national concern at the time on all the national news programs. It sure seems that there were more than just ten homicides. Might have been ten homicides and ten or twenty non lethal shootings in addition. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:10 PM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: This is a bit misleading, Mike. Rates of aggravated assault and rape decreased significantly from what would have been expected over the period of the study. Robberies stayed about the same. And the homicide rate (around 10 per week) over the eight weeks of the study was also about the same as normal. There was a spike of 10 homicides over one 36-hour period (there apparently was some sort of gang battle), but the following week there were only 4 homicides. So it evened out statistically. You just happened to be there the week of the spike. I think shootings would be included in the aggravated assault category; that rate declined significantly over the course of the study. One would, of course, have hoped that the homicide rate would have decreased, but no joy. OTOH, the homicide rate didn't increase, contrary to what some reporters claimed. Here's the text of the study as published in Social Indicators Research:: http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ Here's an article by one of the study's authors rebutting a very sloppy article attempting to debunk the study in Skeptical Inquirer: http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html It addresses the 36-hour homicide spike in some detail. I took my *flying* block in DC during the big campaign there. There was a huge spike in murders and shootings at the time. I guess the TM explanation was, *well you should have seen what it would have been like had we not been there.* On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 1:27 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Along with the mounting medical evidence of the various health benefits of meditation, research shows group meditation can actually reduce crime rates in the greater population. http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/research-shows-group-meditation-can-reduce-crime-rates/ http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/research-shows-group-meditation-can-reduce-crime-rates/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation
Europe has but a small handful of teachers teaching independently. That's hardly a schism. There was little wrong with the deadwood that Maharishi got rid of by raising the prices and applying new structures, they just didn't contribute anymore. They didn't bail out but was forced out, which of course is a very healthy procedure necessary once in awhile for any organization. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Cultmania 103. Always paint anyone who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity as dead wood and as having something wrong with them. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Cultmania 102. Always paint the guru's abusive, controlling behaviour as a good thing. Thanks guys. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hardly a schism when perhaps as little as 2% of the active teachers left to teach on their own. He did get rid of 75% or more of the active teachers by raising the prices and through the rectification though, a lot of deadwood got sorted out that way very elegantly. You seem to have missed that that was very much what he wanted and while he was alive. That doesn't mean much of the deadwood isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : And yet, after he died, not a single one of the people who remained loyal left. All the people who were going to leave, already had left. That may not have been his intent, but that was the effect: the inevitable schism took place before he died, rather than after. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Maybe I didn't out that clearly enough, he put the prices up in 1999 and then again in 2002/3. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I have heard that too, but it seems unlikely that he would have waited from 1999 to what, 2005 to do so? I think he was just loopy - I mean after all who did his pronouncement hurt besides the teachers who had remained loyal to him - the rogues went on teaching authentic TM as if they didn't give a damn what Marshy thought. On Wed, 4/2/14, dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 4:28 PM
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation
Yup, make sure that the brainwashing has held by periodically testing the faith of the devotee. What number are we up to? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Europe has but a small handful of teachers teaching independently. That's hardly a schism. There was little wrong with the deadwood that Maharishi got rid of by raising the prices and applying new structures, they just didn't contribute anymore. They didn't bail out but was forced out, which of course is a very healthy procedure necessary once in awhile for any organization. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Cultmania 103. Always paint anyone who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity as dead wood and as having something wrong with them. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Cultmania 102. Always paint the guru's abusive, controlling behaviour as a good thing. Thanks guys. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hardly a schism when perhaps as little as 2% of the active teachers left to teach on their own. He did get rid of 75% or more of the active teachers by raising the prices and through the rectification though, a lot of deadwood got sorted out that way very elegantly. You seem to have missed that that was very much what he wanted and while he was alive. That doesn't mean much of the deadwood isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : And yet, after he died, not a single one of the people who remained loyal left. All the people who were going to leave, already had left. That may not have been his intent, but that was the effect: the inevitable schism took place before he died, rather than after. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Maybe I didn't out that clearly enough, he put the prices up in 1999 and then again in 2002/3. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I have heard that too, but it seems unlikely that he would have waited from 1999 to what, 2005 to do so? I think he was just loopy - I mean after all who did his pronouncement hurt besides the teachers who had remained loyal to him - the rogues went on teaching authentic TM as if they didn't give a damn what Marshy thought. On Wed, 4/2/14, dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 4:28 PM
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:55 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Yup, make sure that the brainwashing has held by periodically testing the faith of the devotee. What number are we up to? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Europe has but a small handful of teachers teaching independently. That's hardly a schism. There was little wrong with the deadwood that Maharishi got rid of by raising the prices and applying new structures, they just didn't contribute anymore. They didn't bail out but was forced out, which of course is a very healthy procedure necessary once in awhile for any organization. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Cultmania 103. Always paint anyone who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity as dead wood and as having something wrong with them. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Cultmania 102. Always paint the guru's abusive, controlling behaviour as a good thing. Thanks guys. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hardly a schism when perhaps as little as 2% of the active teachers left to teach on their own. He did get rid of 75% or more of the active teachers by raising the prices and through the rectification though, a lot of deadwood got sorted out that way very elegantly. You seem to have missed that that was very much what he wanted and while he was alive. That doesn't mean much of the deadwood isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : And yet, after he died, not a single one of the people who remained loyal left. All the people who were going to leave, already had left. That may not have been his intent, but that was the effect: the inevitable schism took place before he died, rather than after. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Maybe I didn't out that clearly enough, he put the prices up in 1999 and then again in 2002/3. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I have heard that too, but it seems unlikely that he would have waited from 1999 to what, 2005 to do so? I think he was just loopy - I mean after all who did his pronouncement hurt besides the teachers who had remained loyal to him - the rogues went on teaching authentic TM as if they didn't give a damn what Marshy thought. On Wed, 4/2/14, dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 4:28 PM
[FairfieldLife] Warren's top 10 stock picks!
http://vibrationcode.com/buffett-top-10-order-01 http://vibrationcode.com/buffett-top-10-order-01
[FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones
For those of you who have watched the show and are looking forward to the next season of Game Of Thrones as much as I am, these are utterly hilarious. And in ways that totally nail the publications and reporters being parodied. Spoiler warning passed along if you haven't watched the show so far and plan to and don't want to spoil anything. I don't think there are any spoilers for the upcoming season, or if there are, I didn't notice them. If The Media Reported The Events Of Game Of Thrones
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sun...@yahoo.com steve.sun...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal Ishta (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to stir the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
my revulsion is the idea that Marshy would teach this crap - as the writer of the article said, Marshy was the only one around who taught this stuff. It smacks of not just Hinduism but really superstitious Hinduism. If you can believe what Chopra wrote about M after he croaked, he was a superstitious man and passed that crap onto his sycophants. I mean, anyone who would tell folk to run hide when a solar eclipse is in the offing? On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 6:34 AM Indeed. I remember working in the TMO Western Regional Office during the period when we had been instructed to round up and send back to Switzerland any unauthorized audio- and videotapes. This tape (Soma and the Gods) was top on the list. The fascinating thing is that none of these tapes were bootlegs. All of them had been *sold* to the TM teachers who owned them *at a substantial profit* earlier in TM history, before Maharishi decided to start practicing revisionist history and pretending that he hadn't really taught the things that he taught. We were told to tell the TM teachers who owned them that they *had* to return them, and that they would be compensated for them by WPEC in Seelisberg. That's what we were told...no one ever received a penny for any of the hundreds of dollars worth of tapes they turned in. We were also told to threaten them with expulsion from the TMO if they refused to turn them in. Later I saw the Rama guy do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason (revisionist history, trying to pretend to the press that he hadn't said the things that he'd said), and that was one of the tipping points that caused me to back away from him. The thing is, especially given my raps about increased production of Oxytocin yesterday, people on rounding courses were VULNERABLE to Neo-Hindu crap like this. They weren't allowed off the course premises because frankly many of them would not have been able to find their way back to their hotels if they had been...they were that spaced out. So *of course* they're going to believe any crap that's taught to them by the person who (in their minds) got them as high as they thought they were. On another level, Michael's revulsion at learning about Hindu gods supposedly being vampires feeding off of TMers' soma is understandable. I mean, what else are yagyas? The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. What a low-vibe philosophy/religion...it's right up there in the ignorant barbarism column with live animal sacrifice. (Which, of course, was *also* practiced extensively in supposedly pure and perfect Vedic India.) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods Cultmania 101. Isolation, mind altering practises, culturing a sense of uniqueness and superiority through revelation of secret and privileged knowledge... it's all there. The paranoid, controlling and utopianist leader is optional to cults but rather common. Soma and Xenu seem to be walking hand in hand here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
And thank you for giving your memory of this - another piece of info I had no idea of - that the TM teachers could and did buy these tapes. On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 6:34 AM Indeed. I remember working in the TMO Western Regional Office during the period when we had been instructed to round up and send back to Switzerland any unauthorized audio- and videotapes. This tape (Soma and the Gods) was top on the list. The fascinating thing is that none of these tapes were bootlegs. All of them had been *sold* to the TM teachers who owned them *at a substantial profit* earlier in TM history, before Maharishi decided to start practicing revisionist history and pretending that he hadn't really taught the things that he taught. We were told to tell the TM teachers who owned them that they *had* to return them, and that they would be compensated for them by WPEC in Seelisberg. That's what we were told...no one ever received a penny for any of the hundreds of dollars worth of tapes they turned in. We were also told to threaten them with expulsion from the TMO if they refused to turn them in. Later I saw the Rama guy do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason (revisionist history, trying to pretend to the press that he hadn't said the things that he'd said), and that was one of the tipping points that caused me to back away from him. The thing is, especially given my raps about increased production of Oxytocin yesterday, people on rounding courses were VULNERABLE to Neo-Hindu crap like this. They weren't allowed off the course premises because frankly many of them would not have been able to find their way back to their hotels if they had been...they were that spaced out. So *of course* they're going to believe any crap that's taught to them by the person who (in their minds) got them as high as they thought they were. On another level, Michael's revulsion at learning about Hindu gods supposedly being vampires feeding off of TMers' soma is understandable. I mean, what else are yagyas? The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. What a low-vibe philosophy/religion...it's right up there in the ignorant barbarism column with live animal sacrifice. (Which, of course, was *also* practiced extensively in supposedly pure and perfect Vedic India.) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods Cultmania 101. Isolation, mind altering practises, culturing a sense of uniqueness and superiority through revelation of secret and privileged knowledge... it's all there. The paranoid, controlling and utopianist leader is optional to cults but rather common. Soma and Xenu seem to be walking hand in hand here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic --
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
when you have riots and murders in the place where the largest Dome numbers are at least 5 and a half percent of the population, that pretty much kills the idea the ME exists at all. On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 7:27 AM Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making the crime rate fall beyond the level by which they naturally fluctuate. An easily noted 80% drop for instance, that'd be more convincing. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was what was picked up by the press and extrapolated for the entire 8 week period. True Believers want the research to be true Skeptics are often as desperate to be sure that it is false. The reality is that the study was ambiguous, IMHO. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : Judy, I don't remember the details but that it was a national concern at the time on all the national news programs. It sure seems that there were more than just ten homicides. Might have been ten homicides and ten or twenty non lethal shootings in addition. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:10 PM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: This is a bit misleading, Mike. Rates of aggravated assault and rape decreased significantly from what would have been expected over the period of the study. Robberies stayed about the same. And the homicide rate (around 10 per week) over the eight weeks of the study was also about the same as normal. There was a spike of 10 homicides over one 36-hour period (there apparently was some sort of gang battle), but the following week there were only 4 homicides. So it evened out statistically. You just happened to be there the week of the spike. I think shootings would be included in the aggravated assault category; that rate declined significantly over the course of the study. One would, of course, have hoped that the homicide rate would have decreased, but no joy. OTOH, the homicide rate didn't increase, contrary to what some reporters claimed. Here's the text of the study as published in Social Indicators Research:: http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ Here's an article by one of the study's authors rebutting a very sloppy article attempting to debunk the study in Skeptical Inquirer: http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html It addresses the 36-hour homicide spike in some detail. I took my *flying* block in DC during the big campaign there. There was a huge spike in murders and shootings at the time. I guess the TM explanation was, *well you should have seen what it would have been like had we not been there.* On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 1:27 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Along with the mounting medical evidence of the various health benefits of meditation, research shows group meditation can actually reduce crime rates in the greater population.http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/research-shows-group-meditation-can-reduce-crime-rates/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: PHARRELL WILLIAMS - HAPPY (INDIA)
I noticed the background in one scene were mall stores including Louis Vuitton and the like. Perhaps that's your idea of Indian. Looks to me like they probably didn't get much past the airport in any of the locations. On the other hand, I only watched a snippet of two of them. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Perhaps people on this list should travel more. Because they don't wear dhotis or are filmed in front of Temples it can't possibly be from India :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : What was missing were sadhus dancing to this at Kumbha Mela. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 6:17 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Starting unstressing before we watch the video are we ? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : India? That looked like downtown Chicago. What a crock. You get that a lot. Misleading headlines, lead-ins that never materialize in the story. What a shame that they try to pull that crap on people. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Enjoy ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA
Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones
I've read most of the books - thus far they are doing a damn fine job of bringing the books to life on the screen On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones To: fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 10:35 AM For those of you who have watched the show and are looking forward to the next season of Game Of Thrones as much as I am, these are utterly hilarious. And in ways that totally nail the publications and reporters being parodied. Spoiler warning passed along if you haven't watched the show so far and plan to and don't want to spoil anything. I don't think there are any spoilers for the upcoming season, or if there are, I didn't notice them. If The Media Reported The Events Of Game Of Thrones
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Its the ninth mandala actually, but it was never phrased so that I remember - also it is significant that M who always claimed publicly to offer a technique that is non-religious to covertly tell everyone inthe room point blank that the purpose of meditation is to refine the body so it produces soma so Indra and the other gods can have lunch on your nickle and they will give you rewards as a result. This is not just Hinduism but superstitious Hinduism. If what he was teaching in this tape was legit, he would never had had the tapes recalled. As I believe the Turq said not long ago, if TM was a great as they claim it is, they wouldn't have to lie to sell it. I am also eager to hear from any other teachers who post here who have seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time and what they think of it now, or remember when the word came down to give 'em back to the Movement. I think its a very interesting bit of Movement history. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sun...@yahoo.com steve.sun...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 11:41 AM Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation
Sez Barry, making his first mistakes for today because he was so eager to take another shot that he didn't bother to read what Buck wrote: That doesn't mean much of the 'deadwood' isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. IOW, the deadwood were NOT all people who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity, much as Barry would like for that to have been the case. Plus which, Buck never suggested they had something wrong with them; that's Barry's idea. Salyavin, controlling behavior, certainly; but how was this winnowing of teachers abusive? Remember the succession controversy after Guru Dev died. Maharishi wanted to avoid that happening after his own death. It's why he appointed Nader as his successor ahead of time. And he wanted to hand over to Nader only the most committed teachers. If he hadn't been so controlling, I can't imagine the movement would have survived his death intact. It was surely a good thing for the movement. Cultmania 103. Always paint anyone who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity as dead wood and as having something wrong with them. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Cultmania 102. Always paint the guru's abusive, controlling behaviour as a good thing. Thanks guys. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hardly a schism when perhaps as little as 2% of the active teachers left to teach on their own. He did get rid of 75% or more of the active teachers by raising the prices and through the rectification though, a lot of deadwood got sorted out that way very elegantly. You seem to have missed that that was very much what he wanted and while he was alive. That doesn't mean much of the deadwood isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : And yet, after he died, not a single one of the people who remained loyal left. All the people who were going to leave, already had left. That may not have been his intent, but that was the effect: the inevitable schism took place before he died, rather than after. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Maybe I didn't out that clearly enough, he put the prices up in 1999 and then again in 2002/3. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I have heard that too, but it seems unlikely that he would have waited from 1999 to what, 2005 to do so? I think he was just loopy - I mean after all who did his pronouncement hurt besides the teachers who had remained loyal to him - the rogues went on teaching authentic TM as if they didn't give a damn what Marshy thought. On Wed, 4/2/14, dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 4:28 PM
[FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
BTW, here's the transcript of the tape: http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml Answering my own question below: It's definitely the Trancenet writer's image, not Maharishi's, as you'll see if you read the transcript. The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma--is this Maharishi's image, or the image of the guy who wrote this essay, Michael? (I've read the transcript of this tape, by the way, so don't misinterpret my question.) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal Ishta (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to stir the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies, bestow on us the riches of the affluent. And we take Ayurvedic potions and pills believing we will produce extra or more refined soma. An anecdote from a former Maharishi International University (MIU/MUM) professor: When I was on MIU faculty, there was a special videotape that only faculty were privy to. It was the Ninth Mandala, chanted in the original Sanskrit. Sitting with eyes closed, listening to it was considered a great privilege and was highly secret. On my Governor Training Course, after we had rounded and rounded and rounded for three months, MMY [the Maharishi] finally called to answer our questions. I asked what we should expect from endlessly reading the Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda and I never forgot his reply: It will become a living reality. To my knowledge, this fairly frightening vision is the Maharishi's alone. The Rig and Sama Vedas themselves describe the process of making a beverage, soma, by grinding and brewing a certain medicinal plant -- or alternatively by feeding a plant to a cow and then imbibing either its milk or urine. James Allegro speculated some years back that soma was actually the hallucinogenic mushroom amanita muscara, a prevalent inebriator among all Aryan cultures. Perhaps. But even in modern day India, there are hotris who perform the Soma sacrifice using the humble soma plant, and imbibing the juice. Nowhere in all of Vedic literature have we found a single reference to soma as a substance produced in the human stomach and fed upon by Gods. Except this product of the Maharishi's imagination. Many sources from the inner circles of the TM movement have
[FairfieldLife] SuperDooperStition
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:09 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods my revulsion is the idea that Marshy would teach this crap - as the writer of the article said, Marshy was the only one around who taught this stuff. It smacks of not just Hinduism but really superstitious Hinduism. If you can believe what Chopra wrote about M after he croaked, he was a superstitious man and passed that crap onto his sycophants. I mean, anyone who would tell folk to run hide when a solar eclipse is in the offing? I would say, Michael, that Maharishi was not only superstitious, but possibly the most superstitious person I've ever met in my life. He saw omens in pretty much *everything* he saw around him. I've told the story of seeing him walk into the meeting hall in Squaw Valley and finding that the night crew had not finished cleaning the room. As a result, all of the chairs were piled upside down on the tables, obviously so that people could sweep and vacuum and mop under them. When Maharishi saw this, he visibly blanched (I was standing only a few feet away), halted in his tracks, and refused to enter the room. He turned around, backtracked through the hordes of people who had just given him flowers, and exited, refusing to come back until all of the chairs had been set upright. When I asked Jerry about it later (he was my initiator, and I knew him from the L.A. center), he said that seeing chairs upside down was considered a bad omen and that Maharishi wouldn't enter until it was removed. Go figure, for a supposedly enlightened (and thus invincible) guy. We've also heard how he interpreted an icicle forming on the balcony of his digs in Vlodrop as a divine manifestation of the god Shiva. Perhaps it was, and the reason was that Maharishi had generated an enormous amount of stomach soma that day, and Shiva was thanking him for his efforts. :-) I jest, but the serious part is that Maharishi not only believed in the many superstitions he held, he taught them as if they were truth. And people *bought* them as if they were truth. The generation of an enlightenment endorphin or chemical as the result of enlightenment is not a new idea. This process being located in the gut and gods feeding off of it like vampires is kinda weird, but I'd give it a pass if it had been presented as fiction. I mean, think about it. It's the perfect basis for a TV series. You could call it True Soma, and set it in the future, when the Age Of Enlightenment has finally full dawned and almost everyone is practicing TM and the TMSP and living in fully-Vastu compounds generating veritable vats of soma for the gods to feast on. Into this paradise come a bunch of Off The Program Misfit Heretics, who in a fit of unstressing have taken offene at the gods pigging out on their soma. They've hired rogue chemists, and are trying to synthesize soma and market it as True Soma to the masses, even those few who have refused to embrace the Age Of Enlightenment and thus still spit non-meditators. The kicker of the series is that on the one hand the rebels ARE doing this out of compassion for their fellow man, wanting them to be able to enjoy the many benefits of stomach soma themselves. But on the other hand, they're doing it because they're sick and damned tired of the gods feasting on their energy and leaving far too little of it for them. They just want these Bramhaloka-dwelling, soma-sucking bastids off their backs. The drama (there *has* to be drama, because this is a Neo-Hindu future, after all...and it's on TV) is that the gods, being accomplished Siddhi-Masters and all, have looked into the future and have 'seen' that the artificial soma eventually produced by these heretics may work OK for the masses to give them a buzz, but to the gods it tastes like donkey piss. Worse than cheap Mexican beer. Way worse. So they're not at all happy about these misfits and their attempts to start a new beverage company. They want no part of this artificial soma revolution, and want humans to keep churnin' out the Good Stuff by meditating and bouncing on their butts half the day. (Program is longer in this future era.) Suffice it to say the whole thing turns into an epic battle between the heretics and the gods that puts the battle scenes in the Bhagavad-Gita righteously in the shade. It's real CGI Heaven, because by now both the heretics and the gods are full-blown Siddhi Masters, and fiery vajra-weapons are flyin' from both sides. We've already signed Brad Pitt to play our version of Arjuna, Johnny Depp to play the leader of the rebel heretics spit Barry, and Sir Anthony Hopkins to play Shiva, on the gods' side. Tony is already practising his I ate Barry's liver with a glass of S-S-S-Soma and it was Divine line. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
TM teachers paid for pretty much *everything* they gave away at the TM centers or otherwise distributed or made available to meditators there. Tapes, promo materials, books, etc. Many people who never became TM teachers themselves seem to think that these materials were somehow provided by the TM organization. They were not. We had to pay for them. At least when I was teaching TM. From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:09 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods And thank you for giving your memory of this - another piece of info I had no idea of - that the TM teachers could and did buy these tapes. On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 6:34 AM Indeed. I remember working in the TMO Western Regional Office during the period when we had been instructed to round up and send back to Switzerland any unauthorized audio- and videotapes. This tape (Soma and the Gods) was top on the list. The fascinating thing is that none of these tapes were bootlegs. All of them had been *sold* to the TM teachers who owned them *at a substantial profit* earlier in TM history, before Maharishi decided to start practicing revisionist history and pretending that he hadn't really taught the things that he taught. We were told to tell the TM teachers who owned them that they *had* to return them, and that they would be compensated for them by WPEC in Seelisberg. That's what we were told...no one ever received a penny for any of the hundreds of dollars worth of tapes they turned in. We were also told to threaten them with expulsion from the TMO if they refused to turn them in. Later I saw the Rama guy do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason (revisionist history, trying to pretend to the press that he hadn't said the things that he'd said), and that was one of the tipping points that caused me to back away from him. The thing is, especially given my raps about increased production of Oxytocin yesterday, people on rounding courses were VULNERABLE to Neo-Hindu crap like this. They weren't allowed off the course premises because frankly many of them would not have been able to find their way back to their hotels if they had been...they were that spaced out. So *of course* they're going to believe any crap that's taught to them by the person who (in their minds) got them as high as they thought they were. On another level, Michael's revulsion at learning about Hindu gods supposedly being vampires feeding off of TMers' soma is understandable. I mean, what else are yagyas? The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. What a low-vibe philosophy/religion...it's right up there in the ignorant barbarism column with live animal sacrifice. (Which, of course, was *also* practiced extensively in supposedly pure and perfect Vedic India.) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods Cultmania 101. Isolation, mind altering practises, culturing a sense of uniqueness and superiority through revelation of secret and privileged knowledge... it's all there. The paranoid, controlling and utopianist leader is optional to cults but rather common. Soma and Xenu seem to be walking hand in hand here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical Inquirer article and tell me the author came at the research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. And please note, Lawson is the one saying the results of this study were ambiguous. Shame on the TM critics who repeatedly try to portray him as a cult apologist. He is far more objective than you are. Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making the crime rate fall beyond the level by which they naturally fluctuate. An easily noted 80% drop for instance, that'd be more convincing. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was what was picked up by the press and extrapolated for the entire 8 week period. True Believers want the research to be true Skeptics are often as desperate to be sure that it is false. The reality is that the study was ambiguous, IMHO. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : Judy, I don't remember the details but that it was a national concern at the time on all the national news programs. It sure seems that there were more than just ten homicides. Might have been ten homicides and ten or twenty non lethal shootings in addition. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:10 PM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: This is a bit misleading, Mike. Rates of aggravated assault and rape decreased significantly from what would have been expected over the period of the study. Robberies stayed about the same. And the homicide rate (around 10 per week) over the eight weeks of the study was also about the same as normal. There was a spike of 10 homicides over one 36-hour period (there apparently was some sort of gang battle), but the following week there were only 4 homicides. So it evened out statistically. You just happened to be there the week of the spike. I think shootings would be included in the aggravated assault category; that rate declined significantly over the course of the study. One would, of course, have hoped that the homicide rate would have decreased, but no joy. OTOH, the homicide rate didn't increase, contrary to what some reporters claimed. Here's the text of the study as published in Social Indicators Research:: http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ Here's an article by one of the study's authors rebutting a very sloppy article attempting to debunk the study in Skeptical Inquirer: http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html http://istpp.org/crime_prevention/voodoo_rebuttal.html It addresses the 36-hour homicide spike in some detail. I took my *flying* block in DC during the big campaign there. There was a huge spike in murders and shootings at the time. I guess the TM explanation was, *well you should have seen what it would have been like had we not been there.* On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 1:27 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Along with the mounting medical evidence of the various health benefits of meditation, research shows group meditation can actually reduce crime rates in the greater population. http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/research-shows-group-meditation-can-reduce-crime-rates/ http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/research-shows-group-meditation-can-reduce-crime-rates/
Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com; FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:30 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones I've read most of the books - thus far they are doing a damn fine job of bringing the books to life on the screen Michael, I *love* Game Of Thrones and have been watching it from its inception. I think it's one of the most interesting things on TV. That said, I have carefully avoided reading the books yet, because I wanted to experience the series spoiler free, and thus preserve for myself some of the joy of discovering new things. As soon as the series finishes, I plan to read all the books, then watch the whole series from start to finish again, and *then* compare the two. So for now I'm just looking forward to more adventure when the series starts again next week. For Salyavin, who may also be following it, I noticed that in the UK, where there are obviously as many GOT fanatics as in the US, they've decided to air at least the first episode in real time, showing it on UK TV at the same time they first air it in the US. This sounds like a *great* excuse for a party to me. Gather a group of fellow GOT addicts, fuel them heavily with intoxicants, and then stay up until 2AM to watch the first episode of the new season. I don't get any UK channels on my TV, so I guess I'll have to wait until the next morning to watch it... On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones To: fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 10:35 AM For those of you who have watched the show and are looking forward to the next season of Game Of Thrones as much as I am, these are utterly hilarious. And in ways that totally nail the publications and reporters being parodied. Spoiler warning passed along if you haven't watched the show so far and plan to and don't want to spoil anything. I don't think there are any spoilers for the upcoming season, or if there are, I didn't notice them. If The Media Reported The Events Of Game Of Thrones
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Jesus Christ! That's like saying wonder how blue the sky would be if I had not gotten out of bed at 6 am? Wonder how many people would eat a steak tonight If I had not bought that porterhouse at the store? it is nonsense. If as Sal has said they could show a SIGNIFICANT drop in ANYTHING besides their asses on the foam, it would mean something - just a straight deal, no mumbo jumbo, so jimmying the numbers just do program and see what's what. but as they always do, they have to dummy shit up to make TM appear to be fabulous so they can sell it. Like Barry said, if TM was as claimed, they wouldn't have to lie to sell it. On Thu, 4/3/14, authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:08 PM Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical Inquirer article and tell me the author came at the research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. And please note, Lawson is the one saying the results of this study were ambiguous. Shame on the TM critics who repeatedly try to portray him as a cult apologist. He is far more objective than you are. Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making the crime rate fall beyond the level by which they naturally fluctuate. An easily noted 80% drop for instance, that'd be more convincing. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was what was picked up by the press and extrapolated for the entire 8 week period. True Believers want the research to be true Skeptics are often as desperate to be sure that it is false. The reality is that the study was ambiguous, IMHO. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : Judy, I don't remember the details but that it was a national concern at the time on all the national news programs. It sure seems that there were more than just ten homicides. Might have been ten homicides and ten or twenty non lethal shootings in addition. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:10 PM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: This is a bit misleading, Mike. Rates of aggravated assault and rape decreased significantly from what would have been expected over the period of the study. Robberies stayed about the same. And the homicide rate (around 10 per week) over the eight weeks of the study was also about the same as normal. There was a spike of 10 homicides over one 36-hour period (there apparently was some sort of gang battle), but the following week there were only 4 homicides. So it evened out statistically. You just happened to be there the week of the spike. I think shootings would be included in the aggravated assault category; that rate declined significantly over the course of the study. One would, of course, have hoped that the homicide rate would have decreased, but no joy. OTOH, the homicide rate didn't increase, contrary to what some reporters claimed. Here's the text of the study as published in Social Indicators Research:: http://www.istpp.org/crime_prevention/ Here's an article by one of the study's authors rebutting a very sloppy article attempting to debunk the study in Skeptical Inquirer:
Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones
I have read that tourism is up quite a bit in the areas where the series is filmed. One of the things you'll find in the books is a good deal of history and back story that don't make it into the series for obvious reasons. And if you think there is some brutal crap in the films, wait'll you start reading the books! I remember reading some of George Martin's stuff when he first began to publish in Analog and Galaxy magazines - I had not read anything by him in years until I picked up Song of Fire and Ice books - I was impressed - he remains a very very fine writer. On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:06 PM From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com; FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:30 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones I've read most of the books - thus far they are doing a damn fine job of bringing the books to life on the screen Michael, I *love* Game Of Thrones and have been watching it from its inception. I think it's one of the most interesting things on TV. That said, I have carefully avoided reading the books yet, because I wanted to experience the series spoiler free, and thus preserve for myself some of the joy of discovering new things. As soon as the series finishes, I plan to read all the books, then watch the whole series from start to finish again, and *then* compare the two. So for now I'm just looking forward to more adventure when the series starts again next week. For Salyavin, who may also be following it, I noticed that in the UK, where there are obviously as many GOT fanatics as in the US, they've decided to air at least the first episode in real time, showing it on UK TV at the same time they first air it in the US. This sounds like a *great* excuse for a party to me. Gather a group of fellow GOT addicts, fuel them heavily with intoxicants, and then stay up until 2AM to watch the first episode of the new season. I don't get any UK channels on my TV, so I guess I'll have to wait until the next morning to watch it... On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones To: fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 10:35 AM For those of you who have watched the show and are looking forward to the next season of Game Of Thrones as much as I am, these are utterly hilarious. And in ways that totally nail the publications and reporters being parodied. Spoiler warning passed along if you haven't watched the show so far and plan to and don't want to spoil anything. I don't think there are any spoilers for the upcoming season, or if there are, I didn't notice them. If The Media Reported The Events Of Game Of Thrones
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Cultmania 103. Always paint anyone who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity as dead wood and as having something wrong with them. Gee, I guess that means that when I bailed on Robin 28 years ago and blew the whistle I'd come to my senses. Which way is it Bozo? From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Cultmania 102. Always paint the guru's abusive, controlling behaviour as a good thing. Thanks guys. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hardly a schism when perhaps as little as 2% of the active teachers left to teach on their own. He did get rid of 75% or more of the active teachers by raising the prices and through the rectification though, a lot of deadwood got sorted out that way very elegantly. You seem to have missed that that was very much what he wanted and while he was alive. That doesn't mean much of the deadwood isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : And yet, after he died, not a single one of the people who remained loyal left. All the people who were going to leave, already had left. That may not have been his intent, but that was the effect: the inevitable schism took place before he died, rather than after. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Maybe I didn't out that clearly enough, he put the prices up in 1999 and then again in 2002/3. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I have heard that too, but it seems unlikely that he would have waited from 1999 to what, 2005 to do so? I think he was just loopy - I mean after all who did his pronouncement hurt besides the teachers who had remained loyal to him - the rogues went on teaching authentic TM as if they didn't give a damn what Marshy thought. On Wed, 4/2/14, dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 4:28 PM
[FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
What a bunch of manipulative honking you haters are doing against TM here. You are cherry-picking some 'god' comments and making your own assumptions just to make an argument. Reading the transcript, he's talking and using allegory to lay out an inquiry to make a scientific design. Taking observations, seeing some postulates and getting at a hypothesis to test. You are such emotional anti-science ignoram-i it is no wonder you make these assumptions you do and you are gone so bad with your hate around TM and Maharishi. You are going really irrational on us. That transcript clearly shows Maharishi as scientist and rishi together propelling science and spirituality together in to the future. You are trying your best to take it out of context. He was an amazing proponent of science and spirituality that way through his whole career. This lecture is a great example of that and his brilliance at fusing the ancient with modern. Stepping back and seeing that I admire again his consistency that way. -Buck authfriend writes: BTW, here's the transcript of the tape: http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml Answering my own question below: It's definitely the Trancenet writer's image, not Maharishi's, as you'll see if you read the transcript. The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma--is this Maharishi's image, or the image of the guy who wrote this essay, Michael? (I've read the transcript of this tape, by the way, so don't misinterpret my question.) mjackson74 writes: Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal Ishta (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to stir the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies, bestow on us the riches of the affluent. And we take Ayurvedic potions and pills believing we will produce extra or more refined soma. An anecdote from a former Maharishi International University (MIU/MUM) professor: When I was on MIU faculty, there was a special videotape that only faculty were privy to. It was the Ninth Mandala, chanted in the original Sanskrit. Sitting with eyes closed, listening to it was considered a great privilege and was highly secret. On my Governor Training Course, after we had rounded and rounded and rounded for three months, MMY [the Maharishi] finally called to answer our questions. I asked
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/index.shtml http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/index.shtml ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Its the ninth mandala actually, but it was never phrased so that I remember - also it is significant that M who always claimed publicly to offer a technique that is non-religious to covertly tell everyone inthe room point blank that the purpose of meditation is to refine the body so it produces soma so Indra and the other gods can have lunch on your nickle and they will give you rewards as a result. This is not just Hinduism but superstitious Hinduism. If what he was teaching in this tape was legit, he would never had had the tapes recalled. As I believe the Turq said not long ago, if TM was a great as they claim it is, they wouldn't have to lie to sell it. I am also eager to hear from any other teachers who post here who have seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time and what they think of it now, or remember when the word came down to give 'em back to the Movement. I think its a very interesting bit of Movement history.
[FairfieldLife] Re: [Meditating] Fairfield, Iowa Life
Thanks for the encouragement, jr. Spring rains happening here today. Yep, I am running low of time indoors now with the end of winter here in Iowa. Still got some things remaining that are unfinished here. I never finished my paper on Quaker meditators coming to Fairfield. A long time ago I published a paper in Friends Journal about old Quaker Meditators and Fairfield. I was hoping to git back to that old paper and bring it up to date but have run out of time now. The Quaker Meditators in Fairfield, Iowa: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/371018 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/371018 http://iagenweb.org/history/qoi/QOITOC.htm http://iagenweb.org/history/qoi/QOITOC.htm jr_esq writes: Buck, Good luck with your field work. May you reap what you sow! His hoary frost, His fleecy snow, Descend and clothe the ground; The liquid streams forbear to flow, In icy fetters bound. He sends His Word and melts the snow, The fields no longer mourn; He calls the warmer gales to blow And bids the spring return. Spring is upon us here in Iowa and I have got to go off-line more with field work now mostly, after meditation in the Dome. I am two months behind on farm work and horse training. Om those normal years. For this year given the global weird weather this year and winter I am behind. Only the last few days have been really hospitable enough to really be outside for long hours at a time. Still a lot of frost in the ground way down. -Buck.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : BTW, here's the transcript of the tape: http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml Answering my own question below: It's definitely the Trancenet writer's image, not Maharishi's, as you'll see if you read the transcript. Oops, sorry. I just posted the same link. I just read your post and see you did too! The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma--is this Maharishi's image, or the image of the guy who wrote this essay, Michael? (I've read the transcript of this tape, by the way, so don't misinterpret my question.) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal Ishta (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to stir the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies, bestow on us the riches of the affluent. And we take Ayurvedic potions and pills believing we will produce extra or more refined soma. An anecdote from a former Maharishi International University (MIU/MUM) professor: When I was on MIU faculty, there was a special videotape that only faculty were privy to. It was the Ninth Mandala, chanted in the original Sanskrit. Sitting with eyes closed, listening to it was considered a great privilege and was highly secret. On my Governor Training Course, after we had rounded and rounded and rounded for three months, MMY [the Maharishi] finally called to answer our questions. I asked what we should expect from endlessly reading the Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda and I never forgot his reply: It will become a living reality. To my knowledge, this fairly frightening vision is the Maharishi's alone. The Rig and Sama Vedas themselves describe the process of making a beverage, soma, by grinding and brewing a certain medicinal plant -- or alternatively by feeding a plant to a cow and then imbibing either its milk or urine. James Allegro speculated some years back that soma was actually the hallucinogenic mushroom amanita muscara, a prevalent inebriator among all Aryan cultures. Perhaps. But even in modern day India, there are hotris who perform the Soma sacrifice using the humble soma plant, and imbibing the juice. Nowhere in all of Vedic literature have we found a single reference to soma as a substance produced in
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
and God almighty David if you can read the transcript of the tape and believe he was talking science, then you have been breathing in too much GMO crop dust. On Thu, 4/3/14, dhamiltony...@yahoo.com dhamiltony...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:46 PM What a bunch of manipulative honking you haters are doing against TM here. You are cherry-picking some 'god' comments and making your own assumptions just to make an argument. Reading the transcript, he's talking and using allegory to lay out an inquiry to make a scientific design. Taking observations, seeing some postulates and getting at a hypothesis to test. You are such emotional anti-science ignoram-i it is no wonder you make these assumptions you do and you are gone so bad with your hate around TM and Maharishi. You are going really irrational on us. That transcript clearly shows Maharishi as scientist and rishi together propelling science and spirituality together in to the future. You are trying your best to take it out of context. He was an amazing proponent of science and spirituality that way through his whole career. This lecture is a great example of that and his brilliance at fusing the ancient with modern. Stepping back and seeing that I admire again his consistency that way. -Buck authfriend writes: BTW, here's the transcript of the tape: http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml Answering my own question below: It's definitely the Trancenet writer's image, not Maharishi's, as you'll see if you read the transcript. The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma--is this Maharishi's image, or the image of the guy who wrote this essay, Michael? (I've read the transcript of this tape, by the way, so don't misinterpret my question.) mjackson74 writes: Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal Ishta (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to stir the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies, bestow on us the riches of the affluent. And we take Ayurvedic potions and pills believing we will produce extra or more refined soma. An anecdote from a former
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
you are hilarious! I recall someone on the sidhi preps asked something like that - a nurse I think she was and the Governors said the soma would be there, but would be too subtle to detect with current scientific equipment. On Thu, 4/3/14, awoelfleba...@yahoo.com awoelfleba...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:49 PM ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Look, I happened to run across the reference because I was looking up what was out there on soma. I read the first page and then the transcript of the tape. It seems clear to me that he was in fact NOT using allegory. One has to remember, he was a devout Hindu, not a secular man. He really believed what he was teaching that the gods exist AS gods and we the meditators are supposed to use the name or sound of OUR PERSONAL god to produce the soma that Indra and the other gods gobble up and then give us rewards in return. If the tape was allegory, the TMO would not have removed it and threatened excommunication to all initiators who didn't turn 'em back in. At the very least its an interesting chapter in the TM history and I think it clearly shows 1 - Marshy was a religious man masquerading as a secular spiritual teacher. He really believed the bizarre superstitious things he was teaching in private and he did his best to hide it when it came out in the public eye. Not that it affects me as I am not a Christian, but such secret teachings were they widely known would be inimical to devout Christians, Muslims and perhaps Buddhists as well. On Thu, 4/3/14, dhamiltony...@yahoo.com dhamiltony...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:46 PM What a bunch of manipulative honking you haters are doing against TM here. You are cherry-picking some 'god' comments and making your own assumptions just to make an argument. Reading the transcript, he's talking and using allegory to lay out an inquiry to make a scientific design. Taking observations, seeing some postulates and getting at a hypothesis to test. You are such emotional anti-science ignoram-i it is no wonder you make these assumptions you do and you are gone so bad with your hate around TM and Maharishi. You are going really irrational on us. That transcript clearly shows Maharishi as scientist and rishi together propelling science and spirituality together in to the future. You are trying your best to take it out of context. He was an amazing proponent of science and spirituality that way through his whole career. This lecture is a great example of that and his brilliance at fusing the ancient with modern. Stepping back and seeing that I admire again his consistency that way. -Buck authfriend writes: BTW, here's the transcript of the tape: http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml Answering my own question below: It's definitely the Trancenet writer's image, not Maharishi's, as you'll see if you read the transcript. The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma--is this Maharishi's image, or the image of the guy who wrote this essay, Michael? (I've read the transcript of this tape, by the way, so don't misinterpret my question.) mjackson74 writes: Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Oh, dear. No, Michael. Would you say the same thing about placebo-controlled clinical trials of new drugs? Because it's the same principle. It's just that you can't have a D.C. in June and July with meditators (the drug) and a D.C. in June and July without meditators (the placebo) at the same time. So you do the next-best thing, which is to determine on a statistical basis what the D.C. crime rate without meditators would have been. Your analogies with blue sky and steak are uninformed and inapropos, to say the least. Salyavin doesn't get the picture either, as he'll see if he reads the methodology section of the study (but he probably won't bother). If you compare D.C. in June and July with meditators, to D.C. without meditators the previous June and July, or even with April and May of the same year, there's always the possibility that other non-meditation-related circumstances were different enough the previous June and July to account for any difference in the crime rate--unless it was HUGE. But the researchers weren't anticipating HUGE. The meditators were there for only two months, remember. The researchers were looking for a measurable, statistically significant drop in the crime rate. Whether they got it is the issue, not the study design. Not only was the design not nonsense, it was crafted to be statistically definitive in a way that previous similar studies had not been. Jesus Christ! That's like saying wonder how blue the sky would be if I had not gotten out of bed at 6 am? Wonder how many people would eat a steak tonight If I had not bought that porterhouse at the store? it is nonsense. If as Sal has said they could show a SIGNIFICANT drop in ANYTHING besides their asses on the foam, it would mean something - just a straight deal, no mumbo jumbo, so jimmying the numbers just do program and see what's what. but as they always do, they have to dummy shit up to make TM appear to be fabulous so they can sell it. Like Barry said, if TM was as claimed, they wouldn't have to lie to sell it. On Thu, 4/3/14, authfriend@... mailto:authfriend@... authfriend@... mailto:authfriend@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:08 PM Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical Inquirer article and tell me the author came at the research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. And please note, Lawson is the one saying the results of this study were ambiguous. Shame on the TM critics who repeatedly try to portray him as a cult apologist. He is far more objective than you are. Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making the crime rate fall beyond the level by which they naturally fluctuate. An easily noted 80% drop for instance, that'd be more convincing. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was what was picked up by the press and extrapolated for the entire 8 week period. True Believers want the research to be true Skeptics are often as desperate to be sure that it is false. The reality is that the study was ambiguous, IMHO. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : Judy, I don't
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Actually, as I recall, they were planning to do some studies to see whether soma could be detected. Whether they ever did them, with no result, or called them off, I don't know. You are hilarious! I recall someone on the sidhi preps asked something like that - a nurse I think she was and the Governors said the soma would be there, but would be too subtle to detect with current scientific equipment. I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: PHARRELL WILLIAMS - HAPPY (INDIA)
So you saw a Louis Vuitton shop and gathered it couldn't be India ? If you have a valid passport perhaps you should travel more. According to the Turq only 15% of the Americans have a valid passport. Use it if you have one. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : I noticed the background in one scene were mall stores including Louis Vuitton and the like. Perhaps that's your idea of Indian. Looks to me like they probably didn't get much past the airport in any of the locations. On the other hand, I only watched a snippet of two of them. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Perhaps people on this list should travel more. Because they don't wear dhotis or are filmed in front of Temples it can't possibly be from India :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : What was missing were sadhus dancing to this at Kumbha Mela. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 6:17 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Starting unstressing before we watch the video are we ? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : India? That looked like downtown Chicago. What a crock. You get that a lot. Misleading headlines, lead-ins that never materialize in the story. What a shame that they try to pull that crap on people. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Enjoy ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Actually, Michael, his name is Doug not David. Just to help everyone keep track, etc. On Thu, 4/3/14, Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 9:05 AM and God almighty David if you can read the transcript of the tape and believe he was talking science, then you have been breathing in too much GMO crop dust. On Thu, 4/3/14, dhamiltony...@yahoo.com dhamiltony...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:46 PM What a bunch of manipulative honking you haters are doing against TM here. You are cherry-picking some 'god' comments and making your own assumptions just to make an argument. Reading the transcript, he's talking and using allegory to lay out an inquiry to make a scientific design. Taking observations, seeing some postulates and getting at a hypothesis to test. You are such emotional anti-science ignoram-i it is no wonder you make these assumptions you do and you are gone so bad with your hate around TM and Maharishi. You are going really irrational on us. That transcript clearly shows Maharishi as scientist and rishi together propelling science and spirituality together in to the future. You are trying your best to take it out of context. He was an amazing proponent of science and spirituality that way through his whole career. This lecture is a great example of that and his brilliance at fusing the ancient with modern. Stepping back and seeing that I admire again his consistency that way. -Buck authfriend writes: BTW, here's the transcript of the tape: http://minet.org/www.trancenet.net/secrets/soma/soma2.shtml Answering my own question below: It's definitely the Trancenet writer's image, not Maharishi's, as you'll see if you read the transcript. The unforgettable image of ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers around the world to get their share of the mythical Soma--is this Maharishi's image, or the image of the guy who wrote this essay, Michael? (I've read the transcript of this tape, by the way, so don't misinterpret my question.) mjackson74 writes: Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation
Whenever the Turq writes about cults here be sure to read it. He is after all the only member of this group that has been in a cult. Not only that, but with a cult-leader who claimed to be a Buddhist. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:55 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Yup, make sure that the brainwashing has held by periodically testing the faith of the devotee. What number are we up to? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Europe has but a small handful of teachers teaching independently. That's hardly a schism. There was little wrong with the deadwood that Maharishi got rid of by raising the prices and applying new structures, they just didn't contribute anymore. They didn't bail out but was forced out, which of course is a very healthy procedure necessary once in awhile for any organization. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Cultmania 103. Always paint anyone who came to their senses and bailed on the cult insanity as dead wood and as having something wrong with them. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:50 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation Cultmania 102. Always paint the guru's abusive, controlling behaviour as a good thing. Thanks guys. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Hardly a schism when perhaps as little as 2% of the active teachers left to teach on their own. He did get rid of 75% or more of the active teachers by raising the prices and through the rectification though, a lot of deadwood got sorted out that way very elegantly. You seem to have missed that that was very much what he wanted and while he was alive. That doesn't mean much of the deadwood isn't not loyal and many go to assemblies etc. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : And yet, after he died, not a single one of the people who remained loyal left. All the people who were going to leave, already had left. That may not have been his intent, but that was the effect: the inevitable schism took place before he died, rather than after. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Maybe I didn't out that clearly enough, he put the prices up in 1999 and then again in 2002/3. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I have heard that too, but it seems unlikely that he would have waited from 1999 to what, 2005 to do so? I think he was just loopy - I mean after all who did his pronouncement hurt besides the teachers who had remained loyal to him - the rogues went on teaching authentic TM as if they didn't give a damn what Marshy thought. On Wed, 4/2/14, dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: TM and the Scorpion Nation To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2014, 4:28 PM
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelfleba...@yahoo.com awoelfleba...@yahoo.com wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Judy, I've gotten the impression over the years that the TMO prefers to do non invasive procedures for finding the physiological correlates of long term TM and TMSP. One non invasive avenue they could take with regards to soma in the stomach, is to test long term TMers for good digestion, absence of digestive disorders, etc. And then there's the whole issue of scientists' finding brain cells in the stomach... On Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:29 AM, authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com wrote: Actually, as I recall, they were planning to do some studies to see whether soma could be detected. Whether they ever did them, with no result, or called them off, I don't know. You are hilarious! I recall someone on the sidhi preps asked something like that - a nurse I think she was and the Governors said the soma would be there, but would be too subtle to detect with current scientific equipment. I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones
Another great Game Of Thrones LOL-fest from the same guy at BuzzFeed who wrote the other one. Same spoiler warning applies. 12 Charts Only Game Of Thrones Fans Will Understand From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 3:36 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones I have read that tourism is up quite a bit in the areas where the series is filmed. One of the things you'll find in the books is a good deal of history and back story that don't make it into the series for obvious reasons. And if you think there is some brutal crap in the films, wait'll you start reading the books! I remember reading some of George Martin's stuff when he first began to publish in Analog and Galaxy magazines - I had not read anything by him in years until I picked up Song of Fire and Ice books - I was impressed - he remains a very very fine writer. On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:06 PM From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com; FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:30 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones I've read most of the books - thus far they are doing a damn fine job of bringing the books to life on the screen Michael, I *love* Game Of Thrones and have been watching it from its inception. I think it's one of the most interesting things on TV. That said, I have carefully avoided reading the books yet, because I wanted to experience the series spoiler free, and thus preserve for myself some of the joy of discovering new things. As soon as the series finishes, I plan to read all the books, then watch the whole series from start to finish again, and *then* compare the two. So for now I'm just looking forward to more adventure when the series starts again next week. For Salyavin, who may also be following it, I noticed that in the UK, where there are obviously as many GOT fanatics as in the US, they've decided to air at least the first episode in real time, showing it on UK TV at the same time they first air it in the US. This sounds like a *great* excuse for a party to me. Gather a group of fellow GOT addicts, fuel them heavily with intoxicants, and then stay up until 2AM to watch the first episode of the new season. I don't get any UK channels on my TV, so I guess I'll have to wait until the next morning to watch it... On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones To: fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 10:35 AM For those of you who have watched the show and are looking forward to the next season of Game Of Thrones as much as I am, these are utterly hilarious. And in ways that totally nail the publications and reporters being parodied. Spoiler warning passed along if you haven't watched the show so far and plan to and don't want to spoil anything. I don't think there are any spoilers for the upcoming season, or if there are, I didn't notice them. If The Media Reported The Events Of Game Of Thrones
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Steve, one of the meta issues that fascinates me about all this is how in Catholicism we supposedly ingest the body and blood of Christ. What it suggests to me is something that the mythologist Joseph Campbell might notice, that in all cultures around the world, there's some notion of ingesting the other when it comes to humans and divinities. Must be something physically in the human brain about that. Does that sound far out? On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 10:50 PM, steve.sun...@yahoo.com steve.sun...@yahoo.com wrote: You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal Ishta (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to stir the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous, the destroyer of enemies, bestow on us the riches of the affluent. And we take Ayurvedic potions and pills believing we will produce extra or more refined soma. An anecdote from a former Maharishi International University (MIU/MUM) professor: When I was on MIU faculty, there was a special videotape that only faculty were privy to. It was the Ninth Mandala, chanted in the original Sanskrit. Sitting with eyes closed, listening to it was considered a great privilege and was highly
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
From: Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 4:49 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods And then there's the whole issue of scientists' finding brain cells in the stomach... Not a mystery at all. You are what you eat. :-) Return of the living Dead - BRAINS!!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Actually, they wouldn't have to do endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas. Why would you need that many? Remember, what they'd be looking for is an unfamiliar substance never before documented to exist in the human stomach. All you'd need would be a few samples of the substance. Then you'd have to figure out how to show the substance was soma, but testing hundreds of sidhas wouldn't help you do that. Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
turq, read it and weep: There are over 100 million brain cells in your gut... http://www.bbc.com/news/health-18779997 On Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:56 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: From: Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 4:49 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods And then there's the whole issue of scientists' finding brain cells in the stomach... Not a mystery at all. You are what you eat. :-) Return of the living Dead - BRAINS!!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Right, Judy and that's another reason why the whole issue seems extremely challenging. Theoretically they could even find soma in the blood. But, as you say, it would have to be identified as soma, etc. As I mentioned in another post to you, I think it's more practical to make predictions about the results of soma in the stomach and then test long term sidhas for those. The other fascinating issue for me about all this is something Doug touched on, how the same phenomenon can be described using either religious language or scientific language. I agree with him that Maharishi was a genius at using both. I think MMY was a true visionary in this and other ways. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:56 AM, authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com wrote: Actually, they wouldn't have to do endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas. Why would you need that many? Remember, what they'd be looking for is an unfamiliar substance never before documented to exist in the human stomach. All you'd need would be a few samples of the substance. Then you'd have to figure out how to show the substance was soma, but testing hundreds of sidhas wouldn't help you do that. Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Michael, one way I think about all this is in terms of energy, vibration, resonance and amplification. Indra can be thought of as the word that some people use to describe an energy or frequency that is all around us. A scientist might designate it by a certain amount of hertz or a certain light frequency. Something like that. I think that in the not too distant future, there won't be a gap between science and spirituality and then all these aspects of spirituality will be universally understood from a scientific point of view also. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:10 AM, Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com wrote: you are hilarious! I recall someone on the sidhi preps asked something like that - a nurse I think she was and the Governors said the soma would be there, but would be too subtle to detect with current scientific equipment. On Thu, 4/3/14, awoelfleba...@yahoo.com awoelfleba...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:49 PM ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Actually, as I recall, they were planning to do some studies to see whether soma could be detected. Whether they ever did them, with no result, or called them off, I don't know. You are hilarious! I recall someone on the sidhi preps asked something like that - a nurse I think she was and the Governors said the soma would be there, but would be too subtle to detect with current scientific equipment. Well, that certainly is a bullshitty way out of that one. Too subtle. Ha ha. I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Steve, pretty funny that in the midst of all these Soma and the Gods posts, I received an ad with Subject line: This stuff is God in a bottle! On Thursday, April 3, 2014 6:41 AM, steve.sun...@yahoo.com steve.sun...@yahoo.com wrote: Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. Just to clarify: I meant there would be hundreds willing to be scoped, not that you would require hundreds in order to get valid results. My point was the eagerness and enthusiasm of many TM'ers. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Dave Barry
Ann, I think this is probably my favourite Dave Barry piece, because it highlights the differences in the way different human minds interpret experience.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
I am, you may be surprised to learn, in 100 percent agreement with you and Doug on this. I'd add that IMO, Maharishi understood Life, the Universe, and Everything on the purely metaphysical level, the common denominator, as it were, of science and religion and every other area of human experience and knowledge. That's why he was comfortable applying his teaching to just about any topic. (Which is NOT to say that he was unerringly right--he often didn't know as much as he thought he did about the mundane world, including science, and made quite a few dumb mistakes.) The other fascinating issue for me about all this is something Doug touched on, how the same phenomenon can be described using either religious language or scientific language. I agree with him that Maharishi was a genius at using both. I think MMY was a true visionary in this and other ways. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:56 AM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: Actually, they wouldn't have to do endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas. Why would you need that many? Remember, what they'd be looking for is an unfamiliar substance never before documented to exist in the human stomach. All you'd need would be a few samples of the substance. Then you'd have to figure out how to show the substance was soma, but testing hundreds of sidhas wouldn't help you do that. Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Dave Barry
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote : Ann, I think this is probably my favourite Dave Barry piece, because it highlights the differences in the way different human minds interpret experience. Yes, and might explain some of the goings on here at FFL. I also love how you can take some thoughtful insights that probably have a pretty good smattering of truth about them and make them funny all at the same time.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Judy, this reminds me of when I was a really new TMer in Dec 1975 and Maharishi attended a physics conference at MIU and someone said, about the alleged connection between TM and physics: Maharishi, what if it turns out NOT to be true. And I'm paraphrasing what Maharishi said: then we will start over. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 10:33 AM, authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com wrote: I am, you may be surprised to learn, in 100 percent agreement with you and Doug on this. I'd add that IMO, Maharishi understood Life, the Universe, and Everything on the purely metaphysical level, the common denominator, as it were, of science and religion and every other area of human experience and knowledge. That's why he was comfortable applying his teaching to just about any topic. (Which is NOT to say that he was unerringly right--he often didn't know as much as he thought he did about the mundane world, including science, and made quite a few dumb mistakes.) The other fascinating issue for me about all this is something Doug touched on, how the same phenomenon can be described using either religious language or scientific language. I agree with him that Maharishi was a genius at using both. I think MMY was a true visionary in this and other ways. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:56 AM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: Actually, they wouldn't have to do endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas. Why would you need that many? Remember, what they'd be looking for is an unfamiliar substance never before documented to exist in the human stomach. All you'd need would be a few samples of the substance. Then you'd have to figure out how to show the substance was soma, but testing hundreds of sidhas wouldn't help you do that. Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Dave Barry
For what should be obvious reasons, this two-parter is one of my all-time Dave Barry faves: Parlez-vous Français? An Aesthetically Challenged American in Paris (Part II) From: anartax...@yahoo.com anartax...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 5:29 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Dave Barry Ann, I think this is probably my favourite Dave Barry piece, because it highlights the differences in the way different human minds interpret experience.
[FairfieldLife] Question on Religion
So during the pundit riot events, I saw the R-1 Visa thing where the pundits are designated as religious workers, and the federal guidelines say they have to be sponsored by a non-profit religious organization or an outfit that is affiliated with a religious organization. And I got to thinking that the pundits are required to do not only yagyas but to also do TMSP twice a day. So my question is: how can a non-religious organization (the TM Movement) require a group of religious workers to perform a secular practice (TMSP) every day as a condition of their employment as R-1 visa religious workers? Or is this a subtle admission that TMSP is actually a religious practice - you know, to get that soma flowing in a most sweet and exhilarating stream for Indra and the other gods and goddess to drink? So's they kin give us wealth and good lookin' gals and jools (flawless for jyotish purposes of course) and lots of other good stuff?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Dave Barry
Thanks, Ann and turq, I LOVE Dave Barry and in my mischievous moments, thought it would be fun if he visited FF (-: On Thursday, April 3, 2014 10:42 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: For what should be obvious reasons, this two-parter is one of my all-time Dave Barry faves: Parlez-vous Français? An Aesthetically Challenged American in Paris (Part II) From: anartax...@yahoo.com anartax...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 5:29 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Dave Barry Ann, I think this is probably my favourite Dave Barry piece, because it highlights the differences in the way different human minds interpret experience.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
thanks for telling that - do you recall if Marshy blew out the candle for her Highness? Wonder what other tapes were in there, p'raps Marshy praising Adolf? On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 7:17 AM That's got to be Cultmania 104. Always rationalise any contradictions in the guru's teaching, by pretending they don't exist if necessary. The lost Marshy tapes a fascinating story. When I worked at the academy one of my jobs was clearing out and cataloguing the video collection. There was a box of tapes marked Not to be watched that had all the Deepak stuff in - remember him? Poster boy for ayurveda and Marshy's favourite and ubiquitous vaidya, became public enemy number one overnight - but the box also contained some gems like Marshy lighting a cake for the Queen on her birthday and praising the wonderful British empire for all the great things it had done for the world. This was in the middle of his hatred for all things British and American - the start of Scorpionland perhaps. I wanted to sneak it onto the playlist for that weekend's course but they wouldn't let me. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Indeed. I remember working in the TMO Western Regional Office during the period when we had been instructed to round up and send back to Switzerland any unauthorized audio- and videotapes. This tape (Soma and the Gods) was top on the list. The fascinating thing is that none of these tapes were bootlegs. All of them had been *sold* to the TM teachers who owned them *at a substantial profit* earlier in TM history, before Maharishi decided to start practicing revisionist history and pretending that he hadn't really taught the things that he taught. We were told to tell the TM teachers who owned them that they *had* to return them, and that they would be compensated for them by WPEC in Seelisberg. That's what we were told...no one ever received a penny for any of the hundreds of dollars worth of tapes they turned in. We were also told to threaten them with expulsion from the TMO if they refused to turn them in. Later I saw the Rama guy do exactly the same thing, for exactly the same reason (revisionist history, trying to pretend to the press that he hadn't said the things that he'd said), and that was one of the tipping points that caused me to back away from him. The thing is, especially given my raps about increased production of Oxytocin yesterday, people on rounding courses were VULNERABLE to Neo-Hindu crap like this. They weren't allowed off the course premises because frankly many of them would not have been able to find their way back to their hotels if they had been...they were that spaced out. So *of course* they're going to believe any crap that's taught to them by the person who (in their minds) got them as high as they thought they were. On another level, Michael's revulsion at learning about Hindu gods supposedly being vampires feeding off of TMers' soma is understandable. I mean, what else are yagyas? The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. What a low-vibe philosophy/religion...it's right up there in the ignorant barbarism column with live animal sacrifice. (Which, of course, was *also* practiced extensively in supposedly pure and perfect Vedic India.) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 7:47 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods Cultmania 101. Isolation, mind altering practises, culturing a sense of uniqueness and superiority through revelation of secret and privileged knowledge... it's all there. The paranoid, controlling and utopianist leader is optional to cults but rather common. Soma and Xenu seem to be walking hand in hand here. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT
Re: [FairfieldLife] If the Media Reported on Game Of Thrones
Game of Thrones was not my cuppa tea so I didn't even watch it when I had HBO. I'm sure there will be a lot more complaining this year because in the US you often pay a $90 or more tax a month to watch HBO. That is in the form of your monthly cable or satellite bill. If the past Thrones fans have complained as to why they can't just buy the episodes the day after they air like they do other series. Well, the Premium channels won't do that. They're stuck in an antiquated 20th century business model and I bet some board members as well as stockholders complain about leaving the money on the table they could be getting from making those episodes available for sale on places like iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and VUDU. The series I would really like to see that HBO has trapped is Mike Judge's series about Silicon Valley: http://mprod.wired.com/2014/04/mike-judge-silicon-valley/ I like what he had to say about his experience of working at a Silicon Valley company (which of course gave rise to the movie Office Space): It really felt like a cult. The people I met were like Stepford Wives, Judge says. They were true believers in something, and I don't know what it was. I saw Office Space with a couple of former co-workers and their wives. We had a great laugh at how he managed to skewer the nonsense we experienced. I experienced it from the level of being a manager and actually trying to keep things sane and productive which meant that I kicked people out of the office if they were spending too much time there. The first day on the job my boss said the owner didn't like people to work too long of hours so I had the right to hone in those hours. As a kid my mother would make me stop working long on projects explaining that I would reach a point of no return so take a break. Indeed not only did some of the people at work want to live at the office as if it were a monastery but they were incensed at the idea they were working too long. In fact some burned out and after I left apparently the new manager wasn't so good at curbing hours and some had nervous breakdowns. On 04/03/2014 03:35 AM, TurquoiseBee wrote: For those of you who have watched the show and are looking forward to the next season of Game Of Thrones as much as I am, these are utterly hilarious. And in ways that totally nail the publications and reporters being parodied. Spoiler warning passed along if you haven't watched the show so far and plan to and don't want to spoil anything. I don't think there are any spoilers for the upcoming season, or if there are, I didn't notice them. If The Media Reported The Events Of Game Of Thrones http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/if-the-media-reported-the-events-of-game-of-thrones
Re: [FairfieldLife] [Fairfield] Logically Preparing
Yeah, welcome to the mid-west, home of killer tornadoes. Trade one disaster for another. Chances of survival with an earthquake are much higher than those of surviving a tornado. On 04/02/2014 08:38 PM, dhamiltony...@yahoo.com wrote: I certainly feel that as meditators you should all move to Fairfield, Iowa forthwith. Avert the danger before it comes. The Domes being geodesic structures are some of the best to withstand global changes of the scale evidently lining up. Maharishi consulted a lot with none other than Buckminister Fuller before building the Fairfield Domes. I thank the Unified Field that Bevan and everyone settled on these timber framed Golden Domes when they went looking for some domes for us “to meditate under”, as Maharishi sent them looking. Jai Guru Dev, -Buck in the Dome noozguru asserts: Major quakes tend to occur by frequency. http://www.earthquakesafety.com/earthquake-history.html jr_esq mailto:jr_esq@... writes: Little shakers may be a relative term. When the Loma Prieta earthquake happened in October 1989, my dad saw the walls of the house shake for about a minute or so. Luckily, he was safe and the house was not damaged. At that time, I was still living in Seattle and was watching the World Series when the programming was interrupted due to the shaker. But I was in Seattle during the big earthquake over there in 2001 (I think that was the year, as I recall). I remember our office building was swaying back and forth and we were at the 32nd floor. I hid underneath my desk. Thankfully, our building did not sustain any damages, except for a few streaks if cracked paint in the emergency stair well. However, an old red brick building at the Pioneer Square sustained some damages. noozguru mailto:noozguru@... writes: I've been sayin' it might be another 20-25 years before a big one here as the faults have settled for awhile. So all we will get is a few little shakers. On 04/02/2014 12:22 PM, jr_esq@... mailto:jr_esq@... wrote: The seismologists over have been predicting for the next BIG ONE, for several years now, here in San Francisco, CA. But it hasn't happened yet. Now, I'm thinking of buying a piece of land near Austin, Nevada as a hedge just in case this prediction comes true, sooner or later. I was thinking that earlier in the week with all the quakes and mudslides going on. My sister lives near Frisco, she hates earthquakes, I point out that it's a stupid place to live in that case, she says she likes the vineyards and beaches too much to move.. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... mailto:noozguru@... wrote : noozguru mailto:noozguru@...: Okay then, is the Ring of Fire becoming active? There was an 8.2 quake off Chile and Yellowstone is beginning to have swarms (all bets are off if that turns into a volcano). Better be practicing asanas so you can kiss your ass good-bye. Pundit Sir wrote: I guess you don't have a video camera or we'd have seen videos from you. Addressing the important issues! I guess you don't have a video camera or we'd have seen videos from you. My channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/CaptBebops On 04/02/2014 09:45 AM, Pundit Sir wrote: Such as What We Did Today? Well,I guess if you did anything worth reporting we'd have heard about it. If you owned a camera, I guess you'd have posted a snapshot. It's beginning to look like you don't get out much - I did see the photo you sent of visiting Starbucks one day a few months ago. Maybe you don't own a camera; maybe you don't know how to upload a flat file; maybe you don't have a web site; or maybe you live in a lace that even if you did go out, there's nothing to do or see. Maybe you are just JELLOS. Go figure. noozguru mailto:noozguru@... Such as What We Did Today? :-D On 04/02/2014 09:07 AM, Pundit Sir wrote: Addressing the important issues! On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Michael Jackson mjackson74@... mailto:mjackson74@... wrote: Sal, is this your mistress driving the Lamborghini? http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/400-000-lamborghini-aventador-air-wild-london-crash-article-1.1741770 .
Re: [FairfieldLife] [Fairfield] Logically Preparing
Rory is leaving Fairfield to live in Florida, and perhaps also the Pundits are leaving. The Americans better start going to the Domes asap to avert the danger that has not yet come. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : Yeah, welcome to the mid-west, home of killer tornadoes. Trade one disaster for another. Chances of survival with an earthquake are much higher than those of surviving a tornado. On 04/02/2014 08:38 PM, dhamiltony2k5@... mailto:dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: I certainly feel that as meditators you should all move to Fairfield, Iowa forthwith. Avert the danger before it comes. The Domes being geodesic structures are some of the best to withstand global changes of the scale evidently lining up. Maharishi consulted a lot with none other than Buckminister Fuller before building the Fairfield Domes. I thank the Unified Field that Bevan and everyone settled on these timber framed Golden Domes when they went looking for some domes for us “to meditate under”, as Maharishi sent them looking. Jai Guru Dev, -Buck in the Dome noozguru asserts: Major quakes tend to occur by frequency. http://www.earthquakesafety.com/earthquake-history.html http://www.earthquakesafety.com/earthquake-history.html jr_esq mailto:jr_esq@... writes: Little shakers may be a relative term. When the Loma Prieta earthquake happened in October 1989, my dad saw the walls of the house shake for about a minute or so. Luckily, he was safe and the house was not damaged. At that time, I was still living in Seattle and was watching the World Series when the programming was interrupted due to the shaker. But I was in Seattle during the big earthquake over there in 2001 (I think that was the year, as I recall). I remember our office building was swaying back and forth and we were at the 32nd floor. I hid underneath my desk. Thankfully, our building did not sustain any damages, except for a few streaks if cracked paint in the emergency stair well. However, an old red brick building at the Pioneer Square sustained some damages. noozguru mailto:noozguru@... writes: I've been sayin' it might be another 20-25 years before a big one here as the faults have settled for awhile. So all we will get is a few little shakers. On 04/02/2014 12:22 PM, jr_esq@... mailto:jr_esq@... wrote: The seismologists over have been predicting for the next BIG ONE, for several years now, here in San Francisco, CA. But it hasn't happened yet. Now, I'm thinking of buying a piece of land near Austin, Nevada as a hedge just in case this prediction comes true, sooner or later. I was thinking that earlier in the week with all the quakes and mudslides going on. My sister lives near Frisco, she hates earthquakes, I point out that it's a stupid place to live in that case, she says she likes the vineyards and beaches too much to move.. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... mailto:noozguru@... wrote : noozguru mailto:noozguru@...: Okay then, is the Ring of Fire becoming active? There was an 8.2 quake off Chile and Yellowstone is beginning to have swarms (all bets are off if that turns into a volcano). Better be practicing asanas so you can kiss your ass good-bye. Pundit Sir wrote: I guess you don't have a video camera or we'd have seen videos from you. Addressing the important issues! I guess you don't have a video camera or we'd have seen videos from you. My channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/CaptBebops https://www.youtube.com/user/CaptBebops On 04/02/2014 09:45 AM, Pundit Sir wrote: Such as What We Did Today? Well,I guess if you did anything worth reporting we'd have heard about it. If you owned a camera, I guess you'd have posted a snapshot. It's beginning to look like you don't get out much - I did see the photo you sent of visiting Starbucks one day a few months ago. Maybe you don't own a camera; maybe you don't know how to upload a flat file; maybe you don't have a web site; or maybe you live in a lace that even if you did go out, there's nothing to do or see. Maybe you are just JELLOS. Go figure. noozguru mailto:noozguru@... Such as What We Did Today? :-D On 04/02/2014 09:07 AM, Pundit Sir wrote: Addressing the important issues! On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Michael Jackson mjackson74@... mailto:mjackson74@... wrote: Sal, is this your mistress driving the Lamborghini? http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/400-000-lamborghini-aventador-air-wild-london-crash-article-1.1741770 http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/400-000-lamborghini-aventador-air-wild-london-crash-article-1.1741770 .
[FairfieldLife] Marshy's First Guru [1 Attachment]
Well folks, I found it. Photographic document showing Marshy interacting with his very first guru. That's Marshy on the left.
Re: [FairfieldLife] [Fairfield] Logically Preparing
Nablusoss, I love it when I get FF news from people in other countries! Plus, Rick just posted that Rory was resuming satsang on Wednesday nights! On Thursday, April 3, 2014 12:49 PM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Rory is leaving Fairfield to live in Florida, and perhaps also the Pundits are leaving. The Americans better start going to the Domes asap to avert the danger that has not yet come. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : Yeah, welcome to the mid-west, home of killer tornadoes. Trade one disaster for another. Chances of survival with an earthquake are much higher than those of surviving a tornado. On 04/02/2014 08:38 PM, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote: I certainly feel that as meditators you should all move to Fairfield, Iowa forthwith. Avert the danger before it comes. The Domes being geodesic structures are some of the best to withstand global changes of the scale evidently lining up. Maharishi consulted a lot with none other than Buckminister Fuller before building the Fairfield Domes. I thank the Unified Field that Bevan and everyone settled on these timber framed Golden Domes when they went looking for some domes for us “to meditate under”, as Maharishi sent them looking. Jai Guru Dev, -Buck in the Dome noozguru asserts: Major quakes tend to occur by frequency. http://www.earthquakesafety.com/earthquake-history.html jr_esq writes: Little shakers may be a relative term. When the Loma Prieta earthquake happened in October 1989, my dad saw the walls of the house shake for about a minute or so. Luckily, he was safe and the house was not damaged. At that time, I was still living in Seattle and was watching the World Series when the programming was interrupted due to the shaker. But I was in Seattle during the big earthquake over there in 2001 (I think that was the year, as I recall). I remember our office building was swaying back and forth and we were at the 32nd floor. I hid underneath my desk. Thankfully, our building did not sustain any damages, except for a few streaks if cracked paint in the emergency stair well. However, an old red brick building at the Pioneer Square sustained some damages. noozguru writes: I've been sayin' it might be another 20-25 years before a big one here as the faults have settled for awhile. So all we will get is a few little shakers. On 04/02/2014 12:22 PM, jr_esq@... wrote: The seismologists over have been predicting for the next BIG ONE, for several years now, here in San Francisco, CA. But it hasn't happened yet. Now, I'm thinking of buying a piece of land near Austin, Nevada as a hedge just in case this prediction comes true, sooner or later. I was thinking that earlier in the week with all the quakes and mudslides going on. My sister lives near Frisco, she hates earthquakes, I point out that it's a stupid place to live in that case, she says she likes the vineyards and beaches too much to move.. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : noozguru: Okay then, is the Ring of Fire becoming active? There was an 8.2 quake off Chile and Yellowstone is beginning to have swarms (all bets are off if that turns into a volcano). Better be practicing asanas so you can kiss your ass good-bye. Pundit Sir wrote: I guess you don't have a video camera or we'd have seen videos from you. Addressing the important issues! I guess you don't have a video camera or we'd have seen videos from you. My channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/CaptBebops On 04/02/2014 09:45 AM, Pundit Sir wrote: Such as What We Did Today? Well,I guess if you did anything worth reporting we'd have heard about it. If you owned a camera, I guess you'd have posted a snapshot. It's beginning to look like you don't get out much - I did see the photo you sent of visiting Starbucks one day a few months ago. Maybe you don't own a camera; maybe you don't know how to upload a flat file; maybe you don't have a web site; or maybe you live in a lace that even if you did go out, there's nothing to do or see. Maybe you are just JELLOS. Go figure. noozguru Such as What We Did Today? :-D On 04/02/2014 09:07 AM, Pundit Sir wrote: Addressing the important issues! On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Michael Jackson mjackson74@... wrote: Sal, is this your mistress driving the Lamborghini? http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/400-000-lamborghini-aventador-air-wild-london-crash-article-1.1741770 .
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
As you accuse me of being unobjective I'm not going to bother reading the link you posted. I've thought long and hard about this stuff for years, read all the research (even had a set of the collective papers). I've probably read it before anyway but even if I haven't everything I say about it stands: why only 20%? Why can't you see the amazing results when you look at at the actual figures? How does it work? Have we really got to rewrite physics, psychology, sociology and biology just to because of a bit of statistical jiggery-pokery? I can only assume you think I'm not objective because I don't agree with you about it. I also don't think much of your analysis of Lawson here. If he was objective I doubt he would say that an instance of mass murder skewed the results. They are part of the results, like it or not. And so what if one sceptic doesn't approach it the way I do? You might be forgetting that what we are talking about is an obviously ambiguous set of statistics that supposedly means the world could be made peaceful on the basis of people jumping up and down on bits of foam. Who isn't going to laugh at that? If all you can say is that the results would have been better if some nutjob hadn't gone postal with an AK47 then it isn't a great demonstration of Heaven on Earth is it? You are going to have to do better and often and come up with an explanation that isn't a bunch of new age hogwash. Unobjective? I was curious enough to learn how to do it. But here's the clincher; Why doesn't the Maharishi Effect affect everyone? It is supposed to be the infinitely powerful unified field after all (ask Buck for details). If you want to fall back on the old TM standby of It was a bit of unstressing then you have to accept that the rapes and murders that did happen wouldn't have happened if the TMO weren't there. I dub it BS until there is Heaven on Earth. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical Inquirer article and tell me the author came at the research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. And please note, Lawson is the one saying the results of this study were ambiguous. Shame on the TM critics who repeatedly try to portray him as a cult apologist. He is far more objective than you are. Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making the crime rate fall beyond the level by which they naturally fluctuate. An easily noted 80% drop for instance, that'd be more convincing. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was what was picked up by the press and extrapolated for the entire 8 week period. True Believers want the research to be true Skeptics are often as desperate to be sure that it is false. The reality is that the study was ambiguous, IMHO. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : Judy, I don't remember the details but that it was a national concern at the time on all the national news programs. It sure seems that there were more than just ten homicides. Might have been ten homicides and ten or twenty non lethal shootings in addition. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:10 PM, authfriend@... authfriend@... wrote: This is a bit misleading, Mike. Rates of aggravated assault and rape decreased significantly from what would have been expected over the period of the study. Robberies stayed about
[FairfieldLife] ehyeh asher ehyeh: possible translations!
14 And God said unto Moses, [1] I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, [2] I AM hath sent me unto you. [1) Or I AM, BECAUSE I AM ; Or I AM WHO AM ; Or I WILL BE THAT I WILL BE 2) Heb Ehyeh ; From the same root as Jehovah (without nikkud cholem over the consonant hey: jahveh)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Like I have said and TB'ers ignore - Fairfield, Iowa - 300 pundits, at least 200 other TMSP'ers doing program twice a day. Fairfield Iowa current population 9,476 people - about 5 1/2% of the population doing TMSP - FAR more than square root of 1%. Fairfield Iowa, crime free? Accident Free? Riot Free? Common Sense conclusion - Marshy Effect is PR bs created by Marshy to sell tickets to the Golden Vedic Age that never existed and never will, not through TMSP anyway. On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 6:23 PM As you accuse me of being unobjective I'm not going to bother reading the link you posted. I've thought long and hard about this stuff for years, read all the research (even had a set of the collective papers). I've probably read it before anyway but even if I haven't everything I say about it stands: why only 20%? Why can't you see the amazing results when you look at at the actual figures? How does it work? Have we really got to rewrite physics, psychology, sociology and biology just to because of a bit of statistical jiggery-pokery? I can only assume you think I'm not objective because I don't agree with you about it. I also don't think much of your analysis of Lawson here. If he was objective I doubt he would say that an instance of mass murder skewed the results. They are part of the results, like it or not. And so what if one sceptic doesn't approach it the way I do? You might be forgetting that what we are talking about is an obviously ambiguous set of statistics that supposedly means the world could be made peaceful on the basis of people jumping up and down on bits of foam. Who isn't going to laugh at that? If all you can say is that the results would have been better if some nutjob hadn't gone postal with an AK47 then it isn't a great demonstration of Heaven on Earth is it? You are going to have to do better and often and come up with an explanation that isn't a bunch of new age hogwash. Unobjective? I was curious enough to learn how to do it. But here's the clincher; Why doesn't the Maharishi Effect affect everyone? It is supposed to be the infinitely powerful unified field after all (ask Buck for details). If you want to fall back on the old TM standby of It was a bit of unstressing then you have to accept that the rapes and murders that did happen wouldn't have happened if the TMO weren't there. I dub it BS until there is Heaven on Earth. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical Inquirer article and tell me the author came at the research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. And please note, Lawson is the one saying the results of this study were ambiguous. Shame on the TM critics who repeatedly try to portray him as a cult apologist. He is far more objective than you are. Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making the crime rate fall beyond the level by which they naturally fluctuate. An easily noted 80% drop for instance, that'd be more convincing. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Teh statistic was skewed. For one week, the homicide rate was double the average. THAT was
Re: [FairfieldLife] ehyeh asher ehyeh: possible translations!
Yeah he also said he would kill anybody that pissed against the wall too. 1 Kings 16:11 And it came to pass, when he began to reign, as soon as he sat on his throne, that he slew all the house of Baasha: he left him not one that pisseth against a wall, neither of his kinsfolks, nor of his friends. 1 Kings 14:10 Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone. 1 Kings 14:9-11 (in Context) 1 Kings 14 (Whole Chapter) Other Translations On Thu, 4/3/14, cardemais...@yahoo.com cardemais...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] ehyeh asher ehyeh: possible translations! To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 6:35 PM 14 And God said unto Moses, [1] I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, [2] I AM hath sent me unto you. [1) Or I AM, BECAUSE I AM ; Or I AM WHO AM ; Or I WILL BE THAT I WILL BE 2) Heb Ehyeh ; From the same root as Jehovah (without nikkud cholem over the consonant hey: jahveh)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Indeed, and why bother? Anyone who has read the 9th Mandala of the Rig Veda will know it's a drink made from plant extracts. Soma (Sanskrit सोम sóma), or Haoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haoma (Avestan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a Vedic ritual drink[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma#cite_note-1 of importance among the early Indo-Iranians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_civilization and greater Persian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Iran cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yašt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%A1t 20 and Yasna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it. It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity. There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_identity_of_Soma-Haoma. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_(genus), perhaps Ephedra sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma Sounds speedy! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] SuperDooperStition
This is first of all, quite funny and I think you should turn it into a novel - the premise is quite good. On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] SuperDooperStition To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:00 PM From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:09 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods my revulsion is the idea that Marshy would teach this crap - as the writer of the article said, Marshy was the only one around who taught this stuff. It smacks of not just Hinduism but really superstitious Hinduism. If you can believe what Chopra wrote about M after he croaked, he was a superstitious man and passed that crap onto his sycophants. I mean, anyone who would tell folk to run hide when a solar eclipse is in the offing? I would say, Michael, that Maharishi was not only superstitious, but possibly the most superstitious person I've ever met in my life. He saw omens in pretty much *everything* he saw around him. I've told the story of seeing him walk into the meeting hall in Squaw Valley and finding that the night crew had not finished cleaning the room. As a result, all of the chairs were piled upside down on the tables, obviously so that people could sweep and vacuum and mop under them. When Maharishi saw this, he visibly blanched (I was standing only a few feet away), halted in his tracks, and refused to enter the room. He turned around, backtracked through the hordes of people who had just given him flowers, and exited, refusing to come back until all of the chairs had been set upright. When I asked Jerry about it later (he was my initiator, and I knew him from the L.A. center), he said that seeing chairs upside down was considered a bad omen and that Maharishi wouldn't enter until it was removed. Go figure, for a supposedly enlightened (and thus invincible) guy. We've also heard how he interpreted an icicle forming on the balcony of his digs in Vlodrop as a divine manifestation of the god Shiva. Perhaps it was, and the reason was that Maharishi had generated an enormous amount of stomach soma that day, and Shiva was thanking him for his efforts. :-) I jest, but the serious part is that Maharishi not only believed in the many superstitions he held, he taught them as if they were truth. And people *bought* them as if they were truth. The generation of an enlightenment endorphin or chemical as the result of enlightenment is not a new idea. This process being located in the gut and gods feeding off of it like vampires is kinda weird, but I'd give it a pass if it had been presented as fiction. I mean, think about it. It's the perfect basis for a TV series. You could call it True Soma, and set it in the future, when the Age Of Enlightenment has finally full dawned and almost everyone is practicing TM and the TMSP and living in fully-Vastu compounds generating veritable vats of soma for the gods to feast on. Into this paradise come a bunch of Off The Program Misfit Heretics, who in a fit of unstressing have taken offene at the gods pigging out on their soma. They've hired rogue chemists, and are trying to synthesize soma and market it as True Soma to the masses, even those few who have refused to embrace the Age Of Enlightenment and thus still spit non-meditators. The kicker of the series is that on the one hand the rebels ARE doing this out of compassion for their fellow man, wanting them to be able to enjoy the many benefits of stomach soma themselves. But on the other hand, they're doing it because they're sick and damned tired of the gods feasting on their energy and leaving far too little of it for them. They just want these Bramhaloka-dwelling, soma-sucking bastids off their backs. The drama (there *has* to be drama, because this is a Neo-Hindu future, after all...and it's on TV) is that the gods, being accomplished Siddhi-Masters and all, have looked into the future and have 'seen' that the artificial soma eventually produced by these heretics may work OK for the masses to give them a buzz, but to the gods it tastes like donkey piss. Worse than cheap Mexican beer. Way worse. So they're not at all happy about these misfits and their attempts to start a new beverage company. They want no part of this artificial soma revolution, and want humans to keep churnin' out the Good Stuff by meditating and bouncing on their butts half the day. (Program is longer in this future era.) Suffice it to say the whole thing turns into an epic battle between the heretics and the gods that puts the battle scenes in the Bhagavad-Gita
Re: [FairfieldLife] SuperDooperStition
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] SuperDooperStition This is first of all, quite funny and I think you should turn it into a novel - the premise is quite good. Thanks. I had mucho fun writing it, sitting at a cafe even nearer to my house than Bad Habits, which has recently re-opened its patio to embrace the Spring weather. On Thu, 4/3/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] SuperDooperStition To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:00 PM From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, April 3, 2014 1:09 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods my revulsion is the idea that Marshy would teach this crap - as the writer of the article said, Marshy was the only one around who taught this stuff. It smacks of not just Hinduism but really superstitious Hinduism. If you can believe what Chopra wrote about M after he croaked, he was a superstitious man and passed that crap onto his sycophants. I mean, anyone who would tell folk to run hide when a solar eclipse is in the offing? I would say, Michael, that Maharishi was not only superstitious, but possibly the most superstitious person I've ever met in my life. He saw omens in pretty much *everything* he saw around him. I've told the story of seeing him walk into the meeting hall in Squaw Valley and finding that the night crew had not finished cleaning the room. As a result, all of the chairs were piled upside down on the tables, obviously so that people could sweep and vacuum and mop under them. When Maharishi saw this, he visibly blanched (I was standing only a few feet away), halted in his tracks, and refused to enter the room. He turned around, backtracked through the hordes of people who had just given him flowers, and exited, refusing to come back until all of the chairs had been set upright. When I asked Jerry about it later (he was my initiator, and I knew him from the L.A. center), he said that seeing chairs upside down was considered a bad omen and that Maharishi wouldn't enter until it was removed. Go figure, for a supposedly enlightened (and thus invincible) guy. We've also heard how he interpreted an icicle forming on the balcony of his digs in Vlodrop as a divine manifestation of the god Shiva. Perhaps it was, and the reason was that Maharishi had generated an enormous amount of stomach soma that day, and Shiva was thanking him for his efforts. :-) I jest, but the serious part is that Maharishi not only believed in the many superstitions he held, he taught them as if they were truth. And people *bought* them as if they were truth. The generation of an enlightenment endorphin or chemical as the result of enlightenment is not a new idea. This process being located in the gut and gods feeding off of it like vampires is kinda weird, but I'd give it a pass if it had been presented as fiction. I mean, think about it. It's the perfect basis for a TV series. You could call it True Soma, and set it in the future, when the Age Of Enlightenment has finally full dawned and almost everyone is practicing TM and the TMSP and living in fully-Vastu compounds generating veritable vats of soma for the gods to feast on. Into this paradise come a bunch of Off The Program Misfit Heretics, who in a fit of unstressing have taken offene at the gods pigging out on their soma. They've hired rogue chemists, and are trying to synthesize soma and market it as True Soma to the masses, even those few who have refused to embrace the Age Of Enlightenment and thus still spit non-meditators. The kicker of the series is that on the one hand the rebels ARE doing this out of compassion for their fellow man, wanting them to be able to enjoy the many benefits of stomach soma themselves. But on the other hand, they're doing it because they're sick and damned tired of the gods feasting on their energy and leaving far too little of it for them. They just want these Bramhaloka-dwelling, soma-sucking bastids off their backs. The drama (there *has* to be drama, because this is a Neo-Hindu future, after all...and it's on TV) is that the gods, being accomplished Siddhi-Masters and all, have looked into the future and have 'seen' that the artificial soma eventually produced by these heretics may work OK for the masses to give them a buzz, but to the gods it tastes like donkey piss. Worse than cheap Mexican beer. Way worse. So they're not at all happy about these misfits and their attempts to start a new beverage company. They want no part of this artificial soma revolution, and want humans to keep churnin' out the Good Stuff by meditating and bouncing on their butts half the day. (Program is longer in this future era.) Suffice it to say the whole thing turns into an
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Somehow the post title reminds me of Reuben and the Jets. (Or maybe Soma and the Gods would make a good band name). So the vedic seers were meth heads? :-D On 04/03/2014 11:47 AM, salyavin808 wrote: Indeed, and why bother? Anyone who has read the 9th Mandala of the Rig Veda will know it's a drink made from plant extracts. *Soma* (Sanskrit सोम /sóma/), or Haoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haoma (Avestan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian */sauma-/, was a Vedic ritual drink^[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma#cite_note-1 of importance among the early Indo-Iranians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_civilization and greater Persian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Iran cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta, Haoma has the entire /Yašt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%A1t/ 20 and Yasna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it. It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity. There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_identity_of_Soma-Haoma. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_%28genus%29, perhaps /Ephedra sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_sinica/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma Sounds speedy! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Must have been something excitable, what with all the trouble they gave the black skinned Rakshasas in the Golden Age... I think Soma and the Gods would make an excellent band name. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : Somehow the post title reminds me of Reuben and the Jets. (Or maybe Soma and the Gods would make a good band name). So the vedic seers were meth heads? :-D On 04/03/2014 11:47 AM, salyavin808 wrote: Indeed, and why bother? Anyone who has read the 9th Mandala of the Rig Veda will know it's a drink made from plant extracts. Soma (Sanskrit सोम sóma), or Haoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haoma (Avestan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a Vedic ritual drink[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma#cite_note-1 of importance among the early Indo-Iranians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_civilization and greater Persian cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yašt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%A1t 20 and Yasna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it. It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity. There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_%28genus%29, perhaps Ephedra sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma Sounds speedy! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... mailto:sharelong60@... wrote : Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... mailto:awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... mailto:awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... mailto:mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
[FairfieldLife] TM and utopianism
What is utopian-ism? “I went to a lecture at the U. of Ia. in Iowa City the other nite given by a visiting classicist professor and went out to dinner with him after. In discussing [Meditating] Fairfield, Iowa he broke from what we were saying at a point and declared that he [a classicist] could not understand what “Utopia” could possibly be.. .That he lives and thinks in the past and present but could not understand what I was talking about Utopia this way. It was not the time to say anything more but we are e-mailing.” https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/377435 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/377435
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
First of all, you referred to the TM critics who portray Lawson as a cult apologist, not you specifically, Salyavin. I was thinking primarily of Barry and Michael in any case. What cult apologist is going to acknowledge that the study results were ambiguous? (Minor point, but we don't know that the homicide spike was mass murder, BTW. Supposedly it was the result of the flareup of a gang war in which members of the gangs killed each other.) By skewed, Lawson didn't mean the spike homicides weren't part of the results. He meant they were unevenly distributed. At the time, this was misinterpreted by reporters to mean, as Lawson said, that the murder rate had doubled throughout the eight weeks of the study rather than for a single week, followed by a week in which it was more than halved. Second, I'm not saying you're wrong to be skeptical of the Maharishi Effect. I'm skeptical of it myself. Nor am I suggesting the DC study proved anything. I'm criticizing the skeptics who haven't bothered to understand how it was designed. As a result, many of their specific criticisms are straw men. That's where your wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation description of the skeptics falls apart. Likewise, your notion that if there was anything to the Maharishi Effect, it should have immediately resulted in a huge decrease in the crime rate is absurd. If the meditation intervention did result in only a 20 percent reduction over eight weeks, would it therefore not be worth doing at all? That's just not a sensible objection. And finally, below you put all kinds of words in my mouth that I never said and never would say or even think. You don't seem to understand that insisting on fair, accurate, objective descriptions of something doesn't necessarily mean being convinced of its validity. That's another blind spot skeptics tend to have; it conveniently enables them to disregard corrections and not take the trouble to get the story straight. As you say, you aren't going to bother looking at the study's methodology because you've mistakenly decided I'm a True Believer in the Maharishi Effect (on the basis of no actual evidence, BTW). As you accuse me of being unobjective I'm not going to bother reading the link you posted. I've thought long and hard about this stuff for years, read all the research (even had a set of the collective papers). I've probably read it before anyway but even if I haven't everything I say about it stands: why only 20%? Why can't you see the amazing results when you look at at the actual figures? How does it work? Have we really got to rewrite physics, psychology, sociology and biology just to because of a bit of statistical jiggery-pokery? I can only assume you think I'm not objective because I don't agree with you about it. I also don't think much of your analysis of Lawson here. If he was objective I doubt he would say that an instance of mass murder skewed the results. They are part of the results, like it or not. And so what if one sceptic doesn't approach it the way I do? You might be forgetting that what we are talking about is an obviously ambiguous set of statistics that supposedly means the world could be made peaceful on the basis of people jumping up and down on bits of foam. Who isn't going to laugh at that? If all you can say is that the results would have been better if some nutjob hadn't gone postal with an AK47 then it isn't a great demonstration of Heaven on Earth is it? You are going to have to do better and often and come up with an explanation that isn't a bunch of new age hogwash. Unobjective? I was curious enough to learn how to do it. But here's the clincher; Why doesn't the Maharishi Effect affect everyone? It is supposed to be the infinitely powerful unified field after all (ask Buck for details). If you want to fall back on the old TM standby of It was a bit of unstressing then you have to accept that the rapes and murders that did happen wouldn't have happened if the TMO weren't there. I dub it BS until there is Heaven on Earth. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical Inquirer article and tell me the author came at the research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. And please note, Lawson is the one saying the results of this study were ambiguous. Shame on the TM critics who repeatedly try to portray him as a cult apologist. He is
[FairfieldLife] Re: TM and aspects of utopianism
Up more recently, TM and describing aspects of utopianism: Born in 1927, Norman Zierold grew up in the Amana colonies, a Germanic Utopian community in Iowa... . .. . “I remember how aspects of Utopia had colored my days from the very beginning, when I was born into a community that expected the future to realize its hopes for an ideal life, the very definition of Utopia. Spontaneously, the thought came to me that I might be a spiritual teacher one day, an aspiration that was invoked in due time as I learned to meditate, had prized experiences of bubbling bliss, and subsequently taught the technique to several hundred people.” .. . I often recall a TM gathering called “A Taste of Utopia” back in 1983, when over eight thousand volunteers rushed to Iowa to practice their Transcendental Meditation technique as a group to bring more harmony to the world. At a talk he gave in Maharishi University’s Golden Dome of Pure Knowledge, named after the ancient Vedic sage Patanjali, Maharishi spoke the words that changed the course of my life—“Why waste your life on little, little things?” -Norman http://issue16.tmmagazine.org/my-story.html http://issue16.tmmagazine.org/my-story.html What is utopian-ism? “I went to a lecture at the U. of Ia. in Iowa City the other nite given by a visiting classicist professor and went out to dinner with him after. In discussing [Meditating] Fairfield, Iowa he broke from what we were saying at a point and declared that he [a classicist] could not understand what “Utopia” could possibly be.. .That he lives and thinks in the past and present but could not understand what I was talking about Utopia this way. It was not the time to say anything more but we are e-mailing.” https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/377435 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/377435
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
You mean, anyone who has read the Ninth Mandala in the translation TM uses will know that's how the Ninth Mandala in that translation describes soma. But they won't necessarily know to what degree that description is symbolic/poetic/metaphorical rather than literal, or even whether the original has been translated accurately (from the ancient Sanskrit to German, then from German to English). Indeed, and why bother? Anyone who has read the 9th Mandala of the Rig Veda will know it's a drink made from plant extracts. Soma (Sanskrit सोम sóma), or Haoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haoma (Avestan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a Vedic ritual drink[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma#cite_note-1 of importance among the early Indo-Iranians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_civilization and greater Persian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Iran cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yašt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%A1t 20 and Yasna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it. It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity. There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_identity_of_Soma-Haoma. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_(genus), perhaps Ephedra sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma Sounds speedy!
[FairfieldLife] Re: [Meditating] Fairfield, Iowa Life
Also did not get to finish utopian-ism and Fairfield neither. Dang. What is utopian-ism? Thanks though for the encouragement, jr. Spring rains happening here today. Yep, I am running low of time indoors now with the end of winter here in Iowa. Still got some things remaining that are unfinished here. I never finished my paper on Quaker meditators coming to Fairfield. A long time ago I published a paper in Friends Journal about old Quaker Meditators and Fairfield. I was hoping to git back to that old paper and bring it up to date but have run out of time now. The Quaker Meditators in Fairfield, Iowa: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/371018 https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/FairfieldLife/conversations/messages/371018 http://iagenweb.org/history/qoi/QOITOC.htm http://iagenweb.org/history/qoi/QOITOC.htm jr_esq writes: Buck, Good luck with your field work. May you reap what you sow! His hoary frost, His fleecy snow, Descend and clothe the ground; The liquid streams forbear to flow, In icy fetters bound. He sends His Word and melts the snow, The fields no longer mourn; He calls the warmer gales to blow And bids the spring return. Spring is upon us here in Iowa and I have got to go off-line more with field work now mostly, after meditation in the Dome. I am two months behind on farm work and horse training. Om those normal years. For this year given the global weird weather this year and winter I am behind. Only the last few days have been really hospitable enough to really be outside for long hours at a time. Still a lot of frost in the ground way down. -Buck..
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Oh yeah! I had forgotten that all the demons in the vedas are said to be black skinned! That'll create controversy and sell more books and films! On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 8:01 PM Must have been something excitable, what with all the trouble they gave the black skinned Rakshasas in the Golden Age... I think Soma and the Gods would make an excellent band name. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, noozguru@... wrote : Somehow the post title reminds me of Reuben and the Jets. (Or maybe Soma and the Gods would make a good band name). So the vedic seers were meth heads? :-D On 04/03/2014 11:47 AM, salyavin808 wrote: Indeed, and why bother? Anyone who has read the 9th Mandala of the Rig Veda will know it's a drink made from plant extracts. Soma (Sanskrit सोम sóma), or Haoma (Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a Vedic ritual drink[1] of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic and greater Persian cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yašt 20 and Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it.It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity.There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra, perhaps Ephedra sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma Sounds speedy! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Ann, I think it would be pretty involved and costly for the TMO to perform endoscopies on hundreds of sidhas in order to have a valid study about soma in the stomach! For one thing, I've always been put under when I have mine done. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 8:49 AM, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Michael, with all due respect, you are not an expert on Hinduism, or even superstitious Hinduism for that matter. I think we saw that last week. So you have an opinion on the relationship of Soma and the Vedic Gods, but it is just your interpretation, unless you claim to be able to decipher the clear meaning of the Vedic verses. You probably don't know what chemicals a refined nervous system may create, and if they have any effect on ones environment, or the elements of nature, if there is such a thing. So, you may choose to spin Maharishi's comments in anyway you choose, but the case you are making seems rather weak to me. The introductory lecture for TM discusses benefits in four areas, if I'm not mistaken. There is a reference to the tradition that it comes from. But I don't think, in fact I know, there are no grandiose claims being made. I think sometimes your points are on target, but oftentimes not. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Its the ninth mandala actually, but it was never phrased so that I remember - also it is significant that M who always claimed publicly to offer a technique that is non-religious to covertly tell everyone inthe room point blank that the purpose of meditation is to refine the body so it produces soma so Indra and the other gods can have lunch on your nickle and they will give you rewards as a result. This is not just Hinduism but superstitious Hinduism. If what he was teaching in this tape was legit, he would never had had the tapes recalled. As I believe the Turq said not long ago, if TM was a great as they claim it is, they wouldn't have to lie to sell it. I am also eager to hear from any other teachers who post here who have seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time and what they think of it now, or remember when the word came down to give 'em back to the Movement. I think its a very interesting bit of Movement history. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 11:41 AM Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Likewise, your notion that if there was anything to the Maharishi Effect, it should have immediately resulted in a huge decrease in the crime rate is absurd. Why? If it works for some why not everyone. Why does the unified field pick out one rapist to convert and not another? If the meditation intervention did result in only a 20 percent reduction over eight weeks, would it therefore not be worth doing at all? That's just not a sensible objection. But it didn't. Not that I saw looking at the actual crime rates. If it had it might be useful but as I have pointed out quite a lot lately, the crime rate didn't go down anywhere near as much as it did the year later with changes in policing methods etc. So why would any crime agency choose yogic flying over something that works better. Unless you want to go along the standard TM excuse that the effects of the ME are accumulative which the good people of Skelmersdale and Fairfield will tell you isn't actually the case. Have a go at answering the rest of the points I raised. Get objective. As you accuse me of being unobjective I'm not going to bother reading the link you posted. I've thought long and hard about this stuff for years, read all the research (even had a set of the collective papers). I've probably read it before anyway but even if I haven't everything I say about it stands: why only 20%? Why can't you see the amazing results when you look at at the actual figures? How does it work? Have we really got to rewrite physics, psychology, sociology and biology just to because of a bit of statistical jiggery-pokery? I can only assume you think I'm not objective because I don't agree with you about it. I also don't think much of your analysis of Lawson here. If he was objective I doubt he would say that an instance of mass murder skewed the results. They are part of the results, like it or not. And so what if one sceptic doesn't approach it the way I do? You might be forgetting that what we are talking about is an obviously ambiguous set of statistics that supposedly means the world could be made peaceful on the basis of people jumping up and down on bits of foam. Who isn't going to laugh at that? If all you can say is that the results would have been better if some nutjob hadn't gone postal with an AK47 then it isn't a great demonstration of Heaven on Earth is it? You are going to have to do better and often and come up with an explanation that isn't a bunch of new age hogwash. Unobjective? I was curious enough to learn how to do it. But here's the clincher; Why doesn't the Maharishi Effect affect everyone? It is supposed to be the infinitely powerful unified field after all (ask Buck for details). If you want to fall back on the old TM standby of It was a bit of unstressing then you have to accept that the rapes and murders that did happen wouldn't have happened if the TMO weren't there. I dub it BS until there is Heaven on Earth. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical Inquirer article and tell me the author came at the research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. And please note, Lawson is the one saying the results of this study were ambiguous. Shame on the TM critics who repeatedly try to portray him as a cult apologist. He is far more objective than you are. Ambiguous is as good as false. When you look at the actual US government data for the year, broken down week by week, you can't see any drops in crime levels, sure there are dips all over the place but the one in August is no bigger than the one in March so if you are claiming that coherence causes crime rates to drop then who was meditating in March. And the crime rate dropped significantly more the next year due to changes in policing and gentrification. It's all on the government website. The thing about sceptics is we almost always originally come at paranormal research from a position of wanting it to be true and looking for confirmation. That's true for me and Susan Blackmore and any amount of people from CISCOP. It's only the constant failure of of world to confirm whether it has provided us with any paranormal abilities to measure that gives rise to what you may think is a narrow minded sceptic. I still hope for the best though, but the TMO could make it easier by making
[FairfieldLife] Alien life?
Ocean discovered on Enceladus may be best place to look for alien life Evidence from Cassini spacecraft suggests a large body of liquid water beneath the surface of Saturn's moon EnceladusResearchers have discovered a deep saltwater ocean on one of the many small moons that orbit Saturn http://www.theguardian.com/science/saturn, leading scientists to conclude it is the most likely place in the solar system for extraterrestrial life to be found. Gravitational field measurements taken by Nasa's Cassini space http://www.theguardian.com/science/space probe revealed that a 10km-deep ocean of water, larger than Lake Superior, lurks beneath the icy surface of Enceladus at the moon's south pole. David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said the body of water was so large it may extend halfway or more towards the equator in every direction. It might even extend all the way to the north. The presence of a saltwater ocean a billion kilometres from Earth more than satisfies Nasa's long-held mantra of follow the water to find signs of alien life http://www.theguardian.com/science/alien-life, but water is not the only factor that makes Enceladus such a promising habitat. The water is in contact with the moon's rocky core, so elements useful for life, such as phosphorus, sulfur and potassium, will leach into the ocean. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/03/ocean-enceladus-alien-life-water-saturn-moon http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/03/ocean-enceladus-alien-life-water-saturn-moon This is cool, one thing we know for sure is that water is essential for life. Life as we know it anyway. The fact that life started so fast on Earth seems to imply that when the ingredients are present the self assembling proteins and molecules rapidly get themselves into complexity profound enough to start life. These organic building blocks are formed in stars and are ubiquitous in the universe. If it's possible to get here and get inside this moon it could be our first look at a genuinely alien environment. If it turns out that the place has water and is also sterile despite the same stuff that is found on earth it will make us think harder about what was required to get our planet so full of complex diversity.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Are you for real? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : You mean, anyone who has read the Ninth Mandala in the translation TM uses will know that's how the Ninth Mandala in that translation describes soma. But they won't necessarily know to what degree that description is symbolic/poetic/metaphorical rather than literal, or even whether the original has been translated accurately (from the ancient Sanskrit to German, then from German to English). Indeed, and why bother? Anyone who has read the 9th Mandala of the Rig Veda will know it's a drink made from plant extracts. Soma (Sanskrit सोम sóma), or Haoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haoma (Avestan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a Vedic ritual drink[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma#cite_note-1 of importance among the early Indo-Iranians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_civilization and greater Persian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Iran cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yašt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%A1t 20 and Yasna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it. It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity. There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_identity_of_Soma-Haoma. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_(genus), perhaps Ephedra sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma Sounds speedy!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Who says that the Maharishi Effect converts anyone? Here is MY understanding of the Maharishi Effect: TM, by its very nature, has a beneficial effect on the practitioners AND on their surroundings. Group TM, by the nature of synergy, has a greater effect than TM practiced outside of groups. Since all of reality is consciousness at its basis, all of reality should benefit in some way from TM practice, whether group or non-group. The people who benefit the most, of course, are the participants in the group. Since people in general manifest a more sophisticated level of consciousness than a rock, the rest of Society near the meditation group, being made up of people, should show more of this beneficial effect of group meditation than rocks. Since people tend to wander about doing things, one way to measure the beneficial effect from group meditation is to measure what people are doing before, during and after the group meditation period. Since the effect is so slight (they're not participating in the group meditation after all), the effects will only be noticed by doing careful statistical analysis of the behavior of a large group of people. And so... the Maharishi Effect research programme proceeds. By my understanding, everyone benefits a tiny little bit. Due to random differences between individuals, some people show this benefit a tiny bit more in their behavior than other people do, just as different meditators take different times to become enlightened. Other than the assumption that there's some effect to measure in the first place, there's no mystery for why the effect supposedly manifests the way it does... how could it manifest any other way? L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Likewise, your notion that if there was anything to the Maharishi Effect, it should have immediately resulted in a huge decrease in the crime rate is absurd. Why? If it works for some why not everyone. Why does the unified field pick out one rapist to convert and not another? If the meditation intervention did result in only a 20 percent reduction over eight weeks, would it therefore not be worth doing at all? That's just not a sensible objection. But it didn't. Not that I saw looking at the actual crime rates. If it had it might be useful but as I have pointed out quite a lot lately, the crime rate didn't go down anywhere near as much as it did the year later with changes in policing methods etc. So why would any crime agency choose yogic flying over something that works better. Unless you want to go along the standard TM excuse that the effects of the ME are accumulative which the good people of Skelmersdale and Fairfield will tell you isn't actually the case. Have a go at answering the rest of the points I raised. Get objective. As you accuse me of being unobjective I'm not going to bother reading the link you posted. I've thought long and hard about this stuff for years, read all the research (even had a set of the collective papers). I've probably read it before anyway but even if I haven't everything I say about it stands: why only 20%? Why can't you see the amazing results when you look at at the actual figures? How does it work? Have we really got to rewrite physics, psychology, sociology and biology just to because of a bit of statistical jiggery-pokery? I can only assume you think I'm not objective because I don't agree with you about it. I also don't think much of your analysis of Lawson here. If he was objective I doubt he would say that an instance of mass murder skewed the results. They are part of the results, like it or not. And so what if one sceptic doesn't approach it the way I do? You might be forgetting that what we are talking about is an obviously ambiguous set of statistics that supposedly means the world could be made peaceful on the basis of people jumping up and down on bits of foam. Who isn't going to laugh at that? If all you can say is that the results would have been better if some nutjob hadn't gone postal with an AK47 then it isn't a great demonstration of Heaven on Earth is it? You are going to have to do better and often and come up with an explanation that isn't a bunch of new age hogwash. Unobjective? I was curious enough to learn how to do it. But here's the clincher; Why doesn't the Maharishi Effect affect everyone? It is supposed to be the infinitely powerful unified field after all (ask Buck for details). If you want to fall back on the old TM standby of It was a bit of unstressing then you have to accept that the rapes and murders that did happen wouldn't have happened if the TMO weren't there. I dub it BS until there is Heaven on Earth. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: PHARRELL WILLIAMS - HAPPY (INDIA)
Nab, I have no doubt. No doubt whatsoever that there are Louis Vuitton shops in India, as well as Channel and Gucci, and every other luxury brand. Malls in every part of the world are similar. But if I were trying to show something uniquely Indian, that is not what I would highlight, unless I was in a hurry and just had time to jump off the plane and into the terminal for a few minutes, on my way to another locale. I have a feeling that might be the way they produced those videos, although I really didn't look at them. Please correct me if I am mistaken. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : So you saw a Louis Vuitton shop and gathered it couldn't be India ? If you have a valid passport perhaps you should travel more. According to the Turq only 15% of the Americans have a valid passport. Use it if you have one. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : I noticed the background in one scene were mall stores including Louis Vuitton and the like. Perhaps that's your idea of Indian. Looks to me like they probably didn't get much past the airport in any of the locations. On the other hand, I only watched a snippet of two of them. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Perhaps people on this list should travel more. Because they don't wear dhotis or are filmed in front of Temples it can't possibly be from India :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mdixon.6569@... wrote : What was missing were sadhus dancing to this at Kumbha Mela. On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 6:17 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: Starting unstressing before we watch the video are we ? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, steve.sundur@... wrote : India? That looked like downtown Chicago. What a crock. You get that a lot. Misleading headlines, lead-ins that never materialize in the story. What a shame that they try to pull that crap on people. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : Enjoy ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJJJ8Vyv3ZA
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
You know Share, some people compare it to cannibalism. I don't. I don't see anything wrong with it. As rituals go, it seems as good a one as any. I don't know if it was corrupted along the way somehow. It's been a while since I've read the Bible, but supposedly that's the way it played out at that Passover Supper. Not that it matters, but I think the new Pope is quite a breath of fresh air. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Steve, one of the meta issues that fascinates me about all this is how in Catholicism we supposedly ingest the body and blood of Christ. What it suggests to me is something that the mythologist Joseph Campbell might notice, that in all cultures around the world, there's some notion of ingesting the other when it comes to humans and divinities. Must be something physically in the human brain about that. Does that sound far out? On Wednesday, April 2, 2014 10:50 PM, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the Gods is much larger. And the theology that the Maharishi espouses is not Hinduism. It is much more idiosyncratic -- and frankly bizarre. In a nutshell, the Maharishi describes a sort of parasitic relationship between TMers and the Vedic Gods. TMers produce the magical chemical Soma in their gut -- but it isn't something they can use directly. The Vedic Gods, principally Indra, descend from Heaven and feed on the Soma in the TMers' belly. In return for this primitive relationship, the Gods grant all manner of boons. TMers become successful, happy, prosperous, and develop supernormal abilities. Unbeknownst to non-TM teachers, the entire TM program can be understood through this simple model. We practice yogic asanas and pranayama to clear the channels through which Soma will flow. We repeat the name of our own personal Ishta (God) to summon Him or Her. Advanced TMers practice the sidhis to stir the Soma and further clear channels. We read verses from the Ninth Mandala that literally invite the Gods by name to feast on the Soma in our belly: Flow, Soma, in a most sweet and exhilirating stream, effused for Indra to drink Be the lavish giver of wealth, most bounteous,
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
you shot your erudite arguments all to hell by saying there were no grandiose claims - that's all TM is, is grandiose claims - spin don't have shit to do with it. marshy was a liar, a con artist, a Hindu fanatic and very superstitious. If you wanna argue superstition, try telling Turq that he didn't see M flee a room just because chairs were upended. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sun...@yahoo.com steve.sun...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 9:10 PM Michael, with all due respect, you are not an expert on Hinduism, or even superstitious Hinduism for that matter. I think we saw that last week. So you have an opinion on the relationship of Soma and the Vedic Gods, but it is just your interpretation, unless you claim to be able to decipher the clear meaning of the Vedic verses. You probably don't know what chemicals a refined nervous system may create, and if they have any effect on ones environment, or the elements of nature, if there is such a thing. So, you may choose to spin Maharishi's comments in anyway you choose, but the case you are making seems rather weak to me. The introductory lecture for TM discusses benefits in four areas, if I'm not mistaken. There is a reference to the tradition that it comes from. But I don't think, in fact I know, there are no grandiose claims being made. I think sometimes your points are on target, but oftentimes not. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Its the ninth mandala actually, but it was never phrased so that I remember - also it is significant that M who always claimed publicly to offer a technique that is non-religious to covertly tell everyone inthe room point blank that the purpose of meditation is to refine the body so it produces soma so Indra and the other gods can have lunch on your nickle and they will give you rewards as a result. This is not just Hinduism but superstitious Hinduism. If what he was teaching in this tape was legit, he would never had had the tapes recalled. As I believe the Turq said not long ago, if TM was a great as they claim it is, they wouldn't have to lie to sell it. I am also eager to hear from any other teachers who post here who have seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time and what they think of it now, or remember when the word came down to give 'em back to the Movement. I think its a very interesting bit of Movement history. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 11:41 AM Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
That is how I have generally understood these forces of nature described in the Vedas. I think I mentioned before, that for some reason I always associated the Troop of Maruts as perhaps rain bearing clouds. I would enjoy seeing connections being made. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Michael, one way I think about all this is in terms of energy, vibration, resonance and amplification. Indra can be thought of as the word that some people use to describe an energy or frequency that is all around us. A scientist might designate it by a certain amount of hertz or a certain light frequency. Something like that. I think that in the not too distant future, there won't be a gap between science and spirituality and then all these aspects of spirituality will be universally understood from a scientific point of view also. On Thursday, April 3, 2014 9:10 AM, Michael Jackson mjackson74@... wrote: you are hilarious! I recall someone on the sidhi preps asked something like that - a nurse I think she was and the Governors said the soma would be there, but would be too subtle to detect with current scientific equipment. On Thu, 4/3/14, awoelflebater@... awoelflebater@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 1:49 PM ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. It would be logical, I would think, for the Movement to have used some of their science-y minded people to test the stomachs of meditators for this supposed soma. Not that hard to do. Stick a scope down there and check it out, retrieve samples. I am sure there would have been hundreds of eager participants. Surely, this is so easy to prove or disprove - maybe not on the presence of soma-sucking Gods - but on the existence of soma at least. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
If Unity Consciousness is a reality, if God Consiousness is reality, in my opinion there would be some chemical produced that would be partly responsible for that. Soma sounds as good as any. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Steve, pretty funny that in the midst of all these Soma and the Gods posts, I received an ad with Subject line: This stuff is God in a bottle! On Thursday, April 3, 2014 6:41 AM, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to participants in the Kropinski trial, this tape -- along with the entire TTC catalog -- appeared mysteriously on someone's doorstep one day. Since then the tape has been used by plaintiffs in court cases to prove that the TM movement had a religious, specifically Hindu, agenda -- largely because it's one of the few times the Maharishi was captured on tape talking about worshipping the Vedic Gods. (Of course today, the TM movement sells Hindu sacrifices, yagyas or yajnas, to Ganesh, Lakshmi, and other Gods for thousands of dollars without batting an eye!) But the true significance of Soma and the
Re: [FairfieldLife] Soma and the Gods
On 4/2/2014 7:53 PM, Michael Jackson wrote: Soma and the Gods What would it take, MJ, for you to do a simple search on topics BEFORE you post your questions? Let's see now, how many years has it been since I've been posting messages about SOMA to Google Groups and Yahoo Groups? Ten years? It's like sometimes we're dealing with infants around here, or simple kitchen help, that don't even know the difference between a bija mantra and an apple seed. SOMA is the nectar of the Gods in Hindu mythology. You'd think that people like MJ have never even heard of the Rig Veda or watched a single Bill Moyers episode on TV. Go figure.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
On 4/2/2014 10:49 PM, steve.sun...@yahoo.com wrote: But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? The roots of TM can be found in the ascetic tradition of the indigenous inhabitants of South India - based on the yoga tradition; the yogins and ascetics who founded Jainism and Buddhism. The Vedas and hence the SOMA decoction, are products of the Sanskrit speakers who came into India around 1500 BC. from Iran, whose traditions were Aryan, based on the ritual sacrifice. Thus Hinduism is a synthesis of Buddhism and Brahmanism.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
that is bullshit - that means that supposed enlightenment is NOT something that we already are, that we just don't pay attention to - that means that it is dependent on a chemical. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sun...@yahoo.com steve.sun...@yahoo.com wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 9:48 PM If Unity Consciousness is a reality, if God Consiousness is reality, in my opinion there would be some chemical produced that would be partly responsible for that. Soma sounds as good as any. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Steve, pretty funny that in the midst of all these Soma and the Gods posts, I received an ad with Subject line: This stuff is God in a bottle! On Thursday, April 3, 2014 6:41 AM, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones are there. On the other hand, so what. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Somehow in my looking at TM, I have always missed this - any of you guys ever see this tape? If so what did you think of it? Soma and the Gods On the next Web page begins the transcription of Soma and the Gods taken from testimony in the Kropinski trial. This videotape is one of a handful that have become infamous in the TM movement because of their secrecy: It is only shown to TM teachers on the heavily regimented Teacher Training Course (TTC). For many years copies of this tape were not even allowed to enter the continental US. For good reason! Much like the Church of Scientology's OT materials, Soma and the Gods lays out the Maharishi's freakish theology in a way that the public is not deemed ready for by the Maharishi and the movement. According to
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote : Who says that the Maharishi Effect converts anyone? Not me, what are you talking about? Oh, I see I convert for evidence that means that you have to prove it before I take it seriously. I haven't seen any worth chucking out my perfectly good world view for. Here is MY understanding of the Maharishi Effect: TM, by its very nature, has a beneficial effect on the practitioners AND on their surroundings. Group TM, by the nature of synergy, has a greater effect than TM practiced outside of groups. Why does something that you also think is a function of brain waves travelling through the thalamus (or whatever the idea was) have something to do with the environment? They don't leave your head you know. Since all of reality is consciousness at its basis, WTF? Prove it. This is wild speculation that no one outside of the new age lecture circuit actually believes. I recommend Stephen Hwkings new book The Grand Design for an accessible intro to current cosmological thinking. Save yourself some time by looking up consciousness in the index. In fact do that in any physics book. all of reality should benefit in some way from TM practice, whether group or non-group. The people who benefit the most, of course, are the participants in the group. Since people in general manifest a more sophisticated level of consciousness than a rock, the rest of Society near the meditation group, being made up of people, should show more of this beneficial effect of group meditation than rocks. Erm... But rocks have to change in some way right? Unified fields and all that...How about dogs they should be easier to test. Serious question: The ME should work on animals too, given their simpler lives they should be easier to study. Since people tend to wander about doing things, one way to measure the beneficial effect from group meditation is to measure what people are doing before, during and after the group meditation period. Since the effect is so slight (they're not participating in the group meditation after all), the effects will only be noticed by doing careful statistical analysis of the behavior of a large group of people. How convenient! And so... the Maharishi Effect research programme proceeds. By my understanding, everyone benefits a tiny little bit. Due to random differences between individuals, some people show this benefit a tiny bit more in their behavior than other people do, just as different meditators take different times to become enlightened. Other than the assumption that there's some effect to measure in the first place, there's no mystery for why the effect supposedly manifests the way it does... how could it manifest any other way? LOL With the caveats you just put on that determinedly hamper all study, how will we ever know? But people have tried. Open minded researchers have suggested studies that would show a relationship between one mind and another at a spooky distance but they were never attempted at MUM. Can't remember the guys name (Barry Markovsky?) from Iowa university. He made a lot of good points about why no one takes the TMO seriously about this. Basically there is no explanation that uses known phenomena, you also have to throw out most of what we think we already know and get all 'consciousness is the unified field' about it, and who believes that? Who even has any reason to believe it? You don't based on the evidence here. L ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Likewise, your notion that if there was anything to the Maharishi Effect, it should have immediately resulted in a huge decrease in the crime rate is absurd. Why? If it works for some why not everyone. Why does the unified field pick out one rapist to convert and not another? If the meditation intervention did result in only a 20 percent reduction over eight weeks, would it therefore not be worth doing at all? That's just not a sensible objection. But it didn't. Not that I saw looking at the actual crime rates. If it had it might be useful but as I have pointed out quite a lot lately, the crime rate didn't go down anywhere near as much as it did the year later with changes in policing methods etc. So why would any crime agency choose yogic flying over something that works better. Unless you want to go along the standard TM excuse that the effects of the ME are accumulative which the good people of Skelmersdale and Fairfield will tell you isn't actually the case. Have a go at answering the rest of the points I raised. Get objective. As you accuse me of being unobjective I'm not going to bother reading the link you posted. I've thought long and hard about this stuff for years, read all the research (even had a set of
Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates
Have a go at answering the rest of the points I raised?? You mean, the ones where you put words in my mouth? OK... I can only assume you think I'm not objective because I don't agree with you about it. Wrong. You made that up. As I told you, I'm skeptical myself. But I have excellent reason to think you aren't objective: because you assume, entirely without evidence and entirely mistakenly, that I'm a True Believer in the Maharishi Effect even after I've told you otherwise. If all you can say is that the results would have been better if some nutjob hadn't gone postal with an AK47 then it isn't a great demonstration of Heaven on Earth is it? But I didn't and wouldn't say that or even think it. You made that up. If you want to fall back on the old TM standby of 'It was a bit of unstressing' then you have to accept that the rapes and murders that did happen wouldn't have happened if the TMO weren't there. But I didn't and wouldn't fall back on that old TM standby. You made that up. Since I'm not trying to defend the Maharishi Effect or the DC study, obviously there's no reason for me to respond to your challenges to them (except with regard to your lack of understanding of how the study was designed). The question is, why on earth would you think I should? You're doing a wonderful job of making my points about skeptics' blind spots for me. Thank you. Likewise, your notion that if there was anything to the Maharishi Effect, it should have immediately resulted in a huge decrease in the crime rate is absurd. Why? If it works for some why not everyone. Why does the unified field pick out one rapist to convert and not another? If the meditation intervention did result in only a 20 percent reduction over eight weeks, would it therefore not be worth doing at all? That's just not a sensible objection. But it didn't. Not that I saw looking at the actual crime rates. If it had it might be useful but as I have pointed out quite a lot lately, the crime rate didn't go down anywhere near as much as it did the year later with changes in policing methods etc. So why would any crime agency choose yogic flying over something that works better. Unless you want to go along the standard TM excuse that the effects of the ME are accumulative which the good people of Skelmersdale and Fairfield will tell you isn't actually the case. Have a go at answering the rest of the points I raised. Get objective. As you accuse me of being unobjective I'm not going to bother reading the link you posted. I've thought long and hard about this stuff for years, read all the research (even had a set of the collective papers). I've probably read it before anyway but even if I haven't everything I say about it stands: why only 20%? Why can't you see the amazing results when you look at at the actual figures? How does it work? Have we really got to rewrite physics, psychology, sociology and biology just to because of a bit of statistical jiggery-pokery? I can only assume you think I'm not objective because I don't agree with you about it. I also don't think much of your analysis of Lawson here. If he was objective I doubt he would say that an instance of mass murder skewed the results. They are part of the results, like it or not. And so what if one sceptic doesn't approach it the way I do? You might be forgetting that what we are talking about is an obviously ambiguous set of statistics that supposedly means the world could be made peaceful on the basis of people jumping up and down on bits of foam. Who isn't going to laugh at that? If all you can say is that the results would have been better if some nutjob hadn't gone postal with an AK47 then it isn't a great demonstration of Heaven on Earth is it? You are going to have to do better and often and come up with an explanation that isn't a bunch of new age hogwash. Unobjective? I was curious enough to learn how to do it. But here's the clincher; Why doesn't the Maharishi Effect affect everyone? It is supposed to be the infinitely powerful unified field after all (ask Buck for details). If you want to fall back on the old TM standby of It was a bit of unstressing then you have to accept that the rapes and murders that did happen wouldn't have happened if the TMO weren't there. I dub it BS until there is Heaven on Earth. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote : Salyavin, I posted a link to the study. Have a look at it, please, in particular the explanation of the methodology. It's a lot more complicated than you think to determine whether the rate actually went down during the study period. The issue is whether, in the absence of the meditating group, the violent crime rate would have been what the researchers projected it to be statistically, or what it actually was with the meditating group. Then read the rebuttal to the Skeptical
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Bit of a problem responding intelligently, eh, Salyavin? Are you for real? You mean, anyone who has read the Ninth Mandala in the translation TM uses will know that's how the Ninth Mandala in that translation describes soma. But they won't necessarily know to what degree that description is symbolic/poetic/metaphorical rather than literal, or even whether the original has been translated accurately (from the ancient Sanskrit to German, then from German to English). Indeed, and why bother? Anyone who has read the 9th Mandala of the Rig Veda will know it's a drink made from plant extracts. Soma (Sanskrit सोम sóma), or Haoma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haoma (Avestan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a Vedic ritual drink[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma#cite_note-1 of importance among the early Indo-Iranians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Iranians, and the subsequent Vedic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_civilization and greater Persian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Iran cultures. It is frequently mentioned in the Rigveda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigveda, whose Soma Mandala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_Mandala contains 114 hymns, many praising its energizing qualities. In the Avesta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avesta, Haoma has the entire Yašt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C5%A1t 20 and Yasna http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasna 9-11 dedicated to it. It is described as being prepared by extracting juice from the stalks of a certain plant. In both Vedic and Zoroastrian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrian tradition, the name of the drink and the plant are the same, and also personified as a divinity, the three forming a religious or mythological unity. There has been much speculation concerning what is most likely to have been the identity of the original plant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_identity_of_Soma-Haoma. There is no solid consensus on the question, although some Western experts outside the Vedic and Avestan religious traditions now seem to favour a species of Ephedra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_(genus), perhaps Ephedra sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra_sinica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma Sounds speedy!
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : you shot your erudite arguments all to hell by saying there were no grandiose claims - that's all TM is, is grandiose claims - spin don't have shit to do with it. marshy was a liar, a con artist, a Hindu fanatic and very superstitious. Michael, my comments were about the introductory lecture. If you maintain that it contains grandiose claims, why don't you produce some evidence of that. It's been a long time since I gave one, but it was all pretty basic. Probably you can't find any, and then your usual tactic is to go off point and find some other issue to rail against. I believe the FFL term for that is changing the context. . Like okay, maybe the introductory lecture doesn't make grandiose claims,but Maharishi was still a blah, blah, blah The inability to say on point shows a real weakness in debating an issue. Definitely points off for that. wish to declare your usual If you wanna argue superstition, try telling Turq that he didn't see M flee a room just because chairs were upended. So what if he was superstitious, and acted irrationally sometimes. You have a poor understanding of what the state of enlightenment is. People have idiosyncrasies before enlightenment, and idiosyncrasies after enlightenment. I am not speaking from experience, just from observation. And of course that is only my opinion. But you are so hell bent on finding fault wherever you look wr to TM, that often whatever good points you make are clouded by your animus towards the organization. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 9:10 PM Michael, with all due respect, you are not an expert on Hinduism, or even superstitious Hinduism for that matter. I think we saw that last week. So you have an opinion on the relationship of Soma and the Vedic Gods, but it is just your interpretation, unless you claim to be able to decipher the clear meaning of the Vedic verses. You probably don't know what chemicals a refined nervous system may create, and if they have any effect on ones environment, or the elements of nature, if there is such a thing. So, you may choose to spin Maharishi's comments in anyway you choose, but the case you are making seems rather weak to me. The introductory lecture for TM discusses benefits in four areas, if I'm not mistaken. There is a reference to the tradition that it comes from. But I don't think, in fact I know, there are no grandiose claims being made. I think sometimes your points are on target, but oftentimes not. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : Its the ninth mandala actually, but it was never phrased so that I remember - also it is significant that M who always claimed publicly to offer a technique that is non-religious to covertly tell everyone inthe room point blank that the purpose of meditation is to refine the body so it produces soma so Indra and the other gods can have lunch on your nickle and they will give you rewards as a result. This is not just Hinduism but superstitious Hinduism. If what he was teaching in this tape was legit, he would never had had the tapes recalled. As I believe the Turq said not long ago, if TM was a great as they claim it is, they wouldn't have to lie to sell it. I am also eager to hear from any other teachers who post here who have seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time and what they think of it now, or remember when the word came down to give 'em back to the Movement. I think its a very interesting bit of Movement history. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 11:41 AM Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
Michael aside from the philosophical question of we are enlightened, we just aren't aware of it, what I am speculating is that if there are states of enlightenment, and I believe there are, there are likely to be unique chemicals that either help produce the state, or are a byproduct of it. I can't say for sure, and don't really even care. It's just a speculation on my part. Yesterday as I was driving, I was wondering about the thought I had as a child that always scared me. what's beyond the edge of the universe. And since you brought up that other point about already being enlightened, but just not knowing it, the mind blower for me was that it is said that at some point you realize that the material world is just an illusion anyway. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : that is bullshit - that means that supposed enlightenment is NOT something that we already are, that we just don't pay attention to - that means that it is dependent on a chemical. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... mailto:steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 9:48 PM If Unity Consciousness is a reality, if God Consiousness is reality, in my opinion there would be some chemical produced that would be partly responsible for that. Soma sounds as good as any. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote : Steve, pretty funny that in the midst of all these Soma and the Gods posts, I received an ad with Subject line: This stuff is God in a bottle! On Thursday, April 3, 2014 6:41 AM, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Am I missing something, because isn't that what the 10th mandala is about in just about every verse. So even though it's been some 20 plus years since I listened to it, that's my recollection. Evidently that is something the Vedas concern themselves with. Do you consider this revelation? I guess you do. Are you are trying to paint it as some strange ritual where people splay themselves out and cry, Indra, eat me, eat me! If so, I must have missed that. (-: ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : I just found it interesting - as I said I think, somehow this particular document had escaped my attention. I was told during the sidhi prep courses that we produce soma in the stomach and only if we have soma being produced can we have experiences of higher states of consciousness. That's what the governors who taught the courses told us and those would be Greg Palma, Walter Gibbons and Paul Potter (for those here who love to have sources quoted). But nothing was ever said about the gods eating it and giving us blessings as a result. I had no idea such a tape existed and I wanted to hear from the TM teachers here to see if they had seen the tape and what they thought of it at the time they saw it. That's all. On Thu, 4/3/14, steve.sundur@... steve.sundur@... wrote: Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Date: Thursday, April 3, 2014, 3:49 AM You know Michael, I wish I knew more about Soma, about the Vedas, about the Vedic Gods. But I don't. There are some who think it is all a bunch of jibberish. I think Barry may be in this camp, and I hope I am not misrepresenting him. But I do generally have respect for ancient traditions. And I think most traditions have a more superficial aspect and a deeper, hidden aspect. I think the teachings of Jesus show this as well. What you relate about Maharishi's comments about Soma being produced in the gut, and God's feasting on it, doesn't really strike me as that strange. I think it's probably standard stuff in some schools of Hinduism. But do you really think they needed this to try to make a case of Hindu roots for TM? I mean the Puja could probably make that case. And that is hardly hidden. And I guess you could parse whether the Mantras have meaning or meaningless, but for whatever reason, and in some way, the technique has worked for many people, and still works for people who are just now learning it. And I believe at some point early in the movement it was discussed whether to bring it out as a religious practice, or a scientific one. Obviously the scientific approach won out. But of course the Hindu, or religious overtones
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Soma and the Gods
On 4/3/2014 1:34 AM, TurquoiseBee wrote: The whole IDEA of them is that these supposed gods and goddesses are so neurotic and so insecure that they'll respond to being praised by puny-ass humans praying to them and offering them fruit and hankies and large sums of cash. You probably couldn't get more prejudiced against Hindus than this statement. Of course, almost the whole of Western civilization is based on the very same ideas, and the basis for most of the Indo-European languages. But, why is it that Barry wants to denigrate the Hindus? Answer: For the simple reason that he thinks it will get back at Judy. It's all about Judy. It has nothing to do with basic TM practice. It has nothing to do with comparative religions. Barry just can't resist sinking to almost any level in order to win a religious debate. Go figure.
