subject:"Re\: \[FairfieldLife\] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates"

Serotonin IS produced by teh human digestive system and IS consumed by that 
same system. 

 It's been known for a very long time. Maharishi may have read something about 
it in school, even. 
 
L
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 contact her and ask her if you want to know - she was actually referring to 
other aspects of his teaching as well, tho she did not say specifically what. I 
sent her both links so she may have read both pages. I read, as you call it, 
the actual transcript and tho the author of the piece on it did describe it 
in somewhat scoffing terms, he didn't make anything up. The fact that M, a 
Hindu, can straightfaced claim that soma is a substance produced by the human 
digestive system and that Hindu gods drink that refined product is food itself 
for derision. He was either superstitious or a monumental liar. I vote for 
both. 
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, 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: Friday, April 4, 2014, 5:32 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Did any of her
 Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or
 are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for
 soma eating Hindu gods image? Or some other revolting
 image of her own devising?
 
 The woman who got TM
 kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing
 Hindu, tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day that
 Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the humans as
 a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs Hindus
 the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in India
 feel the same way she says.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-05 Thread salyavin808


 So it isn't anything to do with the unified field? I could have told you that.
 

 But maybe people watched it and just don't share your confidence about what it 
all means?
 

 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote :

 Did any of you guys even bother to watch the video on EEG done by Alaric 
Arenander that I linked to. The entirity of the 4 higher states of 
consciousness was shown in the EEG, I suspect.  

 I could draw parallels between each major higher stage of consciousness that 
MMY talked about, and the various patterns of EEG shown. Alaric knew this, too, 
though he didn't go so far as to name them expliclly.
 

 He pointed out pure sense of self over and over again within the context of 
highly coherent frontal lobe alpha 1 EEG.
 

 He pointed out the integration of world and self many times as well. The 
glorified cosmic consciousness was shown in the last part of the video where 
he showed that not only was the alpha EEG in hte frontal lobes becoming almost 
100% coherent, but that the coherence in beta and gamma frequencies was 
approaching the level found in alpha1 EEG before the meditator had gone on the 
Invincible America course for several years (hint hint).
 

 

 L

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I would say that tehre's a lot LESS to it than that. 

 L
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote :

 Well, Barry, actually there is more to it than that. It's been a long time for 
you, and as we all know, you have a lousy memory that is getting worse the 
older you become. 

 

 

 And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that. 
As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

The technique of TM is think a mantra but don't try. 

 There, now you can be sure that no-one will ever pay a cent to teh TM 
organization again, because learning from a one-line webpage text is the same 
as learning from a teacher trained to make a carefully choreographed 
presentation.
 

 

 L

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

OBviously you didn't look at the video link I gave of Alaric Arenander's talk 
on EEG and TM. 

 The last minute or so is a before/after of a guy who had been practicing TM 
and teh TM-SIdhis for several years on the Invincible America Course. 
 

 Regardless of how trivial the techniques seem, there is something going on, 
obviously.
 

 Whether or not you needed to go take a course to learn to do them properly 
is immaterial. IN the most important way, they appear to work as advertised.
 

 L

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-05 Thread TurquoiseBee

From: lengli...@cox.net lengli...@cox.net

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Saturday, April 5, 2014 8:51 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

OBviously you didn't look at the video link I gave of Alaric Arenander's talk 
on EEG and TM.
The last minute or so is a before/after of a guy who had been practicing TM and 
teh TM-SIdhis for several years on the Invincible America Course. 

Regardless of how trivial the techniques seem, there is something going on, 
obviously.

Whether or not you needed to go take a course to learn to do them properly is 
immaterial. IN the most important way, they appear to work as advertised.

Speaking of TM working as advertised, Lawson, how's it going with that 
medication you were taking to treat your Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?

I ask because it seems to have been working OK for the last few months, but 
you've just made 28 posts (so far) between the hours of 9:00 PM and Midnight, 
your time. 

And every single post was an attempt to justify -- if not glorify -- the ideas 
and theories of a guy who (if I am not mistaken) you never met, and who charged 
you considerable sums of cash for everything he ever taught you. 

You bring the concept of cult fan boy to new heights. Congratulations.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-05 Thread authfriend

Perhaps you're so highly evolved you didn't need it, Lawson, but my Center 
Invincibility Course took six weekends, plus the two-week flying block at MIU. 
That was a whole lot of instruction in how to use the sutras. 
 
 I would say that tehre's a lot LESS to it than that.
 

 

 

 

 Well, Barry, actually there is more to it than that. It's been a long time for 
you, and as we all know, you have a lousy memory that is getting worse the 
older you become. 

 

 

 And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that. 
As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Well, my point was that the practice itself, like TM, is incredibly simple. 

 L
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote :

 Perhaps you're so highly evolved you didn't need it, Lawson, but my Center 
Invincibility Course took six weekends, plus the two-week flying block at MIU. 
That was a whole lot of instruction in how to use the sutras. 
 
 I would say that tehre's a lot LESS to it than that.
 

 

 

 

 Well, Barry, actually there is more to it than that. It's been a long time for 
you, and as we all know, you have a lousy memory that is getting worse the 
older you become. 

 

 

 And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that. 
As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-05 Thread authfriend

Barry's claim was that you could get a book with all the sutras in it and so 
didn't need to take the course. That's what I was responding to. 

 

 

 Well, my point was that the practice itself, like TM, is incredibly simple. 

 L
 

 Perhaps you're so highly evolved you didn't need it, Lawson, but my Center 
Invincibility Course took six weekends, plus the two-week flying block at MIU. 
That was a whole lot of instruction in how to use the sutras. 
 
 I would say that tehre's a lot LESS to it than that.
 

 

 

 

 Well, Barry, actually there is more to it than that. It's been a long time for 
you, and as we all know, you have a lousy memory that is getting worse the 
older you become. 

 

 

 And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that. 
As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-04 Thread salyavin808


 Nice editing. You are conveniently dishonest when it suits you. 
 

 I don't get why you find communicating so difficult, as soon as you get on the 
losing side of an argument you start railing and twisting against irrelevant 
points that are all perfectly valid in an argument against the ME by claiming 
you wouldn't have thought that in the first place. It makes no sense unless  
you just like arguing and attempting to feel superior and/or wounded and long 
suffering over other peoples perceived stupidity. Sure haven't seen much 
behaviour like that from you
 

 If you're a sceptic too why bother? 
 

 Try these instead:
 

  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?
 

 So why would any crime agency choose yogic flying over something that works 
better?
 

 

 

  

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote :

 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

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-04 Thread salyavin808

That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even. 
 I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think Darwin and 
Einstein.
 

 If I remember correctly it was Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in 
a Faraday cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic impulses as 
well as everything else - and getting people to meditate (or not) outside to 
see what changes there were (or not). The purpose of this approach is to make 
sure we aren't affecting each others meditation with pheromones or changes in 
breathing or even the power of suggestion causing the claimed deeper 
experiences people have in group meditation. 
 

 Once you've done that and isolated the effect you can move onto the wider 
population and see what effect it's having on non-meditators nearby. Then all 
you've got to do is explain it, but with paranormal research it's data first 
and lots of it. 
 

 To stop the TMO accidentally kidding itself and producing flawed research they 
should hand the whole thing over to James Randi, he offers a million bucks to 
anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. With a force as strong as the 
unified field it ought to be a breeze! Could get some mighty fine yagya's with 
that sort of money.
 

 
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!
 
 Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23
 
 On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 
mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com 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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 8:21 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

Nice editing. You are conveniently dishonest when it suits you. 

I don't get why you find communicating so difficult, as soon as you get on the 
losing side of an argument you start railing and twisting against irrelevant 
points that are all perfectly valid in an argument against the ME by claiming 
you wouldn't have thought that in the first place. It makes no sense unless  
you just like arguing and attempting to feel superior and/or wounded and long 
suffering over other peoples perceived stupidity. Sure haven't seen much 
behaviour like that from you

If you're a sceptic too why bother? 

1. Because the point of arguing is simply to argue, not to win. She's going 
to declare victory anyway. 

2. Because she wants to be seen as doing something to defend the idea of the 
ME while simultaneously claiming not to believe in it. She believes this 
exempts her from being a cult apologist, even though she consistently takes 
positions that place her in the position of doing just that -- apologizing for 
the cult.

3. Because the *real* point of any argument is to find something -- anything -- 
in what the other person said that she can nitpick about and then use to claim 
that they are STOOOPID or a LIAR or both. The way she thinks, if she can find 
even one thing that allows her to do that, she's won. (And interestingly, 
this actually seems to actually work for the one or two people who still 
support her, because they're too dumb to notice that she's completely ignored 
most of the other points or questions raised by the person she's out to 
demean.) 

4. Because she has no choice. She's an argumentation vampire, and has to suck 
attention almost every day in the form of an argument or she'll burst into 
flames like those vampires on True Blood who get exposed to the sun.

5. Because someone out there is still WRONG, and it's her holy dharma to get 
them to admit it and apologize. 

Try these instead:

 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?

So why would any crime agency choose yogic flying over something that works 
better?

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote :

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

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

That's likely true of all b ut the most clearcut examples of new research 
programmes. The problem is that the TM organization abandoned attempting to 
conduct new research on the topic, so we're left with stale research. 

 Any theory can be rescued however, if proponents care to put enough time and 
energy into reconciling observed data  with modifications too the theory, but 
the TMO never bothred.
 

 Shrug.
 

 I think that the EEG microstates research, should it show what I suspect it 
will show, will potentially give new life to the ME theory.
 

 We'll see.
 

 L
 

 

 

 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!
 
 Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23
 
 On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 
mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com 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, 10:05 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto: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

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I don't know if Barry ever suggested that (he never mentioned it to me that I 
remember) but  I've been suggestiing variations on that idea for decades. The 
problem has been that Fred Travis' original research along that line (his PhD 
thesis actually) used 40 seconds average EEG and that's too coarse a 
measurement to use when the average EEG starts to approach the maximum anyway. 

 That's where EEG microstate research comes in. If they can establish a pattern 
found most often during PC,than they can look for statistical variations in 
that pattern along the lines of what you describe below.
 

 Of course, I'd start without the farady cage, and then with, if an effect were 
found in hte most liberal of circumstances.
 

 L
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :

 That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even. 
 I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think Darwin and 
Einstein.
 

 If I remember correctly it was Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in 
a Faraday cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic impulses as 
well as everything else - and getting people to meditate (or not) outside to 
see what changes there were (or not). The purpose of this approach is to make 
sure we aren't affecting each others meditation with pheromones or changes in 
breathing or even the power of suggestion causing the claimed deeper 
experiences people have in group meditation. 
 

 Once you've done that and isolated the effect you can move onto the wider 
population and see what effect it's having on non-meditators nearby. Then all 
you've got to do is explain it, but with paranormal research it's data first 
and lots of it. 
 

 To stop the TMO accidentally kidding itself and producing flawed research they 
should hand the whole thing over to James Randi, he offers a million bucks to 
anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. With a force as strong as the 
unified field it ought to be a breeze! Could get some mighty fine yagya's with 
that sort of money.
 

 
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!
 
 Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23
 
 On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 
mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com 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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do research 
to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect other people 
and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 


Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such a 
dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 




 From: lengli...@cox.net lengli...@cox.net
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
I don't know if Barry ever suggested that (he never mentioned it to me that I 
remember) but  I've been suggestiing variations on that idea for decades. The 
problem has been that Fred Travis' original research along that line (his PhD 
thesis actually) used 40 seconds average EEG and that's too coarse a 
measurement to use when the average EEG starts to approach the maximum anyway.

That's where EEG microstate research comes in. If they can establish a pattern 
found most often during PC,than they can look for statistical variations in 
that pattern along the lines of what you describe below.

Of course, I'd start without the farady cage, and then with, if an effect were 
found in hte most liberal of circumstances.

L


---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :


That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even.


I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think Darwin and 
Einstein.

If I remember correctly it was Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in a 
Faraday cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic impulses as 
well as everything else - and getting people to meditate (or not) outside to 
see what changes there were (or not). The purpose of this approach is to make 
sure we aren't affecting each others meditation with pheromones or changes in 
breathing or even the power of suggestion causing the claimed deeper 
experiences people have in group meditation. 

Once you've done that and isolated the effect you can move onto the wider 
population and see what effect it's having on non-meditators nearby. Then all 
you've got to do is explain it, but with paranormal research it's data first 
and lots of it. 

To stop the TMO accidentally kidding itself and producing flawed research they 
should hand the whole thing over to James Randi, he offers a million bucks to 
anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. With a force as strong as the 
unified field it ought to be a breeze! Could get some mighty fine yagya's with 
that sort of money.





---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :


It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!

Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23


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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-04 Thread salyavin808


 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, LEnglish5@... wrote :

 That's likely true of all but the most clearcut examples of new research 
programmes. The problem is that the TM organization abandoned attempting to 
conduct new research on the topic, so we're left with stale research
 

 That makes me highly suspicious of their own opinion of the quality of the 
research.
 

 Any theory can be rescued however, if proponents care to put enough time and 
energy into reconciling observed data  with modifications too the theory, but 
the TMO never bothered.
 

 You'd think the promise of a new field in physics and the concept that it 
fundamentally connects with conscious life is something physicists would be 
flocking to hear. Apparently not, something must be putting them off, whether 
it's poor research, lack of a supporting theoretical structure or the 
association of woo-woo yagya's etc. The TMO has got to pull its finger out if 
it wants to be taken seriously. 
 

 A case in point: I got a hopeless email this week from them - after yagya 
donations of course - that had a paragraph about supersymmetry and the 
connection between the formation of particles at the start of the universe and 
positivity in human consciousness. Hotmail deleted it permanently otherwise I'd 
post it here, but they've got to do better than that. Really, it's an abuse of 
science and John Hagelin knows it, unless he's right and everyone else is wrong 
about everything and the universe is here solely for us and for our benefit 
only. 
 

 Either way someone has a lot of explaining to do. As usual the onus is on the 
one making wild claims to show that it might even be possible, let alone the 
practicalities. I think they've given up being taken seriously and keep all 
this stuff in-house as an advertising ploy. The alternative - that the TM 
mythos about vedic physiology and quantum consciousness - is too ridiculous to 
contemplate in light of what we'd have to lose and pretend isn't true 
scientifically to accommodate it.
 

 I'll stick with what actual working physicists and cosmologists come up with 
as a model until the TMO gets some better ME research together.
 

 Shrug.
 

 I think that the EEG microstates research, should it show what I suspect it 
will show, will potentially give new life to the ME theory.
 

 Make it so. I'm always on the side of the optimists. Do you mind if I don't 
hold my breath?
 

 We'll see.
 

 L
 

 

 

 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!
 
 Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23
 
 On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 
mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com 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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do research 
to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect other people 
and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 

Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such a 
dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 

It occurs to me that someone should provide a little history about the TM 
Sidhis for those who weren't around when they first came out. 

That is, in the beginning there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or 
even the *concept* that we were doing it for the world or anything like that. 
The TMSP was marketed to us True Believers at the time as: 1) a way to master 
superpowers like levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly) progress more quickly 
towards one's *own* enlightenment. In the beginning, during the early courses, 
reason #1 was the one emphasized in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed 
and NO ONE ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales pitch to 
emphasize #2.

By this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed from the whole TM 
movement, and *at no point had anything ever been mentioned about the TMSP 
benefiting anyone other than the person practicing it*. 

The whole Maharishi Effect nonsense was invented later, after they had 
realized that not only the original reason #1 for practicing it was never going 
to happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen, either. People had spent 
literally thousands of dollars learning to fly without flying, and had spent 
similar amounts learning to become enlightened without that ever happening, 
either. Many people were beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM 
movement, *including* many who had learned the TMSP. 

So what they did was to invent two mechanisms to keep people hanging on, still 
chasing carrots at the end of the stick. The first was that the TMSP didn't 
work properly unless you were in a big roomful of people doing it with you. 
This was supposed to create a herd mentality and cause people to identify 
with the group, and of course it worked. The second was to invent the made-up 
Maharishi Effect and pretend that doing the TMSP was somehow benefiting other 
people, and the world. This worked, too, because it gave people a reason to 
keep practicing it, plus it made them feel self-important, because they were 
saving the world.

I just thought it was important to remind people of this, because some here 
like to pretend that the way the TMSP is currently marketed is how it always 
was. And they like to pretend that the idea of the ME was always present, and 
always part of the sales pitch. Neither is true.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters disputing this, and claiming 
that the idea of the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I 
challenge you to come up with a mention of the Maharishi Effect *per se* in 
*any* publication before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and 
applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total numbers of people practicing 
TM, or the old 1% of the population idea.

The earliest mention of any group effect I could find after a few rounds with 
Google's Advanced News Search page was this article from 1984, and that only 
mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time, super-radiance effect -- 


The Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some Iowans Are 
Hopping Mad

 Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a verifiable date (meaning 
*not* revised later in an attempt at revisionist history as many of the 
current TM publications have been) talking about a mass effect caused by the 
TM-Sidhi program, and in particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I think 
my point has been made. 


Which is that the ME is a made-up term that was late to the party, invented 
*long* after the TMSP had been invented and had already been marketed for other 
reasons for years. My broader point is that some TM apologists have been so 
trained to perform revisionist history in their own brains that they'll claim 
it was present at the beginning of the TMSP program, *even though they 
themselves weren't*.

Besides, the old 1984 People article is pretty funny, given the current state 
of Fairfield and the fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in 
the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)





 From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do research 
to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect other people 
and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 


Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such a 
dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 


It occurs to me that someone should provide a little history about the TM 
Sidhis for those who weren't around when they first came out. 

That is, in the beginning there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or 
even the *concept* that we were doing it for the world or anything like that. 
The TMSP was marketed to us True Believers at the time as: 1) a way to master 
superpowers like
 levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly) progress more quickly towards one's 
*own* enlightenment. In the beginning, during the early courses, reason #1 was 
the one emphasized in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed and NO ONE 
ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales pitch to emphasize 
#2.

By this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed from the whole TM 
movement, and *at no point had anything ever been mentioned about the TMSP 
benefiting anyone other than the person practicing it*. 

The whole Maharishi Effect nonsense was invented later, after they had 
realized that not only the original reason #1 for practicing it was never going 
to
 happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen, either. People had spent 
literally thousands of dollars learning to fly without flying, and had spent 
similar amounts learning to become enlightened without that ever happening, 
either. Many people were beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM 
movement, *including* many who had learned the TMSP. 

So what they did was to invent two mechanisms to keep people hanging on, still 
chasing carrots at the end of the stick. The first was that the TMSP didn't 
work properly unless you were in a big roomful of people doing it with you. 
This was supposed to create a herd mentality and cause people to identify 
with the group, and of course it worked. The second was to invent the made-up 
Maharishi Effect and pretend that doing the TMSP was somehow benefiting other 
people, and the world. This worked, too, because it gave people a reason to 
keep practicing it, plus it made them feel self-important,
 because they were saving the world.

I just thought it was important to remind people of this, because some here 
like to pretend that the way the TMSP is currently marketed is how it always 
was. And they like to pretend that the idea of the ME was always present, and 
always part of the sales pitch. Neither is true.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

turq, I think it's part of human nature to want to share with others whatever 
we have found that enriches life, increases happiness, etc. I think doing 
research is part of that aspect of human nature. And also an expression of 
innate human curiosity to better understand ourselves and the world around us.


On Friday, April 4, 2014 3:48 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
  
The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do research 
to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect other people 
and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 


Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such a 
dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 




 From: lengli...@cox.net lengli...@cox.net
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
I don't know if Barry ever suggested that (he never mentioned it to me that I 
remember) but  I've been suggestiing variations on that idea for decades. The 
problem has been that Fred Travis' original research along that line (his PhD 
thesis actually) used 40 seconds average EEG and that's too coarse a 
measurement to use when the average EEG starts to approach the maximum anyway.

That's where EEG microstate research comes in. If they can establish a pattern 
found most often during PC,than they can look for statistical variations in 
that pattern along the lines of what you describe below.

Of course, I'd start without the farady cage, and then with, if an effect were 
found in hte most liberal of circumstances.

L


---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :


That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even.


I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think Darwin and 
Einstein.

If I remember correctly it was Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in a 
Faraday cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic impulses as 
well as everything else - and getting people to meditate (or not) outside to 
see what changes there were (or not). The purpose of this approach is to make 
sure we aren't affecting each others meditation with pheromones or changes in 
breathing or even the power of suggestion causing the claimed deeper 
experiences people have in group meditation. 

Once you've done that and isolated the effect you can move onto the wider 
population and see what effect it's having on non-meditators nearby. Then all 
you've got to do is explain it, but with paranormal research it's data first 
and lots of it. 

To stop the TMO accidentally kidding itself and producing flawed research they 
should hand the whole thing over to James Randi, he offers a million bucks to 
anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. With a force as strong as the 
unified field it ought to be a breeze! Could get some mighty fine yagya's with 
that sort of money.





---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :


It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!

Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23


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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I think I'll go over the the university and shake Professor Markovsky's hand 
for his mighty fine erudite analysis of the Marshy Effect. 

On Fri, 4/4/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 6:41 AM

   That's the guy. He did some good
 thinking on it and offered an explanation of why the rest of
 the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus
 is very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it
 so others can get an idea of how it might .work - the
 feasibility of how it might work
 even.
 I think you can always spot a bad
 theory when it raises more questions than it answers. For
 every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of
 many more things that it throws into confusion and the
 closer you get to physics the harder it gets to explain. If
 all this coherence is being passed through some field into
 other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field
 differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What
 does human society mean to the fundamental structure of the
 universe? How come no one has found the unified field? It
 goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely
 rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's
 incontravertible, think Darwin and
 Einstein.
 If I remember correctly it was
 Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in a Faraday
 cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic
 impulses as well as everything else - and getting people to
 meditate (or not) outside to see what changes there were (or
 not). The purpose of this approach is to make sure we
 aren't affecting each others meditation with pheromones
 or changes in breathing or even the power of suggestion
 causing the claimed deeper experiences people have in group
 meditation. 
 Once you've done that and isolated
 the effect you can move onto the wider population and see
 what effect it's having on non-meditators nearby. Then
 all you've got to do is explain it, but with paranormal
 research it's data first and lots of
 it. 
 To stop the TMO accidentally kidding
 itself and producing flawed research they should hand the
 whole thing over to James Randi, he offers a million bucks
 to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. With a
 force as strong as the unified field it ought to be a
 breeze! Could get some mighty fine yagya's with that
 sort of money.

 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@...
 wrote :

 It was Barry
 Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South
 Carolina! Whoo hoo!

 Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the
 Maharishi Effect theory and commented, “The theory
 receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are
 undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex,
 undefined terms or metaphors.”22 They concluded that the
 theory’s claims “do not merit being taken seriously by
 the scientific community. The theory motivating the research
 is ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior
 knowledge; the evidence offered is not impressive and
 mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible explanations
 for the findings.”23

  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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

turq, I think it's part of human nature to want to share with others whatever 
we have found that enriches life, increases happiness, etc. I think doing 
research is part of that aspect of human nature. And also an expression of 
innate human curiosity to better understand ourselves and the world around us.

While sharing *can* be a motivation, I think that with many people who have 
turned evangelizing TM into almost a full-time occupation that there may be 
other factors at work as well. Such as trying to maintain one's *own* will to 
believe by convincing others to believe the same thing they do. Or such as 
trying to prove oneself superior to others because of course youknow how 
things really work and the ones you're preaching to don't. 

In the case of the TM researchers themselves -- almost ALL of whom are or were 
Maharishi devotees -- I think a factor that needs to be considered is that 
doing research on TM and getting it published was one of the ONLY ways they 
could get the personal attention of the guy they considered their master, 
Maharishi himself. The only other way you could do that was by being rich and 
giving him a lot of money, or by being famous and allowing him to use your name 
to make more money. I had a couple of these TM researchers back in the late 
1960s and early 1970s admit to me that they changed their majors *so that* they 
could do exactly this and get closer to Maharishi. One said, I'm in it for 
the darshan. This strikes me as an attitude that might tempt them to skew or 
fake results, because only good findings would result in a pat on the back 
from Maharishi.

I notice, however, that you completely missed the real point of my original 
comment. The very IDEA that bouncing around on one's butt can affect world 
peace, the weather, and crime rates is *INSANE*. It's laughable. If you hadn't 
already been indoctrinated by so many years of having accepted so many other 
absurd ideas when you first heard this, you would have laughed at it, too.     

On Friday, April 4, 2014 3:48 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote:

The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do research 
to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect other people 
and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 

Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such a 
dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 

 From: lengli...@cox.net lengli...@cox.net
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

I don't know if Barry ever suggested that (he never mentioned it to me that I 
remember) but  I've been suggestiing variations on that idea for decades. The 
problem has been that Fred Travis' original research along that line (his PhD 
thesis actually) used 40 seconds average EEG and that's too coarse a 
measurement to use when the average EEG starts to approach the maximum anyway.

That's where EEG microstate research comes in. If they can establish a pattern 
found most often during PC,than they can look for statistical variations in 
that pattern along the lines of what you describe below.

Of course, I'd start without the farady cage, and then with, if an effect were 
found in hte most liberal of circumstances.

L

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :

That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even.

I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think Darwin and 
Einstein.

If I remember correctly it was Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in a 
Faraday cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic impulses as 
well as everything else - and getting people to meditate (or not) outside to 
see what changes

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Those are excellent points. The ME is the reason behind the yagya program as 
well, as supposedly the effect of yagya enhances or is similar to ME so that 
world peace can be achieved by yagya (ignoring that fact that India itself is a 
rather rough place to live for most of its population even tho one can 
supposedly give a few rupees to a priest to do yagya for you and get you all 
the stuff you want from the gods) - So create the non-existent ME and it proves 
to be useful to create other money generating enterprises as well.




 It occurs to me that
 someone should provide a little history about the TM Sidhis
 for those who weren't around when they first came out. 
 
 That is, in the beginning there was NONE of this
 Maharishi Effect crap or even the *concept* that
 we were doing it for the world or anything like
 that. The TMSP was marketed to us True Believers at the time
 as: 1) a way to master superpowers like
  levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly)
 progress more quickly towards one's *own*
 enlightenment. In the beginning,
 during the early courses, reason #1 was the one emphasized
 in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed and NO ONE
 ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales
 pitch to emphasize #2.
 
 By this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed
 from the whole TM movement, and *at no point had anything
 ever been mentioned about the TMSP benefiting anyone other
 than the person practicing it*. 
 
 The whole Maharishi Effect nonsense was invented
 later, after they had realized that not only the original
 reason #1 for practicing it was never going to
  happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen,
 either. People had spent literally thousands of dollars
 learning to fly without flying, and had spent
 similar amounts learning to become enlightened
 without that ever happening, either. Many people were
 beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM movement,
 *including* many who had learned the TMSP. 
 
 So what they did was to invent two mechanisms to keep people
 hanging on, still chasing carrots at the end of the stick.
 The first was that the TMSP didn't work
 properly unless you were in a big roomful of people doing it
 with you. This was supposed to create a herd
 mentality and cause people to identify with the group, and
 of course it worked. The second was to invent the made-up
 Maharishi Effect and pretend that doing the TMSP
 was somehow benefiting other people, and the world. This
 worked, too, because it gave people a reason to keep
 practicing it, plus it made them feel self-important,
  because they were saving the world.
 
 I just thought it was important to remind people of this,
 because some here like to pretend that the way the TMSP is
 currently marketed is how it always was. And they like to
 pretend that the idea of the ME was always present, and
 always part of the sales pitch. Neither is
 true.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

turq, the physics of it makes sense to me. That's all. And even this morning I 
received a newsletter from a non TM group explaining how changing 1% of a 
system improved the whole kit and caboodle. 


On Friday, April 4, 2014 7:08 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
  
From: Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
turq, I think it's part of human nature to want to share with others whatever 
we have found that enriches life, increases happiness, etc. I think doing 
research is part of that aspect of human nature. And also an expression of 
innate human curiosity to better understand ourselves and the world around us.


While sharing *can* be a motivation, I think that with many people who have 
turned evangelizing TM into almost a full-time occupation that there may be 
other factors at work as well. Such as trying to maintain one's *own* will to 
believe by convincing others to believe the same thing they do. Or such as 
trying to prove oneself superior to others because of course youknow how 
things really work and the ones you're preaching to don't. 

In the case of the TM researchers themselves -- almost ALL of whom are or were 
Maharishi devotees -- I think a factor that needs to be considered is that 
doing research on TM and getting it published was one of the ONLY ways they 
could get the personal attention of the guy they considered their master, 
Maharishi himself. The only other way you could do that was by being rich and 
giving him a lot of money, or by being famous and allowing him to use your name 
to make more money. I had a couple of
 these TM researchers back in the late 1960s and early 1970s admit to me that 
they changed their majors *so that* they could do exactly this and get closer 
to Maharishi. One said, I'm in it for the darshan. This strikes me as an 
attitude that might tempt them to skew or fake results, because only good 
findings would result in a pat on the back from Maharishi.

I notice, however, that you completely missed the real point of my original 
comment. The very IDEA that bouncing around on one's butt can affect world 
peace, the weather, and crime rates is *INSANE*. It's laughable. If you hadn't 
already been indoctrinated by so many years of having accepted so many other 
absurd ideas when you first heard this, you would have laughed at it, too.     

On Friday, April 4, 2014 3:48 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote:
 
  
The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do research 
to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect other people 
and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 


Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such a 
dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 




 From: lengli...@cox.net lengli...@cox.net
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:37 AM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
I don't know if Barry ever suggested that (he never mentioned it to me that I 
remember) but  I've been suggestiing variations on that idea for decades. The 
problem has been that Fred Travis' original research along that line (his PhD 
thesis actually) used 40 seconds average EEG and that's too coarse a 
measurement to use when the average EEG starts to approach the maximum anyway.

That's where EEG microstate research comes in. If they can establish a pattern 
found most often during PC,than they can look for statistical variations in 
that pattern along the lines of what you describe below.

Of course, I'd start without the farady cage, and then with, if an effect were 
found in hte most liberal of circumstances.

L


---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :


That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even.


I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.

On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

   Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
 of the population idea.

 The earliest mention of any group effect I could
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
 super-radiance effect -- 

 The
 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
 Iowans Are Hopping Mad
   Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
 at revisionist history as many of the current TM
 publications have been) talking about a mass
 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
 think my point has been made. 

 Which is that the ME is a made-up term
 that was late to the party, invented *long*
 after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
 marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is
 that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform
 revisionist history in their own brains that
 they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the
 TMSP program, *even though they themselves
 weren't*.
 Besides, the old 1984 People article is
 pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the
 fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in
 the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)

 From:
  TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com
  To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
  Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates

   From: TurquoiseBee
 turquoi...@yahoo.com
  To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 

 Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
  Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates

   The point I don't understand, Lawson, is
 WHY anyone would want to do research to validate
 or prove something as ludicrous as We can
 affect other people and the world by bouncing around on our
 butts on slabs of foam. 

 Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough
 of an attachment to such a dumbfuck idea as to want to
 prove it. 

 It occurs to me that
 someone should provide a little history about the TM Sidhis
 for those who weren't around when they first came out.

 That is, in the beginning
 there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or
 even the *concept* that we were doing it for the
 world or anything like that. The TMSP was marketed to
 us True Believers at the time as:
  1) a way to master superpowers like
  levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly)
 progress more quickly towards one's *own*
 enlightenment. In the beginning,
 during the early courses, reason #1 was the one emphasized
 in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed and NO ONE
 ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales
 pitch to emphasize #2.

 By
 this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed
 from the whole TM movement, and *at no point had anything
 ever been mentioned about the TMSP benefiting anyone other
 than the person practicing it*. 

 The whole Maharishi Effect nonsense
 was invented later, after they had realized that not only
 the original
  reason #1 for practicing it was never going to
  happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen,
 either. People had spent literally thousands of dollars
 learning to fly without flying, and had spent
 similar amounts learning to become enlightened
 without that ever happening, either. Many people were
 beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM movement,
 *including* many who had learned the TMSP. 

 So what they did was to invent
 two mechanisms to keep people hanging on, still chasing
 carrots at the end of the stick. The first was that the TMSP
 didn't work properly unless you were in a
 big roomful of people doing it with you. This was supposed

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right. You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every 
turn. The Meissner-Like Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi 
Effect” in publication goes back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of 
paper 98 in The Scientific Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected 
Papers, Vol 1 and its introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked 
around before that on courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was 
being published in a sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
 of the population idea.
 
 The earliest mention of any group effect I could
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
 super-radiance effect -- 
 
 The
 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
 Iowans Are Hopping Mad
  Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
 at revisionist history as many of the current TM
 publications have been) talking about a mass
 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
 think my point has been made. 
 
 Which is that the ME is a made-up term
 that was late to the party, invented *long*
 after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
 marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is
 that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform
 revisionist history in their own brains that
 they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the
 TMSP program, *even though they themselves
 weren't*.
 Besides, the old 1984 People article is
 pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the
 fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in
 the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)
 
 
 
 From:
 TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@...
 To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com;
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
 Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 From: TurquoiseBee
 turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@...
 To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com;
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 
 Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
 Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The point I don't understand, Lawson, is
 WHY anyone would want to do research to validate
 or prove something as ludicrous as We can
 affect other people and the world by bouncing around on our
 butts on slabs of foam. 
 
 Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough
 of an attachment to such a dumbfuck idea as to want to
 prove it. 
 
 
 It occurs to me that
 someone should provide a little history about the TM Sidhis
 for those who weren't around when they first came out.
 
 
 That is, in the beginning
 there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or
 even the *concept* that we were doing it for the
 world or anything like that. The TMSP was marketed to
 us True Believers at the time as:
 1) a way to master superpowers like
 levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly)
 progress more quickly towards one's *own*
 enlightenment. In the beginning,
 during the early courses, reason #1 was the one emphasized
 in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed and NO ONE
 ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales
 pitch to emphasize #2.
 
 By
 this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed
 from the whole TM movement, and *at no point had anything
 ever been mentioned about the TMSP benefiting anyone other
 than the person practicing

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates


 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :

 That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even. 
 I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think Darwin and 
Einstein.
 

 If I remember correctly it was Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in 
a Faraday cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic impulses as 
well as everything else - and getting people to meditate (or not) outside to 
see what changes there were (or not). The purpose of this approach is to make 
sure we aren't affecting each others meditation with pheromones or changes in 
breathing or even the power of suggestion causing the claimed deeper 
experiences people have in group meditation. 
 

 Once you've done that and isolated the effect you can move onto the wider 
population and see what effect it's having on non-meditators nearby. Then all 
you've got to do is explain it, but with paranormal research it's data first 
and lots of it. 
 

 To stop the TMO accidentally kidding itself and producing flawed research they 
should hand the whole thing over to James Randi, he offers a million bucks to 
anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. With a force as strong as the 
unified field it ought to be a breeze! Could get some mighty fine yagya's with 
that sort of money.
 

 So, apparently there is an ME but not the E that he (and the Movement) claims 
there is. The ME is all sorts of people running around believing their 
collective meditations are creating world peace and that one day they will fly 
or, indeed, are flying already. Maharishi had lots of effects but as far as I 
can tell none of them have anything to do with greater world consciousness as a 
result of meditating. On the other hand, the ME can be witnessed in a few 
people here who still seem to display his influence in their lives, and not 
only for the positive. I think it is a simple matter of re-defining what the ME 
is and it seems different for everyone (or almost everyone).
 

 
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!
 
 Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23
 
 On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 
mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com 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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 8:21 AM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

   Nice editing. You are conveniently dishonest when it suits you. 

 I don't get why you find communicating so difficult, as soon as you get on the 
losing side of an argument you start railing and twisting against irrelevant 
points that are all perfectly valid in an argument against the ME by claiming 
you wouldn't have thought that in the first place. It makes no sense unless  
you just like arguing and attempting to feel superior and/or wounded and long 
suffering over other peoples perceived stupidity. Sure haven't seen much 
behaviour like that from you

 If you're a sceptic too why bother? 

1. Because the point of arguing is simply to argue, not to win. She's going 
to declare victory anyway. 

2. Because she wants to be seen as doing something to defend the idea of the 
ME while simultaneously claiming not to believe in it. She believes this 
exempts her from being a cult apologist, even though she consistently takes 
positions that place her in the position of doing just that -- apologizing for 
the cult.

3. Because the *real* point of any argument is to find something -- anything -- 
in what the other person said that she can nitpick about and then use to claim 
that they are STOOOPID or a LIAR or both. The way she thinks, if she can find 
even one thing that allows her to do that, she's won. (And interestingly, 
this actually seems to actually work for the one or two people who still 
support her, because they're too dumb to notice that she's completely ignored 
most of the other points or questions raised by the person she's out to 
demean.) 

4. Because she has no choice. She's an argumentation vampire, and has to suck 
attention almost every day in the form of an argument or she'll burst into 
flames like those vampires on True Blood who get exposed to the sun.

5. Because someone out there is still WRONG, and it's her holy dharma to get 
them to admit it and apologize. 

 Bawwy appears to have done a virtually life-long study on Judy. This would be 
admirable except for the fact that he professes to despise her and thinks she 
is some cunt too stupid to live (his words, not mine) which now makes it appear 
to be some disease on his part. Imagine focusing and writing about and 
responding to someone who you think is crazy, bitter, a cultist, a cunt and 
otherwise the scum of the Earth for so many years. Could this be the Judy 
Effect? Bawwy certainly appears to be unable to let her go, to ignore her, to 
stay unaffected and unmoved. This is actually quite hilarious given Bawwy's 
claims to all those things he, er, claims about himself which is a list too 
long to include here.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates


 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do 
research to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect 
other people and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 

 

 Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such 
a dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 

 

 Well, you've certainly proven, without a doubt, the existence of the Judy 
Effect and you don't even have to move a muscle off the couch for it to be in 
full effect. I will, from this time forward, refer to this interesting 
phenomena as the JE and you appear to be most susceptible to it. You might want 
to reevaluate some dumbfuck idea to figure out why you are so vulnerable to 
her.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: dhamiltony...@yahoo.com dhamiltony...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

Nope.  Well, Turquoiseb is in error about
his 1978 assertion and you are wrong for thinking he is right. 

I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 
Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

You
guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn.The
Meissner-Like Effect of consciousness coherence in the  “Maharishi
Effect” in publication goes back to at least [ 1976 ] with the
publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific Research on Transcendental
Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its introduction and preface
in such.   It was known and talked around before that on courses and
conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
-Buck

mjackson74 writes:

I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.

On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... wrote:

Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
challenge you to come up with a mention of the
Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
of the population idea.

The earliest mention of any group effect I could
find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
super-radiance effect -- 

The
Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
Iowans Are Hopping Mad
 Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
at revisionist history as many of the current TM
publications have been) talking about a mass
effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
think my point has been made. 

Which is that the ME is a made-up term
that was late to the party, invented *long*
after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is
that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform
revisionist history in their own brains that
they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the
TMSP program, *even though they themselves
weren't*.
Besides, the old 1984 People article is
pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the
fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in
the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)

From:
TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
To:
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday,
April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
Subject: Re:
[FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
Crime Rates

From: TurquoiseBee
turquoiseb@...
To:
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 

Sent: Friday,
April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
Subject: Re:
[FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
Crime Rates

The point I don't understand, Lawson, is
WHY anyone would want to do research to validate
or prove something as ludicrous as We can
affect other people and the world by bouncing around on our
butts on slabs of foam. 

Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough
of an attachment to such a dumbfuck idea as to want to
prove it. 

It occurs to me that
someone should provide a little history about the TM Sidhis
for those who weren't around when they first came out.

That is, in the beginning
there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or
even the *concept* that we were doing it for the
world or anything like that. The TMSP was marketed to
us True Believers at the time as:
1) a way to master superpowers like
levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly)
progress more quickly towards one's *own

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I recall the marketing for the TM-Sidhi programme and it was pretty much as 
Barry has said. I found the following on the MUM website (*emphasis added*): 

 The World Peace Project
 

 *Immediately following the discovery of the Super-Radiance effect in the Fall 
off 1978*, Maharishi decided to apply it to resolve conflicts in the 
international arena. More than 1400 experts in the Transcendental Meditation 
and TM-Sidhi program were sent for approximately two months (November and 
December, 1978) to several trouble spots of the world, including Central 
America (Nicaragua), the Middle East (Lebanon), Southern Africa 
(Rhodesia-Zimbabwe) and Zambia), and to Southeast Asia (Cambodia) as well as to 
surrounding countries.

 

  (the portion I quoted is about halfway down the page)

 

 Therefore it seems extremely unlikely that the Sidhi programme was marketed as 
a group phenomenon prior to this time. I knew several of the governors who went 
off on those excursions from New York. The marketing before that was all super 
powers and faster evolution. I was told the movement wanted to get rights to 
use the Superman comic book character to advertise, but was refused.

 

 From a scientific view, 'discovery' is premature, for from a scientific point 
of view, the jury on this concept has not even yet been convened, as the 
science has not been confirmed outside movement sources, and is thus ignored 
outside the meditator community except as a news item from time to time.
 

 This brings up an interesting question for me. I have observed that most 
people who enter into spiritual circles tend to bring with them a number of 
supersitions, and spiritual movements tend to be a hot bed of superstitious 
ideas. People within the TM fold seem to hold all sorts of ideas about reality 
that are not part of the TM canon.

 

 What was Maharishi like when he entered into his spiritual circle, what sort 
of ideas did he have, how did he understand the world prior and during and 
after his time with Saraswati? Most people seem to change ideas rather slowly 
except during religious conversion, or sometimes in the face of overwhelming 
evidence. My hypothesis is the tendency to be superstitious persists while 
meditating or even doing hard science. So my question is how much nonsense did 
Maharishi inherit and eventually pass on to us?
 

 In addition there are other behavioural features of belief systems. In the 
classic study 'When Prophesy Fails' 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails) believers that expected 
certain events to occur had those hopes dashed, but interestingly, before the 
failure they were very secretive about their beliefs, but after the failure 
they went into proselytising mode, trying to get many more into their mode of 
belief. This is a bizarre conclusion considering the evidence that the ideas 
simply totally failed, but human nature is not strictly rational. This seems to 
be the mental characteristic of spiritual movements whose predictions did not 
come to pass, that it does not matter if what was said is not true.
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 From: dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 3:37 PM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are 
wrong for thinking he is right. 

 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Once the Heidelberg color presses were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi 
published in cycle through the decades major volumes that he edited that show 
the progression of the science, thought, and programs. It was all for linking 
modern science research in spirituality. He was remarkably progressive, 
visionary and revolutionary all at once. I feel you guys should respect him 
more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
 -Buck
 

 

 Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right. 
 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
 of the population idea.
 
 The earliest mention of any group effect I could
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
 super-radiance effect -- 
 
 The
 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
 Iowans Are Hopping Mad
  Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
 at revisionist history as many of the current TM
 publications have been) talking about a mass
 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
 think my point has been made. 
 
 Which is that the ME is a made-up term
 that was late to the party, invented *long*
 after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
 marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is
 that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform
 revisionist history in their own brains that
 they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the
 TMSP program, *even though they themselves
 weren't*.
 Besides, the old 1984 People article is
 pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the
 fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in
 the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)
 
 
 
 From:
 TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@...
 To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com;
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
 Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates
 
 
  
 
 
 From: TurquoiseBee
 turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@...
 To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com;
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 
 Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
 Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates
 
 
  

 
 
 
 
 The point I don't understand, Lawson, is
 WHY anyone would want to do research to validate
 or prove something as ludicrous as We can
 affect other people and the world by bouncing around on our
 butts on slabs

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Buck, Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of science, 
however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses that drive forward. A 
scientist that has a successful career is basically working to extend 
knowledge, and does so by superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in 
science that means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong, and 
that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not be right though). The 
question here is does TM and its related things accomplish what it is said to 
do? Does it work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it? What 
percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated goals? How good is the data? 
Was the data processed properly? I think the results, which were eventually 
good for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially, because movement 
science is largely ignored by the wider community, unproved.
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote :

 Once the Heidelberg color presses were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi 
published in cycle through the decades major volumes that he edited that show 
the progression of the science, thought, and programs. It was all for linking 
modern science research in spirituality. He was remarkably progressive, 
visionary and revolutionary all at once. I feel you guys should respect him 
more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
 -Buck
 

 

 Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right. 
 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
 of the population idea.
 
 The earliest mention of any group effect I could
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
 super-radiance effect -- 
 
 The
 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
 Iowans Are Hopping Mad
  Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
 at revisionist history as many of the current TM
 publications have been) talking about a mass
 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
 think my point has been made. 
 
 Which is that the ME is a made-up term
 that was late to the party, invented *long*
 after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
 marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is
 that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform
 revisionist history in their own brains that
 they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the
 TMSP program, *even though they themselves
 weren't*.
 Besides, the old 1984 People article is
 pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the
 fact that the TMO can't find people

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates


 Correction: Neo dropped out the link to the quote from MUM.edu below
 

 http://www.mum.edu/default.aspx?RelId=622793 
http://www.mum.edu/default.aspx?RelId=622793
 

 --

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote :

 I recall the marketing for the TM-Sidhi programme and it was pretty much as 
Barry has said. I found the following on the MUM website (*emphasis added*): 

 The World Peace Project
 

 *Immediately following the discovery of the Super-Radiance effect in the Fall 
off 1978*, Maharishi decided to apply it to resolve conflicts in the 
international arena. More than 1400 experts in the Transcendental Meditation 
and TM-Sidhi program were sent for approximately two months (November and 
December, 1978) to several trouble spots of the world, including Central 
America (Nicaragua), the Middle East (Lebanon), Southern Africa 
(Rhodesia-Zimbabwe) and Zambia), and to Southeast Asia (Cambodia) as well as to 
surrounding countries.

 

  (the portion I quoted is about halfway down the page)

 

 Therefore it seems extremely unlikely that the Sidhi programme was marketed as 
a group phenomenon prior to this time. I knew several of the governors who went 
off on those excursions from New York. The marketing before that was all super 
powers and faster evolution. I was told the movement wanted to get rights to 
use the Superman comic book character to advertise, but was refused.

 

 From a scientific view, 'discovery' is premature, for from a scientific point 
of view, the jury on this concept has not even yet been convened, as the 
science has not been confirmed outside movement sources, and is thus ignored 
outside the meditator community except as a news item from time to time.
 

 This brings up an interesting question for me. I have observed that most 
people who enter into spiritual circles tend to bring with them a number of 
supersitions, and spiritual movements tend to be a hot bed of superstitious 
ideas. People within the TM fold seem to hold all sorts of ideas about reality 
that are not part of the TM canon.

 

 What was Maharishi like when he entered into his spiritual circle, what sort 
of ideas did he have, how did he understand the world prior and during and 
after his time with Saraswati? Most people seem to change ideas rather slowly 
except during religious conversion, or sometimes in the face of overwhelming 
evidence. My hypothesis is the tendency to be superstitious persists while 
meditating or even doing hard science. So my question is how much nonsense did 
Maharishi inherit and eventually pass on to us?
 

 In addition there are other behavioural features of belief systems. In the 
classic study 'When Prophesy Fails' 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails) believers that expected 
certain events to occur had those hopes dashed, but interestingly, before the 
failure they were very secretive about their beliefs, but after the failure 
they went into proselytising mode, trying to get many more into their mode of 
belief. This is a bizarre conclusion considering the evidence that the ideas 
simply totally failed, but human nature is not strictly rational. This seems to 
be the mental characteristic of spiritual movements whose predictions did not 
come to pass, that it does not matter if what was said is not true.
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 From: dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 3:37 PM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are 
wrong for thinking he is right. 

 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates


 Correction, Neo dropped the link to the MUM web page quoted below:
 http://www.mum.edu/default.aspx?RelId=622793 
http://www.mum.edu/default.aspx?RelId=622793

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, anartaxius@... wrote :

 I recall the marketing for the TM-Sidhi programme and it was pretty much as 
Barry has said. I found the following on the MUM website (*emphasis added*): 

 The World Peace Project
 

 *Immediately following the discovery of the Super-Radiance effect in the Fall 
off 1978*, Maharishi decided to apply it to resolve conflicts in the 
international arena. More than 1400 experts in the Transcendental Meditation 
and TM-Sidhi program were sent for approximately two months (November and 
December, 1978) to several trouble spots of the world, including Central 
America (Nicaragua), the Middle East (Lebanon), Southern Africa 
(Rhodesia-Zimbabwe) and Zambia), and to Southeast Asia (Cambodia) as well as to 
surrounding countries.

 

  (the portion I quoted is about halfway down the page)

 

 Therefore it seems extremely unlikely that the Sidhi programme was marketed as 
a group phenomenon prior to this time. I knew several of the governors who went 
off on those excursions from New York. The marketing before that was all super 
powers and faster evolution. I was told the movement wanted to get rights to 
use the Superman comic book character to advertise, but was refused.

 

 From a scientific view, 'discovery' is premature, for from a scientific point 
of view, the jury on this concept has not even yet been convened, as the 
science has not been confirmed outside movement sources, and is thus ignored 
outside the meditator community except as a news item from time to time.
 

 This brings up an interesting question for me. I have observed that most 
people who enter into spiritual circles tend to bring with them a number of 
supersitions, and spiritual movements tend to be a hot bed of superstitious 
ideas. People within the TM fold seem to hold all sorts of ideas about reality 
that are not part of the TM canon.

 

 What was Maharishi like when he entered into his spiritual circle, what sort 
of ideas did he have, how did he understand the world prior and during and 
after his time with Saraswati? Most people seem to change ideas rather slowly 
except during religious conversion, or sometimes in the face of overwhelming 
evidence. My hypothesis is the tendency to be superstitious persists while 
meditating or even doing hard science. So my question is how much nonsense did 
Maharishi inherit and eventually pass on to us?
 

 In addition there are other behavioural features of belief systems. In the 
classic study 'When Prophesy Fails' 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails) believers that expected 
certain events to occur had those hopes dashed, but interestingly, before the 
failure they were very secretive about their beliefs, but after the failure 
they went into proselytising mode, trying to get many more into their mode of 
belief. This is a bizarre conclusion considering the evidence that the ideas 
simply totally failed, but human nature is not strictly rational. This seems to 
be the mental characteristic of spiritual movements whose predictions did not 
come to pass, that it does not matter if what was said is not true.
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 From: dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 3:37 PM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are 
wrong for thinking he is right. 

 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

As much as people want to dump on Maharishi as being some secreted 
ultra-traditional nationalistic hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be 
quite a modern and spiritual human. He was incredibly consistent looking at the 
whole progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and policy as the 
larger spiritual movement built through a span of time and developed to what we 
see.
 -Buck
 

 Anartaxius writes:

 Buck, Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of science, 
however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses that drive forward. A 
scientist that has a successful career is basically working to extend 
knowledge, and does so by superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in 
science that means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong, and 
that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not be right though). The 
question here is does TM and its related things accomplish what it is said to 
do? Does it work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it? What 
percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated goals? How good is the data? 
Was the data processed properly? I think the results, which were eventually 
good for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially, because movement 
science is largely ignored by the wider community, unproved.
 
 Once the Heidelberg color presses were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi 
published in cycle through the decades major volumes that he edited that show 
the progression of the science, thought, and programs. It was all for linking 
modern science research in spirituality. He was remarkably progressive, 
visionary and revolutionary all at once. I feel you guys should respect him 
more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
 -Buck
 

 

 Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right. 
 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
 of the population idea.
 
 The earliest mention of any group effect I could
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
 super-radiance effect -- 
 
 The
 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
 Iowans Are Hopping Mad
  Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
 at revisionist history as many of the current TM
 publications have been) talking about a mass
 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
 think my point has been made. 
 
 Which is that the ME is a made-up term
 that was late to the party, invented *long*
 after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
 marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-04 Thread nablusoss1008

Maharishi was more modern than those 50 years younger, always moving forward, 
showing infinite flexibility. 
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote :

 As much as people want to dump on Maharishi as being some secreted 
ultra-traditional nationalistic hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be 
quite a modern and spiritual human. He was incredibly consistent looking at the 
whole progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and policy as the 
larger spiritual movement built through a span of time and developed to what we 
see.
 -Buck
 

 Anartaxius writes:

 Buck, Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of science, 
however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses that drive forward. A 
scientist that has a successful career is basically working to extend 
knowledge, and does so by superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in 
science that means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong, and 
that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not be right though). The 
question here is does TM and its related things accomplish what it is said to 
do? Does it work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it? What 
percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated goals? How good is the data? 
Was the data processed properly? I think the results, which were eventually 
good for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially, because movement 
science is largely ignored by the wider community, unproved.
 
 Once the Heidelberg color presses were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi 
published in cycle through the decades major volumes that he edited that show 
the progression of the science, thought, and programs. It was all for linking 
modern science research in spirituality. He was remarkably progressive, 
visionary and revolutionary all at once. I feel you guys should respect him 
more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
 -Buck
 

 

 Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right. 
 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
 of the population idea.
 
 The earliest mention of any group effect I could
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
 super-radiance effect -- 
 
 The
 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
 Iowans Are Hopping Mad
  Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
 at revisionist history as many of the current TM
 publications have been) talking about a mass
 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
 think my point has been made. 
 
 Which

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Maharishi showed a lot of creativity in marketing TM. I recall reading an 
article by a sociologist (I think) in the 'Skeptical Inquirer' about TM 
mentioning how he completely changed the image of the movement from your basic 
Hindu/Vedic base virtually over night by introducing new language, science. I 
think he was fearless in trying things and also dropping things that did not 
work. He did not succeed in erasing the Hindu connexions, and I suspect many 
followers did not like the change to the new terminology (Charles Lutes for 
example), and that might be a reason why it has acted more as a drag on the 
movement than it could have, however the Hindu core of teaching, the puja etc., 
makes it difficult to cover that up. This is what is called isomorphism, 
translating concepts from one set of intellectual symbols to another. Maharishi 
was particularly good at that. Translating spiritual concepts to science is a 
dangerous game because science requires a higher standard of belief, and the 
lax approach to evidence in religion and spirituality in general is a great 
handicap.
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :

 Maharishi was more modern than those 50 years younger, always moving forward, 
showing infinite flexibility. 
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote :

 As much as people want to dump on Maharishi as being some secreted 
ultra-traditional nationalistic hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be 
quite a modern and spiritual human. He was incredibly consistent looking at the 
whole progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and policy as the 
larger spiritual movement built through a span of time and developed to what we 
see.
 -Buck
 

 Anartaxius writes:

 Buck, Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of science, 
however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses that drive forward. A 
scientist that has a successful career is basically working to extend 
knowledge, and does so by superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in 
science that means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong, and 
that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not be right though). The 
question here is does TM and its related things accomplish what it is said to 
do? Does it work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it? What 
percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated goals? How good is the data? 
Was the data processed properly? I think the results, which were eventually 
good for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially, because movement 
science is largely ignored by the wider community, unproved.
 
 Once the Heidelberg color presses were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi 
published in cycle through the decades major volumes that he edited that show 
the progression of the science, thought, and programs. It was all for linking 
modern science research in spirituality. He was remarkably progressive, 
visionary and revolutionary all at once. I feel you guys should respect him 
more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
 -Buck
 

 

 Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right. 
 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Umm, forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by his time with Saraswati? 
this is the first I have heard of it.

On Fri, 4/4/14, anartax...@yahoo.com anartax...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 3:49 PM

   I recall the marketing for the TM-Sidhi
 programme and it was pretty much as Barry has said. I found
 the following on the MUM website (*emphasis
 added*):
 The World Peace
 Project
 *Immediately following the discovery of the
 Super-Radiance effect in the Fall off 1978*,
 Maharishi decided to apply it to resolve conflicts in the
 international arena. More than 1400 experts in the
 Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program were sent for
 approximately two months (November and December, 1978) to
 several trouble spots of the world, including Central
 America (Nicaragua), the Middle East (Lebanon), Southern
 Africa (Rhodesia-Zimbabwe) and Zambia), and to Southeast
 Asia (Cambodia) as well as to surrounding
 countries.
  (the portion I quoted is about
 halfway down the page)

 Therefore it seems extremely
 unlikely that the Sidhi programme was marketed as a group
 phenomenon prior to this time. I knew several of the
 governors who went off on those excursions from New York.
 The marketing before that was all super powers and faster
 evolution. I was told the movement wanted to get rights to
 use the Superman comic book character to advertise, but was
 refused.

 From a scientific view,
 'discovery' is premature, for from a scientific
 point of view, the jury on this concept has not even yet
 been convened, as the science has not been confirmed outside
 movement sources, and is thus ignored outside the meditator
 community except as a news item from time to
 time.
 This brings up an interesting
 question for me. I have observed that most people who enter
 into spiritual circles tend to bring with them a number of
 supersitions, and spiritual movements tend to be a hot bed
 of superstitious ideas. People within the TM fold seem to
 hold all sorts of ideas about reality that are not part of
 the TM canon.

 What was Maharishi like when he
 entered into his spiritual circle, what sort of ideas did he
 have, how did he understand the world prior and during and
 after his time with Saraswati? Most people seem to change
 ideas rather slowly except during religious conversion, or
 sometimes in the face of overwhelming evidence. My
 hypothesis is the tendency to be superstitious persists
 while meditating or even doing hard science. So my question
 is how much nonsense did Maharishi inherit and eventually
 pass on to us?
 In addition there are other
 behavioural features of belief systems. In the classic study
 'When Prophesy Fails' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails)
 believers that expected certain events to occur had those
 hopes dashed, but interestingly, before the failure they
 were very secretive about their beliefs, but after the
 failure they went into proselytising mode, trying to get
 many more into their mode of belief. This is a bizarre
 conclusion considering the evidence that the ideas simply
 totally failed, but human nature is not strictly rational.
 This seems to be the mental characteristic of spiritual
 movements whose predictions did not come to pass, that it
 does not matter if what was said is not
 true.

 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@...
 wrote :

 From:
 dhamiltony2k5@... dhamiltony2k5@...
  To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 3:37 PM
  Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates

  Nope.
  Well, Turquoiseb is in error about
 his 1978 assertion and you are wrong for thinking he is
 right. 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM
 Sidhi courses, *while working at the TM National Center*, so
 I am pretty aware of how these courses were marketed and
 what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION
 of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I
 left the TM movement in 1978. 
 Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in
 the original 1976 Collected Papers
 was added later, in editions that had been subjected to
 revisionist history. The term hadn't even
 been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have
 the right to consider you as delusional as I often do
 anyway. 

 You
 guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn.The
 Meissner-Like Effect of consciousness coherence in the 
 “Maharishi
 Effect” in publication goes back to at least [ 1976 ] with
 the
 publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific Research on
 Transcendental
 Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its introduction and
 preface
 in such.   It was known and talked around before

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Actually, the term Maharishi Effect was invented in 1974, to refer to the 1 
percent effect in the cities studied by Borland and Landrith (that's paper 98 
in Volume 1 of the Collected Papers--the first edition--that Buck refers to 
below). Maharishi had predicted it a decade previously. For awhile 
Super-Radiance Effect was used to refer to the parallel effect with the TMSP 
to distinguish it from the 1 percent effect, but eventually Maharishi Effect 
began to be used for both. 

 Also, I seriously doubt that it was ever said that the TMSP didn't work 
properly unless done in a group. I certainly never heard that. It was said 
that it worked better in a group, even a very small group (e.g., of two or 
three people), but it was still very much worth doing solo.
 

 

 Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right.  

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
 of the population idea.
 
 The earliest mention of any group effect I could
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
 super-radiance effect -- 
 
 The
 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
 Iowans Are Hopping Mad
  Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
 at revisionist history as many of the current TM
 publications have been) talking about a mass
 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
 think my point has been made. 
 
 Which is that the ME is a made-up term
 that was late to the party, invented *long*
 after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
 marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is
 that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform
 revisionist history in their own brains that
 they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the
 TMSP program, *even though they themselves
 weren't*.
 Besides, the old 1984 People article is
 pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the
 fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in
 the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)
 
 
 
 From:
 TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@...
 To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com;
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
 Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 From: TurquoiseBee
 turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@...
 To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com;
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 
 Sent: Friday

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Bucky, I do give the Old Goat ALL the respect he actually deserves and that's a 
fact.

On Fri, 4/4/14, dhamiltony...@yahoo.com dhamiltony...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 3:57 PM

   Once the Heidelberg color presses
 were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi published in
 cycle through the decades major
 volumes that he edited that show the progression of the
 science,
 thought, and programs.  It was all for linking modern
 science
 research in spirituality.   He was remarkably progressive,
 visionary
 and revolutionary all at once.  I feel you guys should
 respect him
 more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
 -Buck

 Nope. 
 Well, Turquoiseb is in error about
 his 1978 assertion and you are wrong for thinking he is
 right. 
 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM
 Sidhi courses, *while working at the TM National Center*, so
 I am pretty aware of how these courses were marketed and
 what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION
 of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I
 left the TM movement in 1978. 
 Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in
 the original 1976 Collected Papers
 was added later, in editions that had been subjected to
 revisionist history. The term hadn't even
 been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have
 the right to consider you as delusional as I often do
 anyway. 

 You
 guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn.The
 Meissner-Like Effect of consciousness coherence in the 
 “Maharishi
 Effect” in publication goes back to at least [ 1976 ] with
 the
 publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific Research on
 Transcendental
 Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its introduction and
 preface
 in such.   It was known and talked around before that on
 courses and
 conferences as the early 1970's research was being
 published in a
 sequence.  You guys obviously were not
 there.-Buck
 mjackson74 writes:
 I have never seen that article
 before - give great historical perspective - especially the
 comment that they expected several thousand sidha
 permanently in Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong -
 also love the comment about Marshy's stretch
 limo.

 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
 wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation
 Can Reduce Crime Rates

 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters

 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of

 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I

 challenge you to come up with a mention of the

 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any*
 publication

 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and

 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total

 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old
 1%

 of the population idea.

 The earliest mention of any group effect I
 could

 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News

 Search page was this article from 1984, and that only

 mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,

 super-radiance effect -- 

 The

 Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some

 Iowans Are Hopping Mad

  Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with
 a

 verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an
 attempt

 at revisionist history as many of the current
 TM

 publications have been) talking about a mass

 effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in

 particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I

 think my point has been made. 

 Which is that the ME is a made-up term

 that was late to the party, invented *long*

 after the TMSP had been invented and had already been

 marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is

 that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform

 revisionist history in their own brains that

 they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the

 TMSP program, *even though they themselves

 weren't*.

 Besides, the old 1984 People article is

 pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and
 the

 fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around
 in

 the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)

 From:

 TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...

 To:

 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

 Sent: Friday,

 April 4, 2014 11:28 AM

 Subject: Re:

 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can
 Reduce

 Crime Rates

 From: TurquoiseBee

 turquoiseb@...

 To:

 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

 Sent: Friday,

 April 4, 2014

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

God Amighty! He wasn't even a regular Hindu! Show me anywhere in the Hindu 
religion where it is taught that soma is a substance created in the human 
digestive system that is eaten by the Hindu gods in exchange for favors!?! He 
was a Hindu fanatic, and a very superstitious one at that. Plus I bet that box 
of do not watch tapes Sal once had his hands on had a copy of some of those 
tapes of M praising Hitler - wheee!

On Fri, 4/4/14, dhamiltony...@yahoo.com dhamiltony...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 4:26 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
   
   
   As much as people want to dump on
 Maharishi as being some secreted ultra-traditional
 nationalistic
 hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be quite a modern
 and
 spiritual human.  He was incredibly consistent looking at
 the whole
 progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and
 policy as
 the larger spiritual movement built through a span of time
 and
 developed to what we see.-Buck
 Anartaxius writes:
 Buck,
 Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of
 science, however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses
 that drive forward. A scientist that has a successful career
 is basically working to extend knowledge, and does so by
 superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in science that
 means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong,
 and that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not
 be right though). The question here is does TM and its
 related things accomplish what it is said to do? Does it
 work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it?
 What percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated
 goals? How good is the data? Was the data processed
 properly? I think the results, which were eventually good
 for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially,
 because movement science is largely ignored by the wider
 community, unproved.
 Once
 the Heidelberg color presses
 were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi published in
 cycle through the decades major
 volumes that he edited that show the progression of the
 science,
 thought, and programs.  It was all for linking modern
 science
 research in spirituality.   He was remarkably progressive,
 visionary
 and revolutionary all at once.  I feel you guys should
 respect him
 more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he
 was.-Buck
 
 Nope. 
 Well, Turquoiseb is in error about
 his 1978 assertion and you are wrong for thinking he is
 right. 
 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM
 Sidhi courses, *while working at the TM National Center*, so
 I am pretty aware of how these courses were marketed and
 what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION
 of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I
 left the TM movement in 1978. 
 Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in
 the original 1976 Collected Papers
 was added later, in editions that had been subjected to
 revisionist history. The term hadn't even
 been *invented* in 1976. 
 
 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have
 the right to consider you as delusional as I often do
 anyway. 
 
 You
 guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn.The
 Meissner-Like Effect of consciousness coherence in the 
 “Maharishi
 Effect” in publication goes back to at least [ 1976 ] with
 the
 publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific Research on
 Transcendental
 Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its introduction and
 preface
 in such.   It was known and talked around before that on
 courses and
 conferences as the early 1970's research was being
 published in a
 sequence.  You guys obviously were not
 there.-Buck
 mjackson74 writes:
 I have never seen that article
 before - give great historical perspective - especially the
 comment that they expected several thousand sidha
 permanently in Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong -
 also love the comment about Marshy's stretch
 limo.
 
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
 wrote:
 
 
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation
 Can Reduce Crime Rates
 
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM
 
 
 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
 
 disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
 
 the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
 
 challenge you to come up with a mention of the
 
 Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any*
 publication
 
 before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
 
 applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
 
 numbers of people practicing TM, or the old
 1%
 
 of the population idea.
 
 
 
 The earliest mention of any group effect I
 could
 
 find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

The woman who got TM kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing Hindu, 
tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day that Marshy's superstitious 
crap he taught like the humans as a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods 
really rubs Hindus the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in India 
feel the same way she says.

On Fri, 4/4/14, anartax...@yahoo.com anartax...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 4:59 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
   
   
   Maharishi showed a lot of creativity in marketing
 TM. I recall reading an article by a sociologist (I think)
 in the 'Skeptical Inquirer' about TM mentioning how
 he completely changed the image of the movement from your
 basic Hindu/Vedic base virtually over night by introducing
 new language, science. I think he was fearless in trying
 things and also dropping things that did not work. He did
 not succeed in erasing the Hindu connexions, and I suspect
 many followers did not like the change to the new
 terminology (Charles Lutes for example), and that might be a
 reason why it has acted more as a drag on the movement than
 it could have, however the Hindu core of teaching, the puja
 etc., makes it difficult to cover that up. This is what is
 called isomorphism, translating concepts from one set of
 intellectual symbols to another. Maharishi was particularly
 good at that. Translating spiritual concepts to science is a
 dangerous game because science requires a higher standard of
 belief, and the lax approach to evidence in religion and
 spirituality in general is a great handicap.
 
 
 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
 no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :
 
 Maharishi was
 more modern than those 50 years younger, always moving
 forward, showing infinite flexibility. 
 
 
 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
 dhamiltony2k5@... wrote :
 
 As
 much as people want to dump on
 Maharishi as being some secreted ultra-traditional
 nationalistic
 hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be quite a modern
 and
 spiritual human.  He was incredibly consistent looking at
 the whole
 progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and
 policy as
 the larger spiritual movement built through a span of time
 and
 developed to what we see.-Buck
 Anartaxius writes:
 Buck,
 Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of
 science, however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses
 that drive forward. A scientist that has a successful career
 is basically working to extend knowledge, and does so by
 superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in science that
 means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong,
 and that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not
 be right though). The question here is does TM and its
 related things accomplish what it is said to do? Does it
 work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it?
 What percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated
 goals? How good is the data? Was the data processed
 properly? I think the results, which were eventually good
 for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially,
 because movement science is largely ignored by the wider
 community, unproved.
 Once
 the Heidelberg color presses
 were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi published in
 cycle through the decades major
 volumes that he edited that show the progression of the
 science,
 thought, and programs.  It was all for linking modern
 science
 research in spirituality.   He was remarkably progressive,
 visionary
 and revolutionary all at once.  I feel you guys should
 respect him
 more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he
 was.-Buck
 
 Nope. 
 Well, Turquoiseb is in error about
 his 1978 assertion and you are wrong for thinking he is
 right. 
 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM
 Sidhi courses, *while working at the TM National Center*, so
 I am pretty aware of how these courses were marketed and
 what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION
 of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I
 left the TM movement in 1978. 
 Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in
 the original 1976 Collected Papers
 was added later, in editions that had been subjected to
 revisionist history. The term hadn't even
 been *invented* in 1976. 
 
 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have
 the right to consider you as delusional as I often do
 anyway. 
 
 You
 guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn.The
 Meissner-Like Effect of consciousness coherence in the 
 “Maharishi
 Effect” in publication goes back to at least [ 1976 ] with
 the
 publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific Research on
 Transcendental
 Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its introduction and
 preface
 in such.   It was known and talked around before that on
 courses

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Did any of her Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or are 
they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods 
image? Or some other revolting image of her own devising? 

 
 The woman who got TM kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing 
Hindu, tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day that Marshy's 
superstitious crap he taught like the humans as a buffet line for soma eating 
Hindu gods really rubs Hindus the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were 
born in India feel the same way she says.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

And, Nablusoss, Maharishi was always the visionary. IMHO it was genius on his 
part to have MUM establish exchange programs with universities in China. 
Wonderful to see so many young Chinese women in the Dome.


On Friday, April 4, 2014 11:38 AM, nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 
wrote:
 
  
Maharishi was more modern than those 50 years younger, always moving forward, 
showing infinite flexibility. 



---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote :


As much as people want to dump on
Maharishi as being some secreted ultra-traditional nationalistic
hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be quite a modern and
spiritual human.  He was incredibly consistent looking at the whole
progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and policy as
the larger spiritual movement built through a span of time and
developed to what we see.
-Buck

Anartaxius writes:

Buck, Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of science, 
however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses that drive forward. A 
scientist that has a successful career is basically working to extend 
knowledge, and does so by superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in 
science that means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong, and 
that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not be right though). The 
question here is does TM and its related things accomplish what it is said to 
do? Does it work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it? What 
percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated goals? How good is the data? 
Was the data processed properly? I think the results, which were eventually 
good for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially, because movement 
science is largely ignored by the wider community, unproved.


Once the Heidelberg color presses
were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi published in cycle through the decades 
major
volumes that he edited that show the progression of the science,
thought, and programs.  It was all for linking modern science
research in spirituality.   He was remarkably progressive, visionary
and revolutionary all at once.  I feel you guys should respect him
more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
-Buck


Nope.  Well, Turquoiseb is in error about
his 1978 assertion and you are wrong for thinking he is right. 


I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 
Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers
was added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. 
The term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 


If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 


You
guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn.The
Meissner-Like Effect of consciousness coherence in the  “Maharishi
Effect” in publication goes back to at least [ 1976 ] with the
publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific Research on Transcendental
Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its introduction and preface
in such.   It was known and talked around before that on courses and
conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
-Buck

mjackson74 writes:

I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.


On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... wrote:

Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce 
Crime Rates
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
challenge you to come up with a mention of the
Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
of the population idea.

The earliest mention of any group effect I could
find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
super-radiance effect -- 

The
Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
Iowans Are Hopping Mad
 Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
at revisionist history as many of the current TM
publications have been) talking about a mass

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

.

On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... wrote:

Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce 
Crime Rates
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 10:25 AM

Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters
disputing this, and claiming that the idea of
the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I
challenge you to come up with a mention of the
Maharishi Effect *per se* in *any* publication
before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and
applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total
numbers of people practicing TM, or the old 1%
of the population idea.

The earliest mention of any group effect I could
find after a few rounds with Google's Advanced News
Search page was this article from 1984, and that only
mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time,
super-radiance effect -- 

The
Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some
Iowans Are Hopping Mad
 Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a
verifiable date (meaning *not* revised later in an attempt
at revisionist history as many of the current TM
publications have been) talking about a mass
effect caused by the TM-Sidhi program, and in
particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I
think my point has been made. 

Which is that the ME is a made-up term
that was late to the party, invented *long*
after the TMSP had been invented and had already been
marketed for other reasons for years. My broader point is
that some TM apologists have been so trained to perform
revisionist history in their own brains that
they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the
TMSP program, *even though they themselves
weren't*.
Besides, the old 1984 People article is
pretty funny, given the current state of Fairfield and the
fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around in
the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)

From:
TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
To:
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday,
April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
Subject: Re:
[FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
Crime Rates

From: TurquoiseBee
turquoiseb@...
To:
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 

Sent: Friday,
April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
Subject: Re:
[FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
Crime Rates

The point I don't understand, Lawson, is
WHY anyone would want to do research to validate
or prove something as ludicrous as We can
affect other people and the world by bouncing around on our
butts on slabs of foam. 

Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough
of an attachment to such a dumbfuck idea as to want to
prove it. 

It occurs to me that
someone should provide a little history about the TM Sidhis
for those who weren't around when they first came out.

That is, in the beginning
there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or
even the *concept* that we were doing it for the
world or anything like that. The TMSP was marketed to
us True Believers at the time as:
1) a way to master superpowers like
levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly)
progress more quickly towards one's *own*
enlightenment. In the beginning,
during the early courses, reason #1 was the one emphasized
in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed and NO ONE
ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales
pitch to emphasize #2.

By
this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed
from the whole TM movement, and *at no point had anything
ever been mentioned about the TMSP benefiting anyone other
than the person practicing it*. 

The whole Maharishi Effect nonsense
was invented later, after they had realized that not only
the original
reason #1 for practicing it was never going to
happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen,
either. People had spent literally thousands of dollars
learning to fly without flying, and had spent
similar amounts learning to become enlightened
without that ever happening, either. Many people were
beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM movement,
*including* many who had learned the TMSP. 

So what they did was to invent
two mechanisms to keep people hanging on, still chasing
carrots at the end of the stick. The first was that the TMSP
didn't work properly unless you were in a
big roomful of people doing it with you. This was supposed
to create a herd mentality and cause people to
identify with the group, and of course it worked. The second
was to invent the made-up Maharishi Effect and
pretend that doing the TMSP was somehow benefiting other
people, and the world. This worked, too, because it gave
people a reason to keep practicing it, plus it made
them feel self-important,
because they were saving the world.

I just thought it was
important to remind people of this, because some here like
to pretend that the way the TMSP is currently marketed is
how it always was. And they like to pretend that the idea of
the ME was always

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-04 Thread Richard J. Williams


On 4/4/2014 3:45 AM, TurquoiseBee wrote:
The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do 
research to validate or prove


So, you don't have all the answers. Apparently Rama levitating was 
actually just a series of point-instants that appear and disappear 
instantly - so fast that you don't even see anything until there he was 
- Rama levitating up in front of the crowd with golden light all around. 
There was no butt bouncing at all. There he was - suddenly levitating.


In contrast, if a monkey were to come flying out of my butt, slinging 
crap all over, anyone could see the shit flying all over the place, and 
in some cases, they could duck - others might get ht in the face.
something as ludicrous as We can affect other people and the world by 
bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam.


Apparently Rama didn't use foam as cushion when he demonstrated 
levitation, at least I've never heard of foam being mentioned. From what 
I've read, Rama simply appeared *suddenly* to be hovering in a cloud of 
smoke up on the stage. There was no 1st stage of yogic flying with the 
Rama guy. In this kind of demonstration there is no flying up, or 
hovering, it's just instant. Go figure.


Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment 
to such a dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it.


One way is to join an online discussion group and post information about 
being an insider in a cult. That way, you can make people think that you 
had the inside track on spiritual knowledge and were wisest of men for 
all the time and money spent. The important question isn't HOW, but WHY 
would anyone want to do such as dumbfuck thing, just to prove that they 
are somebody who was still attached to ideas. It's complicated.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Guru Dev. 

 Umm, forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by his time with Saraswati? 
this is the first I have heard of it. 

 On Fri, 4/4/14, anartaxius@... mailto:anartaxius@... anartaxius@... 
mailto:anartaxius@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 3:49 PM

 
 I recall the marketing for the TM-Sidhi
 programme and it was pretty much as Barry has said. I found
 the following on the MUM website (*emphasis
 added*):
 The World Peace
 Project
 *Immediately following the discovery of the
 Super-Radiance effect in the Fall off 1978*,
 Maharishi decided to apply it to resolve conflicts in the
 international arena. More than 1400 experts in the
 Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program were sent for
 approximately two months (November and December, 1978) to
 several trouble spots of the world, including Central
 America (Nicaragua), the Middle East (Lebanon), Southern
 Africa (Rhodesia-Zimbabwe) and Zambia), and to Southeast
 Asia (Cambodia) as well as to surrounding
 countries.
  (the portion I quoted is about
 halfway down the page)
 
 Therefore it seems extremely
 unlikely that the Sidhi programme was marketed as a group
 phenomenon prior to this time. I knew several of the
 governors who went off on those excursions from New York.
 The marketing before that was all super powers and faster
 evolution. I was told the movement wanted to get rights to
 use the Superman comic book character to advertise, but was
 refused.
 
 From a scientific view,
 'discovery' is premature, for from a scientific
 point of view, the jury on this concept has not even yet
 been convened, as the science has not been confirmed outside
 movement sources, and is thus ignored outside the meditator
 community except as a news item from time to
 time.
 This brings up an interesting
 question for me. I have observed that most people who enter
 into spiritual circles tend to bring with them a number of
 supersitions, and spiritual movements tend to be a hot bed
 of superstitious ideas. People within the TM fold seem to
 hold all sorts of ideas about reality that are not part of
 the TM canon.
 
 What was Maharishi like when he
 entered into his spiritual circle, what sort of ideas did he
 have, how did he understand the world prior and during and
 after his time with Saraswati? Most people seem to change
 ideas rather slowly except during religious conversion, or
 sometimes in the face of overwhelming evidence. My
 hypothesis is the tendency to be superstitious persists
 while meditating or even doing hard science. So my question
 is how much nonsense did Maharishi inherit and eventually
 pass on to us?
 In addition there are other
 behavioural features of belief systems. In the classic study
 'When Prophesy Fails' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails) 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails)
 believers that expected certain events to occur had those
 hopes dashed, but interestingly, before the failure they
 were very secretive about their beliefs, but after the
 failure they went into proselytising mode, trying to get
 many more into their mode of belief. This is a bizarre
 conclusion considering the evidence that the ideas simply
 totally failed, but human nature is not strictly rational.
 This seems to be the mental characteristic of spiritual
 movements whose predictions did not come to pass, that it
 does not matter if what was said is not
 true.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 7:32 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

Did any of her Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or are 
they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods 
image? Or some other revolting image of her own devising?
I don't understand how you can consider either of these descriptions 
revolting, Judy. I mean, you who are so skeptical and all. They're just 
alternative (and completely justifiable) descriptions of a bunch of FICTION 
about gods who don't exist, and a mysterious substance (soma) created in 
the stomachs of meditators, that likewise doesn't exist, right?

You reacting to how other people see such an *obviously* fictional story 
strikes me as kinda weird, the kinda reaction a religious fanatic might have to 
some piece of cherished dogma being challenged.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

You know exactly what my point is here, Barry, and you also know it has nothing 
to do with belief in any of this on my part. If the transcript of the tape is 
accurate, neither of those descriptions are justifiable in terms of what 
Maharishi actually said. Apparently the ideas Maharishi was trying to convey 
weren't sufficiently shocking, so they had to be beefed up with descriptions 
designed to be especially repugnant. 

 It's actually similar to your disingenuous claim that Maharishi taught that 
bouncing around on one's butt would create world peace. As you know, hopping 
is a side effect of the mental technique, which is what is said to do the work 
of creating world peace. The idea that world peace could be created by large 
numbers of people meditating together isn't sufficiently weird, so you have to 
pretend that it's the bouncing around on one's butt that is said to do it.
 

 If it were all as wildly outlandish as you maintain, you wouldn't have to 
distort and lie to convince people of it. You're afraid it's not really 
outlandish enough to put people off, so you have to exaggerate it.
 

 Plus which, you don't dare allow anyone to think that correcting 
disingenuities and inaccuracies and exaggerations so that people get the 
straight story could possibly be anything but cultist apologetics. That's 
simply not true, and you know it. It's just another tactic designed to protect 
your attempts to paint TM in the blackest possible light, regardless of the 
facts.
 

 Some people, Barry, have the integrity to defend even something they don't 
support or believe in from unfairness and inaccuracy. Others (like yourself) 
think it's perfectly OK to misrepresent something you don't think is valid so 
as to convince others to agree with you.
 

 It's not just TM, either. You do this with anything you don't like.
 

 

 

 Did any of her Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or 
are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for soma eating Hindu 
gods image? Or some other revolting image of her own devising? 

I don't understand how you can consider either of these descriptions 
revolting, Judy. I mean, you who are so skeptical and all. They're just 
alternative (and completely justifiable) descriptions of a bunch of FICTION 
about gods who don't exist, and a mysterious substance (soma) created in 
the stomachs of meditators, that likewise doesn't exist, right?

You reacting to how other people see such an *obviously* fictional story 
strikes me as kinda weird, the kinda reaction a religious fanatic might have to 
some piece of cherished dogma being challenged.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

His Holiness Brahmananda Saraswati 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmananda_Saraswati 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmananda_Saraswati
 

 
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 Umm, forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean by his time with Saraswati? 
this is the first I have heard of it.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

contact her and ask her if you want to know - she was actually referring to 
other aspects of his teaching as well, tho she did not say specifically what. I 
sent her both links so she may have read both pages. I read, as you call it, 
the actual transcript and tho the author of the piece on it did describe it 
in somewhat scoffing terms, he didn't make anything up. The fact that M, a 
Hindu, can straightfaced claim that soma is a substance produced by the human 
digestive system and that Hindu gods drink that refined product is food itself 
for derision. He was either superstitious or a monumental liar. I vote for 
both. 

On Fri, 4/4/14, authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 5:32 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
   
   
   Did any of her
 Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or
 are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for
 soma eating Hindu gods image? Or some other revolting
 image of her own devising?
 
 The woman who got TM
 kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing
 Hindu, tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day that
 Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the humans as
 a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs Hindus
 the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in India
 feel the same way she says.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

oh that Saraswati - I thought you meant the goddess of knowledge

On Fri, 4/4/14, anartax...@yahoo.com anartax...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 6:54 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
   
   
   His Holiness Brahmananda 
Saraswatihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmananda_Saraswati
 
 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@...
 wrote :
 
 Umm, forgive my
 ignorance, but what do you mean by his time with
 Saraswati? this is the first I have heard of it.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

You know I have to agree with Barry - if Marshy was making some sort of analogy 
and that's ok with you, (even tho all the TM teachers who ever saw the tape 
took it literally, I bet) why can't the author of the article use a little 
analogy of their own? Double standard? 

On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 5:57 PM

   From:
 authfri...@yahoo.com
 authfri...@yahoo.com
  To:
 FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Friday,
 April 4, 2014 7:32 PM
  Subject: Re:
 [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce
 Crime Rates

   Did any of her
 Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or
 are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for
 soma eating Hindu gods image? Or some other revolting
 image of her own devising?
 I don't understand how you can consider either of
 these descriptions revolting, Judy. I mean, you
 who are so skeptical and all. They're just
 alternative (and completely justifiable) descriptions of a
 bunch of FICTION about gods who don't exist,
  and a mysterious substance (soma) created in
 the stomachs of meditators, that likewise doesn't exist,
 right?

 You reacting to how other people see such an *obviously*
 fictional story strikes me as kinda weird, the kinda
 reaction a religious fanatic might have to some piece of
 cherished dogma being challenged.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 9:18 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

contact her and ask her if you want to know - she was actually referring to 
other aspects of his teaching as well, tho she did not say specifically what. I 
sent her both links so she may have read both pages. I read, as you call it, 
the actual transcript and tho the author of the piece on it did describe it 
in somewhat scoffing terms, he didn't make anything up. The fact that M, a 
Hindu, can straightfaced claim that soma is a substance produced by the human 
digestive system and that Hindu gods drink that refined product is food itself 
for derision. He was either superstitious or a monumental liar. I vote for 
both. 

Agreed. The whole *concept* is laughable. The fact that someone can pretend to 
be outraged at someone treating it so is even more laughable.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

There is a lot of research on TM, but the quality of most of that research is 
not particularly good, which is one of the reasons it is not taken seriously. 
The movement is not interested in scientific truth. It is hard to tell if the 
movement is interested in ending suffering at all. While enlightenment is said 
to end suffering, it does so by letting the person see the world in a new 
light, it does not change the world directly, only the mind's interpretation of 
what the world is. Exactly how that filters down to change the physical world 
is really kind of unknown. Enlightenment ends psychological pain, not physical 
pain; it eliminates or greatly reduces the judgmental chatter in the mind as a 
byproduct.  

 The movement does not spend any resources that I can see, on trying to 
directly end suffering, such as feeding the starving, the resources are 
directed to collecting more income from what I can see. If this really worked 
as specified, teaching as many people as possible at the lowest cost - mass 
produced initiations - would make the world a better place than making it so 
royally exclusive. 
 

 The only meditation system that has managed to break free of its religious 
roots is mindfulness, and that word mindfulness is sort of misleading because 
it implies concentration, but actual instructions I have heard indicate it is 
no more concentrative than TM, and it has been as successful as TM for people, 
though it does seem to have a different ratio of benefits, if one considers the 
result of meditation to be a benefit. It may be that certain forms of 
meditation resonate better with some individuals than others too, or one type 
works better at a certain stage of experience than others. None of this has 
been researched extensively. 

 A search on Google:
 vipassana meditation = 802,000 results

 mindfulness meditation = 541,000 results 
 zazen = 750,000 results (zazen = the single word name for zen meditation)
 transcendental meditation = 334,000 results

 zen meditation = 297,000 results
 concentration meditation = 74,300 results

 bozo meditation = 1 result
 ---
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@... wrote :

 Xeno, personally I'm glad that the TMO is now putting its resources into 
relieving suffering, such as with the street children in South America and 
combat stressed veterans rather than adding to the huge and existing body 
research on TM.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I believe at one time they tried to search for 'soma' at MIU, but the research 
led to no result, and if that was the case, it is unlikely the result would 
have been publicised. I remember a time when new governors were coming back to 
the U.S. from courses. They were eating a lot of white sugar and talking about 
soma a lot. 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 contact her and ask her if you want to know - she was actually referring to 
other aspects of his teaching as well, tho she did not say specifically what. I 
sent her both links so she may have read both pages. I read, as you call it, 
the actual transcript and tho the author of the piece on it did describe it 
in somewhat scoffing terms, he didn't make anything up. The fact that M, a 
Hindu, can straightfaced claim that soma is a substance produced by the human 
digestive system and that Hindu gods drink that refined product is food itself 
for derision. He was either superstitious or a monumental liar. I vote for 
both.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates

... It's actually similar to your disingenuous claim that Maharishitaught that 
bouncing around on one's butt would create world peace. As you know, hopping 
is a side effect of the mental technique, which is what is said to do the work 
of creating world peace.

Good point. The world peace is presumably created not by the sattvic thuds of 
Sidhas' butts landing on foam, but by the mental repetition of English language 
phrases that they paid thousands of dollars for and could have found verbatim 
in a $4.95 paperback edition of the Yoga Sutras. 

My bad. 

:-)

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I'm asking you. You're the one who knows her and who is making the claims on 
her behalf. Again, read what you wrote: 

 She told me the other day that
Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the humans as
a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs Hindus
the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in India
feel the same way she says.
 

 Somewhat scoffing terms really doesn't cover humans as a buffet line or 
ravening Gods jostling each other to feed at the stomachs of TMers... 
Maharishi didn't describe anything remotely like that, so I'd say the writer 
did make it up.
 

 It may well be that the fact that M, a Hindu, can straightfaced claim that 
soma is a substance produced by the human digestive system and that Hindu gods 
drink that refined product is food itself for derision, but if so, why isn't 
that enough? Why do you have to make it sound so much more like a bad horror 
movie than what he actually said?
 

 I think you're afraid, like Barry, that the straight story isn't going to turn 
folks off as much as you want them to be turned off.
 

 

 

 contact her and ask her if you want to know - she was actually referring to 
other aspects of his teaching as well, tho she did not say specifically what. I 
sent her both links so she may have read both pages. I read, as you call it, 
the actual transcript and tho the author of the piece on it did describe it 
in somewhat scoffing terms, he didn't make anything up. The fact that M, a 
Hindu, can straightfaced claim that soma is a substance produced by the human 
digestive system and that Hindu gods drink that refined product is food itself 
for derision. He was either superstitious or a monumental liar. I vote for 
both. 
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, 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: Friday, April 4, 2014, 5:32 PM

 Did any of her
 Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or
 are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for
 soma eating Hindu gods image? Or some other revolting
 image of her own devising?
 
 The woman who got TM
 kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing
 Hindu, tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day that
 Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the humans as
 a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs Hindus
 the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in India
 feel the same way she says.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that. 

 Not surprised all you could come up with was a lame wisecrack for one part of 
my post and had to ignore the rest. Too close to home.
 

 

 

 

 ... It's actually similar to your disingenuous claim that Maharishi taught 
that bouncing around on one's butt would create world peace. As you know, 
hopping is a side effect of the mental technique, which is what is said to do 
the work of creating world peace. 
Good point. The world peace is presumably created not by the sattvic thuds of 
Sidhas' butts landing on foam, but by the mental repetition of English language 
phrases that they paid thousands of dollars for and could have found verbatim 
in a $4.95 paperback edition of the Yoga Sutras. 

My bad. 

:-)

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

From: authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that.

As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I didn't say Maharishi was making some sort of analogy. Please don't misquote 
me. The author of the Trancenet piece is, of course, free to write whatever he 
wants, except he shouldn't attribute that image (which wasn't an analogy, 
BTW) to Maharishi; he should say that's the image that came to his mind. Then 
if we read the transcript, we may want to consider whether a mentally healthy 
person would come up with that kind of gruesome image based on what Maharishi 
said. 

 Oh, and Barry didn't say what you just said.
 

 

 You know I have to agree with Barry - if Marshy was making some sort of 
analogy and that's ok with you, (even tho all the TM teachers who ever saw the 
tape took it literally, I bet) why can't the author of the article use a little 
analogy of their own? Double standard?  

 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; 
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 5:57 PM
 
Did any of her
 Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape, or
 are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for
 soma eating Hindu gods image? Or some other revolting
 image of her own devising?
 I don't understand how you can consider either of
 these descriptions revolting, Judy. I mean, you
 who are so skeptical and all. They're just
 alternative (and completely justifiable) descriptions of a
 bunch of FICTION about gods who don't exist,
 and a mysterious substance (soma) created in
 the stomachs of meditators, that likewise doesn't exist,
 right?
 
 You reacting to how other people see such an *obviously*
 fictional story strikes me as kinda weird, the kinda
 reaction a religious fanatic might have to some piece of
 cherished dogma being challenged.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Well, Barry, actually there is more to it than that. It's been a long time for 
you, and as we all know, you have a lousy memory that is getting worse the 
older you become. 

 

 

 And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that. 
As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

If you are still so averse to the truth about what a fool you were to pay 
thousands of dollars for a bunch of English language phrases you could have 
read in cheap paperback and how to think them that you still have to pretend 
there was more to the TM Sidhis than that, feel free. 


I do not have to pretend. That's all there was to it. That is *still* all there 
is to it. 

I was taken to the cleaners by a con man (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi), and I freely 
admit it. I think the world would be a better place if more people were able to 
admit the same thing.




 From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:03 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
From: authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com

To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 


  
And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that.

As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Wonderfully expressed!

On Fri, 4/4/14, anartax...@yahoo.com anartax...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 7:30 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
   
   
   There is a lot of research on TM, but the
 quality of most of that research is not particularly good,
 which is one of the reasons it is not taken seriously. The
 movement is not interested in scientific truth. It is hard
 to tell if the movement is interested in ending suffering at
 all. While enlightenment is said to end suffering, it does
 so by letting the person see the world in a new light, it
 does not change the world directly, only the mind's
 interpretation of what the world is. Exactly how that
 filters down to change the physical world is really kind of
 unknown. Enlightenment ends psychological pain, not physical
 pain; it eliminates or greatly reduces the judgmental
 chatter in the mind as a byproduct. 
 The movement does not spend any
 resources that I can see, on trying to directly end
 suffering, such as feeding the starving, the resources are
 directed to collecting more income from what I can see. If
 this really worked as specified, teaching as many people as
 possible at the lowest cost - mass produced initiations -
 would make the world a better place than making it so
 royally exclusive. 
 The only meditation system that has
 managed to break free of its religious roots is mindfulness,
 and that word mindfulness is sort of misleading because it
 implies concentration, but actual instructions I have heard
 indicate it is no more concentrative than TM, and it has
 been as successful as TM for people, though it does seem to
 have a different ratio of benefits, if one considers the
 result of meditation to be a benefit. It may be that certain
 forms of meditation resonate better with some individuals
 than others too, or one type works better at a certain stage
 of experience than others. None of this has been researched
 extensively.
 A search on
 Google:vipassana meditation =
 802,000 results
 mindfulness
 meditation = 541,000
 results zazen = 750,000 results (zazen =
 the single word name for zen meditation)transcendental meditation = 334,000
 results
 zen meditation = 297,000
 resultsconcentration
 meditation = 74,300 results
 bozo meditation
 = 1 result---
 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, sharelong60@...
 wrote :
 
 Xeno, personally I'm glad that
 the TMO is now putting its resources into relieving
 suffering, such as with the street children in South America
 and combat stressed veterans rather than adding to the huge
 and existing body research on
 TM.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

ask her - as to the bad horror movie comment - the entire history of the TMO 
rates as one of the worst horror flicks I've ever seen

On Fri, 4/4/14, authfri...@yahoo.com authfri...@yahoo.com wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 7:57 PM

   I'm asking you. You're the one who knows
 her and who is making the claims on her behalf. Again, read
 what you wrote:
 She told me the other day
 that
 Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the
 humans as
 a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs
 Hindus
 the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in
 India
 feel the same way she
 says.
 Somewhat scoffing
 terms really doesn't cover humans as a
 buffet line or ravening Gods
 jostling each other to feed at the
 stomachs of
 TMers... Maharishi didn't describe anything
 remotely like that, so I'd say the writer did make it
 up.
 It may well be
 that the fact that M,
 a Hindu, can straightfaced claim that soma is a substance
 produced by the human digestive system and that Hindu gods
 drink that refined product is food itself for
 derision, but if so, why isn't that enough?
 Why do you have to make it sound so much more like a bad
 horror movie than what he actually
 said?
 I think
 you're afraid, like Barry, that the straight story
 isn't going to turn folks off as much as you want them
 to be turned off.

 contact her and
 ask her if you want to know - she was actually referring to
 other aspects of his teaching as well, tho she did not say
 specifically what. I sent her both links so she may have
 read both pages. I read, as you call it, the actual
 transcript and tho the author of the piece on it did
 describe it in somewhat scoffing terms, he didn't make
 anything up. The fact that M, a Hindu, can straightfaced
 claim that soma is a substance produced by the human
 digestive system and that Hindu gods drink that refined
 product is food itself for derision. He was either
 superstitious or a monumental liar. I vote for
 both. 

  On Fri, 4/4/14, authfriend@... authfriend@...
 wrote:

 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation
 Can Reduce Crime Rates

 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 5:32 PM

 Did any of her

 Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape,
 or

 are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for

 soma eating Hindu gods image? Or some other revolting

 image of her own devising?

 The woman who got TM

 kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing

 Hindu, tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day
 that

 Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the humans
 as

 a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs Hindus

 the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in India

 feel the same way she says.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

As you know, there was quite a bit to how to think them (which phrase I see 
you've hastily added after suddenly realizing how many FFL members have taken 
the TMSP course and might just speak up). Not to mention two weeks' room board 
and further instruction at MIU, although you may not have had that back then.
 

 I got my money's worth from the course, many times over. Sorry you didn't.
 

 

 

 If you are still so averse to the truth about what a fool you were to pay 
thousands of dollars for a bunch of English language phrases you could have 
read in cheap paperback and how to think them that you still have to pretend 
there was more to the TM Sidhis than that, feel free. 
 

 I do not have to pretend. That's all there was to it. That is *still* all 
there is to it. 
 

 I was taken to the cleaners by a con man (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi), and I freely 
admit it. I think the world would be a better place if more people were able to 
admit the same thing.

 

 From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:03 PM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   From: authfriend@... authfriend@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:01 PM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   And as you know, there's more to the TMSP than that.
 
As I know, there really isn't.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

I could have sworn I said, I'm asking you. You're the one who knows her and 
who is making the claims on her behalf. Did that get dropped from my previous 
post? 

 

 

 ask her - as to the bad horror movie comment - the entire history of the TMO 
rates as one of the worst horror flicks I've ever seen 

 
 I'm asking you. You're the one who knows
 her and who is making the claims on her behalf. Again, read
 what you wrote:
 She told me the other day
 that
 Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the
 humans as
 a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs
 Hindus
 the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in
 India
 feel the same way she
 says.
 Somewhat scoffing
 terms really doesn't cover humans as a
 buffet line or ravening Gods
 jostling each other to feed at the
 stomachs of
 TMers... Maharishi didn't describe anything
 remotely like that, so I'd say the writer did make it
 up.
 It may well be
 that the fact that M,
 a Hindu, can straightfaced claim that soma is a substance
 produced by the human digestive system and that Hindu gods
 drink that refined product is food itself for
 derision, but if so, why isn't that enough?
 Why do you have to make it sound so much more like a bad
 horror movie than what he actually
 said?
 I think
 you're afraid, like Barry, that the straight story
 isn't going to turn folks off as much as you want them
 to be turned off.
 
 
 contact her and
 ask her if you want to know - she was actually referring to
 other aspects of his teaching as well, tho she did not say
 specifically what. I sent her both links so she may have
 read both pages. I read, as you call it, the actual
 transcript and tho the author of the piece on it did
 describe it in somewhat scoffing terms, he didn't make
 anything up. The fact that M, a Hindu, can straightfaced
 claim that soma is a substance produced by the human
 digestive system and that Hindu gods drink that refined
 product is food itself for derision. He was either
 superstitious or a monumental liar. I vote for
 both. 
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, authfriend@... authfriend@...
 wrote:
 
 
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation
 Can Reduce Crime Rates
 
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 5:32 PM
 
 
 Did any of her
 
 Hindu friends read the actual transcript or see the tape,
 or
 
 are they relying on Trancenet's 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 or your humans as a buffet line for
 
 soma eating Hindu gods image? Or some other revolting
 
 image of her own devising?
 
 
 
 The woman who got TM
 
 kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing
 
 Hindu, tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day
 that
 
 Marshy's superstitious crap he taught like the humans
 as
 
 a buffet line for soma eating Hindu gods really rubs Hindus
 
 the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were born in India
 
 feel the same way she says.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

As to the Meissner-like effect of consciousness coherence.. . When you get 
things laid out in time series of publication to look at, it becomes remarkable 
what he was doing all along going way back. Of the “Maharishi Effect”, it shows 
up in publication in the mid-1970's and as a hypothesis based on observation in 
research that then drives the history of the movement as science test from then 
through the 1980's to present. Observe, hypothesis, test. The science was 
driving policy to set up tests and explore all along from about then. 
Hypothesis and test as process of science on the spiritual.  
 -Buck

 

 Authfriend writes:

Actually, the term Maharishi Effect was invented in 1974, to refer to the 1 
percent effect in the cities studied by Borland and Landrith (that's paper 98 
in Volume 1 of the Collected Papers--the first edition--that Buck refers to 
below). Maharishi had predicted it a decade previously. For awhile 
Super-Radiance Effect was used to refer to the parallel effect with the TMSP 
to distinguish it from the 1 percent effect, but eventually Maharishi Effect 
began to be used for both. 

 Also, I seriously doubt that it was ever said that the TMSP didn't work 
properly unless done in a group. I certainly never heard that. It was said 
that it worked better in a group, even a very small group (e.g., of two or 
three people), but it was still very much worth doing solo.
 

 

 As much as people want to dump on Maharishi as being some secreted 
ultra-traditional nationalistic hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be 
quite a modern and spiritual human. He was incredibly consistent looking at the 
whole progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and policy as the 
larger spiritual movement built through a span of time and developed to what we 
see.
 -Buck
 

 Anartaxius writes:

 Buck, Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of science, 
however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses that drive forward. A 
scientist that has a successful career is basically working to extend 
knowledge, and does so by superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in 
science that means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong, and 
that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not be right though). The 
question here is does TM and its related things accomplish what it is said to 
do? Does it work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it? What 
percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated goals? How good is the data? 
Was the data processed properly? I think the results, which were eventually 
good for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially, because movement 
science is largely ignored by the wider community, unproved.
 
 Once the Heidelberg color presses were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi 
published in cycle through the decades major volumes that he edited that show 
the progression of the science, thought, and programs. It was all for linking 
modern science research in spirituality. He was remarkably progressive, 
visionary and revolutionary all at once. I feel you guys should respect him 
more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he was.
 -Buck
 

 

 Nope. Well, Turquoiseb is in error about his 1978 assertion and you are wrong 
for thinking he is right. 
 

 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM Sidhi courses, *while 
working at the TM National Center*, so I am pretty aware of how these courses 
were marketed and what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION 
of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I left the TM movement in 1978. 

Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in the original 1976 Collected Papers was 
added later, in editions that had been subjected to revisionist history. The 
term hadn't even been *invented* in 1976. 

 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have the right to consider you 
as delusional as I often do anyway. 

 

 You guys just want to hate on Maharishi at every turn. The Meissner-Like 
Effect of consciousness coherence in the “Maharishi Effect” in publication goes 
back to at least [ 1976 ] with the publishing of paper 98 in The Scientific 
Research on Transcendental Meditation, Collected Papers, Vol 1 and its 
introduction and preface in such. It was known and talked around before that on 
courses and conferences as the early 1970's research was being published in a 
sequence.  You guys obviously were not there.
 -Buck
 

 mjackson74 writes:

 I have never seen that article before - give great historical perspective - 
especially the comment that they expected several thousand sidha permanently in 
Fairfield - guess they got that one wrong - also love the comment about 
Marshy's stretch limo.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... mailto:turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Well, if you really believe that it is true, then you want to have as many 
large groups of people doing it as possible, and that means you have to 
persuade others with the resources to create such groups that your 
intuition/belief is correct. 

 L
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do 
research to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect 
other people and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 

 

 Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such 
a dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 

 

 From: LEnglish5@... LEnglish5@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:37 AM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   I don't know if Barry ever suggested that (he never mentioned it to me that 
I remember) but  I've been suggestiing variations on that idea for decades. The 
problem has been that Fred Travis' original research along that line (his PhD 
thesis actually) used 40 seconds average EEG and that's too coarse a 
measurement to use when the average EEG starts to approach the maximum anyway.
 

 That's where EEG microstate research comes in. If they can establish a pattern 
found most often during PC,than they can look for statistical variations in 
that pattern along the lines of what you describe below.
 

 Of course, I'd start without the farady cage, and then with, if an effect were 
found in hte most liberal of circumstances.
 

 L
 
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :

 That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even. 
 I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible, think Darwin and 
Einstein.
 

 If I remember correctly it was Markovsky who suggested putting a meditator in 
a Faraday cage - which is a room isolated from all electromagnetic impulses as 
well as everything else - and getting people to meditate (or not) outside to 
see what changes there were (or not). The purpose of this approach is to make 
sure we aren't affecting each others meditation with pheromones or changes in 
breathing or even the power of suggestion causing the claimed deeper 
experiences people have in group meditation. 
 

 Once you've done that and isolated the effect you can move onto the wider 
population and see what effect it's having on non-meditators nearby. Then all 
you've got to do is explain it, but with paranormal research it's data first 
and lots of it. 
 

 To stop the TMO accidentally kidding itself and producing flawed research they 
should hand the whole thing over to James Randi, he offers a million bucks to 
anyone who can demonstrate paranormal powers. With a force as strong as the 
unified field it ought to be a breeze! Could get some mighty fine yagya's with 
that sort of money.
 

 
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 It was Barry Markovsky! He is now ha ha! at the University of South Carolina! 
Whoo hoo!
 
 Barry Markovsky of the University of Iowa examined the Maharishi Effect theory 
and commented, “The theory receives low marks for meaningfulness. Key terms are 
undefined or only roughly characterized using other complex, undefined terms or 
metaphors.”22 They concluded that the theory’s claims “do not merit being taken 
seriously by the scientific community. The theory motivating the research is 
ill-constructed and not compelling in view of prior knowledge; the evidence 
offered is not impressive and mundane alternative hypotheses offer plausible 
explanations for the findings.”23
 
 On Thu, 4/3/14, salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com 
mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com 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, 10:05 PM

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates


 Hmm, I wasn't there for any inner circle sales pitches to TM teachers, but I 
attended an introductory lecture on the TM-Sidhis by Rick Archer and friends 
about 38 years ago (do you remember that one in Tucson, Rick?) and the Yogic 
Flying part was presented as a way to gain enlightenment faster with the 
levitation part as an unavoidable side-effect of the practice. I seem to recall 
Rick or another on his team saying something like If Maharishi could get the 
same results without the levitation part, he would have gone that route.
 

 L
 

 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do 
research to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect 
other people and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 

 

 Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such 
a dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 

 








It occurs to me that someone should provide a little history about the TM 
Sidhis for those who weren't around when they first came out. 

That is, in the beginning there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or 
even the *concept* that we were doing it for the world or anything like that. 
The TMSP was marketed to us True Believers at the time as: 1) a way to master 
superpowers like levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly) progress more quickly 
towards one's *own* enlightenment. In the beginning, during the early courses, 
reason #1 was the one emphasized in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed 
and NO ONE ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales pitch to 
emphasize #2.

By this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed from the whole TM 
movement, and *at no point had anything ever been mentioned about the TMSP 
benefiting anyone other than the person practicing it*. 

The whole Maharishi Effect nonsense was invented later, after they had 
realized that not only the original reason #1 for practicing it was never going 
to happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen, either. People had spent 
literally thousands of dollars learning to fly without flying, and had spent 
similar amounts learning to become enlightened without that ever happening, 
either. Many people were beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM 
movement, *including* many who had learned the TMSP. 

So what they did was to invent two mechanisms to keep people hanging on, still 
chasing carrots at the end of the stick. The first was that the TMSP didn't 
work properly unless you were in a big roomful of people doing it with you. 
This was supposed to create a herd mentality and cause people to identify 
with the group, and of course it worked. The second was to invent the made-up 
Maharishi Effect and pretend that doing the TMSP was somehow benefiting other 
people, and the world. This worked, too, because it gave people a reason to 
keep practicing it, plus it made them feel self-important, because they were 
saving the world.

I just thought it was important to remind people of this, because some here 
like to pretend that the way the TMSP is currently marketed is how it always 
was. And they like to pretend that the idea of the ME was always present, and 
always part of the sales pitch. Neither is true.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

That's silly. The Maharishi Effect name was coined rather late. I don't know 
when he started pitching the idea that a small number of meditators could have 
an effect on society, but its probably years prior tot he name being given to 
the concept. 

 

 L

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 Anticipating comments from cult apologist masters disputing this, and claiming 
that the idea of the Maharishi Effect has been present since 1960, I 
challenge you to come up with a mention of the Maharishi Effect *per se* in 
*any* publication before 1978 (the years covered by my account below), and 
applying to the TMSP *per se*, not just to total numbers of people practicing 
TM, or the old 1% of the population idea.

The earliest mention of any group effect I could find after a few rounds with 
Google's Advanced News Search page was this article from 1984, and that only 
mentioned the buzzword in effect at the time, super-radiance effect -- 

 The Maharishi Wants Everybody to Levitate for Peace, but Some Iowans Are 
Hopping Mad http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20087003,00.html

  
Unless you can find a publication before 1978 with a verifiable date (meaning 
*not* revised later in an attempt at revisionist history as many of the 
current TM publications have been) talking about a mass effect caused by the 
TM-Sidhi program, and in particular using the term Maharishi Effect, I think 
my point has been made. 
 

 Which is that the ME is a made-up term that was late to the party, 
invented *long* after the TMSP had been invented and had already been marketed 
for other reasons for years. My broader point is that some TM apologists have 
been so trained to perform revisionist history in their own brains that 
they'll claim it was present at the beginning of the TMSP program, *even though 
they themselves weren't*.
 

 Besides, the old 1984 People article is pretty funny, given the current 
state of Fairfield and the fact that the TMO can't find people to bounce around 
in the domes even when they PAY them to do so...  :-)

 

 

 From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 11:28 AM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:45 AM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do 
research to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect 
other people and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 

 

 Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such 
a dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 

 








It occurs to me that someone should provide a little history about the TM 
Sidhis for those who weren't around when they first came out. 

That is, in the beginning there was NONE of this Maharishi Effect crap or 
even the *concept* that we were doing it for the world or anything like that. 
The TMSP was marketed to us True Believers at the time as: 1) a way to master 
superpowers like levitation, and 2) a way to (supposedly) progress more quickly 
towards one's *own* enlightenment. In the beginning, during the early courses, 
reason #1 was the one emphasized in any sales spiels. As the courses progressed 
and NO ONE ever manifested any siddhis, then they shifted their sales pitch to 
emphasize #2.

By this time I'd given up on the whole thing and bailed from the whole TM 
movement, and *at no point had anything ever been mentioned about the TMSP 
benefiting anyone other than the person practicing it*. 

The whole Maharishi Effect nonsense was invented later, after they had 
realized that not only the original reason #1 for practicing it was never going 
to happen, but that #2 wasn't going to ever happen, either. People had spent 
literally thousands of dollars learning to fly without flying, and had spent 
similar amounts learning to become enlightened without that ever happening, 
either. Many people were beginning to quit TM and walk away from the TM 
movement, *including* many who had learned the TMSP. 

So what they did was to invent two mechanisms to keep people hanging on, still 
chasing carrots at the end of the stick. The first was that the TMSP didn't 
work properly unless you were in a big roomful of people doing it with you. 
This was supposed to create a herd mentality and cause people to identify 
with the group, and of course it worked. The second was to invent the made-up 
Maharishi Effect and pretend that doing the TMSP was somehow benefiting other 
people, and the world. This worked, too, because it gave people a reason to 
keep practicing it, plus it made them feel self-important, because they were 
saving the world.

I just thought

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates


 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 If you are still so averse to the truth about what a fool you were to pay 
thousands of dollars for a bunch of English language phrases you could have 
read in cheap paperback and how to think them that you still have to pretend 
there was more to the TM Sidhis than that, feel free. 
 

 I do not have to pretend. That's all there was to it. That is *still* all 
there is to it. 
 

 I was taken to the cleaners by a con man (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi), and I freely 
admit it. I think the world would be a better place if more people were able to 
admit the same thing.

 

 Admitting it is one thing. Hanging onto and harping on about it to whoever you 
think might listen year after year is quite another. When do you figure enough 
is enough or that you have grown tired of yourself saying the same old thing 
over and over and over...? After I vomit I don't generally pick through the 
mess or keep sticking my finger down my throat.

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Barry, one of the recent (past few hundred years) Vedic texts that describes 
Yogic Flying in terms of hopping like a frog also mentions that its practice 
brings peace to the world. The insanity has been around for several centuries 
at least. 

 L
 

---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote :

 From: Share Long sharelong60@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 1:25 PM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   turq, I think it's part of human nature to want to share with others 
whatever we have found that enriches life, increases happiness, etc. I think 
doing research is part of that aspect of human nature. And also an expression 
of innate human curiosity to better understand ourselves and the world around 
us.
 

 While sharing *can* be a motivation, I think that with many people who have 
turned evangelizing TM into almost a full-time occupation that there may be 
other factors at work as well. Such as trying to maintain one's *own* will to 
believe by convincing others to believe the same thing they do. Or such as 
trying to prove oneself superior to others because of course youknow how 
things really work and the ones you're preaching to don't. 

In the case of the TM researchers themselves -- almost ALL of whom are or were 
Maharishi devotees -- I think a factor that needs to be considered is that 
doing research on TM and getting it published was one of the ONLY ways they 
could get the personal attention of the guy they considered their master, 
Maharishi himself. The only other way you could do that was by being rich and 
giving him a lot of money, or by being famous and allowing him to use your name 
to make more money. I had a couple of these TM researchers back in the late 
1960s and early 1970s admit to me that they changed their majors *so that* they 
could do exactly this and get closer to Maharishi. One said, I'm in it for 
the darshan. This strikes me as an attitude that might tempt them to skew or 
fake results, because only good findings would result in a pat on the back 
from Maharishi.

I notice, however, that you completely missed the real point of my original 
comment. The very IDEA that bouncing around on one's butt can affect world 
peace, the weather, and crime rates is *INSANE*. It's laughable. If you hadn't 
already been indoctrinated by so many years of having accepted so many other 
absurd ideas when you first heard this, you would have laughed at it, too. 

 On Friday, April 4, 2014 3:48 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... wrote:
 
   The point I don't understand, Lawson, is WHY anyone would want to do 
research to validate or prove something as ludicrous as We can affect 
other people and the world by bouncing around on our butts on slabs of foam. 

 

 Please explain to me HOW anyone could develop enough of an attachment to such 
a dumbfuck idea as to want to prove it. 

 

 From: LEnglish5@... LEnglish5@...
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com 
 Sent: Friday, April 4, 2014 10:37 AM
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 
 
   I don't know if Barry ever suggested that (he never mentioned it to me that 
I remember) but  I've been suggestiing variations on that idea for decades. The 
problem has been that Fred Travis' original research along that line (his PhD 
thesis actually) used 40 seconds average EEG and that's too coarse a 
measurement to use when the average EEG starts to approach the maximum anyway.
 

 That's where EEG microstate research comes in. If they can establish a pattern 
found most often during PC,than they can look for statistical variations in 
that pattern along the lines of what you describe below.
 

 Of course, I'd start without the farady cage, and then with, if an effect were 
found in hte most liberal of circumstances.
 

 L
 
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :

 That's the guy. He did some good thinking on it and offered an explanation of 
why the rest of the scientific world doesn't take it seriously. The onus is 
very much on the TMO to prove it or at least explain it so others can get an 
idea of how it might .work - the feasibility of how it might work even. 
 I think you can always spot a bad theory when it raises more questions than it 
answers. For every explanation I've heard for the ME I can think of many more 
things that it throws into confusion and the closer you get to physics the 
harder it gets to explain. If all this coherence is being passed through some 
field into other peoples minds, why not everyones? How does the field 
differentiate between happy thoughts and negative ones? What does human society 
mean to the fundamental structure of the universe? How come no one has found 
the unified field? It goes on and on. Everything has to go or be completely 
rewritten. No one minds doing that if it's incontravertible

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Did any of you guys even bother to watch the video on EEG done by Alaric 
Arenander that I linked to. The entirity of the 4 higher states of 
consciousness was shown in the EEG, I suspect.  

 I could draw parallels between each major higher stage of consciousness that 
MMY talked about, and the various patterns of EEG shown. Alaric knew this, too, 
though he didn't go so far as to name them expliclly.
 

 He pointed out pure sense of self over and over again within the context of 
highly coherent frontal lobe alpha 1 EEG.
 

 He pointed out the integration of world and self many times as well. The 
glorified cosmic consciousness was shown in the last part of the video where 
he showed that not only was the alpha EEG in hte frontal lobes becoming almost 
100% coherent, but that the coherence in beta and gamma frequencies was 
approaching the level found in alpha1 EEG before the meditator had gone on the 
Invincible America course for several years (hint hint).
 

 

 L

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

A puja means whatever the person doing it says it means, so the fact that there 
is a puja involved means nothing more than a Hindu started the organization. 

 Unless, of course, you think the puja is doing something special for the sake 
of the student, in which case, its, by definnition, scientific as that 
something special would be working even if 99% of teh students don't believe 
that its worth anything.
 

 Interesting catch-22, that.
 

 L

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Probably a good portion of the Shankaracharya Order at that time had positive 
feelings towards Hitler. 

 The student of Gurudev's who eventually became the court-appointed 
Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, had been a Hindu freedom figher, likely with a 
price on his head as a terrorist against teh British government, during WWII.
 

 

 L

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

They dont' know much about human anatomy. 

 The Enteric System has more neurons than the spinal column, or all the nerve 
cells of teh peripheral nervous system. 500 million of 'em. The gut eats 95% 
of all the serotonin produced by the human body.
 
L
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote :

 The woman who got TM kicked out of her son's high school is a practicing 
Hindu, tho she is not Indian. She told me the other day that Marshy's 
superstitious crap he taught like the humans as a buffet line for soma eating 
Hindu gods really rubs Hindus the wrong way. And her Hindu friends who were 
born in India feel the same way she says.
 
 On Fri, 4/4/14, anartaxius@... mailto:anartaxius@... anartaxius@... 
mailto:anartaxius@... wrote:
 
 Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime 
Rates
 To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
 Date: Friday, April 4, 2014, 4:59 PM
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Maharishi showed a lot of creativity in marketing
 TM. I recall reading an article by a sociologist (I think)
 in the 'Skeptical Inquirer' about TM mentioning how
 he completely changed the image of the movement from your
 basic Hindu/Vedic base virtually over night by introducing
 new language, science. I think he was fearless in trying
 things and also dropping things that did not work. He did
 not succeed in erasing the Hindu connexions, and I suspect
 many followers did not like the change to the new
 terminology (Charles Lutes for example), and that might be a
 reason why it has acted more as a drag on the movement than
 it could have, however the Hindu core of teaching, the puja
 etc., makes it difficult to cover that up. This is what is
 called isomorphism, translating concepts from one set of
 intellectual symbols to another. Maharishi was particularly
 good at that. Translating spiritual concepts to science is a
 dangerous game because science requires a higher standard of
 belief, and the lax approach to evidence in religion and
 spirituality in general is a great handicap.
 
 
 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
 no_re...@yahoogroups.com mailto:no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote :
 
 Maharishi was
 more modern than those 50 years younger, always moving
 forward, showing infinite flexibility. 
 
 
 ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com,
 dhamiltony2k5@... wrote :
 
 As
 much as people want to dump on
 Maharishi as being some secreted ultra-traditional
 nationalistic
 hindoo-ist, the record shows they guy to be quite a modern
 and
 spiritual human. He was incredibly consistent looking at
 the whole
 progression as science, spirituality in consciousness, and
 policy as
 the larger spiritual movement built through a span of time
 and
 developed to what we see.-Buck
 Anartaxius writes:
 Buck,
 Maharishi did a lot of interesting things. In the world of
 science, however, it is data and confirmation of hypotheses
 that drive forward. A scientist that has a successful career
 is basically working to extend knowledge, and does so by
 superseding, by surpassing his mentors, and in science that
 means showing what your mentors did was in some way wrong,
 and that the newer knowledge is less wrong (still might not
 be right though). The question here is does TM and its
 related things accomplish what it is said to do? Does it
 work uniformly or non-uniformly on those who practise it?
 What percentage of practitioners truly reach the stated
 goals? How good is the data? Was the data processed
 properly? I think the results, which were eventually good
 for me, are nonetheless very uneven, and essentially,
 because movement science is largely ignored by the wider
 community, unproved.
 Once
 the Heidelberg color presses
 were purchased [early 1970's] Maharishi published in
 cycle through the decades major
 volumes that he edited that show the progression of the
 science,
 thought, and programs. It was all for linking modern
 science
 research in spirituality. He was remarkably progressive,
 visionary
 and revolutionary all at once. I feel you guys should
 respect him
 more as the rishi, teacher, and scientist he
 was.-Buck
 
 Nope. 
 Well, Turquoiseb is in error about
 his 1978 assertion and you are wrong for thinking he is
 right. 
 I am not. I was there, and was on one of the first TM
 Sidhi courses, *while working at the TM National Center*, so
 I am pretty aware of how these courses were marketed and
 what was said about them at that time. There was NO MENTION
 of any group effect from the TM Sidhis before I
 left the TM movement in 1978. 
 Any mention of the Maharishi Effect in
 the original 1976 Collected Papers
 was added later, in editions that had been subjected to
 revisionist history. The term hadn't even
 been *invented* in 1976. 
 
 If you think differently, prove it. Otherwise I have

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

Share, the money to teach TM to disadvantaged people comes from donations. 
Aside from a few pilot projects on TM and PTSD, almost all TM research dollars 
these days are coming from the NIH and other grants-giving governmental bodies. 

 Any large donations are for pandits or Invincible America participants.
 

 

 L

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-03 Thread LEnglish5

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] 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] 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] 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] 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:
 http://istpp.org/crime_prevention

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] 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

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

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

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

Re: [FairfieldLife] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates

2014-04-03 Thread LEnglish5

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] 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] Research Shows Group Meditation Can Reduce Crime Rates