Re: [FairfieldLife] Movie Time
From: Bhairitu noozg...@sbcglobal.net [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com I rented Transcendence last night on Blu-ray. Thought it was rather flat. It's like they had a hard time figuring out a concept for the film. It is NOT BTW, a pro-Singularity movie. I've also been watching From Dusk till Dawn, the series, on Netflix. It's very entertaining. And also have been watching episodes of BBC's Happy Valley also on Netflix which is also entertaining. I haven't seen the latter, but I'm happy to hear you're watching the former. I'm admittedly a total Robert Rodriguez fanboy, but I think he outdid his movie with From Dusk Till Dawn series. Rodriguez has another series going on his El Rey channel called Matador, and I've been watching it because I'm a fanboy, but it isn't as good at FDTD. In other TV news, I'm wanting to catch up on my favorite series after having been on vacation, but so far I haven't been able to get past The Honourable Woman. That series may have spoiled me in the same way that Breaking Bad did, so I'm taking a while before watching any others. I've raved about it here before, but that was just for early episodes. Taken as a whole -- as a standalone, no-plans-for-a-sequel, eight-episode TV drama series -- there really hasn't ever been anything quite like it. It redefines the concept of masterwork when it comes to the television arts. One simply cannot say enough about the dream cast -- Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lubna Azabal, Katherine Parkinson, Eve Best, Stephen Rea, Janet McTeer, and Andrew Buchan -- they deserve every award they're going to earn. But the real credit for the masterwork goes to series writer, producer, and director Hugo Blick. Some pundits said he couldn't possibly outdo his previous series The Shadow Line. They were wrong, as pundits often are. The writing and characterization in The Honourable Woman may be the best I've ever seen on TV. As for the series' timing -- a TV miniseries about Palestinian-Gaza tensions hitting the air at the same time that you're seeing similar events play themselves out every night on the Evening News -- that's just pure karma. I think the series presents in the end a hopeful view of an area of the world that is remarkably short on hopeful views, so I think that even on the level of underlying message it succeeds. It's really worth a watch, if you find that you have access to it in your part of the world.
[FairfieldLife] Willin'
I'm back in Leiden but still on vacation. Meaning that this time the frosty, almost (dare I say it?) spiritual Road Trip Mindset I always get while on vacation didn't go away when I stepped off the road. In a weird way, it's like experiencing hours of deep, thoughtless samadhi while meditating, and then opening your eyes and standing up and discovering that it doesn't go away. Cool. So, having awakened all happy and looking forward to the day, and having decided to celebrate that feeling in the best way I know how, I decided to venture forth to one of my favorite writing cafes and rap a bit. And therein lies the rub. After thinking But what to write about? for about the hundredth time, staring at a blank screen, I still had nuthin'. Two cups of good capucchino and I'm still staring at Hemingway's white bull. Nada. No inspiration whatsoever. Same happy feeling, but with no content to write about. Then an old song came on the cafe's sound system. I heard the words I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow... and they hit me with the subjective power of an acid flashback, carrying me back to other times I've sat listening to this same song over the years, especially during transitional periods. The song was popular during the time I first walked away from the TM movement, and I loved listening to it then because it always helped me to remember that in walking away from TM I was walking TO something else, something better. The song is called Willin', and I've included a link below to the cover version that played on this cafe's sound system a few minutes ago, and also to the original version, sung by the song's author, the late Lowell George. So if you want a soundtrack for the rap the song inspired, you've got one. :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJHcD0kHTGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNqv85coyTw Anyway, here's the rap. It's short, and about the delight of realizing that all these years later, at age 68, I'm still willin'. All these years walking a spiritual path, and I'm still willin' to walk one. For that I guess I should thank Maharishi, and Rama, and all of the other people who served as teachers for me along the Way as I walked that path in the past. I may not have chosen to follow *their* path in the end, but I do appreciate their contributions to helping me walk mine. I even appreciate the bad parts of studying with them. I saw both of these supposedly badge-wearing park rangers along the spiritual path do some fairly awful shit to people who had chosen to believe in them and follow them. The kinda shit that could potentially turn me off to the very concept of spiritual path forever. But it didn't. I still consider myself walking a spiritual path. I took everything they threw at me -- both good and bad -- and I'm still walking. At this point I don't have any particular goal in mind at the supposed end of that path, or have any rational reasons for doing so, but I still walk one. Go figure. So what do I consider a spiritual path, *for me*? I guess that, for me, it's the inability to shake off the delusional belief that when I wake up every morning, the day ahead of me is much more likely to be fun than it is to be a bummer. So far, life has been extremely kind to me, so on 99% of the mornings of my life that I have awakened and had this delusional thought at the start of a day, it has actually turned out to be true. I probably wouldn't have been as lucky if I'd been born, say, in a war zone, or in the squalor of some third world nation. But for whatever karmic reasons, this delusional belief has always *worked out* for me, so I'm still willin' to believe in it, and keep walkin'. That's all I had to say. This is just a cafe rap over coffee about having a good start to a day that I'm pretty sure is going to get even better. I'm probably not going to be writing many more such raps for this forum because it's grown too repetitive and boring to participate in, but I felt like writing this one, so I did. If you're one of those people whose first thought on reading it is to want to crap on it, and me...well...feel free. Chances are I'll never even read your response, so the only person whose day it will sour is yours. Your call. :-) Meanwhile, I'll still be walking my own path, and if 68 years of personal history is any indication, having a pretty good time doing so. Cool.
[FairfieldLife] For Salyavin
A long read, but one that provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of -- and perils of -- trying to be a scientist in this increasingly unscientific age. The Aftershocks The Aftershocks Seven of Italy’s top scientists were convicted of manslaughter after a catastrophic earthquake. What the hell really hap… View on medium.com Preview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] Live Nude Cabaret
A fairly new song by an old favorite wordsmith of mine, Jackson Browne. He has a new album coming out soon, as does Leonard Cohen. I've already pre-ordered both. In my experience, old poets can either just get old and frayed as they age, like socks, or they can get better, like wine. I'm curious to see how these guys do... Jackson Browne - Live Nude Cabaret - Denver 2012 - Part 7 Jackson Browne - Live Nude Cabaret - Denver 2012 - Part ... View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Live Nude Cabaret
I always loved Jackson Browne. I used to see him perform at the Troubadour in L.A. on open mic night back in the 60s, painfully shy and almost ashamed of his own voice, preferring other singers' cover versions of his songs to his own. There is a great moment in the recent documentary on The Eagles in which Don Henley speaks of living above Jackson's basement room back in their mutual just-getting-started-in-the-music-business days and being awakened by him every morning by the sound of him sitting at the piano going over and over and over and over the same verse of a new song, trying to make it perfect. Sometimes it would take months. Leonard Cohen is the same way. It can take him *years* to finish a song to the point that he feels it's finished, and that he can record it. It's a real trip to surf the Net and find old, still-in-process versions of one of his songs, years before we in the general public first heard it. The changes are not drastic -- a word will be changed here, a phrase here, the rhyme made more precise here. But *every* change makes the song better, and thus is a significant step in the creation of a perfect song. So I really have high hopes for these two upcoming albums. Jackson's new album (his first since 2008) will be released on his 65th birthday, the same age that saner non-poets retire. Leonard Cohen will be 80 when his new album comes out. Bruce Cockburn is my age, and hasn't had a new album in a while because 1) he's a new father at our shared age, and 2) he's been working for the last few years on his autobiography Rumours Of Glory, which is now finished and about to be released. Hopefully now he'll be able to swing his attention back to writing songs. And hopefully all three of these guys' songs will be as good as the ones they wrote in their youth. Physical athletes can't hope to compete at the same levels once they get old and hoary, but mental athletes still have a shot at it. I really hope that all three of these poets/songwriters manage to surpass even their own previous works, setting the bar higher not only for themselves, but for the rest of us as well, because after all we're gettin' a bit old and hoary ourselves, and could use the inspiration. From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 11:30 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Live Nude Cabaret Nice song. I rarely listen to songs. Has a really nice smooth feel to it. The figuration of the guitar is part of the magic of such songs, providing a shimmering tapestry over which the main melody and words float unhindered. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : A fairly new song by an old favorite wordsmith of mine, Jackson Browne. He has a new album coming out soon, as does Leonard Cohen. I've already pre-ordered both. In my experience, old poets can either just get old and frayed as they age, like socks, or they can get better, like wine. I'm curious to see how these guys do... Jackson Browne - Live Nude Cabaret - Denver 2012 - Part 7 Jackson Browne - Live Nude Cabaret - Denver 2012 - Part ... View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Guru
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2014 11:23 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Guru
[FairfieldLife] The TMO Disease: Hypochondria
I've been staying out of the Alternative Therapies free-for-all for a number of reasons. First, it's been done to death here before, so the whole faux outrage thing has a decidedly been there, done that, don't need to do it again vibe to it. Second, possibly because I bailed from the TMO early, I never got infected with that uber-hypochondria that so many long-term TMers exhibit. I never got into fad diets or mega-supplements or any of that stuff, and have managed to remain remarkably healthy *anyway*, never having to go there and put any attention on my health. I've been lucky enough to be healthy and stay healthy...what was there to focus on or obsess on? Third, I currently write articles for all sorts of people in the health care industry. A few of them probably work for Big Pharma, but most are just everyday practitioners of allopathic medicine or chiropractic or some alternative practice or some mainstream specialty like cardiovascular medicine. And to a person I don't think any of them would disagree with the comments one of them put on the T-shirt below (some MDs might get a bit of a hitch in their panties over the mention of chiropractic, but that's about it). Most of them would LOVE it if their patients would just pay more attention to their diets and to getting enough exercise. But they don't. They want a quick cure. And they want it whether it comes from a Big Pharma pill or a homeopathic sugar pill or a Chinese tonic or an Ayurvedic potion. Health care providers -- whoever they are -- get pushed into the savior role because people go to them demanding the quick cure and shouting Cure me, cure me! They're not willing to do the work every day that keeps them healthy in the first place, so they expect someone else to do it for them.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Asians?
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, mjackson74@... wrote : How can these guys be called Asians, Sal? Ethnicity, they're big on it over here. We are all subdivided to make sure officials aren't discriminating against anyone but I wish they'd just get on with it. If you have to fill out any sort of official form you have to tick the ethnic box and they give you a choice of hundreds. LOL, I was in some government office handing in a form about something and I hadn't bothered with it, the receptionist asked if I would do it there and then so I had a look down the list, it had ten different types of Asian (Pakistani, Indian, South East, Types of Chinese etc) it had nearly as many types of being black, African Caribbean, actual African, North or West African etc. On and on it went down to White, White Irish, White Scottish or Other (please specify). Fed up with the whole charade I ticked Other and wrote Homo Sapiens. She looked embarrassed and said it wasn't about my marital status. Sigh OK, now *that* is funny! :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014
Nice graphic. Is that new? From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; fairfieldc...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 6:41 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 If you are not doing so already, please consider donating a few dollars a month to help offset basic expenses associated with hosting, MailChimp, etc. Of course, larger donations for other expenses are very much appreciated and needed. Donate button on http://batgap.com. Updates from Buddha at the Gas Pump Interviews with Ordinary Spiritually Awakened People New interview posted 08/26/2014: * 247. Sally Kempton 247. Sally Kempton By Rick on Aug 25, 2014 06:18 pm Sally Kempton is a deeply practiced teacher of meditation and spiritual philosophy, and the author of the books Meditation for the Love of It and Awakening Shakti: as well as the audio course Doorways to the Infinite, recently put out … Continue reading → The post 247. Sally Kempton appeared first on Buddha at the Gas Pump. Read in browser » Recent Interviews: 246. Shinzen Young 245. Āloka David Smith 244. Dan Harris 243. Linda Clair 242. David Hoffmeister Copyright © 2014 Buddha at the Gas Pump, All rights reserved. Regular announcement of new interviews posted at http://batgap.com. Our mailing address is: Buddha at the Gas Pump 1108 South B Street Fairfield, Iowa 52556 Add us to your address book
Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014
Sweet, Rick. Just the kinda place I'd like to pull in to top up while on a Road Trip. In my mind I envision encountering this place after pulling off the road in some gawdawful Nowhere in the middle of the Northwestern New Mexico desert, miles from the nearest town, and finding it to be (to my surprise) a Safe Haven. :-) Given my somewhat...uh...odd tastes and proclivities, I imagine the rest stop part of this Safe Haven gas station as a kind of cross between a Tantric Temple in the Himalayas, a truck stop whorehouse along any major road in America, and a convenience store, in which one can not only buy highly-caffeinated drinks to fuel one's ongoing journey, but various medicinal herbs and potions as well. Cash only, because you're Just Passing Through, and who knows whether there will be anything left of you when the credit card bill comes due. :-) From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:09 PM Subject: RE: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 Yes, relatively new. A listener in the UK made it for me. Can be downloaded in various sizes at http://batgap.com/aboutus/fan-resources/, as can batgap theme song, written by Vaj, to use as ring tone. From:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 11:44 AM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 Nice graphic. Is that new? From:'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; fairfieldc...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 6:41 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 If you are not doing so already, please consider donating a few dollars a month to help offset basic expenses associated with hosting, MailChimp, etc. Of course, larger donations for other expenses are very much appreciated and needed. Donate button on http://batgap.com. Updates from Buddha at the Gas Pump Interviews with Ordinary Spiritually Awakened People New interview posted 08/26/2014: * 247. Sally Kempton 247. Sally Kempton By Rick on Aug 25, 2014 06:18 pm Sally Kempton is a deeply practiced teacher of meditation and spiritual philosophy, and the author of the books Meditation for the Love of It and Awakening Shakti: as well as the audio course Doorways to the Infinite, recently put out … Continue reading → The post 247. Sally Kempton appeared first on Buddha at the Gas Pump. Read in browser » Recent Interviews: 246. Shinzen Young 245. Āloka David Smith 244. Dan Harris 243. Linda Clair 242. David Hoffmeister Copyright © 2014 Buddha at the Gas Pump, All rights reserved. Regular announcement of new interviews posted at http://batgap.com. Our mailing address is: Buddha at the Gas Pump 1108 South B Street Fairfield, Iowa 52556 Add us to your address book
Gettin' Into Dodge (was Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview)
OK, just for fun, and to prove that not all of my flights of fancy are *entirely* from my own private store of fancy, I have to tell a story. I was driving cross country in the U.S. with my best friend and former lover, and pulled into Dodge City, Kansas late one night. Winging it, as was our wont while on Road Trips, we had made no firm plans, and thus had no reservations at a place at which to pass the night. Driving along the main strip and seeing No Vacancy on every motel sign, I was starting to lose hope, but then I saw one last motel. It was one of those combo Southwestern Motels, with a small parking lot for auto traffic, and a somewhat larger parking lot for truckers. And its sign actually said Vacancy. I pulled in, found that there was only one room available, and booked it. We checked in, and then -- having heard from the desk clerk that there was no other restaurant in Dodge City open at this late hour, walked over to the restaurant, where we enjoyed a fairly acceptable meal. But as we sat there, I noticed that there was a door at the back of the restaurant, and that many of the truckers, after they had finished their dinner, left a nice tip for the waitress but then, rather than retire to the comfort of their rooms or the cabs of their trucks for the night, walked to this door, said something, and were allowed inside. None of them emerged, during the period when my friend and I were finishing our dinners. I was hooked, curiosity having gotten the better of me, and so when we *did* finish, I walked over to this door and asked the bouncer whether we could go in. He hemmed and hawed and stammered for a few minutes. It was clear that the vast majority of real, everyday, American tourists who had dined here had never made such a request of him. I asked again, he looked at us deeply and seemed to sense something of an affinity there, and let us in. It was the gaudiest whorehouse I've ever seen in my entire life. Velvet Elvis paintings on the walls, only pornographic, with Elvis doing women of all shapes and colors. Red velvet couches, red velvet curtains, the whole bit. Truckers sitting around eyeing the merchandise, which consisted of fairly attractive local beauties here to earn enough money to enable them to (dare I say it) Get The Hell Outa Dodge. We had a couple of drinks and just watched the show for a while, and then thanked our hosts and returned to our room. But what a trip, eh? A normal-looking motel, along a normal-looking highway in fuckin' Kansas, and yet just Behind The Green Door (literally) in the restaurant was a serious whorehouse. I can only hope that the lonely truckers who sought comfort there found some. I certainly did, and I didn't even partake of the merchandise. :-) From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:45 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 Sweet, Rick. Just the kinda place I'd like to pull in to top up while on a Road Trip. In my mind I envision encountering this place after pulling off the road in some gawdawful Nowhere in the middle of the Northwestern New Mexico desert, miles from the nearest town, and finding it to be (to my surprise) a Safe Haven. :-) Given my somewhat...uh...odd tastes and proclivities, I imagine the rest stop part of this Safe Haven gas station as a kind of cross between a Tantric Temple in the Himalayas, a truck stop whorehouse along any major road in America, and a convenience store, in which one can not only buy highly-caffeinated drinks to fuel one's ongoing journey, but various medicinal herbs and potions as well. Cash only, because you're Just Passing Through, and who knows whether there will be anything left of you when the credit card bill comes due. :-) From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:09 PM Subject: RE: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 Yes, relatively new. A listener in the UK made it for me. Can be downloaded in various sizes at http://batgap.com/aboutus/fan-resources/, as can batgap theme song, written by Vaj, to use as ring tone. From:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com] Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 11:44 AM To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 Nice graphic. Is that new? From:'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; fairfieldc
Re: Gettin' Into Dodge (was Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview)
I've actually forgotten the name of this particular Dodge City motel, but as I remember it was called the Something Something Motel And Conference Center. The last part really amused me. Having figured out what it really was, I could imagine guys all over the Southwest bidding their wives farewell as they went off to their yearly (or monthly) conference at this hotel. :-) From: Bhairitu noozg...@sbcglobal.net [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 9:41 PM Subject: Re: Gettin' Into Dodge (was Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview) It's interesting to note that in the Bible Belt you will find such establishments and strip bars far more than you will in the Blue States. There was actually some statistical studies that proved it too. The only time I visited Fairfield I flew into Iowa City and staying overnight at a hotel by the airport looked in the phone directory to see what the local entertainment was. Prominently listed was a gentleman's club. On 08/27/2014 12:10 PM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: OK, just for fun, and to prove that not all of my flights of fancy are *entirely* from my own private store of fancy, I have to tell a story. I was driving cross country in the U.S. with my best friend and former lover, and pulled into Dodge City, Kansas late one night. Winging it, as was our wont while on Road Trips, we had made no firm plans, and thus had no reservations at a place at which to pass the night. Driving along the main strip and seeing No Vacancy on every motel sign, I was starting to lose hope, but then I saw one last motel. It was one of those combo Southwestern Motels, with a small parking lot for auto traffic, and a somewhat larger parking lot for truckers. And its sign actually said Vacancy. I pulled in, found that there was only one room available, and booked it. We checked in, and then -- having heard from the desk clerk that there was no other restaurant in Dodge City open at this late hour, walked over to the restaurant, where we enjoyed a fairly acceptable meal. But as we sat there, I noticed that there was a door at the back of the restaurant, and that many of the truckers, after they had finished their dinner, left a nice tip for the waitress but then, rather than retire to the comfort of their rooms or the cabs of their trucks for the night, walked to this door, said something, and were allowed inside. None of them emerged, during the period when my friend and I were finishing our dinners. I was hooked, curiosity having gotten the better of me, and so when we *did* finish, I walked over to this door and asked the bouncer whether we could go in. He hemmed and hawed and stammered for a few minutes. It was clear that the vast majority of real, everyday, American tourists who had dined here had never made such a request of him. I asked again, he looked at us deeply and seemed to sense something of an affinity there, and let us in. It was the gaudiest whorehouse I've ever seen in my entire life. Velvet Elvis paintings on the walls, only pornographic, with Elvis doing women of all shapes and colors. Red velvet couches, red velvet curtains, the whole bit. Truckers sitting around eyeing the merchandise, which consisted of fairly attractive local beauties here to earn enough money to enable them to (dare I say it) Get The Hell Outa Dodge. We had a couple of drinks and just watched the show for a while, and then thanked our hosts and returned to our room. But what a trip, eh? A normal-looking motel, along a normal-looking highway in fuckin' Kansas, and yet just Behind The Green Door (literally) in the restaurant was a serious whorehouse. I can only hope that the lonely truckers who sought comfort there found some. I certainly did, and I didn't even partake of the merchandise. :-) From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 8:45 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Sally Kempton: New Interview on Buddha at the Gas Pump - 08/26/2014 Sweet, Rick. Just the kinda place I'd like to pull in to top up while on a Road Trip. In my mind I envision encountering this place after pulling off the road in some gawdawful Nowhere in the middle of the Northwestern New Mexico desert, miles from the nearest town, and finding it to be (to my surprise) a Safe Haven. :-) Given my somewhat...uh...odd tastes and proclivities, I imagine the rest stop part of this Safe Haven gas station as a kind of cross between a Tantric Temple in the Himalayas, a truck stop whorehouse along any major road in America, and a convenience store, in which one can not only buy highly-caffeinated drinks to fuel one's ongoing
Re: [FairfieldLife] Attack of the killer robots!
You also can't stop cluelessness. Just the other day my brother discovered this list on Wikipedia of all the companies so lacking in social awareness, irony, or shame that they named their products Skynet. WTF, dudes. Didn't you *see* the Terminator movies? Don't you *understand* how pissed off robots get when you call them that, and how they tend to want to eliminate the human race when they get pissed off? :-) Skynet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Skynet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Skynet may refer to: View on en.wikipedia.org Preview by Yahoo From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:43 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Attack of the killer robots! Only a matter of time. Just think how much fun it'll be in the middle east with battalions of these guys strolling about exterminating everything with a beard. I just hope they look as cool as the ones in the picture. You can't stop progress! Killer robots a small step away and must be outlawed, says top UN official - Telegraph Killer robots a small step away and must be outlawed, sa... A senior UN official says battlefield robots that can kill without human control are a 'small step' away and should be banned View on www.telegraph.co.uk Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Out-evolving the amygdala!
This really is exciting stuff -- being able to hack the brain on a physical level to change the emotional component that we *attach* to a memory or an experience. There is nothing inherently good, bad, happy-making, or fear-making about the memory or experience itself; our reaction is based on what we *bring to it* in terms of attachments. Being able to change those attachment links from negative to positive could be beneficial. Although it's not quite the same thing, I'm reminded of a common experience during my days with the Rama guy. He liked movies, and both attending them and discussing them as metaphors for the spiritual process were a big part of studying with him. So a new movie would come out, a bunch of us would go to see in on opening night, and then we'd wait for the next center meeting to find out what he thought of it. Well, I never found my opinions of these movies to be greatly colored by his opinion, but other students certainly did. For example, I'd run into friends before the meeting and they'd be all excited about this new movie they saw. Hearing I'd seen it, too, they'd talk about all the scenes or one-liners they liked the best. Clearly, remembering them was a link to a positive experience for them, because the more they talked about how much they liked the movie, the happier they got. Then the meeting would start, and sometimes Rama *didn't* like the movie in question. He'd take a dump on it from on high. And then after the meeting, I'd run into these same people I was talking to before the meeting, and they'd have done a complete 180. Now they'd be talking about how crappy the movie was, *using the same scenes and one-liners they'd raved about before* as examples of why they hated it. Go figure. On one level, that's just cult thinking playing itself out -- think the way you've been told to think. On another, something happened that flipped the circuits these people had associated with the memory of the movie -- from positive to negative. Or vice-versa, because sometimes the Rama guy would love something they'd previously hated, and they'd flip-flop over that, too. The most fascinating thing is that none of these people, when called on this flip-floppiness, would own up to it. They flat-out denied having ever said they'd loved the movie they now claimed to not like because Rama didn't like it. If this ability to reverse the nature of the attachments we have to memories could be developed and standardized and made safe, I would see it being of far more value than TM or any other generic technique of meditation for the treatment of memory-related disorders like PTSD. You *can't* get rid of the memories, or the things in the present that trigger remembering them. But it appears that you *can* change the association you have with these memories. Change enough of these associations from negative to positive, and you've got yerself a whole new way of looking at the world. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 2:32 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Out-evolving the amygdala! Now here's some cutting edge mental health therapy. Talk about neuro-linguistic programming! This is a major re-write. Scientists find secret of reversing bad memories - Telegraph Scientists find secret of reversing bad memories - T... Bad memories could be reversed after scientists discovered the part of the brain which links emotions to past events View on www.telegraph.co.uk Preview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] The Future Foretold: That Man In Rio
For some reason, there is a revival goin' on lately of a 1964 film that I loved dearly when it came out. Newly-restored prints of this film are being shown in New York, Paris, and London, and people of note are coming out of their respective celluloid closets and talking about how much this film influenced them and their careers. As an example, Steven Spielberg credits it as one of his *primary* influences for the Indiana Jones movies. All I can say is, having been there in the cinemas watching this at the same time he was...Duh. The film is called That Man In Rio, and it's by the same director -- Phillipe de Broca -- who later created that much-loved Newage favorite King Of Hearts. TMIR was shot two years earlier, and during a period in which the planet had gone a little 007-crazy. James Bond and his emulators were *everywhere* in the cinema, trying to outdo each other for their audiences' attention. I watched them all, but That Man In Rio was one of the few that captured mine. For one reason, I was already a fan of the actor playing the hero, Jean-Paul Belmondo. He had surrounding him a kind of Gallic savoir-faire aura that I could groove on. But for another -- and to be honest a bigger reason why I loved the film at the time -- was that by that time I was already a BIG fan of French cinema (from my time in Morocco), and my *favorite* French actress was Françoise Dorleac. For those of you who don't recognize that name, she was the older sister of Catherine Deneuve. Both of them were raised as part of a fairly aristocratic French theatre family, and it showed. They were both talented, both pursued their lineage into the theatre arts, and both became famous as actresses in France. But here's the kicker -- if you're from a younger generation than mine, try to imagine a universe in which you're reading a News story in French newspapers about two sister-actors, and the one most often referred to as the ugly sister of the two is *Catherine Deneuve*. THAT was Françoise Dorleac. She had a waif-like quality and a fragile beauty that I loved and that I associated from the first moment I caught sight of her with those fabled qualities of Being French, And Being A Babe: Françoise's life was tragically cut short by a sports car accident near Nice, at age 25. I still think that if she had lived, she'd have become more famous and more well-regarded as an actress than her younger sister. But she lived life in the fast lane, and that eventually cost her her head -- literally -- and she never made it to age 26. She *did* leave behind this classic and sometimes *wonderfully* funny movie, which celebrates the wonderful qualities she brought to it, and for which I am happy to see its revival. To quote a review that came out at the same time I first saw this movie, Françoise was clean and quirky, and thus a perfect foil for all of the craziness exploding across the screen all around her. This film was criticized and even savaged at the time for being too fast-paced, and for leaving its audiences behind in its attempts to move to the next whizbang explosion or inconceivably inconceivable plot twist. But all that it *really* did -- in retrospect -- was to give us a glimpse of video games, their sensibilities, and their pacing, several decades before the games themselves ever appeared.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Embodied experience?
Card, I don't know what your sister is into, but it doesn't sound to me as if either of you understands what synesthesia is. That's what happens when information perceived by one sense triggers a simultaneous perception in another, unrelated sense but with no direct input that could cause this second sensory perception. For example, you look at a painting and it makes you taste something. None of this as I understand it has anything to do with the concept of embodied experience. Some people are using that phrase as a buzzword for virtual environments in which sensorimotor technology is used to provoke the sensation of feeling or smell or hearing. That's not really synesthesia because something mechanical is actually triggering these perceptions. From: cardemais...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, August 29, 2014 11:38 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Embodied experience? My sister is using the expression embodied experience in referring to synesthetic experiences of visual arts. Is it OK, or could there be a better expression for that. THX in advance...
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Searching Re: Post Count Fri 29-Aug-14 00:15:05 UTC
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Hey Buck, there are websites where Yahoo users complain about Neo, and list things not fixed. I have noticed that they seem to be taking certain functions offline, and then put them back, possibly an attempt to fix the problem. Neo search never allowed searching by date, at any rate it always failed for me. Now search is disable. For now we are in the here and now on Neo, possibly one of the worst software updates in history. I think Neo is an attempt to make the groups work better with small device screens, such as infinite scrolling. But it totally fucked up desktop and laptop use. Plus now we have Dan and Richard hogging all the space with fluff. Well, an empty mind is one criterion for enlightenment. One of the reasons I never bothered with Neo and shifted to reading FFL in email was that the email client allowed me to preview the list of incoming posts and delete any I don't feel the need to bother with before opening the remaining list. Then I can just leisurely scroll through it. These days the remaining list is very short.
Re: [FairfieldLife] More cool brain stuff...
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : Consciousness is the field. Simply put, no objects exist independently of their being known Believe what you like, I'm not religious. You have to admit, though...Willy's statement *does* kinda nail the essence of troll consciousness. They troll because they're terrified that they don't exist if no one is paying attention to them.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Happy Ganesh Chaturthi !
Happy birthday, Michael. May your metaphorical...uh...trunk of power ever be perky and ready for action. :-) From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, August 29, 2014 8:40 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Happy Ganesh Chaturthi ! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I love it! Today is my birthday too! Me and Ganesh!! Yee ha! From: nablusoss1008 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, August 29, 2014 2:28 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Happy Ganesh Chaturthi ! MERU Concert - Ganesh Stuti - Vidya and Vandana Iyer MERU Concert - Ganesh Stuti - Vidya and Vandana Iyer Vidya and Vandana Iyer singing Ganesh vandana, 'Gajananayutham Ganeshwaram...' with Sandip Bhattacharya on tabla. - Raga Chakra... View on www.youtube.comPreview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Where is Barry Wright?
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com He has been on vacation. But FFL seems to have gone mostly to fluff lately, with a lot of short spammy twinkie brain posts so there is not much to read here any more, no discussions of any substance. Well, I think short spammy twinkie brain posts has substance. That's as near-perfect a description as I've read in some time. :-) The curiosity quotient of the FFL denizens is rapidly approaching zero. If you want to hone your mind here, you might as well pound your head against a wall. With the disappearance of Judy Stein, the main burr around which interesting discussions developed is gone. Barry is one of the few posters here who can write a coherent post longer than a couple of lines. Also missing in action is Curtis who provided some of the best reasoned retorts to various arguments that appeared here. Life goes on, and dies, dies, dies. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wayback71@... wrote : I have not really followed FFL regularly for a while. Is Barry (turq) on vacation or did he say goodbye to FFL? I miss his posts.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Where is Barry Wright?
From: dmevans...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Yep. Interesting what has happened. The limits were removed. Wham. Almost immediately, Richard and Share ushered the forum into its evolution as a chat room - characterized as all are by a preponderence of meaningless drivel. Bam. Gone are the limits telling the brain to put some thought into a post, put some thought into topics, put some thought into with who and in what format one wanted to converse. Thank ya, Limits that forced a pause in the action. Quite the statement this forum is, really. Ma'am.
[FairfieldLife] Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
Even though I'm not a big fan of the comic book/graphic novel genre, or movies made from them, I loved the original Sin City. It look the look and feel of Frank Miller's dark, twisted world and rendered it onscreen faithfully. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For continues the tradition. It is rated So Not For Buck, being full of even more sex and violence than its predecessor. It provides four prequels to the events portrayed in the original movie, and one sequel. Just Another Saturday Night features Mickey Rourke reprising his role as Marv, trying to figure out how what started as just another Saturday night watching Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) dance ended up with him standing over a wreckage of cars and bodies, essentially the only one left standing. It's not the best story in the bunch, but it sets the scene and provides a great lead-in to the title sequences, which are as stunning as they were last time. The Long Bad Night is in two parts, and features Joseph Gordon Levitt as a cocky young gambler trying to teach evil senator Roarke (played again by Powers Booth) a lesson. He wins the poker game but gets the crap beaten out of him by Roarke. He'll have another shot at Roarke in part two, but this part is really here to show us Nancy dancing again, this time building up to trying to shoot Roarke herself for what he did to Hartigan (Bruce Willis) in the previous movie. She doesn't go through with it, but we're startin' to get the idea -- this whole movie is really about Nancy, and what she's building up to. A Dame to Kill For gives us a little back story on Dwight McCarthy (played in the original by Clive Owen but here by Josh Brolin) and how he got to know Gail (Rosario Dawson) and Miho (played this time by Jamie Chung) and the girls who run Old Town. This is the most classic film noir segment in the movie, and it's stunning visually, all black and white with splashes of red where the blood is (and a flash of red-haired wig on Nancy, dancing again). And they couldn't have picked a more film noir woman for Dwight to be in love with. Eva Green was *born* to be a film noir femme fatale, and she's *great* as Ava. She's also naked a lot, which makes this movie more than worth its price of admission in itself. And yet, after the concluding segment of The Long Bad Night, it's not Eva Green who sticks with me as the best actress in the film. That would have to be Jessica Alba, in Nancy's Last Dance. She takes the character of Nancy Callahan that she created so carefully in the first movie and then shows what she's like four years later. Bitter, still obsessed with Roarke for what he did to Hartigan, now angry with herself because she couldn't even shoot him when she had a chance, it all boils over and she performs one last dance and then teams up with Marv for one of those revenge-fests that both Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller are famous for. Alba is tremendous in this movie, and especially in this segment. Eva Green may be the perfect femme fatale, but it's Jessica Alba who gets to show off the acting chops she's gained since that first film and become the titular dame to kill for. If you didn't like the original movie you probably won't like this one. But I thought it was pretty cool, especially for a home movie. That's literally what it is -- Robert Rodriguez made this entire film at his home studio. The actors flew into Austin, drove out to his house, and did all their acting in front of green screens. As usual, Rodriguez himself did all cinematography and editing, and he wrote most of the music. CGI artists created the virtual sets of Sin City. Altogether it works to create a pretty unique film experience. SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR Comic-Con Red Band Trailer SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR Comic-Con Red Band ... View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] More brain zapping stuff
Following up on Salyavin's post about neuroscientists being able to zap brains with blue light to create more positive emotional associations with memories and thus treat PTSD, here's another article showing that this brain-zapping psychiatry stuff now seems to be a trend. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Especially in this case. This is a helmet that supposedly zaps the brains of heavy smokers to help them quit. Great. But I'll bet that once it's approved, it'll wind up costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for one zap. Meanwhile, all over the world doctors and researchers (including many at the CDC) are refusing to support e-cigarettes, which have been shown to be almost as effective at helping people to quit smoking. The e-cigs cost about $20, they're refillable, and they WORK. And so what are doctors trying to do? Legislate them out of existence so they can sell more expensive solutions. Zapping brain may cure heavy smokers, study finds Zapping brain may cure heavy smokers, study finds 44% of pack-a-day-plus smokers studied were able to kick the habit with 'shock' treatment, despite past failures View on www.timesofisrael.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: More brain zapping stuff
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Following up on Salyavin's post about neuroscientists being able to zap brains with blue light to create more positive emotional associations with memories and thus treat PTSD, here's another article showing that this brain-zapping psychiatry stuff now seems to be a trend. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Especially in this case. This is a helmet that supposedly zaps the brains of heavy smokers to help them quit. Great. But I'll bet that once it's approved, it'll wind up costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for one zap. And the catch is that you have to keep the helmet on or the effect wears off! But the helmets will be available in a number of designer colors to go with your favorite outfits. Some people may purchase several helmets so they don't have to wear the same ones to gala openings and awards ceremonies and thus suffer poor reviews from fashion magazines. Famous designers will hop on the bandwagon and produce their own versions of the helmets -- for example, these are supposedly the matching his and hers headgear proposed by Jean Paul Gaultier: :-) Meanwhile, all over the world doctors and researchers (including many at the CDC) are refusing to support e-cigarettes, which have been shown to be almost as effective at helping people to quit smoking. The e-cigs cost about $20, they're refillable, and they WORK. And so what are doctors trying to do? Legislate them out of existence so they can sell more expensive solutions. Zapping brain may cure heavy smokers, study finds Zapping brain may cure heavy smokers, study finds 44% of pack-a-day-plus smokers studied were able to kick the habit with 'shock' treatment, despite past failures View on www.timesofisrael.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] 600 HP car runs on salt water
This is one serious presentation. I really don't know what to make of it. It could be one of the great breakthroughs of our century, or it could be a put-on. And of course if it's for real the big question for all but supercar buyers is What is that *second* electrolyte solution the car runs on, besides salt water? What if they *can* achieve all these admirable numbers, but the second electrolyte costs more per ounce than Chanel No. 5 because it's made from the gonads of a rapidly-nearing-extinction rare species of wombat? :-) :-) From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, September 1, 2014 5:49 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] 600 HP car runs on salt water Very cool, and as they point out, if salt water can generate this kind of power for a car, imagine what it can do for electrical generation in general. No shortage of salt water! http://www.intelligentliving.co/salt-water-powered-car-gets-european-approval/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: New FFL Rule, was where is what's his name?
From: j_alexander_stan...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com If she who shall not be named wants to be anonymous, she should not post here with a subscription tied to her real name. As much as I like said person, her demands for anonymity under a non-anonymous identity are silly and unreasonable. While I agree with this, when are the moderators of Fairfield Life going to do something about the troll who is attempting to destroy it, as he destroyed a.m.t. a few years earlier, by spamming it with endless crap. Richard Williams has made almost 350 posts in a little over a week, and no one stands up to him and demands that he stop. Dan Friedman tried to do exactly the same thing, but fortunately everyone just ignored him, so he seems to have lost interest and gone away. Good riddance. It's clear, however, that Willytex is too insane to do this, and will keep up this endless spamming forever, even if no one ever responds to him. Isn't there *something* you can do to get him to cut back on it?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: New FFL Rule, was where is what's his name?
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : From: j_alexander_stanley@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com If she who shall not be named wants to be anonymous, she should not post here with a subscription tied to her real name. As much as I like said person, her demands for anonymity under a non-anonymous identity are silly and unreasonable. While I agree with this, when are the moderators of Fairfield Life going to do something about the troll who is attempting to destroy it, as he destroyed a.m.t. a few years earlier, by spamming it with endless crap. Richard Williams has made almost 350 posts in a little over a week, and no one stands up to him and demands that he stop. I tried a few times but gave up, now I'm too busy ignoring him. I guess I'm complaining because of all the extra effort it takes me *to* ignore him, or just to read the forum at all these days. I've given up entirely on Neo, because there is no way to filter or sort it usefully, and sadly setting up filters to block the email addresses of known spammers entirely doesn't seem to work properly. So every time I feel like reading FFL I have to perform this ritual of opening the whole list of emails that have arrived since the previous day and then clicking a checkbox next to all of them by Richard, Dan Friedman (while he was here), Ann, Nabby, and fleetwood (Jim), and then deleting them all unread. But then I start reading the remaining list and realize that I also have to delete almost everything from Steve, Share, and Emily/Denise, because they rarely ever said anything that isn't related to some bullshit posted by one of the people I'd already deleted. Vicious circle. :-) The remaining list is somewhat manageable, and occasionally contains something worth reading. Even more rarely, there is actually something worth replying to -- but at most 1 or 2 a day. That's not a very good track record for a forum, so I doubt I'll stick around if this is how things are going to continue to be. At this point I'm not quite sure which is more dismaying -- the outright insanity of people like Richard, or the shocking True Believerism from people like Share and Nabby and JR and Lawson. Both make me feel as if I'd accidentally dropped into a world in which reason is not only not the norm, but has never been heard of. :-) Dan Friedman tried to do exactly the same thing, but fortunately everyone just ignored him, so he seems to have lost interest and gone away. Good riddance. It's clear, however, that Willytex is too insane to do this, and will keep up this endless spamming forever, even if no one ever responds to him. Isn't there *something* you can do to get him to cut back on it? Spam is the word, it would be OK - ish if he made sense or if his links were relevant to what is being discussed, but they aren't. He is clearly a troll trying to ruin the place for his own amusement. As he happily admits. Bhairitu is right, adults don't need post limits so maybe we should petition yahoo for an auto post limit feature that cuts you out if you do more than 50 a week if we aren't mature enough to retain self control.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: New FFL Rule, was where is what's his name?
From: j_alexander_stan...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com As for me, I don't have the time or patience to deal with FFL management beyond what I'm doing right now. My beloved has been in poor health for the past year, and my days are filled with her pain and discomfort. She is so dependent on me being in Fairfield that I haven't traveled east to see my 87 year old father since last September, and I don't know if I'll ever see him again. And, now, my own low-grade infection, that had been kept well in check for 11+ years, is staging a major comeback. There is simply enough stress and unpleasantness in my own life that I refuse to tackle the inane bullshit that goes on here. Sorry to hear all of this, Alex, and as I've said before, thanks for handling the thankless task of trying to manage this place as well as you always have. I know that there is not much you can do when faced with someone as psychotic and as unresponsive as Richard Williams. For all we know, if you were to revoke his posting rights, he's so insane that he might do what Ravi and others have done and just try to create new IDs so he could continue to harass the people here, and you as moderator. Dealing with people like this is a lose-lose situation, which is why I and some others who have spoken up lately have chosen not to interact with him at all, ever again. I guess the thing that bothers me the most, still having a tiny bit of affection for my days involved with TM, is how a discussion group about it could devolve into the inane bullshit that you so accurately describe it having become. What HAPPENED to all of these once-intelligent people to make them so petty, so vindictive, so irrational, and so attached to their beliefs or to the people who sold them those beliefs? If FFL continues as it is, many people will probably bail, because after all there is just so much inane bullshit one can take in a lifetime. The only good thing I see coming out of that is that any prospective newbies wondering whether TM might be right for them and coming to Fairfield Life to find out will probably run away screaming within a few days, and thus never fall prey to all the cult madness. In that sense, True Believers like Nabby and JR and Share and True Psychopaths like Richard Williams may actually be performing a service.
[FairfieldLife] WTF - For Rick
A friend who used to post here sent this short reaction to dropping by FFL for a look today to me in email. I thought it was worth sharing with the forum: No wonder I never bother looking in. Tex is outta control! Or maybe it’s just that there is no “there” there anymore. Tex’s eruptions are just the death rattle of a dead site. 177 'Richard J. Williams' punditster 46 danfriedman2002 39 steve.sundur 39 salyavin808 30 jr_esq 30 fleetwood_macncheese 30 Share Long sharelong60 29 Michael Jackson mjackson74 28 nablusoss1008 28 awoelflebater 28 Bhairitu noozguru 12 s3raphita 10 emilymaenot 9 dmevans365 9 TurquoiseBee turquoiseb 6 emptybill I think that death rattle of a dead site kinda nails it. And IMO it's clearly Rick's fault. As many have pointed out, he *could* do something to remove a person who has said outright that his only reason for posting so much is to fuck with people he doesn't like and ruin their site. But he doesn't. Clearly Rick doesn't read his own forum enough to even CARE what Richard Williams has turned the experience of reading it into. If it were me, given his history and how he's resisted any attempts to get him to lighten up for years now, I'd ban Richard for at least a year. With two conditions. First, if he attempts to create other IDs so he can post anyway, nuke each of the new IDs as they appear and make the ban permanent for life. Second, offer anyone still around on FFL after a year a vote to see if they want to allow him back. Post a few links back to this recent period in which he's been making 500+ posts a month to help them decide how to vote. No muss, no fuss, no maintenance, and maybe the forum would become a pleasant place to have a discussion again. Maybe.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: WTF - For Rick
From: jedi_sp...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To flood the forum like a huge dump truck is clearly malicious intent. I think he's gone totally nuts. For those whose brains are so atrophied from the practice of TM that they cannot do math, so far this week Richard Williams has managed to make almost *30% of all posts* made to Fairfield Life. * So far this week: 177 posts out of 600 - 29.5% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Aug 30: 209 posts out of 1129 - 18.5% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Aug 23: 258 posts out of 943 - 27.4% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Aug 16: 146 posts out of 681 - 23.4% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Aug 09: 152 posts out of 741 - 20.5% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Aug 02: 112 posts out of 518 - 21.6% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Jul 26: 104 posts out of 439 - 23.6% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Jul 19: 149 posts out of 541 - 27.5% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Jul 12: 166 posts out of 720 - 23.1% of all posts made to FFL * Week ending Jul 05: 167 posts out of 660 - 25.3% of all posts made to FFL If that's not flooding the forum and malicious intent, I don't know what is. NO ONE was this malicious in their overposting back when Posting Limits were first instituted -- not Judy, not Lawson, not Shemp. The only reason Richard's percentage of total posts was so low during the week ending August 30 is that Dan Friedman tried to emulate Richard's Net terrorist approach and made 252 posts of his own, increasing the noise but decreasing Richard's noise ratio. If Dan hadn't been posting, Richard's percentage would have been 23.8%. There is no sanity left there to appeal to in a person who posts this compulsively, and this consistently compulsively. Nuke this guy so we can forget him entirely, as if he had never existed. --- turquoiseb@... wrote : A friend who used to post here sent this short reaction to dropping by FFL for a look today to me in email. I thought it was worth sharing with the forum: No wonder I never bother looking in. Tex is outta control! Or maybe it’s just that there is no “there” there anymore. Tex’s eruptions are just the death rattle of a dead site. 177 'Richard J. Williams' punditster 46 danfriedman2002 39 steve.sundur 39 salyavin808 30 jr_esq 30 fleetwood_macncheese 30 Share Long sharelong60 29 Michael Jackson mjackson74 28 nablusoss1008 28 awoelflebater 28 Bhairitu noozguru 12 s3raphita 10 emilymaenot 9 dmevans365 9 TurquoiseBee turquoiseb 6 emptybill I think that death rattle of a dead site kinda nails it. And IMO it's clearly Rick's fault. As many have pointed out, he *could* do something to remove a person who has said outright that his only reason for posting so much is to fuck with people he doesn't like and ruin their site. But he doesn't. Clearly Rick doesn't read his own forum enough to even CARE what Richard Williams has turned the experience of reading it into. If it were me, given his history and how he's resisted any attempts to get him to lighten up for years now, I'd ban Richard for at least a year. With two conditions. First, if he attempts to create other IDs so he can post anyway, nuke each of the new IDs as they appear and make the ban permanent for life. Second, offer anyone still around on FFL after a year a vote to see if they want to allow him back. Post a few links back to this recent period in which he's been making 500+ posts a month to help them decide how to vote. No muss, no fuss, no maintenance, and maybe the forum would become a pleasant place to have a discussion again. Maybe.
[FairfieldLife] Overposting = DoS
Some who have avoided the common TM malady of having brain matter the consistency of the lightness of cotton fiber :-) may have heard of DoS -- a Denial of Service attack. That's where hackers and other social perverts use technological means to keep users of a popular site from contacting that site, or enjoying it. With companies or guvmint agencies, a common DoS attack strategy involves setting up automated phone machines to keep calling their customer service numbers so the line is busy and no one can get through. With websites, there are ways to set up a network of machines to keep banging on areas of the site that use a lot of computing resources, so much so that the site is slowed down and people can't access it or log on. With chat rooms and discussion groups such as this one, another form of DoS is to make the experience of being there so unenjoyable that users who have plowed through it once never want to come back. One of the best ways to do that is to flood the group with angry, hostile, off-topic, and often-crazy posts -- and so MANY of these posts that they can't be ignored. Most people *have* to slog through them, just to get to any topics more interesting. DoS attacks on the Web are now designated in the United States as a form of terrorism. I guess I'm trying to make the case that DoS attacks on discussion groups are another form of terrorism. Back in the day, *many* people brought up how these DoS overposting attacks were ruining for them the experience of reading Fairfield Life. It was such a pain to slog through the hundreds of posts made by a small group (only 3 people, but who consistently made 30% of all FFL posts) that many people no longer wanted to bother coming here. The result of the discussion surrounding this mass exodus was the FFL Posting Limits, which *succeeded* for some time in bringing the noise level of the group down, and simultaneously improved quality in many of the remaining posts. Fairly recently, some of the same people who were responsible for the Posting Limits being created in the first place (along with a few naive newbs like Share) lobbied to have them removed, and Rick complied, largely because his co-moderator Alex felt that policing the Posting Limits was too much trouble. Voila. Here we are, a few months later, and ONE PERSON is now making 30% of all posts to Fairfield Life. Over 1600 of them, in the last two months alone. His constant cascade of crazy is seen by many people as a form of terrorism -- a calculated DoS attack to make the reading experience at Fairfield Life so terrible that its users eventually abandon it. I see it as similar in many ways to another warped former FFLer's attempt to destroy the group by posting porn to it and then notifying Yahoo. That asshole was trying to get Fairfield Life taken down because he disliked some of the things said on it. In my humble opinion, Richard Williams is trying to do the same thing with his constant stream of crazy. He's trying to destroy Fairfield Life by making at least 30% of it unreadable. Given how many people actually seem to support him, he may well have already succeeded -- people are so used to the level of noise he creates that they don't even notice it. Only time will tell. I've started the ball rolling here (hopefully) by commenting on what everyone else was ignoring, the elephant in the room, the person talking so much and so loudly that it was clear he was trying to drown out all other conversation. If that doesn't bother you, don't bother to register an opinion or reply to this thread. If it does, appeal to Rick and see whether anything can be done about this strange form of Net terrorism and the creep perpetrating it.
[FairfieldLife] Burning Man 2014, by Mark Morford
While all of you highly-evolved, oh-so-special people were here trying to piss on each other and declare the things YOU believe the only TRUE beliefs on earth, 66,000 more highly-evolved and FAR more grounded folks created a city in the desert, for fun, and then disassembled it and went away. The day you can do anything even half as cool will be the day anyone should pay attention to anything you have to say on Fairfield Life. Just sayin'... Burning Man 2014, by Mark Morford Burning Man 2014, by Mark Morford Burning Man 2014. Read Mark's blog post about this gallery for more juicy details. View on www.sfgate.com Preview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] MIU Promo Video 1981
The shock is not how incredibly brainwashed these people are as they parrot buzzphrases and display absolutely no individuality whatsoever. The shock is that 34 years later people still think like this and talk like this, some of them here on this very forum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bteLrKEfj3gfeature=share
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: For Ann, was For Rick
I wish I could find a non-Facebook version of this video to post. With this one, you probably can't see it unless you have a FB account. Too bad, if that's true. It's a perfect re-enactment of the Willytex-Salyavin championship fight below. Willytex postures, but Sal delivers the goods. :-) :-) :-) Trung Nghĩa | Facebook Trung Nghĩa | Facebook Capoeira ! View on www.facebook.com Preview by Yahoo From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : On 9/3/2014 10:59 AM, awoelflebater@... [FairfieldLife] wrote: Actually Richard, you arenot in my top four of odious posters here so I can live with you no matter how many times you feel it necessary to post here. I don't get why you do it nor do I have the time or inclination to avalanche this place like you do, but so be it... That's a relief. Seriously, you have been so nice to me since Judy disappeared that I feel that I owe you an explanation. First, a confession. My posts really are for the lurkers. My personal goal in this is to post something, anything, that makes the forum look good to outsiders if they should wander in here for whatever reason. Well Tricky, let me tell you something. You failed. Dismally. Your posts read like they were written by an autistic savant who failed the Turing test. In fact, you are one of the people that seriously made me wonder whether I had backed a losing horse in the first place. When I joined FFL I was still a twice-a-day siddha, I just wanted to read the Kaplan letter and see what the fuss was about. So I joined up and then all the utter bullshit I had witnessed by people in the TMO, all the crappy philosophy from Marshy that had been bugging me, all the scams, all the obvious cultishness, delusion and True Believerism, it all crystalised into a proper understanding and made me realise that it was all merely a hopeful delusion, I'd been had and that was that. And so were you. Reading this list over the years, and in particular the responses of the TB's, has been a big help in the transition from cult thinking back to sanity, your brand of insanity helped a lot there. Thanks. My contribution has been to apply some basic scientific principles to obvious bullshit like yagyas and yogic flying You either know how to think in an open minded critical manner or you don't. You don't Tricky, not by a long shot. You are a believer - nothing wrong with that, I don't slag people off for their beliefs - you got taught something when you were young and don't you want to start disbelieving after all these years. Too much intellectual leg work involved I guess. The longer you've been involved, the harder it is to leave, so when any contrary evidence comes along it's much easier to put your hands over your ears and go laa laa laa. I wonder if you ever even realised there was an alternative? So you spend your day posting one line missives that even you don't understand - your hit rate with the non sequitur gag was less than 5% - and links to irrelevant books and articles. Just suppose one of your lurkers does what I always do and followed the link? Duh, you should really have thought about that little scenario but I don't think it would matter if you had. You are a True Believer and the idea of challenging your own beliefs is anathema, we see it everywhere, the TMO loves science but only if it supports them. If there's a chance it won't they don't bother. You fall into a typical religious role of only looking as far into it as to have your beliefs confirmed. Which isn't really taking part. So when you encounter a contrary POV you throw your toys out of the pram and spam it with your usual bullshit. So, thank you for explaining your reasons - I suppose we should be happy there is one. You say you don't care but you should, you are the biggest buffoon here, that you admit that you want to deliberately ruin it because you don't like having your beliefs criticised or that isn't a pro-TM site is quite pathetic but you lack the perspective to see that obviously. It should have rung an alarm bell with Rick but he doesn't seem to care either. But nor do I because if you are a shining example of what a life on the Highest Path can do then you should keep it up so any lurkers can get a feel for the sort of mature behaviour you can develop. And run a mile.There's your legacy. Congratulations. Years ago, when the internet was just getting started (1994) I was surfing around and ran across Usenet - discussion groups. At first I subscribed to a site that discussed ISKCON, because I had been a participant in one of their temples for about a year (3716 Watseka Ave in L.A.) and I was taken with their devotion and depth of knowledge. Some members had started a news group discussion on the internet and I
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MIU Promo Video 1981
Dr. Pete, who commented on this video on Facebook today (where I saw it, because he's a FB Friend of mine), seems to agree more with my characterization of these people as brainwashed than he agrees with yours. Sure, they were young, idealistic, and inspired. They were *also* brainwashed, repeating the exact phrases they'd been taught to repeat verbatim, all without having ever seen -- or even *asked for* -- any evidence that they were true. I'm gonna stick with brainwashed and cultists. One of the reasons I like Dr. Pete is that he has no problem describing his own time with TM the same way and admitting that he was part of a cult. But then he's a shrink...in retrospect probably the only way he *can* justify having been so stupid as to believe the things we believed back then is to point out the systematic, decades-long indoctrination that led to us believing them. Since what he wrote is in public view on FB, I guess I can pass along one of his other comments that I found perceptive: I helped produce several videos for various MIU functions in the 1980's and it was always a problem to get people to talk about their experiences in their own words rather than in TM jargon. It was the worst with people 'higher-up' in the movement. I interviewed one person, who is in this video too, who kept on saying that he experienced the 'home of all the laws of nature' when he meditated. I asked him, off-camera, if he actually had this experience or if this was a concept he had from MMY. He couldn't distinguish between the two which was rather shocking. Another former FFLer who is actually seen in the video describes it in the comments thusly: How embarrassing. Now I see why TM lost its popularity and the university changed its name. From: feste37 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2014 1:43 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: MIU Promo Video 1981 No, not brainwashed. Young, idealistic, enthusiastic, inspired. I was there in 1981, and it was a good place to be. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : The shock is not how incredibly brainwashed these people are as they parrot buzzphrases and display absolutely no individuality whatsoever. The shock is that 34 years later people still think like this and talk like this, some of them here on this very forum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bteLrKEfj3gfeature=share
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MIU Promo Video 1981
From: feste37 no_re...@yahoogroups.com You're cherry-picking the comments. Have another look and you'll see many positive ones. There was nothing sinister or cult-like in the fact that the University provided an intellectual framework in which students could have some understanding of their experiences. It was helpful. It was useful. It was, dare I say it, enlightening. I'm pleased to have been associated with it. I'm happy for you. But at the same time I'm a little sad that all these years on you've developed so little discrimination that you're happy to remain a cultist. Most of my friends from the TM days figured out what Maharishi was about and how he had suckered all of us into his cult back in the mid-70s, before this video was even made. We can *understand* believing this kind of idiotic cult stuff, because we were there and we believed it, too. We were idiots. What we *can't* understand is how someone could possibly *still* believe it, all these decades later, and choose to *remain* idiots. That's somewhat scary. There is simply no way we can identify with anyone that weak-willed and weak-minded. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Dr. Pete, who commented on this video on Facebook today (where I saw it, because he's a FB Friend of mine), seems to agree more with my characterization of these people as brainwashed than he agrees with yours. Sure, they were young, idealistic, and inspired. They were *also* brainwashed, repeating the exact phrases they'd been taught to repeat verbatim, all without having ever seen -- or even *asked for* -- any evidence that they were true. I'm gonna stick with brainwashed and cultists. One of the reasons I like Dr. Pete is that he has no problem describing his own time with TM the same way and admitting that he was part of a cult. But then he's a shrink...in retrospect probably the only way he *can* justify having been so stupid as to believe the things we believed back then is to point out the systematic, decades-long indoctrination that led to us believing them. Since what he wrote is in public view on FB, I guess I can pass along one of his other comments that I found perceptive: I helped produce several videos for various MIU functions in the 1980's and it was always a problem to get people to talk about their experiences in their own words rather than in TM jargon. It was the worst with people 'higher-up' in the movement. I interviewed one person, who is in this video too, who kept on saying that he experienced the 'home of all the laws of nature' when he meditated. I asked him, off-camera, if he actually had this experience or if this was a concept he had from MMY. He couldn't distinguish between the two which was rather shocking. Another former FFLer who is actually seen in the video describes it in the comments thusly: How embarrassing. Now I see why TM lost its popularity and the university changed its name. From: feste37 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2014 1:43 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: MIU Promo Video 1981 No, not brainwashed. Young, idealistic, enthusiastic, inspired. I was there in 1981, and it was a good place to be. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : The shock is not how incredibly brainwashed these people are as they parrot buzzphrases and display absolutely no individuality whatsoever. The shock is that 34 years later people still think like this and talk like this, some of them here on this very forum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bteLrKEfj3gfeature=share
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: MIU Promo Video 1981
From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] Parroting is one of the ways we learn, but the object of education is to make the mind more flexible, to learn how to learn. One of the things I found objectionable about MIU was an emphasis, at least from some instructors, on saying things the way Maharishi said them. I came into understanding this consciousness thing by way of Zen, Sufism, and a few other things, and Maharishi's explanations eventually added another layer of jargon. The point is to get through the jargon — you have to use some jargon in this business — and find a way to express yourself that truly represents what you experience. If you have no experience, you only have the jargon. But many people can *fake* experience just by repeating the jargon faithfully. That, after all, is what every TM teacher in history was doing when they were talking about enlightenment. I think we can safely say that not one of them actually *was* enlightened, especially way back in the 70s and 80s and 90s, but they had been trained to repeat Maharishi's dogma *about* enlightenment so faithfully that many TM newbs became convinced that they actually were enlightened. Many low-vibe initiators actually took advantage of this, and when some starry-eyed newb came up to them saying, Oh, you've been meditating for five years...you *must* be enlightened... they would look sheepish and say, We're not supposed to talk about our state of consciousness. Another piece of dogma they'd learned to parrot from Maharishi, but in this case one that conveyed the impression that yes, they *were* enlightened. In other words, this was an example of dogma and jargon used for the purpose of LYING. As it turned out for me, no system of description really nails what happens in experience or adequately covers what one knows. I'd go further. No description or set of jargon/dogma ever created in human history to describe the process of enlightenment was ever accurate, or of use. It was just something for ignorant people to hold onto so that they could pretend to themselves that they understood something that can never be understood. After a time, the pile of jargon, which one does retain, becomes a resource which one can combine and recombine at will, and the wider the selection one has, from as many sources as one has, the more closely you can match those terms to your experience. Even so, the map will never either *be* the territory or match the territory. I recall many instances from my time in the movement when people would jump on me because I did not use movement jargon verbatim or used terms and concepts from other traditions. Also I was approaching the age of 30 when I learned TM, so a lot of that pliability of manipulation you find in younger minds was already in retreat. Kids coming up through the Maharishi School etc., are going to have a problem in later life. And many of them certainly did. I went through public schools, had rejected spirituality as having any relevance by the time I was in high school, and when the spiritual side of life came into my awareness by a totally non-verbal experience when I was in my late twenties, I had absolutely no way understanding what it was about, just an intuitive feel that I should pursue it. Now I find some of Maharishi's terminology useful, but my experiences did not unfold in the linear way his descriptions seem to imply. I find *none* of his terminology accurate or useful, *except* when chatting with people here. I use Maharishi's bullshit here because people speak it like a common language. If I used terms I'm more comfortable with, most people wouldn't understand what I was talking about. So I can refer to BS like seven states of consciousness to communicate with some TMer who still believes there are only seven, while at the same time knowing that the reality is closer to the Buddhist 10,000 states of mind. I sometimes think Maharishi settled for 7 because he intuitively understood that most of the people he was dealing with were not smart enough to count higher than that. :-) And I discovered that most of things Maharishi associated with TM, like world peace, happiness, health, etc., were really mostly irrelevant in the pursuit of enlightenment because they only appeal to the ego-infested state of experience. But that's both who he was selling to, and what he was selling. He never really sold or intended to sell anything to get one past the ego. TM and all of his techniques -- plus most of his pandering to people telling them how important they were -- were IMO designed to *increase* ego, and generate self-importance. I would say that he was successful in developing *that* in many of his students. :-) From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife
Re: [FairfieldLife] Philip K rolls over in his grave
I've had it for some time but have never been able to get past the first few minutes and watch it. It's been in production for a really, really, really long time (I first started hearing about it over five years ago), and that often means a movie that has been made but is so terrible they can't get anyone to actually release it. That's what this one sounds like to me. From: Bhairitu noozg...@sbcglobal.net [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2014 5:42 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Philip K rolls over in his grave Don't waste your time or money on Radio Free Albemuth. If curious just wait for it to show up on Netflix in a month or two and see if you last more than 10 minutes. Despite the cast it is pretty bad and amateurish. Neither Shea Whigham nor Scott Wilson (The Walking Dead) could save the thing. I should have paid more attention to the 22% Tomatoes rating.
Re: [FairfieldLife] The invention of telepathy. Sort of....
This morning I logged into Yahoo and, as has become my morning ritual, deleted 70 posts from Richard, Steve, Share, Ann, Nabby, Jim, and Dan without opening them. Out of curiosity, I then did a string search on the folder containing these deleted posts, and found that my name or ID was mentioned in over 60 of them, often preceded by the word From, as if they were replying to some post I'd made. What's up with that? These people have been told that I don't read their posts. Why then are they replying to mine? I made a total of 4 posts about TM or MIU yesterday, and that seems to have generated over 60 replies from people with their panties in a twist, all of them writing feverishly to someone *who isn't reading their posts*. It's as if they believe *I* have mastered the direct brain-to-brain communication talked about in this article, and that therefore they can still somehow manage to insult me telepathically even when I don't read their posts. :-) :-) :-) Thanks for the compliment...I guess...but to get real for a moment, all these people are writing these replies for themselves and for each other, probably to vent their frustrations at being called what they are -- cultists. Just to reiterate the point that they all seem to be missing -- I don't consider it even a *possibility* that any of them are or ever will be interesting enough or intelligent enough to *ever* read anything any of them writes, ever again. They are history -- written off. If in making all of these replies they're trying to pretend to themselves that I still *am* reading their posts, and that therefore they're still as important as they think they are, I would suggest that they're making a better case for them being cultists than I ever could. Thanks to them for helping out... :-) :-) :-) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2014 8:49 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] The invention of telepathy. Sort of Direct brain-to-brain communication demonstrated in human subjects Direct brain-to-brain communication demonstrat... In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers has demonstrated the viability of direct brain-to-brain communication ... View on www.sciencedaily.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: For Salya
I just *knew* there was a reason to keep reading FFL, when most evidence would suggest otherwise... :-) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ... Consider this. Once, when I was a newbie meditator with no involvement with the movement and no knowledge of Indian literature and philosophy, I was sitting in my TM chair having a deep meddy when all of a sudden even the settled mirror-like state I had reached disappeared in an instant and I was this vast space, I mean infinite, and there was this huge humming noise. It lasted a second and then I snapped back to reality in shock with my heart hammering. What conclusions about reality can we draw from that? Or rather, what would you infer? My guess is that with a grounding in Indian literature you might infer that I had experienced the ved. I would agree. What I would most likely disagree on is what the ved is. I know the mystic's explanation, here's mine: Inside my head my brain conspires to create the world we percieve, to do this it needs a sense of depth, and space and movement etc. These come from sense data. It also needs a sense that there is a me observing it all. When the brain settles down and the physiology changes different parts of the Cartesian theatre start to switch off, the importance of sense data lessen and the part of the brain that reacts to what it's seeing is partially deactivated without any stimulus. If it can settle down completely all we are left with is the sense of space and some sort of residual neural humming. Exactly. A sense of space, but not time. I don't necessarily get the residual neural humming thang, but that may be because I have such a bad case of tinnitis that I'd never hear the humming over the constant high-pitched whine. :-) :-) :-) Someone raised on more Zen or Taoist literature might interpret the same experience as the Void. Nice experience, and all...but as you point out, does it really mean anything at all? Like any sudden change in environment - walking round a corner and finding yourself on a cliff edge for instance - it is experienced as shock with a good hit of adrenalin to sharpen you up. But suppose you weren't inclined to neurophysiological explanations and took it at face value, you might think that your mind had gone beyond (transcended) the normal world and experienced some sort of underlying explanation for how our brains work normally. I can see how the mythology arises from experiences like this, the idea that it's how we really are underneath all the day to day crap. But we are still just talking about something happening in our heads, it don't happen without me being fed and rested. I honestly believe that most of the literature of enlightenment appears the way it does because most of the writers were complete narcissists who took themselves and their fleeting experiences Far Too Seriously. It's like, OMG! I had a void moment! That's so cool. I have to announce it to the world and ramble on and on about what this void moment 'means'. Because it's really GOT to 'mean' something because after all it happened to ME and I am so fuckin' important. I must convince all these other people that MY moment was so cool that it should become *their* goal in life to emulate it. :-) :-) :-) And it doesn't form part of physics because the physical world isn't like that. I used to describe the CasUF idea as an analogy but when discussing it with a physicist I know he said it wasn't an analogy at all because the physical world just isn't like that. An analogy is a point-for-point copy and this idea breaks down too early to qualify. I was told by our raja to go on purusha because these experiences of mine woul stabilise and I'd be a seer! See above. Isn't this 'Raja' echoing the exact same sentiment as my imaginary 'seer'? :-) But what would I be seeing if I can have a different explanation form the same data? What's needed is research to work out what is happening and when. I've always said that meditation can help with our understanding of consciousness because this step by step process must reveal something about how our brains work to create what we perceive. I'm still looking forward to Sam Harris' new book -- an atheist neuroscientist who meditates and has had as many high spiritual experiences as anyone on this forum...trying to reconcile these two ways of seeing the world. It should be interesting. Thanks for continuing to post thought-provoking links and comments.
[FairfieldLife] Win-Win
I think I reached a cusp with regard to my participation in this tiny frog pond in cyberspace we call Fairfield Life recently, during my vacation in France and after returning to Leiden. As I've said before, due to the overposting of a few and the Duh! quotient of a few others, I realized that reading through FFL had become more a chore for me than it was a pleasure. That's always a bit of a red flag...I don't tend to linger long around either women or environments that are as high maintenance as FFL had become. :-) I could have reacted to this by just going away, as so many before me have done. But every so often Xeno or Salyavin or Michael or Bhairitu or merudanda or azgrey or Alex or any number of other people post something really interesting, something that tempts me both to read it and reply. I realized that I'd actually *miss* that if I gave up on the place and followed Curtis, Vaj, Marek, Joe, Sally Sunshine and so, so many others into the sunset. At the same time, I'm a pragmatic occultist and I want my time at Fairfield Life to be as productive as possible, requiring of me as little wasted time as possible. With that in mind, I have chosen to keep on truckin' along the FFL Way, but while technologically pursuing the path of ignoring and not bothering to read posts made by a small number of people. They all have a track record of wasting my time. I don't want to waste my time any more. They're toast. The way I figure it, ignoring these people enables me to avoid having to interact with them at the same time I get to stick around and enjoy the posts of people I *do* enjoy interacting with. Win-Win. Some people would call this an exercise in mindfulness. You may call it whatever you want. If it twists your panties and makes you feel the need to call it -- or me -- something nasty, chances are I'll auto-nuke your post and never read it. See what I mean? Win-Win. :-) :-)
[FairfieldLife] Flow State, captured on film
For those who have never had a creative outlet that allowed them to completely lose themselves in the creative process, here's what it looks like. Glenn Gould In Rapture Glenn Gould In Rapture You don't get to see this too often: a man (in this case, a very talented man) totally possessed by his muse. Watch pianist Glenn Gould deep in what psychologists c... View on www.npr.org Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Milky-Way is on the outskirts of Laniakea supercluster
From: jedi_sp...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Our galaxy Milky-Way is on the outskirts of a massive supercluster called Laniakea, which consists of 100,000 large galaxies. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/03/ milky-way-laniakea-galaxy-supercluster-immeasurable-heaven And it is generally considered to be the asshole of the entire galactic supercluster, in the same way Detroit is considered to be the asshole of America. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: A Short History of TMer Newsgroups, Part 1
From: wgm4u no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, September 6, 2014 12:57 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: A Short History of TMer Newsgroups, Part 1 At first I though Judy was a 'plant' by the tmorg to defend MMY and the TMO's reputation, then I realized she was pretty much just posting her own opinions, some of which I agree with and some not I can see why you would have thought that. In retrospect, I think that Judy's biggest failure was that her enormous ego made her assume that everything she believed was hers, what she believed, and that any challenge to one of those beliefs was equivalent to a personal attack. The thing is, in all the time I dealt with her, I don't think I ever heard her express one original idea. 99.99% of everything she wrote was something she had been *told* -- by Maharishi or someone else -- but which she now saw only as her belief, something that had mystically originated with her, not something that was ever taught to her. So IMO when she sounded as if she was spouting TM dogma verbatim and thus being a plant, I doubt seriously that she ever realized she was doing it. She was just writing her beliefs, while completely, totally unaware that she had been indoctrinated to not only believe ever one of them, but to believe that she had never been taught them. My bet, by the way, is that she'll miraculously reappear on or shortly after September 23, having taken her version of Patent Oswalt's summer off. And bully for her if that's what she intended. The big question, however, is whether she'll be any different when she returns.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Reading or Not Reading Posts
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, September 6, 2014 2:38 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Reading or Not Reading Posts ...Barry, Michael, others basically bring to light here people's samskaras, to use an Hindu term that means imprints left on the mind by experience. An interesting perception. And possibly not lacking some accuracy as I sit here wondering how many here are going to respond to a post I made for fun earlier today as if their own, personal self-importance was challenged by me dissing the *galaxy* they live in. Now *that* would be the self-importance samskara, revealed.:-) :-) :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Reading or Not Reading Posts
From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] I enjoy Barry's and Michael's posts because they dredge up conditioned responses. Like how people react when they've been told that they've been dumped, and are neither interesting nor intelligent enough to ever pay any attention to, ever again? :-) :-) :-)
[FairfieldLife] Judgemental, yes. Hilariously spot-on, also yes.
http://judgmentalmaps.com/post/78473663186/losangeles
Re: [FairfieldLife] I Want to Publicly Thank s3erifina
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com We live in South Carolina - daughter is 14 and her mother had a mandatory guidance counselor meeting with student, parent and counselor. The idea was to try to give the kids some sense of direction in terms of their post high school future. So guidance lady asks my daughter if she has any idea of what she might like to do after high school, daughter says Well, I want to either be a tattoo artist or a psychiatrist. The counselor just sat there open mouthed and didn't know what to say. Daughter says she said psychologist but mom swears she said psychiatrist Be a liberated Dad and remind her that she can be *both* a psychiatrist and a tattoo artist. I, for one, would love to see the tattoos a full-time shrink would create. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Why you can't trust your own perception
How many triangles do you see in this image? The correct answer is None. http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/design-technology/kanisza-triangle-you-cant-believe-your-eyes/
[FairfieldLife] Interesting article about the origins of religion
One that brings up the question: What if Maharishi's insistence on the value of doing TMSP in groups had nothing *whatsoever* to do with the supposed effects that the group was supposedly creating, either for the participants or for the world. What if it was always just about getting people to clump together in groups? http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/to-understand-religion-think-football
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Why you can't trust your own perception
Cool class experiment. I should remember to try it around my artist friends. Would they be less likely to see red in a color only close to it on the spectrum, or more likely? I have a natural fascination for this stuff, you must understand, because I have had a number of perceptions that it would have been FAR more convenient for me NOT to have had. Like seeing someone levitate. Like seeing triangular-shaped dimensional doorways open up in front of me in what a moment earlier had been the side of a mountain, and being able to see stars through the doorways. Like seeing a guy six feet in front of me go invisible, such that I could see the desert landscape through him. I perceived all this stuff, first-hand, many times over many years. So did hundreds, possibly thousands of other people who ran into the Rama guy and spent time with him. But was it real or was it future Memorex, created via suggestion? I don't know. I'll never know. Knowing what I know now about suggestion and the placebo effect and the neurochemistry of it all, OF COURSE these experiences of mine could have been the result of suggestion. But suggestion or not, they really *were* my experiences. I saw all this stuff. I saw it so often over the years I almost got bored with it. Seriously. I remember some gal asking me in an L.A. bar one Friday night, Whatchadoin' this weekend. I got a wild hair up my ass and decided to tell her the truth: Tomorrow I'm going to go out into the Anza-Borrego Desert and hike around all night with a couple of hundred guys and gals I know. We like to do this because the guy leading the hike has this tendency to walk around about a foot over the sand and turn invisible and make the stars move around and that's fun to watch. What are you doin'? I quite remember her response. I sat there watching her react for a couple of moments, the wheels of her mind whirling around as she did the Gal Math -- Do I want to be sitting here talking to a crazy person, or one who just thinks he's being funny when he isn't? She decided to go for the latter, ignored everything I had just told her as if it had never been spoken, and told me what she was going to be doing this coming weekend. :-) I'm just riffing on this today in this canalside cafe because in retrospect it really amuses me how much we Rama students took our lifestyle for granted. Let's face it -- most supposed spiritual aspirants would give their left nut or ovary to see a siddhi performed. We saw them so often we got bored with them. But on another level I really DID get to see all this stuff. Many times. It's MY fuckin' experience, even if someone chooses to write it off to suggestion or something else. Damned if I'm ever going to apologize for having had these experiences just because someone's jealous that it was never *their* experience. The triangular-shaped dimensional doorways really *were* there in the sides of those mountains. Even if they weren't. :-) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : How many triangles do you see in this image? 27? The correct answer is None. I did an NLP course once and one of the exercises - to demonstrate this very thing - was to count all the red things in the room we were in, a typical office with books and in-trays, phones etc. I was really pleased that I counted more than everyone else, some 25 compared to everyone elses 10-15. Showed my superior TM perceptions I thought. Until the teacher told us there was only one red object. Quite a surprise to look again and see that most things were orange or yellow or even purple! The power of suggestion http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/design-technology/kanisza-triangle-you-cant-believe-your-eyes/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Why you can't trust your own perception
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Cool class experiment. I should remember to try it around my artist friends. Would they be less likely to see red in a color only close to it on the spectrum, or more likely? You'll have to try it and see. Make sure you don't have a burnt sienna filing cabinet and you might get away with it. I have a natural fascination for this stuff, you must understand, because I have had a number of perceptions that it would have been FAR more convenient for me NOT to have had. Like seeing someone levitate. Like seeing triangular-shaped dimensional doorways open up in front of me in what a moment earlier had been the side of a mountain, and being able to see stars through the doorways. Like seeing a guy six feet in front of me go invisible, such that I could see the desert landscape through him. I perceived all this stuff, first-hand, many times over many years. So did hundreds, possibly thousands of other people who ran into the Rama guy and spent time with him. But was it real or was it future Memorex, created via suggestion? Depends if there were mushrooms in the pizza you had before hand ;-) I've said it before, I just wish I was there for any of it. I never met a guru that made me want to get involved like that and am way too sceptical now to take anyone seriously. But maybe if I met the right person I'd get swept along. I have no way of knowing. My best can it possibly have happened experience was when I'd got hold of a lot of LSD but couldn't find a gang to share it with as my raver mates were all busy jumping around in a field somewhere, so I took the lot myself as an experiment. Not only was it the wildest night of my life but I managed to travel back in time. I was hallucinating so much that it hurt and had to close my eyes and went on an inner trip that took me back through my childhood (very weird seeing teddy bears for the first time as a baby) and then conception - I assume, loads of spinning, exploding diamonds in space, haven't checked this with my folks of course. Then I went further back through previous lives it was like flying over a landscape and through peoples minds and lives, and the places they lived and then the scenery changed and the only things I saw were trees and lakes, a real sense of distance getting faster and faster and then it stopped and I was on the side of a tree at night. It had been raining but what had startled me was the light, it was a dull orange glow and shouldn't have been there. I had no way of thinking as I was obviously some sort of nocturnal shrew or something, I scampered round the tree when a dinosaur came into view real close. It was an Iguanadon I'm certain, which put me in the early cretaceous around 80-90 million years ago. And I've got something to tell people about what colour they were but probably will keep it to myself. If only it was possible to communicate what it was all like being that sort of instinctual mind motivated by hunger and fear, it's in my top 5 most amazing experiences to this day. But it gets weirder, when I got round the tree I saw the source of the light and it was a couple of highly odd looking robot aliens. Honestly. I couldn't have made them up if I tried. Not consciously. At that point I opened my eyes and decided I needed a walk, which is another couple of stories. knowing my interests in UFOs and paleontology I am obviously sure that my mind made it all up on the spot but boy it was an amazing accomplishment, at least as real as sitting here now. Religions have started for less though and I can see how people get started on mistaking what's inside for what's outside if it falls so far out of normal experience. And how it justifies beliefs in things like reincarnation. Unless Graham Hancock is right for the first time in his life. So it isn't really like your experience at all LOL. But I've typed it so it stays. So it does. If you think about it, your and my experiences are probably rarer on this planet than experiences typed (related by, told by) people who went on to form religions, or who tried to. Our tales are along the lines of, This is what we experienced...we don't know WTF it means, we're just telling the stories...do with them what you want. In contrast, many people who went on to talk about their supposed spiritual experiences were more narcissistic and had more self-importance going for them. They couldn't just tell their stories and say, That's it...make what you want of it..., they had to make up 'meaning' and 'mythology' and above all self-importance to surround their experiences with, along the lines of: This (insert Woo Woo here) was my experience. The very fact that it was MY experience makes me *better* than you, if you haven't had the same experience yourself. You should live your life envious of MY experience and, in fact, re-invent
[FairfieldLife] Yoga Mat For Sale
Guy Posts 'Yoga Mat For Sale' Ad On Craigslist. This Is Hilarious. Guy Posts 'Yoga Mat For Sale' Ad On Craigslist. This Is ... Click To Enlarge View on www.tickld.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Why you can't trust your own perception
Just finishing up this train of thought for Sal, since yesterday was the first time I've thought about this Rama stuff in quite a while. Doing so was fun...for about ten minutes...and then I got back to the business of being in the now. :-) Comment at the bottom... From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Cool class experiment. I should remember to try it around my artist friends. Would they be less likely to see red in a color only close to it on the spectrum, or more likely? You'll have to try it and see. Make sure you don't have a burnt sienna filing cabinet and you might get away with it. I have a natural fascination for this stuff, you must understand, because I have had a number of perceptions that it would have been FAR more convenient for me NOT to have had. Like seeing someone levitate. Like seeing triangular-shaped dimensional doorways open up in front of me in what a moment earlier had been the side of a mountain, and being able to see stars through the doorways. Like seeing a guy six feet in front of me go invisible, such that I could see the desert landscape through him. I perceived all this stuff, first-hand, many times over many years. So did hundreds, possibly thousands of other people who ran into the Rama guy and spent time with him. But was it real or was it future Memorex, created via suggestion? Depends if there were mushrooms in the pizza you had before hand ;-) I've said it before, I just wish I was there for any of it. I never met a guru that made me want to get involved like that and am way too sceptical now to take anyone seriously. But maybe if I met the right person I'd get swept along. I have no way of knowing. My best can it possibly have happened experience was when I'd got hold of a lot of LSD but couldn't find a gang to share it with as my raver mates were all busy jumping around in a field somewhere, so I took the lot myself as an experiment. Not only was it the wildest night of my life but I managed to travel back in time. I was hallucinating so much that it hurt and had to close my eyes and went on an inner trip that took me back through my childhood (very weird seeing teddy bears for the first time as a baby) and then conception - I assume, loads of spinning, exploding diamonds in space, haven't checked this with my folks of course. Then I went further back through previous lives it was like flying over a landscape and through peoples minds and lives, and the places they lived and then the scenery changed and the only things I saw were trees and lakes, a real sense of distance getting faster and faster and then it stopped and I was on the side of a tree at night. It had been raining but what had startled me was the light, it was a dull orange glow and shouldn't have been there. I had no way of thinking as I was obviously some sort of nocturnal shrew or something, I scampered round the tree when a dinosaur came into view real close. It was an Iguanadon I'm certain, which put me in the early cretaceous around 80-90 million years ago. And I've got something to tell people about what colour they were but probably will keep it to myself. If only it was possible to communicate what it was all like being that sort of instinctual mind motivated by hunger and fear, it's in my top 5 most amazing experiences to this day. But it gets weirder, when I got round the tree I saw the source of the light and it was a couple of highly odd looking robot aliens. Honestly. I couldn't have made them up if I tried. Not consciously. At that point I opened my eyes and decided I needed a walk, which is another couple of stories. knowing my interests in UFOs and paleontology I am obviously sure that my mind made it all up on the spot but boy it was an amazing accomplishment, at least as real as sitting here now. Religions have started for less though and I can see how people get started on mistaking what's inside for what's outside if it falls so far out of normal experience. And how it justifies beliefs in things like reincarnation. Unless Graham Hancock is right for the first time in his life. So it isn't really like your experience at all LOL. But I've typed it so it stays. So it does. If you think about it, your and my experiences are probably rarer on this planet than experiences typed (related by, told by) people who went on to form religions, or who tried to. Our tales are along the lines of, This is what we experienced...we don't know WTF it means, we're just telling the stories...do with them what you want. In contrast, many people who went on to talk about their supposed spiritual experiences were more narcissistic and had more self-importance going for them. They couldn't just tell their stories and say, That's it...make what you want of it..., they had
Re: [FairfieldLife] Why you can't trust your own perception
Pity you felt the need to go all ego about this, rather than having some fun with it and possibly learning something. Here's Sam Harris riffing on a similar illusion: S.H.: Because what does not survive scrutiny cannot be real. Perhaps you can see the same effect in this perceptual illusion: It certainly looks like there is a white square in the center of this figure, but when we study the image, it becomes clear that there are only four partial circles. The square has been imposed by our visual system, whose edge detectors have been fooled. Can we know that the black shapes are more real than the white one? Yes, because the square doesn’t survive our efforts to locate it — its edges literally disappear. A little investigation and we see that its form has been merely implied. What could we say to a skeptic who insisted that the white square is just as real as the three-quarter circles and that its disappearance is nothing more than, as you say, “a relatively rare — and deliberately cultivated — experience”? All we could do is urge him to look more closely. The same is true about the conventional sense of self — the feeling of being a subject inside your head, a locus of consciousness behind your eyes, a thinker in addition to the flow of thoughts. This form of subjectivity does not survive scrutiny. If you really look for what you are calling “I,” this feeling will disappear. In fact, it is easier to experience consciousness without the feeling of self than it is to banish the white square in the above image. From: Bhairitu noozg...@sbcglobal.net [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, September 7, 2014 6:03 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Why you can't trust your own perception On 09/07/2014 01:47 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] wrote: How many triangles do you see in this image? The correct answer is None. http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/design-technology/kanisza-triangle-you-cant-believe-your-eyes/ None? Really? Pac-Men? What was the age of these academists? 23? Actually the question is phrased wrong. Ask any computer graphics artist how they would create this image. They would start with one purple triangle. Why purple? We'll get to that in a minute. Next at one point in the triangle they would intersect a black circle. They would then copy the black circle and paste two more each each point of the purple triangle. Then select all three circles and put them on the bottom layer. This way the purple triangle overlaps the black triangles to create the Pac-Man. Next select the purple triangle and copy it then flip the triangle. Now we have two triangles forming a star. Select that new triangle and change the fill color to white or background and the stroke (outline) to black. Push that triangle to the bottom layer. Now we have the purple triangle on top. Select it and change the fill color to white (or background) and the stroke also to white. Now you have the graphic. How many images did that take? 5. How many images would it take if you di it the fragmented way? 6. And a much more difficult image to construct that way too. So, I as a computer person who does both graphics programming and art see two triangles. Perhaps the correct question would have been how many complete triangles do you see? The answer could then be none(though I need to examine the graphic carefully as the top triangle might not actually be the same color as the background as I perceive an edge). Oh, why a purple triangle? This is an often unused color in pictures that artists will use temporarily for transparent areas. If purple is used then they can use another color that isn't used in the graphic. I'll give the academics a D+ for effort. :-D
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Interview with Sam Harris at the New York Times opinionator: there is no self
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com Good article, I get an idea of where he's coming from. Nothing to do with mystic woo woo at all. In fact, he's a man after my own heart. Mine, too. He manages to bring concepts that most people get all hazy and Woo Woo about into crystal clarity. Of course consciousness isn't reducible. loads of things aren't, life itself for instance. Reason is they depend on advanced structures, a rock isn't conscious but it's made of the same stuff as my brain is, therefore it must be the organisation inside my head that gives rise to awareness. This is quite obviously born out by experiment. No there isn't a central place in the brain where the sense of self resides, evolution teaches that isn't a likely prediction because it would have to be a very ancient biological structure and yet it acts all modern with its feelings etc. Seems obvious that all parts of the brain from the ancient reptilian parts that gives us instincts and simple motor function responses, the mid brain or limbic system we share with most other mammals that gives us emotions, desires and learned responses like fight or flight. On top of that is the neocortex that gives us higher mammals reasoning and episodic memory, all these things are interconnected and we experience and use all of them with the top, most recently evolved bit, wondering where all the inner stuff comes from. You can also tell there's no inner self when the brain gets damaged, in severe epilepsy the two brains halves are sometimes separated by cutting the connecting nerves. People can still function but if you place a screen between someone's eyes so they can't see what's on the other side your left eye will see things but you won't know what they are even though your right hand can draw them! This means there must be two selfs one in each side! How weird is that? I think the hard problem is really the easy bit, the tricky task is working out exactly what everything is doing and when. I've never understood those who go on and on about the hard problem. It's simply a non-issue to a pragmatic Buddhist. Who CARES about the Why of consciousness or Where it comes from? No one has ever known and no one ever will, and 'knowing' would do them no good even if they found what they thought was a suitable Why or Where. The pragmatic spiritual approach is to leave all the figuring and the posturing about the Why of life to those who feel they have time to waste on such self-indulgent shit, and focus instead on the obvious -- that *something* we call consciousness exists, here and now, and that we have the ability to work with it. The only thing that seems to have any pragmatic value -- for us or for others -- is learning how to make the best use of whatever we consider consciousness to be. Then again, I fully admit to being underwhelmed by the silly shit that philosophers spend their lives pondering. I think the world would have been a better place if they'd all been forced to go out and actually DO something of benefit to other people instead of sitting on their asses feeling self-important about a self that never existed. :-) The inner minds eye has been there since the dawn of complex animal life even though it must have improved via evolution, it's the way we know to respond to threats, simple stimulus/response but so useful it got improved rapidly. This understanding of conscious correlates is proceeding well but the brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. So it's a bit early to say that consciousness is impossible or must be some sort of other thing from the rest of the stuff we know the universe is made of. And it's quite a relief that Sam Harris isn't a mystic he just has a different sense of the importance of inner experience than most scientists. I still see no evidence for quantum consciousness. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, wayback71@... wrote : Sam Harris's Vanishing Self? Sam Harris's Vanishing Self Sam Harris's Vanishing Self The well-known New Atheist makes a case for the value of “spirituality,” which he bases on his experiences in meditation. View on opinionator.blogs.ny... Preview by Yahoo Sam Harris's Vanishing Self The well-known New Atheist makes a case for the value of “spirituality,” which he bases on his experiences in meditation. View on opinionator.blogs.nyti... Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Jack the Ripper unmasked!
It's funny...I had exactly the same response, wondering how many people who have *seriously* invested in claiming that they have *the* solution for who the Ripper was will find some way to deny this. Science, after all, is no match for True Believerism. :-) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, September 7, 2014 1:59 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Jack the Ripper unmasked! Very interesting. I have often wondered, can't wait to see the response from the great many Ripperologists. If it's true then that's a major industry dead! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister@... wrote : The Ripper unmasked: DNA identify Britain's most notorious criminal The Ripper unmasked: DNA identify Britain's most not... A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her as well as the killer. View on www.dailymail.co.ukPreview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Jack the Ripper unmasked!
For example, how will Benjamin Creme react to this news, since a link off one of his websites says that according to the Masters of Light Jack the Ripper was a woman? http://unveiledsecretsandmessagesoflight.blogspot.nl/2009/05/jack-ripper.html I think Nabby owes us some follow-up on this one. Will Benny Creme deny the validity of DNA evidence if it contradicts his (imaginary) Masters? Only time will tell. In the meanwhile, here are some other non-scientific theories: From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, September 8, 2014 1:08 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Jack the Ripper unmasked! It's funny...I had exactly the same response, wondering how many people who have *seriously* invested in claiming that they have *the* solution for who the Ripper was will find some way to deny this. Science, after all, is no match for True Believerism. :-) From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, September 7, 2014 1:59 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Jack the Ripper unmasked! Very interesting. I have often wondered, can't wait to see the response from the great many Ripperologists. If it's true then that's a major industry dead! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister@... wrote : The Ripper unmasked: DNA identify Britain's most notorious criminal The Ripper unmasked: DNA identify Britain's most not... A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her as well as the killer. View on www.dailymail.co.ukPreview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Jack the Ripper unmasked!
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : It's funny...I had exactly the same response, wondering how many people who have *seriously* invested in claiming that they have *the* solution for who the Ripper was will find some way to deny this. Science, after all, is no match for True Believerism. :-) Many a true word spoken in jest. The 75 pages of books on Amazon may become obsolete but I doubt that will be the end of it. Could be a whole new industry of conspiracy theories about how he didn't work alone etc... Maybe he worked with Benji Creme's female ripper. The permutations are endless as will be the refutations that the science is flawed. See also The Turin Shroud, Creationism etc... Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm going to celebrate the solving of this century-old mystery by indulging in my own bit of True Believerism and re-watching From Hell. That's my favorite of all the Jack The Ripper movies ever made, hands-down, and I'd much rather believe that version of the Jack tale to be correct. It's not so much who the creators of this film thought Jack was that makes their version interesting, though. It's the detective who is trying to find Jack who is interesting. In all seriousness, I think that Inspector Frederick Abberline is one of the greatest characters in the entire history of crime fiction. I mean, a police detective who solves crimes by smoking opium and drinking absinthe and then having visions of the killers is pretty damned cool. Having that character played by Johnny Depp is just brilliant. If you like cinema and somehow missed this movie, you really shouldn't have. Johnny Depp - From Hell trailer Johnny Depp - From Hell trailer View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, September 7, 2014 1:59 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Jack the Ripper unmasked! Very interesting. I have often wondered, can't wait to see the response from the great many Ripperologists. If it's true then that's a major industry dead! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, cardemaister@... wrote : The Ripper unmasked: DNA identify Britain's most notorious criminal The Ripper unmasked: DNA identify Britain's most not... A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her as well as the killer. View on www.dailymail.co.ukPreview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] My Sense Of Humor
Be warned... :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY
I think I've figured out what this is all about. It's not about the event. There's never actually going to ever BE an event, either live or streamed. It's all about gathering the names and email addresses of those who RSVP. What this is is a brilliant scam to generate the Ultimate Spam List Of Sucker Email Addresses, which the scammers will then sell to generators of spam marketing worldwide. The scammers will be able to say to their potential spammer customers: This is IT, the Ultimate list you've been looking for. The names on this list are by definition the dumbest, most gullible people on planet Earth, *just* the types you're looking for to buy your worthless Newage products. Look at the facts -- the people who signed up for this 'event' spent most of their lives and much of their money (anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to *millions* of dollars) to hear the 'wisdom' of one of the most low-rent, ripoff, sham 'spiritual teachers' the world has ever known, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Now, several years after he kicked the bucket, they're ready to line up to hear MORE 'wisdom' from him from 'beyond the grave,' just because someone has claimed to be able to 'channel' him. You really CAN'T get any more dumb and gullible than this. THIS really IS the Ultimate Spam List Of Sucker Email Addresses -- invest today and you can make money from the same idiots that the TM organization ripped off. From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 2:55 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY God Almighty! Combining channeling with True TM Believing. I wonder if Bevan, Neal and King Tony will be there? From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, September 8, 2014 7:18 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY http://30thnovember.com/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY
From: Duveyoung no_re...@yahoogroups.com Everybody be like: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jNwjOksqJQk/UTuWKhdSG7I/AIc/7ShPOljGM0Y/s1600/cm-47778-0510a9f8f4a84d.gif View on 3.bp.blogspot.com Preview by Yahoo Funny. And even funnier because you just *know* that there will be people either there or tuning in who really *will* be like that. The Sixth Sense's I see dead people is so passé. These days to get a real audience you've gotta say,I talk to dead people. :-) For those who are curious as to who could possibly come up with such a gig... What he'll be telling you, direct from Maharishi, of course: http://30thnovember.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/30th-November-Lecture-Invitation-PDF.pdf Who he is: George Hammond: Love - A Rational Explanation | Commonwealth Club George Hammond: Love - A Rational Explanation | Co... Love: A Rational Explanation George Hammond, Author, Rational Idealism Monday Night Philosophy steps into the debate about whether love is irrational. The appa... View on www.commonwealth... Preview by Yahoo His books, with interesting pricing concept: http://www.amazon.com/George-Hammond/e/B000APIF1Q/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1410254316sr=1-2-ent Even More Relativity Hardcover – October 1, 1999 1 Used from $2,432.64 1 New from $30.99 A sample of how he thinks: http://home.pacifier.com/~dkossy/hammond.html
Re: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY
It was a JOKE, Alex. Of course, if they *were* collecting email addresses, they could do so easily without providing any kind of space on a form in which to type one -- press the RSVP button, and the system automatically knows your email ID. Duh. I was just riffing on the utter STUPIDITY of people wanting to see someone who claims to be passing along information from someone after his death. You have to admit, any list of such people really *would* be invaluable to spam marketers, because you simply can't find any group of people more gullible than that. And it's not as if this information they're anxious to hear is from any old dead person...it's from Dead Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who didn't really have all that much of value to say when he was alive. I'm just suggesting that the RSVP List from this event is almost by definition a list of the biggest group of losers on the planet, and thus would be a natural for resale to the spammer market. :-) From: j_alexander_stan...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 2:31 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY RSVP | 30th November RSVP | 30th November RSVP OUR PRIVACY POLICY: View on 30thnovember.com Preview by Yahoo Neither your email address nor any other personal information will be digitally captured or collected if you RSVP, live stream the Presentation or watch the Recording of this event. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoi...@yahoo.com wrote : I think I've figured out what this is all about. It's not about the event. There's never actually going to ever BE an event, either live or streamed. It's all about gathering the names and email addresses of those who RSVP. What this is is a brilliant scam to generate the Ultimate Spam List Of Sucker Email Addresses, which the scammers will then sell to generators of spam marketing worldwide. The scammers will be able to say to their potential spammer customers: This is IT, the Ultimate list you've been looking for. The names on this list are by definition the dumbest, most gullible people on planet Earth, *just* the types you're looking for to buy your worthless Newage products. Look at the facts -- the people who signed up for this 'event' spent most of their lives and much of their money (anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to *millions* of dollars) to hear the 'wisdom' of one of the most low-rent, ripoff, sham 'spiritual teachers' the world has ever known, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Now, several years after he kicked the bucket, they're ready to line up to hear MORE 'wisdom' from him from 'beyond the grave,' just because someone has claimed to be able to 'channel' him. You really CAN'T get any more dumb and gullible than this. THIS really IS the Ultimate Spam List Of Sucker Email Addresses -- invest today and you can make money from the same idiots that the TM organization ripped off. From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 2:55 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY God Almighty! Combining channeling with True TM Believing. I wonder if Bevan, Neal and King Tony will be there? From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, September 8, 2014 7:18 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY http://30thnovember.com/
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 3:00 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY I doubt the Movement will respond to this at all, unless it is to take names of those entering the building - wouldn't be surprised to see James Beddinger standing outside the entrance with a notebook and pen, scribbling away. Actually, did you notice that this guy went out of his way to provide a level of supposed anonymity to TM attendees who were afraid of being tracked by the TMO? He claims not to be collecting any kind of list of email addresses, and even provides a way that attendees can specify a different name for their name tag than they supply as their real name. I would imagine that the TMO *will* send someone there to snoop -- not only to bust those who might be Off The Program by visiting someone claiming to be passing along messages from Maharishi, but to make sure that the MUM Begging Department is ready to man their phone lines in case one of these messages from beyond the grave is Give more money to the TMO. :-) :-) :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY
From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 3:11 PM Subject: RE: [FairfieldLife] 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY Funny that Jerry is involved in this. Jerry is famous for saying, with reference to channeling, “Just because you’re dead, doesn’t mean you’re smart.” Just goes to show that in his case, just because you're old doesn't mean you're smart.
[FairfieldLife] Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened
OK, it was kinda inevitable that *somebody* would come along claiming to be able to pass along Maharishi's messages from beyond the grave. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened before now. The thing I'm confused about is how anyone who claims to believe that *by his own standards and according to his own teachings* Maharishi was enlightened would be *interested* in hearing a message from him after death. Or how such a person could even consider such a message a *possibility* if Maharishi was really enlightened. In being open to such a promised message possibly being for real, you would have to believe that Maharishi was NEVER enlightened. If he was, *according to his own teachings*, after an enlightened person dies, there can be no individuality left to send such a message. The drop has returned to the ocean. That means there ain't no drop (or personality construct, or self) known as Maharishi out there any more. Just ocean. Last I checked, oceans don't send messages to guys in showers, including the shower guy's dead wife in on the conference call. And if they do, they don't sign them, Maharishi. I heard Maharishi give the talks surrounding this point many times, and they were often controversy-provoking, with people standing up to the microphone and saying, No, Maharishi, that *can't* be how it is, that if you die in CC there is no more 'you' left and you never have a chance to attain GC or UC. And *every time* someone did this, Maharishi would correct them and say, No, there is NO chance of individual personality continuing to exist after an enlightened person dies. They are already Absolute, and when the relative body falls away, all that is left is Absolute -- no personality, no self, nada. Game over, man. OK, he didn't say Game over, man, but he did pretty much say all the rest, as many teachers here on this forum know. And the thing is Jerry Jarvis knows this better than anyone. He perfected the art of parroting Maharishi's talks on this subject, and I heard him give the same speech many times -- There is no individuality after an enlightened person dies, and no possibility of one existing. So if Jerry has actually come to believe that messages from Dead Maharishi could possibly exist, what does that imply? Well, as far as I can tell, it implies one of two things -- an either/or situation. To believe that this George Hammond guy *has* actually received messages from a Dead Maharishi, Jerry would have to believe that either 1) Maharishi's teaching on this subject (which he had parroted many times) was WRONG, or 2) that the teaching might be correct, but that means that Maharishi was never enlightened. If any of you out there are actually in touch with Jerry, ask him to resolve this WTF quandary for me. I mean, I could understand someone who has never spent any time around Maharishi or never even met him (like Jim, Judy, or Lawson) not knowing what Maharishi's teachings were about the impossibility of individuality after death in CC. But Jerry? I've heard him parrot those teachings, and in that I *know* the Truth so you *really* should believe me tone of voice he used to use in lectures. So if he is willing to entertain even the *possibility* that these messages really come from a now-dead Maharishi who still has individuality, what does that imply about what he (Jerry) now believes? Was the teaching wrong, or was it right, and Maharishi just never enlightened?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY
For the record, Edg, I get that your post is intended to be at least partly funny, and riffs off of stuff that only we Old School TMer Old Farts could ever be really interested in. And it made me laugh a few times. But just so you understand, my first post in this thread really *was* a joke. That was just my first reaction after reading the website pointed to by Rick in his first post. I saw it, realized that it was the PERFECT mechanism for gathering up a list of the Most Gullible Spambait On Planet Earth, and riffed on it accordingly, for fun. But then I did a little Googling, and found that it was a For Real event, and sadder, when posts started rolling in to FFL about it, found that some here actually would take such a claim seriously. That just blows my fuckin' mind. I just made a post in which I discuss a few of the reasons it blows my mind, called Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened. If you find that exercise in cognitive dissonance interesting, I'd be interested in your take on it. From: Duveyoung no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 5:17 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: 30th November | Channeled Info from MMY Email addresses for spamming? Nah. That's old school. Since 1996, my Internet businesses have amassed a full-permission-to-contact-me-granted-by-the-users emailing list of over FORTY MILLION addresses -- that's an honest number. I have never sold a single one of them despite they're being demographically primo. Nor do I spam them -- only sending them something if there's been a pricing or policy change -- about once every few years. Nor could I spam -- there's a ton of filters out there that are combing out the gunk. And there's all kinds of other ways to capture eyeballs with click-bait and cookies. Also, there's so many lists available out there that a good list is very hard to authenticate, so selling a list is a very tough go. It's a bullshittery business. And let me tells ya, I went to, say, a couple dozen healers that breezed through FF -- paid wads of cash, and NOT ONE of them took an email address. Getting new age suckers on a list doesn't cut it -- ya gotta have a list of true-believers-in-you if you're gunna hawk a program -- and that's a very short list. These new age folks probably know most of their clients by name. A long list would just be filled with maybe types. And hey, wouldn't it be great if Jerry took the whole fucking movement away from Girish and Co. by saying HE was the channeler of MMY?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 8:43 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened As to company, I am looking forward to going to Europe and inviting both Barry and Sal to have dinner with me. A nice porterhouse steak p'raps with some green beans and a bit of duck fat potatoes. I don't drink alcohol, but I'll treat Barry and Sal to the libations of their choice. I certainly consider them both good company on FFL. If nature supports, we might get Curtis and Edg to come join us too. The universe quakes at the thought of a dinner party in, say, Amsterdam or London or Paris at which the party guests are Michael, Curtis, Salyavin, Edg, and myself. This could cause a serious disturbance in the Force. :-) :-) :-) I'd invite Vaj and Sally Sunshine and Marek and wayback and Xeno to join us, and then the universe would be truly fucked. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] 'Ideal India, Lighthouse of Peace on Earth' by Maharishi ~ Excerpt
As you often do, Rick, you posted this without comment. So what do YOU think of this quote? To me it's one of the clearest revelations of Maharishi's often-hidden Hindu Supremacy agenda ever. Not to mention his superstition and devotion to Woo Woo. Secularism is bad, but devatas and yagyas are scientific reality. Yeah, right. From: 'Rick Archer' r...@searchsummit.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 4:58 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] 'Ideal India, Lighthouse of Peace on Earth' by Maharishi ~ Excerpt In a 2001 publication called 'Ideal India, the Lighthouse of Peace on Earth', Maharishi Mahesh Yogi wrote the following: Those people who are holding the reins of Indian administration should know their administration is not of Indian origin. The Indian Constitution, promoted by Jawaharlal Nehru, is non-Indian, because it does not nourish the life of either Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, or Shudras; it is only suited to Varn Shankar Shrisht - it is not suited for the survival and evolution of pure life. It does not cater for the natural specialties of Brahmanas, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, or Shudras; it does not even suit the requirements of Brahmachari, Grihastha, Vanaprastha, or Sanyas - it does not cater for the Varn Prasht Vyavastha - it is a copy of non-Indian ideals of life, which have resulted from thousands of years of slavery of foreign powers in India. Through Devata Yagya and Anusthan, Bhakti, and Vedant, we are trying to bless the world from the ancient Indian heritage - the Vedic Heritage; but the Government of India is suppressing the reality of Indian life through its laws. We strongly condemn the word secular and the meaning of secularism that governs the administration of the Government of India, and which dismisses the scientific reality of Devatas and Yagyas and has put these most fundamental fields of intelligence out of government policy. For India to be ideal, it has to rise to invincibility through the wisdom of the Veda; through devotion to Devatas and Yagyas and through the performance of Yagya and Anusthan for the individual to rise to his Cosmic Potential. The deep roots of Dharma have been cruelly invaded by the British, American, and German Christian-oriented philosophy of life. It is a shame for Indians, living in the Land of the Veda, to allow the fundamentals of their Vedic Knowledge to be invaded and virtually crucified by the shallow and very superficial principles of Christendom - baseless principles of life in the name of national unity.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com EXCELLENT post Barry - you have officially busted the asses of everyone who thinks this whole deal is the real deal. I am passing all this along to my friend Bill who is in touch with Jerry, the one I mentioned in past posts who has had several extended phone conversations with Jerry in the past few months. I hope he is willing to pass the question on and I hope Jerry is willing to answer. It would be interesting to hear his answer to my question, although I doubt he'd really give one. Easier to dodge and weave to avoid cognitive dissonance than deal with it, especially if you've devoted 50 years *to* avoiding it. It goes without saying that I see another option to the either/or I laid out below. That was for Jerry -- based on knowing him, those would be the two options I think he would see. Me, I'd go for both/and -- Maharishi was WRONG about what happens after dying in enlightenment AND he was never enlightened. From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 11:27 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened OK, it was kinda inevitable that *somebody* would come along claiming to be able to pass along Maharishi's messages from beyond the grave. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened before now. The thing I'm confused about is how anyone who claims to believe that *by his own standards and according to his own teachings* Maharishi was enlightened would be *interested* in hearing a message from him after death. Or how such a person could even consider such a message a *possibility* if Maharishi was really enlightened. In being open to such a promised message possibly being for real, you would have to believe that Maharishi was NEVER enlightened. If he was, *according to his own teachings*, after an enlightened person dies, there can be no individuality left to send such a message. The drop has returned to the ocean. That means there ain't no drop (or personality construct, or self) known as Maharishi out there any more. Just ocean. Last I checked, oceans don't send messages to guys in showers, including the shower guy's dead wife in on the conference call. And if they do, they don't sign them, Maharishi. I heard Maharishi give the talks surrounding this point many times, and they were often controversy-provoking, with people standing up to the microphone and saying, No, Maharishi, that *can't* be how it is, that if you die in CC there is no more 'you' left and you never have a chance to attain GC or UC. And *every time* someone did this, Maharishi would correct them and say, No, there is NO chance of individual personality continuing to exist after an enlightened person dies. They are already Absolute, and when the relative body falls away, all that is left is Absolute -- no personality, no self, nada. Game over, man. OK, he didn't say Game over, man, but he did pretty much say all the rest, as many teachers here on this forum know. And the thing is Jerry Jarvis knows this better than anyone. He perfected the art of parroting Maharishi's talks on this subject, and I heard him give the same speech many times -- There is no individuality after an enlightened person dies, and no possibility of one existing. So if Jerry has actually come to believe that messages from Dead Maharishi could possibly exist, what does that imply? Well, as far as I can tell, it implies one of two things -- an either/or situation. To believe that this George Hammond guy *has* actually received messages from a Dead Maharishi, Jerry would have to believe that either 1) Maharishi's teaching on this subject (which he had parroted many times) was WRONG, or 2) that the teaching might be correct, but that means that Maharishi was never enlightened. If any of you out there are actually in touch with Jerry, ask him to resolve this WTF quandary for me. I mean, I could understand someone who has never spent any time around Maharishi or never even met him (like Jim, Judy, or Lawson) not knowing what Maharishi's teachings were about the impossibility of individuality after death in CC. But Jerry? I've heard him parrot those teachings, and in that I *know* the Truth so you *really* should believe me tone of voice he used to use in lectures. So if he is willing to entertain even the *possibility* that these messages really come from a now-dead Maharishi who still has individuality, what does that imply about what he (Jerry) now believes? Was the teaching wrong, or was it right, and Maharishi just never enlightened?
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Reading or Not Reading Posts
From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] What I was implying was, say someone is extremely passive, a spiritual type, and you really bore down on him with taunts and insults etc., that person may just suddenly explode at you because you have triggered some normally well hidden response, maybe even the fight or flight response. It is not necessarily a weakness unless you consider an act out of character with a peaceful demeanor a weakness. . . . Conditioning is a wider net than samskaras, as some is hard wired, and samskaras generally result from overloads on the nervous system as opposed to gentler conditioning. Responding when someone calls your name is conditioning, and that results from the habit developed by your parents giving you a name and repeating it in your presence along with other behavioural cues. For a person dedicated to revealing your samskaras, even your name is fair game for head-fucking-with: Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong Spoiler alert: It's on purpose, and there's nothing you can do about it. View on digg.com Preview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] Tapas
No, not that silly practice that wannabee yogis perform when they want to feel all self-important for abstaining from doing something they'd rather be doing than abstaining from. Tapas, the cuisine from Spain. I felt like having some today, and fortunately in Leiden one can find pretty much any type of food in the world, so now I'm comfortably seated at a canalside restaurant enjoying a beer and some albondigas and calamares and mejillones, abstaining from nothing. *Much* better form of tapas than that yogi stuff. I've never understood that spiritual kinda tapas, and why people get off on it. It's like they expect some kinda brownie points for *resisting* something that the Natural Tendency Of Their Minds is drawing them towards? WTF? Just doesn't compute for me. I don't even get the concept. I mean, is some god or some Law Of Nature supposed to be *impressed* by some monk who (similar to TM guys on rounding courses) spends 90% of his time thinking about sex, but isn't really ever gettin' any? Seems to me that the god or the Law in question would want the guy to Go Get Laid Already, so that he could come back to meditation and spend a little time transcending. Anyway, I like the Spanish version of tapas much more. Little dishes of fish or shellfish or veggies or meats, small enough so that you can order 3 to start with and stop there if that satisfies you, or order 3 more (or 12 more) if the first course doesn't. It's a perfect eating style for me, because I tend to have a small appetite and like to graze, rather than eating a long, full meal. YMMV.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Has Rick decided to kill the Group? (Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened)
In all seriousness, I suspect that Rick has done exactly that. He really doesn't seem to even notice that the group has developed a couple of mentally unbalanced types whose highest goal in life seems to be to post the most. Or that other people on the forum are actually encouraging them to do so and egging them on in their psychosis, as they did previously with other mentally unbalanced posters like Ravi and Robin. IMO, the group's already dead. Rick's just hoping that it attracts vultures to perform a Tibetan sky burial, so he doesn't have to spring for a funeral. :-) From: jedi_sp...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2014 2:19 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Has Rick decided to kill the Group? (Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened) Has Rick Archer decided to kill the group? This moron danfriedman2002 is splatting shit all across the forum. I am having great difficulty wading through all this muck. From: Michael Jackson mjackson74@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com EXCELLENT post Barry - you have officially busted the asses of everyone who thinks this whole deal is the real deal. I am passing all this along to my friend Bill who is in touch with Jerry, the one I mentioned in past posts who has had several extended phone conversations with Jerry in the past few months. I hope he is willing to pass the question on and I hope Jerry is willing to answer. --- turquoiseb@... wrote : It would be interesting to hear his answer to my question, although I doubt he'd really give one. Easier to dodge and weave to avoid cognitive dissonance than deal with it, especially if you've devoted 50 years *to* avoiding it. It goes without saying that I see another option to the either/or I laid out below. That was for Jerry -- based on knowing him, those would be the two options I think he would see. Me, I'd go for both/and -- Maharishi was WRONG about what happens after dying in enlightenment AND he was never enlightened. --- Danfriedman2002@... wrote : Jerry Jarvis has spoken his final words to you for his entire life. And since you believe in dissolving after life, I guess that's it. This Post counts. From: TurquoiseBee turquoiseb@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2014 11:27 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Nice to hear from you, Rish...sorry to learn you weren't enlightened OK, it was kinda inevitable that *somebody* would come along claiming to be able to pass along Maharishi's messages from beyond the grave. I'm surprised that it hasn't happened before now. The thing I'm confused about is how anyone who claims to believe that *by his own standards and according to his own teachings* Maharishi was enlightened would be *interested* in hearing a message from him after death. Or how such a person could even consider such a message a *possibility* if Maharishi was really enlightened. In being open to such a promised message possibly being for real, you would have to believe that Maharishi was NEVER enlightened. If he was, *according to his own teachings*, after an enlightened person dies, there can be no individuality left to send such a message. The drop has returned to the ocean. That means there ain't no drop (or personality construct, or self) known as Maharishi out there any more. Just ocean. Last I checked, oceans don't send messages to guys in showers, including the shower guy's dead wife in on the conference call. And if they do, they don't sign them, Maharishi. I heard Maharishi give the talks surrounding this point many times, and they were often controversy-provoking, with people standing up to the microphone and saying, No, Maharishi, that *can't* be how it is, that if you die in CC there is no more 'you' left and you never have a chance to attain GC or UC. And *every time* someone did this, Maharishi would correct them and say, No, there is NO chance of individual personality continuing to exist after an enlightened person dies. They are already Absolute, and when the relative body falls away, all that is left is Absolute -- no personality, no self, nada. Game over, man. OK, he didn't say Game over, man, but he did pretty much say all the rest, as many teachers here on this forum know. And the thing is Jerry Jarvis knows this better than anyone. He perfected the art of parroting Maharishi's talks on this subject, and I heard him give the same speech many times -- There is no individuality after an enlightened person dies, and no possibility of one existing. So if Jerry has actually come to believe that messages from Dead Maharishi could possibly exist, what does that imply? Well, as far as I can tell, it implies one of two things --
[FairfieldLife] Advaitan self inquiry, as performed by Cheech and Chong
Self? Self's not here, man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nxK_hGLTN4feature=youtu.be :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Important Question for Sal
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Alright Sal, we all know that in a few days the Scots will vote on whether or not to form their own country. Now forget all the nonsense about whether the country will prosper by itself. The real question is: if the Scots create an independent country, will they no longer be considered Scorpions? As part of the UK were they originally considered Scorpions? Or was Scorpionland just England proper, excluding Ireland, Scotland and Wales not to mention the Islands, or was it all just one big land of Scorpions? I am not Salyavin, and not as up on history as I should be, but my understanding was that Scorpionhood was bestowed across the entire breadth of the United Kingdom. With one exception, of course. Liverpool was always exempt from Scorpionhood because of prior business agreements between The Beatles and the TMO. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Sam Harris Book
I've been away in Amsterdam for a bit, but while there found this book myself. I'm enjoying it a great deal. Not having read Sam Harris' books before (only many of his online articles or interviews), I'm finding that I really like his writing style. And not just the clarity of it...I really like the *rhythm* of it, the *flow* of it. I get the feeling that he shoots from the hip in his writing, a lot like I do. That is, he catches a wave of inspiration and rides it, allowing it to take him where it will. Sometimes that kinda writing works, sometimes it doesn't. So far, Sam's surfing is working just fine for me. From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, September 12, 2014 2:39 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Sam Harris Book Sam Harris' book Waking Up, a Guide to Spirituality without Religion is now available as of Tuesday It is rather short with just five chapters and a conclusion, but it is cogent and to the point. I am about halfway through it, having bought it today. Chapter 1: Spirituality Chapter 2: The Mystery of Consciousness Chapter 3: The Riddle of the Self Chapter 4: Meditation Chapter 5: Gurus, Death, Drugs, and Other Puzzles Conclusion There are simple instructions for meditation that look as simple as TM: Vipassana (or mindfulness, or perhaps a better translation — clear awareness), and of course it's free, and is the most researched meditation technique. It is a brief guidebook for spirituality for atheists, or anyone who does not buy the spiritual mumbo jumbo of metaphysicians and those into the occult*. I suppose religious people could read it too, religion is not really discussed that much. Unlike TM, which proclaims itself not religious, this is what Maharishi could have made of TM if he really wanted it to be non religious. Buddhism is mentioned because its theory of self (they are not talking of Self with the capital 'S' in Buddhism) has many parallels to scientific research into the nature of self, which does not appear to exist. Consciousness he seems to regard as a mystery, and the examples he gives, give one pause as to the strangeness of what we call our awareness. * supernatural, mystical, or magical beliefs, practices, or phenomena. An example from the beginning of Chapter 5: 'One of the first obstacles encountered along any contemplative path is the basic uncertainty about the nature of spiritual authority. If there are important truths to be discovered through introspection, there must be better and worse ways to do this — and one should expect to meet a range of experts, novices, fools, and frauds along the way. Of course, charlatans haunt every walk of life. But on spiritual matters, foolishness and fraudulence can be especially difficult to detect. Unfortunately, this is a natural consequence of the subject matter. When learning to play a sport like golf, you can immediately establish the abilities of the teacher, and the teacher can, in turn, evaluate your progress without leaving anything to the imagination. All the relevant facts are in plain view. If you can't consistently hit the little white ball where you want it to go, you have something to learn from anybody who can. The difference between an expert and a novice is no less stark when it comes to recognizing the illusion of the self. But the qualifications of a teacher and the progress of a student are more difficult to assess.' And Chapter 1 is on Harris' web site: WAKING UP: Chapter One : Sam Harris WAKING UP: Chapter One : Sam Harris Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. View on www.samharris.org Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Sam Harris Book
From: waybac...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com It was delivered to my doorstep the other day and just a few pages I enjoy his writing style - he is clear and articulate and really nails things. I will read it this weekend. And Barry, as you know, he says there is no self (ha, we have been thru this many times)!! Indeed. He seems to be a very strong personality, with a very strong sense of self, uh, saying there is no self. :-) Unlike some here, I don't have to agree with everything a writer says to like that writer... :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Sam Harris Book
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com I've been working on taxes today and had to delay continuing with the book, but the clarity is welcome after the lax mental sprawl that has become FFL of late. Harris really has a gift for organising material. If you have gotten to the part in the 'self' section about using a transporter, I presented this argument to an initiator some years ago, and the response was, 'No I would not go into such a device'. Perhaps you could review the book here on FFL, not that the most of the current crowd has much capacity for grasping the arguments. Most of the current crowd doesn't have the attention span and intellect to read a comic book, much less something like this. I'll pass. :-) Besides, you know they'd never read it, because they'd be terrified of catching atheist cooties and finding out how mindfulness really works. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: My anger is my proof
I don't read any of 7th ray's posts any more, so I don't know what he might have said, but I sure recognize the vibe you're discussing. Something happened at some point and he became really nasty. I've written him off. From: waybac...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2014 3:27 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: My anger is my proof You know 7th ray, you just wrote something really awful. Did you think you were being clever? I know someone whose son, who was struggling with depression, was told, online, to go kill himself by his friend.. This friend thought he was being bold and out there - he dared him to do it. And the young man did kill himself. His father found the entire year's worth of email exchanges. He took them over to this friend's house and showed them to the friend' and his father. Think about what you wrote. Learn from it. Nothing justifies what you wrote.
[FairfieldLife] Good quote from Sam Harris' new book passed along from a former FFL poster
Seems like everybody's reading this book, except the people here on FFL who assume they already know everything and don't need to, that is. :-) This is a great quote that I'll pass along because 1) my friend already did all the typing so I don't have to, and 2) I love the simple and perfect way that Dzogchen deals with the kinds of faux enlightenment we see often on Fairfield Life. When I first met him, he had not yet been discovered by the throngs of Western devotees who would soon turn his tiny house in Lucknow into a spiritual circus. Like his teacher Ramana, Poonja-ji claimed to be perfectly free from the illusion of the self—and by all appearances, he was. And like Ramana— and every other Indian guru—Poonja-ji would occasionally say something deeply unscientific. On the whole, however, his teaching was remarkably free of Hindu religiosity or unwarranted assertions about the nature of the cosmos. He appeared to simply speak from experience about the nature of experience itself. Poonja-ji’s influence on me was profound, especially because it came as a corrective to all the strenuous and unsatisfying efforts I had been making in meditation up to that point. But the dangers inherent in his approach soon became obvious. The all-or-nothing quality of Poonja-ji’s teaching obliged him to acknowledge the full enlightenment of any person who was grandiose or manic enough to claim it. Thus, I repeatedly witnessed fellow students declare their complete and undying freedom, all the while appearing quite ordinary—or worse. In certain cases, these people had clearly had some sort of breakthrough, but Poonja-ji’s insistence upon the finality of every legitimate insight led many of them to delude themselves about their spiritual attainments. Some left India and became gurus. From what I could tell, Poonja-ji gave everyone his blessing to spread his teachings in this way. He once suggested that I do it, and yet it was clear to me that I was not qualified to be anyone’s guru. Nearly twenty years have passed, and I’m still not. Of course, from Poonja-ji’s point of view, this is an illusion. And yet there simply is a difference between a person like myself, who is generally distracted by thought, and one who isn’t and cannot be. I don’t know where to place Poonja-ji on this continuum of wisdom, but he appeared to be a lot farther along than his students. Whether Poonja-ji was capable of seeing the difference between himself and other people, I do not know. But his insistence that no difference existed began to seem either dogmatic or delusional. On one occasion, events conspired to perfectly illuminate the flaw in Poonja-ji’s teaching. A small group of experienced practitioners (among us several teachers of meditation) had organized a trip to India and Nepal to spend ten days with Poonja-ji in Lucknow, followed by ten days in Kathmandu, to receive teachings on the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Dzogchen. As it happened, during our time in Lucknow, a woman from Switzerland became “enlightened” in Poonja-ji’s presence. For the better part of a week, she was celebrated as something akin to the next Buddha. Poonja-ji repeatedly put her forward as evidence of how fully the truth could be realized without making any effort at all in meditation, and we had the pleasure of seeing this woman sit beside Poonja-ji on a raised platform expounding upon how blissful it now was in her corner of the universe. She was, in fact, radiantly happy, and it was by no means clear that Poonja-ji had made a mistake in recognizing her. She would say things like “There is nothing but consciousness, and there is no difference between it and reality itself.” Coming from such a nice, guileless person, there was little reason to doubt the profundity of her experience. When it came time for our group to leave India for Nepal, this woman asked if she could join us. Because she was such good company, we encouraged her to come along. A few of us were also curious to see how her realization would appear in another context. And so it came to pass that a woman whose enlightenment had just been confirmed by one of the greatest living exponents of Advaita Vedanta was in the room when we received our first teachings from Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who was generally thought to be one of the greatest living Dzogchen masters. Of all the Buddhist teachings, those of Dzogchen most closely resemble the teachings of Advaita. The two traditions seek to provoke the same insight into the nonduality of consciousness, but, generally speaking, only Dzogchen makes it absolutely clear that one must practice this insight to the point of stability and that one can do so without succumbing to the dualistic striving that haunts most other paths. At a certain point in our discussions with Tulku Urgyen, our Swiss prodigy declared her boundless freedom in terms similar to those she had used to such great effect with Poonja-ji. After a few highly amusing exchanges, during which
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Maharishi keeps his promises (was Why MMY's Bhagavad Gita will never be a classic.
From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] My read folder Ann, contains certain posters who tend to not just post one liners or irrelevant comments. Edg is in the read post. Another criterion for this folder is a person does not post excessively. As you now have your own folder it's easy to find your messages. Barry is in the read folder. Putting you in that folder however is like putting protons and anti-protons together. Good plan. :-) To mix them could be a mistake of...dare I say it... Biblical Proportions Biblical Proportions View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] A whole scifi film in 14 minutes 30 seconds...
...and better than most films that take 2+ hours to watch: Today's Must-Watch Short Film: 'Entangled,' From One Of The Writers Of 'Orphan Black' Today's Must-Watch Short Film: 'Entangled,' From One Of... Do we love sci-fi? Yeah, we do. But admitting our personal bias is the first step towards giving you great content. View on digg.com Preview by Yahoo
[FairfieldLife] Rumours Of Glory
I recently wrote positively about a book that hadn't come out yet, my review more of an intuition than anything else, just gettin' a hit on how cool an upcoming book was going to be. That book was Sam Harris' Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, and it now seems to be being read by half the people on the Internet, given the number of people I've seen commenting on it. I'd love to see the same thing happen with another upcoming book, again one that I have not yet read, Bruce Cockburn's Rumours Of Glory. I am enough of a fanboy that I've already pre-ordered the boxed set spoken of below in this email from Bruce's publisher True North. That's how much I am looking forward to his autobiography, one that I suspect will be looked upon as being as much a classical work of spiritual literature as it will be a classic of music literature. Legendary singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn delivers his long‐awaited memoir, RUMOURS OF GLORY– a chronicle of faith, fear, and activism, and a lively cultural, political, and musical tour through the past five decades. RUMOURS OF GLORY, the companion box set to release on True North Records. Pre-order the box set and view the full track listing HERE Order the book and box set in a specially priced bundle HERE Listen to a preview of the rare and unreleased tracks HERE Watch a clip from the DVD HERE The long‐awaited memoir from legendary singer- songwriter Bruce Cockburn, Rumours of Glory, will be published by Harper One in the U.S. and HaperCollinsCanada on November 4, 2014. Best known for his memorable songs including ‘Pacing the Cage’ (1995), ‘If a Tree Falls’ (1988), ‘If I Had a Rocket Launcher’ (1984), ‘Lovers in a Dangerous Time’ (1984) and ‘Wondering Where the Lions Are’ (1979), the award‐winning songwriter and pioneering guitarist, whose life and music has been shaped by politics, protest, romance, and spiritual discovery, has released 31 albums spanning five decades. Cockburn produced an acclaimed body work: his albums have sold over 7 million copies worldwide. He is revered by fans and fellow musicians alike as one of the most important songwriters of his generation. Cockburn says of deciding to write his memoir, “Over the years, the notion that there should be a book about me has popped up now and then, along with offers to write it. It always seemed too soon, and I’ve felt all along that such a book should be mine to author. When Harper One expressed their interest, it finally did seem timely, so here we go!” In Rumours of Glory, Cockburn invites readers into his private world, providing an intimate commentary on his life and work, focused on the roots of his songwriting and the stories behind his best known songs. From Ottawa in 1945 (where he was born) through to Baghdad in 2004, Cockburn shares his family life, personal relationships, Christian convictions, and the social and political activism that has defined him and his music, and has both invigorated and incited his legions of fans worldwide. For Cockburn, music has always been a key way to explore culture, politics and the nature of the spirit, and his remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, blues, rock, and world beat styles. As a long‐time activist, Cockburn has spoken out on a range of issues: native rights, land mines, human rights atrocities in war‐torn countries, Third World debt, ecological devastation, and corporate crime. Cockburn has been awed, appalled, and incensed by what he has seen and felt, and by the very real evil that humans can inflict on one another. As he outlines in Rumours of Glory, he believes that we can, and should, be dedicated to our shared humanity, to saving ourselves, each other and this earth – we just need to find the will. That will comes from maintaining a relationship with the Divine, and following the way of love. And that journey, for Cockburn, has been marked in music. As he says in the book, “In a way we, and all living things, are made of music … music is my diary, my anchor through anguish and joy, a channel for the heart.” Rumours of Glory is also the title of a box set collection curated by Cockburn himself as a companion piece to his memoir; the songs are presented in the same order they appear in the book. This limited edition 117-song, nine-disc set includes 16 rare and previously unreleased songs and a live concert DVD – the artist’s only full-length concert video. Each box set is autographed, sequentially numbered and includes a 90 page book featuring rare photos, extensive track information, and liner notes written by Nicholas Jennings. (Available October 28, 2014 on Bruce’s long time record label, True North Records.) About Bruce Cockburn: Born in 1945 in Ottawa, Ontario, Cockburn began his solo career with his 1970 self‐titled album. His extensive repertoire of musical styles and skillfully crafted lyrics have been covered by such
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Good quote from Sam Harris' new book passed along from a former FFL poster
From: anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Steve, You do need to pay attention to what other people say about enlightenment, otherwise there are no markers as to whether you have made progress or not. But then, who has the 'right' markers? There are lots of descriptions of enlightenment in various traditions. Jim's experience is one of them, but it has me being suspicious because he has said rather little of it in detail, other than he has it, and he knows others do not. The only teacher I know of who describes enlightenment in great detail from start to finish, from a more 'personal' perspective, warts and all, is Adyashanti. There may be other teachers I do not know of, undoubtedly. Maharishi's system appears to have some general benchmarks, but it seems many have had experiences that are of another quality. The jury is out on this for me, but Jim seems to avoid going into much detail about his experience. 'Silence 24/7', a big release when it dawned, 'every perception sees the infinity of the object, unity prevailing', but generally not particularly creative in going beyond stock phrases that could be lifted from Maharishi's tapes. Because he seems to be interested in creativity and expression, I think he could do better at this and make up his own words for this, because then you get more of a feeling of a connexion with a person's mind. To me Jim seems more bluster than Brahman, but I do feel he had a profound experience from his point of view. I would just like to know more about it, and he seems reluctant to go into more detail. Also Jim seemed not to understand descriptions of enlightenment from other perspectives, such as Vedanta, which should not be a problem. Just something seems missing to me. Jim's performance strikes me as low resolution bravura, and seems more interested in telling the tale of it and how it compares to others' than in using it to illuminate our understanding about it. And Jim also said of Barry 'Barry told a silly little story about some western-bubbleized person having a good time, and then realizing instead they were a victim of karma, with a mind full of thoughts'. This was a cut and paste a friend sent to Barry from Sam Harris's book. It was an illustration that we can have experience which we misinterpret as enlightenment, but the story was part of a larger context in the book. I do think Barry was making a veiled reference to Jim, for Barry thinks Jim's enlightenment is faux enlightenment, and the story Sam Harris told was just that. Barry simply reposted the excerpt sent to him by Vaj, because it is a comment on the issue of Neo-Advaitan pseudo-enlightenment we've discussed here many times. Barry does not believe anyone on this forum is enlightened, no matter how much they claim to be, and has said so many times. If the ones doing the claiming get their panties in a twist over it, he considers that proof that they're not enlightened, and thanks them for providing it. :-) For the record, Barry also does not read any FFL posts made by either Richard or Steve, and doesn't much care whether they stop eating and die, because that wouldn't affect him in any way. If Edg or Anartaxius fasted themselves to death stopped posting to FFL he would probably miss their writing for a day or so but he'd get over it. Seems to me people should get over themselves and get back to the business of being ordinary. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Waking Up - the art of pitching meditation to skeptics
I finished Sam Harris' new book, and am up for discussing any parts of it with people here who have also read the book. It should go without saying that in addition to the folks whose posts I never read period (none of whom are likely to have the attention span or humility to read this book anyway), I will engage with no one who hasn't done the homework of actually having read the book. But it's a good book IMO, and opens up many questions for discussion, among people open to actually learning new things. As an overview, I think it was an ambitious task that he managed to pull off fairly well. It isn't the easiest thing in the world, after all, to pitch the value of meditation and spirituality to people who have not the least bit of interest in Woo Woo or religious dogma, and in fact are pretty averse to those concepts. But I think he did a good job of it. For those whose only interest in such things is their own self-importance, i.e., Did he mention TM?, no, I don't think he did. He mentioned some research on meditation, but mainly on vipassana-mindfulness-based secular meditations. Personally, I don't think he'd even consider TM to *be* meditation, based on his descriptions of what he considers meditation to be. After all, in TM most people are sitting there *most of the time* lost in a sequence of reactive thoughts. This is exactly what his idea of meditation hopes to *avoid*. So no, even if TM weren't full of religious ideas and Woo Woo that he'd dislike, he'd probably not consider it real meditation. Speaking to more open-minded people, and to actual scientists (as opposed to Woo Woo Newagers who spout quantum this and unified field that without having any idea what they're talking about), I think Sam does a good job of presenting a case for investigating the spiritual side of life through meditation. His pitch is based pretty strongly on the need for self-knowledge, and for determining who that mysterious I that you consider your self is, and that's not going to appeal to everyone. But I think he mentions enough of the real-world, tangible benefits of meditation that a few people are going to undertake it, based on his book. He even gives a few intro techniques, which I cannot disagree with. I think that for most people his simple mindfulness technique would produce more tangible benefits after a few weeks of practicing it than TM would. And of course Sam's version is free, included in the first chapter he put online to give people a taste of the book. As a writer and as a personality, Sam Harris is NOT gonna be everyone's cuppa tea. For a person whose mantra (so to speak) is self is an illusion, he seems to have the strongest, most opinionated, and outspoken self I've encountered in years. :-) He's not only unafraid to say what he thinks of certain traditions and teachers, he does so occasionally for effect, to poke and prod people who are heavily invested in those traditions or teachers. I found that absolutely *nothing* he said in this book offended me in any way, but I'd be willing to bet that many long-term TMers and religionists here would be in pretty much a perpetual state of faux outrage if they actually tried to read the book. Fortunately for them, they'll never even try, because that would imply (horrors!) that they think they might have something to learn from an atheist. :-) If I have nitpicks with the book, they are, in fact, nitpicks...passages that I would have phrased differently, because I'm even more of a stickler for precision in language than he is. As an example, here's a passage from the book...try to figure out in advance what I disagree with, and how I would change it to make it better: Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism present him as an ordinary human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind. Buddha means 'awakened one'—and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self.' I think honestly that Sam Harris is FAR more hung up on proving that there is no such thing as self than he needs to be. *For him* that's important...for me, not so much. So even in this descriptive phrase I would say ...who woke up from the dream of being *only* a separate self. That's more precise IMO, because it doesn't imply that having no-self is in any way better than having one. No-self/self are for me just two sides of the same coin. IMO the thing about self is that many who claim that there isn't one (for example...duh...Sam Harris) sound just as didactic and just as fanatical as those who claim there is. I don't tend to hang with absolutists, of *any* stripe. My bet is that the original Buddha didn't much give a shit whether he had a self or not...he was just awake, and in the moment. In some of those moments, he had a self; in others, not so much. And *none* of those moments
[FairfieldLife] Sam Harris on choosing a guru :-)
So how does one of the world's great atheists and opponents of religion discuss the concept of gurus? Pretty well, actually, probably because he's been exposed to more of them than most people on this forum. Having realized that he was advising people to learn how to meditate and thus possibly exposing them to the world of spiritual teachers and gurus, he raps at one point about gurus. The result is classic Sam Harris -- the first paragraph is balanced and useful and compassionate, the second is hilariously barbed and IMO right on, and the last sentence conveys the pragmatic bottom line: The gurus I have met personally, as well as those whose careers and teachings I have studied at a distance, range from crooks who could be quickly dismissed to teachers who were brilliant but flawed, to those who, while still human, seemed to possess so much compassion and clarity of mind that they were nearly flawless examples of the benefits of spiritual practice. This last group is of obvious interest, and these are surely the people one hopes to meet, but the middle group can be helpful as well. Some teachers about whom depressing stories are told—men and women whose indiscretions may seem to discredit the very concept of spiritual authority—are, in fact, talented contemplatives. Many of these people get corrupted by the power and opportunities that come from inspiring devotion in others. Some may begin to believe the myths that grow up around them, and some are guilty of ludicrous exaggerations of their own spiritual and historical significance. Caveat emptor. Of course, there can be clear indications that a teacher is not worth paying attention to. A history as a fabulist or a con artist should be considered fatal; thus, the spiritual opinions of Joseph Smith, Gurdjieff, and L. Ron Hubbard can be safely ignored. A fetish for numbers is also an ominous sign. Math is magical, but math approached like magic is just superstition—and numerology is where the intellect goes to die. Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. One can extrapolate from scientific data or technological trends (climate models, Moore’s law), but most detailed predictions about the future lead to embarrassment right on schedule. Anyone who can confidently tell you what the world will be like in 2027 is delusional. The channeling of invisible entities, whether broadcast from beyond the grave or from another galaxy, should provoke only laughter. J. Z. Knight, who has long claimed to be the mouthpiece for a 35,000-year-old entity named Ramtha, is the ultimate example of how you don’t want your teacher to sound. And any suggestion that a guru has influenced world events through magic should also put an end to the conversation. Sri Aurobindo and his partner, known as “the Mother,” apparently claimed to have decided the outcome of World War II with their psychic powers.9 (In that case, one wonders why they weren’t held morally responsible for not having ended it sooner.) Yet another reason to ignore Aurobindo’s long, unreadable books. Generally speaking, you should head for the door at any sign of deception on the part of a teacher.
[FairfieldLife] Mindfulness practice on FFL
There was one section of Sam Harris' new book that resonated with me, because it described a type of mindfulness I've found myself practicing lately in the context of FFL -- screening out anger, so as no longer having to deal with that low mindstate, and get sucked into it. What he wrote was originally about meditation and how to deal with the daily cascade of our *own* thoughts and moods, but I found it also applicable to dealing with other people's moods on a discussion group such as this one: Breaking the Spell of Negative Emotions Most of us let our negative emotions persist longer than is necessary. Becoming suddenly angry, we tend to stay angry—and this requires that we actively produce the feeling of anger. We do this by thinking about our reasons for being angry—recalling an insult, rehearsing what we should have said to our malefactor, and so forth—and yet we tend not to notice the mechanics of this process. Without continually resurrecting the feeling of anger, it is impossible to stay angry for more than a few moments. While I can’t promise that meditation will keep you from ever again becoming angry, you can learn not to stay angry for very long. And when talking about the consequences of anger, the difference between moments and hours—or days—is impossible to exaggerate. I liked this, because it's kinda the way I live my life. I have an ongoing mini-mindfulness routine going on in my mind, almost a background process, that enables me to *notice* when I've dropped into a lower mindstate such as anger. On the rare occasions I become angry, I just allow this background process to wake me up a little, and then I gently move my attention to somewhere happier and more productive. As a result, I honestly can't remember a time in *years* in which I managed to stay angry for more than a couple of minutes, five minutes max. This may be one reason why Fairfield Life is a challenge from time to time, because it seems to be populated by people who do the exact opposite. When something makes them angry, they seem to do everything in their power to STAY angry. It's not unusual to see someone like Judy or Ann or Jim or Steve or Richard or Nabby or Dan nurse a grudge and hold onto it for YEARS. And the fascinating thing is that they seem to believe that just because *they* prefer being angry to being happy, the people they're angry at owe it to them to prefer being angry, too. Days, weeks, months, and even years after they first became angry over something, they trot it out again in an attempt to jumpstart the original argument or insult, jumpstart the anger, make the anger mindstate lively in their minds again, and force the person they blame for that anger to participate in it as a kind of victim, so they can aim their jumpstarted anger at them again in the present, just as they did in the past. This strikes me as pretty much the opposite of mindfulness, and I finally got tired of it, so I just decided to write these people out of my life. And it works. I feel much better no longer having to interface with these anger junkies. On the other hand, past history makes me suspect that my approach may *not* be working as well for the dumpees. I would bet that a few of these people I've written off and chosen to ignore are even angrier at me now than they were before, as if I've somehow done something BAD to them by never reading anything they write. So -- since I know with near-absolute certainty that while I may not be reading their posts they're reading mine :-), for them I'll post the rest of Sam Harris' advice about the mindfulness of dealing with anger. May they learn something from it: Even without knowing how to meditate, most people have experienced having their negative states of mind suddenly interrupted. Imagine, for instance, that someone has made you very angry—and just as this mental state seems to have fully taken possession of your mind, you receive an important phone call that requires you to put on your best social face. Most people know what it’s like to suddenly drop their negative state of mind and begin functioning in another mode. Of course, most then helplessly grow entangled with their negative emotions again at the next opportunity. Become sensitive to these interruptions in the continuity of your mental states. You are depressed, say, but are suddenly moved to laughter by something you read. You are bored and impatient while sitting in traffic, but then are cheered by a phone call from a close friend. These are natural experiments in shifting mood. Notice that suddenly paying attention to something else—something that no longer supports your current emotion—allows for a new state of mind. Observe how quickly the clouds can part. These are genuine glimpses of freedom. The truth, however, is that you need not wait for some pleasant distraction to shift your mood. You can simply pay close attention to negative
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Sam Harris on choosing a guru :-)
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : So how does one of the world's great atheists and opponents of religion discuss the concept of gurus? Pretty well, actually, probably because he's been exposed to more of them than most people on this forum. Having realized that he was advising people to learn how to meditate and thus possibly exposing them to the world of spiritual teachers and gurus, he raps at one point about gurus. The result is classic Sam Harris -- the first paragraph is balanced and useful and compassionate, the second is hilariously barbed and IMO right on, and the last sentence conveys the pragmatic bottom line: The gurus I have met personally, as well as those whose careers and teachings I have studied at a distance, range from crooks who could be quickly dismissed to teachers who were brilliant but flawed, to those who, while still human, seemed to possess so much compassion and clarity of mind that they were nearly flawless examples of the benefits of spiritual practice. This last group is of obvious interest, and these are surely the people one hopes to meet, but the middle group can be helpful as well. Some teachers about whom depressing stories are told—men and women whose indiscretions may seem to discredit the very concept of spiritual authority—are, in fact, talented contemplatives. Many of these people get corrupted by the power and opportunities that come from inspiring devotion in others. Some may begin to believe the myths that grow up around them, and some are guilty of ludicrous exaggerations of their own spiritual and historical significance. Caveat emptor. Of course, there can be clear indications that a teacher is not worth paying attention to. A history as a fabulist or a con artist should be considered fatal; thus, the spiritual opinions of Joseph Smith, Gurdjieff, and L. Ron Hubbard can be safely ignored. A fetish for numbers is also an ominous sign. Math is magical, but math approached like magic is just superstition—and numerology is where the intellect goes to die. Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. One can extrapolate from scientific data or technological trends (climate models, Moore’s law), but most detailed predictions about the future lead to embarrassment right on schedule. Anyone who can confidently tell you what the world will be like in 2027 is delusional. The channeling of invisible entities, whether broadcast from beyond the grave or from another galaxy, should provoke only laughter. J. Z. Knight, who has long claimed to be the mouthpiece for a 35,000-year-old entity named Ramtha, is the ultimate example of how you don’t want your teacher to sound. And any suggestion that a guru has influenced world events through magic should also put an end to the conversation. Sri Aurobindo and his partner, known as “the Mother,” apparently claimed to have decided the outcome of World War II with their psychic powers.9 (In that case, one wonders why they weren’t held morally responsible for not having ended it sooner.) Yet another reason to ignore Aurobindo’s long, unreadable books. Generally speaking, you should head for the door at any sign of deception on the part of a teacher. Sage advice. I like the bit about ending WW2 but I always thought it was GuruDev who did that with a yagya? I always thought it was a shame that the TMO have obviously forgotten the words as super powers like that would come in mighty handy in these dark days. Doesn't stop them screwing money out of the faithful so they can allegedly keep trying I notice. I know you left it all deliberately unsaid and it was probably much more effective for that, but I'm enjoying the quotes and one day, when I'm not so busy, will sit down and give it a considered read. No problemo. I thought it was a worthwhile read (and blessedly short!), and I think that there is much meat for discussion in the book. But if no one feels similarly, I'll just post occasional quotes here myself as drive-bys, to see if they get a reaction. Just did that with one of his quotes on mindfulness practice that I resonated with. I do admit to LOL-ing over occasional lines like numerology is where the intellect goes to die and Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. Wish I'd said that first. :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Sam Harris on choosing a guru :-)
From: Michael Jackson mjackso...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com those who, while still human, seemed to possess so much compassion and clarity of mind that they were nearly flawless examples of the benefits of spiritual practice Name them please. Read the book. Or better yet, find them yourself. Best, find them IN yourself. :-) That's what I suspect Sam Harris would advocate, since that's what he did himself. He is not advocating going out and finding a guru, just dealing with the subject because he knows that some of his readers are going to feel that they need one. And he is very, very open about the value of learning to meditate from someone who is better at it than you are, and who can teach it to you more quickly and effectively, as some of the Dogzchen teachers can do. So IMO he's just passing along good advice about dealing with guru types aimed at people who haven't had any experience with such types. I've met a couple of people in my life who I could apply Sam's description to without hesitation. Neither is a guru per se and neither -- to my knowledge -- works with students in a guru-student relationship. But they were pretty cool dudes. One is from Bhutan and makes films, and the other is a Tibetan monk who spent 40 years imprisoned and tortured by the Chinese, and who came away from the experience feeling nothing but compassion for them. From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 11:19 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Sam Harris on choosing a guru :-) ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : So how does one of the world's great atheists and opponents of religion discuss the concept of gurus? Pretty well, actually, probably because he's been exposed to more of them than most people on this forum. Having realized that he was advising people to learn how to meditate and thus possibly exposing them to the world of spiritual teachers and gurus, he raps at one point about gurus. The result is classic Sam Harris -- the first paragraph is balanced and useful and compassionate, the second is hilariously barbed and IMO right on, and the last sentence conveys the pragmatic bottom line: The gurus I have met personally, as well as those whose careers and teachings I have studied at a distance, range from crooks who could be quickly dismissed to teachers who were brilliant but flawed, to those who, while still human, seemed to possess so much compassion and clarity of mind that they were nearly flawless examples of the benefits of spiritual practice. This last group is of obvious interest, and these are surely the people one hopes to meet, but the middle group can be helpful as well. Some teachers about whom depressing stories are told—men and women whose indiscretions may seem to discredit the very concept of spiritual authority—are, in fact, talented contemplatives. Many of these people get corrupted by the power and opportunities that come from inspiring devotion in others. Some may begin to believe the myths that grow up around them, and some are guilty of ludicrous exaggerations of their own spiritual and historical significance. Caveat emptor. Of course, there can be clear indications that a teacher is not worth paying attention to. A history as a fabulist or a con artist should be considered fatal; thus, the spiritual opinions of Joseph Smith, Gurdjieff, and L. Ron Hubbard can be safely ignored. A fetish for numbers is also an ominous sign. Math is magical, but math approached like magic is just superstition—and numerology is where the intellect goes to die. Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. One can extrapolate from scientific data or technological trends (climate models, Moore’s law), but most detailed predictions about the future lead to embarrassment right on schedule. Anyone who can confidently tell you what the world will be like in 2027 is delusional. The channeling of invisible entities, whether broadcast from beyond the grave or from another galaxy, should provoke only laughter. J. Z. Knight, who has long claimed to be the mouthpiece for a 35,000-year-old entity named Ramtha, is the ultimate example of how you don’t want your teacher to sound. And any suggestion that a guru has influenced world events through magic should also put an end to the conversation. Sri Aurobindo and his partner, known as “the Mother,” apparently claimed to have decided the outcome of World War II with their psychic powers.9 (In that case, one wonders why they weren’t held morally responsible for not having ended it sooner.) Yet another reason to ignore Aurobindo’s long, unreadable books. Generally speaking, you should head for the door at any sign of deception on the part of a teacher. Sage advice. I like the bit about ending WW2
Re: [FairfieldLife] Sam Harris on choosing a guru :-)
speaks of the typical enlightenment path as beginning with advertising about how great it can be and at some point there is a bait and switch when you begin to find out what it is really all about. I mentioned these things because the hierarchy and pretension that one finds in the TMO, seemed absent from Adyashanti's way of dealing with his job. Harris though, put the guru problem in very succinct terms. Enlightenment is about unboundedness. But unboundedness in behaviour can become especially pernicious because '...a guru purports to teach the very art of living, and thus his beliefs potentially encompass every question relevant to the well-being of his students. Apart from parenthood, probably no human relationship offers greater scope for benevolence or abuse than that of guru to disciple... The problem of trust is compounded because the line between valid instruction and abuse can be difficult to discern... A students moral intuition and instincts for self-preservation can always be recast as symptoms of fear and attachment. Consequently even the most extraordinarily cruel or degrading treatment at the hands of a guru can be interpreted as being for one's own good' So gurus really should come with warning labels. Because they do not, approaching a guru with guileless innocence seems like a recipe for disaster. From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 9:54 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Sam Harris on choosing a guru :-) So how does one of the world's great atheists and opponents of religion discuss the concept of gurus? Pretty well, actually, probably because he's been exposed to more of them than most people on this forum. Having realized that he was advising people to learn how to meditate and thus possibly exposing them to the world of spiritual teachers and gurus, he raps at one point about gurus. The result is classic Sam Harris -- the first paragraph is balanced and useful and compassionate, the second is hilariously barbed and IMO right on, and the last sentence conveys the pragmatic bottom line: The gurus I have met personally, as well as those whose careers and teachings I have studied at a distance, range from crooks who could be quickly dismissed to teachers who were brilliant but flawed, to those who, while still human, seemed to possess so much compassion and clarity of mind that they were nearly flawless examples of the benefits of spiritual practice. This last group is of obvious interest, and these are surely the people one hopes to meet, but the middle group can be helpful as well. Some teachers about whom depressing stories are told—men and women whose indiscretions may seem to discredit the very concept of spiritual authority—are, in fact, talented contemplatives. Many of these people get corrupted by the power and opportunities that come from inspiring devotion in others. Some may begin to believe the myths that grow up around them, and some are guilty of ludicrous exaggerations of their own spiritual and historical significance. Caveat emptor. Of course, there can be clear indications that a teacher is not worth paying attention to. A history as a fabulist or a con artist should be considered fatal; thus, the spiritual opinions of Joseph Smith, Gurdjieff, and L. Ron Hubbard can be safely ignored. A fetish for numbers is also an ominous sign. Math is magical, but math approached like magic is just superstition—and numerology is where the intellect goes to die. Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. One can extrapolate from scientific data or technological trends (climate models, Moore’s law), but most detailed predictions about the future lead to embarrassment right on schedule. Anyone who can confidently tell you what the world will be like in 2027 is delusional. The channeling of invisible entities, whether broadcast from beyond the grave or from another galaxy, should provoke only laughter. J. Z. Knight, who has long claimed to be the mouthpiece for a 35,000-year-old entity named Ramtha, is the ultimate example of how you don’t want your teacher to sound. And any suggestion that a guru has influenced world events through magic should also put an end to the conversation. Sri Aurobindo and his partner, known as “the Mother,” apparently claimed to have decided the outcome of World War II with their psychic powers.9 (In that case, one wonders why they weren’t held morally responsible for not having ended it sooner.) Yet another reason to ignore Aurobindo’s long, unreadable books. Generally speaking, you should head for the door at any sign of deception on the part of a teacher.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Established in Being, let anger take over
Great find, Geez. It's quite an experience watching this and listening to Maharishi and many people I know personally, just after reading Sam Harris' new book. Bevan's so insane it hurts to look at him. I love the Australian announcer's way of putting things...it's very dry and witty and Sam Harris-like. For example, standing in front of the MUM sign with the flying dome in the background, saying, I mean...its surreal...students here studying physics who believe they can *fly*. :-) :-) :-) Rather than lashing out at this news report as we all know some True Believers on this forum are girding their loins to do, I think they'd be better served by actually listening to it again and paying attention. This is not a hit job. This is what rational people in the real world think of TM True Believers. And they're right. From: geezerfr...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:03 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Established in Being, let anger take over Wait for the MMY interview 30 seconds in. Maharishi Exposed Maharishi Exposed This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. View on www.youtube.comPreview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Book Reviews
The Bible reviews made my day. :-) From: Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartax...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com; Yahoo! Groups no_re...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 8:58 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Book Reviews As we have been reviewing a particular book this past day, I went to amazon.com and looked at the review pages of a number of books. Amazon.com has a five-star rating system for books. Most books seem to have a large number of five-star ratings and much smaller numbers of 4, 3, 2, and 2-star ratings; usually very few 1-star ratings. I picked a particular edition of the Bible, which typically has a special place in many peoples' hearts and cultures. For one thing one does not normally write the title of this book in italics, Bible, as most books but writes 'Bible' as if it has some special status. the word bible means 'book', and this particular title is unusually popular in spite of having such a generic title. I picked some of the 1-star reviews of the Bible, and also The Science of Being and Art of Living, to see what people would write when disappointed in their purchase, and here is the result: Reviews of the Bible Gripping, violent and sexy read! An invaluable resource when one is considering how to tame one's slaves, or exactly how many cows one should demand in exchange for one's daughter. Steamy sex scenes, intense bloodshed and a little bit of that old-time ultraviolence! Frankly, Jesus' best work was the US Constitution, but this is a close second. Not recommended for children or those easily offended. Spoiler alert! A book about a magician who created man, then removed a rib to create a woman, then a talking snake told her to eat a piece of fruit that the magician told her not to. She did and cursed all of humanity forever. The magician knew all of this ahead of time but did it because he loves all of her doomed grandchildren who are also her children with her son who killed her other son. In fact, the magician loves everyone so much he created himself/son as a human from a virgin (if DNA tests could be done back then it'd have confirmed God's DNA), let himself be put to death as a sacrifice, then came back to life somehow not voiding the sacrifice and then removed the curse that he put on us for that rib eating a piece of fruit. While he removed the curse, you're still cursed if you don't adhere to his rigid, contradictory standards. So... basically he didn't remove the curse after all. This needs to be labelled as fiction because for some weird reason people seem to think this is a true story. Horrible Editing, Confusing and Contradicting Plotlines So after thoroughly perusing the pages of this novel (twice), I thought I'd share a few thoughts on it. The story starts off reasonably straight-forward, though the author of the first few books seems to be a bit vague and doesn't offer much background or detail about the world in which the story takes place before introducing the main protagonist, Adam. The early main plot line spends a great deal of time describing genealogical information of what I assume are the members of an important family (families?) involved with the story and descended from this Adam character. It seemed a bit overdone, though I guess Tolkien also spent a great deal of time on the seemingly mundane in his books and they're pretty popular. Speaking of which, there are a number of times that magic is invoked to turn rods to snakes or move large bodies of water around. There are also talking serpents and donkeys, so if you're into fantasy fiction this book might interest you. It's not long before the timeline starts shifting around, though, and it's easy to lose track. It also looks as though there were multiple authors involved in the book's creation. If so, that would go a long way in explaining why the story lines often repeat information the reader has already learned or outright contradicts previous details presented by earlier writers. Why the editor didn't clean up the disparate plot lines and ensure the narrative was consistent is beyond me. Whatever the reason, the editing is atrocious. I don't understand why the authors weren't credited. Some of the books reference names, but I suspect these names are not the real authors. Maybe the quality of the book was such that they wanted to avoid credit? I did enjoy the numerous battle sequences, though I thought the author(s) could have done a much better job of detailing the action as well as making the motivations for the violence less one-dimensional. It seemed to me the only reason for the seemingly senseless violence was because the primary god in this book said so. I was also confused as to why the author decided to destroy the world near the beginning of the book. It seemed
[FairfieldLife] This looks like THE film event of the year
Almost makes me want to be in New York to attend. Almost. :-) New York Film Fest: Top-Secret Edward Snowden Doc Added to Lineup New York Film Fest: Top-Secret Edward Snowden Doc A... The New York Film Festival is entering its 52nd year, but never before, in its long and rich history, has it done what it did today: namely, added a film — Laura Po... View on www.hollywoodrepo... Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Established in Being, let anger take over
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Excellent find, prison boy! That reporter came in all arrogant, and muck-raking, wanting to do his hit piece, and Maharishi tells him basically to fuck off, and leave the building! Priceless! Watched it twice. I disagree that the reporter was arrogant, there he was confronted with a bunch of deluded fruitcakes who think they can fly, and who are also doing shady deals to gain property in his country, he's damn right to be suspicious. Trouble is, a lot of people here lack the objectivity to see that they are mixed up in something so bizarre and lacking foundation. It's more than a little scary that people like sometimes-rational feste don't see the insanity in this news clip that 99.99% of the world's population would see. Maharishi is just fuckin' GONE, man, which one might attribute just to senility and old age, if it weren't for the fact that most of the other people who represent the TMO in the segment are equally GONE. Bevan has never *been* more embarrassing than he was in this bit, and that's really saying something. I still think that a lot of it w.r.t. the brainwashing is the frog in the pot syndrome. Yeah, I know it's probably a real phenomenon, but the metaphor was that if you put a frog in a pot of hot water, he recognizes the threat to life and just jumps out. Put a frog in cold water and slowly raise the temperature, and he'll just sit there and allow himself to be boiled to death because he gets used to it in small increments. That's what happened to formerly rational TMers. The brainwashing snuck up on them over a period of years and decades. Over that time they got used to seeing things around them that would sent had them running for the exits if they'd been allowed to see them during their first months with TM, but by the time they *did* get to see them they'd been trained to consider these things normal. This is what is scariest to normal 99.99% people watching clips like this one. It's *not* the craziness of the principals, like Maharishi and Bevan and King Tony -- it's the craziness of people like feste who make excuses for them, and write off their obvious insanity by claiming the interview was a hatchet job. Now *that* is scary. You'd almost *expect* the leaders of a worldwide cult to be crazy, but the everyday followers of the cult? When I was a newbie meditator I was filled with the usual fervent zeal of the newly converted, convinced I'd discovered some truth that has eluded the mainstream. Imagine my surprise when the Sunday Times did (for some reason) a round up of cults and what they were all about. I was shocked to see TM in there at all but the fact they got a maximum loony rating seemed amazing at the time. But I didn't know anything about them then. You need to be on the inside not to see it. Exactly. Part of the *definition* of being on the inside is having been sufficiently brainwashed to consider these levels of insanity normal. The scariest part, from my point of view, is that once one has made an internal (and rarely conscious) decision to accept this level of craziness as normal, it's very, very, very, very difficult to ever be able to see it another way. Once brainwashed, people tend to *stay* brainwashed, unless they have a great deal of personal power and will and an inability to be coerced by cult peer pressure. Marshy came over very badly I thought, were you convinced that the reason he refused to meet in person is because he found that new people waste his time? He was *clearly* reacting to the reporter's 'tude, which refused to give him the suck-up obeisance he'd gotten used to getting from almost everyone. So he did what all Narcissistic Personality Disordered people do in situations like that, and tried to regain control by stalking off. Think Robin Carlsen stalking off from FFL when no one would treat *him* the way he expected to be treated. What sort of crappy excuse is that. Can you fly? is a perfectly reasonable question to someone who makes a fortune out of telling others they can. It certainly is. Especially when you've got top-level toadies like Bevan claiming that he could. And the faux grovelling outrage by Bev and Da king convinced me not at all. That *was* interesting, wasn't it. I got the feeling that at least Tony realized what an ass he was making of himself, but Bevan had nary a clue. He was as out of it and as unconscious of what constitutes normal behavior as lifetime schizophrenics I used to see in a state mental hospital I once worked in for a short time. Bottom line, someone didn't take them seriously and they didn't like it. Exactly. Furthermore, this someone had access to the media and about halfway through the interview they realized they didn't. I think that one reason Maharishi reacted the way that he did (like a petulant, narcissistic,
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Transcendentalism: Established in Being, live your life
From: salyavin808 no_re...@yahoogroups.com ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, dhamiltony2k5@... wrote : Om, there's a town here full of old meditators who meditate and who don't have a relationship with the TM movement. Lot of meditators would say, Yes I am a meditator but not that. Waving a hand in the general direction of campus and vedic city to the north of town. This has been a quandary for the reformation of the new movement as it goes forward. Me, i am a satisfied customer. I appreciate meditation very much. I only look to the movement to facilitate the large group meditations here hence i am interested in their welfare i hope they can thrive for all our welfare here. The field effect of the group meditation is quite fabulous to Be in. Spiritual wonders really. They are Enormously spiritual in transcendent experience. What blows me away are meditators who would live here who would not go up there to meditate at all in the group. What an amazing lost opportunity of a lifetime, I would certainly give it a try, silly not to if I'd moved all that way. But I always got fed up with group prog because of the other people there. It seems that some people are incapable of getting there on time or being quiet or not smelling strongly of either BO or ayurvedic potions. Some people just don't think that they are sitting in a quiet room with other humans who may not like the way they behave. Go figure... I did a year long course of 4 rounds a day and on only two occasions did we actually start on time, and it was heavenly when we did. I'd point it out to the habitual disrupters that they were spoiling it for others but they didn't care, no consideration for others you see. Maybe it was me and I was too sensitive but it seems like it wasn't much to ask. Three words: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. You cannot both suffer from that mental disorder and have genuine consideration for others. For the person lost in NPD, there *are* no other people in the room, so they don't really matter. Just look at the behavior of the chronic overposters on this forum. They've been asked politely to tone their act down, and they act as if it's their right to continue to do things that most of the people around them find obnoxious.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Established in Being, let anger take over
From: s3raph...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Re I found it quite entertaining but this is not serious journalism. It's a hatchet job, anyone can see that. I thought Bevan handled the reporter's questions very well, actually. : Yes, it's a hostile interview but that's what happens out there in the world of serious journalism. If MMY had kept his shit together and answered the questions calmly and sensibly he could have saved the situation. Exactly. As for serious journalism, isn't this clip from the Australian version of 60 Minutes? That's pretty serious. He didn't because 1) he wasn't used to dealing with people who weren't fawning over him, and 2) he hadn't thought through the ramifications of his own proposals. Give the girl two points. :-) He was by this point so used to just saying shit and have it be taken seriously by the sycophants around him that he literally couldn't cope with someone not falling for it. To give MMY some slack, I'm not sure when this tape was recorded and he was probably approaching the end game so we can't expect him to be particularly sharp. Nevertheless he did come across as bad-tempered. Aren't sages supposed to be serene when their end comes? I don't know when it was recorded, either. All we do know is that Maharishi's isolation and insanity only got WORSE from this point onwards, until he finally ended his life speaking over closed-circuit TV to no one BUT sycophants who had already paid him a million dollars each, trying to extort even more money from them to build enormous phalluses in his honor. Maharishi's last days could not have been more like King Lear if he'd been trying to perform that role onstage. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote : I found it quite entertaining but this is not serious journalism. It's a hatchet job, anyone can see that. I thought Bevan handled the reporter's questions very well, actually. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, fleetwood_macncheese@... wrote : Excellent find, prison boy! That reporter came in all arrogant, and muck-raking, wanting to do his hit piece, and Maharishi tells him basically to fuck off, and leave the building! Priceless! Watched it twice. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb@... wrote : Great find, Geez. It's quite an experience watching this and listening to Maharishi and many people I know personally, just after reading Sam Harris' new book. Bevan's so insane it hurts to look at him. I love the Australian announcer's way of putting things...it's very dry and witty and Sam Harris-like. For example, standing in front of the MUM sign with the flying dome in the background, saying, I mean...its surreal...students here studying physics who believe they can *fly*. :-) :-) :-) Rather than lashing out at this news report as we all know some True Believers on this forum are girding their loins to do, I think they'd be better served by actually listening to it again and paying attention. This is not a hit job. This is what rational people in the real world think of TM True Believers. And they're right. From: geezerfreak@... [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 6:03 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Established in Being, let anger take over Wait for the MMY interview 30 seconds in. Maharishi Exposed Maharishi Exposed This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Established in Being, let anger take over
From: s3raph...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Bevan Morris comes across as a one-man circle jerk. This has my vote for FFL One-Liner Of The Month. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Elsewhere in cult news...
I don't know whether anyone here noticed the recent U2 debacle, but it's worth paying attention to. I've liked some of their music and not liked other of their music, just like everyone else, but while doing so it has not escaped my attention that the members of the band are all pretty strong evangelical Christians. Evangelicals seem to think it's their RIGHT to preach to other people about the things they believe, and that the people they're preaching to have a DUTY to listen. (A lot like some folks here on FFL, yes?) So what does U2 do? Knowing from past sales figures that very few people are actually going to pony up the money for a new U2 album because as a band they're sorta over, rather than releasing it normally they decide to give it away. So far, so good. It's HOW they decided to give it away that is fucked up. They supposedly worked out a deal with Apple that *everyone* who logged in to iTunes would receive a free copy of their new album, downloaded to them without their permission. Worse, once it was on these unwilling users' machines, they found that they *weren't allowed to delete the new album*. They couldn't get rid of it as an album, and they couldn't delete the songs from random playlists. (Apple, in response to tens of thousands of angry users, later changed the settings so that people could delete it.) Not smart. Sorta the thing that religious fanatics more interested in preaching to an audience than in understanding them or considering them their equals might do... Guy Oseary/U2 - Lefsetz Letter Guy Oseary/U2 - Lefsetz Letter “U2’s Manager Responds to Backlash: If You Don’t Like This Gift, Delete It” Speaking of tone deaf scumbags… The spam problem is all over the news, I have to delete hundreds of messages a day, but when U2 does it it’s legitimate. Ugh. It’s almost like they don’t live in the real wo... View on lefsetz.com Preview by Yahoo
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Established in Being, let anger take over
From: TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com From: s3raph...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Bevan Morris comes across as a one-man circle jerk. This has my vote for FFL One-Liner Of The Month. :-) In fact, I hereby nominate this one-liner for the prestigious Kermie Sutra Award: :-)
Re: [FairfieldLife] Established in Being, let anger take over
From: dhamiltony...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 3:43 PM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Established in Being, let anger take over Yep, a hack. He came in dismissive and ignorant of the material science and the reality of our spiritual experience underlying. He had a story constructed before he came in. It's called sanity. You should try it sometime, possibly with a side order of respect for real science.
