So thought the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:He called for the demolition of all toxic buildings and unhealthy urban environments, even the demolition of historic landmarks if they were not built according to “Vedic architecture in harmony with Natural Law.”
There are so many interesting things you can think up and purvey when you're a self-styled spiritual leader. A
guru. There was a time when we Americans didn't use — hadn't heard — the word "guru." That was before the Maharishi, who had to be some kind of genius to have figured out how to use that most sensational vehicle for reaching the minds of everyone in the world: The Beatles:
Maharishi, what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone.
Maharishi, ooh, what have you done?...
Maharishi, how did you know?
The world was waiting just for you...
Maharish, oooh, how did you know?
Maharishi, you'll get yours yet
However big you think you are...
Maharishi, ooh, you'll get yours yet.
And so, Maharishi finally has got his. Dead in Vlodrop, Netherlands, at an age somewhere beyond 90.
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17 comments:
Early feng shui.
Put a rock in your bathroom to achieve celestial harmony.
Rockin' the bedroom will do that too.
By the standards of evolution, we have inborn desires to foster satiation, for the purposes of survival and, thereby, propogation of the species.
Thirst, hunger, and attraction; these desires can all be fulfilled, so that ultimately the egg can be fertilized.
What purpose then the desire for spiritual fulfillment, if it cannot be sated, as Hitchens avers? Why does it exist? What evolutionary purpose could there be to a false desire?
Madam, "I Dig a Pygmy" by Charles Hawtrey on the Deaf-Aids.
This is Phase One.
Oats to be gotten later.
Evolution favors mathematicians.
and somewhere, Mia Farrow nods approvingly...
L. Ron Hubbard said it best; if you to become really rich and famous start a religion.
"What purpose then the desire for spiritual fulfillment, if it cannot be sated, as Hitchens avers? Why does it exist? What evolutionary purpose could there be to a false desire?"
You're rigging the question by assuming it's false. It's possible that God is trying to reach us.
But quite aside from that, we've evolved consciousness, which has its purposes for survival. But now that we have it, we can use it to judge whether we want to do the things that evolution has programmed us to desire. Evolution doesn't care if we are happy and fulfilled as long as we live to reproduce.
We may enjoy eating and having sex (or suffer for lack thereof) because our ancestors survived by wanting such things, but with consciousness, we need not do what evolution wants us to do.
We can choose other ways to live. It doesn't have to be about self-sacrifice for an unknown or nonexistent afterlife. It can be about having a better life now. I think that's what TM offers, doesn't it? It doesn't seem to require the existence of God.
I said "It's possible that God is trying to reach us."
I can just hear Christopher Hitchens bellyching about what a lame God you have to believe in to think that He's trying to reach us so unsuccessfully.
"I can just hear Christopher Hitchens..."
It seems that Christopher Hitchens is trying to reach us...
I put smooth stones on my kitchen window sill.
Does that make me...spiritual?
Or just a smooth stone likin' sorta guy?
Spiritual. What a racket.
You're rigging the question by assuming it's false.
It was indeed an Hitchensian approach.
But I ask the question because I believe Hitchens is unable to answer it, and express only ignorance regarding its purpose.
I believe it is an inborn desire precisely because it is meant to be sated, that God is trying to reach us. I do not believe it is merely an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, or a fragment of an underdone potato.
Perhaps Fred Thompson just needed a bit of undigested beef to get that fire in the belly.
In any case, Pogo, thanks for the "A Christmas Carol" reference--that line has always been a favorite of mine. Such a thoroughly modern sentiment, Dickens insisting that we keep willingly suspending disbelief in the face of it... and we do. Genius.
Don't worry if Hitchens is trying to reach you; he just wants a drink!
Sexy Sadie, you'll get yours yet.
However big you think you are.
...with consciousness, we need not do what evolution wants us to do.
That's a delusion. You think you can choose what you want to choose, but all your wants (even "higher" ones such as justice, music, spirituality, etc.) as well as the mechanism by which you make the choice, have been created by evolution too. There is no escape.
...with consciousness, we need not do what evolution wants us to do.
That's a delusion. You think you can choose what you want to choose, but all your wants (even "higher" ones such as justice, music, spirituality, etc.) as well as the mechanism by which you make the choice, have been created by evolution too. There is no escape.
I am not sure how many of our higher desires are actually a result of evolution. But I am constantly amazed at how much of our lives and drives are.
When I was younger, I believed more in free will. But as I grow older, I realize that more and more of what I thought to be free will, was really at least a partial result of evolutionary trends and the like. Even altruism, in many cases, can be seen as a survival characteristic.
MCG--
I believe that quote is actually Orwell.
As for Sexy Sadie, John's anger was prompted by Allen Klein's allegations that the Maharishi was a pedophile (at least according to Cynthia Lennon, who credited the Maharishi with getting the boys off drugs). Yoko Ono notwithstanding, it was Allen Klein who split up the Beatles, and would go on to represent George Harrison in the "My Sweet Lord" suit, only to buy out the copyright holders and continue the suit against his former client. Lennon finally clued in to Klein's true nature much later, enshrined in the song "Steel and Glass".
Or so my mind tells me.
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