Forum V: Archive
Compiled: Tues, May 22, 2001 at 17:39:52 (GMT)
From: May 07, 2001 To: May 20, 2001 Page: 3 Of: 5


Carl -:- Cavalcade of DLM / EV luminaries ?? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:36:01 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- Cavalcade of DLM / EV luminaries ?? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:53:00 (GMT)
__ __ kev -:- Glenn Whitaker?? -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 11:41:53 (GMT)
__ __ __ Curious George -:- Glenn Whitaker?? -:- Thurs, May 17, 2001 at 04:20:26 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ kev -:- Norma ?? -:- Thurs, May 17, 2001 at 21:00:20 (GMT)
__ __ Francesca -:- When did my old pal Jule post -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 04:39:56 (GMT)
__ __ __ janet -:- When did my old pal Jule post -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 10:13:22 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Disculta -:- I was at that wedding too I think nt -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 21:49:36 (GMT)
__ __ Roger eDrek -:- Carl, check out these links -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 20:05:43 (GMT)
__ __ Carl -:- Cavalcade of DLM / EV luminaries ?? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 16:38:38 (GMT)
__ __ __ Joe -:- Joan Apter/Mitch Ditkoff/Charles -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 19:54:48 (GMT)
__ __ __ Thelma the Church Lady -:- Have you any idea how thrilling it is to still be -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:23:40 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ SB -:- It made us all a little nuts. -:- Thurs, May 17, 2001 at 23:02:13 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ such -:- saw ex-roomie M. Nouri in 'Finding Forrester'! (nt -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 18:11:28 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ PatC -:- Movie a flop but Nouri looked handsome -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 23:18:07 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ janet -:- it wouldnt hurt to try. maybe he does . -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 10:16:46 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ such -:- last time I saw him was in the men's room at the -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:17:23 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ PatC -:- Such, it was bad good movie OT -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 17:37:05 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Christian Star -:- The last time I saw Nouri was very recent -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 17:22:40 (GMT)
__ __ __ Selene -:- very good description Carl -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:19:51 (GMT)

Bentmettle -:- The Training -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 05:39:53 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- What is 'ISCL'? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:14:36 (GMT)
__ __ G -:- Industrial Strength Church Lady (nt) -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 19:40:58 (GMT)
__ suchabanana -:- m.'s facilitators are unethical manipulators -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 07:53:17 (GMT)
__ __ SB -:- m.'s facilitators are unethical manipulators -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:20:04 (GMT)
__ __ __ Steve Quint -:- m.'s facilitators are unethical manipulators -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:55:14 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ sb -:- changing the package is a good tactic -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 13:25:52 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ la-ex -:- SB, those videos could be quite good... -:- Tues, May 15, 2001 at 03:15:37 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ yeap -:- I know -:- Tues, May 15, 2001 at 07:55:40 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ cq -:- powerful post, SB - and don't throw those vids! -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 18:21:02 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Free -:- Don't take me wrong -:- Tues, May 15, 2001 at 00:53:45 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Steve Quint -:- Latvian Update -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 20:33:52 (GMT)
__ __ Bob -:- facilitators ?? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:13:38 (GMT)
__ __ PatC -:- Rev Rawat is an unethical manipulator -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 08:38:10 (GMT)
__ __ __ such -:- futile org in thrall,cult in stall,m. in fall (nt -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 16:42:45 (GMT)

Nigel -:- A chuckle from the archives... -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 18:21:44 (GMT)
__ such -:- repost: Prem Lazee-Boy Deluxe Armchair Traveler -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 02:56:31 (GMT)
__ Selene -:- A chuckle is right -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 20:38:57 (GMT)

Jean-Michel -:- French Newspaper article fully online -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:57:38 (GMT)
__ toby -:- French Newspaper article fully online -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 10:01:08 (GMT)
__ __ janet -:- i can do it. gimme a day. -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:15:00 (GMT)
__ __ __ janet -:- here's the part i already did before: improved -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:47:03 (GMT)
__ __ __ Francesca -:- I'll give ya more than a day -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 16:02:52 (GMT)
__ __ __ Cynthia -:- janet, you're too much, thanks! n/t -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 15:30:09 (GMT)
__ __ __ toby -:- certainly! Thanks(nt) -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 14:39:16 (GMT)

la-ex -:- Should Worcester get some advertising?MRC? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:18:29 (GMT)
__ Joe -:- Advertise the MRC letter, which is STILL online. -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 17:47:41 (GMT)
__ Way -:- Should Worcester get some advertising?MRC? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 14:31:07 (GMT)
__ __ Activism -:- How should we do it Way?...............nt -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 03:50:49 (GMT)
__ la-ex -:- P.S.....Glen,don't get your hopes up... -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:24:30 (GMT)
__ __ Activism -:- In,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,nt -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:43:48 (GMT)

Gregg -:- Black Premies -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:37:29 (GMT)
__ dv -:- Black Premies -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 03:54:47 (GMT)
__ Gary Epton -:- Soul Brothers -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 23:09:08 (GMT)
__ __ Monmot -:- Harry 'The Comb' Payne? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:39:18 (GMT)
__ __ la-ex -:- Yo,brother Epton,was JCWatts a prem? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 03:35:55 (GMT)
__ __ __ Joe -:- I don't believe it. -:- Tues, May 15, 2001 at 22:46:46 (GMT)
__ __ __ Jerry -:- Johnny Rodgers? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 13:28:55 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ la-ex -:- Johnny Rodgers?I think you're right.Gary? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 15:52:26 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Gary -:- Johnny Rodgers?I think you're right.Gary? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 17:39:45 (GMT)
__ __ __ Gary -:- Yo,brother Epton,was JCWatts a prem? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:07:10 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ la-ex -:- Gary,I don't mean to 'out' anyone, but... -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:22:09 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Gary -:- Gary,I don't mean to 'out' anyone, but... -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:36:48 (GMT)
__ __ __ la-ex -:- Brother Epton, while we're at it... -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 03:49:31 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Gary -:- Brother Epton, while we're at it... -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:28:07 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Mr. Mind -:- ...or if it might affect their re-election-NT -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:07:56 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- ...or if it might affect their re-election-NT -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:42:32 (GMT)
__ Francesca -:- Did you know Ron -- -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:23:53 (GMT)
__ Joe -:- Black Premies -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:05:15 (GMT)
__ __ Scott T. -:- The West Indian link -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 12:59:26 (GMT)
__ __ __ Joe -:- Racism in the cult -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 17:33:14 (GMT)
__ __ Scott T. -:- Black Premies -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 06:17:31 (GMT)
__ __ __ janet -:- Black Premie i had sex with jerome in the argyle -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:20:38 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- I think I remember you -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:48:24 (GMT)
__ __ __ Scott T. -:- His name was Jerome -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 06:25:51 (GMT)
__ __ janet -:- Black Premies -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:05:58 (GMT)
__ __ TD -:- There's a premie from Ghana in Australia (nt) -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 22:31:16 (GMT)
__ __ kev -:- Black Premies -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:56:40 (GMT)
__ __ __ Nick -:- Judy, the instructor -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:30:19 (GMT)
__ PatC -:- In US it is now all white Stepford Wives -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 17:53:19 (GMT)
__ __ Scott T. -:- In US it is now all white Stepford Wives -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:59:53 (GMT)
__ __ __ PatC -:- Is he the God America deserves? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:35:52 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Is he the God America deserves? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 20:57:40 (GMT)
__ such -:- on bass: Steve Neal. Please bag n word slang (nt -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 15:48:14 (GMT)
__ __ janet -:- such, usually i like you-but bag the PC lecture! -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:24:28 (GMT)
__ __ __ such -:- but my own homies don't like it when whites say it -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:08:25 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Gregg -:- on the use of the n word -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 02:32:15 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ such -:- also, straight consciousness r.e. gay terms -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 03:48:20 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Gregg -:- one more thing, Such, if you're still there... -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 02:12:58 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ such -:- I think an arts school is probably way cooler (nt -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 05:49:40 (GMT)
__ __ Gregg -:- n - a (not n - er!) essential for wigga def'n (nt) -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 16:48:52 (GMT)

PatC -:- Space Cowboys, class reunion, losing faith -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 08:25:04 (GMT)
__ la-ex -:- If there is a 5th technique, is this the 6th? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:41:55 (GMT)
__ __ PatC -:- Not so much tight-assed as dumb-assed -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:59:34 (GMT)
__ Robyn -:- Space Cowboys, class reunion, losing faith -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:39:32 (GMT)
__ __ PatC -:- Thanks Robyn, I've actually never been happier -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:03:43 (GMT)
__ bill-reading you I -:- would never think you were past your prime...nt -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:08:29 (GMT)
__ __ PatC: reading you I think -:- You promised me you'd rip Buddha's tits off :)-NT -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:12:51 (GMT)
__ Richard -:- Space Cowboy blues -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:28:03 (GMT)
__ __ PatC -:- Space Cowboy blues - you're right about the loss -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:06:41 (GMT)
__ __ __ Mercedes -:- Space Cowboy blues - you're right about the loss -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:23:47 (GMT)
__ Channeling Gene Siskel -:- Donald Sutherland, not Elliott Gould......nt -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:20:49 (GMT)
__ __ Roger Ebert -:- Thanks, Gene. How's tricks in the afterlife? -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 23:31:40 (GMT)
__ __ __ Scott T. -:- Thanks, Gene. How's tricks in the afterlife? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:34:51 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- By the way... -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:43:21 (GMT)
__ Moldy Warp -:- Great post Space Cowboy xxxMoldy nt -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 09:00:39 (GMT)
__ __ PatC -:- Good morning, Moldy. I'm off to bed. Have fun. NT -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 09:04:50 (GMT)

Scott T. -:- hard wired for spirituality -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 06:37:10 (GMT)
__ Helen -:- hard wired for spirituality -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:19:26 (GMT)
__ Gary Epton -:- hard wired for spirituality -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:27:08 (GMT)
__ Gregg -:- sex -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:19:54 (GMT)
__ __ Joe -:- Wait a minute -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:49:21 (GMT)
__ __ __ Nigel -:- Amen on cost-benefit tails and Chomsky too (nt) -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 17:47:16 (GMT)
__ __ __ G -:- survival value -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:34:18 (GMT)
__ __ G -:- two problems with that theory -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 23:25:54 (GMT)
__ __ __ Gregg -:- survival of the fittest -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 14:09:20 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ G -:- sexual selection -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 21:43:47 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- sexual selection -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:45:39 (GMT)
__ Jerry -:- hard wired for spirituality -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:49:33 (GMT)
__ __ Scott T. -:- hard wired for spirituality -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:19:17 (GMT)
__ Nigel -:- The adaptationist fallacy -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:42:00 (GMT)
__ __ Scott T. -:- The adaptationist fallacy -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:48:07 (GMT)
__ __ __ Nigel -:- 'Peverse?' I think not -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:54:17 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- 'Peverse?' -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:14:05 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ janet -:- i would offer this as survival value: -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 05:07:48 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ JHB -:- Which Questions? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 23:38:59 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Which Questions? -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:20:56 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ G -:- What does 'real' mean? -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 22:17:39 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Nigel -:- What I meant by 'real'... -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 17:57:36 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- 'real' -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 03:40:20 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ G -:- waking brain -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 21:27:29 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- What does 'real' mean? -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:30:25 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Moldy Warp -:- How do you know chimps don't meditate?? -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:57:47 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ janet -:- easy way to find out: teach it to a signing ape -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:31:14 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Bob -:- Moldy!! --- they are enlightened!! nt -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:24:09 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Moldy Warp -:- God Bob - you're right - like dolphins! -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:12:19 (GMT)
__ __ hamzen -:- Otherwise known as natural drift -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:03:40 (GMT)
__ __ __ G -:- reducing the fear of death -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:55:32 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Joe -:- a possibility -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:11:19 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Jerry -:- a possibility -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 02:09:12 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ G -:- ok but -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:40:46 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Joe -:- I agree -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 20:22:45 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ janet -:- yo! i dont hear anyone basing this discussion on -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:39:58 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Nigel -:- Don't underestimate the brain... -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:18:57 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Don't underestimate the brain... -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:43:14 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Nigel -:- Don't underestimate the brain... -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 19:32:41 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Don't underestimate the brain... -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 21:26:17 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ G -:- ...it's got magical powers -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 19:47:37 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Scott -:- ...it's got magical powers -:- Tues, May 15, 2001 at 03:45:23 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ G -:- Why do you have to? -:- Tues, May 15, 2001 at 16:22:03 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Stonor -:- Why do you have to? -:- Tues, May 15, 2001 at 21:30:35 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- yo! i dont hear anyone basing this discussion on -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 03:55:43 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Jerry -:- yo! i dont hear anyone basing this discussion on -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 16:57:48 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ janet -:- ok so you want to take it back to the point of -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:41:13 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ G -:- a good point -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 15:47:48 (GMT)
__ __ Jerry -:- Why spandrels? -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:07:48 (GMT)
__ __ __ Scott T. -:- Why spandrels? -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:59:43 (GMT)
__ __ __ Nigel -:- Dawkins has no problem with spandrels.. -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:36:35 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ G -:- a possible problem with 'spandrels' -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:47:24 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Joe -:- To G and Nigel -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:00:51 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- To G and Nigel -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:53:39 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Nigel -:- Gay Genes (ot) -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:36:47 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Joe -:- I don't think so (ot) -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 22:28:12 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Nigel -:- I don't think so (ot) -:- Sun, May 13, 2001 at 09:12:04 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Monkey Bi-ness(ot) -:- Mon, May 14, 2001 at 05:17:45 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Gay Genes (ot) -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 16:07:26 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Moldy Warp -:- But I know some folks with Morris dancing jeans nt -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:15:10 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ PatC -:- And gay spandrel jeans or is that spandex nt -:- Sat, May 12, 2001 at 23:22:51 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Jerry -:- Dawkins has no problem with spandrels.. -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 15:13:50 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Nigel -:- Dawkins has no problem with spandrels.. -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 17:16:45 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Dawkins has no problem with spandrels.. -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:12:21 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ Joe -:- Dawkins has no problem with spandrels.. -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:57:18 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Greed and fatalism -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:16:53 (GMT)
__ __ Nigel -:- NB: 2nd / 3rd paragraphs in wrong order above (nt) -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:50:14 (GMT)
__ Bob -:- I saw it last night, COOL (nt) -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:08:21 (GMT)
__ Sam Hardy -:- hard wired for spirituality -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 07:05:54 (GMT)
__ __ Bob -:- Neurotransmitter -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:16:43 (GMT)
__ __ __ SB -:- Neurotransmitter -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:18:12 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Bin Liner -:- Chinese beliefs -:- Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:22:01 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Bob -:- Neurotransmitter and sex -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:17:12 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Scott T. -:- Neurotransmitter -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:18:01 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ sb -:- alone can't do it :( -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:46:45 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ hamzen -:- Don't know about that specific spot but -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:10:41 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ sb -:- Moderation -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:57:07 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ Jerry -:- Neurotransmitter -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:05:41 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ Bob -:- Fun ,,but no contraception -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:24:42 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ sb -:- orgasms without ejaculation -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:00:37 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ Bob -:- deleted??? -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:29:36 (GMT)
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ sb -:- That is what I thought- Information is good. (nt) -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:46:36 (GMT)
__ __ Sam Hardy -:- Knowledge of a scientific kind -:- Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 07:19:34 (GMT)


Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:36:01 (GMT)
From: Carl
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Cavalcade of DLM / EV luminaries ??
Message:
Just curious about some of the old DLM (and current EV) long-time 'in-charge ji' type people. I read much here about a lot of premies whose idiosyncracies are truly fascinating. Powertripping is such a public display of unconsciously humiliating behaviour, it can't fail to be instructive, as a caution. You know, 'there but for the grace of God ... '

Anyway, having been in the cult early on, but somewhat out a few years later (on the other side of the big split) there's only a few names I remember: Bob Mishler (may he r.i.p.), Joan Apter (who, for fun, I sometimes thought of as Joe Napter), Charles Cameron (whose articulate satsang in Denver 1972 helped convince me to receive K at Montrose), and a western sister called Jule (pronounced 'joolay') who would wear a huge red bindi dot, I mean HUGE, like the size of a silver dollar, in the middle of her forehead. This was at Prem Nagar in 1972.

So who is this David Smith guy I read about here? Maybe I've blocked any memory, or maybe he came later after I left, but boy, he seems to provoke a lot of reaction. Hitler on skates. What is his scene? The name Glenn Whitaker is also familiar, but that's about it for me.

Maybe more memories will surface as other names are mentioned.

Is there something like an organizational chart, such as corporations have, that might diagram who the players were (or are)? Actually, it is probably too fluid a situation to document except as a snapshot in time, what with all the freaking out, and reassignments and so on. Still, stories of the mighty are interesting.

It used to be so funny to see people running around 'on a mission from God' yet being all intense and stressed out, and at the same time mythifying themselves TO themselves as legends, or latter-day apostles, or whatever. Perhaps, to varying degrees, we all did this. The fanatics, however, were in a class by themselves, and were actually dangerous because of their relentless black-and-white thinking...having the absolutist mentality that kills the spirit, if not the flesh.

What about photos and/or bios of some of these tin-pot generalissimos? Is there anything unscrupulous about having a rogues gallery of these characters? Or is it bad form, because it puts them up for ridicule when they may still have the possiblity of getting out? Then again, they ARE public figures within that universe, like celebrities. Where are the paparazzi?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:53:00 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: Carl
Subject: Cavalcade of DLM / EV luminaries ??
Message:
Charles Cameron
Be sure to check out Charle's HipBone Games linked at the end of his bio. You'll notice no mention of GMJ / DLM in the bio. I for one would delight in reading Sir Charle's take on the glory days of DLM.

Julé posted here recently and would be most welcome to share more of her unique insights.

Joan Apter is doing human potential consulting and aromatherapy in Woodstock, NY. Also most welcome by all.

Glenn Whitaker still head of Élan Vital (neé Divine Light Mission) in the UK.

This site tends to keep ridicule to a dull roar except when it comes to Prem Rawat. The 'just following orders, er my bliss' folks get off a bit easier. Welcome and please do share your memories.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 11:41:53 (GMT)
From: kev
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: Glenn Whitaker??
Message:
Hi Richard & everybody else,

Just thought you would like to know Glenn Whitater is now no longer National Contact for the UK. Glen was said to of 'stepped down' last year. A nice woman called Norma Wilshaw is now acting UK top dog. Having said all that though, the last time I saw Glen was when I was doing service at m's last big bash in England at Harrogate, he was still surrounded by lots of hochos in suits. So maybe he is still the power behind the throne??

Kev (who thinks he knows it all) but still spent the last 13 years of his life in a fucking cult.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 17, 2001 at 04:20:26 (GMT)
From: Curious George
Email: None
To: kev
Subject: Glenn Whitaker??
Message:
Dear Kev,

What does Norma look like? I think i know her. Does she live in Epsom?

Curious George

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 17, 2001 at 21:00:20 (GMT)
From: kev
Email: None
To: Curious George
Subject: Norma ??
Message:
Hi Curious George

Not sure if I can describe Norma all that well for you but here goes. She is in her early 50's late 40's with longish back and going grey (aren't we all) hair. Not what you would call a pritty face but she has a good interesting face, which is more important IMO. She seems to use her hands a lot when she speaks. Not sure about the Epsom thing though, although it does seem to ring a bell. As I said above, she seems like a nice woman.

Kev.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 04:39:56 (GMT)
From: Francesca
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: When did my old pal Jule post
Message:
Richard:

Julie was always a breath of fresh air, even in the fanatical times of 1973 and 1974. She and Frank directed and managed the Soul Rush play, 'America.' I had the female lead, mainly because of a song I wrote.

After Millenium, she helped me and Colleen Veader escape from the clutches of DLM when Bhole Ji asked that we get sent down from Massachusetts to Atlanta to be in the Apostles. She told me that Bob Michler was trying to keep us from going, because we were in the ashram.

She somehow managed to comandeer a vehicle and get us down there. I didn't realize that the family split was already beginning. She was always a renegade.

Let me know about the time period of her posts and I'll look for them. Hope she'll post again.

Francesca

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 10:13:22 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: Francesca
Subject: When did my old pal Jule post
Message:
she only looked once about two months ago. help me here--i cant remember her last name from before she married the first time. i was at her wedding [ to mark, wasnt it?]in denver in late 74 and her reception up in the mountains at some guys lodge [another story] and its been driving me nuts that i cant bring her last name up out of memory. there was a time when i thought i would never forget it.

she's with her second husband now and it sounded from her post like she's happy in it and has been. she said she delights in irking her former premie friends with annoying new info we post here, grating on their nerves with aggravating questions about the obvious idiocies of PPSR and the latest damning dirt
we report on, here.
maybe sir dave's search engine could pick her up out of the most recent archives for you. i think she also posted her email address that one time.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 21:49:36 (GMT)
From: Disculta
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: I was at that wedding too I think nt
Message:
a;ihg
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 20:05:43 (GMT)
From: Roger eDrek
Email: drek@oz.net
To: Richard
Subject: Carl, check out these links
Message:
I've got a few of the infamous over at Roger's House of Maharaji Drek
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 16:38:38 (GMT)
From: Carl
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: Cavalcade of DLM / EV luminaries ??
Message:
Thanks for the updates on some of those folks. I remember liking Jule; she had heart and sad/wise knowing eyes. I can't recall the nature or attitude of her thinking as expressed in satsang; too much time has passed. But Charles Cameron was such a player in those days, and very vocal. I wonder if he disavows any involvement in the cult were he to be asked directly today?

I also wonder if the major honcho-types should get off so easily. I have witnessed the extremely intolerant and judgmental attitudes of some premie 'leaders' who, in the name of guru, God and truth, espoused a virulent us/them mentality and anti-intellect, anti-art, anti-nature agenda that effectively undermined the natural upliftment and increasing maturity that otherwise would be anyone's birthright.

Now, of course, it is clearer to see how a little power makes little people into monsters. But back then it was much harder to separate the words and attitudes emanating from the favored or ambitious premie leaders as being anything other than direct communiques or 'agya' from the Holiest of Holy Personages Ever To Have Trod This Planet.

We were complicit in having fallen for it, no doubt, but I wonder at the culpability of those who were given to 'lord it over' their fellow cultists with such a vicious or self-righteous delight.

Gad, what a smoldering stew-pot of attitudes, emotions, crackpot thinking and sheer disfunctionality were the ashrams and premie communities, expecially if a mahatma, or God Himself were coming to town. Were are lucky to have gotten out alive, hopefully with a few wits left about us.

By the way, I love the 'church lady' characterization frequently mentioned here. I take it to mean a non-gender-specific sort of meddlesome, know-it-all, busybody concerned with punctilious attention to formality and everyone else's place in the unspoken group hierarchy. God help you if you stand in their way.

It seems that even in current times, things are still pretty much the same, just with a more corporate veneer. How sad, how so very sad, for those still in thrall.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 19:54:48 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Carl
Subject: Joan Apter/Mitch Ditkoff/Charles
Message:
One effect this forum has had in regard to premies who still follow Maharaji, is pointing out misleading statments (read, LIES)that premie honchos sometimes have on their otherwise deficient resumes to cover-over their cult involvement.

Take Joan Apter for example. I just checked the website of Mitch Ditkoff's company where Joan works and she has CHANGED her resume, I think because of what got pointed out here. Her resume USED to say that for something like 8 years, Joan was 'director of educational programs' for Elan Vital. What Joan ACTUALLY was, was an initiator, traveling around giving satsang and initiating people to the meditation techniques. That was discussed here, and apparently Joan heard about it, and that particular lie has been removed from her resume. Thanks, Joan, for fessing up, not that you probably would have if it hadn't been mentioned on the internet.

Joan does still list 'Elan Vital' as a client, but neither she nor Mitch mention Maharaji, knowledge, or anything about the experience of the most beautiful and significant thing in their lives as being anything important or influential enough to mention on their resumes although Mitch mentions being on 'ABC Hour Magazine,' and Joan mentions that she grew up in DC but was born in Los Angeles, apparently both things are considered more important than being a devotee of Maharaji for most of their adult lives.

Also, both of them have testimonials on the Elan Vital website, mentioning that knowledge and Maharaji are so important to them, but apparently they would rather their clients didn't know about this particular characteristic.

Also, Charles does not mention on his website that he is the author of 'Who is Guru Maharaj Ji.' Wonder why.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:23:40 (GMT)
From: Thelma the Church Lady
Email: None
To: Carl
Subject: Have you any idea how thrilling it is to still be
Message:
serving You Know Who, the living Master of this day and age, and to help to spread You Know What? I never did become an industrial strength church lady but I never aimed to be. I left that to Herr Schmidtz and other people like him who were far more in need of the Lord's grace than me. I am completely satisfied with my service of straightening out white table cloths at our public video events, Thanks.

PatC: But seriously, Carl, the tinpot cult Hitlers were nasty and creepy but I forgive them because it is not easy to serve God in a Bod, Balyouguesswhat. It made us all a little nuts.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 17, 2001 at 23:02:13 (GMT)
From: SB
Email: None
To: Thelma the Church Lady
Subject: It made us all a little nuts.
Message:
It made us all a little nuts.

The man did it and we were at his total mercy. He grabbed some of us by our souls making our minds sick. He is sick and now that I see who the real maharaji is, all fits.

Herr Schmidtz said once while visiting our city that one time he was for a long period of time, I don't remember how much, (45 minutes?) holding something by maharaji who was fixing a bike, and he said it with humilty feeling proud of having done that,to serve the living lord, inspiring others with his story to do ANYTHING $$$ to help, even $5 will help, he said. Now it sounds outrageous what the cult ask of its followers blind faith and total disregard for the behaviour of their leader. The group mind has created an strange belief system and our guru maharaji is precious and he is divine incarnation, still today, May 2001; Amaroo toe fetish yuhu proves it.

I sat tables too and felt divine!! hahahahaha

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 18:11:28 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: Thelma the Church Lady
Subject: saw ex-roomie M. Nouri in 'Finding Forrester'! (nt
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 23:18:07 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: such
Subject: Movie a flop but Nouri looked handsome
Message:
His greying hair suits him. I first saw him grey in a Law and Order episode where he played a psycho. I guess he won't remember me anymore from the days when I lived in the Haight and he was still a struggling starlet in Hollywood and would phone me to give messages to my friend Margaret who did psychic readings for him.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 10:16:46 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: it wouldnt hurt to try. maybe he does .
Message:
why not?
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 06:17:23 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: last time I saw him was in the men's room at the
Message:
Jackie Gleason Theatre in Miami Beach at one of the later events.

We were each standing at the urinals, then suddenly saw each other and we both started to laugh. As we went to comb our hair and wash up, Michael quipped, 'We've got to stop meeting like this!' Then we chatted and he gave me a card and wrote down the phone number of some hot young lady who he said liked me, too, but lived up in Washington. However, I never followed up on Michael's matchmaking love connection.

I actually liked 'Finding Forrester' much better than a similar flick, 'Good Will Hunting', because of the script. Then, it had the 'Scent of a Woman' type prep school vindication scene near the end.

I wonder how he feels about the m. trip now, too.

Peace and lentils,

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 17:37:05 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: such
Subject: Such, it was bad good movie OT
Message:
The only important thing I learned from it is to wear my socks inside out. Perhaps the name put me off. I thought it was a sequel to Forest Gump. And I enjoyed Goodwill Hunting a bit more but neither were as good as Gus Van Sant's earlier non-Hollywood movies (My own Private Idaho.) The kid in Forrester was wonderful. I could not take my eyes off him. He is so beautiful.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 17:22:40 (GMT)
From: Christian Star
Email: None
To: such
Subject: The last time I saw Nouri was very recent
Message:
He was the 'host' or narrator at the beginning (and end) of a satellite broadcast of Maharaji -- and did it very well, I might add. Looked and sounded great and mentioned that he has been listening to Maharaji for a long time. I've seen him as the host on more than one recent satellite broadcast and hope he does more -- definitely my favorite 'host' for these!!
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:19:51 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: Carl
Subject: very good description Carl
Message:
Of those little people with a little power, and the character of the cult. It hasn't changed much.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 05:39:53 (GMT)
From: Bentmettle
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: The Training
Message:
The Training

Some of you may be familiar with the training workshops the ISCL have been going through with professional 'facilitators'. They involve learning, in a fairly artificial environment, certain 'rules' which promote teamwork over individual brilliance.

The trainees then progress to carry out tasks on the supposedly watertight First Class software channel. One of the rules is the ten second rule. That is, you have to posit your suggestion or question within a ten second time limit. Not surprisingly, people keep breaking the rule. The subsequent conversation on First Class then discusses the breaking of the ten second rule for about ten postings. These are the people who are going to help synchronise the world?

M's quotes are uploaded in jpeg type files to the training boxes. It is verboten to download the quotes to your desktop - inspiration must be grabbed on the run. One ISCL did and immediately felt remorse. The name has been deleted to protect the confused:

'I downloaded a quote. We promised not to. I apologise to the team. I have deleted it. I find it hard to feel connected with this team. When I read the postings I never find anything I relate to. I dont feel unity. Have others been able to bring their passion from the training home, into their lives?'

You wish your life could be so trivial and controlled, don't you?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:14:36 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: Bentmettle
Subject: What is 'ISCL'?
Message:
Also, wouldn't it be most enilightening to get access to or a transcript from this First Class virtual participation scheme? A true study in manipulation and repression to be certain. Any wavering First Classers?
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 19:40:58 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: Industrial Strength Church Lady (nt)
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 07:53:17 (GMT)
From: suchabanana
Email: None
To: Bentmettle
Subject: m.'s facilitators are unethical manipulators
Message:
Dear Bent,

The bogus 'facilitators' I knew who have been used by EVI took directions from the org and violated the very nature and professional code of facilitation.

They took full charge, overly controlled the process, pushed their set agendas, coddled patently unhealthy and abusive behaviors, and manipulated the outcomes - rather than assisting the participants to themselves organically build consensus and establish their own agendas and goals and work to generate the appropriate means of the processes.

I did professional facilitator training and then facilitated public hearings and government meetings for several years. It was nothing at all like the rigid, distorted, and controlling methods employed by those persons EVI uses who pose as 'facilitators'.

Certainly, a facilitator makes process 'suggestions', asks for input/drawing out, paraphrases, tries to assist the group in staying on track regarding whatever the group has decided is their focus, clarifying, dealing with undercurrents and tension, dealing with dominance, hostility, argumentiveness, conflicts or personal attacks between participants, frustrations, process breakdown, 'reasonable' time management; in problem-solving asking for perceptions, concerns, problem definitions, generating/evaluating alternatives, building true consensus... through healthy participative, interactive methods.

However, if what you have posted is correct, they are anally stifling creative input, intelligence, and trust among the participants. Just look at the guilt and disconnection expressed by the poor alleged miscreant you quoted above!

What a total crock! Yeah, First Class -- just like on the Titanic. Time to head for the lifeboats - while you still can save what's left of your lives, org premies!!!

Peace and lentils,

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:20:04 (GMT)
From: SB
Email: None
To: suchabanana
Subject: m.'s facilitators are unethical manipulators
Message:
Did you get the same invitation my city, I got in the mail?

Now instructors are called facilitators???

Hi!

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:55:14 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: SB
Subject: m.'s facilitators are unethical manipulators
Message:
Facilitators, eh? You have to be very synchronized I think to keep up with all the changes that the great m has initiated. He keeps everyone guessing, doesn't he.

Love,

Steve

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 13:25:52 (GMT)
From: sb
Email: None
To: Steve Quint
Subject: changing the package is a good tactic
Message:
to keep all in a 'learning' attitud. He makes people burry their true self. He molds a person by creating NEW concepts which at the end ended up being simply a similar trapping trip as the Catholic Church or any other organized religion. In the name of love and God they tell you to live from the spirit and forget about rational understanding. Do not question, just follow and do what I say.

I am feeling disgusted today. More 'house cleaning' to do I guess... I watch last night a PAM video I have with Lard dancing with the Krishna outfit and gold crown, Darshan (with people filmed at the exact moment they kiss his feet), holi and so much more. Those were the days when we were told to surrender to him.
Watching the video was disturbing enough to want to throw all the videos I have away and in the same time I need to confront myself and have the guts to watch it to see maharaji as he really is, as therapy to change my subconcious mind taht have been filled for so long with lies. I want to get to the point when I can watch it without feeling hurt. I wonder if that is possible.

He is a bad guru alright. Keep them confused and you keep them needy of you.... I can imagine the ensalada Lard has in his head trying to make all fit to continue being GOD incarnated. hahahahaa. Poor Lard. He's a determined man and believes all the BS he talks about or is he doing it deliberatly at this time? I buy Mishler's words. Lard knew at some point that it was wrong to controlled the premies and chose to continue the lie to mantain 'his' world intact. He is a very dangerous man, He has TOO MUCH power over people and the more I watch his videos the more I see that the love he talks about is a strange seudo 'love' and it has nothing to do with true love. It appear to be real, he tells that is true love and sometimes a premie feels a feeling of conneccion with some uper power/energy that feels good but so many other people feel those moments too that all point to the fact that Lard monopolized and made himself in OUR MINDS the giver of that experience and is far from the truth. If it was true then, how is it that I am not at this time open to any philosophy or religion and I do experience a feeling of being part of the whole? And at that moments of recognition I get filled with joy and I feel blissed, without loving a guru or following any belief system. I was dupped to believe that something was missing. He created in my head the need for him and grabbed me by my soul, the ignorant bastard!!

Having said that I feel better. What it makes me angry is to see how filled my subconscient mind is of him and how appealing all can be still be to my sick mind. What a trip!

love,

sb

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Tues, May 15, 2001 at 03:15:37 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: sb
Subject: SB, those videos could be quite good...
Message:
They could be put here on the EPO site, in the form of streaming video.

Please don't throw them out.

Bazza or JM could tell you how.

Could be quite powerful.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Tues, May 15, 2001 at 07:55:40 (GMT)
From: yeap
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: I know
Message:
Could be quite powerful.

I KNOW!! hehehehehe

SB

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 18:21:02 (GMT)
From: cq
Email: None
To: sb
Subject: powerful post, SB - and don't throw those vids!
Message:
the anger is real - and when that subsides you'll have to deal with the very real hurt as well. It's a process that all of us (no matter how long ago we left) have to deal with.

At the end of the day, I'd like to be able to look at the Maha and say 'I forgive you'.

But he hasn't even acknowledged that he has done anything that needs forgiveness.

It's gonna be a long trip.

(and the sooner I get transcribing the better!)

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Tues, May 15, 2001 at 00:53:45 (GMT)
From: Free
Email: None
To: cq
Subject: Don't take me wrong
Message:
I don't mean house cleaning as throwing the videos away! I know their value. :)))

With house cleaning I was refering to my head, my values system, cleaning the barn? LOL

We'll do it. Just be patient, since I'm in the middle of other situation with my son and dealing with health problems I need a bit of time. I'm firm.

The funny thing is that I bought MANY of them with my own money and have kept each Visions receipt and they cannot ask me to return those, so, I have them for good, they are mine. It would be of no use for them to ask for the ones own by the community, I still have mine to disect. I won. hahahahaha

Thanks for your words. All is getting better cq. I hardly cry anymore. You guys told me the truth and there is life after K!

You'll hear from me soon.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 20:33:52 (GMT)
From: Steve Quint
Email: the_avenger55@hotmail.com
To: Steve Quint
Subject: Latvian Update
Message:
I met my first real live Latvian yesterday and got her to say a few sentences in Latvian. I guess this indicates that I'm making progress.

Steve

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:13:38 (GMT)
From: Bob
Email: None
To: suchabanana
Subject: facilitators ??
Message:
Sorry I've been out of this mess too long (good for me Hahahaha).
What on earth is a facilitator. is it like the Terminator?
What is the use of them in EV, since when, etc etc
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 08:38:10 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: suchabanana
Subject: Rev Rawat is an unethical manipulator
Message:
I would agree with everything you said if you substituted the word ''they'' with the word ''he'' instead. These facilitators are in thrall to Rev Pimple Rawat. It is Balyouguesswhat who sets the corporate culture of EV.

Thank you Bentmettle for that very informative post. It was the mindbending conformity and barely hidden paranoia that made me realise that it was a cult.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 16:42:45 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: futile org in thrall,cult in stall,m. in fall (nt
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 18:21:44 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: A chuckle from the archives...
Message:
Many newcomers will have missed this classic incident reported by Joe. It lays the omni-everything ghost to rest, once and for all, and following la-ex's classic post down below, I reckon there is nowt so amusing as a synchronised event falling apart in spite of everybody's best efforts:

Over to Joe:
>>>
It was in 1980, during a 'festival' in Miami, and the Miami satsang hall (which was in a very old, cavernous, decrepit, church on Biscayne Boulevard) was being used for the ashram meeting with Maharaji, when all the ashram premies got to feel special, and during which Maharaji scared the shit out of us saying awful things would happen to us if we ever moved out of his spiritual slave system.

Anyhow, I was coordinator in Miami at the time, and we had one of those ridiculous 'chairs' on the stage. As many of you remember, we all used to bow down to empty chairs all over the world. Anyhow our chair was broken. It kind of wobbled. But, of course, a premie could NOT ever sit in the chair, even to test it for the divine tush. So, we didn't. When Marino arrived, someone explained the situation, but he did nothing and M came out and sat in the chair.

Well, the chair pitched forward and nearly flung the Superior Power in Person into the audience, to the gasps of the ever-so-surrendered premies. I think it was the look on his face that did it. Terror, fear, confusion, totally NOT centered. Somehow I saw what a faker he was. That this was all just a show for him, and the broken chair gave a glimpse of the man behind the curtain. DRIP.

I also remembered how CONTROLLED everything had to be whenever Maharaji came to an event. He was obsessive about wanting to know what was going to happen every SECOND, so he never felt off guard. I think I saw why he did that. It was all a show.

We had another chair, which was whisked onto the stage and he began his ashram discourse. But I had seen something I couldn't forget. The genie was out of the bottle.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 02:56:31 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: repost: Prem Lazee-Boy Deluxe Armchair Traveler
Message:
THE 'ARMCHAIR TRAVELER'!:

Hello, may I interest you in the ultimate, state-of-the-art Meditation chair?! Or, just giving a meditation technique review, or perhaps for those long speaking engagements? How about the Prem model Lazee-Boy deluxe Armchair Traveler?!!! [haha, whoops, excuse me, madam and sir.]

For the discerning petite up to full-figured speaker/meditator - privately fitted and custom-molded for each customer's buttocks - only the absolute Best, most Comfortable and Luxurious Hi-Tech chair ever crafted will do! Comes with wireless remote, 30 chair and foot settings, 24k gold atomic clock, NASA-tested temperature control, retractable titanium baragon, headrest remote-adjustable mink earmuffs (the mink died naturally, of course), armrest video monitor with 256 color adjustments and volume control, applause meter, built-in adjustable AKG condenser microphones, digital telecommunications console with satellite uplink, holographic teleprompter, concealed Bose stereo speakers and DVD player-recorder, 100% silk-covered swan down cushions, stow-away armrest ashtray and liquor/stash dispenser, variable back and seat vibration/stimulator controls, 15-60 minute wakeup-snooze settings, and too many other incredible features to possibly list here.

Meticulously handcrafted and perfected from designs developed over 30 grueling years in secret cult labor camps specifically for meditation programs and speaking engagements by the most discerning of all speakers and world travelers. Yes, the Ultimate, creme de la creme in meditation chairs. May I present the Prem model Lazee-Boy deluxe Armchair Traveler!!! Voila!

The Prem Armchair Traveler also disassembles and fits into a beautiful velvet-lined, fiberglass case [same material as used in the Stealth fighters]. Speaking of expensive airplanes, this baby will easily stow in the storage compartments of any of today's larger commercial or corporate luxury jets -- including the Gulfstream G-4, G-5, Boeing 747, and even the President of the United State's Air Force-1 aircraft.

The price? Uh, well, it's kind of like a yacht, madam and sir. If you have to ask, then you obviously can't afford it. Sorry...

Peace and lentils,

da lil' swami

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 20:38:57 (GMT)
From: Selene
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: A chuckle is right
Message:
Thanks for reposting that. Those gems are so good. My list:
This one you posted.
The Sir Dave Guard of the Cheese
My story of SisterJi Guardian of the Door That Went Nowhere (LB 97)

There are many many more. Joe walking out of an event in the middle of it from front of the hall.

We should, (I should) gather them they make a very picturesque and funny story and do make a point as well.

Selene and ps to sympatico.ca give it up already I'm on to you. (probing)

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:57:38 (GMT)
From: Jean-Michel
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: French Newspaper article fully online
Message:
Elan Vital - Une secte oů le bonheur se paie cher

It's all in French of course ....

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 10:01:08 (GMT)
From: toby
Email: None
To: Jean-Michel
Subject: French Newspaper article fully online
Message:
I know its embarrassing,
as a neighbour I should be able to do some french,
but honest, i chose latin and even failed at that.

Is there a possibilty to get that translated,please ?


Toby

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:15:00 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: toby
Subject: i can do it. gimme a day.
Message:
ok?
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:47:03 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: here's the part i already did before: improved
Message:
May 9, 2001- SOCIETY
CULT
Society.
The rights of man.
A cult which teaches 'enjoyment of life'-- at a very dear cost. The news is not good.
Elan Vital: a cult more pernicious than it appears. Guru Maharaji, his airplanes, his residence in Malibu, and Elan Vital, his cult, which has made itself ever-so- discreet, the better to indoctrinate you.
A modern story of alienation.
An investigation.

Bouygues, British Airways, Canon, Continent, Du Pont de Nemours, Kodak, EDF-GDF, Esso, France Loisirs, France Télécom, Gestetner, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Motorola, Pechiney, Philips, Rhône-Poulenc, Rorer, SANOFI, Shell, Siemens, Valeo, Winterthur Assurances, Xerox, Yves Saint-Laurent.
The list is so long, that others should make a point of checking it, too, if they are not to be put, one day, at the bottom of their salaries, according to the method of motivation proposed by Management & Performance, who present these clients on their Internet site. Those who do not do so should not be surprised, since, thanks to the method, it has become possible to evaluate clearly one's strengths and one's weaknesses, to elaborate strategies for career advantage, to perceive trends/opportunity/ changes with acuity, and to adopt attitudes which respond to exigencies in the environment, maximizing one's adaptability and one's flexibility.'

So says the Internet site. A classic promotion, by an enterprise in classic form, responding visibly to the hopes of enterprises no less classically liberal.
No signs of a cult, certainly.
Still, it could be. It presents with this propensity to bill oneself as the intermediary between real clients, potential clients, or simply desirable figures to see contacted. But two, at least, of the four proprietors of Management & Peformance,[ says Combat (1), in their special May issue, dedicated to religious cults], are longtime administrators of the Elan Vital movement. 'Claude Artheix is still in charge of propagation in France, and Marc Levitte, president of the group since April 1998, have become two of the right- hand-men of Guru Maharaji.'

Maharaji ? The 'god' of a group, was flagged in 1995, during the work of a parliamentary task force charged with inventorying all cultlike movements.
When it occurred, the Divine Light Mission became Elan Vital. In the transformation from one to the other, the Perfect Master became a teacher of meditation, shedding the ' bright, festive outfits associated with Indian beliefs,' which were credible in 1970, for the somber, tailored dress indistinguishable from that of 'any other businessman', utterly respectable in our contemporary world.
On the face of it, a charter professing respect for the human being and the principles of the universal Declaration of human rights. On the underside, it is particularly obscure.
In 1978, Le Figaro qualified Maharaj as a lover of sports cars and jet planes. Things don't seem to have changed much, since his most recent followers speak of the impossibility of his traveling by regular commercial flight, 'for reasons of security'. The result: a Gulfstream V, costing 40 Million dollars, last year replacing its predecessor, which no doubt had come to the end of its use- a Gulfstream IV.
And all this to get to: a yacht, a helicopter, several residences, of course, like that in Malibu, California, with a heliport, or to conference centers, like the one on 528 hectares in Australia.

Financially? A taste for the good life.
and several traffickings not entirely respectable, if one believes the longtime members one can find on the website, www. ex-premie.org.
When Combat expanded its editorial field and put itself into investigation of forms of cults, it intended, after its editorial, to spearhead a public debate on the subject. It encountered Elan Vital along the way, completely by chance. The result is in this May issue, from which we are offering you an unedited presentation.
Because no one truly knows Elan Vital. Because thousands of people are searching for happiness, religious or not, and are potential victims. Because no one can remain indifferent to the question.

The Senate is going to pass a law being proposed to make it easier to prevent and repress cults. Dissolving them becomes possible if a group or a movement has been made the object of condemnations. The mental manipulation or brainwashing is to become defined as an abuse of the weak. (see the law, below)
But it remains to reflect upon the fates of the thousands of virtual victims and the damage, perhaps permanent, that it brought to them. The quest for enjoyment does not question the established churches, in a world where McDonald's and Coca-Cola (interested, like Reagan, in Scientology) have become the purveyors of enjoyment, and where the actual American President researches to see what sign the moon is in.
Considering all of the pressure brought by Americans upon the parliament and the French Government, in the name of 'freedom of Religion', it is coming from those who don't know about our Law of 1905, on the separation of church and State, and who never cease to interfere in our internal affairs and the self determination of the position of Europeans.

Finally, we note that Marc Levitte, longtime president of Elan Vital, France, is the brother of Jean-David Levitte, longstanding counsellor to Jacques Chirac, today ambassador of France to the United Nations. He facilitated, on the 3rd of May, the exclusion of the United States from the UN commission on Human Rights, 'for arrogance', and then interevened, the same day, on the investigative commission on the thefts in the Congo, led by France. Can this eminent diplomat ignore the activities of his brother?
----------------

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 16:02:52 (GMT)
From: Francesca
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: I'll give ya more than a day
Message:
You're a gem!

--love f

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 15:30:09 (GMT)
From: Cynthia
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: janet, you're too much, thanks! n/t
Message:
by
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 14:39:16 (GMT)
From: toby
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: certainly! Thanks(nt)
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:18:29 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Should Worcester get some advertising?MRC?
Message:
As far as I know, the only time that anti-guru advertising has gone into a US publication was just before last years Boston program.

The MRC letter was very well written, and I think affected things, as right after that the 'cult checklist' appeared on the EV site, which was actually one of the suggestions of the MRC letter.

One interesting point of EV's 'cult checklist' is that it proves what we have been saying all along: that in the 70's and early 80's DLM and EV were a major cult (they fit ALL the cult list red flags as indicated in EV's list).
That would obviously make M a cult leader of a cult.
Was anything ever done to deal with the aftershocks of m's cult on the personal lives of any of the members?

However,to stay on topic....should we consider some advertising and radio talk show spots if Worcester happens?
It seems like it might be a time and a city ripe for this.

Remember, last year in Boston, the revelations of the two Mikes, the Combat article,the latest toe kissing/holy breath in amaroo,letters from recently departed premies, and many other things were not yet known or made public.

There is a lot more to be shared this time, the site is even more potent, the evidence even more damning...

Any comments?
Activism...in or out?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 17:47:41 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Advertise the MRC letter, which is STILL online.
Message:
Actually, I would like to have seen some advertising in Miami, but Worchester is fairly near Boston, and I'm sure has some kind of newspaper that might be relatively cheap to advertise in.

The current MRC letter, still online could be used, but I would recommend also excluding the link to the EPO site as well.

OR, a NEW letter could be written as well, but as we all know, writing a letter with the consensus of a committee is a time-consuming job.

I will say this. If M ever does another 'event' near where I live, I'm certainly going to talk to people about some kind of advertising, letters to the editor, investigative reporting in the local press, etc.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 14:31:07 (GMT)
From: Way
Email: wwilliam@kumc.edu
To: la-ex
Subject: Should Worcester get some advertising?MRC?
Message:
How about an email group for any exes that would be interested in submitting ads to newspapers? We could then discuss the possibilities off-line.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 03:50:49 (GMT)
From: Activism
Email: None
To: Way
Subject: How should we do it Way?...............nt
Message:
sghg
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:24:30 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: all
Subject: P.S.....Glen,don't get your hopes up...
Message:
I forgot to add to the above post:

For Glenn, or any other EV lurkers.....any actions we might take would be of course discussed off-line, so don't get too excited.

OK

Gentlemen, start your engines....

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:43:48 (GMT)
From: Activism
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: In,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,nt
Message:
dfttj
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:37:29 (GMT)
From: Gregg
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Black Premies
Message:
Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Unless you remember that group of conga-playing brother brothers from Miami Beach or some other festival.

See, in the 70's I was a bit of a wigga. That's 90's slang for whiteboy wannabe nigga, a suburban kid who affects hip-hop dress, lingo etc. There's that outlaw cachet, I guess.

But back then it was free jazz, not hip-hop. I was into Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Pharoah Sanders...

Spiritually, I was into the standards: Yogananda, Castaneda, Suzuki, and was way too snobbish to fall for that greasy-haired Teen Hindu. Until my yoga teacher became a premie.

A month or so after I started attending satsang, I went to see Pharoah Sanders at a club in Dayton, and the bass player had a tiny picture of Maharaji pasted on his bass!

I ended up staying at his house in Cincinatti in Jan. '75, where I 'received knowledge.'

The premie community there was mostly African-American, centered especially around musicians and martial artists. Just as my yoga teacher had been my gateway to the cult, I believe a karate teacher was the guy who got the ball rolling in Cincinatti.

Anyway, just reminiscing here. Anybody know if those guys are still active foot-kissers, or is it a pretty much a white aging hippies-only cult?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 03:54:47 (GMT)
From: dv
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: Black Premies
Message:
I was community coordinator for a while there. I could write a book about that place. Premies being cited and going to court for threatening whilst imparting 'heavy satsang', black p's being harassed while going to satsang at the ashram which happeed to be located in white trash central, all the ashramites shipped in being emergency tranfers from other cities, ( I wonder what I did? But thats another story...)etc., etc. I got so fed up with the place I moved the ashram 30 minutes out of the city. When I was called back to Miami I left without a peep to anyone. It was much more fun to waste my brain sitting under the wing of the 707 for 12 on 24, 7 days a week.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 23:09:08 (GMT)
From: Gary Epton
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: Soul Brothers
Message:
Well, let's see now there was Canadian Football League superstar J.C. Watts who is now a big time republican Conference Chairman in the U.S. House of Representatives, he is the representative of the 4th Congress, District of Oklahoma.
J.C. Watts
Who definitely attended one of M's private big-donor meetings in the U.S. He is no longer a practicing premie. And I remember Raja Ji hanging with Philip Michael Thomas, Don Johnson's sidekick in Miami Vice
Michael Thomas
but I don't know whether he actually received k, but was definitely (at the time at least) a potential big-donor. I was good buds with a few in Toronto when I lived there. One was a rasta who I've completely lost touch with but I would see regularly at programs, another passed away unfortunately - but was an extraordinary shiny happy person who inspired me greatly (although not greatly enuff) by always standing firmly outside of ChurchLady Central, Michael Duhaney, who is currently Canada's Mr. SmartCard, or something like that, Heller spoke of him recently on one of his rants er posts - a beautiful humble brother who I lived in the 'shram with. I also remember meeting this shiny afro-topped DUO Director brother from California (Santa Monica, I think) who while living in the ashram had some unfortunate run-in with Ann Johnston which could have led to his leaving - can't remember his name tho. I guess if you're really curious and lord knows why I am even bothering to respond to this post, you'd have to go to Africa where apparently there are hundreds if not thousands.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:39:18 (GMT)
From: Monmot
Email: None
To: Gary Epton
Subject: Harry 'The Comb' Payne?
Message:
I can't imagine him letting Anne Johnston push him around, so perhaps you're speaking of someone else. Plus, The Comb (he got his name because he always had a pick in his back pocket) is still into Mr. BigTop, circus ringleader and master of illusion extraordinaire, and also still does security at programs, er, excuse me, events.

Harry was, and probably still is, a serious trip.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 03:35:55 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: Gary Epton
Subject: Yo,brother Epton,was JCWatts a prem?
Message:
gary-

I had heard of a black football star who was a premie back in the Denver, 1970's era...

Was that JC Watts?

I would LOVE to hear his take on m, now that he is a conservative black republican (always was black, but I didn't know about the republican credentials until I heard of him a few years ago.)

I have followed him on the talk shows...the GOP loves to trot him out, as one of their rising stars...

I would LOVE to know what he thought about the whole thing, nd would LOVE to get THAT knowledge out, that JC was a premie...

Can you tell me a bit more?

La-ex

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Tues, May 15, 2001 at 22:46:46 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: I don't believe it.
Message:
I don't believe JC Watts was ever a premie, although the man is derranged enough that it just might be possible.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 13:28:55 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Johnny Rodgers?
Message:
I remember hearing about a football star who was a premie back in the 70s too. It wasn't JC Watts, though. I think his name was Johnny Rodgers, who played for the University Of Nebraska, and also won the Heisman Trophy, if I recall correctly. He then went on to a short stint as a professional. I remember hearing this from one of the more wealthy premies who was invited to one of those fundraiser dinners M loves so much. He mentioned that Rodgers was there, and couldn't wait to cough up all his hard earned cash.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 15:52:26 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: Johnny Rodgers?I think you're right.Gary?
Message:
Jerry-

I seem to recall that name, esp. around the late 70's, in Denver.
I think you are right about him.

Does this mean that both Rodgers and JC Watts Gary?were premies, or are we confusing the two?

Gary, any comments?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 17:39:45 (GMT)
From: Gary
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Johnny Rodgers?I think you're right.Gary?
Message:
Yeah, Johnny Rodgers
Johnny Rodgers
rings a bell with me too now that Jerry mentions it, don't think I am confusing the two of them but my bhakti-buggered brain cells may be called into question. There is a similar parallel in their careers that makes it possible for JC to have known Johnny as a mentor and as perhaps the one who told him about the *ultimate coach*. However, their similar backgrounds also makes me wonder if I am mixing the two of them up. Johnny Rodgers played for the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the early'70s and JC Watts for Oklahoma Sooners in the late '70s. During Johnny Rodgers tenure these two teams were archrivals at the '71 Orange Bowl. Both ended up playing in the Canadian Football League (CFL) and both were MVPs in this league. I googled (google.com) J.C. Watts and you would think the Religious Freedom Coaltion
Religious Freedom Coaltion would have been able to dig us this part of his past. So apologies if lapsed neural synapses have resulted in a mix-up, I will ask around these parts for veracity and report back if so. By the way, J.C. stands for Julius Caesar.
Gary
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:07:10 (GMT)
From: Gary
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Yo,brother Epton,was JCWatts a prem?
Message:
In a way I feel kinda uncertain about doing this 'cuz I'm sure this is info he doesn't want out there so FA feel free to delete my posts . . . Yes, JC Watts, was a premie and I remember seeing a video in the early '80s or thereabouts with him and others meeting w/m re donating large dollars - don't know whether he took the bait. In fact, that could have been his final 'drip'.

This from his bio: While at the University of Oklahoma, Watts was quarterback for the Sooners, leading them to two consecutive Big Eight Championships and Orange Bowl victories. He was also voted the Most Valuable Player in the 1980 and 1981 Orange Bowl wins over Florida State. From 1981 to 1986, he started for Ottawa and Toronto in the Canadian Football League and was voted the Most Valuable Player of the Grey Cup, the CFL’s Super Bowl, his rookie season. Watts was inducted into the Orange Bowl Hall of Honor in 1992

The prospect of 'outing' someone who long ago decided not to follow m is something you should think long and hard about re any negative impact this might have on his career - despite what you feel about the republicans and their prize minority mascot.
Gary

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:22:09 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: Gary
Subject: Gary,I don't mean to 'out' anyone, but...
Message:
I'm just really curious about JC now.

I have always felt that he is a very interesting fellow...while he preaches morality, I know that he was involved with a couple of women at the same time and had a baby out of wedlock with one, while something strange was going on with the other one....it was a very complicated thing...

I will think about it...I'm not really trying to 'out' him in a harmful way, but just think that it is a fascinating story...

La-ex

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:36:48 (GMT)
From: Gary
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Gary,I don't mean to 'out' anyone, but...
Message:
Can't help you about J.C. now - I didn't know him personally back then and he is certainly playing on a much larger football field now than the back alleys I inhabit. Gary
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 03:49:31 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Brother Epton, while we're at it...
Message:
I wonder if Rep. JC Watts would be useful in any way as far as legal stuff, IRS stuff, lawsuits, investigations go etc.?
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:28:07 (GMT)
From: Gary
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Brother Epton, while we're at it...
Message:
Now that is something that did occur to me, but from a career standpoint unlikely. If you attempted to publicize in order to extract allegiance he could simply deny (except for the pesky video which by now the EV monitors have destroyed). In the event of any future legal action an x from his home state of Oklahoma could certainly contact him and request assistance. But politicians don't usually get involved in issues unless the opinion polls tell them that the populace is concerned, or big business is pushing it. But that doesn't mean it ain't worth a try . . .
Gary
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:07:56 (GMT)
From: Mr. Mind
Email: None
To: Gary
Subject: ...or if it might affect their re-election-NT
Message:
mmm
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:42:32 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Mr. Mind
Subject: ...or if it might affect their re-election-NT
Message:
He has a great deal to lose by being identified with Maharaji, and not much to gain by going after him. Still, maybe he's a good guy, or might do it for non-political non-cynical reasons. You never know.

-Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:23:53 (GMT)
From: Francesca
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: Did you know Ron --
Message:
also known as 'Homes' or 'Holmes'?? I believe he was from Cinci and was in Bhole Ji's band (post Millenium) for a while. Big tall man with a great voice. Good person too, which is even more important than bono voce.

--f

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:05:15 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: Black Premies
Message:
There were always extremely few African American premies and I assume that's still true.

There always was a small, black premie community in Cincinnati.

Thre was also a small black community in DC in the early 70s. I remember a couple premies came to COLL from DC. But by the time I got to DC in 1979, the community was lilly white.

There was one black guy who was some security honcho, and I knew one woman in the Chicago ashram who was black, and one or two others in the community. I don't recall any African Americans in the San Francisco or DC communities, nor, for that matter, in Miami.

The Maharaji cult in the USA always was white, middle to upper middle class, WASP, Catholic, and disproportionately Jewish. It also used to be mostly young people, who are now mostly middle-aged, and hence it appears the average age of PWKs in North America these days is about 45-50, still as white as ever.

I think many of you might recall what I reported about the blatantly racist remarks of Pardarthanand ('black people are generally too lazy to be disciplined enough to practice knowledge'), so that might be part of the reason, and the cult was also extremely sexist. A lot of that came from the Indian influence, I think.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 12:59:26 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: The West Indian link
Message:
Joe:

Indians are considered 'black' by many in the UK, while in the US they're treated as 'white' by most (to the extent that the distinction matters). They're also more likely to be on the right, politically, in the US... two facts that are not unrelated. I didn't see the cult as being descriminative racially. It seemed to accept people with the poor judgment to become premies with equal vigor, regardless of race. It was just a matter of how much liesure and socio-economic lattitude one had to pursue such eccentricities, though most blacks in the cult had mannerisms and habits that made them more socially acceptable to whites (so in most cases they had a West Indian ethnic heritage).

Speaking of that, in Jamaica most of the premies were white, in spite of the fact that the population as a whole was Black and Indian. But there were a number of interesting black premies. One fellow named Gosford that I met in the Kingston ashram had interpreted the cultural dispotion of Maharaji as a political endoresment of Marxism, and he planned to found a commune in the Jamaican hill country. He must have eventually become thoroughly disillusioned.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 17:33:14 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: Racism in the cult
Message:
I didn't say the cult was overtly racist, but some of the Indian mahatmas were racist, and sexist, and since the cult was predominantly white, it likely did not appear very welcoming to African Americans, nor to non-urban, working class whites either. If anything, the cult seems to have become more of a caste system based on money than in the past.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 06:17:31 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: Black Premies
Message:
Joe:

L.A. had a number of black premies, mostly musicians. I recall one guy, very nice fellow, who used to sing 'Stretching it Higher' all the time at Larchmont, and lived in the infamous Argyle. There was a very attractive woman named Darshana (obviously not her original name) who used to do automatic writing, and was more than a little flaky. And then there was that guy in Boston who was some sort of minister for Science of Mind. What was his name? Anyway, he rivaled Dr. John in prominence within the cult. Almost had his own little following. He's the one who told me that Salem, Massachessetts was a 'damn witch town.'

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:20:38 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: Black Premie i had sex with jerome in the argyle
Message:
out in the fire hall one night. i was staying in tom fernandez' apt on the top floor and there were a dozen premies sleeping on the floor. i got tired of the crowded conditions and went to sleep in the hall leading to the fire escape. jerome came out to see me and we ended up having sex in my sleeping bag out there.
btw-do you know what has happened to that building? i went back to look at it just a couple of years back, and it was-and is- utterly ruined. the 94 earthquake cracked it, it was turned into a tenement, gang members shot it up, there was a fire in it, and it was evacuated and boarded up. its covered now in graffiti and looks like a bombed out place in kosovo. real freaky. it may be gone by now. i think the city permanently red tagged it and condemned it. if its still standing it has probably become a dangerous squat for homeless hollywood runaways, many of whom i knew and still see.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:48:24 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: I think I remember you
Message:
Were you sort of fresh-faced with brown hair, and often went barefoot? The Argyle just isn't what it used to be. Yuk. But then, Hollywood isn't what it used to be. Gotta go. I have some work to do today, for a change.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 06:25:51 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: His name was Jerome
Message:
That's the guy who lived at the Argyle with us. Amazed I remembered his name. And there was also a guy who was a drummer in the Buddy Miles Band. His name I don't remember.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:05:58 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: Black Premies
Message:
when I lived in the miami community from 79 to 81, i knew a lovely couple named Ajené and Omni/Gemini/Venus Reese. I gave Omni midwifing lessons and she had a home birth with their first baby. They had a home busines making vegetarian 'Grateful Sandwiches' that they distributed at all the health food stores around miami and the beach . You probably bought one yourself while there in those years for the festivals. They had a little tiny picture of MJ on the label about the size of a hole punched in a looseleaf page.
They followed me to Denver in around 1982-3 and had another daughter.

I also remember another black brother who lived in the Argyle apts in L.A., named Jerome. And a beautiful african brother from Nigeria who was quite visible in Los Angeles and Miami, named Adi Yemi. He married an english sister in Miami during the alton road years.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 22:31:16 (GMT)
From: TD
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: There's a premie from Ghana in Australia (nt)
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:56:40 (GMT)
From: kev
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: Black Premies
Message:
In England it is just the same. Most premies now are white middle class and very boring.

In the late eighties there was a black female instructor called Judy (sorry can't remember her last name) I had the biggest crush on her ever but I was too young and shy to do anything about it.

Anyone know what became of her?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:30:19 (GMT)
From: Nick
Email: None
To: kev
Subject: Judy, the instructor
Message:
This was Jude Hackett, who was a friend of mine prior to us both receiving K in 1971. She worked at the BBC for a few years in children's tv. I lost contact with her years ago.

Anyway, my reason for replying is that Jude's behaviour on becoming an instructor mirrored that of a number of other instructors: i.e. on becoming instructors they acted aloof and tried to pretend that their former life hadn't taken place. This manifested in them not acknowledging the existence of old friends. I guess that they felt under extreme pressure to conform to a stereo-type of detached saint etc, or maybe they were just embarrassed that someone knew them when they were simply middle-class dope smoking hippies. But I have to say it really got to me several times.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 17:53:19 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: In US it is now all white Stepford Wives
Message:
Aryan church ladies from Darien. Even the few chinese in San Fran have split and the Indian premies keep themselves to themselves over in Hayward. There is one remaining black premie and he has forsaken his hippie-rasta roots and become an oreo. All the colored and colorful premies have left. It's blindingly white and boringly suburban.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:59:53 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: In US it is now all white Stepford Wives
Message:
Pat:

It may be boringly suburban, but that's quite significant in sociological terms, though not especially in the US. The middle class is where the political marbles are located. Rhadasaomi is the fastest growing religion in the world, thanks mostly to the Indian subcontinent population, and most of the new members belong to the Indian middle class whose political power and influence is growing. Not for nothing that Bubblegum Ji took up politics. Also, it may be important in the long run that India's is one of the fastest growing economies on earth, making a giant leap into the information age. So having the fastest growing religion in the most rapidly flourishing segment of the fastest growing economy is an event that deserves some notice. In a sense, we may be bucking the trend here.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:35:52 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: Is he the God America deserves?
Message:
As well as the rest of the world now that it is being cocacolonized? Yes, Scott, the thought has crossed my mind that Maharajism will one day be the new religion of the entire world and we will be written off as Judas Iscariots or written out of history altogether.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 20:57:40 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: Is he the God America deserves?
Message:
Pat:

That's a long shot, but the Rhadsaomi cult in general could have a resurgence under a different guise here. But more likely it'll just end up having a lot of influence in India, and India's influence in the postindustrial economy will end up more or less equal to Japan's. I think we in the West, and especially in the US, belong to a religion called Lockeanism, which gives us some immunity. Scholars are still incredulous about India. It's like the flight of the bumblebee, which shouldn't be able to fly according to the laws of aerodynamics. By all accounts India shouldn't be a democracy. The socio-economic and religious factions should tear it apart. Yet, it is a fairly robust democracy, with a highly educated and industrious middle class. If I were going to invest low and sell high...

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 15:48:14 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: on bass: Steve Neal. Please bag n word slang (nt
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:24:28 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: such
Subject: such, usually i like you-but bag the PC lecture!
Message:
honestly such--this isnt the 50's or the deep south in the 60's. we all know the implications of the term 'nigger', and if you were conversant with present day ghettospeak, the brothers have taken the old derogatory label and put it into reverse psychology of perverse pride and triumph. I live in gang territory in los angeles and it's everyday common parlance to hear the locals adressing each other with a kind of brassy affection and familiarity, saying things like ' Heyyy, wass up, my nigga?' and ' oh nigga, pleese, don't be givin me dat shit'. The street kids are all races, mixed together, and they ALL employ the same speech, race and color regardless. The word has lost its power as an utterance of bigoted prejudice and now carries a defiant urban confirmation of identity and culture.
among blacks, it is also used to indicate to someone when theyre being or acting ignorant and backward and making their whole race look bad.

sorry to trim you back like this, such, but when you get all hincty and PC like this, you are as repelling and unreal as the industrial church ladies.

loosen up, wouldja? it's just people.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:08:25 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: but my own homies don't like it when whites say it
Message:
Yo, Janet, and if y'all be 'conversant with present day' whatever, it ain't referred to as the 'ghetto' no more, either, by the cuzs. [At least not around my ol' hood, anyway]

Also, among the respectable older African-American generations, the word still does carry negative connotations and painful memories of 360 years of holocaust and racist oppression - and frankly, both the black and salt/pepper members of my extended family don't think any white folks have ever earned the right to use that term - with or without an 'er', incl with an 'a' at the end. Now, what soul brothers and sisters choose to call each other ['Their whole race'] is another matter.

That's what I meant, white girl. So, maybe white folks should still be a lil' careful with that word. In fact, on Martin Luther King Day, someone used the 'er' version here at FV in a most demeaning and unbrotherly fashion.

'Course, I'm not a mack daddy gangbanger with a do rag - like y'all, Janet, vanilla flygirl. Y'know, there are lotsa people who also call women 'ho' and 'bitch', too. But that's just more rap vernacular. Right?! So, which term of endearment wouldja prefer, Janet, 'ho' or 'bitch'? I mean, we wouldn't want to be pc here, after all -- straight 'cross the board for everybody.

Y'see? Yeah, sure, we all jus folks now. But there's sucha thing as respect - and then there's young jiveass honkies out there, too - like that twisted sicko wannabe eminem.

And I sho' nuff ain't no ignorant pc fool. Ya'dig?

So, Peace and Love, and kindly take a chill pill r.e. me [and yo' nasal appendage... te he he]

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 02:32:15 (GMT)
From: Gregg
Email: None
To: such
Subject: on the use of the n word
Message:
you said: ' and frankly, both the
black and salt/pepper members of my extended family don't think any
white folks have ever earned the right to use that term -'

I'd agree with you, Such, about White people's use of the N word. (Not to be too self-centered, but I'd like to add that I would never use it except in an academic context, i.e.; referring to others' use of the word, which was essential in defining 'wigger' to the Europeans/Australians on this site.)

I don't care for the 'PC' term itself, personally, for two reasons. One, it was originally an ironic term employed by the Left to denigrate leftists who were reflexively (kneejerkingly) opposed to certain words/concepts. And then, in a double irony, the right wing appropriated the term to indicate inflexible dogma!

Secondly, I think that it is a good thing that people should be ashamed to use derogatory terms to refer to minorities, disabled people, etc.

Race is not a comfortable topic in America. This thread has raised a few hackles. Oh well. Better to talk and be angry than not talk and be toxically bitter.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 03:48:20 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: also, straight consciousness r.e. gay terms
Message:
Another related example:

When I was a teenager, I was a really cute boy -- which led to problems at school. Every day it was 'hey, girl', 'queer', or 'you fag,' usually accompanied by some punches. Almost every day I had to confront demented and violent bullies and their 2-3 pals who would surround me or wait for me after school.

I'm straight, but I can tell you that I don't think anyone appreciates that sort of thing -- demeaning slurs, bullying, daily degradation and attacks.

Do you know the origin of the word 'fag'? In the middle ages in Western Europe and the British Isles, towns used to persecute and often burn homosexuals at the stake, feeding the fires with bundles of wood. 'Faggot' became a slang term thereafter for homosexuals.

Now, among gays, it's one thing to use the term socially. However, when most straights use the word 'fag', I have observed that there is usually some stigma attached or intended.

Not to be pc [because I hate that stuff, too - it's all over the campus, i.e. ritual pc policing - shades of that film 'PCU']; however, I think sometimes we are unaware - at best, when we speak of others, stereotype, or use some slang terms. And sometimes others unfortunately misunderstand our intentions -- although most people can detect the tone. Written words comprise the medium, the mode of communication we have here, for example, at FV. So, I think generally practicing some awareness and sensitivity for others - as individuals - is basically a good thing.

Of course, we have surely all fallen short, on that account - at various moments in our lives. But we can always learn from our mistakes, nevertheless. (If we were perfect, we probably wouldn't be here, after all.) In truth, empathy and compassion are keys to our own growth -- and humanity.

Thanks, Gregg, for your comments.

Peace and lentils,

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 02:12:58 (GMT)
From: Gregg
Email: None
To: such
Subject: one more thing, Such, if you're still there...
Message:
True about the homo/sissy/fag thing. I work at a public school called Denver School of the Arts, and on of the remarkable things about it is that gays are totally accepted.

I had a male student a few years ago (a dancer), who I since have heard has had elective surgery to become a woman, who would have been ridiculed and worse in most high schools. However, in my AP Lit class,the other kids gave him as much respect as any other student, although he was a boy who talked like a girl. My heart breaks for gay kids in regular high schools.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 05:49:40 (GMT)
From: such
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: I think an arts school is probably way cooler (nt
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 16:48:52 (GMT)
From: Gregg
Email: None
To: such
Subject: n - a (not n - er!) essential for wigga def'n (nt)
Message:
x
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 08:25:04 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: Space Cowboys, class reunion, losing faith
Message:
I just felt like wriiting this and it doesn't fit into any of the current threads so here it is.

I was just watching ''Space Cowboys'' on video. Parts of it reminded me of this forum. For those of you who haven't seen it: it's about four astronauts who failed to make it into space in the 60s but are recalled to rendezvous with a broken satellite nowadays. It's the nicest movie I've seen since ''Billy Elliott.''

Clint Eastwood plays Clint Eastwood as usual but finally fesses up to being about 69. James Garner has become a pastor like Mickey the Pharisee. Elliot Gould, greyhaired and ponytailed, has put his NASA engineering skills into designing roller-coasters. Tommy Lee Jones is a crop-duster in Utah.

DLM/EV was not exactly like NASA but FV is sometimes a lot like a class reunion. I've seen threads comparing aches and pains and the perils of being over forty and for some of us over fifty. Of course there are all the reminiscences and post mortems and I know that you have to hang around here for a couple of months to see that what appears here is only the tip of the iceberg of the lives of the people who post here. And I keep on wanting to know all about you. To me nothing that most of you will write here is OT. So, I'm nosy.

I started to feel a bit blue for the first time in the four months since I parted company with the perfect master. At first I thought that I did not have my usual source to turn to psychologically. Then I thought, ''Well, I've lost faith before: in the catholic church.'' I was a convert to catholicism and converts lose faith much harder than born catholics. And I'd lost faith in several causes and spouses to whom I'd given myself as much as I ever did to Rev Moon Beam.

Then I realized that I didn't need faith. The human race looks decidely less stupid to me now than I believed it was 30 years ago in my youthful arrogance and ignorance. And western thought, culture and creativity all seem much more trustworthy than Hindu mumbo-jumbo. Maybe I don't have faith but I still have the same optimism.

But there is no denying that I did give Mahahaharajuju my entire trust at one time; put my whole faith in the urug. This June will be the 30th anniversary of Pimple Rawat's setting foot in the west for the first time. Thirty years ago most of us heard about him and started to come. When he first arrived he gave me faith in the human race. I put up with the crap (which I now know to have been caused by the cult mentality created by him which is still prevalent 30 years later) because our mission of bringing peace to the world in our lifetimes was so exciting.

That was the illusion that I clung to till four months ago and which is why I kept sending checks. If I had known about the manslaughter wobble dance when it happened in 82 I would have saved a lot of money and put it to better use and I would have not become mentally ill because of my gut-feeling that I was associating with a crook. I call it mental illness because, when I look back on the pent up anger and disappointment that I harbored towards Balyouguesswhat for years all the time rationalizing and justifying his obvious character flaws, I realize that I was not a happy premie. And I absolutely resent the Faker from Hardwar.

The only reason that I don't dwell on my resentment is because I am a hedonist and prefer feeling nice to feeling nasty. But every now and then it's just so nice to call a guru a spade.

Then of course I realized that most of my blue feeling were the result of hurting my back yesterday and my aches and pains are slightly more incapacitating than they were 30 years ago. I guess I am past my prime and better start thinking in terms of risk management and damage control if I want to play golf with Clint Eastwood at Pebble Beach when he finally fesses up to being 99.


Space Cowboys

Billy Elliott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:41:55 (GMT)
From: la-ex
Email: None
To: all
Subject: If there is a 5th technique, is this the 6th?
Message:
This is slightly off-topic, but it occurred to me that if there is a 5th technique,I may know the 6th technique...

The 5th, according to Pat, is inserting the tongue firmly in the cheek, I believe...

Would the 6th be something like this: tighten the anal sphincter muscles completely, and walk with legs held tightly together...become a totally anal retentive tight ass?

(could it be that only 'church ladies' have been shown the 6th technique?...could account for many things...)

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:59:34 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: la-ex
Subject: Not so much tight-assed as dumb-assed
Message:
Maybe the tight-ass anal sphincter technique is practiced religiously by the special EV gestappo industrial strength church ladies like Herr Schmidtz.

But the table-cloth smoothing lesser church ladies have never really practiced it properly and as a result have developed lazy and/or prolapsed anal sphincters which simply dangle forlornly in a dumb-assed sort of way just waiting for the words of the master.

Rev Pimple Rawat also does not practice the sixth technique and therefore has set the example of being ethically sloppy, morally loose, greedily irresponsible and boringly dumb-assed.

Remember Balyouguesswhat: Loose lips sink ships! And I mean both sets of lips.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:39:32 (GMT)
From: Robyn
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: Space Cowboys, class reunion, losing faith
Message:
Dear Pat,
I was glad you didn't write this post in some other thread as I would have most likely missed it. I read it this morning when I should have been leaving for work. I was late, 15 min!, it was long but it caught me, it touched my heart and I was glad to have taken the time to read it. When I got to work my boss said, in a nice voice, Senorita, es mue(sp) tarde!
I haven't had time here really since starting my new job and I had a short stint in DLM and didn't need any help with my time there. So many here have touched my heart and taught me lots about how different the cult was for so many and all the dirty facts but also about myself and lots of people have shared themselves with me, their real selves and like you I really am into that, I enjoy it and the friendships I've formed are very important to me, some of them ongoing for 4 years now!!!
You may have had some rocky times in the last 4 months Pat but I hope and think that all and all it has been a good four months.
Love,
Robyn
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:03:43 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: Robyn
Subject: Thanks Robyn, I've actually never been happier
Message:
I'm en-lightened! I got rid of a heavy burden on my back. I wish you well in your new job. So are you going to call us on June 2nd for your birthday? Contact Marianne for details.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:08:29 (GMT)
From: bill-reading you I
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: would never think you were past your prime...nt
Message:
sdfggf
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:12:51 (GMT)
From: PatC: reading you I think
Email: None
To: bill
Subject: You promised me you'd rip Buddha's tits off :)-NT
Message:
k
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:28:03 (GMT)
From: Richard
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: Space Cowboy blues
Message:
Pat,

You mentioned the blues that you now attribute to back pain but it caught my eye. I've written several times about leaving the M&K connection in the late 80's only to get caught up again mid-90's because of missing an 'intentional community' and 'having a purpose'. M&K were an easy fall back position for a short while. When a loved one dies or, in our case, we leave behind a way of life and our spiritual chew toy, there remains a huge hole that is emptiness. I know I can fill that with booze, drugs, food, another spiritual trip - whatever. I think it is most important to acknowledge and mourn the loss of the comfort (however perverted) that came from being part of the JuJu show. Leaving it is like losing an old friend in a way. We can rant and rave about how fucked M and the church ladies are but the reality is, there is a hole in the soul that must be filled with love and beauty. I don't believe that M&K can ever fill 'that place', only anesthesize it.

Don't mean to preach and this may not be what you are feeling at all but your 'blues' comment kicked this off.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:06:41 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: Richard
Subject: Space Cowboy blues - you're right about the loss
Message:
It is there but thank god I did not have to go through a sudden wrenching away. It was so gradual. My biggest emptiness is not having the excitement of bringing peace to the world and finding god within. Those were very big promises that he made to us. Now all he offers is a piece of his big fat cake and don't worry be happy. No more world peace or realization of the ultimate Kahuna.

Yep, I'll fill the old hole with love and beauty as you suggest and keep plodding on doing my little piece to make the world a nicer place.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:23:47 (GMT)
From: Mercedes
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: Space Cowboy blues - you're right about the loss
Message:
Pat, you are a sweety. Feel like giving you a big hug.
Mercedes
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:20:49 (GMT)
From: Channeling Gene Siskel
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: Donald Sutherland, not Elliott Gould......nt
Message:
m
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 23:31:40 (GMT)
From: Roger Ebert
Email: None
To: Channeling Gene Siskel
Subject: Thanks, Gene. How's tricks in the afterlife?
Message:
Is it anything like ''What Dreams May Come?'' Seen any good movies lately?

PatC

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:34:51 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Roger Ebert
Subject: Thanks, Gene. How's tricks in the afterlife?
Message:
Roger:

Oddly, I went to high school with Gene Siskel. I recall him yelling at me in a humiliating way as I held the door for him when I was a Plebe, though I don't think he normally yelled at people. He was theater officer and editor of the Vedette, the school newspaper, and was a senior when I was a freshman. Small world.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 17:43:21 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: By the way...
Message:
another classmate of mine was Ed Razek, who is now the CEO of Victoria Secret. He used to get a lot of flak in Mr. Golnik's algebra class for not being too bright, so sounds like he was able to rise above that handicap. Wish now I'd been friendlier to the guy.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 09:00:39 (GMT)
From: Moldy Warp
Email: None
To: PatC
Subject: Great post Space Cowboy xxxMoldy nt
Message:
x
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 09:04:50 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: Moldy Warp
Subject: Good morning, Moldy. I'm off to bed. Have fun. NT
Message:
k
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 06:37:10 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Everyone
Subject: hard wired for spirituality
Message:
Saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel about some experiments done at Laurentian University that created a spiritual experience, similar to what we refered to as Knowledge, by electrically stimulating areas in the frontal lobe of the brain. The researcher's name was Dr. Michael Persinger. Looks interesting. Not sure whether this means that the experience is nothing more than brain stimulation, or whether the wiring is there *because* of spiritual reality. I can't see why such a mechanism would have emerged out of natural selection, since it seems only marginally related to any survival potential. They've been speculating that the capacity is related to the same thing that allows us to glean whether an enemy or predator is threatening, but I think that's a stretch. Anyway, interesting stuff.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:19:26 (GMT)
From: Helen
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: hard wired for spirituality
Message:
I don't necessarily think God put the spiritual impulse in us, although I used to. I think it's part of being human though to long for meaning, to long for something spiritual with which to enrich our lives. Our existence is important to us! Why shouldn't it be?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:27:08 (GMT)
From: Gary Epton
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: hard wired for spirituality
Message:
Go here for more on Persinger's 'God Helmet'
(as seen on t.v.!)

The God Helmet

Gary

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:19:54 (GMT)
From: Gregg
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: sex
Message:
Sexual selection explains a lot of things which don't have obvious survival benefits. The peacock's tail is the classic example of a design feature which is actually anti-survival in that it attracts predators and adds weight, etc. But a big bright tail gets the chicks, so there you have it.

In humans, the creation of and appreciation of beauty in all its forms, esp. artistic, seems to have been hardwired into us through a similar mechanism. We are attracted to those who manifest beauty in song, dance, fancy linguistic shenanigans, etc. So those capacities are passed along.

Spirituality could have become part of us in the same way. Those who have begun to open their spiritual potential (not todays's premies, according to Sloeburn below) often appear radiant, or, at least, happy and energetic.

Just another theory!

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:49:21 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: Wait a minute
Message:
Sexual selection explains a lot of things which don't have obvious survival benefits. The peacock's tail is the classic example of a design feature which is actually anti-survival in that it attracts predators and adds weight, etc. But a big bright tail gets the chicks, so there you have it.

Gregg, the only 'survival value' in evolution is survival of the genes onto the next generation. It doesn't so much matter that the Peacock has a shorter life burdened by a big tail if he can sire many more chicks as a result. And since Pea Fowl are far from monagamous, it might just be that the big tail attractiveness to females outweighs a relatively shorter life span.

Also, the 'propensity' for something might be what is hard wired, and the environment might determine whether the behavior or attribute ever develops. For example, I think Chomsky's theories on language development at key periods in a human's life, are pretty well accepted since the 60s (as well as his SCATHING attack on B.F. Skinner), but if the environment doesn't give the input for language devopment, and if it doesn't happen before the age of about 7, it never does happen.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 17:47:16 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: Amen on cost-benefit tails and Chomsky too (nt)
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:34:18 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: survival value
Message:
'the only 'survival value' in evolution is survival of the genes onto the next generation.'

So 'natural selection' selects those genes that it selects, those that survive to the next generation. In other words, the genes that survive survive.

I guess I would have to agree with that!

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 23:25:54 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: two problems with that theory
Message:
1. 'sexual selection' can easily be abused as a catch-all to explain away those traits that don't fit 'survival of the fittest'.

2. Why would a design feature which is anti-survival be considered attractive? That that could happen seems to contradict the 'survival of the fittest' theory. The trait of seeing an anti-survival trait as attractive should be selected out.

So there you have it.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 14:09:20 (GMT)
From: Gregg
Email: None
To: G
Subject: survival of the fittest
Message:
'Survival of the fittest' is kind of an oversimplification of the development of complex life forms like ourselves. And sexual selection is not just a catch-all dismissal. It explains a lot. We are, after all, a tribute to the taste of our progenitors.

We are attracted to others because of the traits which contribute to survival, sure. And in other humans, cleverness (big 'ol brains) is as important a survival trait as speed and strength.

But why would we be attracted to people who sing well or paint cool designs on rocks?

Language is another interesting problem. 98% of our speech uses about 4000 words. However, the average human has a vocab of about 60,000 words. Why?

Perhaps Pleistocene man selected his/her mate partly on the potential partner's linguistic ability. It happens now, doesn't it?

Some of my ideas about this come from a book someone (Scott T?) recommended on this site, Beauty, by Frederick Turner. He offers some philosophical justification for beauty's place in the universe, tied up with evolution etc.

As far as spirituality...I haven't heard that particular theory, that spiritual work bestows a radiance upon the the practioner that others would find attractive, but, well, maybe.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 21:43:47 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Gregg
Subject: sexual selection
Message:
Yes, sexual selection does have some explanatory value, I'm just saying that the concept can be abused.

What I don't see is why an anti-survival design feature would be considered attractive. How does evolutionary theory explain the existance of the trait of preferring an anti-survival trait? I've read Dawkins attempt at explaining the peahen's preference for big showy peacock feathers, but it seemed like a weak explanation.

In the TV show 'The Life of Birds', they show a male bird artistically arranging found objects. This little bird was a real artist, I was very impressed and apparently a little female bird was also. It was better than a lot of art done by humans. Very interesting.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:45:39 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: G
Subject: sexual selection
Message:
G:

What I don't see is why an anti-survival design feature would be considered attractive. How does evolutionary theory explain the existance of the trait of preferring an anti-survival trait?

But this is surely a matter of offsetting resultants, isn't it, like sickle-cell? (Sickle-cell kills the subject, but also confers immunity to sleeping sickness.) Display makes you more noticeable, to both friend and foe, so clearly both the advantage and disadvantage are related to that in the case of peacocks, etc. (It isn't that the peahen 'prefers' display, but that she has a genetically determined disposition to *notice* advertising.) I don't see this as an inherent problem with the theory, although you'd have to come up with a credible argument for the offsetting benefit in the case of spirituality.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:49:33 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: hard wired for spirituality
Message:
The most widely proposed theory for why the brain seems hardwired for spirituality, that I know of, is that it gives us hope that all is not in vain. Supposedly, if we evolved with a brain capable of understanding the inevitability of old age and death, but with no compulsion to believe in a loving God, the constant state of anxiety our impending doom would leave us in would render us incapable of defending ourselves against predators and the elements. It's a weak theory, as far as I'm concerned, but this seems to be the one most favored by the 'experts'.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:19:17 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: hard wired for spirituality
Message:
Jerry:

Yeah, it is weak. Animals seem to get along fine without it. Perhaps our 'higher functioning' demands something like that, but basically it strikes me as one of the 'maybe' theories, that just aren't very convincing.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:42:00 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: The adaptationist fallacy
Message:
I can't see why such a mechanism would have emerged out of natural selection, since it seems only marginally related to any survival potential

Hi Scott,

There is a common assumption made by both creationists and some evolutionists that for something to be hard-wired it ought to have a clear survival function; that any human characteristics, physical or behavioural, which lack such an explanation pose a problem for natural selection. Creationists will offer examples of these as evidence against evolution, while ultra-adaptationist theorists will look for the adaptive value of pretty well anything and everything - eg. Randy Thornhill's 'adaptive value of rape' theory.

(Other non-adpative characterists might be relics of structures or behaviours no longer carrying their original design purpose. These may be subsequently co-adapted into new evolutionary structures. eg. it is now commonly believed that the earliest wings were not evolved for flying, but for maintaining body temperature in their reptilian hosts. A strong wind plus natural selection did the rest.)

There are, in fact, countless examples of what Gould and Eldridge termed 'spandrels' to be found among life-forms. These are attributes which in themselves confer no evolutionary benefit, but are necessary by-products of the possession of other attributes which are adaptive. A male's having nipples makes no difference to the number of offspring he leaves behind but for females to have nipples (with their obvious adaptive value) it is necessary at the earliest stages of development before sex has been determined for both men and women to posses nipples in a rudimentary form. Hence, males nipples are good examples of spandrels.

I think spandrels might account for 'seeing' light, 'hearing' music and 'tasting' nectar. There seems to be a 'K' experience for each primary sense - surely no coincidence - and I doubt any could occur without the activation of the relevant visual, auditory and olfactory brain centres. Similarly the 'Word' might be considered a 'felt' experience.

I suspect meditation experiences are 'perceptual noise' phenomena which result from switching things off which were originally 'designed' (in the blind watchmaker sense) to be left switched on. Though other factors such as emotion and biofeedback might play a part in generating 'spiritual' experiences.

But this doesn't entirely explain why premie feel euphoric and bliss out just 'focusing within' does it? Or why they feel 'love' in the presence of their Master. My own theory for this feel-good factor centres partly on the evolutionary importance of the breath and the need for infants to monitor their airwaves. Also, given that infants are disposed to bonding with their mother or primary carer, and that people as a whole are disposed towards falling in love, there is no reason that our biochemical 'love wiring' (which might otherwise lie latent)
can't easily be transferred by classical conditioning to become triggered by pretty well anything. Little fat millionaire fanatastists included.

(I explained all this a bit more in my 'Journeys' entry.)

I may be way off the mark here, but I see no need for 'spiritual' phenomena to be given their own explanatory space simply because their origins are obscure. The circumstantial evidence looks pretty good to me.

Nige the Neodarwinian

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:48:07 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: The adaptationist fallacy
Message:
Nigel:

I know there are explanations, but they seem like 'klugs' to me. In other words, they don't seem very elegant and are reminiscent of the 'theories' used to explain the anomalies observed in the Copernican theory of the planets. These theories often don't allow us to predict anything, for instance.

'I think spandrels might account for 'seeing' light, 'hearing' music and 'tasting' nectar. There seems to be a 'K' experience for each primary sense - surely no coincidence - and I doubt any could occur without the activation of the relevant visual, auditory and olfactory brain centres. Similarly the 'Word' might be considered a 'felt' experience.'

Again, the natural conclusion would be that these capacities are the orgin of the senses, evidence for creation. The theory that they are 'necessary but not causal' seems like another klug. Anyway, it's sort of an odd coincidence that they seem so convincing to us. 'Realler than real' is what people say. Again, why conclude that they are not real, but the sense perceptions that derive from them, together with the image of the world they suggest, are? It seems slightly perverse.

Independent of the conclusion these theories seem designed to support they just wouldn't be very noteworthy. Frederick Turner says that we *are* hardwired with these 'neurocharms' that are not only interesting, but virtually define our limits and proclivities as humans. In other words, they allow us to organize the world in very specific ways, and preclude the viability of other possible organization schemes that might be more logical. This doesn't settle the question of whether the neurocharms are the result of design or evolution, but it shifts the burden of proof onto evolution.

Sometimes I wonder what sort of conclusion one might draw from the evidence if he were completely unbiased. That is, to what extent does the desired conclusion determine the theory? If you didn't give a damn about the conclusion, or if any conclusion were of equal value, then what would you think?

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:54:17 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: 'Peverse?' I think not
Message:
Again, the natural conclusion would be that these capacities are the orgin of the senses, evidence for creation. The theory that they are 'necessary but not causal' seems like another klug. Anyway, it's sort of an odd coincidence that they seem so convincing to us. 'Realler than real' is what people say. Again, why conclude that they are not real, but the sense perceptions that derive from them, together with the image of the world they suggest, are? It seems slightly perverse.

Agreed the K experiences are 'real', but only in the sense that the perceptual systems generating them are real. But for me it is about necessity in theory building. Physical sensitivity to the environment (with variations here and there, as in bats' radar) is universal among mammals and has obvious adaptive value. K expereriences have no clear evolutionary purpose and are far from universal. As far as any behavioural or neurophysiological evidence goes (at least that I am aware of), other animals don't appear to meditate or indulge in religious rituals - though Neanderthal man seem to have gone in for some of that stuff, if you believe the anthropologists. In most cases critters are hypervigilant compared to humans - too risky to 'go within', even if they had sufficient self-awareness to consciously redirect their attention at will, which is debatable. Lizards may bask in the sun, but that is about body-temperature regulation. Whether they even possess consciousness as we understand it is another matter.

Our senses almost certainly passed through a rudimentary stage - as with the more primitive organisms still extant which, say, demonstrate simple light-sensitivity or tactile 'awareness'. But the survival value even in these lies in the detection of food or avoidance of danger. Is that really such a peverse ordering of preferred hypotheses..?

BTW: For 'necessary but not causal' read 'inevitable byproduct'. Products are not causes in my dictionary.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:14:05 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: 'Peverse?'
Message:
Nigel:

Perverse because there's apparently no room for the rather obvious theory that the experience is more than just an interesting artifact. I mean, are we going to evolve to the point that we can solve complex social problems through pure intellect, or by designing faultless contracts, by regarding this sort of thing as a side effect that's easily dealt with by a pill of some sort? I think you have to at least consider the possibility that this package is not just a necessary byproduct, but 'essential.'

Agreed the K experiences are 'real', but only in the sense that the perceptual systems generating them are real.

Not limiting the discussion to K experiences, but also including near death and out of body and other experiences that seem related, I'm going to propose that they seem real because we preceive reality through the senses, and if these experiences are somehow a prerequisite to binding the senses into a 'human' pattern, then the experiences would seem *more* real than mere sense-perceived physicality because they *are* more real. That is, we could be perceiving something with far greater potential impact on us than whether the wind will give us a chill. This seems more coherent than the notion that they're a byproduct, either necessary or circumstancial.

Humans are certainly more complex than animals, but that just leads back to the same unanswerables. So, you really believe that the complexity and higher functioning is a satisfactory explanation for the ubiquity of the experience, rather than the other way around? I mean, where does your theory leave us with respect to the veto power of the determined terrorist, whose irrationality seems so impervious to debate and argument, not to mention detection? I mean, granted he's wrong, but...

Aspects of the experience can apparently be produced in nearly anyone. Animals have the same senses that we do, yet they don't have anything like this as far as we know. Perhaps they do though, and we just haven't designed an experiment that detects it. If they don't, then it could hardly be a byproduct of sensual accuity, since nearly all animals are more sensate than we are. We are decidedly 'lower functioning' when it comes to the senses.

BTW: For 'necessary but not causal' read 'inevitable byproduct'. Products are not causes in my dictionary.

OK, I'll bite. Why 'inevitable?' Furthermore, one thing can be inevitable with respect to another and still be either cause or effect, so we need some additional information to sort out which is which. You can't presume that because something is inevitably correlated with something else that you therefore know which direction the causality runs. The fact is, you don't. Neither do I. I just hope the answer prooves to be more intriguing and satisfying than the theories posed by evolutionists so far. Suppose we aren't talking about God. Suppose we're just talking about a misperceived reality, a misplaced dimension or two... or three.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 05:07:48 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: i would offer this as survival value:
Message:
any one I know who has 'made it' into the Light all the way--that is, not just 'watching' it but being drawn inside of it so there was no difference between observer and the observed, have emerged telling of having had all their questions answered, of having finally known what they always wanted to know, of the Light having literally illuminated things completely for them that they had wanted to understand all their lives. This includes people who received knowledge and people who knew nothing of maharji or meditation but were taken there thru drugs, near death experiences,religious experiences or other unexpected developments.
the illumation endured after emerging from the Light.Their ability to perceive and see the world around them was significantly changed by it. The appreciation and sense of understanding continued. If they succeeded in achieving it more than once, their penetrating perception increased.

I myself had such an experience. I definitely can say that it boosts survival abilities. Martial arts practitioners develop far more highly honed senses than the ordinary person, increasing their survival acuity, and the best attain it by meditative practices, not just physical practice of the kadas.

the light seems to give mental intelligence. the sound seems to givve emotional/intuitive intelligence. when i was a gung ho premie in NYC, i made a habit of wearing earplugs all day so i didnt hear the harsh, grating, jarring noise of the city and what people said. I found as a result that I could read people's eyes and body language and unspoken feelings to an astonishing degree. That was definitely increased survival ability.

and as far as animals meditating, any cat owner knows that cats meditate!

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 23:38:59 (GMT)
From: JHB
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: Which Questions?
Message:
Janet, you wrote:-

any one I know who has 'made it' into the Light all the way--that is, not just 'watching' it but being drawn inside of it so there was no difference between observer and the observed, have emerged telling of having had all their questions answered, of having finally known what they always wanted to know, of the Light having literally illuminated things completely for them that they had wanted to understand all their lives.

Can you give any examples of specific questions that were answered, and afterwards, could the experiencer remember the specific answers? Could it be that there was a feeling of there being no questions that required answers, rather than all questions being answered?

John the questions all experiences since finding this damned forum:-)

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:20:56 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: JHB
Subject: Which Questions?
Message:
John:

I had an OOB experience long before I entered the cult. Basically that experience answered the one *big* question of whether or not I was my body, and more precisely just where my physical existence fit in the larger scheme of things. Those answers weren't especially helpful to organizing my life, and they probably generated even more quesions about how *that* experience is related to my everyday existence. Still haven't figured that out.

To tell the truth I wouldn't be terribly disappointed to find that the experience was entirely induced by electrochemical functions, because that would suggest that electrochemical functions have more promise than I thought, or than has been previously demonstrated. But, I honestly doubt that's the case. For me, I'm about 98% convinced that there is something very significant going on beyond what we call the physical, which simply means to me that we have a rather underdeveloped conception of reality. I think we're trapped in a sort of backwater. There's no great urgency about it though. We'll eventually make it out. But again, it would be somewhat gratifying to discover that I'm wrong too, because the proof would still have to expand the borders of what we know.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 22:17:39 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: What does 'real' mean?
Message:
'Agreed the K experiences are 'real', but only in the sense that the perceptual systems generating them are real.'

Let's generalize to qualia (our qualitative experiences) in general, which K experiences are a subset of. Why do you say that they are real 'only in the sense that the perceptual systems generating them are real'? How are you defining 'real'? Do you simply mean 'material'? When you use the word 'generating' what are you implying? What do you think qualia are 'generated' from? All we really know is that perceptual systems seem to trigger qualia. Do we even know that they trigger all our qualia? What about the qualia, such as a feeling of expansion, that occur when there is a lack of activity in a certain area of the brain?

Labeling qualia as less than fully 'real' is like some spiritual folks calling the material word an 'illusion'. It is a subjective value judgement and a too easy way to dismiss what can't (so far) be explained. That's my opinion anyway.

One problem is that the word 'real' is used to mean various things. It might mean 'material' or 'accurately representing something material' or 'honest' or 'having actual substance' or a host of other things.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 17:57:36 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: G
Subject: What I meant by 'real'...
Message:
..was real in both senses: objective (as with Scott's 'consequences' reply, and subjective (your 'qualia' or whatever you want to call it).

Both depend on a living, waking brain - unless you have other evidence. Ho hum, I think we've been here before... ;)

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 03:40:20 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: 'real'
Message:
Nigel:

Both depend on a living, waking brain - unless you have other evidence.

If a tree falls... Actually, my experience and the experience of most people who've had OOB and ND experiences is that the brain got in the way. There's a sort of tautology, after all. I mean, if it hadn't gotten in the way then you'd have no idea it ever *might* have happened to me. This is actually one of the possible scenarios, so to be rigorously scientific about the thing you'd have to at least consider the possibility, and design an experiment to test it. It may be wasted effort, if you're right... but you can't presume that. The other avenue is to prove that the qualia are *completely* explained by electrochemical impulses. Good luck on that. If something is real, then it *will* have consequences, and we just have to arrange to be there when they happen.

One thought occurs to me. We've developed an extraordinary ability to perceive, via various extensions, at extremely small dimensions and very high frequencies. We are not very good at noticing patterns of extremely low frequency. Even something on the scale of decades, like el nino, took us quite a while to grasp. So we're tuned to some kinds of subtleties, but regularly tune out others. And we completely lack whatever extensions it takes to comprehend most of the universe (what physicists call the 'dark stuff'). It's not dark because it's evil. It's dark because we can't see it, and until very recently didn't even know it was there.

Suppose, for instance, that there's a being whose sensations occur on the scale of millennia, instead of microseconds. Such a being would seem pretty inanimate to us, wouldn't it? How could we tell it was alive? Is being alive simply a matter of being fortuitously scaled to accommodate human perception?

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 21:27:29 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: waking brain
Message:
Some of our subjective experiences do have consequences, they influence our behavior.

'Both depend on a living, waking brain'

Considering that I'm not dead nor can I ask say a rock if it experiences, it's hard for me to disprove that statement. But I've witnessed strange events that lead me to believe that death is not THE END. That is not scientific evidence, but it's enough for me to believe. I'm talking about my belief here, not what we know, so I don't expect you to agree. As to what goes on in deep sleep, who knows?

When you say 'waking' are you including dream states?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:30:25 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: G
Subject: What does 'real' mean?
Message:
G:

To me 'real' means 'having an impact or consequence.' We are left with the problem of detecting the consequence, which may involve sorting out a very complex pattern or series of events that don't seem significant within our normal frame of reference. But it's odd that the 'sorting out' involves, in this case, utilizing the very item under study (the binding of the senses into a coherent human pattern). That's the problem. And to me, it seems a special sort of problem not to be taken lightly or for granted. In fact, I'm not going to give it the conventional label, because that's a side track.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:57:47 (GMT)
From: Moldy Warp
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: How do you know chimps don't meditate??
Message:
x
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:31:14 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: Moldy Warp
Subject: easy way to find out: teach it to a signing ape
Message:
and then ask them what they experience when they do it.
it's all there, waiting for someone to do it and report what takes place.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:24:09 (GMT)
From: Bob
Email: None
To: Moldy Warp
Subject: Moldy!! --- they are enlightened!! nt
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:12:19 (GMT)
From: Moldy Warp
Email: None
To: Bob
Subject: God Bob - you're right - like dolphins!
Message:
Not to mention amoebas and duck-billed platuses (or should that be 'platipi?)...
Obviously the Hindu- juju - reincarnationists have got it the wrong way round... It is really the worst fate to come back as a human bean... and especially a devotee of Krishna (AKA Rawat of course)doomed to circle the wheel of karma endlessly incarnating as a follower of a hamster!
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:03:40 (GMT)
From: hamzen
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Otherwise known as natural drift
Message:
In car crashes suspect that dmt gets activated which is why time slows down etc, also that release of certain lovey trippy chemicals reduces the fear of death, couple of possible bonuses survival wise.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:55:32 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: hamzen
Subject: reducing the fear of death
Message:
How would a reduction in the fear of death have survival value?
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:11:19 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: G
Subject: a possibility
Message:
A certain calming effect, and slowing of time, might allow for more rational actions to try to prevent the death, or enhance the possibility of survival. It helps keep the individual from getting overloaded and paralyzed by fear, increasing the possiblity of survival. That would be my guess.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 02:09:12 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: a possibility
Message:
In extreme life threatening circumstances, the mind and body go into autopiolot. Large doses of adrenaline are released, oxygen is flooded toward the muscles, concentration is at a peak, and we're poised for 'fight or flight' as they say, no thinking required, just do or die. There's nothing slow or calming at these desperate times in our lives.

The theory on how our tendency toward spirituality helps with survival states that without this calming influence, we would perpetually be in a state of 'fight or flight' because the knowledge of death is constantly with us, unlike less cognitive creatures who only encounter death when it's looking them in the face, like a rabbit that's just rounded the corner to see a hungry wolf coming it's way, or an antelope that suddenly catches a wiff of a predator on the wind. Otherwise their lives are a relaxed, grazing peacefully affair, oblivious of any impending doom. We have no such luck.

An understanding that death is always near is always with us, and would keep us constantly on autopiolot for survival. The body and mind can only withstand this 'fight or flight' state of being for so long. But the soothing effect of the idea that God resides in his heaven gazing lovingly upon us removes us from that state so that, like the beasts in the field who are in no imminent danger, we too can graze peacefully.

So the theory goes.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:40:46 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: ok but
Message:
That (the calming and slowing) should have (and perhaps has) developed even before humans evolved, and should not require any concept of God. Why should a concept of God be required? All you should need is the release of some chemicals in the brain and a resultant mind state.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 20:22:45 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: G
Subject: I agree
Message:
I don't think the concept of God is in any way connected, or at least there isn't any evidence of that that I'm aware of.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 11:39:58 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: G
Subject: yo! i dont hear anyone basing this discussion on
Message:
facts: to wit--near death experiences, unasked for and survived and reported.
god isnt made up. god is something encountered and described. those who encounter it tell others.
it isnt an idea. its something that happens to someone and they recover to speak of it.

you guys are spinning way out there into sheer speculation and i dont hear a one of you bothering to look at what IS.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 13:18:57 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: Don't underestimate the brain...
Message:
I knew an epileptic who sometimes had seizures at work. After such episodes he would report 'real' experiences such as being in a cops and robbers chase on the planet Mars - borne out by his running around the office and cowering behind desks.

In this case, temporal lobe seizures were to blame. But as I see it the brains primary function is to create a 'reality' for itself using all available information - internal and external - a capacity which can manifest in all sorts of alternate realities when its physiology or chemistry are disturbed.

For example, US pilots are trained in the world's largest centrifuge which whisks them around in an imitation cockpit at incredibly high speed to test the effects of g-forces. They routinely bliss out as the brain starts pumping natural opiates to counter the stress. They also go through NDE-type 'tunnels of light' as the visual cortex starts to shut down. (An in-flight camera shows their ecstatic grins.) And although the pilots I saw being interviewed placed no spiritual interpretations on their experiences, they obviously found them profoundly moving and, in a sense, meaningful.

Obviously I can't comment on your own experience, Janet, but it take a lot to pursuade me that any god was involved, given what else the brain is capable of.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 14:43:14 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Don't underestimate the brain...
Message:
Nigel:

I don't think there's any real imperative to fit a conception of God into an experience that seems to contain it's own answers on that score, none of which fit very well into what we probably mean by the term 'God' in everyday parlance. It's a little like the conclusion that Centaurs exist, from the evidence provided to the Greeks by barbarian horsemen. We don't yet have the structures to accurately interpret these experiences, or test them for that matter. If we did, we'd know what we were talking about...

What you're pointing out with your co-worker are delusions, which may or may not mean to him what I mean by 'real.' I've had dreams that seemed very real, and that I would describe as real. I've also had hallucinations that I'd typically call real. Yet, at some place in the back of my mind I knew they weren't, even at the time. I have precisely two experiences, significantly out of the ordinary, that carried no such back-of-the-mind reservations. If those were delusional, then they cast serious doubt on whether *this current experience* is real, or precisely how one would arrive at a coherent definition of an 'undisturbed' state, other than some sort of mean or average. Obvious problems with that, of course.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 19:32:41 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: Don't underestimate the brain...
Message:
What you're pointing out with your co-worker are delusions, which may or may not mean to him what I mean by 'real.' I've had dreams that seemed very real, and that I would describe as real. I've also had hallucinations that I'd typically call real. Yet, at some place in the back of my mind I knew they weren't, even at the time. I have precisely two experiences, significantly out of the ordinary, that carried no such back-of-the-mind reservations. If those were delusional, then they cast serious doubt on whether *this current experience* is real, or precisely how one would arrive at a coherent definition of an 'undisturbed' state, other than some sort of mean or average. Obvious problems with that, of course.

Minor point first: a delusion is a demonstrably false belief. The epileptic guy I referred to had overwhelmingly convincing hallucinations - total altered reality experiences.

I take your point about the difficulty in defining an 'undisturbed' state which is objectively real, but I don't think we need waste too much time there if our subjective reality coincides with those of others and also with established scientific laws.

This isn't to say I am NOT hallicinating a world full of people and scientific laws, but if I am it is one that is remarkably coherent and internally consistent over successive decades (if my memories of those decades are not also illusory!) and, let's face it, this the only reality I have to deal with and it seems real enough to me.


Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 21:26:17 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Don't underestimate the brain...
Message:
Nigel:

Stability and consistency are very important. One has to ask what there is to gain by undertaking a radical shift in orientation, if indeed that's what we have to do to 'catch up.' On the other hand, I think there are stable and consistent ways of going about this. It amounts to the same sort of openness we demonstrate in learing a new language. We need not relinquish the old until we're at least reasonably secure and comfortable in the new, but we have to at least try the new out from time to time to test its fitness. The woman who used to do the sexually ambiguous 'Pat' character on Saturday Night Live does a one-person show where she talks about how she deals with some of this stuff. She's a religious person, but sometimes just decides to suspend her belief and live as though there were no God or higher being for 2 days out of 7, just to see how it affects her. Going the other direction is a bit trickier, of course, and since there are so many side roads I'm not sure it's as instructive. I think I'd also find that most religions are fairly inarticulate, and even incoherent. They don't have much to offer, at least for me. However, I'm obviously not an atheist, or even an agnostic.

RB Fuller had an interesting cosmology that involved concentric omnidirectional 'zones of relevance' with 'almost relevant' zones both inward and outward, before encountering the 'starkly irrelevant' in both directions. My conception is that this other reality is starkly irrelevant to us inwardly and outwardly, as we are to it, for the time being. I can't see precisely how that can change, but intuitively I feel that it must. Maybe it's almost relevant to me.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 19:47:37 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: ...it's got magical powers
Message:
Poof! It creates the mind out of nothing.

'Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!'
- Bullwinkle

Isn't this creationist thinking?

'Nothing comes from nothing.'
- Sir Isaac Newton

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Tues, May 15, 2001 at 03:45:23 (GMT)
From: Scott
Email: None
To: G
Subject: ...it's got magical powers
Message:
G:

Seems to me that you have to adopt something like that position whether you're creationist or not. The difference is that the creationists don't bother to be reductionist. They adopt the naive attitude that the stages in the process or optional.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Tues, May 15, 2001 at 16:22:03 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Scott
Subject: Why do you have to?
Message:
Why do you have to adopt a position like that?

I think that materialists are doing the same thing when it comes to the notion of the brain 'generating' (read creating) the mind. They don't specify the stages, they don't say how this could happen, just like Creationists not saying, for example, how God could poof Adam and Eve into existence out of nothing or form them directly from clay (and where did Cain's wife come from?). I'm aware that much has been discovered about brain function, but that's not the whole story. For example, an emotion is not simply a matter of a certain chemical being present in a certain part of the brain, there is also the actual experience of the emotion, which is not the same thing as the chemical.

The brain does seem to condition the mind, so it does seem reasonable to assume that mind and matter are somehow related and that there is a direct causal link from brain state to mental state (but I don't believe in all cases) and vica versa. But even that doesn't have to be true, they could both be governed by something else, but that notion seems a bit too far-fetched to me.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Tues, May 15, 2001 at 21:30:35 (GMT)
From: Stonor
Email: None
To: G
Subject: Why do you have to?
Message:
Hi G (and ScottT!)

I like your thinking here, G. Yes, what about the experience of those emotions, what's that all about? By the way, G, I read a fascinating description/discussion of 'colour' today - can't understand all the details yet, but I definitely haven't read that explanation before! I'll try to tell you more about it soon via email.

(Where/when did you watch Rocky and Bullwinkle, G? I know you're not from Canuckland. I grew up on it in the black and white days, - loved the Fractured Fairy Tales, and Professor Peabody's history, and I will never forget Boris and Natasha!)

And I hope you're well, Scott. I enjoy reading your posts! Thinking about that 'charisma' discussion, I wonder how many people would think he had any 'charisma' if he was just taking a bus home from work, all alone like everyone else! ;-)

Anna

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 03:55:43 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: yo! i dont hear anyone basing this discussion on
Message:
Janet:

Those perceptions, including my own, definitely count as data or 'facts.' Because it's mostly recounting of subjective experience then the problem is in the interpretation.

-Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 16:57:48 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: yo! i dont hear anyone basing this discussion on
Message:
you guys are spinning way out there into sheer speculation and i dont hear a one of you bothering to look at what IS.

Janet, what IS is a mystery still waiting to be unravelled. What IS has yet to be discovered. Right now, there's a lot of theorizing going on, but no hard answers. If you want to take the side that God IS, and life after death IS, fine, but that doesn't mean that's actually WHAT is. That's just what you believe.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 15:41:13 (GMT)
From: janet
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: ok so you want to take it back to the point of
Message:
speaking of how organs were formed in the first place, not just what they perceive. discussions like how di organs form that could sense vibration and turn it into sound, while another one formed to gather photons and render them into colors and shapes and movement, and another succeeded in shaping itself chemically and physically to render contact with the world into touch and heat and cold and pleasure and pain and irritation, and how did those contribute to or detract from survival and propagation, individually and species wise.
i found , oddly enough, the urantia book and rupert sheldrake, my best help so far.
doesnt it seem that its all about interpreting energy? interior and exterior? everything that formed, did so in response to the environment, and was made FROM the enviroment.
now that takes us into the questions of whats really
out there and whats really in here. is it solid? is it energy? we percieve it our way. what do other life forms perceive it as? can we ever know?
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 15:47:48 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: janet
Subject: a good point
Message:
People report near-death experiences even after there was no measurable brain activity. I think the idea that they made up the experiences as they were waking up is a stretch beyond credibility. I don't buy it.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:07:48 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Why spandrels?
Message:
Hi Nige,

I can see where some theories of evolutionary psychology do stretch the limits of credibility (aspects of Dawkin's selfish gene, for instance, like when bees sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the hive), but I don't think Gould's theory for spandrels is any less of a stretch. I find it mostly just a weak attempt to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle.

Jerry the Sophist

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:59:43 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: Why spandrels?
Message:
I agree. It's as though there is this amazing coincidence and synergy in a package or structure that works amazingly well, and is 'greater than the sum of it's parts' even if it's not fully up and running, and all we have are theories about why various components *might* have come into being. Not very impressive, really. I mean, even if you're an evolutionist you have to be somewhat disappointed by the lack of elegance.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:36:35 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: Dawkins has no problem with spandrels..
Message:
..in spite of his big differences with Gould on various finer evolutionary points. Why do you consider spandrels to be a stretch? (I know Dennett tried to put the boot into the theory with the result that even Dawkins accused Dennett of 'missing the point' in Unweaving the Rainbow.)

Surely spandrels are an inevitable evolutionary phenomenon? It would be more of a problem for me if they didn't occur.

I don't carry a morris dancing gene, but am free to morris dance (at aleast I would be if I hadn't just knackered my knee!) I have all the requisite physiological components and adequate sense of rhythm (but fortunately enough self-respect not to morris dance), but none of said components were adapted for morris dancing. Hmm, maybe not such a great example, since the behaviour in question is far from universal. But you know what I mean...

Ok, how about: why do we yawn? Nobody knows for sure - it won't affect our reproductive success - unless we fall asleep on the job. But it seems yawning must be related to some evolutionary adaptation, perhaps one which will become obvious when yawning is better understood, since all mammals do it.

I certainly prefer the spandrel explanation for so-called 'inner' experiences over the 'fear of death' hypothesis. But the latter would provide obvious motivation for sustaining belief generally.

We are probably dealing with a complex collection of phenomena with many interacting evolutionary causes and things to factor-in(eg. the social behaviour of gurus often bears striking similarities to the social behaviour of alpha male primates).

Anyway, I think we're agreed on a biochemical basis for human spirituality, whatever our preferred takes on it.


Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:47:24 (GMT)
From: G
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: a possible problem with 'spandrels'
Message:
A possible problem with the 'spandrel' concept is that it could be used uncritically to supposedly account for all traits that don't have survival value. You can get into tautological thinking, where if a trait doesn't have survival value, you just assume it's a 'spandrel'. This could be used as a band-aid to cover problems with neo-Darwinism.

So how do you test a trait to see if it is a spandrel? Surely 'spandrel' should mean more than just 'a trait lacking survival value', that is pretty meaningless. You should have to provide clear evidence that a trait really is a spandrel, that survival pressures indirectly but totally account for it, before calling it a spandrel.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 01:00:51 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: G
Subject: To G and Nigel
Message:
It is kind of a filler, isn't it?

I know I've read the tortured, and I think absurd, arguments Dawkins has made for the evolution of homosexuality. Is that a spandrel too? How?

Nigel, have you ever read anything in Dawkins that provides any explanation for that?

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:53:39 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: To G and Nigel
Message:
Joe:

I know this isn't exactly PC, but why wouldn't homosexuality simply be a latent potential in everyone? It's not difficult to explain it's manifestation at a collective level, since it clearly is a population control. What's more difficult to explain is why it isn't more widely tolerated? I can't see much of a downside for heterosexual males, for instance. One possible explanation has to do with the *kinds* of social bonds that are formed, and their effect on the child rearing function of families. But I've discussed that before. It seems difficult to get from the collective to the individual motivations in both cases. There's a collective 'plus' and a collective 'minus' but that doesn't help very much to explain why individuals behave as they do, or whether anyone even considers the consequences of anything. Then again, maybe we're smarter than we look.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 07:36:47 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: Gay Genes (ot)
Message:
Hi Joe,

(By 'filler' do you mean off-topic? - I'd say the biological basis of spiritual stuff is more relevant to K than lots of the US political debates we've seen here ;)

No I haven't seen Dawkins explain homosexuality by gene theory, but I'm not sure he's really tried to. If gayness were 'hard-wired' (which is far from established and pretty dubious, IMO) gene theorists would have to fall back on some kind of 'helpers-at-the-nest' mechanism to rationalise it. This would only work in evolutionary terms if the siblings of the gay person showed at least twice the reproductive success they would otherwise have.

I remember Dawkins saying something in The Extended Phenotype to the effect that genes which express themselves in one characteristic nowadays might have served an entirely different purpose in a different ancestral environment - which might apply if gay genes were shown to exist. But he wasn't exactly endorsing the idea, I dont think.

The evidence for 'gay genes' is flimsy at best - and based mostly on physiological, rather than genetic evidence, ie. some common brain configuration in adult gay males. The link with the genes has been assumed rather than demonstrated. (And to date mainly claimed by one theorist only based on his own research findings.) I think too little is understood about the interaction between genes and environment during development - including the nine months between conception and birth - to make such assumptions.

Anyway, does genes vs. environment help gays much either way? For the moral-majority types, an environmental basis for homosexuality = 'bad learning' and 'being led astray' while a genetic basis would be seen as a 'malfunction' that may be screened against or weeded out by eugenic intervention. A bit of a no-win situation, I reckon.

IMO on available evidence 'gay genes' is as much a crap theory as 'criminal genes' or 'morris dancing genes'.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 22:28:12 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: I don't think so (ot)
Message:
Hey, I'm at Joy's in Seattle. Nice, this place. Doesn't our picture look great? Thanks Richard.

By 'filler' I meant Spandrels, not OT.

Regarding the 'gay gene' they haven't found one, but given that gayness has been around since the begging of the species it appears logical that it is hard wired in some way. My brothers were raised in the same enviornment as me, more or less, and are straight. They haven't found a single 'gay gene' but it may well be more than one gene involved. But I think the scientific evidence, although not conclusive, is very strong for the genetic component being very strong.

Frankly Nigel, I don't think the existence of a 'gay gene' is even necessary. There probably isn't a gene for jealousy either, but that has evolved, for obvious reasons.

Studies with identical twins raised in different environments show a very strong genetic component, but it isn't 100%. It also may involve hormone levels in the womb, but evolution should have fixed that, too, given the lower likelihood of reproduction for the resulting genes. And I have personally heard Dawkins give his absurd (taking care of nephews) explanation himself, when he spoke in San Francisco and John Cleese moderated. The audience wasn't too happy with the explantion and actually Dawkins didn't seem to happy with it either.

I don't really know if the genetic basis for homosexuality 'helps' or 'hurts,' but I think that's irrelevent.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sun, May 13, 2001 at 09:12:04 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: I don't think so (ot)
Message:
Hey, I'm at Joy's in Seattle. Nice, this place. Doesn't our picture look great? Thanks Richard.

Say Hi! to Joy from me. Richard too if he's around. Yeah, great photo.

By 'filler' I meant Spandrels, not OT.

Ok, I'm with you now. Yes, I agree that spandrels can be called in to explain anything that lacks an obvious adaptive purpose. Trouble is, like male nipples, such byproducts will inevitably exist and the difficulty lies in demonstrating whether or not something is a spandrel or adaptation in its own right - or even a bit of both.

Regarding the 'gay gene' they haven't found one, but given that gayness has been around since the begging of the species it appears logical that it is hard wired in some way. My brothers were raised in the same enviornment as me, more or less, and are straight. They haven't found a single 'gay gene' but it may well be more than one gene involved. But I think the scientific evidence, although not conclusive, is very strong for the genetic component being very strong.

Unless someone, somewhere can identitify a speficic gene which is carried by gays but not heteros (or vice versa) the concept of 'gay gene' is meaningless, I reckon.

Frankly Nigel, I don't think the existence of a 'gay gene' is even necessary. There probably isn't a gene for jealousy either, but that has evolved, for obvious reasons.

Hmm, I'm sure jealousy must be coded somewhere in the human genotype, since the potential is there in everyone - but when a trait is universal it is again meaningless to think in terms of someone carrying the 'jealousy gene' or whatever. Especially when there are very definite example of causal genes such as that for Huntingdon's disease. Complex behaviours involve hundreds of genes which may be switched 'on' or 'off' at any given moment - all interacting both with each other and the environment in unpredicatble ways.

Studies with identical twins raised in different environments show a very strong genetic component, but it isn't 100%. It also may involve hormone levels in the womb, but evolution should have fixed that, too, given the lower likelihood of reproduction for the resulting genes. And I have personally heard Dawkins give his absurd (taking care of nephews) explanation himself, when he spoke in San Francisco and John Cleese moderated. The audience wasn't too happy with the explantion and actually Dawkins didn't seem to happy with it either.

Actually, homosexuality only looks adaptively dysfunctional when you make a rigid 'either/or' distinction between homo and hetero. Until recently ethologists used to think the predominant hetero 'Pan Troglodite' chimps were our closest evolutionary relatives, but now they reckon Bonobos are genetically closer. Bonobos are notoriously bisexual - both sexes are - and will go around rogering all and sundry just by way of saying 'Good morning'. They use sex as much for social bonding and avoiding conflict as for reproduction. I'm not suggesting humans are like that necessarily but it makes you realise the difficulty of trying pin down ANY behaviour to its ostensibly adaptive function. Could be we are all born with a potential for gayness, but that certain environmental triggers are necessary for it to express itself.

I don't really know if the genetic basis for homosexuality 'helps' or 'hurts,' but I think that's irrelevent.

I agree it's irrelevant to whether or not gay genes exist - but quite often a person's theoretical stand will be influenced by their personal politics (eg. many examples from the 'genes for intelligence' debate with right-wingers like Herrnstein and Murray arguing for 'genes' and the lefties going for 'environment'. They will tend to set up systems of measurement and observation which will confirm their prejudices and make very selective use of the evidence).

More just a sociological point, really.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Mon, May 14, 2001 at 05:17:45 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Monkey Bi-ness(ot)
Message:
Nigel:

Actually, homosexuality only looks adaptively dysfunctional when you make a rigid 'either/or' distinction between homo and hetero. Until recently ethologists used to think the predominant hetero 'Pan Troglodite' chimps were our closest evolutionary relatives, but now they reckon Bonobos are genetically closer. Bonobos are notoriously bisexual - both sexes are - and will go around rogering all and sundry just by way of saying 'Good morning'. They use sex as much for social bonding and avoiding conflict as for reproduction. I'm not suggesting humans are like that necessarily but it makes you realise the difficulty of trying pin down ANY behaviour to its ostensibly adaptive function. Could be we are all born with a potential for gayness, but that certain environmental triggers are necessary for it to express itself.

I had a hunch about Bonobos. Had a roommate once... But could the fact that one was married to Cher explain the findings, or was it the other way around?

--Scott 'overworked to the point of extreme silliness' T.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 16:07:26 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Gay Genes (ot)
Message:
Nigel:

Good points. BTW, I have a friend who met her husband during a Morris dancing class. They produced two offspring, both boys, but I don't know whether the boys are Morris dancers too.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:15:10 (GMT)
From: Moldy Warp
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: But I know some folks with Morris dancing jeans nt
Message:
x
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Sat, May 12, 2001 at 23:22:51 (GMT)
From: PatC
Email: None
To: Moldy Warp
Subject: And gay spandrel jeans or is that spandex nt
Message:
k
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 15:13:50 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Dawkins has no problem with spandrels..
Message:
Surely spandrels are an inevitable evolutionary phenomenon? It would be more of a problem for me if they didn't occur.

I'm not saying they don't occur anymore than the EP theory for altruism is false. All I'm saying is in a rush to find answers, some of these theories are given more credence than they deserve, considering the evidence there is to support them. Spandrels, at this point, is basically a way of saying, 'I don't know why this is, but hey, how's about this idea?!' The same is true for evolutionary psychologists when they try to reconcile the selfish gene theory with altruism. Nothing they've said yet do I find convincing. The same with the theory for faith in God, that it eases our anxieties so we're better able to function and survive. Hmmm, maybe, maybe not. You see where I'm coming from. I'm just being a skeptic about all this. I find that's the safest ground to stand on. So far.

Now, about that morris dancing gene. Hmmmm....

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 17:16:45 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: Dawkins has no problem with spandrels..
Message:
You see where I'm coming from. I'm just being a skeptic about all this. I find that's the safest ground to stand on.

You said it, Jerry. Absolutely! But with the proviso that evidence-based speculation tends to be safer territory than the approach of those who would give parity to all forms of speculation, including some which are merely faith-based. Evolutionists, like anyone else, should doubt their own hypotheses and seek ways of testing them. Evolution itself, though, has moved beyond reasonable doubt and ought to be treated as fact, given the overwhelming weight of evidence.

(I have no proble with altruism being an adaptive trait, but as you say there are a few problems with attempted gene-level explanations such as kin-selection or reciprocal altruism. But you could work from the fact that since all humans carry 99% of our own genes, helping others ultimately helps copies of our own DNA - but to do so would cut against the general grain of within-species selection orthodoxy as proposed by Trivers and others.)

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:12:21 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: Dawkins has no problem with spandrels..
Message:
Nigel:

But you could work from the fact that since all humans carry 99% of our own genes, helping others ultimately helps copies of our own DNA - but to do so would cut against the general grain of within-species selection orthodoxy as proposed by Trivers and others.

Actually, that seems like a good theory for fatalism rather than cooperation. For instance, you take the belief in predestination and the behavior that would be the logical result is fatalism. But something intervenes (the need to produce a 'sign' of elect status). That small intervention results in capitalism and the origins of the industrial revolution. There's no particular reason why a 'sign' would mean anything, and no particular reason to think that the particular sign (success in a calling) is the one that has significance. It's completely a social construction, apart from the enormity of the *need* that engendered it, and the level of extreme anxiety that the belief in predestination would create in it's absence. We *needed* a sign, so we figured out how to define it and then how to produce it, and finally how to organize a society and system around it... to the extent that the original belief in predestination was no longer necessary. So, created or designed we're very amazing creatures.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:57:18 (GMT)
From: Joe
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: Dawkins has no problem with spandrels..
Message:
Actually, that seems like a good theory for fatalism rather than cooperation. For instance, you take the belief in predestination and the behavior that would be the logical result is fatalism.

I don't know why you think that's a logical result. How about self-centeredness and greed as reactions to predestination? I think they work into capitalism quite nicely.

How about immorality and hedonism? Why aren't they just as logical results, since predestination has to do with an after-life, not the ability to improve one's condition of living on earth?

Plus the same thing could be said for people who don't believe in an afterlife, like atheists, and Jews for that matter. They are in that sense predestined. I don't see all that much fatalism there, and as for being industrious, well, the Jews do have that reputation. They are the wealthiest religious group in the USA, followed rather closely by the Irish.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 08:16:53 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: Joe
Subject: Greed and fatalism
Message:
Joe:

I don't know why you think that's a logical result. How about self-centeredness and greed as reactions to predestination? I think they work into capitalism quite nicely.

Why wouldn't fatalism be manifested as uncontrolled greed? What's the difference? Also presumes that greed is a sufficient motivation for the sort of rationalizing process that took place (rationalization in the Weberian sense of organized, calculated and cooperative accumulation thoughout the arc of a lifetime). The fact that it just didn't happen suggests either that the greed wasn't great enough, or that greed isn't the answer. Besides, this theory ignores the fact that while accumulation was allowed, spending was not. That is, in addition to accumulating wealth one also had to manifest thrift and modesty. Buchanan argues that thrift and industry together were necessary to prime the pump of capitalism, that industry alone wouldn't have worked. Of course, once the pump was primed then greed eventually manifested, and belief in predestination waned.

How about immorality and hedonism? Why aren't they just as logical results, since predestination has to do with an after-life, not the ability to improve one's condition of living on earth?

According to Colin Campbell immorality and hedonism simply manifest at a later stage in the cycle. Also, Islam has a form of predestination that involves *this* life rather than the next, and the result is much different. It led to a warrior society rather than a capitalist society. But again, the fulfillment of greed was definitely seen as a sign of *not* being one of the elect. Only as belief in predestination waned did greed manifest.

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:50:14 (GMT)
From: Nigel
Email: None
To: Nigel
Subject: NB: 2nd / 3rd paragraphs in wrong order above (nt)
Message:
nt.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:08:21 (GMT)
From: Bob
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: I saw it last night, COOL (nt)
Message:
nt
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 07:05:54 (GMT)
From: Sam Hardy
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: hard wired for spirituality
Message:
Also happens with temporal lobe epilepsy, which is one theory why Van Gogh painted such heightened pictures.

Why wouldn't a mechanism emerge out of natural selection if it helps get a big brain through the night?

One of the neurotransmitters in the brain is nitrous oxide. Don't know why I pay my dentist five bucks a pop when I can get it for free.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 13:16:43 (GMT)
From: Bob
Email: None
To: Sam Hardy
Subject: Neurotransmitter
Message:
there is still one missing transmitter out (in) there:
What about orgasms!! It takes usually several minutes to get to this (can only speak of personal experience of course...)
There is no known mechanism or substance which allows such a slow build-up to trigger this release. Anybody who wants to join me for the Nobelprize here?? (Female please!)
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 14:18:12 (GMT)
From: SB
Email: None
To: Bob
Subject: Neurotransmitter
Message:
I read last night about a belief that some Chinese people have the benefits of retaining ejaculations. Apparently there is an area between the annus and the testicles that if it's pressed when the man is about to have an orgasm, the orgasm is felt intensely as with ejaculation, but without one. These people believe that there is a lot of energy released and that is beneficial to retain it, so they have figure that they can achieve and orgasm without ejaculating.

This idea is from a branch of Tai Chi, related to Taoism and one of its studies is to learn how to keep the good Chi, or good energy, in us rather than giving it away, 'misusing it'. It explain that when man is tired but feel like enjoying sex he can refrain from ejaculating manipulating the named spot which controls the urge to ejaculate. This'sends' the semen back, but he stills feel the pleasure of the orgasm. haven't tried it yet. LOL

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Fri, May 11, 2001 at 00:22:01 (GMT)
From: Bin Liner
Email: None
To: SB
Subject: Chinese beliefs
Message:
I got a full on electric shock once in a roomful of people one of whom was Chinese .

After the others had got me sorted out , she came up & said ,'that was very good luck for you , it'll make you more intelligent ' .

No post modern irony , she explained that the Chinese think electric shocks are good for the brain .

I wouldn't go poking about in my wedding tackle on their say so if I were you .

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:17:12 (GMT)
From: Bob
Email: None
To: SB
Subject: Neurotransmitter and sex
Message:
The Chinese have a very old tradition about retention of sperm.
It is a great set of exercises. It is something entirely missing in the male education in our culture. It can very significantly improve sexual relations and therefore marriages etc.
The pressing or the mentioned perineal area is the most crude way: The male spremduct loops from the testicle up to the bladder, through the prostate, where secretions are added. where the sperm ducts come together is the vesicula seminalis, something like a small gallbladder, where the semen is stored, and chemically modified. This vessel is wrapped in smooth muscle, which contracts during ejaculation, while downstream relaxing a small sphincter which keeps everything nicely locked away from urine during the day.
Pressing the point above during orgasm and until the erection subsides prevents the sperm from flowing out. The pressure eventually drives everything back in the vesicula. It is a way
for a man to have multiple orgasms. I am afraid that all this pressure might eventually lead to a 'flat tire', but which doctor can you ask this???
There is more information about this very cool (hot?) subject:
The Tantra yoga connection from india, and a probable very secret branch of Yoga: an esoteric branch of the already secretive kundalini yoga.
Also there is more relation to k. than seems at first:
Part of a Chinese sex technique uses a more powerful version of 'the word' technique to force the sex energy straight into the head: talking about seeing light! It gets recirculated down, and amplified. this is indeed very powerful stuff. (I hate being single). I will post more about this when I have time
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:18:01 (GMT)
From: Scott T.
Email: None
To: SB
Subject: Neurotransmitter
Message:
SB:

There was a guy at the hotspring resort purporting to teach how to attain 'perpetual orgasm,' or at least an orgasm that lasts for hours rather than seconds. I meant to take that course, but it required a partner for practice and I had just broken up with someone. :-(

--Scott

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:46:45 (GMT)
From: sb
Email: None
To: Scott T.
Subject: alone can't do it :(
Message:
Ohhh...Sorry to hear that but I'm aware that maybe was a 'blessing'.

I am having experiences that are very new to me. No strings attached. Just exercises. And how much more we don't know? Lots, but for sure nobody needs lard!

I (we) haven't tried it yet. Just read that in a Tai Chi book.
I'll tell you if it works; why not try it.;)

(Is somebody going to get mad at me for talking so liberally about ejaculations? Nature works though and without viagra.

hahahhahaha

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:10:41 (GMT)
From: hamzen
Email: None
To: SB
Subject: Don't know about that specific spot but
Message:
had a couple of years where it happened for me without ejaculation on a regular basis. But it was bloddy exhausting, as enjoyable as it was, cause the sessions went on for ever!
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 19:57:07 (GMT)
From: sb
Email: None
To: hamzen
Subject: Moderation
Message:
So it works eh. Hmmm...interesting. Did you manipulated that area or was spontaneous for you? Well, you don't have to answer. I'll find out. hahahaha...

;) Hi hamsen!

sb

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 18:05:41 (GMT)
From: Jerry
Email: None
To: SB
Subject: Neurotransmitter
Message:
SB,

Are these people actually capable of stopping themselves from ejaculating, or do they just believe they can? Sounds to me like a great excuse for a teenager to give his girlfriend for why he wouldn't get her pregnant. 'Don't worry, dear. I'm an expert in the Chinese art of not-cumming. You have nothing to worry about.' Maybe that's how it all started. Personally, I can't see myself ever attempting this trick. It doesn't sound like much fun.

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:24:42 (GMT)
From: Bob
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: Fun ,,but no contraception
Message:
It is great fun. By the way this is the way my first daughter was conceived, Surprise, surprise.

Anyway it turned out to be the best thing which ever happened to me. (only equaled by getting my second child)

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:00:37 (GMT)
From: sb
Email: None
To: Jerry
Subject: orgasms without ejaculation
Message:
I read about it last night. Thye said that pressuring that spot, is like a indentation/hole it stops the ejaculation. Did I explained it correctly? Yes. No semen coming out but you feel the orgasm.

I could say more but is going to get deleted. :0

sb

Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 20:29:36 (GMT)
From: Bob
Email: None
To: sb
Subject: deleted???
Message:
And why should that be? This is great information which has never made it far out of cultish groups in the west. There is definitely a link with k. and taking this information out in the open can only bring happiness to many
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 21:46:36 (GMT)
From: sb
Email: None
To: Bob
Subject: That is what I thought- Information is good. (nt)
Message:
and agree with it.
Return to Index -:- Top of Index

Date: Thurs, May 10, 2001 at 07:19:34 (GMT)
From: Sam Hardy
Email: None
To: Sam Hardy
Subject: Knowledge of a scientific kind
Message:
http://www.2think.org/hii/wilson.shtml
Return to Index -:- Top of Index