Claims That Life's 'All An Illusion' Exaggerated

"In a skeptical world, with editors and reporters who actually worked to dig up the facts and put the claims made,...into context, there would be something more,...than a regurgitation of the same old things we've seen in [transcendental meditation] movement press releases for the past few decades, and quotes from both TM salesmen and specially selected consumers of their product.

The title, 'Can Meditation Curb Heart Attacks?' is one of those leading questions that snake-oil salesmen love, since they can then respond with the answer they've already prepared. In fact, that's the strategy of the TM sales pitch for decades, as founding TM salesman Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once stated during a TM teacher training course: 'Every question is a perfect opportunity for the answer we have already prepared.' The New York Times has set the stage, creating a vacuum into which the following stage-managed presentation perfectly fits. A better title might have been, 'Vedic theocrats claim introductory technique of their faith curbs heart attacks.' It would have from the beginning clarified who's making the claim, and the nature of the organization that's making the claim. Unfortunately my expectations of New York Times reporters aren't likely to be fulfilled in my lifetime; this is a sad benchmark of how poor the reporting is in one of the nation's leading newspapers today."

-- Mike Doughney, making me wonder how many global warming "scientists" are into meditation - "Every question is a perfect opportunity for the answer we have already prepared." - while already feeling, as I do, The New York Times is a NewAge mouthpiece, nothing like the TM-Free Blog.