Ann Althouse & Meade To TMR: "I Know - It's A Cult. It's Not Scientific. But You Don't Have To Join To Let [It] In."

 So lookee here - this is,...interesting.

The New York Times did a puff piece on David Lynch and his TM cult (what else?) but what's cool is they also included a chart (above) of who's in it, and - whouldn't you know - all the media's major movers and shakers are in there:

The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace may focus on teaching meditation techniques to at-risk children and soldiers suffering from PTSD. But Lynch has had a significant impact in his own industry. Some of the foundation's recent initiates are shown above.

So, as I've always told you, if you're ever trying to discover why Oprah, Ellen, Dr. Oz, Susan Sarandon, George Stephanopoulos, Candy Crowley and all the rest are spoon-feeding us what seems like a mutli-pronged but singular message (feminism, gays, save the planet, soul mates, etc.) and who it's really coming from, we might now know who one of their biggest cult leaders in America is:

Eraserhead. 

Now, let's not forget who David Lynch is. I've done a lot of work on Lynch, and I'm not alone. But first, the blog for people who've escaped the cult, TMFree, led me to the NYT article and they have a few things to say about it:

Longtime TM Initiator-Governor Bobby Roth, currently employed by David Lynch’s foundation, carefully cultivates celebrity TMers. Like high profile celebrities in other cult-like groups, TM celebrities are sheltered from the dysfunctions, demands, psychosis and poverty experienced by many rank and file TM devotees.

This is what I'm now calling "The Instapundit/Ann Althouse (& Meade) Effect". It's when you dispense misinformation without a care for it's effects on others you exploit. ("You've got your good thing, and you've got mine.") Here's some more from TMFree:

On March 4, 2013 John Horgan pubished for his Scientific American “Cross-Check” blog “Do All Cults, Like All Psychotherapies, Exploit the Placebo Effect?” referring to Hoffman’s article, above. 

Horgan offers a short discussion of the placebo effect, followed by an explanation of destructive cults.  He closes his essay “The more you believe in the uniquely transformative power of your cult, the more you get out of it. The only price you have to pay is your rationality.” 

A few days later, on March 8, Horgan offered another essay critiquing TM’s research, in response to the True Believer comments on his first TM expose’ post, “Research on TM and Other Forms of Meditation Stinks”.

Anyway - back to David Lynch. If you truly want to see him in action, you have to check out the film, David Wants To Fly, where Lynch shows the venality in his heart and that of his program. I've told you what it's about - Naziism - and the Germans saw it clearly when Lynch spoke there:

"The flap those words created, with their echoes of the Third Reich, reveals both the deadly seriousness with which Germans view their wartime past and the gulf separating Lynch's new-age agenda from that of some hard-bitten Berliners with a more historical mind-set.”

 Yeah, don't anybody dare remember where the phrase "Mind/Body/Spirit" came from. (Has anybody else noticed that hasn't ever been a news item?) And the fact the Nazis were doing yoga while maintaining concentration camps for undesirables, like me, who didn't want to practice that or homeopathy. 

Well, not me, baby, I know what Nazis are about - killing anyone who has a real culture:

And - just like last time - I'm waiting for 'em to dare and try to get me,...

 

You Really Can Get "In" Through The "Out" Door,...

I ran into Scientology and stayed there for 12 years, which is a whole lot more embarrassing than saying “Hi, I’m transsexual.”

-- Kate Bornstein, the former "first mate" to L. Ron Hubbard (emphasis mine)

In the last two years there have been 10 cult-themed movies released, starting with David Wants To Fly and ending with The Master, but, while all of them covers a different kind of cult, and takes a different approach to the issue - everything from deep comedy to deadly serious - there are two messages they have in common:

The false nature of what cults offer, and/or - most importantly - the need to get out.

There are other recurring themes as well, all of them counter-intuitive to the positive messages we've been told are the benefits of participation in such "communities." I'd go through them all but am short of time today, so will only give you this one for now:

All of the cults depicted radiate sex, and love, of some kind - there's not a hateful or Satan-worshipping group in the lot of them - but, still, it's emotional engagement that's found to be phony and, ultimately, harmful to the participants.

Consider that, as you insist on the projected good and wholesome nature of Mormonism, or defend the freedom of it (and other groups) to be able to flourish under our noses. Or consider what wider influence they've been having on a once strong country, brought to it's knees based on what is, quite apparently, it's own desire to dance with folly, if not the Devil. Face it:

Cultism is so last century.

I'll see you later,...