In 1972 the Bee Gees drummer left to join a band dedicated to a cult leader named Maharaj-ji. A few years later George Harrison of the Beatles produced a different band dedicated to the same cult leader. Carlos Santana was given the name Devadip by his abusive guru Sri Chinmoy. Donovan traveled to India with the Beatles studying Transcendental Meditation. Soon the Doors, Mick Jagger and the Grateful Dead would all be practicing TM. The Beach Boys recorded one of Charles Manson's songs. Leonard Cohen dropped out and moved into a Zen Monastery, but his guru would be ousted for sexual abuse. Musician turned cult leader Mel Lyman was dubbed the "East Coast Charles Manson." John Travolta and Frank Stallone recorded a vinyl record made up of Scientology lyrics that went gold.
These are just some of the fascinating stories in Cult Rocked
So, I hope we’ve established that, by 2008, this blog, and others, were already aware of (and concerned about) anti-vaccinationists, when few others were, including most of the media. Thirteen years ago, Antivaxx was a leftist movement, so no one cared. That's how the world worked. When this started, NewAgers were open about what they did. There was no COVID-19 back then, and Donald Trump wasn’t on the political radar for NewAgers in the news media (or like early anti-vaccine activist Jim Carrey, years later, on SNL) to use as a scapegoat.
But, The NewAge Movement and Oprah Winfrey (a journalist, and thus, a part of the media) were there. Oprah was even campaigning with Barack Obama, long after she’d been promoting anti-vaccinationists, homeopathy, and much, much more like them - practically the entire pantheon of the NewAge Movement - UFO nut, Shirley MacLaine, included. And the media said NOTHING critical about her, what she was doing, or the con artist's tools she was using. Unlike Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey was embraced with open arms for spreading misinformation and pseudoscience. And she always has been. Excused, even. Seth Macfarlane mentioned it in 2018. Meghan and Harry (two NewAgers) probably used her, in 2019, for that very reason. Few dare question what Oprah’s been buying (into) and/or selling, no matter how bogus it is. And - at it's core - it's almost all bogus.
It's the same with Howard Stern and Transcendental Meditation - the quackery, cult, and fraud - as he's allowed the radio waves to freely badger Aaron Rodgers, which is also totally bogus: why do Howard and Oprah and Jim Carrey get a pass, when they're snacking from the same, dangerous, NewAge smorgasbord?
Thankfully, Howard and the rest of the mediaare still talking about Rodgers, but all of them have already stopped talking about the 200-year old phenomena of homeopathy, that all of Rodgers' problems sprang from. Nothing on the pharmacies selling it (or how they get away with doing that) or the billions of believers around the world, or the French company that makes it (or how France recently called homeopathy a "grave error") or Prince Charles being homeopathy's patron in the UK, or what any of that means, because the focus is staying exclusively on Aaron Rodgers lying to theNFL. So the fact he lied in the service of homeopathy is ignored - even by Joe Rogan. The fact homeopathy is water with a belief system attached - that causes people to lie about it - is being ignored by just about everyone. What role a NewAge media's self-imposed ignorance is playing, in screwing up society, is also not being examined, at all. In a media-saturated nation. There's only one message we're getting, from everywhere, on the left and right, all day long, in the western world:
Plus, this headline is from The Huffington Post, which (also in 2008) TMR noted was “A Warehouse For Wackos”. Why give (cult leader Arianna Huffington's) "HuffPo" that title - all the way back in 2008? It wasn't just because other cult members, like Howard Stern, appeared in it. Here’s the direct quote - from “a cancer surgeon and NIH-funded cancer investigator” - that instigated my actions:
“Within three weeks of its formation, I had noticed a very disturbing aspect of the Huffington Post, and that was that it appeared to be providing a major soapbox for antivaccinationists,..."
Emphasis mine. So, what were you thinking about in 2008? What about now? Or what are you being told to think? Or how to think it? The links, above, are just a bit of evidence (real world proof) that The Crack Emcee's head was screwed-on tight, waaay before everyone else's - because The NewAge Movement has never fooled TMR - not even when filtered through the Howard Stern's of the world. And, they don't have to fool anyone else, either. Just keep reading - and pass it along to someone else: I'm breaking it all down, now, right here (To Be cont'd,...).
"[Lisa Oz] is co-producer of the Dr. Oz Show and credited with the idea for the television show as a way 'practicing preventive medicine on a grand scale'..."
BUT
Scientists tallied up all the advice on Dr. Oz's show. Half of it was baseless or wrong.
"According to the New York Times, Lisa Oz's mother 'believed fervently in New Age approaches like homeopathic remedies and meditation' and also introduced her husband to 'alternative medicine and Eastern mysticism' which he now integrates into his advice programs."
BUT
Cancer patients who use alternative medicine die sooner
Transcendental Meditation Free has posted a timeline of the Maharishi's "teachings", showing how they changed over the years to accommodate unforeseen circumstances, like people seeing through his lies. Here's a TMR favorite:
Ooooh - sorry, white folks - you, Deepak, and The Beatles have been wrong for the last 50 years.
Now that we've got that out of the way - it's a gullibility scam like all the "alternative" rest - when do we "become One" and get some findings on the multiples of negatives we've endured under this, bullying, NewAge regime that's insisted nonsense like meditation just had to be part of modern existence?
That's what I - as a modern man - want to know,...
Wanna see the similarity between the whole Transcendental Meditation racket, seen above, and Instapundit? Robert Stacy McCain has an interesting observation:
"This network/community concept seems to have been lost by (or, more likely, was never known to) newer arrivals in the ‘sphere. The idea that each of us is contributing to a common project is not just some kind of “Stone Soup” idealism, but is in fact the only way to build any genuinely meaningful alternative to that pathetic exercise in groupthink we call the Mainstream Media…."
So Glenn's answer to the Mainstream Media's "groupthink" was to create a vessel for his own. And now they, too, are known for deception, manipulation, misinformation, and exploitation. Paraphrasing:
That Mitt Romney election was in-the-bag, now pay us for that marvelous insight - at, supposedly, no cost to yourself - unless you think losing the White House bore no cost.
Fools. Rush. In.
Listen to Ann spout it:
"I'm getting impatient with Tracy right now. I want to interrupt and say that blogs are a great format if you have a distinctive voice, and not just if you have idiosyncratic attributes — like gay, English, Catholic, and heretically conservative. The form — the blog — was so great, so powerful, so liberating, that many, many writers said me too, often pushed by an old-style publisher like the NYT that needed to have blogs to seem up-to-date. What made the age golden was the greatness of some blogs, like Sullivan's, not the sheer number of blogs at any given time."
Yeah, and as long as you silly, silly people - and not ideas - got there early enough to become the gatekeepers, saying who's "in" and "out". Listen to the loonie:
She actually wants us to go along with the suggestion that Andrew Sullivan - the weirdo who launched an investigation into Sarah Palin's womb - runs a blog of "greatness".
There aren't enough drugs on the planet to make that work. How can it?
This is, specifically, why a blog about NewAge cultism focusses on the political blogosphere. They are as blind to themselves as the mainstream media is.
Point - I don't pick on Professor Jacobson.
It's a fact that Glenn Reynolds & Co. can't give me a fair shake, because I spotted - and spoke out about - their cultish nonsense from Day One. I was ranting about despising "groupthink" wherever it comes from - Left or Right - and saying I will never fit into it.
Nor will I ever try.
And, as Boomers, this "community" of "groupthink" was destined to be their answer.
In stepped Ann Althouse.
I was raising noise about their "clique," on her blog, and she told Glenn to link to TMR, probably to shut me up. People on her blog were listening to me then. That's what big bloggers are afraid of. It has nothing to do with language or attitude - or else Ann would've gotten rid of me, long ago, instead of me leaving - it's attention going elsewhere. They can't shake down the rubes without 'em, can they?
Their mistake?
Assuming - by inviting me in - I couldn't see, and would stop saying, what they've been up to all along.
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,...
It doesn't seem to matter what kind of article we're reading about things going wrong, or being unfair, eventually the name of some NewAge icon or idea will pop up as the culprit, yet it's still a chore to get anyone to recognize it's the adoption of NewAge cult thinking, itself, that's screwing us. A case in point is Dominic Raab's article on feminism where he says this:
You can’t have it both ways. Either you believe in equality or you don’t. If you buy into the whole Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus theory of gender difference – with all its pseudo science - you can’t then complain about inequalities of outcome that flow both ways from those essentially sexist distinctions.
Very true, though we'd take issue with the mere claim of "pseudo science" and lay the blame where it should be - "spirituality" - specifically, NewAge.
Of course, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus was written by "Dr." John Gray. What most don't know is "Dr." John Gray was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's personal secretary for the Transcendental Meditation cult. (Not only that, but his Ph.D was from a California university that was shut down, and his undergraduate degrees - in the made-up "Science of Creative Intelligence" field - were from the Maharishi European Research University in Switzerland. In other words, totally bogus.) Considering Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus was a major best-seller, how many have absorbed Gray's (and the Maharishi's) cultish, "sexist" thinking - "with all its pseudo science" - as their own?
And why has TIME Magazine featured the thoughts of Deepak Chopra? He's a Maharishi alum, too. Also - considering the Maharishi was a fraud - what has elevated Chopra to the role of an American spokesman, worthy of speaking on American television about topics as diverse as politics? Who, exactly, is he speaking for? What good has Chopra accomplished? Other than duping millions, what has he actually ever done? Does anyone care? Or, in the age of Bernie Madoff, is deceiving people considered an accomplishment in and of itself?
No one looking seriously at the subject can miss how the NewAge scam works:
The Huffington Post posts a column by Deepak Chopra, defending Oprah Winfrey's promotion of quackery, using celebrities Jenny McCarthy (above) and Suzanne Somers.
Or, put more accurately, a John-Rogers cult member (seen above) ran a bald-faced lie by a Maharishi cult member, defending a NewAge accolade's "crazy talk", using a (now debunked) anti-vaccinationist and natural cancer cure fraud.
Catching on yet?
As Dominic Raab pointed out with his "Dr." John Gray example, we now have the entirety of Western culture (and business) willingly, and wrong-headedly, following these scam artists and "mystical" frauds, destroying the fabric of our society - without ever questioning when these crooks (as TIME Magazine says) "jump to easy conclusions and,...spackle over problematic gaps and inconsistencies in the ideas". Why not? When was it a part of the American character to allow charlatans, and outright cultists, to operate amongst us unmolested - giving them power, and making them fortunes, beyond their wildest dreams to boot?
"David Wants to Fly" is a documentary film that is at times hilarious, frustrating and enlightening. Bourgeoning filmmaker David Sieveking takes us on his path to filmmaking, as he peaks behind the Maharishi's curtain, that wonderful wizard of "Ohm." While Maharishi's teachings of Transcendental Meditation spread to the world through the likes of the Beatles, Sieveking tapped the unlikely source of David Lynch.
The widely influential films of David Lynch such as "Eraserhead", "The Elephant Man", "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive" are transcendentally macabre, more than meditative. Yet, Sieveking idolized Lynch and jumped a plane to Iowa to see the master speak about creativity through Transcendental Meditation (TM). Iowa is of course the unlikely home to Maharishi University and its Golden Dome of Pure Knowledge.
Throughout the course of Sieveking meeting Lynch and embracing his assigned TM Mantra, the documentary traces the realization of true filmmaking. Sieveking knows he is his own subject, playing the protagonist on the yellow brick road of self-discovery. Though, David doesn't want to go home, "David Wants to Fly."
Inspired by his idolization of Lynch, Sieveking learns some essential lessons in documentary filmmaking and the deconstruction of Idols. Sieveking comes to odds with Lynch, challenging how he has become a spokesman for a multibillion dollar industry. Through Sieveking's deconstruction of Lynch, he obsessively questions the TM movement itself, thus deconstructing Maharishi.
Sieveking comes to the potent realization that Transcendental Meditation has done the exact opposite of what Lynch promised him. The documentary lens zooms in on the unraveling of Sieveking's personal life. He runs into the open arms of the TM community, but is banished once he questions that it is industry, rather than community. As his girlfriend leaves him, his filmmaking career seems to be blackballed by Lynch's disapproval and Sieveking's mantra chanting starts to sound more like a Country song.
Yet, the young filmmaker's journey is in essence transcendental as he finds his true path. He becomes a filmmaker, not by blindly following Lynch's advice to close his eyes in meditation. Instead he opens his eyes to the blind following of a movement and shines light on the dirt swept under the rugs they meditate on.
Catch it where you can, people, because this is a picture that contains a damn good lesson for everyone:
Since New Years, we were personally asked what to do about two separate guys, one black and one white, who have gone out and bought 90 guns - and 50 gallons of soy sauce - "just in case the shit goes down." Yea, they came to us, and not one of the Big Brains out there in Bloggerland.
Unfortunately, at this point, this all seems like perfectly normal behavior to us for educated people in America. Or Haiti.
It's hilarious - all the newspapers want to make sure we know what the psychics and astrologers say the coming year will bring. Why? If they know there are no psychics, and astrology isn't real - and they have to know it - then why the columns devoted to them? Is this the role of a newspaper? And what interest do they have in indulging Americans in nonsense?
With Britain shivering through a third winter in a row, shouldn’t the weather forecasters have warned us well in advance? Why didn’t the Met Office tell us?
‘The truth is it did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October.
‘But we weren’t let in on the secret because the Met Office no longer publishes its seasonal forecasts due to the ridicule it suffered for predicting a barbecue summer in 2009.
We are blessed, Ladies and Gentlemen, to live in a age of such brilliance and courage.
"David Wants To Fly" is finally coming to America, people. Go, see how much fraudulent bullshit Western society has indulged since The Beatles:
Why don't Newagers just admit they've got problems ("you're stressed, confused") so, maybe, they can get some real help? Oh yea, the arrogance (they all claim to have gotten rid of) along with their egos.
We forgot.
Here's a question that's been bothering us lately;
Why do we still speak of Bush having a "Katrina Moment" (AKA "Heck of a job, Brownie") when it's now known that Louisiana's Governor, Kathleen Blanco, was the one who "froze"?
Hey - in the "My Gawd, These People Are Dumb" category, the Vodkapundithas an idea:
Maybe having stormed the walls of Washington, it’s time for the Tea Party to make a determined assault on our institutional media.
That's smart. Because, as we all know, the Left came to power by attacking Rush Limbaugh and Co., right? No - they can't touch Rush, or Mark Levin, etc.. They came to power by taking out The Religious Right. By ridiculing and neutralizing the Jerry Falwell's, the Pat Robertson's, and (what they imagined were) George Bush's beliefs.
So go on, y'all, take on the media (as the Right has been doing, for decades, to no effect) but continue to allow the Oprah Winfrey's, Marianne Williamson's, and Deepak Chopra's to "spiritually" indoctrinate the public in opposing you:
