Horse & BMAC & TM

[Claude Setzer]

> But if you care to know my opinion, I think that a possibly good
> project of promoting meditation and putting it to some socially beneficial
> use has been delivered to ridicule with this levitation gimmick,
especially
> since after all these years of hopping, not one TM champion has been seen
> flying.
>
>  K. Elst
>

Thank you for your pleasant response to my comments. I think there is no
question that the marketing for NLP sometimes hits people the wrong way. But
there is very solid research to show without a doubt that the process that
is called "yogic flying" has some very unusual effects both on the
individual doing it and on the people nearby. On the individual it is found
that the process of practicing the technique results in very unusual brain
wave patterns that cannot be invoked by any other known means. In society,
very carefully performed and analyzed studies have shown repeatedly that a
group of people performing the technique have an unprecedented effect of
creating good results on thousands, even millions of nearby people.


If people will not believe the results, then I do not know why they would
believe other results either. Would seeing someone levitate for an hour
convince them?? If so, then they are more interested in spectacle than in
good benefits to themselves and to society.


I think the TM organization has made it very clear and straight forward by
many public demonstrations that the average person practicing this technique
does what you call "hopping." For now, this hopping IS, almost by
definition, "yogic flying." There are people, on an irregular basis, that
experience more than that, but that is not really the point.

To add a little Sanskrit to the discussion, above you said, "not one TM
champion has been seen flying." As you know, the word, aneka, which
literally means, "not one" in Sanskrit, is often interpreted as "many." In
fact, many have been seen flying (for very short times)  but probably not
publicly.


The thing that is important is that the practice of a specific technique has
extremely beneficial results both for the person and for the environment. It
seems to me that this effect is much more "useful" than the traditional
interpretation of the prediction, of Pantanjali and others, that a person
can perfect the event that we call levitation.

Sincerely,

Claude Setzer