Scrapbook
Scrapbook Maharishi, What Have You Done? The hole one feels in the nation’s collective soul this week may be due to the passing of the Giggling Guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, of undisclosed...
...Age is an afterthought in the realm of spacetime consciousness...
...It is an idea that has a distinguished precedent...
...But then he changed tack...
...Color THE SCRAPBOOK negative, but it’s easy to stay positive when sheeple buy your five-day TM classes for $2,500 a pop, a drop in the bucket of your organization’s $3.5 billion in assets...
...I’ve got four people in Baghdad who could be killed at any moment who are trying to tell the truth the best they can of that story...
...But he did manage to inspire a whole city, Maharishi Vedic City in Iowa, which comes complete with its own architecture, education system (developing the “total brain potential and cosmic creative intelligence of every student”), and “Vedic Defense” force—a Kucinich-like group of “peace-creating experts” whose TM and “Yogic Flying techniques will promote coherent national and world consciousness and thereby prevent any negativity from arising in America or in the family of nations...
...That wasn’t the only setback he suffered, either...
...But the Maharishi did all right for himself in the decades that followed, as cult leaders tend to do...
...Meacham began...
...Pursuing That Elusive, Black-Turtlenecked Readership Newsweek’s Jon Meacham at the Columbia Journalism School, wearing his heart on his sleeve and a bit unaware of the improving security situation in Baghdad, replies to a J-school student who says to him, “The news...
...Auden have in common...
...It was he who came up with the brilliant suggestion of one square per bathroom visit...
...He writes to THE SCRAPBOOK in reply to an item on this page last week describing Crow’s paranoid fantasy that Karl Rove was somehow behind the media’s ridicule of her memorable proposal for dealing with climate change...
...It even has its own currency—the Raam...
...The hole one feels in the nation’s collective soul this week may be due to the passing of the Giggling Guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, of undisclosed cause, though one suspects old age had something to do with it...
...Sure, his TM theme park, Veda Land, proposed by the late magician Doug Henning, which was to feature a levitating restaurant, never got off the ground, so to speak...
...A recent study revealed that hand-rolled ciggies lead to a higher incidence of lung cancer...
...Sheryl Crow that she need not be embarrassed by the revelation that, to help save the planet, she proposed restricting the use of toilet paper to one square per bathroom visit...
...I just don’t know how to do it...
...His pioneering techniques included sitting with his eyes closed, chanting mantras, and encouraging legions of gullible celebrities to vacate their minds (many of them already had a head start) in a ritual that was said to “involve neither concentration nor contemplation...
...As the Sun notes: “It’s like Pete Doherty recommending heroin at a hepatitis fundraiser...
...You can still use dollars or your credit card,” Vedic City’s website instructs...
...And I need—I’ve got people out there risking their lives right now...
...Irving Kristol on Sheryl Crow What do Sheryl Crow and W.H...
...Ringo had to leave the ashram early because he couldn’t eat spicy food...
...Nobody knows for sure...
...If you’re all out of Raams, though, no worries...
...We’ll let Irving Kristol explain...
...The only names I remember were Benjamin Britten and W.H...
...Far be it from us to make fun of the other guy’s religion, at least now that Mitt Romney is out of the presidential race, but having introduced “yogic flying” to the world (“frog hopping” to cynics), the Maharishi is to thank for several decades of self-help quackery...
...They rented a house in Brooklyn with the intention of creating a minicollective of five or six residents...
...He was anywhere from 91 to 98 years young...
...The Economist is more courageous” (as reported in the New York Observer): “The success of The Economist —the fact that you read it, a blackturtlenecked guy at Columbia,” Mr...
...Michael Chabon on Obama, February 4, 2008, Washington Post...
...As Gita Mehta wrote in her timeless book, Karma Cola: “The westerner is finding the dialectics of history less fascinating than the endless opportunities for narcissism provided by the Wisdom of the East...
...Because he did his writing at home, Auden was elected general manager...
...The Economist is not, by the way . . .” He changed tack again...
...We’ll let a reporter at London’s Sun tabloid explain: When asked how she protected her heart, genius Joss replied: “In England we smoke [hand] rolled cigarettes...
...Our Celebrity Advisers In other developments on the celebrity expertise front, Joss Stone, the English songstress, was in New York for Fashion Week, where she pitched in to help raise awareness of heart disease among women, at an event sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute...
...Auden...
...Look, I need you,” said Mr...
...Early in World War II, when food and gasoline and much else were being rationed, a small group of intellectuals in New York decided to live economically...
...The group dissolved within months...
...Kind of like watching The View...
...It’s an incredible frustration that I’ve got some of the most decent, hard-working, honest, passionate, straight-shooting, non-ideological people who just want to tell the damn truth, and how to get this past this image that we’re just middlebrow...
...No question, he comes off as at once brilliant and sensible, vibrant and measured, engaged and engaging, talented, forthright, quickwitted, passionate, thoughtful and, as with all remarkable people whom experience has taught both the extent and the bitter limits of their gifts, reasonably humble...
...Maybe it was more than the unmentionable odour of death that offended Auden’s September night...
...Straights have chemicals that keep them burning...
...Her advice...
...Coming at the problem from separate directions, both parties have chanced upon the same conclusion, namely, that the most effective weapon against irony is to reduce everything to the banal...
...So if you have to really smoke, smoke rollies...
...You have the Karma, we’ll take the CocaCola, a metaphysical soft drink for a physical one...
...It’s better to smoke rollies than straights...
...Introduced to American audiences by the Beatles, he had a bumpy start when they accused the celibate ascetic of making inappropriate sexual advances while trying to achieve a state of oneness with Mia Farrow’s sister (inspiring the Lennon-penned song, “Sexy Sadie...
...Our distinguished correspondent chivalrously rides to the defense of the beleaguered folk singer: “Please assure Ms...
...Top advice—except it’s wrong...
...I don’t get it from Newsweek...
...Meacham...
...Saint Barack (cont...
...He got the ball rolling with his Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement...
Vol. 13 • February 2008 • No. 22
