Lost to America in the aftermath of Super-Bowl Sunday followed by Super Tuesday was check-out day for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 91, in the Netherlands The other night I watched another Guru-to-the-Stars tell Jeremy Piven on Jeremy's "Journey of a Lifetime." This holy man said L.A. is the world's #2-ranked Spiritual Center, behind only India and his insanely expensive celebrity Ashram. Http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Mahesh_Yogi_First_Indian_mystic_to_give_jet-set-go_mantra/articleshow/2762842.cms. "Once is a Philosopher, twice is a Pervert," said Voltaire, philosphically to the Left of Author/Psychologist James Dobson, once a USC grad-school mate and whose fame long ago left Doctor Bawb in obscurity. To cop to a preference for obscurity would send one or two to the Diagnostic & Statistical Manuals in search of WTF's ailing Bawb now? Have at it and let me know what turns up.
. No Matter, I digress as everWhat that Celebrity Guru said to Piven about L.A. remided me s a lot of what I remember the late Maharishi saying 40-years ago at L.A.'s Wilshire-Ebell Theater. This was soon after The Beatles' brief Transcendental Meditation period http://www.tm.org/ and was more than enough to send me and two buddies and me to the Maharishi's lecture in a luxurious old venue in LA's posh mid-Wilshire district.
Memories, mine for sure, are faulty. Add 40+ years' wear to what remains my decent but never photographic memory and nothing but unreliable recall presents. Elizabeth Loftus, still another Shrink colleague of infinitely greater reknown than Dr. Bawb was or will be [though she unfairly came to grief as Defense Witness for Scooter Libby] is the World Champeen of "false memory" researchers. http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/psytoday.htm. My buddy of longest standing confirms my recollection that the Maharishi's said ZIP that woulda been an Epiphany for him, me and most anyone that night. We recall the Maharishi giggled a lot. At everything; At what he said. What anyone asked. The lecture was a Free-Bee and so we got what we paid for. Maybe the Maharishi's giggling pointlessnes was "Guru Nerves." A bad night. Both buddies were, respectively, a world-class programmer and a highly-paid Tech Writer. I was working at UCLA's Space Biology Lab trying to figure out what to be when I grew up. Still, that giggle began to grate on others aside from we three. I was fidgety and impatient. Suddenly an audience member rose to his feet: "C'mon, man! Like what would you say to, say, Adolf Hitler after all his crimes?" Giggling gleefully, the Maharishi instantly replied: "I WOULD HAVE SAID TO MISTER HITLER THAT HE NEEDS TO MEDITATE." oI recall coming awake while the audience response was mostly gasps mixed with a few "Far out, man's!"
Here, my buddy of longest standing's memory differs with mine only in the details of timing. We agree on the substance. I recall my friend the Tech Writer who'd come straight from work and still wore coat and tie rising to his feet and, looking every bit the Junior Partner in an accounting firm, asked the Maharishi with a straight face and unequalled sincerity: "Excuse me, but are you from out of town?" The Maharishi's beatific smile vanished, instantly replaced by an expression conveying bewildered confusion and loss of aplomb. We three exited in helpless laughter before any authority, official or self-appointed, remembered to detain us or ask for a point of clarification. Cruel maybe, but fair - and making it to age 91 in Amsterdam doesn't strike me as an overly bad ending.
Finally Barack. Cynicism gave way to hope - Real Hope - that my three kids 20, 17 and 17 may have a better chance than I when I watching and then watching again the Black-Eyed Peas YouTube video based on an Obama speech from last week. It was enough to make me risk a broke heart. Again. YES WE CAN!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY
1 comment:
I love that Maharishi story.
Say, my Daley machine progressive Barack is much more alive now than he was when you wrote this, eh?
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