| As
a guru, it
is necessary
to create an
aura of writing
with passion. |
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| To
do so, the
successful
guru spices
up meaningless
sentences with
some Eastern
claptrap... |
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| “The
great sage
Shankara realized
this as the
pinnacle expression
of Atman (soul).
In the Vedas,
this was chanted
as the Being
with out the ”I”. |
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| Step
2: Manipulate the Words |
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| Be sure to capitalize certain words in your paperback books. This gives the illusion of authority. Pampering a word such as "self" with a capital "S" gives it a quality of holiness and demands reverence. |
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| So
let’s see what
we have: “The
Inner Self is the Truth!” |
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| What
does it mean? Remember
the guru’s caveat: “just
don’t think.” You,
the guru, have only one
goal - to make up commercially
appealling nonsensical
sentences. |
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Step
1: Words |
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Develop
a collection of words that
you use. Not important
if you understand them
however. Here are some
examples: |
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I,
being, inner, energy, spiritual,
sense, truth etc. |
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Be
sure to include some Indian
words, even if you are
not Indian! |
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Veda,
dharma, karma, rishi, prana,
dosha, etc. |
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| Sense
is one of our words.
Let’s build
off of it. Senseless
has a definite meaning,
for example, the
exclamation, “What
a senseless act of
violence!” is
readily understood.
What happens when
we tag on a suffix
'ness' to obtain
senselessness? |
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| “The
Inner Self is the
Truth which lies
beyond the sense
for it is Senselessness” |
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| You
could quickly follow
this with some Eastern
gibber from India: |
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| “The
Inner Self is the
Truth which lies
beyond the sense
for it is Senselessness.
The ancient sages
in India knew about
this. Moksha is to
attain this state
of Senselessness.” |
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| The mythologist
Joseph Campbell unwittingly came up with
a perfect description of gurus and grasshoppers
such as Chopra and Byrne in the title of
his best-selling book, The Hero with a Thousand
Faces, to which we may add "and every
one of them is ugly." The guru culture
has a disturbing agenda. It wants to sell
recycled notions after dressing them up in
gaudy non sequiturs and garbled statements.
And it will succeed because societies-both
Eastern and Western-are learning what to
think as opposed to how to think. In the
age of text messaging, Post-Its, and Cliffs
Notes, brevity in writing and speech is now
valued for a new reason: they must say little
or nothing. To the list of just-isms, such
as "Just do it," "Just say
no," etc., must be added the guru's
dictum, "Just don't think." |
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| How
does one gain the title of "guru"?
How does a person freeload without giving
the game away? How do you write new "secrets" containing
no secrets whatsoever or maybe many secrets?
In other words, how does one become the next
Paperback Guru? |
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Consider the following from page 47 of DC's footnote:
"I
am not my atoms, they come and go.
I am not my thoughts, they come and go.
I am not my ego, my self-image changes.
I am above and beyond these; I am the witness, the interpreter, the Self
beyond the self-image."
Now consider this from page 168 of Byrne's
The Secret: "I AM receiving every good
thing. I AM happy. I AM abundant. I AM
healthy. I AM love. I AM always on time.
I AM eternal youth. I AM filled with
energy every single day...I am whole,
perfect, strong, powerful, loving, harmonious,
and happy."
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| If you have
trouble swallowing the above atoms and secrets,
there is an intelligent and succinct alternative
spoken by Al Franken of Saturday Night Live: |
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"I am good enough, I am smart
enough, and doggone it, people
like me!"
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| As
we will see, without the piggybacking habit,
no self-help book can be written. There will
always be a Berlin Wall between this scheme
and plagiarism. Consider any one of the three
passages posed as a challenge a little earlier.
If the content in that passage were, say,
a formal idea from quantum physics or an
original poem, then any unacknowledged attempt
to piggyback would be squarely plagiarism.
But since the content has no discernible
meaning whatsoever, any type of unacknowledged
piggybacking is fair game. For instance,
many of the Choprasin pustulates appear to
be unacknowledged rephrasing of the postulates
that are given in Capra's Tao; the latter,
of course, is devoid of intelligent content.
Hence, the Choprasin pustulates suffer from
the same disease. By discussing the piggybacking
maneuver, in a most critical sense, the aim
of this debunking has been realized. Pick
any two general self-help books off the shelf
and compare passages at random from them.
You will inevitably discover clever ways
in which the two authors piggyback on other
self-help writers' prose or on each other's.
The Secret doesn't hide this! Byrne audaciously
includes photos of prominent self-help writers
whose piggybacked quotes comprise a major
component of the book. Chopra piggybacks
on his own ideas by writing similar stuff
in all his books! |
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| "A youthful
mind is playful and lighthearted. Laughter
is the best medicine. We encourage you to
have the intention to lighten up and be open
to the wonder and delight of living a human
life," writes DC on pages 219-220 of
Grow Younger, Live Longer. "Laughter
attracts joy, releases negativity, and leads
to miraculous cures." This is Grasshopper
on page 139 of The Secret piggybacking on
Master's laughable banality above. Note the
wily manner in which Byrne introduces the
phrase "miraculous cures" in her
quote. Substitute this phrase with "quantum
healing" and the piggybacking on Choprasin
would be complete. Interestingly, "quantum
healing" is not a miracle in the sense
of the Second Coming. The latter is clearly
understood (improbable as it may be); the
former cannot because it is nonsensical.
The Second Coming might invite tepid conversation
at dinner. Quantum healing would ruin dinner
altogether. This is perhaps why Bertrand
Russell noted that modern dogmas are more
harmful than old ones (see section 0.4 of
this book). |
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| I mentioned
at the beginning of this chapter that if
you attempt to become a guru and are not
successful, you would have, at the very least,
acquired the skills needed to graduate from
a business school, majoring in corporate
strategy or organizational behavior. One
of these "difficult skills" taught
in business schools, for example, is how
to create an effective questionnaire, much
like what the self-help guru does in his
best sellers. The questions are designed
to be repetitive, insinuative, and self-serving-the
conclusions that you draw from the data should
be no different than the insights of an astrologer.
Why bother with business school? I will show
you how it's done. But first let's take a
look at a questionnaire that Chopra constructs
on pages 293-296 of his footnote. |
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| He writes on
page 293: "To discover where you are
on the scale of time-bound versus timeless
awareness, answer the following questionnaire." Note
how cunningly he has collated two words from
our list in section 1.1, namely "timeless
awareness." What does it mean? I don't
know. Do you? The point is that he is going
to help us draw inferences about an undefined
idea! The i-puke starts with a dribble, namely
the title, "How Do You Metabolize Time?" The
dribble quickly becomes an uncontrollable
deluge. He wants you to tick off statements
that best apply to you. There are thirty
statements in all, divided evenly into two
parts: (1) time-bound and (2) timeless. Statements
under (1) include, for example, "Life
is a balance of losses and gains; I just
try to have more gains than losses." Under
(2), for example, "I feel unique." He
advises, "Some of the statements in
Part 1 may seem to contradict others in Part
2, but that doesn't matter." Well, by
George! Thanks for that clarification. So
how well would you do on this diabolical
test? "If you score higher on Part 1...for
you, time is linear; it often runs short
and will eventually run out...You are likely
to value excitement and positive emotions
more highly than inner peace and nonattachment." He
goes on, "If you scored higher on Part
2, you tend to be timeless in your awareness...You
value detachment over possessiveness; your
motivations tend to be internal rather than
external." |
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| And to think
this naked emperor has succeeded in attracting
so many followers! |
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| In
the following, I faithfully mimic Chopra,
including the manner in which he invents
scoring rules. For this example, I've developed
a questionnaire on the topic of sex, which
will not fail to lure readers in today's
society. |
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