Chopra Watch: A BS Sandwich of Astrology, Primordial Vibrations, and Spirit Math

[beam me up scottie]

Chopra Watch: A BS Sandwich of Astrology, Primordial Vibrations, and Spirit Math
September 17, 2015 by Bo Gardiner

Luckily for you, I receive Deepak Chopra‘s “Chopra Centered Lifestyle Newsletter” -– how’s that title for narcissism? — so you don’t have to. (You’re welcome.)




Yesterday, Chopra alerted me to go read about the power of Primordial Sound Meditation, written by “The Editors at Chopra.com”:

As scientific research reveals, when you meditate, your breathing slows, blood pressure decreases, and stress hormone levels fall.

Thanks for the reminder, Deepak! I know that medical science has found health benefits to meditation, so I’m going to go meditate right now!

“Stop!” shouts my e-guru (though his actual words are prettier and more camouflaged). “To do it right, you must have my special (read: expensive) scientific mantra!”

At the Chopra Center, we offer instruction in Primordial Sound Meditation, a powerful meditation technique rooted in the Vedic tradition of India. Chopra Center co-founders Deepak Chopra and David Simon have revived this ancient practice of sound meditation and made it available in a format that’s easy to learn.

When you learn Primordial Sound Meditation, you will receive a personal mantra. A mantra is a specific sound or vibration — which when repeated silently — helps you to enter deeper levels of awareness…

The mantra you will receive is the vibration the universe was creating at the time and place of your birth, and it is calculated following Vedic mathematic formulas. When you silently repeat your mantra in meditation, it creates a vibration that helps you slip into the space between your thoughts, into the complete silence that is sometimes referred to as “the gap.” Your mind is no longer caught up in its noisy internal chatter and is instead exposed to its own deepest nature: pure awareness.

As many studies show, a regular meditation practice offers numerous health benefits… Today doctors are increasingly citing stress as a major contributing factor to most illnesses.

And that, my friends, is the classic Chopra Bullshit Sandwich: Take two slices of science-based statements no different from what a medical doctor might recommend, like “stress can be bad for you” and “meditation can be good for you.” Next, slather between them some gooey, wooey Deepities like “I can give you a mantra that exposes your deepest nature using the vibration the universe was creating at the time and place of your birth.” Season liberally with phrases like “scientific research reveals,” “studies show,” and “research has found.”

Now for the most important ingredient: Marketing. Carefully wrap your bullshit sandwich in dreamy New Age rhetoric; sell it with snide digs at “conventional science,” charge thousands of dollars… and PBS and other major media outlets will be clamoring to take a bite. They will happily pretend they’re not presenting an astrologer as a credible voice on science and health. It may not give us food poisoning, but minds everywhere become just a bit more crippled.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/09/17/chopra-watch-a-bs-sandwich-of-astrology-primordial-vibrations-and-spirit-math/

The stupid, it burns.

The antidote, as always, is in the comments.

[DetlefK]

1. Repeat the sound... but stay silent while doing it.

I have come to the conclusion: Whoever is stupid enough to fall for woo deserves to be separated from his money. That's simply social darwinism.

[beam me up scottie]

2. I have seriously considered going into the woo business.

Take Orgone Energy for example:

Orgone energy was Wilhelm Reich's term for the Force an omnipresent, "life positive" energy he claimed to have discovered in 1939. Reich often used 'orgone energy' as a catch-all to explain every natural phenomenon for which there was no conventional explanation (or for which Reich did not know there existed a conventional explanation), as a kind of a God of the gaps. Those few properties of orgone energy Reich did spell out as definite included:

Orgone is attracted by organic substances

Orgone is attracted, but then immediately re-radiated, by metallic substances

Earth has an orgone energy field that flows west-to-east faster than the Earth rotates, except when a storm is approaching and the flow reverses its direction

...

But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane

According to Wilhelm Reich, when a human body absorbs orgone energy, red blood corpuscles emit a blue glow at their fringe when viewed under a microscope.[7] (The possibility that this blue fringe was chromatic aberration, a side effect of focusing light through a lens, didn't seem to have occured to Reich.)

Also, orgone energy causes an involuntary pelvic thrusting motion, which Reich called the "orgasm reflex". The orgasm reflex can appear from activities other than an actual orgasm, and Reich claimed to see it in some of his patients during vegetotherapy. This motion is related to Reich's dividing of universal forces in to suction and pushing actions.

Orgone therapy

Reich extended his ideas of orgone energy into psychoanalytic based therapy throughout his career. Late in his life he combined them all into a general therapy theory coined Orgone therapy. There were two main broad subdivisions: physical orgone therapy and psychiatric orgone therapy. It was not uncommon for Reich to use both types of therapy on the same individual.

Physical orgone therapy involved the use of devices that Reich believed manipulated orgone energy directly. These included orgone accumulator boxes large enough for the patient to sit in, orgone blankets and "shooters" which were built out of the same layers as a single wall in an orgone accumulator, and Reich's medical DOR buster which was a scaled-down version of his cloudbuster.

...

Physical orgone therapy has its origins in Reich's belief in orgone energy. He believed that one effect of muscular armor was that the chronically-contracted muscles blocked the natural flow of orgone energy in the body, and that thus supplying the body with extra orgone energy might be able to overcome those blocks. He also believed that organic substances attracted orgone energy, and metallic substances attracted but then immediately re-radiated orgone energy -- so, he reasoned, by building boxes with organic substances lining the outside and metallic substances lining the inside, he ought to be able to "accumulate" orgone energy inside the box. Reich and his followers built many of these orgone accumulator boxes and had patients sit naked inside them for 10-20 minutes at a time. They eventually came to believe that physical orgone therapy could cure everything from impotence to cancer.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Orgone_energy

Now look at the products being sold to harness the healing power of it:

Metaphysical Orgone EMF Shield Radiation Protection Energy Generator Chem Trails

Does your home have acell phone, microwave, fluorescent lights, TV screens or computer? Each of these products is greatly exposing you to harmful radiation. You will neutralize the negative energy and EMF (Electromagnetic Field Radiation) in your home with a Black Sun Orgone Accumulator.

$285.12 used
+$17.89 shipping. No tax

Orgonite 6" Orgone Energy Charging Plate. Crystals, Apatite, Moldavite, Hematite Petalite Phenacite Rhodizite Tourmaline Shungite, SBB Coil

This heavy duty 6" diameter Orgone Positive Energy Generator Charging Plate contains a piece of Hematite at the center under the heavy gauge Copper SBB Coil, within the SBB ...

$275.00
+$10.95 shipping. No tax

Set Of 100 Earth Orgone Energy Cubes Amazing Harmonizer Hhg/tb- Potent

Earth Orgone Energy Harmonizer HHG/TB Devices You will receive 100 Orgone Energy Cubes!- Amazing Harmonizer HHG/TB Potent Energy Technology- Protective Shield! (1.25" diameter ...

$395.95 used
Free shipping. No tax

Orgonite | Akasha Beam - Chembuster from Oz Orgonite

Akasha BeamChembuster connected with the ether We use well-tried knowledge and existing know how for the craftsmanship of all our orgonites. The existing chembusters could be ...

$5,156.45
+$217.77 shipping. No tax

How hard could it be?

[DetlefK]

7. I think, a colleague of mine ran into Orgone woo.

He's a scientist and has a 5yo daughter. One day she was sick and the doctor sent her to this medical practitioner for a special treatment. This scientist was speechless when this other "doctor" started waving a crystal over his sick child... At first, as scientists are wont to do, he tried to understand and decipher what was going on. He had never heard of this therapy and initially thought that this was some kind of physical effect he had been unaware of. When it became clear that none of the pseudoscientific explanations had a connection to physics, he grabbed his child and was outta there.

[beam me up scottie]

11. I would have been out of there too.

Jesus.

It's one thing to let them practice woo on an adult but to have them try to cure a child with it is despicable.

[AlbertCat]

9. How hard could it be?

It's extremely difficult... if you, y'know...


have a conscience and ethics.

[beam me up scottie]

12. Exactly.

That's the only thing that prevents me from doing it.

[Curmudgeoness]

16. I don't have a conscience, so

if you have any good ideas for something new that we could come up with, I would be more than willing to do it.

Actually, I do have a conscience, but I don't see this as an ethical dilemma. Hell, these people are going to fall for my woo or someone else's woo, so I might as well get into the fray. I have also thought that I should give the people what they want.

[beam me up scottie]

17. Well we considered going to a woo store and just repackaging the crystals

and other assorted trinkets/doo dads as orgone products.

If you check out the ads on google products it's easy to learn the code words. You could probably mark the stuff up 500% and make a nice profit.

If you're handy with a welder you can create orgone blasters and make a fortune:

http://www.orgoneblasters.com/make-your-own.htm

[Curmudgeoness]

20. Can't I just make tin foil hats?

But I have to admit, those are hilarious.

[beam me up scottie]

21. Maybe you could use different coloured foil and really jazz them up.

[Curmudgeoness]

22. My area has people who would be looking for "help" with their life.

Like this one.....I wish I knew where you buy alien repelling spotlights.

HERMITAGE, Pa. -
An unusual story out of Mercer County, where neighbors say they're fed up with an elderly man who wraps his house in what appears to be foil and shines spot lights to deter aliens.

http://www.wfmj.com/story/30006139/hermitage-residents-say-neighbor-is-afraid-of-aliens

[beam me up scottie]

23. Jeebus.

There's your product, Alien Repelling Spotlights!!!

[onager]

3. He must have a new book coming out...

:large

[beam me up scottie]

4. Chopra is another "gift" Oprah foisted upon us.

Along with Drs Phil and Oz.

[onager]

5. And Dr. Jenny McCarthy...

Good Daily Beast article about that, "Blame Hollywood for Anti-Vaxers:"

Who doesn’t love Oprah? America loves Oprah. The president loves Oprah. Everybody who has ever wanted a free Pontiac definitely loves Oprah. And yet the celebrated talk-show host, actress, and political player has a piss-poor track record when it comes to science.

In fairness, Oprah is no anti-vaxxer. She has, however, given one of the movement’s biggest celebrity mouthpieces a national platform. After actress and Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy launched her crusade—which included a Green Our Vaccines march and rally in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 2008—Oprah invited her on to her show.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/03/blame-hollywood-for-anti-vaxxers.html

[beam me up scottie]

6. Argh.

I forgot about her.

Oprah: my guests prove science is a democracy!

Look under your chairs!

You get some woo, and you get some woo, everybody's going home with woo!

And measles.

[LostOne4Ever]

24. Don't forget, atheists are incapable of experiencing awe according to Oprah

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201310/why-oprahs-anti-atheist-bias-hurts-so-much

[AlbertCat]

8. using the vibration the universe was creating at the time and place of your birth.

This was big when I was a kid.... does it count?

[beam me up scottie]

13. Love that song!

[Cartoonist]

15. In that case

Your mantra is:

Mike Love, not war.

[AlbertCat]

25. Mike Love, not war.

LOL X 10!


Bop Bop!

[progressoid]

10. That's a quantum bull shit sandwich.

When I read 'personal mantra' I immediately thought of Jeff Goldblum

[beam me up scottie]

14. Lol!

You said quantum.

[Curmudgeoness]

18. I'm glad that the author referenced astrology

since that was the first thing that popped into my head when I read about the personal mantra....based on the time and place of your birth. This is the biggest load of crap that I have seen in years, and that is saying something.

[beam me up scottie]

19. Chopra is very good at inventing crap and selling it.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

H. L. Mencken

[SwissTony]

27. In 1994, Chopra published a book called...

"Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The Quantum Alternative to Growing Old".

Comparing photos of him then and now, it's clear he hasn't aged a day.

I've got a nice bridge for sale...going cheap...

[beam me up scottie]

28. "Transcendence illuminates the progressive expansion of creativity"

The enigmatic wisdom of Deepak Chopra

Woo woo is as woo woo does.

[lindysalsagal]

29. So, you're saying, it vibrates?

Like, just shaking a little, or are we talking about moving all of my blood to one part of my body?

[beam me up scottie]

30. Some vibrations are good: