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 cause, though one suspects old age had something to do with it. He was anywhere from 91 to 98 years young. Nobody knows for sure. Age is an afterthought in the realm of space-time consciousness.

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. He got the ball rolling with his Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. 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." Kind of like watching The View.

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"). That wasn't the only setback he suffered, either. Ringo had to leave the ashram early because he couldn't eat spicy food.

But the Maharishi did all right for himself in the decades that followed, as cult leaders tend to do. 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. 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."

It even has its own currency--the Raam. If you're all out of Raams, though, no worries. "You can still use dollars or your credit card," Vedic City's website instructs. 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.

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. .  .  . 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. You have the Karma, we'll take the Coca-Cola, a metaphysical soft drink for a physical one."

Irving Kristol on Sheryl Crow

What do Sheryl Crow and W.H. Auden have in common? We'll let Irving Kristol explain. 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.

Our distinguished correspondent chivalrously rides to the defense of the beleaguered folk singer: "Please assure Ms. 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. It is an idea that has a distinguished precedent.

"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. They rented a house in Brooklyn with the intention of creating a mini-collective of five or six residents. The only names I remember were Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden. Because he did his writing at home, Auden was elected general manager. It was he who came up with the brilliant suggestion of one square per bathroom visit.

"The group dissolved within months."

Maybe it was more than the unmentionable odour of death that offended Auden's September night.

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. Her advice? 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. It's better to smoke rollies than straights. Straights have chemicals that keep them burning. So if you have to really smoke, smoke rollies." Top advice--except it's wrong. A recent study revealed that hand-rolled ciggies lead to a higher incidence of lung cancer.

As the Sun notes : "It's like Pete Doherty recommending heroin at a hepatitis fundraiser."

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? I don't get it from Newsweek. The Economist is more courageous" (as reported in the New York Observer):

"The success of The Economist--the fact that you read it, a black-turtlenecked guy at Columbia," Mr. Meacham began. But then he changed tack. "Look, I need you," said Mr. Meacham. "And I need--I've got people out there risking their lives right now. The Economist is not, by the way .  .  ." He changed tack again. "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. .  .  . "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. .  .  . I just don't know how to do it."

Saint Barack (cont.)

"No question, he comes off as at once brilliant and sensible, vibrant and measured, engaged and engaging, talented, forthright, quick-witted, passionate, thoughtful and, as with all remarkable people whom experience has taught both the extent and the bitter limits of their gifts, reasonably humble." (Michael Chabon on Obama, February 4, 2008, Washington Post.)