Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [60]
Henning says that levitation is "stabilized pure consciousness in activity, a result of perfect mind-body coordination." Sorry, Doug; the semantics don't work as misdirection. You said you hadn't done the miracle. Then, suddenly, you say you did it the first time you tried it. Just where is the truth in all this?
World Government News, which claims that TM has achieved its goal of world peace, is an expensive, full-color magazine that tries desperately to prove the tenets of TM. Under a cartoon drawing of "Sidha Man" (representing guess who) we read a familiar quotation: "And He arose, and rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm, and they feared exceedingly, and said one to another: What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" I think I get the message.
A small, pleasant, bearded man from India, a most unlikely figure, teamed with a powerful and efficient public-relations team and supported by uncritical media stories, has turned unproved and outdated notions of Eastern mysticism into a pseudoscientific mess that has seized the imaginations of enough people to make the organization wealthy and secure.
The fact remains, however, that despite the alleged beneficial influences of TM, many people continue to die violent deaths around the world. A mass suicide occurred in Guyana in 1978, "The Year of Invincibility for Every Nation." Tears continue to be shed in every corner of the globe, and all the mantra-chanting of all those poor suckers seems only to have stirred the wind a bit. Money continues to pour into the Maharishi's coffers, and for every dollar received a child gasps its last in hunger. The Maharishi and his TM have not proved to be saviors of the world, and the thousands upon thousands who have joined the cult—with eyes tightly shut, awaiting Pure Bliss that does not come, anticipating the magical powers promised and the great surges of goodness that are not at all evident—are still waiting.
Chariots in Flames
The Paper Seven eighths of everything is unseen
—The Iceberg Theorem
Erich von Daniken is a Swiss author who has become one of the most widely read writers of all time. He earned this distinction by selling some 36 million books, and he sold them because they pandered shamelessly to the public taste for nonsense. The only facts in his four books—Chariots of the Gods? Gods from Outer Space, The Gold of the Gods, and In Search of Ancient Gods—that I depend on are the page numbers.
For fifteen years, he has perpetrated on the reading public what I characterize as a literary diddle of enormous scope. A simple examination of his work will demonstrate this. In fact, any reasonably intelligent person with access to a public library can disprove such nonsense quickly and easily.
His major claims are:
1. Beings from outer space visited earth many times in the past.
2. They mated with primitive people here.
3. Such visits are recorded in mythology and history.
4. Artifacts have been left behind that prove these visits.
Now that's a lot for an ex-hotel manager / embezzler to prove. It all depends on whether his evidence is any good.
Concerning his first point, von Daniken trots out his prize exhibit. It is a sarcophagus lid from Palenque, a site in Mexico excavated about sixty years ago that has yielded wonderful treasures indeed. The lid, from a grave discovered under a Mayan pyramid there, bears an intricate carving of a man in a somewhat fetal position which, von Daniken claims, indicates that he is an astronaut. More than that, he identifies not only a rocket-sled contraption our flyer