'60s Pop star to open Meditation U. in Scotland

Sixties pop star Donovan is working on a plan to open a university in Scotland to be devoted to transcendental meditation.

The 'Mellow Yellow' singer says TM guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi asked him to build the university while the pop star was on pilgrimage to India back in 1968. But it wasn't until he met famed film director David Lynch in recent years that he decided to fulfill the Maharishi's request.

Lynch and Donovan plan to contact education officials in Scotland to make the school a legitimate place of learning and Lynch says the effects could be outstanding.

http://www.nme.com/news/nme/32146

Dalai Lama discusses meditation with scientists

Nearly four thousand people filled the gymnasium of Emory University in Atlanta to listen to a conversation between scientists and the Dalai Lama about the effects of meditation on depression.

Several top experts on depression indicated that meditation can play a big part in treating people suffering from the condition.

The one-day conference was sponsored by Emory University and the Boulder, Colorado-based Mind & Life Institute. It was part of a weekend of events with the Dalai Lama, who has accepted a distinguished professorship at the prestigious private college.

On Friday, the exiled Tibetan leader was presented with a science curriculum designed by Emory faculty and translated into Tibetan. The faculty will teach the curriculum to thousands of Tibetan monks living in India starting in January 2008 and part of a program requested by the Dalai Lama to improve monastic education.

http://tinyurl.com/3b6tq6

Filmmaker Promotes Meditation on Israel Trip

David Lynch, on a five-day visit to Israel to encourage transcendental meditation, met with Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres.

The 61-year-old director, who has received Oscar nominations for "The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet" and "Mullholland Dr.," is visiting Israel to encourage transcendental meditation as a new approach to eliminating violence in schools and creating a peaceful world.

"Real peace is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all suffering, all negativity," Lynch said at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. "Change comes from within. From the first meditation, boom, you're there."

Lynch has been meditating for more than 30 years. He started the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace to promote transcendental meditation as a way to aid students in violence-ridden schools and bring about world harmony.

http://tinyurl.com/2t8v47

No one can patent ancient yoga techniques, says spiritual leader

Mystic master and spiritual guru Anandmurti Gurumaa on Wednesday described the practice of yoga as an ancient all-encompassing discipline to be enjoyed by people from various walks of life, and said no person or country had any business to patent it.

Interacting with select media persons here ahead of a five-day-long camp on ways to promote the management of stress on a day-to-day basis, Gurumaa, who originally hails from Amritsar, criticised moves in the United States to patent yoga.

"Knowledge is not anyone's property. Everyone has a right to it. Yoga is a discipline that has been handed down through the ages, through time, and it has taken generations of people to understand it, propagate it and derive individual benefit from it," she said.

She apparently was reacting to Bikram Yoga founder and US-based Bikram Choudhary's move in May this year to get a copyright for his method of teaching yoga, which has shocked yoga enthusiasts and experts in India.

There is a unanimous feeling in India that the idea of patenting knowledge like yoga is absurd and violates the ancient Indian art.

Anandmurti Gurumaa is the latest to join a bandwagon of critics against this move to patent yoga, even as the U.S. Patent Office has officially issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 trademarks on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks.

www dailyindia com

Mantra and Meditation

Much effort has been put into finding the "right" mantra for a particular person -- and the meaning is taken to be all-important. In fact the meaning of a mantra is of much less importance than how it feels to you. Even more important is the amount of energy and focus one puts into the recitation of one's mantra during meditation. With the right intention and focus, one can enter into pure meditation and the actual mantra chosen becomes a secondary issue.

Arguelles

Beyond the purple sky of the holonomic, post-historic future stretches the planetary rainbow, a celestial guardian being. While representing the cave and sacred site guarding rainbow serpents and dragons of aboriginal and early hieratic civilization, the rainbow guardian has always been with us. Like the psi bank that it symbolizes, its chromatic pattern has always beckoned to us to fulfill our potential. As the symbol of realization, bliss, and completion, it represents the “end condition” of humanity totally attuned to and operative with the spectrum of environmental energies. Such an expression suggests a complete synesthesia, a condition of complete planetary synthesis almost unthinkable today. Yet it is a condition to with the logic of the holonomic equation inescapably points.

-- Jose Arguelles, Earth Ascending

Jean Klein on evolution

Evolution in the strict meaning of the word is only an unfolding, a passing from that which is implicit to that which is explicit, from that which is unmanifest to that which is manifest. It produces nothing extrinsic to itself. It never produces, let alone creates. We cannot rely on it in our search for salvation or liberation. Liberation is not a problem of evolution, for no evolution can lead to liberation, which is the result of discernment only. We are not concerned with evolving, but we should endlessly put the question 'Who am I?' to ourselves. -- Jean Klein

Every new emergent and transformative development brings a new demand and a new responsibility: the higher must be integrated with the lower. And the greater the degree of development, the greater the burden of inclusion.

-- Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything 495

Brain Network Related To Intelligence Identified

In a review of 37 imaging studies related to intelligence, including their own, a pair of neuroscientists have uncovered evidence of a distinct neurobiology of human intelligence. Their Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT) identifies a brain network related to intelligence, one that primarily involves areas in the frontal and the parietal lobes.

The data suggest that some of the brain areas related to intelligence are the same areas related to attention and memory and to more complex functions like language. Haier and Jung say this possible integration of cognitive functions suggests that intelligence levels might be based on how efficient the frontal-parietal networks process information.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070911092117.htm

Yoga festival planned for UN peace day

Global celebrities Christy Turlington, Russell Simmons, Sting and Donna Karan are going vegan for a day to promote the yoga-inspired events worldwide organised by the Global Mala Project (GMP) on UN's International Day of Peace, Sep 21.

The event is aimed to raise awareness and funds for global causes. The GMP aims to unite the global yoga community to form a mala or a rosary around earth through collective practices based on the Hindu sacred cycle of 108 on Sep 21-22.

Participants include hundreds of yoga studios, mainly in the US and at least two in India, renowned yoga and spiritual teachers.

The main event in Los Angeles on Sep 22 has been planned as a gathering of 108 yoga studios, 1,008 teachers and 10,000 people. The 12-hour programme includes yoga trance dance by Shiva Rea, meditation with Bangalore-based guru Paramahamsa Nithyananda, Kundalini Yoga, 108 rounds of Surya namaskar, mandala creation and kirtan.

Over 16 million people practise yoga in the US and the market for yoga in the country is worth $3 billion, according to Yoga Journal surveys.

http://tinyurl.com/2r2d3f