Front Royal Family Practice Medical Records Release: Fill & Download for Free

I am not the first to note a paper that definitively belongs in this list, but other answers that reference it have been collapsed for brevity. And in truth, they were not as good answers as I am about to write, because they do not expose to the naive reader who may have only heard some vague reference of it the specifics of exactly why this paper was so atrocious. I refer to Andrew Wakefield’s infamous paper (now retracted): “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.”. This is the paper that started the anti-vaccination movement.1— Unlike much research of questionable quality, that may be published in vanity journals or society journals with less exacting peer review standards, this work was published in an extremely reputable journal — The Lancet. Per Wikipedia: “The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world's oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals”. [1]2— The authors made an inferential error that any high-schooler taking an AP Statistics class would have known to avoid: the assumption that correlation equals causation. While speculation of causative mechanisms is often performed in papers that identify correlation, the tiny sample size here was completely inadequate to support any such hypothesis. This claim supported by this error caused the paper to receive far more publicity than it otherwise would have warranted. From the Lancet’s 2004 partial retraction:We wish to make it clear that in this paper no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient. However, the possibility of such a link was raised and consequent events have had major implications for public health. In view of this, we consider now is the appropriate time that we should together formally retract the interpretation placed upon these findings in the paper, according to precedent.[2]Note the minimization of the statements made in the paper, the “possibility” of a link. In fact, this is the first sentence of the Findings in the abstract of the original work:Onset of behavioural symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination in eight of the 12 children[3]You may make your own interpretation, but that does not read to my eyes as a casual and non-directing speculation of the type one might find within the closing comments of a paper’s discussion. Had it been placed there, rather than front and center in the Findings, the impact may have been much less. For certain, in interviews Wakefield was not shy about playing up the link:Neither school nor hospital stood on the sidelines. They threw their weight behind Wakefield. In the build-up to the press conference, they installed extra phone lines and answering machines to field the expected panic, and distributed to broadcasters a 23 minute video news release showcasing Wakefield’s claims. “There is sufficient anxiety in my own mind for the long term safety of the polyvalent vaccine—that is, the MMR vaccination in combination—that I think it should be suspended in favour of the single vaccines,” he said, in one of four similar formulations on the videotape.3— The authors failed to disclose to the journal substantial financial conflicts of interest. From the Lancet’s 2004 statement:(4) That the children who were reported in the Lancet study were also part of a Legal Aid Board funded pilot project, led by Dr Wakefield—a pilot project with the aim of investigating the grounds for pursuing a multi-party legal action on behalf of parents of allegedly vaccine-damaged children, the existence of which was not disclosed to the editors of The Lancet.(5) That the results eventually reported in the 1998 Lancet paper were passed to lawyers and used to justify the multiparty legal action prior to publication, a fact that was not disclosed to the editors of The Lancet.(6) That Dr Wakefield received £55000 from the Legal Aid Board to conduct this pilot project and that, since there was a substantial overlap of children in both the Legal Aid Board funded pilot project and the Lancet paper, this was a financial conflict of interest that should have been declared to the editors and was not.[4]4— The authors violated the standards of medical ethics, including conducting invasive tests on children that were not clinically justified.The developmentally challenged children of often vulnerable parents were discovered to have been treated like the doctors’ guinea pigs.5— The authors violated the standards of medical and experimental practice for subject enrollment and data collection.He is also anxious to arrange for tests to be carried out on any children . . . who are showing symptoms of possible Crohn’s disease. The following are signs to look for. If your child has suffered from all or any of these symptoms could you please contact us, and it may be appropriate to put you in touch with Dr Wakefield.”The listed symptoms included pain, weight loss, fever, and mouth ulcers. Clients and contacts were quickly referred. Thus, an association between autism, digestive issues, and worries about MMR—the evidence that launched the vaccine scare—was bound to be found by the Royal Free’s clinicians because this was how the children were selected.6— The authors falsified data. Although none of the 12 cases cited in the report was accurately represented, here is an example to show how egregious the changes were:Child 1’s recorded story began when he was aged 9 months, with a “new patient” note by general practitioner Andrea Barrow. One of the mother’s concerns was that he could not hear properly—which might sound like a hallmark presentation of classical autism, the emergence of which is often insidious. Indeed, a Royal Free history, by neurologist and coauthor Peter Harvey, noted “normal milestones” until “18 months or so.”Child 1 was vaccinated at 12 months of age, however. Thus neither 9 nor 18 months helped Wakefield’s case. But in the Lancet, the “first behavioural symptom” was reported “1 week” after the injection, holding the evidence for the lawsuit on track.Step 1 to achieve this: two and a half years after the child was vaccinated, Walker-Smith took an outpatient history. Although the mother apparently had no worries following her son’s vaccination, the professor elicited that the boy was “pale” 7-10 days after the shot. He also elicited that the child “possibly” had a fever, and “may” have been delirious, as well as pale.“It’s difficult to associate a clear historical link with the MMR and the answer to autism,” Walker-Smith wrote to the general practitioner, with a similar letter to Wakefield, “although [Mrs 1] does believe that [child 1] had an illness 7-10 days after MMR when he was pale, ?fever, ?delirious, but wasn’t actually seen by a doctor.”Step 2: for the Lancet, Wakefield dropped the question marks, turning Walker-Smith’s queries into assertions. And, although Royal Free admission and discharge records refer to “classical” autism, step 3, the former surgeon reported “delirium” as the first “behavioural symptom” of regressive autism, with, step 4, a “time to onset” of 7 days.So here—behind the paper—is how Wakefield evidenced his “syndrome” for the lawsuit, and built his platform to launch the vaccine scare.Even when data was not completely falsified, it was cherry-picked:Moreover, through the omission from the paper of some parents’ beliefs that the vaccine was to blame, the time link for the lawsuit sharpened. With concerns logged from 11 of 12 families, the maximum time given to the onset of alleged symptoms was a (forensically unhelpful) four months. But, in a version of the paper circulated at the Royal Free six months before publication, reported concerns fell to nine of 12 families but with a still unhelpful maximum of 56 days. Finally, Wakefield settled on 8 of 12 families, with a maximum interval to alleged symptoms of 14 days.Between the latter two versions, revisions also slashed the mean time to alleged symptoms—from 14 to 6.3 days. “In these children the mean interval from exposure to the MMR vaccine to the development of the first behavioural symptom was six days, indicating a strong temporal association,” he emphasised in a patent for, among other things, his own prophylactic measles vaccine, eight months before the Lancet paper.7— The authors did all of the above, not in service of misplaced medical zeal and a true desire to help their patients, but in service of money earned for creating support for a lawsuit against a vaccine manufacturer, with a follow-on of driving business to a replacement vaccine that Wakefield would profit from.Given the previous week’s publicity drive, the vaccine plans were sensitive. But the school had long known of this ambition. First surfacing in Wakefield’s 1995 patent for a diagnostic test for Crohn’s disease, it had been fleshed out in 1997, eight months before the press conference, in a patent for a “safer” single measles shot.The revised business plan was ambitious and detailed, aiming to raise £2.1m from investors. It spanned the detection of Crohn’s disease, the treatment of autism, and “a replacement for attenuated viral vaccines.”8— As a result of the above actions and motivations, the authors precipitated a public health crisis.As parents’ confidence slowly returned in Britain, the scare took off around the world, unleashing fear, guilt, and infectious diseases—and fuelling suspicion of vaccines in general. In addition to measles outbreaks, other infections are resurgent, with Mr 11’s home state of California last summer seeing 10 babies dead from whooping cough, in the worst outbreak since 1958.For most authors their participation was peripheral. Though one other has been struck from the register after the investigation that resulted in the Lancet’s final retraction in 2012, it is clear that Wakefield was the architect of this fraud, that it was his venality and conflicts of interest that led him to posit and promote the link between the MMR vaccine and autism, and that he continued to champion this finding long after other studies had cast significant doubt on the validity of his results.In other words, out of sheer personal greed the primary authors of this paper violated medical ethics, abused children, lied to their parents, lied to the public, and indirectly caused (and are still causing) illness and death from diseases that should be highly preventable.To this last, Wakefield is not the only one culpable. There is a long list, from the Lancet that failed to properly investigate and issue a full retraction in 2004 when the improprieties were first brought to their attention, to celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy who utilize the platform of their fame to promote dangerous agendas. But whatever came after, Wakefield and this paper started it.All quotes unattributed in the text above are from Brian Deer’s investigative series in the British Medical Journal. [5] [6]Footnotes[1] The Lancet - Wikipedia[2] ScienceDirect[3] ScienceDirect[4] ScienceDirect[5] How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed[6] How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money

I read the contents in the link. Here is what I think (not feel):All his verifiable facts are wrong.His understanding of scientific concepts (such as energy) is wrong.His attempts to create parallels between his understanding of scientific concepts and his own teachings are therefore wrong.He is delusional and a narcissist. He genuinely believes he has all the answers (hence a narcissist). He does not (hence delusional).He is ignorant, and therefore contemptuous of regular modes of education, of scientists, and of education in general.And that might turn out to be ironic because I, an educated medical scientist, am about to dissect his words. Bring your metal detectors, folks. There might be irony ahead.Q: Sadhguru, your knowing seems to be inexhaustible. Is all this recorded in you or are you just getting it from somewhere?The question probably arises because Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev has, over time, provided his own explanations for the following real-world phenomena: biological magnetism, thyroid function, cancer and carcinogenesis, tidal currents, the molecular modification of water, the Higgs Boson, medical therapeutics, and the role of evolution in dietary science. For starters. (He has held forth on much more than this.) But what he has repeatedly emphasized is his lack of both a formal and religious education. He has stressed that he often skipped school; and that he has never read The Gita or any book in the Hindu canon. And so the question.Sadhguru: Karma is recorded in many ways: memory-wise, sensation-wise, physiology-wise and energy-wise. Similarly with knowledge, some things are transmitted to you on the level of your mind, others on the level of your body.False equivalency. We all have a physical body. And one organ in that body is the brain. The sum total of the electrical impulses in our brain at any point of time is what is called our mind. But karma is different. It isn’t material, and thus isn’t scientific, or scientifically testable. Karma is moral; the sum total of your moral actions. It has spiritual implications, it dictates where your soul ends up after death. Karma is not your mind. Let us say you were cursed with a mentally impaired brain in this life. But your karma was good, so you are born as a genius in your next life. You see? You are given a more powerful mind for the next round.I stress that because there is zero proof that karma is recorded in our memory or sensations or physiology or energy. In fact, let me deconstruct that: sensations create memories, the storage of memories is part of human physiology, and human physiology requires energy (biochemical energy) to happen. So that entire sentence of his is meaningless; and betrays gross ignorance of what the words sensation, physiology, memory and energy mean.But I’d like to clarify further the one word this man (and any new-Age BS vendor, like Gwyneth Paltrow, for e.g.) tends to misuse more often than any other: energy. Sadhguru has used the phrase: positive energy, negative energy, yogic energy, and so on more than once. Gwyneth Paltrow talks about feminine energy and kidney energy.So here it is; once and for all: energy is the ability of a body to do work. Let us say you are a Flat-Earther spewing your bunkum on the YouTube comments section to an official NASA spacewalk video. Now let us say I found myself behind you without your knowledge a few days later. Naturally, the correct thing to do in such a situation is to reset your head; by hitting you very hard.Now in the instant, just before I show you the origins of the universe, my raised hand has energy. It has potential energy.An instant later, I take one small step for man (but a leap for all mankind), by pinging the back of your abnormally thick skull. Right before impact, my hand converts that potential energy into kinetic energy.The same variation plays out in all of life. Sunlight is light energy and heat energy. It is used by chlorophyll in plants to perform photosynthesis, which converts that energy into biochemical energy, which is used to synthesize structural components. So the biochemical energy is converted to chemical energy binding the plant molecules together. When we harvest, chew, swallow, then digest plant material, we invest chemical energy to break apart those molecules, releasing the chemical energy in the bonds of the plant molecules.So there is no positive energy, or negative energy, or feminine energy. There’s just energy, period. Some of it might be reusable, some of it might not, but that isn’t positivity or negativity. There is the completely different matter of positive chemical charge and negative chemical charge, but that is completely unrelated to the spiritual/emotional usage of the word positive.Similarly with knowledge, some things are transmitted to you on the level of your mind, others on the level of your body. Do you see how once you know how to swim, your body knows it? If you fall into the water, you will swim. You do not have to remember how to ride a bicycle. Once you know how, if you sit on the bicycle, it just goes. Even if you do not ride a bicycle for twenty years and then get on to one, you might be a bit off-balance at first but then you just go, because the memory is in the body. It is no longer in the mind. Transmission is also on many different levels.Wrong. This is neurological illiteracy. All information is stored in the brain. He picks two examples: swimming and cycling. So let us work with these examples. Now both these examples have a couple of things in common: they are kinetic skills, they are complex skills requiring multiple muscle groups, they require a finely-tuned sense of balance.So let me start with the most basic: the human sense of balance. It requires three components to function harmoniously: our inner ears (fluid clues), our eyes (visual clues), and the neural component of proprioception (that uses the previous two to generate position sense). Here is a very brief summary of the physiology of balance (excluding technical terms).Do you see how all incoming sensory information is integrated at the level of the cerebral cortex and cerebellum? Those are in the brain.Early in life, this neuro-physiological network is not fully developed. That is one of the reasons we have to learn to walk as toddlers. But once we have learned, this ability is not permanent. It can be lost. The reason doesn’t even have to be neurological. It can be something as simple as decreased blood flow in a vessel.Here, let me show you. Consider this (below) network of blood vessels in the brain. It is called the Circle of Willis, and is one of the most important vascular networks worth studying in the body. It is easy if you break it down; takes maybe 10 minutes to memorize. But for now just memorize the position of the one artery I have circled.Done? Good. Did you note how the entire circle is bilaterally symmetrical?Now take a look at this MRI of this patient. For your orientation: that artery in the middle of the upper half is the basilar artery. Tell me if you can see any asymmetry in the lower half of the circle of Willis. (In the radiograph, R stands for Right.)Do you see how the entire right vertebral artery is narrowed along its entire length?There could be a clot near the base of the artery. Blood clots are more likely to happen where there is turbulent flow of blood. And sharp angles in the vascular network tend to induce turbulent flow around the edge.But why is this important? Because this artery supplies an area of the brainstem responsible for balance. If it is cut off, the dependent area of the brain is starved for blood and will soon die. This damage is irreversible. The patient will be unable to balance; and therefore unable to walk, let alone bicycle, even if all the rest of the body is normal. We know because this happens in old people all the time. It’s called a stroke.And here’s the thing: all this happens in the brain. Here’s an image of the floor of the skull viewed from above. Look where the vertebral arteries are.So when this happens to an old person, do you know what we do? We make them learn to balance all over again. The brain is incredibly accommodating, in that it can relearn old information and store it in a new place. So we teach them to walk. All over again.Stroke rehabilitation is a tedious and painful process. Bear in mind that during all this, nothing except a tiny area of the brain is damaged. Just a tiny bit. Smaller than your thumbnail. And still all this. Because the brain is where all the information is stored. The non-brain part of the body does not store any information. Information is stored in the form of proteins. The proteins are preserved within the cell bodies of neurons. Therefore for information to be stored, we have to have a huge mass of neurons. Take a look at this image of the nervous system in the body and tell me where you see huge masses of neurons:Get my point?Good. Now get another more practical point. Let us test this unusual individual’s strange theory. Consider a coma patient. Their only problem is their cerebral cortex. They cannot be woken up. But the rest of their body is functioning. Now, if we threw the coma patient in a pool, would he swim?Here is why I worry for Sadhguru’s followers: Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is scientifically illiterate. But he is also under the delusion that he is hyper-literate, and so he advances his own pseudo-scientific explanations for everything from molecular biology to particle physics. Now I understand why his followers will not catch any of these errors. The average upper-middle class educated Indian is usually scientifically illiterate, having ingested and regurgitated by rote for his science exams in school. But they still retain enough memory of that education to recognize scientific terms, and so when Sadhguru uses them illegitimately in discourse, they get positively triggered.But the second, more disturbing reason is this: even if they missed the blatant pseudo-scientific BS, how could they ignore the obvious self-contradictions? Because Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is not just an extremely ignorant know-it-all. He’s also an idiot. He conspicuously contradicts himself all the time, and his followers never catch this because……because the continuous chanting (I am not my mind, I am not even my body, I am not my mind, I am not even my bo…), the hectic daily schedule, the complete loss of modern communications, the protein deprivation (strict vegetarian diet), the enforced lack of speech (voluntary vows of silence), the subconscious cues of supervision (the guru’s portrait hangs in every room), all ensure that his audience will be thought-controlled. Isha Yoga, at its core, is a cult by the standard medical definition of a cult. It ticks off on every single one of Robert Lifton’s criteria of thought reform: http://www.cultrecover.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/lifton8criteria.pdfNow, what blatant contradictions am I talking about? I’ve dissected Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev’s mouth-makings before right here on Quora (you will find links at the end of the answer) so if you’ve read those, you’ve seen how blunt his self-contradictions are. But in this answer, there’s this:What? How does that explain that? That would be like saying that once you assemble a car, and drive it, even after a year of disuse, you can start it up and drive it again, because the driving force is in the car’s body. No! It isn’t! It’s in the car’s internal combustion engine. That drives it. After a long period of disuse, if the engine is fine, it will drive. Even if it brand new, if the engine is not fine, it will not drive! If you can ride a bicycle again after a gap of ten years, that is because your brain remembers. Not your body. If his twaddle were true, coma patients should automatically ride bicycles. The knowledge is in the body, yes?I am not carrying the burden of this knowledge when I walk on the street. I do not know anything, but at the same time, I know everything. If you ask me anything concerned with the inner dimensions of a human being, I will come out with the answer, without any hesitation, with absolute clarity.He knows nothing yet knows everything? That’s a dangerous technique called cognitive dissociation, often used to break prisoners during interrogation. Cult leaders use the same technique. After all, breaking a prisoner and indoctrinating a devotee are the same neurological process: removing resistance to instruction.This technique works this way: when you present the victim/prisoner with two opposites that cannot be resolved, yet force him to process them in unison, the resulting confusion will cause so much mental stress that he will stop analyzing and rely on you for the explanation. He won’t even attempt to understand the explanation, he will just memorize it and repeat it.A standard version of this is the good-cop-bad-cop routine in interrogation. In this man’s cult, it is much more subtle.The programs are advertised stating “religion is no bar” or “all religions welcome”. Except that is a lie, because what he teaches is his personal version of Shaivism (Shiva-worship) in which he himself is (very subtly) a proxy for the lingam in his ashram, which in turn is a proxy for Shiva, therefore…He repeatedly states that what he is teaching is not a religion, but a science, another kind of science, about technologies for well-being. Except that so-called science involves chanting mantras, yoga, yogic trances, daily aarti before his portrait, tantric trances, and talk about Ayurveda, Siddha, kriyas, mandalas and so on.He constantly presents a bipolar appearance, in which he claims he fuse both the ancient and the modern. He teaches from ancient texts, yet flies helicopters as a hobby. Does yoga, yet rides dirt bikes. Wears ethnic wear, yet carries a cell-phone and a watch. His monthly newsletter, Forest Flower, mirrors this duality. The front cover always has him in a pose of piety, while the back has him goofing off (wearing horns, making faces).It takes a little detachment to realize the farce. The marketing is a lie. Intimate devotees are instructed not to reveal to anyone what happens inside the programs. His ‘science’ isn’t science. His ‘technologies’ aren’t technologies. He does not teach from any known Hindu text. In fact, he proudly declares his illiteracy concerning them. He is not a fusion of ancient and modern. He is neither. He has no understanding of modern science, nor any understanding of ancient texts.Even if somebody says the Gita is saying something else, I will simply say that maybe Krishna does not know. What can I do about it? It is so crystal-clear within me that it cannot be any other way. It is not that Krishna does not know. It is just that maybe you are not able to see what he is saying.He is an authority above even the Gita. His knowledge surpasses Lord Krishna’s. It is not his fault. He just knows. No, wait. Correction: Krishna isn’t ignorant, the meaning of his words are merely obscure.See the cognitive dissociation there again? Krishna is ignorant. No, Krishna isn’t ignorant, his words are unfathomable. End result: stop trying to logically resolve this and just trust in him.But wait. What if the Gita and Sadhguru disagree, because Sadhguru himself is not able to see what Lord Krishna is saying?This is not coming from remembrance. This was transmitted in a different way. My association with my Guru was just for a few moments. Somehow, he did not even want to touch me with his foot. He touched me with his walking stick. What cannot be learned in ten lifetimes was transmitted in one moment. It was all there.Okay. Here’s a question: he started what eventually became the Isha Yoga foundation because of the experience he had while meditating atop Chamundi hill; that one moment of ecstatic bliss. In his own words, he started teaching Yoga so he could share this experience with others. (This always seemed strange to me because the best way to go about that, one would think, would be to make them meditate as well atop Chamundi hill.) He initially taught for free, refusing money. Eventually he began accepting money because, according to him, if the long-duration programs are offered for free, people would not value them. (Never mind that the most successful religions in the world run almost exclusively on charity.)But he just presented a simpler solution: he could transmit everything he has learned and experienced through a single touch, to his devotees. He does want this belief system to propagate, yes? And he does have hundreds of devotees in his ashrams who have renounced their worldly lives as engineers and bankers to find the same answers he found, yes? These people are trapped in place, yes? And trapped in time too? (Since the forward movement of their lives is frozen until they find what they are seeking.)So just touch them. Release them with one touch. That is all it will take.But I know he will say no (because none of this is true) and I think I can guess the reason he will give: “That would be unaesthetic.” Because that is the very same reason he gave a Tehelka reporter who covered his activities in depth more than half a decade ago: India's Independent Weekly News MagazineQuote from article (emphasis mine): “He says his appearance changed — the shape of eyes, voice — and people began to fall at his feet or ask him to predict the future. He soon pulled out of his business, fearing he’d manipulate people. “It was easy for me to read minds,” he said later. “I still can. But what’s the point? It’s like playing golf with a five-year-old… It isn’t a matter of ethics. More a matter of aesthetics.””Quote from article (emphasis mine): “In our private conversations, as I reluctantly sat at his feet, he said things like he could look at me and tell what ailment I have, and will have in 10 years (but he wouldn’t, since that would be “unaesthetic”). Or how in a new place, he just needs to stay in contact with an undisturbed object and he can understand the place’s history.”Yes. Aesthetics matter more than anything. More than life or death. That is why we physicians refuse to treat patients who are deformed by their diseases, or smell bad. Infants with diarrhea are welcome to die of cholera, what is important is that the pediatrics ward must not stink.Sarcasm, pardon. If I had the ability to tell how someone was going to die, hang aesthetics, I would tell them and save their life. Don’t f**king give me some fatalistic BS about the finality of death! Is it cancer? We’re getting better every year at beating cancer! Is it suicide? We’ll get them counselling and medication! Tell us how they will die, and we can rewrite their future for them.If he could truly tell the history of a place with a single touch, he could save innocent people. After all, a single touch at the scene of a murder would clarify the events, and possibly save innocent, wrongly-convicted lives. What about the sensational and badly mismanaged investigation into the murder of Aarushi Talwar? 2008 Noida double murder case - Wikipedia He could start with that.Therefore let me condense:If you live in India, a developing country with a vast number of un-diagnosed medical cases, an equally vast number of cases of perverted justice, and an infinitely higher number of uneducated people; and you possess the ability to fix all these with a mere touch, to not do so would be wicked/conscienceless/sadistic.But here is a bigger mistake: he began by explaining how information is stored in the body. Now, we have established that to be wrong. But even if that were correct (which it isn’t) he still hasn’t managed to make sense because the statement that information is stored throughout the body does not explain how that same information can be transmitted through a single touch.Humans convey information through signs (visual, auditory, touch) or signals (body language, posture). We transmit information using auditory speech, or visual written words. We can also transmit information through touch: I can trace a message on your skin, and you can decipher my tactile signals, but that would only work one alphabet at a time. And we transmit information through body language as well. In fact, most of the time we use the phrase “positive/negative energy” in a social sense, we are referring to body language. You enter a room and notice a large number of people in open poses, communicating freely, smiling a lot; you say, “I can feel a lot of positivity in this room.”This especially applies to all the mentally-gullible emotionally-susceptible followers who tout their Isha workshop experience as magical, who say there was ‘something special’ about that place. Of course there is. When you work indoors under fluorescent lights for ten hours a day, six days a week, bogged down by workplace gossip and corporate intrigue, without meaningful time for family bonding, or invigorating exercise… …and then suddenly go to a place where you are cut off from major stressors (such as your cellphone) with fresh air, green grass, blue skies, natural light, and are bombarded with relentless (fake) positivity that encourages you to participate in a series of physical activities (tossing a ball on the lawn, chanting in front of Sadhguru’s portrait) of course it will be invigorating to the point of feeling “magical”! True, you could achieve the same effect by running every morning and reading some meaningful books that challenge you to think, but those activities require self-motivation, whereas the Isha programs are supervised, yeah?Coming back to touch. Touch is, in fact, the least effective way to transmit information between humans. We sometimes transmit immunological information (immunoglobulins) by touching mucosal surfaces to mucosal surfaces (kissing, sexual intercourse) or mucosal surfaces to skin (kissing). But skin-to-skin touch, as Jaggi Vasudev mentions, transmits just infectious diseases.His guru touched him with the end of a stick and transmitting ten lifetimes of information? My foot.It was not just about knowing myself. It was also about various technologies, about how and what to do in every aspect, with absolute clarity. When it is transmitted like this, in the form of energy, not in the form of memory or logical understanding, the burden of knowledge is not on you. This is the difference.This is actually the most valuable part of his rambling. See, for a long time, I was in doubt as to what he meant by the extent of his powers. In his explanation to what he means by calling himself (and demanding others call him) Sadhguru, he says this (emphasis mine): I come only from my inner experience and the only thing I know for sure is this piece of life from its origin to its ultimate. If you know this piece of life, you know everything that is worth knowing in this cosmos, because the whole cosmic nature has happened only the way this piece of life has happened. You don’t have to go about searching the whole cosmos to know the mysteries of the universe. If you look inward and know this piece of life from A to Z, you know life in every possible way.I couldn’t figure out whether “this piece of life” referred to his subjective experience of life, or to an objective understanding of the universe.Well, now I know. “It was not just about knowing myself. It was also about various technologies, about how and what to do in every aspect, with absolute clarity.”Good. I needed to hear that from him, because we know, with 100% certainty, that he knows nothing about the following, yet is completely convinced that he knows everything about these things:-the chemical nature of water-basic high school chemistry-basic high school geography-fundamental principles of magnetism-continental drift-quantum physics-the neural basis of memory-thyroid function-cancer and carcinogenesis-the biological process of digestion-the human circulatory system-and last but most of all, how to construct a coherent and testable thought processThe proof for all of this is in my other answers, linked at the bottom of this one. You might think this answer is fairly rigorous; until you read those.So… what do we call someone who thinks he knows something that he knows nothing about? Oh wait, in the Sadhguru’s own words (from that previous link to his site: SadhguruHow sad. How very, very sad.People who have studied knowledge become heavy with it. They become serious. Studied people cannot even laugh usually, but someone who comes from his realization – he knows, but the burden of knowledge does not sit on his head all the time. He carries it very lightly, because this is a different technology altogether.This is a characteristic rant of his, if you’ve been paying attention. My biggest grouse with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is his anti-academic attitude. This man seems to have a profound sense of contempt for people who gain their knowledge through painful, slow education. He ridicules science (because he does not understand it) and ridicules scientists (because he never met a real one).And in doing so, he ridicules easily half his audience, who might have majored in science or applied sciences in university. Again, another mark of a narcissist: not knowing your audience. People like this man, who take themselves too seriously, often don’t have enough seriousness left over for other people. You’ve seen his careless and dismissive attitude toward ordinary people from his own words (on the nature of water, in one of my previous answers about him).If he did, then he would know that the opposite is true. Ignorance is the root of fear. That is why we often represent ignorance as darkness. Because our oldest fear is the fear of the dark; as babies, afraid to close our eyes in the fear that when we open them, our mother will no longer be visible. Knowledge is light, it removes irrational fear. The more you know, the freer you are. It might not make you laugh without reason and suddenly break into a jig at random moments, like Sadhguru does.Randomly laughing and dancing without provocation does not mean your soul is light or unburdened. It might mean you have a tapeworm in your brain. The acquisition of knowledge will not do that for you (thank gawd). It will not make you laugh more. But it will make your laughter more authentic.The great scientists of our time, of all times, were known for their irreverence and zest for life. In fact, their enthusiasm for life was what drove their methodical scientific method. Don’t you short-sell us, you pompous ass-hat.This is Richard Feynman seated beside the royal princess of Sweden during the formal dinner at the Nobel Awards ceremony (which he attended to collect his Nobel Prize for Physics):You can’t put a stopper on our zest for life. Not us scientists. You could paralyze the best of us from the neck down; they’d still find a way to get the most out of life.Here: let one of the most brilliant minds in science show you what the scientific community thinks of your ignorant, condescending, anti-factual downplay of all who study science, of our love for the universe and for life, all life, everywhere and in all times-From the days of the stone tablet to today’s microchips, it’s come a long way. The moment we started producing a book, a million stone tablets could go into a single book. Now a million books can go into a CD and a million CDs can go into a chip. And what is stored in a billion chips can be stored in a certain arrangement of energy. I do not know if modern science is working in this direction, but someday, science will come up with ways to store information in an arrangement of energy. I know this clearly as that is the reality within us.I’ll let someone far more qualified than me explain how modern technology does in fact store information in the form of energy: Neil? Get in here! Neil Menon's answer to As a scientist, what do you think about Sadhguru's statement, that information can be stored and transmitted between different people via energy?What is already recorded is what is being spoken and what is being spoken is not something which I am thinking of and speaking. What is being spoken is what life is. It is recorded all the time, everywhere. We do not have to re-record it again. It has always been there. Whether I exist or I do not exist, Truth is; it is always there. We can talk about it if you want to, or we can just see it as it is. Do not worry, it will never be lost.This is a fine example of word salad. It’s easy to make. Take words, toss them around in bowl of mouth. Serve cold.Here are the links to my previous answers on the bearded-anti-educational-conman named Jaggi Vasudev (who came down from a hill one day and instructed his followers to address him thereafter as ‘Sadhguru’):Asher Nitin's answer to What are scientists’ opinions on Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev's IIT Madras talk about water having memory and his abilities to manipulate its taste via telekinesis?Asher Nitin's answer to Doctors only: Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says one must not sleep with the head pointing north (see the link). Is his scientific explanation for this true?Asher Nitin's answer to Do doctors in allopathy accept the wisdom of Sadhguru on the limits of allopathy, and the advantages of Ayurveda and Siddha?In response to two, no, three queries about what muscle memory is (if I say all memory is in the brain):Muscle memory isn’t memory in the muscles. It is memory of the muscles; i.e. how much to contract and relax each muscle while performing a task. This relative contraction and relaxation of opposing groups of muscles results in precise limbs and trunk positions that are appropriate to the task.This memory, subconscious memory of where to place the muscles, is called muscle memory. Most of it is stored in the cerebellum. The other form of memory, conscious memory that allows you to recall something you memorized, is called declarative memory. Most of that is stored in the medial temporal lobe.Both these structures, the cerebellum and the medial temporal lobe, are in the brain proper. See:

What has shocked me the most is that people have believed the tabloid version of the man. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch bought up all the media real estate in Australia, then Britain, and now Fox News in America. On Fleet Street in Britain, he issued orders to his minions to go after the royals (especially Lady Diana,) and after Michael Jackson and Madonna in the tabloid headlines in order to expand their market share to the youth demographic.Tabloids peddle the shadow side of human nature to the shadow side of human nature. They sell regurgitated swill for profit and make money off of human misery by publicly humiliating and dismembering real people front page. They have a formula they follow: find or manufacture something dark about a celebrity then begin small and slow and over time, raise the stakes with every story, build up to sensationalism and scandal in order to gain market share, sell newspapers and take people down, which they celebrate at the end of the day with high fives in the local pub. It’s a dirty business. Lady Diana was killed trying to avoid tabloid journalists chasing her for the “money shot” which they took, snapping pictures as she lay dying in the back seat of her crumpled car after the paparazzi chase and accident where she died. They repeated this disgusting practice when a hack put his camera to the window of Jackson’s ambulance and snapped a photo.Mainstream media outlets saw the money to be made smearing celebrities (especially Michael Jackson) front page and began to adopt tabloid tactics which are to get the “money shot,” provoke the targeted celebrity to anger in order to get an unfavorable photo, exaggerate, sensationalize, use linguistic tricks in headlines— like rhyming, onomatopoeia, alliteration— to get eyes on the page.There is a racist element to the abuse Jackson suffered at the hands of the media: How dare a Black man be a star? Be wealthy? Be popular? Be attractive to White (gasp!) women? The moment he sold millions of records and became wealthy, the culture began to tear him down. It’s really unfortunate people couldn’t see this. If one thinks of the consequences of ‘driving while Black’ for men in this 21st century, one can imagine how being Black and obscenely rich and successful would have made someone a target 15–20 years ago.Jackson was extorted by a family that accused him of a horrific crime and instead of reporting him to law enforcement, filed a civil suit instead, seeking money. They never filed criminal charges and the boy who was supposedly molested refused to cooperate in a criminal trial but sought emancipation from his family. The prosecutor stalked Jackson for 10 years until another accusation surfaced in the all-White White Santa Barbara from a family that had extorted Sears for a false claim of sexual abuse in a earlier case. Facing criminal charges. Jackson petitioned the court to delay the civil trial until after the criminal one so that he wouldn’t have to reveal his defense to the prosecution in the civil case causing double jeopardy for himself in the criminal case and so that the trial would be fair. His petition was denied; his insurance company paid the accuser to go away over Jackson’s objections. The damage was done and forever after, Jackson became an easy extortion target.District Attorney Sneddon’s vendetta against Jackson was well known. One can find overt racism in the arrest records which are mostly comprised of minorities’ surnames and people of color; besides, the locals wanted Neverland for growing grapes and wine.The boy who was supposedly molested, petitioned for, and was granted, emancipation from his family after Jackson was accused. The Chandler family never filed criminal charges but instead tried to reach a financial agreement through Barry Rothman, their attorney. The boy, Jordan, was later assaulted by his father (Evan) as an adult and was estranged from his family once again. Later, Evan committed suicide soon after Michael Jackson died. As stated, Jackson’s insurance company paid off the family in order to end the case and the ongoing expenses of litigating the case over Jackson’s objections. He wanted a trial.Unfortunately, settling that case out of court with the insurance payoff just opened the door for others to sue Jackson. He was acquitted of all charges in the 2005 trial which was a tabloid circus (See Huffington Post “One of the Most Shameful episodes in Journalistic History”) In this country we presume someone innocent unless they’re proven guilty in a court of law. Jackson was innocent. The people who knew him closely and best all vouch for his ethics and generosity and yes, would or did allow their children to stay at Neverland with Jackson. Jackson’s “bedroom” at Neverland was a 2 story apartment attached to a hallway that led to the rest of the estate.The moral panic of the 1980s about molestation, Satanic Ritual Abuse, the McMartin Preschool Case and accusations of child sexual abuse and rural incest shocked a nation and led to false memory syndrome, frenzied and false accusations, accusing everybody in sight of heinous crimes, and ruining lives. It was in this heightened and hypervigilant atmosphere that the Jackson accusations arose. False accusations soared after the frenzy, harming adults and many families including ruining lives with false accusations.In 10 years of investigation of Jackson, neither Child Services nor the FBI found any evidence of wrongdoing. Sneddon’s trips around the world to find more victims (millions funded by taxpayers) came up empty. The hype and false memes were perpetuated by the tabloids who cashed in, and the mainstream media converted to medialoid because they resented the cash and profits tabloids made with copy about Jackson scandals they manufactured. Editors sent their journalists out looking for innuendo and scandals about Michael Jackson because they sold copy and sold newspapers.Jackson grew up with seven siblings in a house the size of a 2 car garage. The living room was converted to a bedroom every night and play and social life took place on beds where watching movies, TV, play, eating popcorn and pillow fights were common. This may explain his purview that beds are for things other than sexual activity. Most of his family life took place in beds and bedrooms. Before the moral panic of satanic ritual abuse and incest of the 1980s , it was acceptable for adults to be with children on or in beds.It’s shocking that people believe Jackson’s marriage to Lisa Marie Presley was a ‘sham’ or ‘scam’ because even after their divorce, Lisa Marie often checked into the hotels where he was staying to spend nights with him. Theirs was a complicated relationship. Their irreconcilable marital differences were about having children; she didn’t want children and he did. Lisa Marie confided to friends that he was a masterful lover. Jackson was not gay nor was he interested in sex with males or children. He was heterosexual and had many relationships with women. He didn’t believe in male boasting about conquests because he was taught by his mother, whom he adored, to respect women and maintain privacy about his sex life.His children are his biological children. He is their father. To question their paternity is racist. They are not White, but mixed race. It is shocking that people can’t bear to attribute sexuality or conceiving children to Jackson. Women considered him sexy; both white women and women of color fainted at his concerts.It’s shocking that people still believe that Jackson bleached his skin or tried to be White or had multiple surgeries when his Vitiligo was evident as well as his Lupus which destroys cartilage. His autopsy confirmed his autoimmune diseases.It’s shocking that people can’t wake up and smell the money in the propaganda film Leaving Neverland. Wade Robson was Jackson’s champion, the key witness testifying for him in the 2005 trial, telling the jury Jackson was innocent of the charges. He didn’t turn on Jackson until after his death when he was turned down for a Michael Jackson tribute show in Las Vegas by the estate. He fell out of favor, then begged for the job and the estate instead hired Jaimie King; only then did Robson file his suit. He is suing for multiple millions. Then James Safechuck supposedly “didn’t remember” his abuse until he saw the attempted money grab by Robson televised and he suddenly remembered that he, too , was “abused.”. Their stories have changed several times and the film Leaving Neverland that was supposed to bolster their case was debunked and edited over and over to cut out the questionable parts. The accusation that Safechuck leveled about being molested in the train station was false because the train station wasn’t built until years later and long after the claimed molestation supposedly took place there. The documentary Square One debunks all the charges Robson and Safechuck have made.Jackson is listed in the Guinness Records as the celebrity supporting the most charities, most of them on behalf of children. On his Bad Tour he donated a major piece of medical equipment to a hospital in EVERY city he visited during his 103-concert tour. On the Victory Tour with his brothers, he donated his share of proceeds to charities. He quietly paid for childrens’ medical bills, surgeries, transplants and funerals all over the world. He paid for all the surgeries for a child set on fire by his father as revenge in his divorce and Jackson supported the gentleman his whole life while they remained lifelong friends.It is shocking that people keep repeating the tabloid garbage over and over or just assume guilt because that’s the prevailing gossip. They present as authorities yet never research the information; they somehow feel justified in repeating what they have heard rather than seeking credible sources. For the truth, read the publicly released FBI and other reports or court testimony and Aphrodite Jones’ book. Jones is an investigative reporter who attended Jackson’s four month trial and wrote a book about it.Jackson was the most bullied man in the world. Being Black isn’t illegal. Being wealthy isn’t illegal. Plastic surgery isn’t illegal. Being eccentric isn’t illegal. But Jackson was treated as if they were and as if HE were— just for being. He is not here to defend himself or press charges against his accusers for lying or making a false “documentary” with men who are both trained actors and who are suing his estate to cash in for billions. It is shocking that people tried to kill his career, kill his humanity, kill his reputation, kill his legacy and even kill his music. But the most shocking thing is that they continue to dig him up even from his grave to kill again and again.