Brigitte Hamann's Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth (London: Granta 2005) for example describes the aged Mrs Wagner enthusing about that nice Mr Hitler - so kind to dogs and children, such perfect manners, such an artist and so very ill-served by ungrateful underlings.
That connoisseur of cream cakes, dumplings and the industrialised murder of several million kids, their parents and grandparents (let's not mention the war, said Mrs W) was a member of the Benny Mussolini Club - people nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The club does include people of great humanity and merit but mere nomination - a very easy process - is no guarantee of worthiness and thus should not be taken at face value. As Gilbert & Sullivan noted, things are not always what they seem: skim milk sometimes masquerades as cream and resounding titles may identify entities that are virtuous but ultimately underwhelming. Titles are sometimes easily spawned.
The preceding post about Ervin Laszlo's endorsement of Akashic Field Therapy (an endorsement that seems consistent with independent statements by Laszlo and might thus be considered to be authentic) has provoked thought about how audiences construe authority and about the reception of NGOs that are concerned with intangibles.
Laszlo is described as founder of the Club of Budapest. The Club's Australian presence is - for a sceptic - somewhat perplexing, with for example an announcement in 2008 (there's nothing since then, so perhaps the members have done a spot of astral travelling in the past two years) that -
we would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of you for having joined the Global Peace Meditation and Prayer Day on May 18.People "resonated in high consciousness"? And "sent powerful bright thoughts" - as distinct from the dull grouchy thoughts that you are reading, thoughts transmitted via HTTP and optical fibre rather than the Blavatsky aether - "to humanity and to our beautiful Planet Earth"? No doubt our beautiful Planet Earth is suitably appreciative and resonated back.
On this day, hundreds of thousands of people resonated in high consciousness and sent powerful bright thoughts to humanity and to our beautiful Planet Earth from five continents, from Australia and Uzbekistan to the United States, from Italy and Uganda to Costa Rica. Participants from 45 countries registered with us and we imagine there were more countries involved.
The site notes that Laszlo is -
head of the General Evolution Research Group, which he founded.Another bio states that he is -
He is an advisor to the UNESCO Director General, ambassador of the International Delphic Council, member of both the International Academy of Science, World Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Philosophy. He is the former president of the International Society for Systems Sciences.
the author or co-author of forty-seven books translated into as many as twenty languages, and the editor of another thirty volumes including a four-volume encyclopedia. He is Founder and President of The Club of Budapest, Founder and Director of the General Evolution Research Group, Chancellor-Nominee of the GlobalShift University, Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, Senator of the International Medici Academy, and Editor of the international periodical World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution. Laszlo has a PhD from the Sorbonne and is the recipient of four honorary PhD's, from the United States, Canada, Finland, and Hungary. He was awarded the Peace Prize of Japan, the Goi Award in Tokyo, 2002, and the International Mandir of Peace Prize in Assisi, 2005.For a grinch such as myself, inclined to look on the dark side, it is terribly funny - redolent of 1920s fads for mysticism, homeopathy, nut cutlets, international committees, little journals with long titles and larger ambitions, secret handshakes and gatherings of the true believers around gurus such as Keyserling, Gurdjieff or Steiner. (Steiner was of course a fan of the Akashic Field, reflected in works such as The submerged continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, their history and civilization: being chapters from the Akashic records. Lemuria and Atlantis!) You can have fun researching bodies such as the International Delphic Council, the International Medici Academy, the GlobalShift University and the World Academy. Along the way - take a cut lunch and a torch, as some of the entities are obscure - you'll be entertained by serendipitous discoveries.
Recipients of the Goi Award include Deepak Chopra. (Alas, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has levitated, if that's the word, to the great beyond, and thus wasn't available for nomination or continued association with TM University.) What appears to be the Mandir site includes treats such as promo for LifeWave patches -
based on the principles of new biotechnologies for improving health of people around the world to make them feel good and live well. LifeWave patches stickers are based on the principles of acupuncture which dates back to 5000 years ago but without using needles due to the development of nano and biotechnology, by stimulating the nerve centers with microcrystals of silicon compounds in contact with the human body creating flows energy to the meridians and clear.Hmmm, one cannot, it seems, have too many high thoughts and too much resonance. Microcrystals are so much more stylish than the quackery that saw Katherine Mansfield's tuberculosis being treated by immersing the author in a large pile of cow manure.
Some of the dot points are merely worthy. The Club of Budapest (complete with a World Wisdom Council and associated with the World Commission on Global Consciousness and the World Spirit Forum) is elsewhere described as -
an informal association of ethical, globally as well as locally active opinion leaders in various fields of art, science, religion, and culture, dedicated to our common future. Its members include the Dalai Lama, Vaclav Havel, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Peter Ustinov, Peter Gabriel, and young and creative people in many parts of the world. They place their names and energy into the service of what they consider the crucial mission of our time: catalyzing the emergence of adapted vision and values in society by evolving our individual and collective consciousness."Evolving our individual and collective consciousness" by resonating as one with the universe and thereby furthering a New Age version of Intelligent Design?
