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Wednesday, March 16, 2016

RANCHER LAVOY FINICUM'S FAMILY: NEW VIDEO RELEASED SHOWS POLICE & FBI SHOOTING WAS MURDER

STATIST FEDS & POLICE OPEN FIRE ON PATRIOTS WITHOUT ANY PROVOCATION
SLOW MOTION VIDEO:
RANCHER LAVOY FINICUM'S FAMILY: NEW VIDEO RELEASED SHOWS POLICE & FBI SHOOTING WAS MURDER 
The release last week of video footage taken from the cellphone of a passenger inside the pickup truck driven by Arizona rancher Robert LaVoy Finicum provides dramatic new evidence of the final minutes and seconds before he wasshot to death at a roadblock near Burns, Oregon, on January 26.
It also shows, for the first time, the tense situation for the survivors huddled inside the pickup, as the shooting by the FBI and Oregon State Police (OSP) continued.
The video, which was released by the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office at a press conference on March 8, shows the new footage as an inset within the already well-known FBI footage taken from an aerial camera and released by the FBI on January 28.
As The New American previously reported, the FBI video, because it is shaky, jumpy, blurry, is of poor resolution, and has no sound, raises more questions than provides answers. It does not, for example, answer the vital questions concerning when the firing began and how many shots were fired. (Government officials acknowledge that neither Mr. Finicum nor any other occupants of his vehicle fired any weapons, although the incident was widely reported, initially, as a "gunfight.") Nor does the newly released video definitively resolve the key issue as to whether Mr. Finicum’s hand motion was the result of reaching for a gun (the FBI/OSP version), which, allegedly, was in his pocket, or was reaching toward his side due to having already been shot (the Finicum family’s version).
The new video footage, which was taken by Shawna Cox, has been unavailable until now, since it was confiscated by the FBI when she was arrested along with the other passengers in Finicum’s truck. Mrs. Cox’s video, which is of good quality, provides important audio and imagery evidence, but still does not definitively resolve key issues, such as the disputed significance of Finicum’s hand motion, which goes directly to the matter of the use of deadly force.
The main takeaway from the March 8 press conference — the message that was blared in headlines in the establishment media — was that the shooting of Finicum, a leader of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, was “justified.” Shane Nelson, the Deschutes County sheriff, told the assembled news organizations: “We have determined that eight shots were fired on that day, six of which have been attributed to the Oregon State Police, including the three shots that resulted in the death of Mr. Finicum, and two shots which were fired by the HRT [FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team] operators.”
“Of the eight shots fired, the six fired by the Oregon State Police were justified and, in fact, necessary,” said Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris, who led the investigation and joined Sheriff Nelson at the press conference. “My legal obligation under Oregon law is to review the six shots fired by the Oregon State Police," Norris said. "The Inspector General of the US Department of Justice will review the actions taken by the HRT operators.”
As reported by The Oregonian, this official acknowledgement of the FBI’s HRT involvement in the shooting has caught some people by surprise and further undermines the federal government’s credibility in the matter. “An FBI agent is suspected of lying about firing twice at Robert 'LaVoy' Finicum and may have gotten help from four other FBI agents in covering up afterward, authorities revealed Tuesday,” The Oregonian stated.
“The bullets didn't hit Finicum and didn't contribute to his death,” The Oregonian story continued, “but now all five unnamed agents, part of an elite national unit, are under criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. Inspector General Michael Horowitz is leading the independent inquiry.”
The Oregonian also provides a slow motion video of what is believed to be a bullet from the FBI HRT piercing the passenger door and window as Finicum exits the vehicle with his hands held up.
Sheriff Nelson disputed statements by the two women who were released after the Finicum shooting, Shawna Cox and Victoria Sharp, both of whom said that over a hundred shots were fired by law enforcement personnel. “After Mr. Finicum was shot,” he stated, “numerous gas projectiles and flash bangs were deployed to get the remaining occupants of the truck, Ryan Bundy, Shawna Cox, and Victoria Sharp, to surrender peacefully but, again, only eight shots were fired.”
It will take sophisticated analysis of the sound recording from the Cox video to determine whether or not the claim of “only eight shots” holds up, or whether additional potentially lethal rounds are detectable among the sounds of “numerous gas projectiles and flash bangs” going off. The Finicum family says it has its own experts analyzing the video to reach their own conclusion.
LaVoy Finicum’s widow, Jeanette Finicum, held a press conference on March 8 in St. George, Utah, to counter the official press conference in Oregon. Reading a prepared statement, Mrs. Finicum emphatically reiterated her earlier statements that her husband had been “murdered,” that the FBI/OSP road block was an “ambush,” a “kill stop.”
The federal and state authorities, she said, “continue to bring forward selective evidence.” However, she reminded her audience, “As in all such situations there is another side to this story.” She stated that the Finicum family categorically rejected, among other things, the charge renewed by authorities earlier in the day that LaVoy Finicum was shot because of the belief that he was going for a gun in his pocket. After addressing several of the points made by Sheriff Nelson, District Attorney Norris and others at the Oregon press conference, she announced that she would have a more detailed response, as well as an opportunity for journalists to ask questions, the following day, March 9.
In her March 9 press conference, Jeanette Finicum did take questions. She also restated her belief that her husband had attempted to protect the other occupants of the vehicle after he had already been fired upon and it had become apparent that the law enforcement officers were intent on shooting him.
"My lawyers have already discussed with me how the facts will show that the officers intended to shoot LaVoy, how an informant arranged for him to be in the lead truck, how the officers started shooting at the truck to force it to stop and then, finally, how my husband gave himself up in order to draw attention away from the others in the truck."
Mrs. Finicum also brought up again an important point that was not addressed by the official press federal/state conference on March 8: Ryan Bundy, who was in LaVoy Finicum’s truck when the shooting/arrest occurred was also wounded, but that bullet has not been accounted for. Also, although the released Shawna Cox video has shed important light on the shooting incident, there is still the need to verify that all of her video has been released. According to third parties interviewed by The New American, Mrs. Cox has said that there should be additional video that hasn’t been released by authorities. (For a video interview of Shawna Cox following her release from jail, see here.)
In addition, there should be video from Ryan Bundy’s cellphone, and as The New American has pointed out, video-audio-photo evidence from bodycams and dashcams of the police/FBI participants in the Finicum shooting. None of these important sources of evidence has been made available yet to the public, nor even been referenced in official statements or press coverage.

Related articles:
JEANETTE FINICUM RESPONDS

JEANETTE FINICUM AT PRESS CONFERENCE
                                  

Talk Show Host Breaks Down Over FBI Murder



TRUMP RALLIES REVEAL INCREASED TENSIONS AMONG AMERICANS AS THIS NATION PLUNGES TOWARD CIVIL UNREST~NAZI BROWNSHIRTS, STORMTROOPERS, OR PROGRESSIVES? JUST STREET THUGS LIKE DURING HITLER'S RISE

TRUMP HAS CLOSE CALL: SANDERS SUPPORTER STOPPED BY SECRET SERVICE
Trump Rallies Reveal Increased Tensions Among Americans As This Nation Plunges Toward Civil Unrest
THOMAS DIMASSIMO ATTEMPTED TO STORM TRUMP'S PLATFORM
TRUMP RALLIES REVEAL INCREASED TENSIONS AMONG AMERICANS AS THIS NATION PLUNGES TOWARD CIVIL UNREST

We have allowed ourselves to become deeply divided

by Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse
SEE: http://www.infowars.com/trump-rallies-reveal-increased-tensions-among-americans-as-this-nation-plunges-toward-civil-unrest/republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

America is coming apart at the seams, and Trump rallies have become the latest flashpoint for the rising tide of civil unrest that is sweeping the nation.
For years, I have been writing about the increasing levels of anger and frustration in this country, but now they are reaching a fever pitch.  And rather than channeling all of our anger and frustration into solving our problems, we have allowed ourselves to become deeply divided and many Americans seem to be taking glee in fighting with one another.  Instead of learning to hate one another, we should be learning how to love one another.  Unfortunately, America has chosen another path, and 2016 is very rapidly starting to look very much like the chaotic political year of 1968.  No matter how the rest of this election season plays out, it appears that we have entered a time of violence, chaos, civil unrest and greatly increased tension among Americans.
On Friday, thousands of radical leftists showed up at a planned Trump rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago with the express purpose of disrupting it.  Fortunately Donald Trump cancelled the rally, because there was a very real possibility that mass violence could have erupted.  The following description of what happened comes from Wikipedia
On March 11, 2016, the Donald Trump presidential campaign canceled a planned rally at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), in ChicagoIllinois, citing “growing safety concerns” due to the presence of thousands of protesters in and outside of his rally[3]. Thousands of anti-Trump demonstrators responding to civic leaders’ and social media calls to shut the rally down had gathered outside the arena, and several hundred more filled seating areas within theUIC Pavilion, where the rally was to take place. When the Trump campaign announced that the rally would not take place, there was a great deal of shouting and a few small scuffles between Trump supporters and anti-Trump protestors.
The Daily Caller has identified three groups that were heavily involved in organizing the planned disruption of the Trump rally in Chicago.  Those three groups are ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Chicago, the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Rights Reform, and La Raza Chicago.
In addition, MoveOn.org also appears to have been involved in what took place in Chicago.  The following comes from Infowars
“Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events,” the George Soros funded MoveOn web page states. “To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough. To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election.”
Following the cancelled rally in Chicago, a radical leftist protester named Thomas Dimassimo attempted to storm the stage while Trump was speaking at an event in Dayton, Ohio.  This YouTube video contains footage of that chilling moment…
Thomas Dimassimo has been identified as a Bernie Sanders supporter, and even though his Twitter account has now been erased, this screenshot was taken while it was still up…
Marlon Bando Tweet
There was also another tweet where he said that his goal was “martrydom“.  I have seen some news reports that link Dimassimo to ISIS, but those reports are being disputed.  Either way, the fact that the Secret Service had to intervene to protect Trump from this lunatic is more than just a little bit alarming.
Following the incident in Dayton, a Trump rally in Kansas City was disrupted more than a dozen times by political agitators.  At one point, police actually used pepper spray on some of the protesters.
Scenes such as these are starting to cause many people to make direct comparisons between 2016 and 1968.
And if the chaos is this bad already, what will things look like during the general election?
Candidates on all sides should be calling for peace and calm, but instead they are pointing fingers at one another.
For example, Hillary Clinton is putting the full blame for the unrest on Donald Trump
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said this weekend that Trump is guilty of “political arson,” adding that “the ugly, divisive rhetoric we are hearing from Donald Trump and the encouragement of violence and aggression is wrong, and it’s dangerous,” The New York Times reported.
And Donald Trump is placing the blame at the feet of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton
“You had professional disruptors, thousands of them, from Sanders and to a smaller extent, Hillary (Clinton),” he said of a Friday night event in Chicago that Trump canceled after chaos broke out there.
Unfortunately, most Americans have absolutely no idea where all of this is leading.
A house that is divided will fall, and America is now more divided than at any other time in my entire lifetime.
If there was a single set of values or principles that united us, it would be possible for us to come together as a nation and solve our problems.  But there isn’t.  We have rejected the values and the principles of our founders, and these days Americans are being pulled in dozens of different directions.  In fact, if you ask 100 different Americans what we need to do to get our country back on the right track you are probably going to get 100 different answers.
The chaos and violence around our political process is going to get a lot worse than this.  And we are going to see more communities erupt just like Ferguson and Baltimore did.
In the end, Americans are going to kill Americans, our cities are going to burn, and we are going to experience a period of governmental shaking unlike anything that we have ever seen before.
All of this could have been avoided if we could have simply learned to love one another.  But instead, we have allowed ourselves to be divided in just about every way imaginable, and the mainstream media is constantly tossing more fuel on the fire.
This isn’t about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton or any other politician.  Rather, this is about a once great country that is deeply, deeply divided and that is coming apart at the seams right before our very eyes.
May God have mercy on the late, great United States of America.
_______________________________________________________

The Truth About The Chicago Trump Protests

FOMENT, LEADING TO: 

The Assassination of Donald Trump

The Truth About the Anti-Trump Chicago Riot

Robert Spencer in FrontPage: 

Progressive Brownshirts

BY ROBERT SPENCER
SEE: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/03/robert-spencer-in-frontpage-progressive-brownshirtsrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
In FrontPage today I discuss how Leftist protesters are making violence and intimidation a regular feature of the American public discourse.
Ferguson. Baltimore. Chicago. Everywhere Leftist protesters occupy the streets, those whose opinions are deemed insufficiently progressive are abused, mocked, ridiculed, brutalized and physically menaced. This lawlessness is rapidly becoming the norm; the Obama administration, as well as leading media and cultural figures, need to decry that normalization and act strongly against these thugs now – before the American public square is transformed beyond recognition, and ceases to be an arena for free discourse.
Although this violence and brutalization of political opponents is a new phenomenon in American politics, it has a historical antecedent: the Nazi Brownshirts. In The Coming of the Third Reich, historian Richard J. Evans explains how, in the early days of National Socialist Germany, Stormtroopers (Brownshirts) “organized campaigns against unwanted professors in the local newspapers [and] staged mass disruptions of their lectures.”
To express dissent from Nazi positions became a matter of taking one’s life into one’s hands. The idea of people of opposing viewpoints airing their disagreements in a civil and mutually respectful manner was gone. One was a Nazi, or one was silent (and fearful).
That is just the kind of public arena that the Left has been trying to bring to the United States for years. For decades, they have told us that their political and ideological opponents are not just wrong, but malevolent. In college in the early 1980s, I was taken aback by the obscene, relentless, vicious hatred that the Left directed toward Ronald Reagan – I was at that time entirely sympathetic with their disdain for him, but the frenzy with which they expressed it, their wild furious contempt, shocked me.
And that was nothing compared to what they had in store for George W. Bush. Years ago, the Democratic Party as a whole, along with the entire Leftist establishment, adopted the Alinskyite tactic of ridiculing, mocking and smearing their foes instead of engaging them on the level of ideas. Leftists today routinely portray their opponents as simultaneously stupid and evil, idiotic but crafty; it’s practically a reflex.
The shutdown of Trump’s rally in Chicago, however, takes this one step farther. Trump supporters leaving the arena in Chicago after the Left-fascists had forced cancellation of the Trump rally last Friday experienced that firsthand. AP reported that “the protesters closed in on the building, obstructing most of the exits just as Trump supporters began filing out. The Trump supporters had little choice but to push through the anti-Trump crowds that parted only slightly, yelling, ‘Racists go home!’…Trump supporter Bill Vail said he walked through a gauntlet of protesters who cursed at him as he pushed through holding his 9-year-old daughter’s hand. She cried, he said.”
Commented Vail: “They scream about tolerance, but are being intolerant themselves. That doesn’t make sense.” Yes, it does. Clearly the authoritarian, America-hating Left has decided that the Brownshirts had a good idea: those whose dare to oppose their political views will henceforth be greeted with truncheon and fist. Soon the dissenters will learn their lesson, and accept the Left’s agenda with docility.
Cruz, Rubio and Kasich are already learning to do this, as they demonstrated when they had the audacity, or craven opportunism, to claim that Trump’s rhetoric was at least partially responsible for the shutdown of the Chicago rally. Do they think they will be spared? Do they realize that by charging that Trump bears partial responsibility for the thugs’ actions, they have tacitly validated those actions, implying that under some circumstances, the forcible shutdown of one’s political opponents was acceptable – if, say, that political opponent was prone to saying “outrageous” things?
They don’t realize that once that premise has been accepted, it can be turned on them. And it will be. Now that they’ve apparently agreed that violent thugs can be justified in forcibly silencing those they hate, what will they possibly say when the thugs decide that they, too, have strayed beyond the bounds of what one is allowed to say?
Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich – to say nothing of Clinton, Sanders, and Obama – should have forcefully and unequivocally condemned the Chicago thugs, called for their arrest, and declared their unshakeable support for civility in the public discourse and respect for one’s ideological opponents. Instead, they all contributed to the erosion of that civility and respect, and took the U.S. just a bit closer to becoming a tyranny in which the goons who shut down politically unacceptable rallies work for the state.
Hitler and Himmler and Goebbels, if they’re able to look on from their fiery graves, may be feeling a sense of having, at long last, triumphed.
______________________________________________________

Moveon.Org Vows to Continue to Disrupt Trump Rallies

BY RAVEN CLABOUGH




GROWING NUMBER OF MAJOR U.S. CORPORATIONS EMBRACING EASTERN MEDITATION PRACTICES

spiritual-living
GROWING NUMBER OF MAJOR U.S. CORPORATIONS EMBRACING EASTERN MEDITATION PRACTICES
BY GARRETT HALEY
SEE: http://christiannews.net/2016/03/14/growing-number-of-major-u-s-corporations-embracing-eastern-meditation-practices/republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

A growing number of major American corporations are offering meditation, mindfulness and yoga programs for their employees, practices that are believed to have originated in pagan Eastern religions.
Last week, the California-based software company Salesforce generated media attention for putting meditation rooms on every floor of the company’s newest corporate office building in San Francisco.
Marc Benioff, who is Salesforce’s CEO and an outspoken proponent of homosexual marriage, said the meditation rooms facilitate “mindfulness.”
“There’s a ‘mindfulness’ zone where employees can put their phones into a basket or whatever, and go into an area where there’s quietness,” he stated, according to “Business Insider.” “I think this is really important to cultivating innovation in your company.”
Fifty miles southeast of Salesforce’s San Francisco office, Google offers a meditation course called “Search Inside Yourself” to workers in its Silicon Valley headquarters. More than a thousand Google employees have been through the mindfulness training course, which promotes Eastern meditation practices.
“It’s not just Google that’s embracing Eastern traditions,” a report from “Wired.com” explained. “Across the Valley, quiet contemplation is seen as the new caffeine, the fuel that allegedly unlocks productivity and creative bursts.”
Google’s meditation routines are designed to help employees “search for meaning and emotional connection.”
Google is one of many technological companies that has come to embrace meditation and mindfulness programs. Facebook, also headquartered in California’s Silicon Valley, provides a meditation room for employees and is actively seeking to infuse Buddhist values into its corporate culture.
“While many other Silicon Valley companies are teaching their employees to meditate, Facebook is trying to inject a Buddhist-inspired concept of compassion into the core of its business,” “Wired.com” reports.
Many other technological companies have begun promoting Buddhist-inspired meditation techniques. AOL Time Warner offers quiet rooms for employees to refresh and mentally refocus. Yahoo! encourages workers to take advantage of meditation rooms. And Apple reportedly allows employees to take 30 minutes each day to meditate at work.
Why are yoga and meditation so popular among corporate giants of the tech field? Some trace the trend back to the early pioneers of computers and the Internet.
“Many of the people who shaped the personal computer industry and the Internet were once members of the hippie counterculture,” wrote Noah Shachtman on “Wired.com.” “So an interest in Eastern faiths is all but hardwired into the modern tech world.”
This interest in Eastern faiths is not limited to California-based tech giants, however; many non-technological companies are also working meditation routines into their corporate schedules. According to recent articles from The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, General Mills, Target, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs Groups have all started offering mindfulness programs.
“Across the country there’s a loosening up of social mores right now and things like yoga and meditation just are not as foreign or as taboo as they once were,” said David Gelles, author of the book “Mindful Work: How Meditation Is Changing Business from Inside the Out,” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Yoga has become extremely popular.”
As meditation, yoga and related practices grow more popular among American workplaces, a number of respected Christian leaders have voiced concerns over the practices’ ties to unbiblical Eastern religions. Dr. Albert Mohler of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary describes yoga as “a spiritual discipline by which the adherent is trained to use the body as a vehicle for achieving consciousness of the divine.”
“There is nothing wrong with physical exercise, and yoga positions in themselves are not the main issue,” Mohler wrote in a blog post titled “The Subtle Body—Should Christians Practice Yoga?” “But these positions are teaching postures with a spiritual purpose.”
“Christians who practice yoga are embracing, or at minimum flirting with, a spiritual practice that threatens to transform their own spiritual lives into a ‘post-Christian, spiritually polyglot’ reality,” he concluded. “Should any Christian willingly risk that?”
________________________________________________________
FROM LIGHTHOUSE TRAILS RESEARCH:
http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletters/2016/newsletter20160315.htmrepublished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Fortune 500: 
“Meditation Has Become A Billion-Dollar Business”
The New Age effort to transform business is very real and becoming more successful all the time.—Ray Yungen
By Jen Wieczner
Fortune
In 2015 the meditation and mindfulness industry raked in nearly $1 billion, according to research by IBISWorld, which breaks out the category from the alternative health care sector. But even that doesn’t count the revenue from the nearly 1000 mindfulness apps now available, according to Sensor Tower (top app Headspace recently raised $30 million and has been downloaded 6 million times), or the burgeoning category of wearable gadgets designed to help people Zen out (the popular Muse connected headband measures brain activity during meditation for $299).
This year 22% of employers will offer mindfulness training—typically priced between $500 and $10,000 for large-group sessions—a percentage that could double in 2017, according to a forthcoming survey by Fidelity Investments and the National Business Group on Health. The non-profit Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, a mindfulness training program incubated at Google, grew revenue more than 50% last year by offering two-day workshops (up to $35,000 for 50 people) to dozens of other Fortune 500 companies, including Ford F -1.06% and American Express AXP -1.36% . Click here to continue reading.
A Related Article by Ray Yungen Showing the Implications of New Age in Business:
If there was one single group to whom the promise of creating one’s own reality would have specific appeal, it would be business people. The competition in the corporate world is so keen that anything, no matter how unusual, may be eagerly embraced if it offers results. As they say in the business world, the bottom line is success.
The way New Age thought has crept into corporations is simple to understand. Management trainers and human resource developers hold positions where they can incorporate metaphysics into business under titles such as Intuition Development, Right Brain Creativity, and Superlearning. The New Age nature of these seminars may be introduced by employers either intentionally or unwittingly. The New Age Journal states:
An unconventional new breed of consultant has surfaced on the corporate lecture circuit. They speak of meditation, energy flow and tapping into the unused potential of the mind. What’s more, they are spreading their Arcane curriculum not only among the alternative entrepreneurs who populate the capitalist fringe, but within the heart of corporate America as well. General Electric, IBM, Shell, Polaroid, and the Chase Manhattan Bank are sending their fast-trackers to crash courses in, strange as it may sound, intuition.1
Once, while attending a New Age convention, I was told by one of these new breeds that resistance to New Age concepts in business was being replaced by a new openness. “How you focus it is all important,” he began, and then added:
If you barge in with occult lingo it turns them off right away. You have to tell them how you can make their employees happier and get more productivity out of them—then they will listen. You are really teaching metaphysics, but you present it as human development.
The Quiet Revolution
This approach has tremendous appeal because companies naturally want to get the most out of their people. New Agers know this approach works to their advantage. One trainer defines her role the following way:
There is something new in the fact that businesses are taking an active interest in the potential of these techniques to bring about transformational change within large groups of people for organizational ends. You have to deal with the whole person—body, mind and spirit—if real change is to happen.2
In one interview, New Age writer Marilyn Ferguson echoes the same theme:
Business leaders have, by and large, exhausted materialistic values and are often open to spiritual values… What’s more, top-level business people are not afraid of the transformative process, and typically, after I speak to them, they say, “I didn’t know that such things were possible. I don’t understand everything you’re saying, but I’m going to find out about it.” Whereas most people who don’t understand new concepts automatically reject them, business people, who by nature are trained in risk taking, go after them.3
Dennis T. Jaffe, Ph.D., founder and director of the Learning for Health Clinic in Los Angeles, had this to say:
Many progressive companies are incorporating some of the inner-directed exercises I mentioned [in meditation and visualization] into their “manual of procedures” . . . These changes point to a quiet, inner-directed revolution that is reshaping many companies into being agents of self-realization. . . . Many social thinkers, such as Marilyn Ferguson, believe that because of its openness to change, business has the greatest potential for spiritualizing the world. (emphasis mine)4
A number of courses, books, and individuals are having a great impact on the business world. Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers have written a book titled Creativity in Business. The book is based on a Stanford University course that they claim has “revolutionized the art of success.”5 Two people who enthusiastically endorse this book are Spencer Johnson, MD., coauthor of The One Minute Manager, and Tom Peters, coauthor of In Search of Excellence. Silicon Valley Bank Chairman, N.W. Medearis, says the book is “an experience which will leave one significantly changed.”6
Ray and Myers acknowledge that the book takes much of its inspiration from “Eastern philosophies, mysticism, and meditation techniques” and that “dozens of America’s brightest and most successful business practitioners and entrepreneurs have contributed to the course and to this book.”7
It is absolutely amazing how unabashed Creativity in Business is in recommending its source of creativity. In one section we find the heading, “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Guide.” It reads:
In this exercise you meet your wisdom-keeper or spirit guide—an inner person who can be with you in life, someone to whom you can turn for guidance.8
These beings are contacted either through meditative breathing exercises or with mantra meditation. If there is any doubt the book is talking about New Age meditation, it is resolved upon reading:
As meditation master Swami Muktananda says: “We do not meditate just to relax a little and experience some peace. We meditate to unfold our inner being.”9
Tarot cards are even presented as a source of creativity. As with other New Age categories, it begins with breathing exercises (or as the book says, go into silence). The person then picks the cards, which are supposed to give “some important insights.”10
A new generation of New Age business gurus is starting to emerge on the scene. One of the more prominent is T. Harv Eker, who leads “Millionaire Mind Seminars” through his company Peak Potentials Training. This is one of the fastest growing corporate training companies in the country today, with 250,000 trainees to date. What these eager folks learn is apparent by Eker’s statement that his “Mission is to educate and inspire people to live in their Higher Self.”11
This is a typical approach. You will recall an earlier quote, “businessmen eat this stuff up, the experience sells itself.” That is why it is making such headway, it works. If these methods work for people in business today the way they worked for Madame Blavatsky in finding the woman’s lost brooch related in chapter two, then it’s easy to see the implications of metaphysics in the business world.
Quite often I will hear people from a certain age group and social outlook dismiss what I am researching with terms such as “weirdo hippie religion.” When I hear this, I think of articles appearing in such well respected magazines as U.S. News & World Report which paint a far different picture. One article in particular dealt specifically with New Age spirituality in the corporate world. It was called “Shush. The Guy in the Cubicle is Meditating.” The article disclosed that such consultants had become “the darlings of business circles”12 and not just any business circles:
[W]hen 2,000 global powerbrokers gathered for the elite World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the agenda included confabs on “spiritual anchors for the new millennium” and “the future of meditation in a networked economy.” Indeed, 30 MBA programs now offer courses on the issue. It’s also the focus of the . . . Harvard Business School Bulletin. (emphasis mine)13
What this shows is that the dismissal of New Age spirituality as hippy/dippy is very much outdated and unsound. As one corporate trainer proudly proclaimed, “What’s new is that it’s just entered the mainstream.”
Corporate “Wellness”
Creativity is not the only New Age avenue into the corporate scene. Health and fitness programs presented in the context of corporate wellness are becoming increasingly popular. Executives give a willing ear to ways of keeping productivity up and absenteeism down.
Many of these programs have metaphysical motives within them. One such wellness expert promoting total health explained how she was able to teach mantra meditation to a group of businessmen:
Just yesterday I met with a whole room of executives for breakfast—top executives in a huge multinational company. . . . Here were these executives closing their eyes and breathing deeply into their abdomens, and quieting their mind by repeating just one word—“relax, relax.”14
Earlier in the interview this woman related how she had “studied metaphysics” and “meditated three or four times a day for direction.”15
In her joy at being able to subtly introduce meditation to those who would have rejected it as being too “far out” otherwise, she commented: “Ten years ago in an American company I would have been thrown out in the street, I’m sure.”16
Business—The Most Logical Candidate
The New Age effort to transform business is very real and becoming more successful all the time. When asked in an interview about where he thought the vanguard of transformation was in the country today, New Ager James Fadiman replied:
What’s fascinating to me is that when I met recently with some of the old-timers in the movement, I discovered that all of us had expanded from working in growth centers to working in American business. What the business community needs, wants, and appreciates at this time are insights from the human potential movement. . . . I’m finding executives who, twenty years ago, considered the human potential movement a kind of joke and who are now recruiting specialists into the most conservative industries.17
Larry Wilson, coauthor of The One Minute Sales Person, clearly stated in an interview that metaphysics is the core of what is being taught:
The heart of our new management training represents a return to the ancient spiritual wisdom about the true identity and power of the individual. In our courses, we aim to empower people so they can get in touch with their creative Source and then apply the potential to every part of their lives, including their work life. (emphasis mine)18
Wilson also revealed in the interview that it is the higher self that is at the heart of this “ancient spiritual wisdom.” He explained:
Once a sufficient number of employees get in touch with their true potential, the organization changes . . . it helps to have top management in tune with it.19
In another interview, the late futurist and New Age leader Willis Harman acknowledged that:
Some of the most creative and successful people in business are really part of this new paradigm movement. You can find this sort of talk going on in business. In fact, a group of business executives and myself got together and created something we call the World Business Academy, which is a network of business executives who have already gone through their own personal transformations to a considerable extent and are asking: “What’s the new role of business? What’s the new corporation?”20
International Management magazine revealed that many of the major European corporations are also eagerly embracing New Age spirituality. Included in the list were the Bank of England and the UK’s Ministry of Defense and Cabinet Office.21
The previously mentioned individuals, and numerous others like them, are working diligently within the corporate world to bring about a paradigm shift of potentially staggering proportions. Larry Wilson acknowledged this by saying, “This new approach is changing the corporation, and that change will affect other institutions of our Society.”22
This is not an understatement. In the 2007 Shift Report: Evidence of a World Transforming by the Institute of Noetic Sciences (a New Age think tank), it reveals:
Since 1994 more than 100,000 executives from 56 countries have taken the Self-Management and Leadership Course (SML). SML is a two-day residential retreat inspired by the principles of raja yoga, which advocates inner stillness through breathwork, movement, meditation, and self-inquiry as a path to wisdom and inner balance.23
New Agers know that if they can transform business, they will have transformed the world. The reason for this is that business and government feed into each other, so to speak. Many politicians are also business people, or lawyers with strong ties to business. Also, many politicians go back into the corporate world when they leave office. The two cultures are profoundly intertwined. If the corporate world goes New Age (as we see it doing) the world of government isn’t far behind. (For more information on how the New Age has come into our North American society, read For Many Shall Come in My Name by Ray Yungen.)
Endnotes:
1. E. Armstrong, “Bottom-Line Intuition” (New Age Journal, December 1985), p. 32.
2. “What’s New in the New Age?” (Training Magazine, September 1987), p. 25.
3. Interview with Marilyn Ferguson (Science of Mind magazine, May 1983), pp. 11-12.
4. “From Burnout to Balance,” Interview with Dennis Jaffe, Ph.D., (Science of Mind magazine, June 1985), pp. 88-89.
5. Michael Ray and Rochelle Meyers, Creativity in Business (Garden City, New York, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1986), front cover.
6. Ibid., back cover.
7. Ibid., back flap.
8. Ibid., pp. 36-37.
9. Ibid., p. 142.
10. Ibid., p. 154.
11. T. Harv Eker, author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind; quote taken from Eker’s Peak Potentials Training website, http://www.peakpotentials.com/new, accessed 11/2011.
12. Marci McDonald, “Shush. The Guy in the Cubicle is Meditating: Spirituality is the latest corporate buzzword” (U.S. News & World Report, May 3, 1999), p. 46.
13. Ibid.
14. Kathy Juline, “Wellness Works: A New Lifestyle for a New World,” Interview with Elaine Willis, Ph.D. (Science of Mind magazine, June 1990), p. 25.
15. Ibid., pp. 19-20.
16. Ibid.
17. Interview with James Fadiman (Science of Mind magazine, June 1988), p. 77.
18. “Changing the Game in Business,” Interview with Larry Wilson (Science of Mind magazine, February 1987), p. 10.
19. Ibid., p. 14.
20. Willis Harman, “The New Age of Consciousness” (Guide to New Age Living, 1989), pp. 18, 20.
21. “Disciples of the New Age,” (International Management magazine, March, 1991), p. 45.
22. Larry Wilson interview, op. cit., p. 31.
23. 2007 Shift Report: Evidence of a World Transforming Journal (Petaluma, CA: Institute of Noetic Sciences, March-May 2007, No. 14, 2007), p. 55.