Connected, feel free to talk now

I "attended" a Raelian online meditation this past Sunday, which meant I signed onto what was essentially a chat room that I was given advance notice of a week earlier in an e-mail. I typed "Hello its sunny in New York" in the manner of most before me, turned the volume up and paced around downstairs, checking in every so often on the typed chat situation as members "arrived" and waited for the meditation to begin.

It felt like being in one of the genre aol chatrooms [Dolphin Lovers!] I'd sign into when my parents first got 'the upstairs computer' with hopes it would be filled with busily typed aspects of cetacean lore I figured those in the c-room would all mutually know and love.

Alas, no great secrets of the Elohim (though someone did think to thank them when the meditation concluded!)were communicated, nor was the tawdry initiation of online orgies of the extraterrestrial order I'd been only fractionally expecting from these people. (But then again, I think their philosophy- that the purpose of life in this world is to experience pleasure, is the club med attitude i just don't see how would be possibly sustainable.)

A/S/L variety information was provided in the first phase of the 'meditation,' along with generic, if sometimes extremely positive, brief greetings. There was about a half hour of this sort of limited 'socializing': " HI! Paula, from Spain!" "Hello all!" "Hello everybody! laughter is the best medicine!"
The meditation was traditional, I had just done some kundalini yoga and meditating myself, figuring I'd 'watch' from the outside (outer outside?) before I method acted my way into raelianinity, but the voice went in and out, and even I, the great enthusiast of all cultural ephemera, was pretty bored.
A heavily accented man led the group (nearly all raelion leaders I've researched online are french? sounding? lazy gist journalism at its finest) who signed in from all parts of the world (or so they claimed.)The meditation was guided in English, though from the sentence structure and spelling, I'd have to guess most attendees were not native English speakers.) The meditation was standard de-stressing secular style, and lasted less than a half hour. He asked for us to breath intentionally, focus on various parts of our bodies and visualize energy spiraling into our foreheads then outward, and realize where 'Me' was, etc. Nothing profoundly strange and Damnit. This is my Sunday afternoon and I already know how I like to unwind/wind up
There was a third phase to the meditation- a "talk" by some "experts" on laughter- which was the "theme" of the afternoon.
This video .... followed. It had somewhat of a terrifying effect on me, but from the typed comments in the room, it looked like people found it absolutely Hilarious. It then took upwards of 15 minutes (of admirably tension-free silence and patient, encouraging, if banal, typed chatter) for the talk to begin, which was pretty much a question/answer period from the meditative raelians to ask pressing questions of the host like 'why can't we laugh and be happy all the time," "what about laughing gas?" and "why do babies laugh so much?"

I like to question the every day aspects of life that we may be taking advantage of, all the time, and many of these seemingly simple questions in my experience certainly have had profound (to me)answers or considerably unexpected complexity, but these questions... I just couldn't help mentally cataloging the whole group as a hedonistic (and not even uniquely so?) international singles engine for alien-enthusiasts who are trying to recreate that feeling they all got on E and nitrous that one time in Goa.

The host did his best to answer these three questions in an 'inspiring' way, which only required him to validate the questions at all and respond relevantly enough by repeating the words 'baby' and 'happiness' back in his answers; the moderator was helpful enough in keeping morale up during the frequent connection blips,, ie. chuckling a lot. Then at the close of the last question, everyone said "THANK YOU!" a billion times, said their equally generic goodbyes, and that seemed to be the end.
Not that I expected great transformation to occur(I may have wanted to watch them turn on- but there were no video hookups! or spontaneous discussion.) But meditating and meeting only once a month, I felt they would want to meet and talk about their realian topics, alien current events, ontological research, human cloning or Whatever, but maybe the whole point was genuinely to laugh and that they all were, unlike me, cracking up hysterically in their respective homes.

I should stop for a moment and mention "What about laughing gas" may not have been so entirely an absurd question. An account involving nitrous oxide does draw some parallels with the Raelian origination story. Enid Blyton, a 'prolific writer of British children's books* describes a time when she took laughing gas, "I find myself drawn through space at a speed so great that I thought I must be going at the pace of light itself. I seemed to go through vibrating waves of light...finally after a long, incredibly long journey in an incredibly short time I arrived somewhere...and I saw, or knew, that there were Beings there-no shape, nothing tangible-but I knew they were great and holy and ineffable. Then I knew I was going to hear the secret of Everything-and Everything was explained to me, simply and with the utmost lucidity. I was overjoyed-filled with wonder and delight. I knew the reasons behind existence, time, space, evil, goodness, pain-and I rejoiced, marveled that no one had guessed such things before..."Let me tell everyone this wonderful thing I know, this secret that explains everything and will bring such rejoicing and happiness! And as I went back down aeons of time, I was told I must not divulge the secret and I cried out why-and as I went I was told why and I said 'At least let me always remember', but no, I was not even to be allowed to remember even one small detail of it myself...just the very moment I returned to my body in the dentist's chair I was told why...and it was such a logical and wonderful reason that I accepted it joyfully, in the fullest understanding...I can still get back the feeling at the end of it, of acquiescing joyfully in my foregoing of the secret, and yet hugging to myself the certainty that 'all's well with the world,' despite everything! This experience has nothing to do with religion, it wasn't a 'vision', only something amazing introduced by the gas- but I kept hold of my identity all the time, and did not lose the reporter sense of the practiced writer..."
Rael says he saw great beings when he climbed that volcanic crater decades ago, only to climb down and form his 'non-religious' cult. Yes, chatroomies, it seems the secret of life may in fact be laughter...And a sense of humor is so spiritual/psychedelic- to be funny or find things funny you have to rely on the poetic way your subconscious associates and recognizes concepts. Joke as sacrament maybe? Laughter as litany?
Other strange ways Raelianism is not as wiggly as they come. This online mode of meditation actually works to free the new religious movement from the trappings of much of the other new age accoutrement: no aromathepy incense, no 'ability' to feel the chakrah flow of your fellow mediators in the room, no uniform dress, no crystal power, no colorologistic candles, no affected vibing. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of the raelian monthly meditation (hardly frequent enough for the primary purpose to be gleaning the healthful effects of meditation) was, but no other obvious purpose manifested itself, though a few people posed one or two existential questions that just sort of hung there in 'space.' (No pun intended?)
If there is already internet intercourse,Chatroulette speed dating (which seems to encourage the type of cowardly, fear laden attitude towards self and others that could be summed up as "I'll just Next them before they can split on me." But by condensing the probability of time you spend interacting with another stranger, questions on the purpose of any human interaction are brought to the fore, causing us to wonder how would we even know a successful interaction when we saw(-insert transitive verb here)one anyways? What makes a human interaction successful? Do we experience as much as we can (ie. Nexting through a mass population) and only stop and spend a little time with someone only when we become bored of the race past so many, or is it successful only when we know what we're looking to get out of an interaction, and know how to artfully engage someone in this? It also makes me wonder about the future of proximetrics... are there e-raves, flickr break ups, tweeted benders,and skype surprise birthday parties in our futures as well?

If, as my friend says, "preach is just reach with a p" then is google truly just oogle with a g?


You: bye stranger
Stranger: bye stranger

However I'm still totally going to do this since the theme is SAVE HUMANITY
http://www.raelm.org/email/en2/
*(thanks to the essential anthology by Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz on the drug experience)