If I hadn’t mentioned, the Vedas have opened my eyes to a rich wellspring of knowledge, teachers, and gurus who enliven the ancient infinity within. I’m still a practitioner of an assortment of yogas and meditations, with an unsavory disposition for Maharishi University of Management in tow.
My study of the Vedas started approximately three(3) years ago. I’m so grateful for the teachings of so many different spiritual teachers across so many genres of spirituality: The Dalai Lama, Dr. Nicholas Sutton, Dr. Zakir Naik, Eknath Easwaran, Deepak Chopra, The Pope, and many others. I don’t discriminate on the basis of sex, race, or religion, nor do I judge these personalities. I soak it in and ‘think for myself’ — I’m a critical thinker, who does not expect perfection from my fellow human beings with which this glorious earth I share.
I’ve explored the MUM campus, Vedic City, and the surrounding areas marveling at this Vastu application of home construction — and community building at large. The Brihadeeswara Temple of Tamil Nadu, the floating city of Ankgor Wat, or the visually stereographic vibrations of the Prambanan Temple in Java are some of the most breathtaking Vastu-like achievements I’ve witnessed — I’m not qualified to deem these as Vastu, they’re simply awesome.
But when Maharishi University of Management’s acclaimed champion of Vastu architecture gave a presentation to my classmates and I, during our course STC108, I was far from impressed. After listening to his discourses on fundamental principles of Vastu design — such as northern and eastern orientation, or room allocation based on functions of the hypothalamus — I found myself somewhat bored as I’d already encountered these elementary concepts in my private study. I harbor deep interest in Vastu design, Ayurveda, Sanskrit, and things of this nature.
Finally, though, something new was introduced — new to me. He began to distribute some studies to the classroom. The class divided itself into groups to review these studies, and then the time to review them as a class followed some fifteen(15) minutes later.
One of these studies stood out to me in particular. There was something mathematically suspect about it, so I couldn’t help but to ask for further explanation.
The “RESULTS” of the study — pictured below as it was presented to us — expressed the following:
Bipolar inpatients in E rooms (exposed to direct sunlight in the morning) had a mean 3.67-day shorter hospital stay than patients in W rooms. No effect was found in unipolar inpatients
Naturally, after hearing him boast about the ‘3.67-day’ claim, I was shocked about something. There seemed to be an obviously relevant piece of information missing that was surely central to the claim.
As you can see from my various notations, the length of the hospital stay was missing. Surely an architect, who’s vocation is rooted in mathematical precision, didn’t intentionally omit this piece of fundamental information — doing so would undermine the purpose of handing it out.
Before he moved on to the next study I had to submit my query:
“What was the length of the stay?” I asked. There was a brief silence — and I expected ‘total knowledge’ to emanate from it — and then he spoke.
“What do you mean?” he replied.
So naturally, with all my classmates’ attention, I had to retort “How long were the patients hospitalized, the mean average?” — and I felt somewhat uncomfortable challenging the most fundamental math in the face of his esteemed credentials.
His response “I can’t remember, you’ll have to look at the study.” seemed to thwart the obvious.
If the hospital stay was 100 days, then a 3.67-day reduction is essentially a 3.67% reduction, which is marginal and hardly compelling.
But if the mean average hospital stay was one week, then this would suggest a compelling 50% reduction, approximately.
“Reduction” is surely a phenomenon denoted by “rate” when in the context of statistical comparison. Yet if I hadn’t submitted my query, surely some students may leave the class believing that he had proven his case.
I felt his leveraging of the word “reduction” was more akin to the culinary application of the word — from architecture to B.S. (and I don’t mean Bachelors of Science.)
Needless to say, I no-longer harbored an interest in this field — at least at Maharishi University of Management. Again, an example of how the university tries to wit it’s students into believing in abstract ideas through scientific proof. Just tell us up front, it may or may not be true, that we should decide for ourselves.
But lets say that this mere ‘abstract’ from a study contains the desired information, which it likely does, it still does not explain the attempt of this man’s incoherent brain waves to PERSONALLY leverage the abstract as if it — by itself — proved something.
Additionally, what if the full study requires a payment of $31.50 USD? Most of us have already paid far more than we should to continually peel off the ‘skrill’ to double check the credibility of the professors. Moreover, why should students do more work to get to the truth, disambiguating many of our lessons as it is already? Why didn’t he present the full study?
All the wish-wash about how students shouldn’t take things at “face value” is rubbish, particularly in the scope of architecture and medicine. The housing market shells out near $100.00 USD per square foot for this architecture, so there should be clear disclosure of it’s accuracy — or novelty. Instead, the Maharishi University of Management bookstore solicits a book — Vastu City Planning — that further boast notions of health, wealth, and invincibility in accordance with “Natural Law” inherent in the Vastu design. It’s these exact same claims that this professor intended to reinforce through suggestion and irrelevant scientific proof.
