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The numerous premies who have reviewed Clarity on Amazon have provided a perfect example of a cult, and how a cult distorts the truth. The book is not magnificent. It does not deserve those extreme and gushy praises. The most positive thing that can be said about the book is that it provides a hopeful message. If you find that message to be helpful to you, then fine. But why do these premies take what is a simple, hopeful and rather common message and turn it into hero worship? Because what these premies are adoring is obviously not the book, but its author. This transparent and silly effort to glorify Prem Rawat through these book reviews will turn off a lot of people, including thoughtful premies, if there are any of those left. Anyone with an actual regard for the truth will surely be turned off. This effort to provide Rawat with public acceptance is on the same level as the business magazine articles, the United Nations venues, the token charity work, and the endless self-promoting "news releases." Besides the embarassing falseness of these efforts, the fact is that they ain't gonna work. Very, very few people will ever become aware of these efforts, let alone be pursuaded by them. It is also troubling that Amazon has such a very restrictive policy about negative reviews. Although I can certainly appreciate their need to curb reckless conflict within their website, their policy of censorship is unbalanced and has created a truly absurd situation with this title Clarity, a situation that is beneath the values of our society.
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Thanks, Will. My thoughts exactly. Also, I'm wondering who wrote the "editorial" review, which is as gushy and empty as most of the other premie reviews! I just checked Amazon, and they are listing the item as "currently unavailable" now--so I suppose the sales were good? Will there be a re-issue? A "Revised Version"? More of the same? I'm afraid of the answer--there will be! Interestingly enough, I couldn't find their usual invitation to "review this item". Maybe even Amazon itself has had enough of the stuff! Or perhaps you have to be a certified premie with a secret code to get in? Oh well... if this be clarity, give me the woods that cannot be seen for the trees, any day! ~Shelagh
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Very interesting. Both the "Clarity" book and that video with Burt Wolf, are listed on Amazon, but they are not actually for sale. The "Clarity" book was at first for sale for $10 (probably to get premies to buy it and boost the sales totals). Then, it quickly went to $29.95, and then, very quickly, it was no longer for sale. The Burt Wolf interview video is on Amazon, but never has been available for purchase. In both cases, the premies gush over what wonderful items they are. It seems this is all an attempt to, once again, try to get Rawat some good PR, I guess being able to say he has a book on Amazon that got good reviews, even though the book isn't actually for sale.
Modified by Joe at Tue, Feb 07, 2006, 17:12:36
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I asked Amazon why they continually removed negative reviews. The wrote me back with their usual crap about "review guidelines". I pointed out that some negative reviews that had been removed were entirely within their "guidelines". They told me they could not, for privacy reasons, discuss specific reviews with anyone other than the author. I wrote back that I had not invited a discussion of any specific reviews, but merely asked why reviews that are within their posted review guidelines were removed. They wrote back that they had answered my question and refused to discuss it further with me. Quote: "As you have been informed of our policies, we will not be
entertaining any further discussion on the status of review
submissions made by other customers."
I will no longer be doing business with Amazon. I wrote and told them this, and why, but I doubt there were any tears over it. It's sick. The only amusing thing about it all is how very cult-like the cult has made itself look over those reviews. Any non-cult person would have to read that and laugh their ass off.
Modified by Premie_Spouse at Tue, Feb 07, 2006, 15:49:35
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This might be very simple business. See somehow you channel to amazone, look we have 1 million followers that do exactly what we want them to do. We will prove that. Watch the positive comments grow in 3 days by our order. Do you want to loose 1 million potentional customers or just 20 disgruntled ex-followers? Corruption feeds corruption!
That simpletoby
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It might be unfair on all parties to leave this newest analysis out of the equation: > 
The clue's in the title. "Clarity" is one of the best books I have ever read. It is so clear and well written. It opens the heart to the possibilities of inner peace and contentment. Just what everyone in this world needs. It should be in every school and library. Well worth finding out
Modified by Nigel at Tue, Feb 07, 2006, 17:27:44
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I might have to go back and double-ckeck, but I swear that since I started this thread a fairly level-headed but negative review by 'Nigel Longhurst' of Liverpool, UK, has vanished from Amazon dot U effing K! I've just bought some new glasses, and I know I've have had the odd hallucination in my time, but - really - say it ain't so! Unbelievable!
Modified by Nigel at Tue, Feb 07, 2006, 18:53:29
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Prem Rawat’s work does not pretend to be poetry in any understood sense unless the author is also deceiving himself. Structurally, Clarity is prose with random scissor-work applied to create a visual illusion of verse. (Kwik-Save poetry, perhaps: ‘pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap’, and hope nobody notices the quality?) Take the verse that starts by kindly informing us that ‘Life is what we are all about’. Reassemble the first dozen lines into conventional paragraphs and what have you got…? ‘We exist. We live. Life is about joy and beauty. It is not about our differences, Our pains, our problems. Life is the song that plays through this breath. It is the call buried in each and every heart. It is the light that shines within us. If we look outside we find questions, not answers. If we look within, we find answers, not questions. We often think that questions will lead to answers, but that is not necessarily so. There is a distinct domain of answers and a distinct domain of questions. There is also an ocean of answers, and in the ocean of answers, there are no questions. For the mind, it is more intriguing to be filled with questions. For the heart, it is more intriguing to be filled with answers…’ This simple re-editing exercise turns bad poetry into bad prose. Nobody is any the wiser, apart from, perhaps, readers who know something about the author and already understand the ‘message‘ implied in these pseudo-mystical thought-bubbles. As for the bubbles themselves: the idea of ‘a domain of questions’ that is distinct from the ‘domain of answers’ is, by the standards of any reasonable creed, philosophy, or science, patent nonsense. For his next slim volume, Mr Rawat should perhaps provide an accompanying fuzzy-felt, feel-good dictionary in which terms such as ‘life’, ‘joy’, ‘beauty’, ‘breath’, ‘heart’ and ‘light’ are synonymous and interchangeable. But to do so could never rescue an irredeemable weakness on the ‘poet’s’ part to put written words to constructive use. Even halfway-decent poetry has a facility to conjure up images and feelings, to engage at a familiar level, to delight, enthral, move or entertain the reader. The poem’s last stanza suggests a different agenda: ‘I help people understand that
there is hope and that
there is a beautiful purpose in life
instead of all the mundane things
that we find ourselves caught up in.
What I offer is Knowledge.’ The neutral observer does not need to reassemble this non-poetry into non-prose to imagine where the author’s real ambitions lie: not only beyond the tiresome domains of questions and answers, but beyond those of literature itself.
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If you resubmit it, it will get put back up. This has happened to me. They deleted a review, I reposted it, and it was not deleted after that. It all seems rather subjective and arbitrary, and I think it's just that different people at Amazon are looking at the same stuff and coming to different conclusions.
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I think the first time they get a complaint they don't even really look and they throw out the review. If someone complains about THAT then they take a look. This is what the pattern looks like
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They must be idiots! This is such an intelligent review! Glad we get to see it here, Nigel--yes, resubmit it to Amazon. Keep them on their toes! Somewhat OT, but any of you seen the reviews of A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey? Amazon has really had to walk a fine line there, now that the book has been so discredited, even by the publishers themselves. And look at some of the negative reviews there! What's been said against "Clarity" pales before some of those! But they remain. ~Shelagh
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I appreciate the endorsement, She - ta, lass! I maybe wil resubmit it - but with so few negative reviews on Am-dot., amongst all the fawning and swooning, it hardly seems worth the effort... But what I find really startling is the way my post disappeared in real time, ie., in the brief time window since I counted the no. of reviews as 75 (at 16:18, according to forum time) and when it went back to 74 (18:16). This can only mean - what I've suggested earlier - that ev are monitoring this forum with a near-obscene compulsion and acting immediately on anything gleaned here, no matter how cult-like or stupid it makes them look. And not only to exes, but premies too - who I am certain read this site even if they're not supposed to. (Side Q for Mike F. or JHB: is it forum policy to prevent premies posting here? Or are they preventing themselves, under M's instruction?) I just checked out the reviews for Million Little Pieces; most telling was the contrast between reviewers who believed the book to be autobiography, and those who'd heard it was faked. (I also found a publishers' disclaimer via Google: at http://www.randomhouse.com/trade/publicity/pdfs/AMLP012706.pdf) They needn't have bothered, really. Fiction is good when it's 'true' - and not in the sense that it is factually accurate, and the same goes for autobiography, poetry and books generally. (Do you know the Casteneda's Don Juan stories? -maybe the ultimate example of fiction posing as fact, but so poorly written, there's not even a glimmer of 'truth' in the whole seven-volume series. His publishers never came clean, and neither did the University of California who awarded Casteneda his doctorate. When one of your own is selling millions, it might compromise your integrity?) So maybe it's to their credit that Frey's publishers have made their announcement re. the 'truth' of the tale. I'd never heard of the Frey book, so can't really comment there, but Clarity is so spectacularly naff, I can't imagine the work itself or the gushing premie reviews being anything more than counter-productive if they think they are helping propagation in some way. You hardly need negative reviews with so many obsessive cultists around to do the damage for you! Nige
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(Side Q for Mike F. or JHB: is it forum policy to prevent premies posting here? Or are they preventing themselves, under M's instruction?)There have been a few people who have registered that we don't know, and have not yet posted, but no one that we know to be a premie, apart from one known premie troll who has tried to register a few times. It may be that the slightly more difficult registration process has put them off, or that there is some kind of instruction not to post. Interestingly, the premie forum (link above) has recently had a purge of many of its original members who were suspected of being ex-premies, and requires all new members to introduce themselves on one sub-forum before they get access to the rest of the forum. Anyone who quotes from Indian scriptures is suspect, as is anyone who foments any disagreement. As a result there is little real discussion of anything - just mutual back slapping and agreement that Knowledge is beautiful. There is one discussion about the nature of reality and illusion but given the underlying belief that the experience of meditation is what is real, the discussion couldn't really go anywhere. Anyway, premies are welcome to register and post, as long as they don't annoy me and Mike too much! John.
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Thanks, John, It's good to see it spelled out - I wasn't sure whether I'd missed something. That no premies post here therefore suggests some kind of agya is in place - on earlier forums, as you'll remember, the woodwork was often riddled with premie posters, sometimes useful, more often not. (But - sigh! - I kind of miss them...) And it at least demonstrated our shared belief in openness and willingness to discuss, when compared with ev sites, past and present. Nige
Modified by Nigel at Wed, Feb 08, 2006, 13:41:26
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The forum intro begins with:-This forum is for anyone with a genuine interest to discuss and read about Prem Rawat, also known as Maharaji. Premies should have more reason than anyone to want to discuss Rawat. Also, I am on record as saying I enjoy debating with premies, and I'm pretty sure Mike has never expressed that he doesn't want them here. They just haven't turned up yet! Of course, when one does, their first post will get about 20 replies which just goes to show how much we all like having them around!  John.
Modified by JHB at Wed, Feb 08, 2006, 15:40:14
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I always wanted to. I think I could do fair than most of the real ones who come here. I always thought their arguments were so lame and could have been a lot better.
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Me, too! Pick me! I think I can talk and argue in complete circles. Any other requirements? Besides having to swerve when logic comes at me? And completely ignore facts? And wiggle away from true discussion like jello? And kiss his lardhip's feet?........Oh, crap no! I'm outta here!
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It's essential to post on the premie forum. It's quite easy though as we know their belief system so well. What's funny is that they suspect the ones who talk about Krishna and Kabir when I'm pretty sure they are all genuine. To post there you need to be cool, and tell them how much you enjoy a beer and watching the sunset.
But seriously, I wouldn't want anyone pretending to be a premie here, apart from, of course, Pauline Premie who would probably getted banned from the premie forum before she could sell some more organs to get darshan.
John.
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Someone at Amazon, either by pressure from EV and premies or somebody within the company, is making sure enough negative reviews get deleted to keep that five-star rating there. EV and/or some poor premie slobs are monitoring both Amazon and this forum with what can only be described as a cult obsession to make sure the lard's five-star rating is maintained. As soon as some premie or EV whines about a review, it comes down, and then, maybe, someone can repost a negative one. But, there will never be enough negative ones at one time to damage his lardship's five-star rating. Poor weak-egoed bastard. Too bad he's so pathetic that EV and the premies have to ride herd on Amazon like that and whine every ten minutes. Wow, what a life. Sucks to be you guys! You'd think, being the lard of the universe and all, that he would be above that and his foot-kissers wouldn't have to defend him quite so rabidly. Poor bastards.
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This is from Dorri Jones, whom I think you know. Remember? She is the woman who was doing propagation in a hospital on the Isle of Wwight and got pinned by a reporter in a fashion that made her a bit miffed. Consider her statement and tell me if you can make any sense of it. The Perfect Feeling, February 5, 2006
In his book 'Clarity,' Prem Rawat expresses in gentle, heartfelt prose poetry a simple, timeless truth; that human beings can, if they so wish, find what they are looking for within themselves. I am invited to explore and fulfil my own potential to appreciate and enjoy the peace that comes from knowing the essential and the beautiful within my own heart... This makes my head hurt and it sounds just like Rawat...it's so circular and full or obfuscations. And now it's "prose poetry" ?! Just try to pull it apart and figure out what she is saying.... "find what they are looking for within themselves." [Cash, maybe? Drugs?] And if one of my students wrote a sentence like this, I would give them an "F." I am invited to explore and fulfil my own potential to appreciate and enjoy the peace that comes from knowing the essential and the beautiful within my own heart... Blimey, that's something. (let's see, enjoy the potential to appreciate and enjoy the peace that comes from knowing the essential... ....wow, gettin dizzy, circuits blowing.......crunch.) Do you think premies ever get embarrassed? They should.
Modified by Joe at Tue, Feb 07, 2006, 18:19:27
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Do you think premies ever get embarrassed? They should.
when the start having negative feelings or think that it is negative, they sit down and practice. So they never face themselves with real life and therefore there is no growth. That is the reason why they stay conned for decades
toby
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...works by the simple guideline of "show, don't tell"--meaning that you don't just throw around a bunch of large abstractions like "truth", "simplicity", "wisdom" and such, but you present specific details and scenes that DEMONSTRATE those things! Such images deliver a much more direct feeling, because of the appeal to the senses! Large abstractions can't do that. They are just words, words, words...cut them up how you may, they can't do it! We won't even get into matters of rhythm, musicality, incremental repetition, line-breaks, syntax, and other criteria of real poetry! You have to have some real sensitivity to language for that. ~Shelagh
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See Google:
http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=%2Bamazon+%2Bcensor+%2Breviews&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta=
Related link: Amazon on Google
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Here's someone's first-hand experience - and opinion:"Okay here's the deal. I must've written
about 15 reviews at amazon.com, around
8-9 being 2-star reviews or less. All of my
4-5 star reviews have been posted, yet only
one of my 1-2 star reviews is up. And all of
my low-star reviews were written quite a while
ago. So, I just have to wonder, do they only put
up some reviews based on the score? I know
it's just just luck whether or not it gets put up....
look at which ones of mine have put up. And I
know it's not the quality of the reviews. ALL of
my low-star reviews were very well written ..."
Related link: from http://forum.dvdtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-83913.html
Modified by cq at Fri, Feb 10, 2006, 14:40:29
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I looked at some of the websites on your Google link. Obviously the problem is not limited to Clarity. I was already thinking that this was really about the fact that Amazon doesn't like negative reviews because it lowers sales. These links from Amazon certainly lend support to that theory. It is also a real eye opener. In the past, not even considering the idea that Amazon did something like that, I often looked to the reviews to help me make a purchase decision.
On the other hand, they may be more likely to act if there is a complaint and they may also be mostly afraid of law suits. Or a combination of everything. Nevertheless, it's times like these that I really appreciate the positive side effects reading and posting on this forum has. Here is another comment from a poster on the same forum where cq quotes from:
(Actually this is the same post that cq quotes from, but I think the last part is the best part)
tha_dvd_man
02-23-01, 03:43 AM Okay
here's the deal. I must've written about 15 reviews at amazon.com,
around 8-9 being 2-star reviews or less. All of my 4-5 star reviews
have been posted, yet only one of my 1-2 star reviews is up. And all of
my low-star reviews were written quite a while ago. So, I just have to
wonder, do they only put up some reviews based on the score? I know
it's just just luck whether or not it gets put up....look at which ones
of mine have put up. And I know it's not the quality of the reviews.
ALL of my low-star reviews were very well written and whatnot, yet here
is one of my 5-star reviews I submitted just to see what would happen,
and they used it: Great story, great animation, great everything. Sell
your cat, sell your sister, sell your mom, sell your house...sell your
SOUL! Do WHATEVER YOU CAN to buy this masterful piece of art. THE BEST
THING IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND!!!!!!!!!! BEEFCAKE!!!!
It really pisses me off that amazon.com would do that. You spend all
that time writing the reviews, and to top it off you really have to
wonder what scores some other items would have if all their reviews had
been put up. And here is another one: fourwalker 02-23-01, 08:22 AM yeah
it does seem to me that they tend to be more liberal with the positive
reviews than the negative ones. I mean look at this review for this
self help book.... its five stars but obviously meant as a joke.
Reviewer: Henry Raddick (see more about me) from London, England
This fantastic book tells it how it is. So many times when I was
reading this I just thought to myself "That is just so much like my
wife." Through reading this, my wife realised that she had been wrong
to refuse the implants (if she gets a decent rack then I wouldn't have
a problem with pay-per-view hardcore porn) and had been unreasonably
hectoring about my drinking. Sometimes when a relationship goes wrong
it is the case that only one of the parties is at fault and through
this book my wife began to face up to that responsibility.
you can see it for real at....
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0786866314/customer-reviews/107-0909013-6661307
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The latest response I have got from Amazon, dated Feb 10 is this. It does look as though our complaints have crept up the corporate ladder. My brief reply at the bottom.-- Mike ____________________
Dear Mr. Finch, My name is Aaron Bond, and I am part of Amazon.com's Executive Customer Relations group at our corporate offices. One of my group's mandates is to address the most acute account and order problems, and in this capacity your concerns have been brought to my attention. Thank you again for your feedback about our reviews process. We are constantly re-evaluating and examining our features and services, and feedback such as yours is invaluable to this ongoing process. I have forwarded your comments to the appropriate department for consideration. Opinions are always open to argument, and the best way to express your approval or disapproval of an opinion is by voting yourself. As more votes are cast on individual reviews, the featured reviews are updated within 7 days to reflect the most recent voting activity. At this point, the limit has been reached as to the degree of detail in which we can discuss other customer's reviews. Again, our policy clearly states that reviews that are deemed to be more focused on personal attacks on the author than the title itself will be removed, at our discretion. Please rest assured that this issue has been escalated to the highest possible level within our organization. As you have been informed of our decision, we will not be entertaining any further discussion on this subject. I regret that we have been unable to address your concerns to your satisfaction. We remain committed to neutrality in the products we sell, and will continue to do our best to allow customer opinions of those products to be frank and undiluted. Thank you once again for participating in the Amazon.com community. I sincerely hope that you will continue to look to us for your online shopping needs. Regards, Aaron B.
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com ____________________
My reply: Dear Aaron B. Thanks for your email. In this instance you have put your own finger on the problem when you write: >>best way to express your approval or disapproval of an opinion is by voting yourself. That works fine for all normal books, but when a book is written by a cult leader with lots of followers to do his bidding, and they all write similar reviews and all vote accordingly, your system breaks down. Everything that I and others (eg Jim Heller) have written to you about stems from that one point. -- Mike Finch
www.MikeFinch.com
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