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Len and Tony

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For all customers that purchased the Maharishi booklets from Croatia.

I have just been informed by the TM teacher in Croatia that there has been a delay in shipping due to a transfer of funds problem

At this time I am waiting to hear when the problem will be resolved... what this means is the books will not be arriving this month as planned.. they may take an additional 6 weeks or so.

I apologize for this delay... if you wish a refund I will be happy to provide it..... otherwise I will send the books as soon as I can.

Please note this will be the last order I will be placing for these booklets.

Again I apologize for this unexpected delay.

There is a new groundbreaking book on TM being published in early June... there will be a lot of media attention.

Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., a twenty-year researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and the celebrated psychiatrist who pioneered the study and treatment of Season Affective Disorder (SAD), brings us the most important work on Transcendental Meditation since the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Science of Being and Art of Living—and one of our generation’s most significant books on achieving greater physical and mental health and wellness.

Please be sure to read the review we have at the end of of this month’s newsletter

Sam Oppenheim (Len’s son) is taking over for Len this month.

He has reviewed 3 books for us this month

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is the true story of how one woman’s cancer led to the world’s first immortal human cell line. When Henrietta died in 1951 scientists treating her in the all-black separate (but unequal) ward at Johns Hopkins took her cells, labeled them “HeLa”, and found that they multiplied quickly and didn’t die easily. This led to amazing scientific breakthroughs pioneered using her cells, and yet few ever knew about the woman behind the cells or her descendants.

Her family, however, did not fare as well as her cell line, and the other half of the story (told simultaneously in alternating timelines as you discover about her life, death, and science) is about her descendants who eventually, reluctantly at first, accepted Rebecca Skloot into their lives as she befriended them in her research.

This account of her life, death, descendants, and the field of human cell line science is both a research-driven popular science book, and a soap-opera-adventure into one family’s drama.

The Lacks family’s history is intertwined with the scientific world they neither understood nor benefited from. Experimentation without consent and other debates about medical ethics make the reading relevant and engaging, while the examination of freed slaves and their descendants living in poverty raises questions of social justice. 

Overall it is very well written, and in my recent book club discussion we unanimously enjoyed reading it.

Super Sad True Love Story is an absurdist and dire view of the future told through humor and pathos. Its critical acclaim agrees well with my experience reading it, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

In many ways it makes salient points about our current culture through a nearly-realistic (but terribly disturbing) dystopian post-recession, big-brother, anti-intellectual USA. Mina, my wife, and I find parallels to the story in everyday life and it remains relevant months after reading. The novel is a true page turner, told in alternating emails and diary entries between the two anti-heroes: a depressed Jewish man who still reads *gasp* bound books, and the technophile, sarcastic, confused, Korean-American object of his affection.

Carter Beats the Devil is a swashbuckling romantic historical fiction novel in the vein of “Water for Elephants” and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay”. It is especially memorable because the world of San Francisco and Oakland a century ago is very real, heavily researched, and beautifully described. In fact, the novel is doubly interesting because it is loosely based on the actual historical magician Charles Joseph Carter, and many famous people from the early part of the 20th century are featured including Houdini, the Marx Brothers, Philo Farnsworth who invented Television, and wealthy magnate Francis “Borax” Smith.

The novel begins in 1923 with a fantastic magic show in an opulent theater with President Harding featured on stage. When President Harding dies, the charming and noble Carter is a suspect and many sub-plots later become intertwined with this key storyline. I found Glen David Gold’s novel incredibly engaging for all 500-plus pages, and can re-imagine my favorite parts with such vividness, I must have been in the circus in a past life!

Sam Oppenheim

Here is the latest book on TM by Dr Norman Rosenthal.

Due to be published in early June

You can preorder it now

The following is from the Foreward

Foreword by Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.,
Emmy Award-winning host of The Dr Oz Show and Vice Chairman and Professor of Surgery, New York Presbyterian- Columbia University

Let me return to my surgical roots and cut to my conclusion: Dr. Norman Rosenthal’s Transcendence: Healing and Transformation through Transcendental Meditation is a profoundly important book on a topic that you need to know a lot more about. Moreover, it has been written by an eminently qualified expert: an internationally respected psychiatrist and 20-year senior researcher at the National Institutes of Mental Health who first described “Seasonal Affective Disorder” and pioneered the use of light therapy. 

So, why is this book so incredibly valuable?

Stress wears us down, drains us of the joys of life, fuels countless diseases and disorders, and is slowly, or rapidly, killing us. Cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, as well as digestive disorders, anxiety, depression, are often caused, or exacerbated, by stress. You know these grim realities – and hopefully you are already doing something to neutralize stress, such as eating better and exercising more. But there is something you may not be doing, but which you really must do, beyond exercise and diet. And that is promoting your own mental resilience: developing your natural, innate ability to overcome mentally the mounting pressures and demands that pervade our lives. Stated bluntly, you must promote mental resilience or lose the fight against stress—and suffer the consequences.

Dr. Rosenthal’s Transcendence brilliantly addresses the importance of mental resilience—and much more. It reveals, in a most readable and enticing fashion, the need to access – through a simple, time-tested meditation technique – the silent core of our own Being; and it recounts the unprecedented, scientifically documented, wide-ranging benefits that naturally ensue. 

I have known Dr. Rosenthal and his work for more than ten years, and am happy to count him as a respected colleague and one of my panel of experts to whom I turn for advice about the mind – in sickness and in health. I have always admired Dr. Rosenthal for his ability to tackle the most challenging emotional problems we all face. In Transcendence, Dr. Rosenthal addresses his clinical and literary skills to the subject of Transcendental Meditation as a promising technique for helping a wide range of people both physically and emotionally.

As a cardiovascular surgeon, I am familiar with the ability of TM to reduce high blood pressure, the so-called “silent killer.” In many controlled studies, simply but elegantly described in Transcendence, we learn that this blood pressure reduction is not only statistically significant, but clinically significant as well. This is reflected in the ability of TM to greatly reduce cardiac mortality in people at risk for heart disease. But Transcendence takes us far beyond the physical benefits of TM, and advances a persuasive argument that TM may help people with a wide range of emotional conditions – including anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorder, and addictions – as well as veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. The list may sound overblown, but Dr. Rosenthal makes his case well by offering gripping stories of emotional transformation, backed up by impressive research and logical explanations for how TM may provide such varied benefits.

There are chapters on the potential value of TM in inner-city schools, prisons and shelters for the homeless that make for fascinating reading, and offer genuine hope for people trying to make their way in these difficult environments. In one of my favorite chapters in Transcendence, we learn how TM can help even highly successful people live fuller and richer lives. Finally, there is an explanation for how TM might improve the level of harmony, both within ourselves and the world outside.

Dr. Rosenthal is one of those rare professionals who is able to mix authority and accuracy with riveting stories that read like a novel. In Transcendence, he has given us all a gift that will enlighten, entertain, and perhaps even transform. This will become the go-to book for those searching for the wisdom within meditation.

— Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.

Transcendence demystifies the practice and benefits of Transcendental Meditation for a general audience who may have heard about the method but do not necessarily know what it is, how it is learned, or what they stand to gain, physically and emotionally, from achieving transcendence. Dr. Rosenthal clearly and practically explains the basic ideas behind Transcendental Meditation: It is a nonreligious practice that involves sitting comfortably for twenty minutes twice a day while using a silent mantra, or nonverbal sound, to attain a profound state of aware relaxation.

Alongside exclusive celebrity interviews-where figures like Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Martin Scorsese, Russell Brand, Laura Dern, Moby, and David Lynch openly discuss their meditation-Dr. Rosenthal draws upon experience from the lives of his patients and a wealth of clinical research amassed on TM over the past generation (340 peer-reviewed published articles). He provides the fullest and most accessible book ever on the broad range of benefits of this remarkably simple practice, from relief of anxiety, stress and depression to new hope for those experiencing addiction, attention-deficit disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Dr. Norman Rosenthal’s Transcendence is the best-ever book on Transcendental Meditation: accessible and substantive, engaging and scientific, practical and profound. A very enjoyable read that can change your life, for good.” - David Lynch

“I have been meditating for over 10 years, and I found Transcendence to be a uniquely compelling introduction to the art and science of Transcendental Meditation. Dr. Norman Rosenthal’s book will propel TM into the mainstream where it belongs.” - Russell Simmons

It has now been a year since the book store closed.. a dream ends and we awake and than a new one begins.

So much has changed in this past year.

I still dream about the store... most of my dreams are of the 4th st store.. the store is crowded and filled with happy people.. the dreams are a bit sad yet peacefulness is entwined within that emotion.

Nothing stays the same.. and if an ending seems like that( an ending) it is of course a false perception of ego. For my ending was a beginning.

A new life in a new state.. living with my High School sweetheart that I last saw 40 years ago.

So I have grown by letting go and my mind sees now the reasons for endings that lead to new beginnings.. which also lead to endings that are reborn again and again into and onto eternity. Forever we travel our embryo reborn and grounded in a silence that overcomes all in the final end.

Your endings are not that.. sadness never lasts forever... accept all... for change in our relative life is the only certainty.. and with that there is much hope.

Do I cry for what was not

or who I did not become

For those who are better

or for those who are worst.

for an imagined loss?

Do I have anger when others do not share in my imaginary opinions

Let myself go and the essence of my soul will flow down

Reasons and opinions are not important

they are better left unknown and unsaid

They are all fiction.

Mystery is all that prevails in the end

for

There is a part of me

the tears that descend

that cleanse

and because of each tear allowed

I grow closer to who I really am.

They mystery playing within itself

Love

Tony