Skip

Meet N-POW, son of N-ACH¹
MUM’s landed a catch

A scholar named Skip
The King of the Quip

Brilliance that comes by the batch

His credentials are sterling — it’s true
Pull his CV into view:

BA and MA
PhD — all the way,

Conferred by the great DCU²

At Harvard, Skip went to the pen³
To study the hardest of men

The thieves and the thugs
The doers of drugs
The users, abusers
The cruisers and losers
The haters, the traitors
Natural law violators —

Law breakers again and again

With Skip their improbable guide
They turned their attention inside

Minds became calm
And bliss, like a balm,

Bubbled up and could not be denied

In a single year, these men grew more
Than students at Harvard in four

The drop in recidivism?
They almost got rid-of-ism —

Far fewer came back through the door⁴

§ § §

Through sensori-motor, concrete:
Skip’s quite prepared to compete.

On up through formal
Skip is quite normal —

Upstairs the man seems quite complete⁵

His shtick was developmental psych
You know — Piaget and the like

But that knowledge and more
Went straight out the door

When Skip had his very own tyke

Young Nathaniel — eyes clear and cheeks ruddy
A boy who’s Skip’s personal buddy

Forget the book learning —
Instinct’s returning

With his very own in-house case study

Skipper has something to say
On those levels of Jean Piaget

Skip’s no fanatic —
Skip’s diplomatic —

But people, it’s just not that way!

He talks quite a bit of unfreezing⁶
This is some news we find pleasing:

We hope he’ll remember
Deep in December —

He’d better watch out if he’s teasing

Skip is ahead of his time
Pioneering a new paradigm

Skipper now revels
In more advanced levels —

Levels that reach the sublime

He’s fathomed the highest of states
Where total pure knowledge awaits

CC and GC
UC and BC
He’s opened his portal
On knowledge immortal —

He’s one of the greats among greats

§ § §

He went to the stressed Middle East —
Where fighting for years had not ceased

Here he’d be trying
The power of flying

And the power of intention not least⁷

In Jerusalem, where did Skip choose
To house his assembly of Jews?

The Arab sub-section —
Did Skip lose direction?

Folks wondered, what screws did he lose?

And Skipper, though put to the test
Found nature could organize best

Everyone felt
Huge rocks start to melt —

Even Arabs learned TM with the rest

The group’s size was not stable or static
In fact, it proved rather erratic

It rose and it fell —
And all turned out well:

The results became far more dramatic

When the size of the flying group rose
War deaths hit all-time lows

They dropped and they dropped —
They practically stopped —

He made history, as everyone knows

In Jerusalem, all over town
Accidents, crime, fires went down

The stock market improved
The nation’s mood grooved —

As achievements go, this was a crown

§ § §

What happens when people are old?
Would the research continue to hold?

Skip didn’t doubt
But he meant to find out

With a study both brilliant and bold

Nursing homes — that’s where he’d be
He designed his design to the T

Assignment was random
Groups running random

His subjects’ mean age: 83

The results were impressive — and moving:
With TM, everything was improving.

Unlike other groups
Skip’s TM troops

At the end were all living and grooving

Now Skip has just made his case stronger —
He found that his subjects lived longer

Down with mortality
Up immortality —

TM is a life-span prolonger

So Skipper is hardly a sleeper
Skip’s an Olympian leaper

He never says “can’t” —
And in his next grant

Skip will pursue the Grim Reaper

§ § §

Of course we can’t fail to mention
A source of his stunning ascension:

His work with Doc Schneider
Which grows ever wider —

Hip hip hurray hypertension!

Robert and Skip took a chance
They caught one another’s shy glance

They decided to dance
The result? Sweet romance

And millions of dollars in grants

Hypertension? No trouble deducing it:
Imbalance in life is producing it

Their studies are growing:
TM, they are showing,

Is reducing and finally vamoosing it

§ § §

Skip’s made himself quite essential
Unfolding our human potential

Look at that face:
Mischief plus grace —

He’s Jonathan Winters, credentialled⁸

A lovable, huggable bear
A lecturer extraordinaire

His knowledge delights us
His humor unites us —

I’m asking you — who can compare?

Charles Nathaniel Alexander —
Even his name says commander

Look how he leads us,
The knowledge he feeds us —

What leadership’s greater, or grander?

Sir Skip — yes, he ought to be knighted
His research is so multi-sided

With so many facets
On so many assets —

No wonder we’re all so excited

It’s fitting he’s rising in fame
May all of the world know his name

May the masses enjoy
The bliss of this boy —

May Skip have the world’s acclaim

And all praise to Victoria Kurth⁹
Who makes all his work worth the worth

Skip, on life’s journey,
Has found an attorney

Who brings all of Heaven to earth

Skip sets a rip-zip of a clip
With nary a yip, slip, or trip

A bliss whip in his grip
His ship will outstrip. . . .

That’s the scope of the scoop on dear Skip

And so: Salutations to Skipper
A chap who is ever so chipper

If bliss be a star,
He’s brightest by far —

In fact, he’s our brilliant Big Dipper

Allow me to offer this tip:
Whenever you’re ready to flip

A source of good cheer
Is ever so near —

Just a hop and a jump and a Skip

§ § §

Now how can we honor this boy?
Pay tribute to dear Skip Ahoy?

What he’d have preferred
Can be summed in one word —

That one simple word is . . . enjoy

May 25, 1998

1 — This line refers to the motivation need theory developed by American psychologist David McClelland, which Skip appreciated. According to McClelland, people are motived by three primary things: the Need for Achievement (N Ach), the Need for Affiliation (N Aff), and the Need for Power (N Pow). N Ach refers to the desire to excel and succeed, N Pow to the desire to be influential, and N Aff to the desire for close personal relationships.  Most people display a mixture of all three, but often one of the three motivators dominates. Skip felt he was an N Pow person and his father was N Ach.

2 — DCU is “Dead Cat University.” Maharishi was critical of modern education because it failed to develop the most important thing in students’ lives — their consciousness. He sometimes cited Harvard as a prime example, at one point saying that Harvard was only “dragging a dead cat.” Skip was a Harvard man.

3 — This is Walpole, a maximum security prison in Massachusetts, where Skip did his doctoral research.

4 — Skip’s research involved teaching Walpole prisoners the TM technique and then measuring changes in their ego development, a measure of overall personal development. Ego development levels off in adolescence, and prisoners typically have low levels of ego development. Skip found that when prisoners learned the TM technique, they grew significantly in ego development — more in a single year than Harvard students did in four years.

5 — This verse refers to Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. In this theory, children develop through stages known as sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

6 — When Skip observed that human growth levels off in adolescence — then resumes growing when people learn the TM technique — he developed the terms freezing and unfreezing to refer to this phenomenon. When human growth levels off, it freezes. When it resumes growing, it unfreezes. This terminology recognizes that the leveling off of growth is not is neither natural nor permanent.

7 — Here we’re talking about the landmark research Skip did with David Orme-Johnson in Israel in 1983. They assembled a group of TM and TM-Sidhi program participants in  who practice the TM and TM-Sidhi programs, including Yogic Flying, in a hotel in downtown Jerusalem for a two-month experiment. The group included college students, office workers, laborers. They spend hours each day in the hotel with their eyes closed.

During the next two months, positive changes swept the area. In Jerusalem, crime, car accidents, and fires dropped significantly. In Israel as a whole, crime fell, the stock market increased, and the national mood improved. Across the border to the north, in civil war-ravaged Lebanon, war intensity and war deaths dropped significantly.

8 — Jonathan Winters was a popular comedian at the time, with a resemblance to Skip.

9 — Vicki Herriott was married to Skip for many years. This is her maiden name.