Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhis

I am reminded of an old joke.

Tom: Hey, Bob, about that bucket I lent you last week. Well, when you returned it to me yesterday, it was broken!

Bob: Tom, first of all, it was broken when you lent it to me; second of all, I returned it to you in perfect condition; and third of all, I never borrowed it from you!

About 1965, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi promised that "TM, 15-20 minutes twice a day, will make you enlightened in 5 to 8 years." Yet, around 1975, he introduced the TM-Sidhis program, whose purpose was to speed us on the road to enlightenment. Well, it's now been over 30 years since people started practicing the TM-Sidhis, but I still haven't heard of many people getting enlightened.

Why did Maharishi even introduce the TM-Sidhis program? As the joke above suggests, when a person makes too many explanations for something, it can make all of the explanations suspect.

Therefore, I would like to invite TM-Free Blog readers on another one of my trips down memory lane. I will share with you my memories of Maharishi's many explanations of why he started teaching the TM-Sidhis program. These memories are over 30 years old, so I do plead guilty to the possibility of misremembering. If you remember these quotes more accurately, please share them below.

And also, if you'd like, share with us your own memories on his excuses for why TM 20 minutes twice a day was no longer enough. Also, your opinions on said explanations. Also share with us, if you'd like, your conjectures on why you think he REALLY started teaching the TM-Sidhis. Or share any other related thoughts!

Here, (paraphrased) are four different answers that I remember Maharishi giving, as to why he was now adding a technique to his already flawless and complete technique:

1. "My initiators kept asking me, 'What more can I do to help the movement? What more can I do?' So I finally said, 'I am very tempted to give you something....' "

2. "The reason initiations are now dropping is because, due to all the TMers in the world, the consciousness of the average person has gone up. Non-meditators used to start because they were attracted to the glow of evolution on the initiators' faces. But now that the average person is more evolved, the contrast is no longer so great. So the initiators must rise up to a higher level of evolution so that the non-meditators will be attracted to us and thereby want to learn TM."

3. "Because of all the TMers meditating over all these years, the atmosphere has become more refined, softer, so that we can now teach more advanced techniques which would not have brought results in the past."

4. Maharishi: We have been teaching TM for many years, people have been dipping into the Absolute for many years. Yet they are not living all the values of the Absolute! We must ask, "Why not?" What are the values of the Absolute?

Initiator #1: Omniscient.

Maharishi: Yes.

Initiator #2: Omnipresent.

Maharishi: Yes.

Initiator #3: Immovable.

Maharishi: (chuckling) That one not so fascinating!

Initiator #4: Love.

Maharishi: (Annoyed) No, no, no....Almighty. The Absolute is Almighty. We should all be almighty. All-powerful. And yet we are not exhibiting this quality. Why not? Something must be done. We dip into the Absolute, but we are not pulling these qualities up into the Relative. Something must be done to pull these qualities out into the individual's life.
(Hence, the TM-Sidhis).

By the way, just like he promised us that TM twice a day would bring us enlightenment in 5 to 8 years, he continued his tradition of promised completion dates with the TM-Sidhis. When speaking about the "Six-Month Courses," where he first started teaching versions of the TM-Sidhis, Maharishi said, "One six-month course is enough to enlighten some people, two six-month courses are enough to enlighten most people, and three six-month courses are enough to enlighten a horse! (laughter)."

By the way, did you believe him in 1965? Why? Did you believe him in 1975? Why? I believed him both times.

Now it's your turn.

Transcendental Meditation Open Thread

Commenters, this Open Thread is for you! Please feel free to bring up topics of interest to you, ask questions, etc. on this "Open Thread."

Remind You of Transcendental Meditation Org Tactics?

I ran across an extraordinary Daily Kos article on the tactics Scientology uses to seduce and invade communities when they want to build new facilities.

Remind you of anyone we know?

If you've a mind to, consider visiting the Daily Kos link above and recommending the article. We have a chance to get this issue in front of hundreds of thousands of politically committed readers!

J.

You're Not Crazy--Comments Have Changed

Dear Loyal Commenters,

We are going through some growing pains with our comments. Haloscan is being phased out. We were essentially forced to upgrade to a new comment system with very little notice from Haloscan/JS-Kit.

I think we have ironed most of the kinks as of this morning. If you are having difficulty logging in, posting, or anything else, please contact me at jmknapp53@gmail.com.

The good news: There are many improvements to explore.

• The Recent Comments section in the right-hand column now also includes polls, top comments, and more. Just click on the tabs in the Recent Comments/Navigator box to see them.
  
• You can now rate comments by clicking on the "Like" link at the bottom of each comment. When enough votes have been gathered, Top & Hot comments will begin showing in Recent Comments.
  
• You can choose to use a Twitter, Google, or other profile to attach to your comments. You can even add a photo or other avatar to your profile and comments. This helps other readers identify your comments quickly.
  
• Anonymous posting is working again, after a slight fix.
  
• It is now easier than ever to include a graphic, video, or other file with your comment.
  
• There are even more html commands you may use in your comments for links, bold, italic, and more. (You should find more info on permitted html here.)
  
• You can now read threaded comments. When you reply to someone, it will show beneath their comment. This allows you and others to more easily follow the conversation.
  

Although this was forced on us somewhat ungracefully, it's my hope that none of our commenters were inconvenienced.

And I hope you enjoy the features of the new system!

J.

A look at The Purusha Newsletter

Follow this link to have a look at the Purusha Newsletter:

(Note the request to raise $900,000.)

And here's a link to see the letter from "Raja Bob"

http://temp.purushacapital.org/media.html

(Note that the site will "includes a royal palace for Maharaja Adhiraj Rajaraam.")

Yes, we are no religion!!

Transcendental Meditation: Look Quick before Link Disappears

UPDATE: Sure enough, the link is down. What are they afraid of? Cowards! Videos back up. Must have been transient problem. Password protection was added to the site about an hour after this post, however.

You never know what you will find in your email.

Here are two links to (mildly) secret videos on the web site dedicated to "Resource Materials for Certified Teachers of the Transcendental Meditation Technique": Governor's Chat, December 7, 2009 and Governor's Chat, May 24, 2009.

Wow! Do these look creepy or what?

That's a frame grab of "Raja John Hagelin." Yes, the same "world-renowned physicist" splattered across the Internet with his introductory talks on TM and Quantum Physics. Usually appearing in coat and tie -- sans the Burger King crown.

Show these at your next PTA. I imagine the question of TM in the public schools will evaporate rather quickly.

Better peek quick, I don't imagine these links will remain up once we've published them.

There are some interesting nuggets in these bland-enough-to-be-disturbing videos. Here are some initial thoughts from TMFB editor, Mike Doughney:

December observations: Hagelin says initiations increased 149 percent.

May observations: Hagelin says initiations in the past were down to 100/month.

This means they're now up to 149/month, right? :) What about those million "at-risk" kids, they don't figure into this (or exist for that matter).

The other thing on the May tape is Hagelin explicitly going over the Vedic revivalist and millenarian stuff that I talked about in my blog post on November 23. Again, great to see it in his own words.

One of our editors hope to go into more analysis in a few days, but I wanted to rush this out for your perusal before it disappeared -- forever!

J.

If Transcendental Meditation's Founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Came Back for One Day

I have a fantasy. What if Maharishi came back from the dead for 24 hours? And what if, for those 24 hours, you could ask him anything you wanted? And best of all - for those 24 hours, he would answer every question with absolute honestly? What would you ask him?

Do you have a burning question about TM, the TM organization, or Maharishi that you have been wondering about for years, or decades? I invite readers to pose their questions for Maharishi here. Unfortunately, since Maharishi is dead, he will not be answering us. But together, the readers on this blog have acquired great wisdom and insight, so maybe we can make some headway in uncovering some answers. Therefore I invite readers to this blog to pose questions, and then I invite other commenters to read the questions, and if you have an insight that might answer the question, to write your answer here. I'm not asking for the "perfect" answer, just your best guess. Remember, the guiding principle for your best-guess answer is: "If Maharishi were to tell the truth, what would he say?"

To start the ball rolling, I will ask a few questions of my own.

1: Were you really a monk/disciple/yoga student under Guru Dev, or were you just his secretary?

2. If you were his disciple, were you really his favorite?

3. Did Guru Dev really teach you the TM technique, and instruct you to teach it around the world? Or did you invent TM yourself? Or how did you come up with TM?

4. What was your real goal in teaching TM? Was it your first stated goal, the "spiritual regeneration" of humans? Or was it the goal you ended up with, to build a large empire of "Vedic" communities? Or was it to make a lot of money? Or all of the above?

5. You describe cosmic consciousness, God consciousness, unity consciousness, angels, gods, the universe, etc. with such assuredness, as if you have actually experienced these things first hand and are living in higher states. Is that true? It has also been said that you performed "miracles." Is that true? If all this is true, does it mean you are in constant touch with God, or that you are "enlightened," or that everything you do is life-supporting? What does it mean for us as your students? Does it mean we should obey you totally? Does it excuse you from having the same ethical principals as the rest of us try to live by? Why or why not?

6. Why did you perpetuate so many lies? Was it because you had contempt for the average person? Was it because you wanted wealth and power? Was it because you thought the spiritual ends justified the means? Or what?

7. Do you really believe that TM can lead a person to enlightenment? Or that TM plus the Sidhis, or plus Ayurveda, or plus Maharishi architecture (etc.) can lead a person to enlightenment? Do you really believe that "enlightenment" exists?

8. I don't understand where all the money comes from, or where it all goes. I mean, I know it comes from initiations, from ayurvedic treatments, from the spas, from the architecture, from big donations from rich people, from tuition to schools in the U.S. and in India, from factories, etc. And I know it goes to buy land, hotels, schools, pundit communities, and to start big projects that then don't get finished, etc. But then the schools charge admission, the hotels charge rentals, the communities cost money to build, the factories produce consumer products. So where does the money from that go? To more, bigger, better? And where does THAT money come from/go to? I hear the money is going to your extended family, but what are they doing with it? Are they just building more and more money-making ventures, like more factories, or living in palaces, or bribing the Indian government, or what? And what sort of things are they bribing for?

Well, there's my list. Readers, now it's your turn. Any questions you have always wanted to ask Maharishi, and get honest answers to? Any questions you might know the answers to?

TM's "Global Country" selling one third of its Fairfield land holdings

The mayor of Maharishi Vedic City, Bob Wynne, announced yesterday that the Global Country of World Peace, the organization that teaches Transcendental Meditation that we around here often call the TMO for short, will be auctioning off fully one-third of its land holdings in the Fairfield, Iowa area starting in five days.

This last-minute announcement is a bit odd since obviously this auction has been in the works for a while, and the open house at the building to be auctioned happened over two weeks ago. Here's a part of "Raja" Wynne's e-mail:

Dear Supporters of Invincible America,

It is a great joy to announce that on Tuesday, December 15th beginning at 10:00 a.m. CST, Global Country of World Peace will make available for sale at auction one of the most beautiful buildings in our Invincible America community and a number of parcels of organic farmland totaling 600 acres. This auction will continue Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Please see the announcement for details of when each parcel will be sold.

Since Global Country of World Peace owns quite a lot of land in the community we want to make about 1/3 of it available for those who wish to take advantage of prime organic real estate along Route 1 and inside Maharishi Vedic City for development, organic agriculture or residential or commercial uses. We feel this will help stimulate faster growth in the community and make property available contiguous to Maharishi University of Management, between MUM and Maharishi Vedic City, and within Maharishi Vedic City.

In addition, proceeds of the sale of these properties will be used to support Global Country of World Peace Movement activities in the community and around the country.

Here's what the brochure announcing the auction, from the local auction service handling it, looks like. Click the image to see the whole thing. It's a real study in the clash of cultures often seen in the Fairfield area - an auction announcement, just like that you'd see for an auction of farm equipment, but with a photo captioned "Sthapatva [sic] Veda designed brick building."


I'm sure there will be plenty of speculation as to what this relatively huge auctioning of the TM organization's assets in the Fairfield area means for the future of the TM movement. It seems to me that this e-mail announcement, sent way too late to attract serious bidders, serves only to insure that most in the meditating community would learn of the sale from the TMO, and not by other means. For the mayor to say "It's a great joy" to announce such an auction is more than a bit peculiar, since this sale clearly indicates that the TMO's plans for Fairfield probably don't involve expansion, but more likely, serious contraction.

This announcement coincidentally comes on the heels of an earlier e-mail that, after a bit of study, might also indicate that the TMO is setting the stage for a worldwide contraction except for its operations in one country: India. I'd written recently about how the "Maharishi's Global Plan" e-mail sent one month ago, explained in detail here by John Knapp, is a clear indicator that the organization that teaches Transcendental Meditation does, in fact, see as one of its goals the creation of a social and political order in every country indistinguishable from that of a Vedic theocracy.

In a sense none of this is new; the TM organization's willingness to get involved in politics along with promoting TM as the solution for everything at every level of society, and the source of its cosmology, pretty much dictates a Vedic theocratic outcome, the recent difference being the leadership, in such e-mails, has been being a bit more explicit about it lately. But there's something else in that e-mail, the significant part I'll repeat here:

The spiritual counterpart for your country lies in India. Each country is connected to one of the twelve jyotir lingas in India, the seat of Shiva, the eternal silence at the basis of creation. Reviving the age-old knowledge about the spiritual connection of every country with the Jyotirlingas in India and the creation of 48 Brahmananda Saraswati Nagars is Maharishi's greatest gift for humanity.

If you look at that global plan, both at the linked website and elsewhere - in particular, at the "Vedic Pandits" website - what you'll see described is a 680 million dollar construction project to build what are called "Brahmanand Saraswati Nagars," or in English more understandable to the casual meditator, "Guru Dev Towns." Their plan proposes 48 of these towns across India, associated in groups of four with the 12 Jyotir Lingas, historically significant places of worship of Shiva. As described, they're talking about a construction cost of over $12 million for each of these towns, and in the mythology the TMO is spinning about these projects, each of those towns is somehow "associated" with four countries.

So now that these associations are being set up through these statements - which, like a lot of what Mahesh came up with during his lifetime, are contemporary fantasies specific to this particular evangelical Vedic sect, and as far as I know do not reflect the beliefs of any other strain of the religious traditions of India - what do they really mean by all this? Clearly all the action is back in India where the seats of Shiva are, and where all the mass facility construction is planned.

If all the other countries of the world are magically "connected" with sites the TMO is building in India, then why does the TMO need any facility in any other country, save as a means of generating revenue to send back to India to help finance these construction projects and ongoing operations there? While the intent to "transform every country into a Vedic country" implies that they'd need a presence in every country to accomplish that - what if the leaders, and their make-it-up-on-the-fly-as-needed theology, indicate that a physical presence anywhere else on Earth isn't necessary? Is the significance of the rest of the world, from the ultimate Vedic supremacist viewpoint of the TMO, merely that other countries serve as exploitable sources of resources to fuel its own myth-based version of a Vedic revival in its homeland?

There are certainly obvious indications that exactly this process is well underway. How many, or shall I say, how few substantial local facilities teaching the TM program exist in the United States today? Meanwhile in India, the chain of Vedic based schools incorporating the TM program in India run by Mahesh's nephew, Girish Varma, says it's in 118 cities and is the "largest chain of privately operated public schools in India." Clearly these schools were at least in part financed with funds sourced in the West, as can be explicitly seen in the tax returns filed by the U.S. based Maharishi Global Development Fund showing a transfer of $44 million in 1999 earmarked "for the construction of schools in India."

My point is that unexpected and eventually drastic changes may be on the horizon for the TMO. All of the activity we see in the West today, with slightly off-kilter Westerners like David Lynch still trying to popularize a expatriate Vedic spiritual movement long past its prime, may simply be irrelevant. The real power and influence lies back in India, and as global economic conditions change, the usefulness to the TMO of any significant physical presence elsewhere in the world may eventually decline. In that context, this land sale and a subtle yet clear message that all of its operations are somehow "connected" to a bunch of "Guru Dev Towns" in India may be more significant than what appears at first glance.

Transcendental Meditation Organizations' legal threat against The Examiner

Two links below address Maharishi University of Management (MUM) and David Lynch Foundation (DLF) recent legal threats to the Examiner.com in an effort to remove an article critical of the David Lynch Foundation's efforts to bring Transcendental Meditation (TM) into public schools.

You can read the Examiner's published article in response to this threat by clicking here. The author wrote "Upon reviewing Goldstein's criticisms, the author has decided that there are no grounds for labeling this article "defamatory"."

The original legal threat from MUM and DLF can be read on Wikileaks by clicking here.

On another note, intense "self-help" programs called Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT) induce brain chemistry similar to what we experienced during intense TM "rounding" programs. Many of us know others who experienced various degrees of psychosis, and some suicides, when involved with prolonged intense "rounding" courses - The Movement taught us that such problem symptoms were due to the victims' "heavy unstressing," placing the blame squarely back on the individual - typical blame-the-victim mentality. Naturally, TM research never addresses problem results from TM. And TM research never studies the effects of rounding courses, despite ongoing active recruitment for rounding programs.

You can read about an Australian coroner who attributed a woman's suicide to her participation in an LGAT by clicking here. Tragic that the woman committed suicide. But great to see professional validation by a coroner! May the trend continue - for public recognition of potential mental health dangers from participation in mind altering programs.