Transcendental Meditation: What got you in? And what got you out? Part 1

I've been thinking back over my long strange journey through TM. How did I get so deeply embroiled? How did I get out? Maybe you've been musing over your own life too, or that of those you love who are still embroiled in TM. Here's my chronology. I hope reading it will help some TM-Free readers sort out their own experience.

- I was looking for a better life.
- I read "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda. At the tender age of 16, I did not realize that autobiographies were not automatically truthful. The book excited me with the hope that Hinduism's yoga had something special to offer. I tried out Yogananda's teachings, but they did not satisfy me.
- I attended lectures of Swami Satchitananda, who fulfilled my expectations of what a yogi saint should be like. But I did not start his yoga because it seemed like a commitment to a lifestyle change and a difficult practice.
- I had friends who started TM and told me in awed tones what wonderful results it brought, and that it was very easy.
- I attended TM introductory lectures and was impressed by the scientific research, logic of the theory, and serenity of the initiators.
- I was impressed by my initiator's holy glow during the initiation ceremony. When I said my mantra, I felt it reverberate in my mouth and around the room in a mystical way. When I thought the mantra silently for the first time, I was transported to a magical place of inner peace and bliss. I felt euphoric, stoned, for the first three days that I did TM, and I noticed positive changes in myself in those first three days, too. All these things led me to believe that TM was a profound, life-changing spiritual technique.
- The initiators promised that by doing TM twice daily, the positive changes would continue to accumulate. Indeed, for the first few months that I did TM, I did notice small improvements in myself.
- I ran into some TMers who were gung-ho on TM as a method not only for self-improvement, but as the solution for all of life's problems. They encouraged me to attend a long TM course.
- I attended the course and rounded for one month. Maharishi was there in person and lectured several times a day. Also, a few prominent Western guest speakers - scientists, psychologists, astronauts, philosophers, educators, etc. - hailed the virtues of TM. Maharishi promised that TM would solve all problems of society. My brain was in a vulnerable, receptive state from all that sensory deprivation during rounding and from hearing only TM-positive opinions for one month. There was no questioning or challenging. As computer geeks say, "Garbage in, garbage out." It was so easy to be lulled into a dreamy, hopeful state of belief. I experienced Maharishi as giving off saintly emanations. He was charismatic, knowledgeable , charming, flattering, and convincing - and begged us to become TM initiators. It was so easy to fall, as the path of least resistance, into his belief system.
- I left the course a true believer, determined to become an initiator. It never occurred to me to research the opinions of TM skeptics.
- Originally, I believed what Maharishi taught because science and logic supported his system (or so I had been led to believe.) But gradually, unconsciously, I made the transition from "Maharishi says it because it's true" to "If Maharishi says it, then it's true." All my TM activities that followed hereafter just strengthened the belief system that I had now internalized. Residence courses, checker training, advanced lectures, TM teacher training, initiating, working at TM residential centers, learning the TM-Sidhi program, attending long rounding courses for world peace - no matter what Maharishi's latest invention or discovery or program was, Maharishi had to be right, and to question would be disloyal and foolishness.

How about you? Does any of this resonate for you? What got you in?

Coming next: Part 2: And what got you out?

Crunching the Facebook Numbers: How Many Meditators Are There?

One of the most persistent claims made by the TM movement is that there are currently about one million people practicing Transcendental Meditation in the United States. There is very little evidence to support this claim, other than the fact that, according to the movement's own records, about 919,000 people learned TM in the US between 1968 and 1977. This figure was once published in a chapter on the TM movement in the 1986 book, The future of religion: secularization, revival, and cult formation.

This figure, while interesting, may not be relevant today. As many former TM teachers and even meditators have noted, the dropout rate among new meditators is very high, with many giving up the practice in as little as six months or less. Informally, anecdotally, it's relatively easy to run into people who used to do TM in the distant past, but people who are currently active meditators are much more difficult to find.

Through use of an advertising targeting tool on Facebook, it's possible to measure the popularity of a number of topics related to Transcendental Meditation across age groups, and thus extrapolate from that sampling of Facebook users to the general population. This method suggests that only about 60,000 people in the United States have any current interest in these topics, which is a tiny fraction of the "one million meditators" that the TM movement claims currently live in the United States.

Readers' Open Thread on Transcendental Meditation

Season's Greetings from TM-Free.Blog!

It's time for an open thread. You, the reader, get to choose the topic, whether serious or light-hearted. What's on your mind about TM?

I've got a few thoughts on my mind too, so I'll start the ball rolling.

1. Who designed those awful crowns? They look like Old King Cole crowns, nothing like the crowns real monarchs wear. Are they solid gold? Are the rajas embarrassed to wear them? Are they embarrassed to wear those funny gowns? Do they realize the outfits look absurd on everyone, and especially on overweight men? And what's with the white cloth in the interior of the crowns?

2. I finally understand that TM isn't a dessert topping, but - is it a religion, or is it actually a money-making scheme? (I mean, where does all that money for $2,500 initiations go, or the $4,000 for the yagyas? Where did the money from the "Million Dollar Course" go?) Or is it actually a political world order scheme? Or is it Mahesh's attempt to be very important? Or was it his attempt to make the whole world happy? or spiritual? Or what the heck???

3. Mahesh experimented on TMers in order to develop the TM-Sidhis program. He instituted the "Six Month Course" and the "Age of Enlightenment Course" where he tried out various meditation techniques until he came up with what he called the TM-Sidhis. My question is, as human guinea pigs, was anyone injured on those courses? And what became of them?

Those are my musings. What's on your mind?

Mantras and other secrets of Transcendental Meditation

Recently, a non-TM friend asked me, "In the TM movement, what was secret, aside from the mantras?" That question really got me thinking. I have come to the conclusion that there were at least six types of secrets in the TM movement: (1) things that were secret to the lower levels, but were revealed to upper levels, (2) things that were not secret in the earlier days of the TM movement, but later were made officially secret, (3) things we were explicitly told to keep secret, and to tell the public that these things were secret, (4) things we weren't explicitly told to keep secret, but we picked up the cues that we should keep them secret, and (5) things that we were explicitly told to lie about to the public in order to keep them secret, (6) things that Mahesh kept secret from all of us (or you may term that "lied to us about") that we only found out through the internet, etc.

Type (1) might be the religious/Hindu/Vedic side of the movement. Or the fact that Maharishi instituted celibacy for some factions of the movement.

Type (2) might be the fact that the mantras were sounds to attract the favor of Hindu gods. Another example is that "God Consciousness" was later re-termed "Glorified Cosmic Consciousness." Also, originally it was strictly forbidden for non-"flyers" to see "yogic flying." Later the public was invited to watch.

Type (3) might be the mantras, how they were were chosen, and how to do TM, the TM-Sidhis, and other TM programs.

Type (4) might be to not translate the puja if someone asked us. Or to not tell anyone that learning how to choose the mantras took 5 minutes.

Type (5). I remember Maharishi telling us to "tell the audience at the introductory lecture that the puja is a 3-minute ceremony." Someone asked Maharishi in dismay, "It takes me 10 minutes! Am I doing something wrong?" Maharishi replied, "It will feel like 3 minutes to the student." Or Maharishi's explicit instruction to "tell the students that the puja is a non-religious ceremony, just for the purpose of giving gratitude to the tradition of masters." However, on my TM Teacher Training Course, Maharishi told us that the real purpose of the puja was to temporarily lift the TM teacher into a higher state of consciousness, and sped his/her growth towards enlightenment.

Type (6) might be the fact that Maharishi's "timeless wisdom, the purity of the teaching" consisted of him teaching different mantras and different criterion for choosing mantras on different TM Teacher Training courses. Or that Maharishi was not Guru Dev's favored disciple, but rather his clerk. Or that TM research is biased, that some people have harmful results from doing TM, and that other techniques have proven as good as TM.

Please, add your memories of TM secrets to this list!

Who Are These People? The Backgrounds of David Lynch's "Operation Warrior Wellness" participants

(This is a rewrite/update of last years' "Who Are These People" feature, on the "researchers" and other figures associated with the David Lynch Foundation's campaign to promote Transcendental Meditation to vulnerable populations including schoolchildren and military veterans.)

This weekend's events sponsored by the David Lynch Foundation begin at 11 am Pacific time today, with a "press conference" that's been announced on the Foundation's web site, but strangely, as far as what shows up online this morning, no press releases have been sent to the media through the usual websites to encourage attendance by members of the press.

(Update, 9:30 am ET: Obviously the Associated Press has rewritten a press release into a news story for an event that hasn't even happened yet. It's 6:30 am in Los Angeles and Lynch and company are probably still asleep.)

At the DLF web site, there's a copy of an invitation that was sent to people who practice the Transcendental Meditation technique describing the event. As usual, this sort of "press conference" that isn't - a non-event that's staged periodically by the organization that teaches TM for the last few decades - will be a sales pitch offering the Transcendental Meditation program as yet another form of panacea, this time, as a treatment for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress.

As is standard practice for promoters of Maharishi-branded products, full disclosure of the backgrounds, and prior associations with the TM program, of the people who'll be present and/or presenting at this event seldom occurs. While it may appear that the medical doctors and other individuals on the panel may be independently employed, many have long been closely associated with the TM organization.

As I've written before, the promoters of TM today generally tend to come from a rather narrow demographic, recruited while relatively young, and during a particular period, the late '60's and early-mid 70's, when recruitment into TM was supported by the influence of American popular culture. Likewise, there's a striking sameness among the ten individuals involved with this conference. Only two of them are clearly younger than 50 years old, and they're students at the TM movement's university. Among those whose date of initiation into the TM program can be identified, other than those students, only one learned TM after the mid-1970's.

My added details about the conference panel participants appear in italic below. Names and initial descriptions are from various David Lynch Foundation sources including press releases and bios on the Foundation and Operation Warrior Welness websites.

Is it a religion, or a dessert topping?

One of the more stupefying features of TM is its vague claim of not being a religion: "The Transcendental Meditation technique is not a religion or philosophy." But an overview of everything connected with TM practice - the organization and the people who teach TM - suggests something completely different. Religious aspects are woven throughout this entire enterprise that claims to be "scientific" in nature. In fact, the core doctrine of the organization which teaches TM is that of a religion. This religious organization holds that Transcendental Meditation and other practices in the program have an effect on the individual and society through means that can only be described as religious. The TM organization's stated goals of global transformation have many similarities to those of other religious faiths.

The TM movement's denial of its own obvious religiosity is absurd. As my title suggests, it brings to mind this great Saturday Night Live sketch. "New Shimmer's a floor wax and a dessert topping!"

(Outside the U.S. use this link - the sketch starts at 1:30. Here's a transcript.)

"Tastes terrific... and just look at that shine!" But, as with Chevy Chase's rendition of the somewhat sleazy pitchman selling a surrealistic, self-contradictory product, something doesn't add up when it comes to the TM teacher's standard pitch concerning the relationship between TM and religious belief.

Critics over the years have pointed out that the religious nature of TM was proven by the decision in a Federal court case, Malnak v. Yogi, decades ago (1977). Yet promoters continue to insist that Transcendental Meditation is not a religious activity and may be implemented in public schools.

The following essay analyzes how the words and behaviors of the people and organizations promoting Transcendental Meditation mark it as a religious program. This is clearly demonstrated by current websites and online videos produced by the TM movement.

Book Review. "Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult" by Jayanti Tamm (2009).

Several exit counselors have explained to me that it can aid a person in recovery from a destructive cult to learn about a different cult. That's because it's hard to judge one's own experience objectively, but when one sees manipulation and inconsistencies in another group, it's easier to make the leap to understanding better one's own former group.

Therefore I thought it might be useful to some readers if I reviewed the book "Cartwheels in a Sari." This is the true story of growing up in the Sri Chinmoy movement. The author has a straightforward style. She doesn't beat the reader over the head with Chinmoy's reprehensible behavior. Instead, she tells the story through the innocent, non-critical eyes of the child she was - and damns Chinmoy in the telling.

Jayanti Tamm was born into Chinmoy's group. As a child, she naturally believed everything she was told about about "Guru": that he was godlike, that he gave everything to his devotees; and that in return they should totally believe, be totally devoted, and be totally obedient.

An early memory of Tamm's: the devotees are sitting on the ground before "Guru," who is sitting on an awning-covered platform. All are prepared for a long meditation session. Then, far off, lightning flashes and thunder roars. "Guru" announces that he will perform a special meditation to stop the rain. He closes his eyes, and sure enough, the rain holds off for 10 minutes. Jayanti is thrilled. Her guru can even control the weather! But then the rain starts. "Guru" then reveals that some disciples had doubted his ability, therefore he held off the rain only for a limited time! Now he would teach them a "true lesson." And so the devotees sat contritely in the mud and rain for hours, meditating.

Cult recovery scholars call this technique "mystical manipulation," that is, making an everyday event seem miraculous, and ascribing it to the cult. In TM, an example of mystical manipulation was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's contention that when a TMer experienced involuntary jerking movements, stress was being released and the TMer was purifying his/her nervous system. Another was ascribing improvements in the stock market to people "flying" together. Another was, during the construction of the Fairfield domes, we were told that the winter weather miraculously turned warm on the days we had to pour cement. Actually, the crew supervisors listened for the weather reports, and when the weather was warm, then they poured. Can you think of other examples?

Like the founder of TM, Sri Chinmoy (born "Chinmoy Kumar Ghose," 1931-2007) bent the truth for the sake of publicity. For instance, Chinmoy instructed several of his devotees to seek employment at the United Nations. Once hired (in clerical positions), they started a lunchtime social club, and invited "Guru" to speak. Chinmoy's goal was realized: his publicity could now state that he was a speaker at the U.N.

Similar TM organization technique: give honorary Maharishi University Ph.D.s to supporters of TM, and then have these "doctors" extol TM. Can you think of other examples?

Anatomy of a Comment Thread, part 1

(First of a few parts.)

Since I think we're approaching another round of mentions of Transcendental Meditation online - and, a likely presence of TM supporters in comment threads following those mentions - I thought I'd resurrect, for preparation, examination and commentary, a comment thread from a while back, in which I engaged in some verbal repartee with those supporters.

This thread, from examiner.com about two years ago, followed an interview with a Tucson TM teacher regarding the introduction of the Transcendental Meditation program into schools there. As it turns out, the interview subject was no random TM teacher, but the co-author of The TM Book, from about thirty-five years ago, which was handed out free to new TM meditators around that time.

It's important to keep in mind that there's an organized group of TM bloggers who actively work to add their comments on such threads, to counter and displace critics and others who disagree with the TM movement's "party line" as presented by themselves and the David Lynch Foundation.

No girls allowed in the treehouse! Oprah, Ellen, and Transcendental Meditation

It's getting to be TM silly season again. The first reports have just begun to arrive, of famous talk-show hosts having visited the Fairfield, Iowa, epicenter of almost all things TM in the US, and the formal announcement of David Lynch's yearly fundraising gala. Soon we'll be treated to a small stream of mentions of Transcendental Meditation in various media, usually involving some marginally-famous or once-famous movie star, music legend or other public figure.

As always, though, they'll only be repeating one tiny little piece of the story: about how this particular form of meditation is allegedly the cure for almost anything that ails you, and how some supposedly "at-risk" population group - usually a group that's also vulnerable to manipulation by various hucksters and quacks - stands to benefit by learning TM through the fundraising efforts of the David Lynch Foundation.

Oprah Winfrey, "His Majesty Maharaja Adhiraj Rajaraam," head of the global TM movement, and Ellen DeGeneres.

Those of us who've been involved in some way with TM for some time, or watched the movement's gyrations for some years, have seen it all before. The marketing of the program has for decades focused on recruiting prominent individuals to the cause, who may then support TM publicly, recruiting others personally through their connections, or through the media, promoting it on television or in print. Today, though, it's inexplicable why intelligent and resourceful people, who you might think would know better, and who have a reputation to protect, would bother getting anywhere near TM or the organization that sells it.

A few minutes with Google should reveal to most anyone that the TM sales pitch actually says very little about the organization and the people doing the selling; there's an anti-scientific, anti-medical and extraordinarily odd, if not just plain bizarre, social structure that lies behind the façade used to sell the TM program to the world, where its devotees profess habits and beliefs that many would find repugnant if not positively medieval.

Transcendental Celebrity Shtick

Since Maharishi’s late 1960’s with the Beatles, Beach Boys, Mia Farrow and Donovan, Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation Movement cultivated celebrity appeal for enhanced recruitment and donations.




Glitz of the rich and famous appeals to many. When I was with the TM Movement, many TMers bragged about their association with various celebrities coming through town or on advanced TM courses. While I met my share the rich and famous, and was friendly with a few, the starstruck twinkle unto itself did not draw me. Many others were magnetically attracted to associate with the stars, much like associating with the popular crowd in high school. Name dropping is a common phenomenon within TM circles.

Many talented individuals gain celebrity status through talent and hard work. But celebrities are fallible human beings, like the rest of us, who can be misled and recruited in vulnerable moments - just like anyone else! Celebrity endorsement unto itself does not mean something is valuable. All that sparkles is not gold, folks!