Transcendental Meditation Teacher/Psychologist Says HE'S Never Suffered

Earlier today, I received an email from a psychologist and TM teacher. I won't share his email—I promise confidentiality to anyone who writes me, no matter what they have to say.

But you'll probably catch the drift from my public response.

Dear Dr. X,

Thanks for your input. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with email I receive from TM true believers, you seem to be reacting to or imagining things I have never said, implied, or even thought.

It doesn't appear you've read much of what I've written. I have repeatedly said over the years that I think TM is as good or better as any other beginner technique.

My beef is with the policies of the Org. Not simple 2×20 TM practice.

Although, it does appear, based on my clinical practice, that a significant minority of people who "rounded" extensively may have difficulties with dissociation ranging from mild to severe, according to their reports. ("Rounding" refers to extended meditation practice, as much as 8 hours a day or more.)

I have also written widely that I myself meditate using a number of techniques, including a mantra-based one. Although I no longer do TM or recommend it to others, I do teach some of my clients to meditate, using simple mindfulness techniques.

So your charge that I am against all meditation simply isn't true.

Nor have I ever said TM is the worst enemy of humanity.

Choosing to put my energy into criticizing TM is of course my choice. You're free to disagree with my choice. But, because you are a psychologist, it's hard to understand your pre-judgment of my personal life choice based on little or no information about me.

I am in no way doubting that you have had good experiences with TM. But I'd be very surprised if you've been around the TM movement for any period of time and are not well aware that a significant minority of long-timers have very serious problems with dissociation, depression, anxiety, involuntary tics, body jerking, and more.

Were you around for the delightful phrase, "Fiuggi Flipouts"?

It was the callous way that we "initiators" referred to people who came back from virtually unlimited meditation routines practiced at the Teacher Training Course in Fiuggi Fonte in 1972. Many were literal basket cases. Some have still not put their lives back together.

You state that Zen and many other spiritual traditions talk about similar problems for advanced practitioners. I'm not willing to cavalierly toss this kind of damage aside just because it may be true for other spiritual paths. Perhaps they need reform, too.

Besides, TM is not a religion. Not really a "spiritual path."

It is a multiBILLION-dollar corporation—selling very expensive products.

If Transcendental Marketer$ warned people upfront that some of them may experience life-destroying effects from doing TM and the other advanced techniques exactly as instructed, I would be somewhat less concerned—I suppose. But we both know they do the exact opposite, proclaiming that it's good for everyone, improves all areas of life, and has only positive effects.

These are only 3 of the lies the TM movement uses in order to make money. Even the Maharishi knew they weren't true.

I'm pleased to hear that none of your patients experienced these effects. But I've been working in this field for 15 years, working with well over 1500 TMers—mostly teachers and other long rounders. Certainly most never experienced the debilitating effects of long-term, advanced TM practice that I describe. But hundreds did. And that's just counting the people that I personally have worked with.

I can't express the cumulative effect on me of seeing the horror in the nearly empty eyes of person after person describing uncontrollable dissociation, depression, anxiety, difficulty with concentration, memory, identity—the wreckage of demolished lives.

Your suggestion isn't bad. The TM Org should publish a prominent disclaimer warning that people with serious mental disorders should only practice under the care of a mental health professional. Of course, the overwhelming number of people I'm describing wouldn't have been protected by such a disclaimer—even if the TM Org had the honesty to publish it.

Other disclaimers to add:

• If you have any tendency toward mental illness even garden-variety depression—whether you know it or not—you may end up in a nuthouse from practicing TM.
• If you've ever smoked a doobie, you may become a neurological basket case.
  
• If you're a "negative" person, you're probably wasting your time practicing TM.
• If your karma is bad, all bets are off.
• If you run into trouble, we can't help you. You're on your own.

To say the TM Org is not the greatest evil humanity faces sounds like a convenient rationalization. It is not equivalent for me with saying the TM Org is not evil at all.

And it's certainly no ringing endorsement of the product.

Hitler was a worse evil. Stalin was worse. Heck, cancer is worse. There is always someone in greater pain somewhere. Should we therefore dismiss the pain of everyone else?

We fight the evil that we know.

You object to my writing tone.

I use the tone that is most likely to get my message heard. Unfortunately, in Kali Yuga (the Hindu Dark Age), satire, sarcasm, and outright ridicule works.

John Stewart, Saturday Night Live, and South Park rule!

J.

P.S. For readers unfamiliar with dissociation, what we used to laughingly call "spacing out," "blissing out," being a "space cadet" or "cosmic cowboy": This article discusses symptoms; this article offers some simple techniques that may help cope with dissociation; this article presents a "case history" from expert testimony in the Kropinski case, which also included the infamous "List of TM Casualities."

More Doubtful Transcendental Meditation "Research" Clogging the Intertubes

Transcendental Meditation Marketer$ are ballyhooing the latest "research" on the neurological effects of TM: "A self-referential default brain state: patterns of coherence, power, and eLORETA sources during eyes-closed rest and Transcendental Meditation practice."

Try this Google search, and you will find hundreds of sites uncritically reporting a press release put out by the Maharishi University of Management on the "study."

It appears the research was funded by MUM itself.

But check out the authors: Fred Travis, David A. F. Haaga, John Hagelin, Melissa Tanner, Alaric Arenander, Sanford Nidich, Carolyn Gaylord-King, Sarina Grosswald, Maxwell Rainforth, and Robert H. Schneider.

• Lead author Travis (pictured above) is a MUM professor and head of Vedic Science.
  
• Haaga (American University) may be legit, although he's been prominently displayed in other TM studies recently.
• Schneider is a MUM professor of physiology and health.
  
• Melissa Tanner is Haaga's graduate student.
  
• Alaric Arenander goes way back in the movement to Charlie Lutes days and sure looks like a quack.
  
• Sanford Nidich is a MUM professor of physiology and health and education.
  
• Carolyn Gaylord-King is on the board of trustees of MUM and a professor of health and education to boot.
  
• Sarina Grosswald is Executive Director Office of ADHD and Learning Differences at David Lynch Foundation and Director at Arlington - DC Transcendental Meditation Center, the closest TM center to Haaga.
  
• Maxwell Rainforth is an assistant professor of physiology and health and statistics at MUM.
  
• Of course, Hagelin needs no introduction—although what this erstwhile quantum physicist knows about biomedical research is beyond me.

The full study itself is for sale, but costs $34. I'm not sure it's worth the cost to actually purchase.

J.

Transcendental Meditation Wikipedia Scandal Heats Up

Readers may be aware of the ongoing scandal at Wikipedia surrounding Transcendental Meditation—related pages.

TM Org members, including employees of Maharishi University of Management, are being investigated for working in tandem to subvert Wikipedia's generous, volunteer editing policies. The charge indicates TM editors are motivated to remove information neutral or critical about the TM Org and replace it with standard Movement propaganda.

This article first broke the scandal. (Hats off to a wonderful blog!) My article updated the Wikipedia information—and added other examples of TM astroturfing.

Apparently the saga continues! The investigation has moved on to the next stage. All editors involved—including TM Org editors—present their evidence here. Really worth reading!

The list of allegations against the TM Org editors will sound tiringly familiar:

Attacks, threats, plagiarism, disruption, distraction, lies, bias, abuse, vandalism, harrassment, false outrage, intellectual dishonesty, intimidation, inuendo, legal scare tactics, dishonesty, ad hominem attacks, McCarthyism, being secretive, inflammatory speech, passive aggression presented as pseudo-civility, cherry-picking favorable research results,...

Transcendental Meditation Marketer$ may actually have an agreed upon playbook.

As we know Tom Ball and Keith DeBoer have organized a group of "enlightened bloggers" to drown out any negative comments posted anywhere on the Internet critical of TM. Given that so many of the TM faithful use precisely the same techniques over and over and over, it seems likely that a playbook of some kind has been circulated among them by TM Central:

How to Stop a Known Critic

1. Begin by accusing the critic of having a conflict of interest.
   
2. Attack their character as unethical, immoral, mentally ill, insensitive, cruel, ethnically prejudiced, etc.
   
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2 until everyone else tires of the conversation.
   
4. Very Important: Make sure you have the last word!

How to Stop a New Critic

1. Suggest they do not have sufficient knowledge about TM to make intelligent criticisms—no matter how applicable or impressive their credentials.
   
2. Deny the credibility or veracity of any report or research not approved of by TM Central.
   
3. Attack the intelligence of the critic.
   
4. Feign false outrage over a trivial detail of the critic's argument or language—frequently claiming the critic is bigoted.
5. Feign ignorance of serious questions in order to circumvent changes to the article, such as when a critic asks about the basis of Hagelin's quantum-based ideology.
   
6. Feign ignorance of well-known principles in research, such as peer-review not being equivalent to acceptance.
   
7. Invoke a special status as a "victimized" minority, whom society doesn't understand.
8. Accuse the critic of being a "sock puppet" or in the employ of an "enemy" organization. [None exist to my knowledge. If one does, hey, I'm for hire!]
9. As the critic is now "known," attack them as a "known" critic. See "How to Stop a Known Critic" above.

Well-known TM critic Andrew Skolnick reports he has been harassed by TM legal and other representatives since 1991 because he wrote a critical article about TM research and researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). His words about "TM's attack dogs" summarize the situation neatly:

If there is one "superpower" achieved through advanced TM training it is the power to tirelessly lie through one's teeth, as this shameless example demonstrates.... As long as TM's attack dogs are allowed to keep rewriting Wikipedia articles, this battle will continue ad nauseum and drive away contributors who decide to spend their time on more constructive projects.

Unfortunately, that is the TM Org's precise goal.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

—Edmund Burke

J.

Ned Wynn: Why I Left the Transcendental Meditation Movement

I remember being an initiator.

I didn't initiate that many people. I did teach a lot of people to become teachers. I ran part of the teachers' training courses in different places, especially Mallorca where I lived for 2½ years (with side trips all over the place in Europe—especially, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Austria, England).

I had had my time in the TM movement.

I was noticing things, hearing things. Suddenly there were more bosses where once there was Jerry Jarvis. I love Jerry and I loved having him be the boss. But when these other people started showing up and the system of teaching became more and more like a pyramid scheme, I balked.

I remember E. telling me once—in all seriousness—when we were in Fiuggi Fonte near Rome, "If you leave TM and the master and fail to do what the master bids you, your life will disintegrate, you will be lost."

It was like a hellfire and damnation speech from the Baptist or Catholic pulpits.

I just looked at E. for a moment to see if he was kidding me. He was not. I shook my head and smiled. This guy was a doctor for God's sake! I think it was then that I realized that the whole deal was a dangerous sham, which I had been ignoring for some time.

I didn't want to acknowledge this toboggan slide into culthood that TM was accomplishing. Not only were most of the people I knew on board for it, they were waxing the runners on the sled that was taking them straight to hell!

If an educated guy, a physician like E., was that heavily indoctrinated with this spiritualistic mumbo-jumbo, then what was that telling me about all the rest of it?

It was definitely time to move on.

— Ned Wynn, Former TM Teacher Training Course Leader, Mallorca, Spain and Europe

© 2010 Ned Wynn, all rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any media without prior written consent of the author.

Transcendental Meditation European Org Continues to Implode

According to a Danish TV report (English, Danish), "Raja" Bjarne S. Country Feldt of Denmark, is trying to sell off property intended for the "Invincible University of Denmark." This is the second time Bjarne has slashed the price in the last year, but so far no takers.

It may raise fast emergency cash, but his slashed offering price will lose the Danish TM Org 48% of their original investment, a cool £29 million—or $44 million US. [TMFB reader and commenter Darth Veda suggests the Google translation may be in error. It is possible the figure quoted is in DKK, not pounds sterling, and would be exchanged for approximately $5 million.]

If anyone takes him up on it.

Almost certainly the money raised for the "Invincible University" came from wealthy donors. Now that yet another TM dream has gone up in smoke, will they get their money back?

Isn't the name, "Invincible University," just a tad ironic?

J.

P.S. Is it just me, or does King Bjarne look less like King Arthur—and more like the kid in grammar school who always got his ass kicked?

Ned Wynn: The Personal Danger of Teaching Transcendental Meditation

Old-time Transcendental Meditation Initiator Ned Wynn submitted the following article about the dangers he sees for TM Teachers still telling the same old story about the "meaningless" mantras to new initiates.

Many old timers will know of Ned. He was a Teacher Training Teacher for a number of years, teaching on Mallorca, Fiuggi Fonte, and throughout Europe. He has a lot of insider knowledge about the TM Movement—and the Maharishi—back in the day.

Ned left the Movement in 1972, for reasons he explains below.

Can you believe these mantra issues have been hanging over the TM Org's head for more than 40 years—and they haven't undertaken simple, basic reforms to put them behind them?

---

I warn people today about TM when they ask me my opinion.

Especially about the mantras.

My warning is that teaching these mantras without revealing—to monotheists specifically—that they translate into English, with some variations, "To Lord Shiva, I bow down," could lead to some real trouble for the teachers.

There is danger, personal danger, to teachers of TM should it be discovered by devout Catholics, Jews, Muslims, etc. that the "meaningless" mantra they have been given is in fact a prayer to Shiva.

In today's world of Islamic militancy, for instance, it could lead to the teacher literally being killed. Some of these guys would take their own lives along with the teacher's because of the shame of having sworn fealty to a foreign god.

And for Jews and Christians there is the distinct possibility that there would be some repercussions—though most likely they'd stop short of murder!

Won't they?

I know some committed Christians. I know that they would be horrified at uttering such blasphemous things whenever they said their mantra.

They wouldn't do anything about it in terms of some retaliatory activity, but they would stop meditating using the word(s) they were given. And eventually someone will publish this stuff, and the lack of candor in the teaching won't encourage people to join up.

They don't want to worship pagan gods. It's in direct contravention of the Commandment: Thou shalt have no other God before me. And believe me there are millions of people who take that very seriously.

They feel that their eternal souls are mortally endangered by breaking that Commandment.

Exodus
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
3 Do not have any other gods before me.

Christ especially was concerned with two "Great" Commandments (from Matthew).

Mt 22:36
“[Jesus], which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, ’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”

It would be hard to love the Lord your God "with all your heart and soul and mind" if you are also, in your meditation, bowing down to a Hindu god. I am not familiar with the Koran, but I do know that the Muslims abide by the Ten Commandments just like Jews and Christians do.

So, teachers and governors and kings or whatever your foolish titles may be, do not think yourselves protected in some magical way from the danger inherent in the meditation technique you are teaching. There is no magical protection enclosing or safeguarding you.

It's a myth promoted by Mahesh.

It's a con.

The machetes in the hands of those increasingly irritated Brothers of Islam, however, are not mythical, their sharp edges are very real.

And the Brothers are famously not squeamish when it comes to releasing gallons of blood from the bodies of tricksters and pagan shamans.

Plus which, when you get down to it, it's simply dishonest.

— Ned Wynn, Former TM Teacher Training Course Leader, Mallorca, Spain & Europe

© 2010 Ned Wynn, all rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any media without prior written consent of the author.

If You Do Transcendental Meditation Will You Look Like This?

Tucked into a Maharishi University of Management newsletter, Achievements, is the announcement:

More students at Maharishi University of Management are planning to become teachers of the Transcendental Meditation^® technique inspired partly by an increasing demand for teachers to teach at-risk children in schools around the world. [Emphasis added.]

Fortunately, they included pictures of what your children might grow up to look like.

Parents: Fair warning! You might want to ask the kids to leave the room—so you don't scare 'em!

Brandy C. Lee-Jacob, Ph.D. student in Maharishi Vedic Science. You'll note that women are encouraged to wear bright colors, especially red, in the TM Org.

It's considered more feminine, Vedically speaking.

Puki Freeberg, MUM alumna and Teacher of the Transcendental Meditation Technique. Puki is modeling an Indian sari, traditional female garb in India.

No lifestyle changes here!

Dr. Fred Travis, Chair of the Department of Maharishi Vedic Science. Sporting a "scientific" lab coat, Fred looks the picture of Vedic health.

Note to TM Marketer$: Guy could use a good spray-on tan!

Bobby Roth, Vice President of the David Lynch Foundation, and Head of Public Relations for TM Org for decades, explaining why TM costs money to learn. Bobby has endless YouTube videos that explain why TM is not a religion, how it changes the brain, and why you can't learn TM from a book.

Helpful stuff! Only viewed by a handful of people on the entire planet.

"Do," aka Marshall Applewhite, spiritual leader of Heaven's Gate suicide "religion," explaining why you should be "initiated." Shortly after this video was shot, White and 38 members committed mass suicide.

I just included him for comparison purposes.

Notice the eyes on all of these johnnies!

J.

What is Religion? What is Transcendental Meditation?

What is the TM theory and TM?

Is it a religion?


David Lynch recently was in Iceland promoting TM. I read an interview of Lynch found here: http://maharishi.posterous.com/iceland-news-david-lynch-answers-questions-on

It is easy to go cross-eyed with the TM speak but I want to tease out some significant points. Lynch says in reference to TM:


. . . I saw it as a spiritual path.

. . . Transcendental Meditation is not a religion, it's a mental technique.

. . . It is a scientific and spiritual path. People from all religions practice Transcendental Meditation as well as agnostics and atheists.

. . . Enlightenment does bring complete freedom from the world's strife and confusion. Full potential of the human being is called enlightenment. Enlightenment answers all questions, ends all suffering and all negativity.


So, we can conclude that Lynch believes that doing TM is a spiritual practice, but protests that it is not a religion. What does it mean to be a spiritual practice? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines spiritual as:

1 : of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : incorporeal
2 a : of or relating to sacred matters b : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal
3 : concerned with religious values
4 : related or joined in spirit
5 a : of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b : of, relating to, or involving spiritualism : spiritualistic

These all are essentially mystical matters. Note the words "sacred," "spirit," "religious," and "supernatural." These are not words of science but words of religion.

So is the TM spiritual path religious? Merriam-Webster's definitions of religious include: "relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality." That is Lynch. Lynch claims he has meditated twice a day for 36 years. He believes enlightenment answers all questions and TM brings enlightenment. He is religious about TM.

Back to the dictionary: Merriam-Webster's definition of religion includes: "a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith." At least for Lynch, TM theory of enlightenment is a religion, despite his protestations to the contrary. He just doesn't know what the meaning of "is" is.

But TM is a religion fail. In response to the question "Is there a system of ethics connected to the practice of TM"? Lynch says no. Let us not ever forget that. There is no ethical framework to keep those in the TMO honest. There are no rules believers can point to which require that Haglin, Lynch, Morris, Nader, or Varma act in any particular way. I am someone who questions religious beliefs precisely because they are beliefs, not facts. But at least most religions arguably have ethical frameworks to help people to live their lives. Without an ethical framework TM is a religion fail and the movement something to distrust.