Whereas David Lynch catches thought fish from thoughts during TM, I can give you some fried fish of my own experience of doing extented TM courses the 1970's; I would say I came out fried on TM. Not everyone who learns TM dives that far into the muddy TM waters, but for the few that do, it can propfoundly change them.
The saddest change that happened to me and to everybody else I knew was that we stopped laughing. All of life became serious. I know I stopped laughing because when my sister came to visit and took me away with my parents to a hotel for a night, I laughed, and realized that I hadn't laughed in months!
Before entering into the extended TM "rounding" periods of meditation that the Maharishi had us do in teacher training courses, I used to plan. However, during these very special courses, the student devotee is discouraged from planning with the directive; "this time is not the time to make decisions!..." Master Mahesh, when exactly do you give the power back into the hands of your students to make decisions for themselves.... nnnneverrrr.......
Before the trance-induction technique of TM, I had table manners. After a lot of meditation, I lost a sense of manners. This was an observation of my mother's when she visited me in Arosa Switzerland where we all ate enmass with other rounding devotees. That was my mom's perspective and her comment stayed with me for a long time. I thought I was getting enlightened. Now I think that we were not only his guinea pigs, but some of us were becoming pigs too!
This last fried fish of a memory happened to me before I did exptended meditation courses. I had been a considerate young woman before meditation, even though perhaps negative and moody. After just beginning TM, I thought more and more about how I felt physically. I became sensitive to smells, I thought a lot more about food, I felt worried about negative energy around me and getting "drained." I had never worried about "energy" before TM. I became more self-absorbed than I had been, even if I had been self-absorbed; it became worse.
