Judgment entered against David Lynch's foundation and Chicago school board in US Federal Court

One of the three civil cases brought against the David Lynch Foundation and the Board of Education of the City of Chicago has reached its conclusion, with judgments against both the DLF and the Board.

Quoting the court:

(1) Judgment is entered in favor of plaintiff Mariyah Green and against defendant Board of Education of the City of Chicago in the amount of $75,000. This is inclusive of any and all relief available to the plaintiff in this case against the Board including all types of damages; attorney’s fees; costs; interest; and litigation expenses. (2) Judgment is entered in favor of plaintiff Mariyah Green and against defendant David Lynch Foundation in the amount of $75,000. This is inclusive of any and all relief available to the plaintiff in this case against the Foundation including all types of damages; attorney’s fees; costs; interest; and litigation expenses.

While it appears that the attorney for Lynch's foundation and various TM organizations believed that such a lawsuit would likely immediately be dismissed by any court before which it was brought, the initial case against the DLF, the Board and initially, the University of Chicago, which spawned two others including this one, has dragged on since October 2020 and may be settled in the next few weeks. The other spawned case is still in progress.

This outcome should give responsible individuals in any government agency in the United States, or private entities funded by governments, second thoughts before teaming up with Lynch or any other TM promoting organization. The consequences may be rather expensive.

(For a summary of the claims at issue in these cases, see my earlier post at Reddit.)

The full text of an early version of Maharishi's "Introduction to the Holy Tradition"

I've been following along with the latest developments in the lawsuit against the David Lynch Foundation, and others, in the aftermath of the DLF's latest failed attempt to insinuate the TM program into public high schools. The legality of any entanglement of any government entity in the United States with Transcendental Meditation was successfully challenged by the opinions in Malnak v. Yogi  - which may be forty years old, but that still serves as persuasive authority in US courts - which resulted in an injunction against the TM program in public high schools in New Jersey, which still stands today.

One critical element of the current case - which in some ways mirrors Malnak over forty years later - is the translation of the puja, the ritual performed before instruction in the TM technique, which is spoken and sung in the Sanskrit language. In Malnak the religiosity of the puja in translation was one of two primary factors in the court's opinion finding that TM was of a "religious nature," and that element is also, I think, one of the facts which will determine the outcome of the case in Chicago.

Counsel for the David Lynch Foundation has been working tooth and nail to exclude the puja translation from the case, in the past few days acknowledging that the translation which appears in the district court opinion in Malnak is the same as that performed in Chicago schools, on school property. But the attorneys for the DLF are attempting to insert a "poison pill" that the translation which has been part of the published Malnak decision for over 40 years cannot be used as evidence in the current case.

So, to drive home what each and every Transcendental Meditation teacher knows by heart - and what they were taught during their training - this is the full text of the "Introduction to the Holy Tradition," which has existed in several versions. These are scans of a physical copy in my possession, which I obtained from a book and document seller in France. Its text is nearly identical (with an omission which I attribute to an editing error) to two other versions, one of which appears as an appendix in a book written by a former TM teacher (R. D. Scott in "Transcendental Misconceptions," published in 1978), and the other in the Amlan Dey thesis, submitted in 2017, which I refer to in part 2 of my previous series on the purpose and significance of the puja.

I can't accurately date this document, since there is nothing identifying where, when and by whom it was published, but given the style in which it was printed, and the quality of the paper, I think it likely that it dates to the late 1960's and was printed in the print shop at Maharishi's "Academy of Meditation" Rishikesh ashram. I believe it's possible that this booklet was distributed to participants in the same TM teacher training course that was visited by the Beatles, Mia and Prudence Farrow, and other prominent people in early 1968. Any information that might help identify this booklet's origin would be appreciated.

The portion of this booklet which matches the Sanskrit-to-English translation in the Malnak opinion starts in the eleventh image below, the "Invocation of the Holy Tradition."

This document is also available as a PDF file.

Breaking: US Department of Justice allegedly funded Transcendental Meditation "Quiet Time" program in Chicago

A filing today in the ongoing Federal court case against the Chicago Board of Education, the David Lynch Foundation, and the University of Chicago disclosed that, during the course of discovery, the Board of Education informed the plaintiffs that the Department of Justice, and not any of the other named defendants, financed the so-called "Quiet Time" program as part of a supposed research project involving Chicago public schools.

Northern District of Illinois courtroom.
(Library of Congress photo)

This means that, according to this filing by the plaintiffs, the teaching of TM was directly financed by the US government, a clear violation of the separation of church and state.

The "religious nature" of TM was established in the late 1970's in Malnak v. Yogi, which was upheld on appeal in the Third Circuit. Technically this decision is binding only in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, but such opinions are often cited as being persuasive in other Federal courts; Malnak has been cited over sixty times in other cases involving church/state matters.

Apparently this disclosure will likely result in the US Department of Justice being added to the list of defendants in this case.

New PTSD studies: TM as a "black box" - what's inside?

Recent studies claiming that Transcendental Meditation is effective in treating PTSD, and that it provides other benefits, treat TM as a “black box.” As with many similar past studies, researchers fail to consider that this method of meditation instruction contains several hours of other information, which creates a context of expectation of life improvement, a structure or habit which will improve life, and an authority who provides the assurance that TM will unfailingly produce those changes. These inadequacies in the design of these studies would be obvious, if all aspects of instruction in the TM program that have never been opened for examination by the TM teaching organization were properly studied and controlled for by independent researchers.

Another research study, this time on using TM as a method of treating PTSD, has just been published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress. The study, “A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation as Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Veterans,” purports to show that “Veterans with PTSD who practiced the Transcendental Meditation technique showed significant reductions in PTSD symptom severity.” A widely circulated press release issued by Maharishi International University announced this study, headlined with the “Transcendental Meditation effective in reducing PTSD, sleep problems, depression symptoms” claim. It includes the same sort of ubiquitous bar chart that’s been seen in TM promotional efforts since at least the mid-1970’s.

It should be noted that while the data analysis performed in this study showed significant positive changes with respect to PTSD, insomnia, depression and anxiety, there were no significant changes on the measures of anger and quality of life, the last being one of TM’s traditional selling points. More notable is the way in which this study, as with many others performed with the participation of the Maharishi International University (MIU) research faculty, relies on a vague if not inappropriately inaccurate description of Transcendental Meditation, as if it were solely a method practiced inside the mind and contained no other significant aspects, doctrine or belief that might in some way affect behavior which would then produce these results, among some people, for some limited period of time. 

You can't spell TM without SCI

A formal reckoning with attempts by the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) to place Transcendental Meditation programs in public schools, defying the fact that a Federal court injunction prohibited TM instruction within them on Constitutional grounds, is long overdue. The flaws in the Malnak v. Yogi opinions, leaving unaddressed the possibility that TM could be completely separated from a formal course in the so-called “Science of Creative Intelligence,” have been deliberately misunderstood and exploited by the DLF and the TM organization for years. The suggestion that TM promotion and instruction in public schools would be permissible if the words “Science of Creative Intelligence” were never mentioned is simply ridiculous; TM is the practical element of SCI and doctrinal tenets of SCI of a religious nature are present throughout TM promotion, preparation and instruction. 

Northern District of Illinois courtroom.
(Library of Congress photo)

Since the puja, the ceremony which is always performed before individual TM instruction, occurred on Chicago school premises (as the DLF has insisted that it must), in some fundamental way the DLF was organizing its own prayer services on school property; whether they were understood to be religious by students is irrelevant. The organization mandated a puja performance to satisfy its own priorities, based in its own SCI doctrine, with respect to TM instruction. 

The religiosity of what the David Lynch Foundation and its allies have attempted to do, rooted in the doctrine of SCI, is obvious, and the District Court’s phrasing in its Malnak opinion over forty years ago is still very appropriate here:  “the proposition needs no further demonstration.”

Update: Chicago lawsuit against TM public schools program expanded into class action

Plaintiffs bringing legal action against the David Lynch Foundation (the DLF), a Chicago Public Schools district, and the University of Chicago, seeking redress as a result of the so-called "Quiet Time" program to introduce TM into public schools, have amended their complaint, making it a class action lawsuit.

Puja table set up for TM instruction.
The framed image is a registered trademark/service mark
held by Maharishi Foundation Liechtenstein in the United States.
Photo by the author.

Previously, from August 2020:

Lawsuit in progress: David Lynch Foundation abandons TM "Quiet Time" program in Chicago

Here's the relevant part of the amendment which was filed yesterday.

A. Class Definition(s)

94. The (b)(2) Injunctive and Declaratory Relief Class consists of:

All persons who are CPS students, CPS teachers, parents or legal guardians of CPS students directly associated with any CPS school facilitating the “Quiet Time” program, or any other program involving the practice of “Transcendental Meditation.”

95. The Three (b)(3) Sub-Classes consist of:

All students who attended a CPS school during a period when the school facilitated the “Quiet Time” program.

All teachers at CPS schools who were required to accommodate, endorse, facilitate, or enable the “Quiet Time” program at a CPS school where they were employed at the time.

All parents and legal guardians of students who attended a CPS school during a period when the school facilitated the “Quiet Time” program.

This is apparently the second class action lawsuit brought against organizations attempting to offer TM in public schools. In 1975 a California school district was the target of a class action for offering TM as an English elective, for credit, and as part of a physical education program. The suit was dismissed as moot after the school district declared that they would never again offer or recommend such courses.

The three defendants have not yet replied to the complaint, except to successfully challenge a demand for an immediate temporary restraining order.

The amended complaint may be viewed and downloaded, here.

Lawsuit in progress: David Lynch Foundation abandons TM "Quiet Time" program in Chicago

A lawsuit has recently been filed against the David Lynch Foundation (the DLF), a Chicago Public Schools district, and the University of Chicago as a result of the Transcendental Meditation organization’s effort to orchestrate what it called a “research study,” to demonstrate what they have claimed are the benefits of TM for high school students. The plaintiffs bringing this action include the student, parent and substitute teacher who testified at a Chicago Board of Education hearing one year ago. They alleged that, to participate in the program, students were required to participate in the TM initiation “puja” ritual, which had already been found to be religious in nature in a previous Federal court case. They also alleged that students were coerced in various ways to participate in the program and that class time was wasted on meditation. All of these activities were running under the “Quiet Time” moniker, the somewhat generic, obfuscating title that the DLF has given to its advocacy of TM in both public and private schools.

Puja table set up for TM instruction.
Fruit, flowers and handkerchief are generally provided by the prospective meditator.
Photo by the author.

Read the original story here at the TM-Free Blog, from August 2019:
Chicago Tribune reports on allegations made by high school students, that they were coerced to practice TM  

Updates to this story, Williams v. Board of Education

The plaintiffs, who also include an advocacy group and an association of local churches, asserted that they were deprived of their rights by the DLF, the public school system and the University of Chicago, by violating the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The suit seeks redress in the form of an immediate restraining order against these three institutions, and various injunctions against the teaching of TM in Chicago public schools. The broadest of these requests is for “a declaratory judgment that facilitating, establishing, implementing, or reimplementing the “Quiet Time” program, or any other program involving the practice of “Transcendental Meditation,” within or through any CPS school violates the United States Constitution.” Finally, the suit seeks to obtain “compensatory damages for the mental anguish and emotional distress suffered in connection with the constitutional deprivations suffered at the hands of the named Defendants.”

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 5: The bottom of the barrel of published TM research articles

Read this series from the beginning.

Read the previous installment of this series (Part 4).

David W. Orme-Johnson. From "Inaugurating the
Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment," 1975

We here at the TM-Free Blog have received a comment from David W. Orme-Johnson. He’s a former Maharishi University of Management psychology department chairman and a frequent defender and promoter of TM research studies. I’ve mentioned him and his website a number of times in previous parts of this series, “The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation.” He submitted his comment in response to the second part posted here at the TM-Free Blog on September 22, 2019, subtitled ‘"Peer review" doesn't always mean "quality" or "accuracy.”’ In 2015, he claimed to have no formal affiliation with the TM movement on his website, but a published comment that same year indicated that he was then associated with the “Research Desk, Maharishi Foundation USA.”

As a matter of editorial policy, the contributors to the TM-Free Blog don’t particularly care to reprint the TM movement’s marketing materials. There are thousands of TM movement operated or affiliated websites worldwide that serve that purpose. There is also, of course,  Orme-Johnson’s own website, “Truth About TM,” that contains plenty of defenses of TM research and a few rebuttals of critics from his point of view, that’s evidently very similar to that of the TM organization. Parts of his submitted comment are of a promotional nature, therefore I won’t be running his comment in the comments, or as a post, verbatim.

The "evidence-based" claim, as it appears on the
tm.org website at the time of this writing.

I may write up a full response to Orme-Johnson’s comment at some later date. Since this is a series about the usual claims made by the TM movement, particularly with respect to research findings and how they are represented, particularly with respect to being published in “peer-reviewed” journals, I will respond here to two elements of his comment. The first part of his comment further illustrates the problems with TM research that contradict the TM movement’s claims that, among other things, Transcendental Meditation should be considered “evidence-based” because of this body of research studies. He wrote:

The second paper the blog uses to criticize TM research is a preliminary study by the late Sarina Grosswald and co-authors on ADHD. In children with ADHD, the study showed statistically significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and improvements in ADHD symptoms and executive function. The authors were obviously not naïve about experimental design, as the blog portrays them, because they said in the title that this was “An exploratory study”. 

This passage in Orme-Johnson’s comment leaves me chuckling to myself. The idea that calling their work “an exploratory study” excuses blatant problems and errors in their methods is, in my view, ridiculous. If the experimenters really wanted to draw serious attention to their work, which makes a rather novel if not controversial claim, why wouldn’t they take particular care to ensure that what they were doing wasn’t obviously problematic? Relying on self-reporting and self-controls, ensuring that the schools’ most prominent authority figure was an enthusiastic TM meditator, and coaching the student subjects to expect positive results - and recording that coaching on video! - are not excusable because the study was “exploratory.” If anything, these faults show that the claimed results were most likely the result of the kind of wishful thinking and confirmation bias common among TM meditators, and aren’t really worth considering for further study. But a paper like this, published in a third- or fourth-rate journal, provides the kind of story that’s commonly circulated among TM insiders, that reinforces, for them, that what they’re doing, spending time and money on, is a valid and worthwhile cause. It also provides fodder for press releases that are sent to reporters who aren’t in a position to approach these matters with the skepticism, resources or time to do anything other than to publish these claims verbatim without the most basic examination of how these conclusions were reached.

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 4: When "peer review" becomes "meditator review"

Read this series from the beginning.

Read the previous installment of this series (Part 3).

Cover of the final volume of the
Journal of Social Behavior and Personality.
Does this look like a legitimate, independent scientific journal to you?

As I’ve discussed in earlier parts of this series, the organizations that offer Transcendental Meditation (TM), including the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), have long claimed scientific legitimacy and validity for all the claims they regularly make for TM on the basis of scientific research. They imply that the fact that this research has “appeared in many leading, peer-reviewed journals” is as good as a formal stamp of approval, for the accuracy and legitimacy of everything they say in support of TM.

But what do they really mean when they use the phrase, “peer-review?” Earlier, I quoted David Orme-Johnson, the retired psychology department chairman at the TM movement’s university, Maharishi University of Management (MUM), who is currently a promoter of TM by way of his “Truth About TM” website:

Moreover, one purpose of the peer-reviewed process is to screen out studies that may have been biased by the orientation of the investigators. The numerous published studies on the Transcendental Meditation program have met the high standards of peer-review.

In the course of sorting through many of the research papers often cited on lists of TM research that appear on the tm.org website and elsewhere, I came upon an important detail, in a paper written by David Orme-Johnson and two other Maharishi University of Management staffers. This is in the context of a critique of two National Research Council (NRC) reviews of the research on meditation published in 1991 and 1994. Their critique is largely centered on their opinion that the NRC’s reviews did not include certain studies that would have supported their position that TM produces beneficial physical and mental effects that do not occur with other forms of meditation, and that TM provides greater relaxation, greater improvements in human performance, and other benefits compared to other methods, that went unreported in the NRC review.

Near the end of their critique is this statement, which I think is a rather extraordinary demonstration of a basic ignorance or outright avoidance of the scientific method, that I also think contradicts his earlier comments on the bias of investigators, with emphasis added by me:

How can we insure objectivity in future reviews of technologies from non-Western cultures or from radically new scientific paradigms that may be outside the knowledge and experience of the reviewers? We suggest that half of the membership of review committees for new or controversial research be comprised of researchers from different universities or research institutions who are practitioners of the technology in question, who have published research in the field, and who are well conversant with the theoretical frame that informs the research.

So there you have it in their own words. They are suggesting that half of the people who review research on Transcendental Meditation should be meditators themselves; that is what they mean by “practitioners of the technology,” because another name for Transcendental Meditation is the “Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field.” I suppose the phrase means very little if, as is true of most people, including scientists, you aren’t familiar with the background on Transcendental Meditation to recognize that reference. The “Unified Field” pseudonym for TM was frequently used during the early 1990’s in various TM related publications, and it’s defined that way on page 26 of the first, 1987 edition of Bob Roth’s book on TM. (It doesn’t appear in later editions of that book, but it’s mentioned in numerous other publications around that time.)

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 3: Journals are the product of editors and reviewers

Read this series from the beginning.

Read the previous installment of this series (Part 2).

Recent issue of International 
Journal of Neuroscience, 
November 2019

Many people are easily impressed by what look like big numbers, and the organizations that offer Transcendental Meditation (TM), including the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), often use numbers in a bid to establish scientific legitimacy among non-scientists and the general public. Here’s a particular paragraph that is part of the preface to one bibliography of research on TM, produced by a TM affiliated doctor in the UK:

Scientific research on the Transcendental Meditation technique comprises more than 600 studies conducted at over 250 independent universities and research institutions in 33 countries...  These studies have demonstrated a wide range of benefits for mind, body, behavior, and society... and have appeared in many leading, peer-reviewed journals.

As I explained earlier, this frequently mentioned number of “600 studies” gets significantly reduced in practice, and that’s because, in my opinion, it includes a few hundred studies performed at TM institutions, including Maharishi University of Management, that were never published anywhere other than their own, seven-and-soon-to-be-eight volume, “Collected Papers” series. It’s also interesting to note, that at the inauguration of the so-called “Age of Enlightenment” in 1975, forty-four years ago, it was already claimed that 300 studies were performed at 200 universities.

Today, the list of studies on the tm.org website only includes studies that were published in books, journals or other scientific publications. When that list is pared down to include only original research and not other articles, only 123 studies remain, and they say they were “published in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals.” Only 21 of those studies were authored entirely by people with no connection to TM movement institutions.

When the list of publications in which those 123 studies appear is analyzed, a pattern emerges: ten of those studies appeared in a single journal, eight of them over a ten year period. Another seven of those studies appeared in a single issue of another journal. Four journals each published four of these articles, and one of those journals published four articles in a single issue.

Given that there are so many journals in which researchers could publish their findings, the question arises: why is it that there are these clusters of TM research papers in a few journals? 

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 2: "peer review" doesn't always mean "quality" or "accuracy"

David Lynch, Sarina Grosswald,
and John Hagelin at a David Lynch
Foundation press conference,
December 2011.

Read this series from the beginning.

This series continues with Part 3, here.

The organizations that have promoted Transcendental Meditation (TM), including the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), have for decades repeated the insistence of TM’s founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that extensive scientific research supports their claims of TM’s validity. As I discussed previously, when their claim that “hundreds of published studies” is examined, it’s clear that an enormous proportion of those studies - 82% of the studies listed from the front page of the tm.org website - have been authored, or co-authored, by researchers with a documentable, institutional tie to a TM organization. That’s just the first of the issues that arise, when their various claims of independence, volume and quality are contrasted with an analysis of this set of studies. I think we can safely assume that a list on the primary TM website would contain the best studies they can come up with and that support their frequent claims of scientific validation of TM. The response of, “is that really all you’ve got to offer after fifty years of trying?” comes to mind when the contents of that list are carefully examined.  The methodology of many of these studies, versus the conclusions made, are the points at which the movement’s assertions don’t hold up under scrutiny.

There’s also the implied insistence among those offering TM, that when a study is published in a “peer-reviewed journal,” that that study has some magical stamp of approval and that everything in any such study, particularly conclusions favoring TM, are always absolutely and perpetually true. This is, unfortunately, often the way that scientific research is reported in the media, leaving a misimpression with the public that published studies in prestigious journals are some fixed statement of scientific reality. This is seldom true. Science is an ongoing process of discovery, and often the findings of studies, even those published in highly regarded, peer-reviewed journals, will conflict with one another, are found to be not all they were initially thought to be, and in a few rare cases, the researchers were found to have committed fraud in the course of producing a study which supported their predetermined conclusion.

This reliance on peer review as some absolute stamp of accuracy and legitimacy is actively exploited by TM apologists. David Orme-Johnson, longtime psychology department chairman at the TM movement’s university, Maharishi University of Management (MUM), writes about peer review on his “Truth About TM” website as if it would, in every case, notice and intercept every instance of shoddy science performed by a researcher, who’s also a meditator, working on a subsequently published study favoring TM:

Moreover, one purpose of the peer-reviewed process is to screen out studies that may have been biased by the orientation of the investigators. The numerous published studies on the Transcendental Meditation program have met the high standards of peer-review.

This is not quite how academic publishing works in the real world, where faults in research, missed by reviewers, are noted by other scientists after they’re appeared in those peer-reviewed journals, and those faults are later discussed. Those critiques, rebuttals and counter-rebuttals of TM research can sometimes be found in the pages of the same journals in which the original studies of TM have been published.

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 1: Truly independent research on TM is rare

TM original research listed on the tm.org website, evaluated over
five-year periods. Meditating individuals and affiliated MIU/MUM
faculty have authored the majority of it since 1981.

For over a half century now, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the movement and the organizations that he spawned, and now the David Lynch Foundation, have insisted that their claims supporting Transcendental Meditation have been scientifically validated, and are supported by some consensus among many scientists. The prominence of TM, and the reputations of public figures who are constantly named in the media as having learned this mental technique, have rested on the assumption that these claims are completely valid. They regularly make reference to a large pile of scientific studies - the actual number of those studies varies a great deal from moment to moment, but it’s usually in the hundreds - that confirm, for them, that these assertions are always true.

But what happens when all those supportive scientific studies that they constantly mention in support of TM, are actually obtained, analyzed, sorted and evaluated? How many of them reflect the work of people who have no connection to TM at all, financial, emotional or otherwise - not as meditators, TM teachers, or faculty at the movement’s own university? Is it at all accurate for them to imply that because they can name-drop many universities, research institutions, and the titles of prominent medical and scientific journals, that some positive scientific consensus exists to support the claims they constantly make for the safety, efficacy and validity of Transcendental Meditation?

The short answer is, as you might expect, no.  This series on TM's research claims continues with Part 2, here.

PDF files containing copies of spreadsheets with all the supporting data for this article are available at the bottom of this page.

From the archives: "TM and Cult Mania" on meditators' responses to criticism

I think a lot of people, who are new to the whole field of raising criticism and objections to Transcendental Meditation, may be a bit unprepared for the kinds of reactions that I've long been on the receiving end of. Hostile reactions from meditators, TM teachers and others who are almost reflexively supportive of any effort to spread the practice of meditation far and wide are common, and they usually take the form of avoidance, distraction or personal attacks on the person raising the objection to TM, along with the usual repetition of the "main points" of belief and doctrine that they constantly say are absolutely, positively not a part of learning TM. (You can even see some fifteen to twenty year old e-mail I've received containing much the same, here.)

Now that a few allegations of what the David Lynch Foundation's program of introducing TM into public schools might actually be doing there, have made it into a major newspaper, these sorts of responses are now likely to again be seen in any forum where these issues may be raised.

As evidenced by my experience on Facebook over the past few days, you will even see "haha" laughter reactions when serious issues of US constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state, or students' allegations they are being forced to meditate without their or their parents' fully informed consent, are brought out for discussion and comment. But these are the old habits of people who some might think should be loving, peaceful souls, because they'll sometimes also brag to you that they've been meditating for 40 years or more in the first few moments that you encounter them. They're acting from their insistence that their personal, mental experience is exactly what they say it is, and because they still unquestioningly believe what they were told long ago, the agenda that doesn't exist: that the world will magically transform itself to "Heaven on Earth" if as many people as possible will do exactly what they do.

The second two-thirds of the name of the David Lynch Foundation is, "for consciousness-based education and world peace." Get told enough times that you're working toward "world peace" while sitting with your eyes closed, and obviously strange things eventually begin to happen.

So here's an excerpt from the book, "TM and Cult Mania," which was published way back in 1980. Obviously the authors had some experience in dealing firsthand with meditators and TM promoters, because the descriptions in the book are very similar to what I saw, as far back as the early 1990's when first encountering the TM cheering section in online Usenet newsgroups, and to what I've again seen over the last few days.  This excerpt clearly comes from an academic perspective laced with sarcasm and perhaps the kind of fatigue that comes from having seen the same bad behaviors of meditators over and over again, a fatigue with which I'm quite familiar.

More on TM in Chicago schools: Allegations of coercion, inducements and "bribe rewards"

As reported on here at the TM-Free Blog a few days ago, on July 26 (2019) the Chicago Tribune reported on the appearance of a Chicago high school student and teacher at a Board of Education meeting, objecting to an ongoing program by the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) and the University of Chicago that introduced Transcendental Meditation (TM) into Bogan High School.  Shortly after their appearance before the Board of Education, that student, along with another recent graduate of the school, and a parent spoke of even more disturbing experiences with school teachers, personnel, and meditation teachers who were part of the TM program in their high school, in two Facebook videos.

Read the original story here at the TM-Free Blog:
Chicago Tribune reports on allegations made by high school students, that they were coerced to practice TM  

The Chicago Board of Education hearing was recorded, and the testimony of the student and teacher, which were described in the Tribune article, can be viewed directly on YouTube. They raised objections before the Board, to the obvious religious content of the “puja” ritual, which is central to the instruction of Transcendental Meditation - which, according to a 40 year old Federal appeals court ruling, disqualifies such programs from being offered in public schools. Dasia Skinner, the teacher and school employee, told the Board that 60 students that she spoke with all had similar accounts of having gone through the “secret” puja ritual. “All of this was done without parents’ knowledge or the students’ understanding,” she said, and that students were told, “whatever happens in this room, stays in this room.” They both alleged that students were coerced to join and continue with the program, and were disciplined if they did not comply. 

TM in Chicago schools: Letter to the Chicago Tribune editor

This is a letter, thus far unpublished, that I submitted to the editor of the Chicago Tribune as a followup to their story reporting the allegations that have been addressed to the Chicago Board of Education about the so-called "Quiet Time" program - actually, the Transcendental Meditation program - implemented in Chicago public high schools by the David Lynch Foundation and the University of Chicago.

(More: "Chicago Tribune reports on allegations of high school students coerced to practice TM," August 10, 2019, here at the TM-Free Blog)

The point of this letter is to make it clear, that the aim of the David Lynch Foundation in introducing TM into schools is not merely some innocuous effort, allegedly directed at some of this country's most disadvantaged schools and students,  to improve young people's lives. It is instead, part of a means to implement a baldly religious agenda, of a group that at its core is obviously a religious sect, to remake the world into what they call, "Heaven on Earth." They seek to achieve this outcome by getting as many people as possible to practice a very specific form of meditation that will, as if by magic, transform the planet from a state of relative chaos to their concept of an orderly "peace." 

This agenda is even part of the full name of the David Lynch Foundation, the rest of its name being, "for consciousness-based education and world peace." Both those aspects, explanations of which were purged some years ago from the Foundation's website, are religious concepts that are drawn from the Vedic scriptures of India and sanitized of explicitly religious content for a receptive Western audience, that has often been deliberately misled by the implied falsehood that there's some broad consensus in the scientific community in support of this practice.  The religiosity of the "puja" ritual integral to the teaching of TM, and the mantras having associations with Vedic/Hindu deities, are details that are simply the tip of the iceberg, when the grandiose "let's take over the world" aspects of the TM movement - that are not well known or obvious to outsiders - are considered.

Chicago Tribune reports on allegations made by high school students, that they were coerced to practice TM

See also, here at the TM-Free Blog: 

• TM in Chicago schools: Letter to the Chicago Tribune editor, August 12, 2019

• More on TM in Chicago schools: Allegations of coercion, inducements and "bribe rewards," August 15, 2019

Recently, the Chicago Board of Education heard rather disturbing testimony from a substitute teacher and a student at one of the schools in which the so-called “Quiet Time” program was active during the past school year. “Quiet Time” is a euphemistic name that the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) uses to describe their Transcendental Meditation (TM) program that they have sought to establish in secondary schools in a number of countries, including public high schools in the United States. The DLF offers what it calls scientific evidence that such a program is beneficial to students, despite reviews and other research that indicate that, for many if not most people, such benefits are elusive to nonexistent, and that meditation may be detrimental for some individuals.

In this instance, the program was implemented by TM teachers and others working for the DLF in several Chicago high schools, including the school that was the source of these objections, Bogan Computer Technical High School. According to a 2015 University press release and web page, the David Lynch Foundation was paid $300,000 by the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs department to initiate this program in several Chicago public high schools, as part of what is claimed to be a scientific research study. The program is being supervised under the direction of several University of Chicago Urban Labs personnel. Students in the program are to meditate twice daily at the beginning and end of the school day, devoting at least part of two class periods that would otherwise be spent receiving instruction or doing other academic work, to meditation.

Along with the same allegation that was raised over forty years ago in US Federal courts - that students were required to participate in a religious ritual, in a public school, if they were to learn TM, and that once resulted in a permanent injunction against the teaching of TM in public schools - the Board heard that students were pressured into joining the program, and were subject to disciplinary action, including the dropping of grades, if they did not comply. Of course, all such tactics involving discipline or coercion of meditators in what has been promoted as a research study, would completely invalidate any claim to scientific legitimacy of any attempted published research on the benefits of meditation that may later result.

National Institutes of Health Researches TM - Poorly

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "...is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives….”(1)

The David Lynch Foundation, a proponent of TM, states,

“...The National Institutes of Health have granted more than $26 million over the past 18 years to study the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program on cardiovascular disease….”(2)

The TM movement likes to point out that there are over 600 published research projects showing the benefits of TM.  However, critics have pointed out that most TM research is of poor quality.  Inadequate controls, small samples, cherry picking of results, biased design, self-reporting, conflict of interest - the flaws are astonishing.(3)  Whether these flaws are due to poor researcher skills, researcher prejudice in favor of TM, or some other reasons, I don't know.

The NIH doesn't want researchers with conflicts of interest doing their research.  This led me to ask, who exactly is doing the NIH-funded TM research?  Are there any conflicts of interest?  

I have researched the names of most of the researchers studying TM with NIH money.  I’ve discovered that for virtually every study, many of the researchers are affiliated with TM.(4)  They are  Maharishi University of Management (MUM) professors, MUM researchers, MUM graduates, TM teachers.  People with these credentials have gone through months or years of TM indoctrination consisting of one-sided education and meditation retreats, which put people into suggestible states.  Further, many of these researchers work for TM for very little pay, as volunteers, or on work-exchange.  I consider these credentials indicative of bias towards TM.  In fact, I feel it would be appropriate to say that some people with such a background could be considered to have a “missionary” approach towards TM.

A few years ago, I attempted to contact NIH to alert them to the bias of many of their researcher. Unfortunately, what I learned is that the only "conflict of interest" they acknowledge is financial.  They do not consider belief/missionary zeal/faith to be conflicts of interest.  But that still leaves the question of if the NIH considers TM teachers, MUM professors, MUM researchers, etc., to lack financial conflict of interest.  After all, if an MUM professor publishes “positive” results, then more people might learn TM, and then more people might attend MUM, and then the professor might get a raise, or tenure.  Alas, the NIH website stated that concerns about conflicts of interest would only be considered before research has begun.  Also, they stated that the only strategy the NIH employs on conflicts of interest is to ask the researchers what steps they propose to take in order to eliminate the bias.

So, if you ever read that NIH research on TM has proven that TM is a unique, marvelous, beneficial technique for the human race, please consider the points above.  The research is probably seriously biased.

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(1) nih.gov

(2) davidlynchfoundation.org:  “...The David Lynch Foundation helps to prevent and eradicate the all-pervasive epidemic of trauma and toxic stress among at-risk populations through promoting widespread implementation of the evidence-based Transcendental Meditation (TM) program in order to improve their health, cognitive capabilities and performance in life…."

(3) TMFree.blogspot.com:  How to Design a Positive Study: Meditation for Childhood ADHD, Abstracts of Independent Research on Transcendental Meditation, Problems with TM Research by Barry Markovsky, Evaluating Heterodox Theories, including "Maharishi Effect" (Markovsky and Fales)

(4) I have highlighted in red those researchers for whom I found TM affiliations.  (Note: Variations in footnote style is due to copying directly from research papers).

1. Stress Reduction Programs in Patients with Elevated Blood Pressure: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. 
Maxwell V. Rainforth, PhD, Robert H. Schneider, MD, Sanford I. Nidich, EdD, Carolyn Gaylord-King, PhD, John W. Salerno, PhD, and James W. Anderson, MD

2. Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Health Promotion with the Transcendental Meditation Program and Maharishi Consciousness-Based Health Care. 
Robert H. Schneider, MD, Kenneth G. Walton, PhD, John W. Salerno, PhD, and Sanford I. Nidich, EdD.
Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa.

3. Effects of a Randomized Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation on Components of the Metabolic Syndrome in Subjects With Coronary Heart Disease.
Maura Paul-Labrador, MPH; Donna Polk, MD, MPH; James H. Dwyer, PhD; Ivan Velasquez, MD; Maxwell Rainforth, PhD, Robert Schneider, MD, and C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD

4. Long-Term Effects of Stress Reduction on Mortality in Persons ≥55 Years of Age With Systemic Hypertension. 
Robert H. Schneider*, MD, Charles N. Alexander, PhD*, Frank Staggers, MD*,  Maxwell Rainforth, PhD*, John W. Salerno, PhD*, Arthur Hartz, MD, Stephen Arndt, PhD, Vernon A. Barnes, PhD+, and Sanford I. Nidich, EdD*
*From the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa; the West Oakland Health Center, Oakland, California; the Departments of Family Medicine and Psychiatry, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa; and the Georgia Prevention Institute, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia. +Vernon A. Barnes, PhD from Maharishi University of Management

5. Reduced Blood Pressure and Use of Hypertensive Medication (American Journal of Hypertension, January 2005).
Robert H. Schneider#, Charles N. Alexander#, Frank Staggers, David W. Orme-Johnson#, Maxwell Rainforth#, John W. Salerno#, William Sheppard, Amparo Castillo-Richmond", Vernon A. Barnes", and Sanford I. Nidich#
# From the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management (RHS, CHN, DWO-J, MR, JWS, SIN)
“ Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa graduates (VAB, AC-R)

6. Effectiveness of Transcendental Meditation on Functional Capacity and Quality of Life of African Americans with Congestive Heart Failure: A Randomized Control Study. 
Ravishankar Jayadevappa, PhD, Jerry C. Johnson, MD, Bernard S. Bloom, PhD, Sanford Nidich, EdD, Shashank Desai, MD, Sumedha Chhatre, PhD, Donna B. Raziano, MD, and Robert H. Schneider, MD
From the Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (RJ, JCJ, BSB, SD, SC); Elder Health Pennsylvania (DBR), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa (SN, RS). 

7. Effects of a Randomized Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation on Components of the Metabolic Syndrome in Subjects With Coronary Heart Disease.
Maura Paul-Labrador, MPH; Donna Polk, MD, MPH; James H. Dwyer, PhD; Ivan Velasquez, MD; Sanford Nidich, PhD., Maxwell Rainforth, PhD; Robert Schneider, MD;  C. Noel Barry

8. Neuroimaging of meditation’s effect on brain reactivity to pain. 
David W. Orme-Johnson(a), Robert H. Schneider(a), Young D. Son(b), Sanford Nidich(a), and Zang- Hee Cho(b)
a Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA 
b Departments of Radiological Sciences & Psychiatry and Human Behavior, MED SCI I, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

9. Effects of Stress Reduction on Carotid Atherosclerosis in Hypertensive African Americans. 
Amparo Castillo-Richmond, MD; Robert H. Schneider, MD; Charles N. Alexander, PhD†; Robert Cook, MD; Hector Myers, PhD; Sanford Nidich, PhD; Chinelo Haney, MBA; Maxwell Rainforth, PhD; John Salerno, PhD 
From the Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention (A.C.-R., R.H.S., C.N.A., S.N., M.R., J.S.), Maharishi University of Management, College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, Fairfield, Iowa; the Department of Radiology (R.C.) and Biobehavioral Research Center (H.M., C.H.  [C.H. is a TM teacher]), Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, Calif; and the Department of Psychology (H.M.), University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.  
†Deceased. 
Correspondence to Amparo Castillo-Richmond, MD, Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, 1000 North 4th St, FB 1134, Fairfield, IA 52557. E-mail amparo@mum.edu