I've been cleaning out my files, and I came upon notes from my conversation with an exit counselor back in 1987. I hope you will enjoy reading some of his comments:
"Of all the groups I have dealt with, some of the most severe casualties have been in TM. This is in direct contradiction to TM publicity. Meditation techniques are not appropriate for everyone, because some people have difficulty distinguishing between the inner content and outer content of their minds. Such people can go into a psychotic state from doing meditation, because these techniques loosen boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious. For the average person, this is a pleasure, because most people have too many boundaries there. But for a minority of people, it is dangerous to have the boundary more porous."
[Editor's comment: When I saw the film "David Wants to Fly," I had the good fortune to find Dr. Herbert Benson, author of "The Relaxation Response"
sitting right behind me! I introduced myself to him, and he told me a
few stories. Included was, "I observed the course in Fuiggi, Italy.
Since I am an M.D., when I and course participants got off the plane in
the U.S., I did sign a bunch of them straight into mental hospitals."]
"So it was normal for people in TM to "freak out" -- to have highs, lows, get emotional."
[Editor's comment: In the TM world, careening highs and lows were considered normal, even positive. It was called unstressing, and we were told that it meant the person was throwing off old stress.]
I suggested to the exit counselor that TM had a special hook for the average Westerner because it backs up its beliefs with appeals to science. He replied, "Scientology also bombards people with statistics."
"If you have a busy, multidimensional life, to sit down for 20 minutes is okay. But if meditation becomes a goal in itself, it's bad. It's like fasting. The first time you do it, it feels good, healing. But if you continue to fast, it turns on itself. The mind is similar - it needs information and stimulation. Without outside stimulation, it stimulates itself. Thus, inner material comes out. The person becomes increasingly swallowed up in their inner world, and outside decisions and the outer world become more difficult."
"I feel TM has a callous view of people. I've treated one of Maharishi's lovers. She was seduced and abandoned by Mahesh. She became psychotic. He promised he would marry her; then she was told, "You're being sent to Switzerland."
[Editor's comment: This strikes me as Mahesh being callous, not the TM organization. But I believe he set the tone, and did make policy for the TMO that was callous.]
"Dr. Herbert Benson's book 'The Relaxation Response' demonstrates that one can create TM-like results without TM. By any autohypnosis technique, one can do this. TM's marketing insisted that TM was distinct."
"True scientific research shows that anyone can have a TM-like response. Almost all psychologists discredit TM research as self-serving and flawed. For instance, the research on reduced crime is totally without controls, confounding factors, etc. That research is extremely specious. All TM research is designed to hook people in. The TMO allows scientific proofs but not scientific critiques. When you were in TM, you were only exposed to the research that they wanted you to see."
[Editor's comment: Is TM research still in disrepute? I think much less so. It's being taught in some public schools and veterans' organizations. And I believe the Surgeon General recently had an amiable discussion with a leading TM proponent.]
Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.
Showing posts with label Dr. Herbert Benson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr. Herbert Benson. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Thursday, January 09, 2014
Study questions long term benefits of meditation
Lindsay Gellman reviews an analysis of science behind meditation in the January 6 Wall Street Journal, linked here : Meditation has limited benefits, study finds.
As TMFree readers would expect, meditation is not the save-all panacea for which it's marketed.
The majority of studies on Transcendental Meditation (TM) are NOT controlled studies, thus are weak. For example, TM studies do not compare TM with mindfulness meditation, prayer, buddhist chanting, nor with daily napping or exercise.
According to Dr. Herbert Benson, any word works as well as a TM mantra. Herbert Benson was co-researcher with Keith Wallace for the original TM studies in Scientific American. Benson then found identical results with other meditations and prayers that do not require secretive indoctrination. Benson called this The Relaxation Response.
Lo! mediterranean siestas provide some benefit!
As Gellman summarizes in the Wall Street Journal :
"Although uncontrolled studies have usually found a benefit of meditation, very few controlled studies have found a similar benefit for the effects of meditation programs on health-related behaviors affected by stress," the JAMA report said.
The report's findings show that meditation is perhaps less effective in alleviating stress-related symptoms than is widely believed, said Allan H. Goroll, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts General Hospital, in invited commentary also published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. "The studies overall failed to show much benefit from meditation with regard to relief of suffering or improvement in overall health, with the important exception that mindfulness meditation provided a small but possibly meaningful degree of relief from psychological distress," he wrote."
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Transcendental Meditation : Research = Biased Advertising
At long last, critique emerges of Transcendental Meditation’s so-called “scientific data” which is really just masked advertising. Mere publication, even in scientific journals, does not demonstrate truth.
“Mysterious Disappearing Paper Finally Reappears In Another Journal “ was published on November 13, 2012 and may be read both here at “CardioBrief, a one-stop source for cardiology news and links” and here in "Forbes". Larry Husten cited concerns about the re-publication of a TM study-cum-advertising which had previously been revoked before press by the Archives of Internal Medicine. Husten questioned this TM study now published in “Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality & Outcomes”.
Husten reviewed the study’s mysterious retraction by The Archives of Internal Medicine, critiqued the study’s statistical methods and alluded to cult-like association of the researcher from the Institute of Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management.
In 1975 Herbert Benson compared the benefits from TM with other forms of Judeo-Christian prayer and, (lo!) found identical results. The same results have been repeated many times with various forms of meditation, prayer and restful states. Resting quietly for a few minutes daily, in prayer, day dreaming or contemplation proved beneficial without the use of a mystical fruit-flowers-handkerchief Hindu puja with secretive mystical mantra. Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine continues to provide medical support for meditative practices without a hidden agenda.
TM True Believers repeatedly site “over 600 scientific articles” of so-called research on Transcendental Meditation to justify that TM is the best method for stress management (or to solve any of life’s maladies, for that matter). Not one of those TM-cited journals compares TM to other forms of meditation or mindfulness practices.
On Monday November 12th, American Veteran’s Day, CNN’s Soledad O’Brien aired a few minutes with TM spokesperson Bobby Roth, speaking about TM to help military veterans cope with PTSD.
A man (anonymity requested) raised in the TM Movement by a former political candidate for TM’s Natural Law Party offered us the following critique of CNN’s recent TM docu-sales pitch :
1) The solution to all problems
2) Heals the brain by removing deep stress
3) Simple, easy, mental technique
4) Non religious, yet at the same time the common denominator of all religions
5) Benefits everyone not just veterans
6) Young people are the ones we can convert
7) Its a therapy, tested, sound, the missing element regular medicine is no longer needed yet its in addition to that regular medicine
8) Government funded to give illusion of credibility
9) Its just like going to a yoga classWednesday, October 10, 2012
levitation
Obviously there's nothing new about the whimsy of levitation. It's been around since Aladdin and the Flying Carpet! That Mahesh should shoot himself in the foot with such nonsense only speaks to the extremely low opinion he had of our intelligence (and high opinion of his ability to fool others).
Mahesh was not delusional but simply knew he could get away with just about anything having, as he obviously felt he had in the palm of his hand, huge numbers of delusional and highly gullible true-believers. Convincing true-believers to give you their money is easier than taking candy from a baby.
Here's a fun film. At around 38 minutes or so into the film, the magician, whose abilities are quite remarkable, purports to interview a monk who can levitate. The scene is quite interesting and well set. Believable, too, except for all the candles and the cameraman who could have but somehow clearly did not film between the "monk" (actor?) and the wall behind him.
Had Mahesh got Doug Henning to build him some setup like this, he'd have had millions upon millions of followers within a week. There would have been huge waiting lists to not only learn TM, but Mahesh could have asked any price for his ersatz "spiritual development" or whatever he was getting away with pretending his TM and 'sidhi' concoction was all about.
Obviously, Mahesh didn't trust Henning; trust, in Maheshism, seems to be money-based: you pay a million $ and you get to become a "rājah" - 'course, we have no idea what the so-called rājahs know and anyone can waft about in flowing garments. If you look on the right hand column of our Blog, you'll see: Essential Documents and Articles - this may be all there is to know plus a few things the TMO would rather none of us knew!
The YouTube film is very useful. It illustrates how simple it is to WOW! people. Magicians are as old to humanity as the concept of entertainment. - TM as entertainment? No, not really. Benson and Wallace demonstrated that there really is something to TM, although I think Wallace's conclusion that there is alertness co-emergent with restfulness might be a strain on credulity. Way too often we have heard people either on the day of initiation or in follow-up say that they had no idea what was happening when they were meditating. But when cued, they would answer positively that they experienced what they had been suggested to have experienced. But at least the restfulness was measurable, TM really was a non-prescription tranquillizer (for many, for a while).
Dr. Benson, of course, demonstrated with real science that his "relaxation response" had not only some validity but actually accomplished something.
On a purely observational scale, TM allowed not only rest, but when increased beyond 20 minutes twice a day, it engendered a susceptibility to suggestion that any hypnotist would envy - and/or a decreased interest in critical thinking. Many people, blindly following Mahesh, became those delusional, highly gullible true-believers only too willing to finance Mahesh's belief in himself and spend hours every day doing something that gave the same old results. There have been no new results since "rest" - which is something to think about.
Now, randomly, we come to one of Mahesh's fiddled-with bits of pseudo-science, ADHD. This is also in the right hand column under Essential Documents and Articles. In the early days of TM there is definitely an experience of rest (how much/how little is indeterminate). I do not think that that is in any question by anybody. Beyond those early days, however, there is insufficient evidence to form any conclusion as the TM drop-out rate was consistently very high. Perhaps today, since TM teachers charge so much, dropping out becomes more problematic, amounting to acknowledging that one has throwing away a great deal of money for something of questionable utility. TM, for so many, has become an exercise in doing something over and over expecting different results, an expensive exercise in futility and, it would appear, pleasant hopelessness.
BUT it might well be this drop-out rate that Mahesh was most focused on when, recognizing that TM was only an exercise in rest for most, he began concocting more and more make-believe "solutions" to the world's problems to sell to more and more gullible people - making more and more money for himself and his family in India. He said "we'll use science to prove it" - meaning, we thought, that we'd use the scientific method to validate that what he claimed about TM was indeed true, because we believed that TM was what he claimed ... after all, we did TM, we experienced rest, we hadn't dropped out because we didn't experience rest! YET even more crucially, we believed in Mahesh ... just like some of the people in the crowd scenes in the YouTube film might have believed they were witnessing real magic. After all, many of those tricks are very difficult to explain.
What did Mahesh really mean about "using" science to prove "it" ... prove what, exactly? Who knows. Mahesh didn't chat. But it appears, especially from Mahesh's behaviour and craving for money, that he surely must have been spot-on aware that he couldn't possibly prove that TM did something it very clearly didn't do. Mahesh was cunning, not stupid.
So, all that faux-science? It endeavours to speak volumes of "proof" that Mahesh was what we thought he was; if TM looked legitimate, then it was obvious Mahesh was legitimate! The fiddled "studies" endeavour to validate Mahesh! All that junk science is simply manipulated to prove Mahesh was right, not that TM did anything other than generate or allow deep rest for some, but not all. His claims for TM, both before and after the Beatles, had come to nothing and after the Beatles dumped him he desperately needed proof about his legitimacy - because even those of us who were sincere believers were beginning to doubt! - I seriously question very, very much that anyone devoted to the idea that Mahesh was the real deal will give a toss about anything I have to say here - but for the rest of us, while we may want to enjoy the entertaining magic tricks, the prestidigitation and appearance of impossible things, we don't need to believe nonsense simply to validate one another's misconceptions and delusions about Mahesh and his clever tricks that swallowed our money.
Like magic tricks and entertainment, stories around the camp fire and the beginnings of theatre, TM is one thing, but it is not "spiritual development" in my opinion; nor is the relaxation response. It might be something to do instead of spiritual development, but it isn't spiritual development.
Of course, Dr. Benson has had the integrity to only focus on what his method actually does, what it can be demonstrated to actually accomplish; he has not needed to make false claims or pretentious accusations about the negativity in the atmosphere or CIA operatives trying to disrupt his empire (!). He has been up-front about what his method of relaxation accomplishes and has set an example for healers and compassionate people everywhere.
Mahesh was not delusional but simply knew he could get away with just about anything having, as he obviously felt he had in the palm of his hand, huge numbers of delusional and highly gullible true-believers. Convincing true-believers to give you their money is easier than taking candy from a baby.
Here's a fun film. At around 38 minutes or so into the film, the magician, whose abilities are quite remarkable, purports to interview a monk who can levitate. The scene is quite interesting and well set. Believable, too, except for all the candles and the cameraman who could have but somehow clearly did not film between the "monk" (actor?) and the wall behind him.
Had Mahesh got Doug Henning to build him some setup like this, he'd have had millions upon millions of followers within a week. There would have been huge waiting lists to not only learn TM, but Mahesh could have asked any price for his ersatz "spiritual development" or whatever he was getting away with pretending his TM and 'sidhi' concoction was all about.
Obviously, Mahesh didn't trust Henning; trust, in Maheshism, seems to be money-based: you pay a million $ and you get to become a "rājah" - 'course, we have no idea what the so-called rājahs know and anyone can waft about in flowing garments. If you look on the right hand column of our Blog, you'll see: Essential Documents and Articles - this may be all there is to know plus a few things the TMO would rather none of us knew!
The YouTube film is very useful. It illustrates how simple it is to WOW! people. Magicians are as old to humanity as the concept of entertainment. - TM as entertainment? No, not really. Benson and Wallace demonstrated that there really is something to TM, although I think Wallace's conclusion that there is alertness co-emergent with restfulness might be a strain on credulity. Way too often we have heard people either on the day of initiation or in follow-up say that they had no idea what was happening when they were meditating. But when cued, they would answer positively that they experienced what they had been suggested to have experienced. But at least the restfulness was measurable, TM really was a non-prescription tranquillizer (for many, for a while).
Dr. Benson, of course, demonstrated with real science that his "relaxation response" had not only some validity but actually accomplished something.
On a purely observational scale, TM allowed not only rest, but when increased beyond 20 minutes twice a day, it engendered a susceptibility to suggestion that any hypnotist would envy - and/or a decreased interest in critical thinking. Many people, blindly following Mahesh, became those delusional, highly gullible true-believers only too willing to finance Mahesh's belief in himself and spend hours every day doing something that gave the same old results. There have been no new results since "rest" - which is something to think about.
-
Now, randomly, we come to one of Mahesh's fiddled-with bits of pseudo-science, ADHD. This is also in the right hand column under Essential Documents and Articles. In the early days of TM there is definitely an experience of rest (how much/how little is indeterminate). I do not think that that is in any question by anybody. Beyond those early days, however, there is insufficient evidence to form any conclusion as the TM drop-out rate was consistently very high. Perhaps today, since TM teachers charge so much, dropping out becomes more problematic, amounting to acknowledging that one has throwing away a great deal of money for something of questionable utility. TM, for so many, has become an exercise in doing something over and over expecting different results, an expensive exercise in futility and, it would appear, pleasant hopelessness.
BUT it might well be this drop-out rate that Mahesh was most focused on when, recognizing that TM was only an exercise in rest for most, he began concocting more and more make-believe "solutions" to the world's problems to sell to more and more gullible people - making more and more money for himself and his family in India. He said "we'll use science to prove it" - meaning, we thought, that we'd use the scientific method to validate that what he claimed about TM was indeed true, because we believed that TM was what he claimed ... after all, we did TM, we experienced rest, we hadn't dropped out because we didn't experience rest! YET even more crucially, we believed in Mahesh ... just like some of the people in the crowd scenes in the YouTube film might have believed they were witnessing real magic. After all, many of those tricks are very difficult to explain.
What did Mahesh really mean about "using" science to prove "it" ... prove what, exactly? Who knows. Mahesh didn't chat. But it appears, especially from Mahesh's behaviour and craving for money, that he surely must have been spot-on aware that he couldn't possibly prove that TM did something it very clearly didn't do. Mahesh was cunning, not stupid.
So, all that faux-science? It endeavours to speak volumes of "proof" that Mahesh was what we thought he was; if TM looked legitimate, then it was obvious Mahesh was legitimate! The fiddled "studies" endeavour to validate Mahesh! All that junk science is simply manipulated to prove Mahesh was right, not that TM did anything other than generate or allow deep rest for some, but not all. His claims for TM, both before and after the Beatles, had come to nothing and after the Beatles dumped him he desperately needed proof about his legitimacy - because even those of us who were sincere believers were beginning to doubt! - I seriously question very, very much that anyone devoted to the idea that Mahesh was the real deal will give a toss about anything I have to say here - but for the rest of us, while we may want to enjoy the entertaining magic tricks, the prestidigitation and appearance of impossible things, we don't need to believe nonsense simply to validate one another's misconceptions and delusions about Mahesh and his clever tricks that swallowed our money.
Like magic tricks and entertainment, stories around the camp fire and the beginnings of theatre, TM is one thing, but it is not "spiritual development" in my opinion; nor is the relaxation response. It might be something to do instead of spiritual development, but it isn't spiritual development.
Of course, Dr. Benson has had the integrity to only focus on what his method actually does, what it can be demonstrated to actually accomplish; he has not needed to make false claims or pretentious accusations about the negativity in the atmosphere or CIA operatives trying to disrupt his empire (!). He has been up-front about what his method of relaxation accomplishes and has set an example for healers and compassionate people everywhere.
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