Maharishi's published tirade against healthcare

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation movement has for decades attempted to recruit medical doctors and scientists, primarily in the 1970's. Some of those people, after having been trained as TM teachers, have had positions in universities and medical institutions where they worked, with occasional success, to legitimize TM as some sort of beneficial therapy or medically valid intervention for a variety of ailments. Most recently, the David Lynch Foundation, the TM promoting organization founded by the late film director, has claimed that TM is a remedy for post traumatic stress disorder, selling the program to veterans and healthcare professionals and gaining some access to both the US military and to a few hospitals and universities. Scientific evidence for any of these claims is scarce to none, and what exists was largely authored by many of those same individuals.

What is not generally known is that the founder of Transcendental Meditation was militantly opposed to contemporary medicine and healthcare as it is generally practiced. His organizations offered "Maharishi Ayurveda" products and services, repackaging the traditional methods and remedies of India under his own brand name and trying, and largely failing, to obtain scientific evidence to support their claimed effectiveness.

In the late 1990s, as Maharishi's health failed, a number of publications apparently written by or dictated by him were issued by the movement's "Maharishi International University," which for a while was known as "Maharishi University of Management." An over 500 page volume, "Ideal India," which carries a 2001 copyright date, is a lengthy, detailed exposition of what Maharishi thought would be necessary to create a fully "Vedic" India, another example of his strategy to integrate fundamentalist Hindu/Vedic practices and doctrine, under the rubric of Transcendental Meditation practice, into government at every level in every country.

Buried in those pages is a "Resolution" which proposes to "to Ban Allopathic Medicine and Replace It with Maharishi’s Vedic Health-Care System." It begins with 74 "Whereas" assertions which serve to demonize modern medicine, mislabeled as "allopathic" and as a cause of disease and death. ("Allopathic" is a term originated by homeopaths in the early 1800s, and is now generally used by various quacks in much the same adversarial fashion as Maharishi used it here to describe contemporary conventional medicine.)  His rants primarily centered on the alleged harmful side effects of pharmaceuticals and medical procedures, which, ironically, had at one point saved Maharishi's own life, according to his former protege, Deepak Chopra. 

T.M. in Yoga Journal, March/April 2001

Just for fun, I'm sharing with you the results of my spring cleaning.  This week I was going through old magazines, and picked this issue at random to browse through.  Wow!  Maybe it was a slow month at Yoga Journal, because they sure filled up a lot of space with T.M. related stuff.  Maybe the T.M. organization (TMO) public relations department sent out a bunch of "infomercials" (advertisements disguised as news items.)

Here's what I found:

1.  Paid advertisement: "America's Premier Ayur Veda Health Center - Maharishi Vedic Medicine at the Raj. Offering medically supervised programs based on….."  It included a testimonial: "I decided to try The Raj to avoid a lung transplant. It saved my life. Today I can converse without coughing, my heartburn is gone…."

[Since this is the TMO I'm dealing with, I googled the patient's name.  For what it's worth, I found her obituary - she had died of cancer seven years after the advertisement, at the age of 71.  She was treated at The Raj for something other than cancer.  - Laurie]

2.   News note: "A recent study found that ancient Vedic healing techniques….Four patients suffering from diabetes, sarcoidosis, hypertension and Parkinsons….Three weeks of Maharishi Vedic Medicine which incorporates diet, herbs, purification, yoga, T.M., Vedic sound therapy," ["Vedic sound therapy" is the term the article used for chanting - Laurie] and "yaghyas" (sic) which were defined in the article as "a Vedic therapy for restoring the harmony between an individual and the cosmos."   "….Over 18 months, many of the symptoms were reduced and some were even able to lower or discontinue medication. Source: Behavioral Medicine 2000; 26: 34-46."

3. Health article: "Allergy Alert: Stop Sneezing with these Herbal Remedies….Medical Director of Raj Maharishi Ayur-Ved Health Center in Fairfield, Iowa…imbalance of kapha dosha…Director of Research for Maharishi Ayur-Ved Products International says…."

4.  Paid advertisement: "Experience the Youthful Skin Transformation. Our Youthful Skin(™) line contains potent, natural-sourced….$26.95 for sample pack (4-step regimen of 4 lotions)."

5.   Health article: "Bathe in the Elements: Ayurveda prescribes cleansing your body in water, air, earth, fire and space….Ayurvedic 'bathing'….For example, 'an air bath…of deep breathing and focused awareness of the breath…bathes the lungs…,' says a visiting consultant at The Raj, an ayurvedic health center in Fairfield, Iowa…."

6.   News note:  "The Beatles Anthology.…Some consider the Fab Four's personal friendship with the Maharishi to be an early inspiration for the popular rise of yoga and meditation in the West."

7.  First-person story:  This one had no mention of T.M., but it ended with this paragraph, which, considering the heartbreak that sometimes results from following Maharishi, seemed to me ironically  apropros:

"Don't bow down to just a man," [a local guru  - Laurie]  I reply.  "Instead, bow down to your own Self that you recognize inside him.  Then bowing down to him is no different than bowing down before your own higher nature."  My student finally did choose to bow down.  Afterward, he looked relieved.  That's one of the opportunities that gurus provide:  They give us a chance to put aside our selfishness and replace it with surrender and service."

  

SH*T RU'S SAY

Comedic Dogma from TM SGAs (Second Generation Adults).
Thanks to Lanie, Soangela and Chamolie!

Showcases crazy-making thought-stopping techniques of a TM-based upbringing.





(Do any other post-TM women, besides me, avoid pastel shawls?)

Enjoy!

Jai to Freedom!

TM-Free News Brief, 23 February 2011

"Pulse Diagnosis" quackery, coming to a hospital near you? Almost twenty years ago, Andrew Skolnick's expose' of Maharishi Ayur-Veda appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. An article co-authored by Deepak Chopra, praising the alleged benefits of these products, had previously appeared in the journal, and the authors had failed to disclose their financial association with the movement's commercial enterprises. This led to Skolnick's investigation of the movement, which included this key section:

An investigation of the movement's marketing practices reveals what appears to be a widespread pattern of misinformation, deception, and manipulation of lay and scientific news media. This campaign appears to be aimed at earning at least the look of scientific respectability for the TM movement, as well as at making profits from sales of the many products and services that carry the Maharishi's name.

It appears that after twenty years of the TM movement's hammering of the medical establishment, the coming-of-middle-age of longtime TM devotees, and the apparent acceptance of outright quackery across-the-board by the healthcare industry, the promoters of Maharishi Ayur-Veda may now be gaining unimpeded and unquestioning entry to the nation's top medical institutions.

The "Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine" - another example of the growing and inexplicable trend of medical schools and healthcare providers throwing science-based medicine overboard in favor of, presumably more profitable, quackery and pseudoscience - will be sponsoring a "training program for health professionals" in "Clinical Ayurveda™," which appears to be yet another of the TM movement's trademarked names for its products. The program is hosted by three medical doctors who are also employees of the TM movement, in its "Maharishi Ayur-Veda Association of America" (MAAA). One of the three doctors, Kulreet Chaudhary, who's prominently featured on the website of this TM front group, is also on the staff of Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California. For some reason, John Hagelin is also affilated with these so-called "medical education programs," a man whose main talents these days seem to be wearing a gold crown and spouting gibberish.

Featured in this so-called "training program for health professionals" is "pulse diagnosis," which has been described by various critics as "a variation of palm reading" or "no more plausible than analysis of toenail clippings." It involves taking the pulse of a patient and rendering, just from that, a diagnosis of disease. Unlike much pseudoscience, this program appears to be interfering with the decision-making ability of doctors, seemingly suggesting that they may ignore scientifically-valid methods of diagnosis in favor of what they think they learn by taking the pulse.

Ironically, considering the AMA's original role in helping debunk Maharishi Ayur-Veda and its proponents twenty years ago, this "training program" now offers "AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™" for participation.

Update, 24 February: A further search of the web indicates that this program of offering AMA-approved CME credit for courses in Maharishi Ayur-Veda under the auspices of Scripps is not new; this website, operated by MAAA, announced a previous course, which began in November, 2009 and ran through May, 2010.

• Clinical Ayurveda™ - A Practical Training Program for Health Professionals - Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine
• Maharishi Ayur-Veda: guru's marketing scheme promises the world eternal 'perfect health', Andrew A. Skolnick, JAMA, Medical News & Perspectives, Oct. 2, 1991
• Course Faculty and Curriculum Development Committee, Maharishi Ayur-Veda Association of America
• Quackademic medicine in the U.S.: The view from the U.K., Orac, Respectful Insolence, Scienceblogs, February 18, 2008
  
• "Heaven on Earth." Any second now. Mike Doughney, TM-Free Blog, January 25, 2011

Another report on Transcendental Meditation in San Francisco public schools surfaces: San Francisco public radio station KALW recently produced a story on the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) program to introduce TM in three San Francisco public schools. In this report, the only hint of any evidence that the TM program in these schools is effective is a reference to the usual unscientific marketing surveys and anecdotes TM promoters regularly spew, made midway through the report: "Most of the evidence of the program is anecdotal. Students and teachers participate willingly and say it’s helpful for them, and surveys that school has done return positive feedback."

In the past, we've noted various reports about two of the San Francisco schools mentioned, Visitacion Valley Middle School and Everett Middle School, from various sources including the DLF. In 2009 TM-Free received this unconfirmed report of "a crew of 20 bullying, clueless T.M. fanatics working for the David Lynch Foundation" at Everett. This is the first mention I've been able to find of this program having been introduced at a third school, John O’Connell High.

A web page from the Everett Middle School website reads much like the same promotional materials TM salespeople have used for decades, emphasizing "a simple, scientifically proven, nonreligious technique," all points which are regularly disputed by former meditators and critics. As with many of the David Lynch programs in public schools, TM is renamed "quiet time;" the artifice of a "quiet time" of as short as 60 seconds has been known to be used by some as a vehicle to introduce, or legitimize, prayer in public schools. The Everett website also prominently features a TM/DLF front group, the "US Committee for Stress-Free Schools," which from its description is the actual corporate entity attempting to introduce the TM program into public schools.

James Dierke, mentioned in the report as the principal at Visitacion Valley, has been named as an adviser to one of the many TM organization front groups pushing to establish the TM program in public schools; the people identifed on such websites are often if not almost always longtime meditators, having started TM during its height of popularity in the mid-1970's.

• From time-out to quiet time: meditation comes to SF schools, Natalie Jones, KALW News, February 10, 2011
• Report on TM in San Francisco Schools, TM-Free Blog, April 7, 2009
• Quiet Time - About the Program, Everett Middle School
• Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education - Management
• TM in public schools - TM-Free Blog label
• Know Your Rights: Religion in Public Schools A Guide for Administrators and Teachers - ACLU of Tennessee - see "Moment of Silence" section
• Map: Lynchian Education

David still wants to fly, really, really badly: The Sunday Times magazine (London) published a lengthy feature article on David Lynch, his foundation, and TM at the end of December, and it just found its way to my desk. Alex Hannaford wrote up a wonderful lede, quietly indicating from the start that maybe the rest of the world should assume David Lynch isn't the least bit sane, particularly when he starts talking about interfering with the education of children by teaching them TM:

David Lynch is sitting at a huge desk in his studio --a mess of boxes, bits of wood and electric cable -- telling me how he believes he will one day be able to fly. As in levitate. Take off. Vooom. For him, a champion of Transcendental Meditation, Yogic Flying would be the ultimate life-enhancing experience. The technique involves bouncing along the floor in the yoga lotus position, and practitioners are convinced that eventually the "collective cosmic consciousness" generated will be so powerful that they will be able to raise themselves into the air and soar. "Yeah, right now it's hopping, not flying," Lynch says, looking very serious. "It's intense bliss. They don't get tired. On the contrary, just more and more energy and bliss propels them up in the air." He is no doubt that, as world negativity dissolves, meditators will have lift-off. And he would like British schoolchildren to learn how to do it, too.

This silly notion that people are about to fly any second now if only "negativity dissolves" is the same kind of crap I heard over thirty years ago. Some people simply refuse to grow up, don't they? All the more reason to keep Lynch and his minions away from schools of any kind. Let's be clear, that one of Maharishi's last directives, echoed by Lynch here, was to make sure that middle and secondary school students were taught, not just how to meditate, but also "Yogic Flying" and the rest of the anti-scientific quackery - some would say "religion" - that the "Global Country" sells.

• Mantra with a mission, Alex Hannaford, Sunday Times Magazine, December 26, 2010

Briefly: More news from David Sieveking; his documentary/expose film on today's TM movement, "David Wants To Fly," has received three award pre-nominations, and continues to be shown in the U.S. at various film festivals... David Lynch's "online charity music label" kicks off; despite all the press and hype, only a handful of paying downloads in the first few days of the campaign... The transfer of a UK Maharishi School to state control (story in the 9 February News Brief) has come under more criticism.


The TM-Free Blog is now on Facebook, where you'll see both pointers to new postings here at the Blog and news articles and other items as we receive them.

There's also a TM-Free Twitter stream.

TM-Free News Brief, 23 February 2011. Published irregularly here on Wednesdays by Mike Doughney, who's solely responsible for its content unless otherwise noted.

Getting Out of the Mindset

As requested, this is a duplicate post from today's post on Gina's personal blog, Getting Out of the Mindset

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A young adult (identity withheld on request) sent an email titled “Getting out of the mindset.” In an extensive self-revelatory and reflective message, this young adult explained having been born and raised in the TM community of Fairfield, Iowa, educated K-12 in Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment (MSAE) including some time at Maharishi University of Management (MUM).

While grateful for the deep connections of close friends in the precious home community, this person’s doubts about TM’s validity spurred personal searching into the background of TM and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This person concluded that TM is not what the teachings portray. The young adult wrote of the ensuing personal liberation from a restrictive mindset, “ever since I have been skeptical of about every idea I have, realizing it may or may not be true. Once you embrace that idea you become more powerful, you have more control over your mind and your life, and I have become a happier, smarter, more understanding person because of it.”

This person sent an email because, “Since this first big anti-TM event I have still been unable to completely free myself of the TM doctrine... and still hold some concept that TM might be special.... Indoctrination is frightening, and letting go of world views you have had since you were old enough to understand them is a tough process.. I keep wanting to move out of Fairfield but the utopian style community the movement has established here is hard to escape. I have many, many friends who I love dearly here, and to leave them behind is a scary thought. What saddens me is that most of my friends are still in the TM mindset to some degree. None of them take it very seriously but it still remains in the back of their head that TM is special, jyotish can tell them what will happen in their lives, and that nature can "support" certain things they do. If you have any interesting stories or points to relate to me about my process of escape I would love to hear them! The topic interests me a lot.”

Name withheld by request
Full email not reproduced here at the writer’s request; only a few pertinent quotes included above.

Gina’s comment to readers of this blog: I am neither a professional exit counselor, nor therapist. I hold a deep respect for the potential of existential and psychological crisis when one questions all they have been raised to believe, and the community they love. Many from the TM Movement have been close to others’ psychotic breaks or suicide attempts when the duress of such personal crisis hits. Thus, I avoid acting in a therapeutic role and do not accept clients for cult recovery assistance. Professionals in the field of cult recovery are linked to the right on this blog. The young adult, above, already formed personal conclusions about involvement with the TM Movement. The writer, previously unknown to me, requested personal stories about leaving TM. My response follows.

Hello _____,

Thank you for your kind and heartfelt letter.  I sigh deeply.

You are intelligent and independent thinking.  Good for you!  Your compassionate self and social analysis will serve you well in life!

Your anguish is real.  It is hard to leave a utopian community and mindset.  Oh so hard. However, in a true utopia, you would not fear reprisal from expressing your own opinions. The outside world is not so scary, not tomasic, not full of rakshasas as you have been told.  However, you will never again find the "instant community" of enmeshed, almost extended family, to which you are accustomed in Fairfield. 

You CAN, with time, develop meaningful friendships and deep connections, with others outside of Fairfield.  You can meet others who are willing to question themselves, share discussions of same, and support one another in finding one's own path of integrity through life.  However, the bonds are not instant. Unlike cult life, healthy bonds are not instantaneous. True connection develops over time, sharing consistently with integrity, and with acceptance of differing opinions.

It is true -- you will never find the intensity of social closeness... e.g. enmeshment... that you experience in Fairfield, unless you join another cult!

Fairfield IS a special place, but it is not totally unique. Other cult based communities offer their version of the same social dynamics in which you were raised. There is a range of group-think within Fairfield, as you well know. This is also a common phenomenon in neighborhoods surrounding other cult communities throughout the world.

It is normal to be anxious about losing your loved ones and family from expressing your opinion in a cult setting. In a noncult setting, it is extremely abnormal to have such anxiety. you have normal responses to an abnormal situation. It can be frustrating to have circuitous thought-stopping conversations that return forever to TM, Ayurveda, and jyotish to solve everything. You probably don't want to hurt the feelings of those you love by directly saying "That's ridiculous!"

You are correct, in my opinion -- once you embrace the ability to question EVERYTHING -- you become more personally "powerful".. thus the name of my blog "Coming to Life."

I respect your desire for anonymity, as your social and professional connections remain TM and Fairfield based. Some of those whom I love in Fairfield are well aware of my online activism against the TMOrg and Maharishi’s leadership; others have ended our friendship over my outspokenness. You see, one is predicted to fail if they leave the deemed support of the deemed-utopia. Instead, others and myself have succeeded on the outside. What greater threat could there be?

You requested personal stories of “escape.” In that vein, I offer a bit of personal experience. You may find it helpful.

I, too, dearly love the Fairfield community. I was the first 'ru to graduate from Fairfield High School in 1975, before MIU prep began a middle school or high school. My daughter attended K-2nd grade at MIU Prep (MSAE's precursor). We will always miss the idealistic "loving" community that you call home.

Like avoiding social heroin, we could never again live in such a restrictive setting. And like a recovered heroin addict, we will always miss the addictive high of our former community’s enmeshment. Truly, there are many in Fairfield who I love deeply and forever. I will not name them. You and I must know many of the same people.

The only resources that I can offer you, are those linked on my blogsite. You can, of course, reach toward the "extended TM family” of the grown kids who left. They help one another throughout the world. In most major cities in the US there are small groups of young adults who come from Fairfield. They support one another.  I don't have a listing of such.  It's not my place to disclose who I'm in touch with.  You could ask around for contacts, perhaps older siblings of your friends.   As you know, there is a range of continued belief in TM and Maharishi. Many former TMers follow Amachi or other gurus.  Some joined born-again Christian groups or the Mormons to provide instant community.

I suggest that you apply to a non-TM university somewhere. You will sharpen your mind while developing relationships with other motivated young adults and university faculty based upon a commonality of interests, rather than based upon adoption of another’s dogma.

Obviously from my online voice, I've rejected most of the TMO official teachings and lifestyle.  My home even has a south facing entrance!  I still prefer natural fiber clothing and a healthy lifestyle. I still like Indian food! Unlike many TM kids, I've never been a rebellious party-animal.

After leaving Fairfield, my (now grown) children were raised with swim team, little league and the Boy Scouts in an upper middle class suburb.  We've made lifelong friends with amazing people who never heard of Maharishi, other than "Oh, the Beatles followed him briefly!".  We spent some time with Unity church, to give my children a respect for open spirituality.  No more church or spiritual labels, now that the kids are grown.  My grown children live honest lives of integrity; they do not attend church. Yes, it was immensely difficult for me to learn to connect with non-TMers, to consciously eliminate my TM-based vocabulary and worldview. But it is possible. If I could do it without cult recovery information and resources, and no other ex-TMers to assist, then you certainly can succeed! I suggest accessing professional cult-recovery resources; your adjustment will be much smoother with the information that is now readily available.

My father died last year in fantasy TM-think, after decades of needless pain while paying for costly TM cures through yagyas, ayurveda, jyotish, mystical talisman gemstones and other such. My aging mother continues the same vein while spouting Maharishi-isms.  I couldn't tell you how my adult-kids cope with the extremes cult-think or non-cult from their parents. My grown kids (3rd generation TMers) tease me as being part of the "ACC" (Anti-Cult Cult). I’ve told them to be careful because, “cult think / social enmeshment is our family illness.” Be wary of false flattery. Trust others’ behaviors over their words or kisses.

The International Cultic Studies Association runs workshops for those born or raised in cults - Second Generation Adults (SGAs), that’s you and me.  The ICSA workshop for SGAs could help you sort things out, without providing another dogma. My adult daughter found one SGA workshop helpful, even though she left Fairfield at the age of 10; she is really a 3rd generation.  For info on those workshops, click HERE. ICSA also has SGA mini-workshops associated with their annual international conferences, the next one will be in New York City this summer, for information on the NYC conference, click HERE.

Good for you - to access resources to help you reflect back onto your community.   Breaking free is a lonely process, compared to the seeming validation of group-think, but you will ultimately be stronger and more real. As Shakespeare wrote, “This above all: to thine ownself be true and it shall follow as the day the night - thou can’st not then be false to any man.” That’s the bottom line.

Coming to your own perspective on YOU, your community and your life is an important step in claiming your autonomous adulthood!  We must make difficult choices as we move forward into autonomous adulthood.  Sounds like you may be on the verge of such a step!

Let me know if you visit the Bay Area.  I'd be happy to take you out for lunch or coffee.

You are intelligent and determined - you will make it!

With admiration and respect.  

Warmly, 
Gina :)

Transcendental Meditation Offering CME Credit to Health Professionals

I received an email on a Maharishi Ayur-Veda Training course in July targeted at physicians and other health professionals. (Many thanks to the anonymous tipster!)

According to the flyer, "Participants will develop practical skills for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease that can immediately be applied in practice."

I wonder what scientifically trained health professionals will make of diagnosing critical health conditions by merely "reading" a wrist pulse -- and treating them with herbal preparations that have been found in the past to be contaminated with insect and fecal matter?

The course looks like an intensive "large group awareness training," similar to courses taught by est, LandMark, or Scientology. Course participants will spend 3-days at a time isolated at Maharishi University of Management.

I wonder if the TM Org is taking a page from Scientology's playbook, focusing on recruiting "medical doctors, osteopathic physicians, chiropractic physicians, naturopathic physicians, nurse practioners, physician assistants, and other allied health professionals."

While we do not endorse this or any program offered by TM, and urge caution when considering taking part in such courses, interested readers can read more about the course here.

Wishing for immortality

There's a section of the Maharishi University of Management website that contains an archive of the school's yearbooks - most of them from the days when it was called Maharishi International University, from 1975 through 2004. They're a fascinating window into some of the often unwritten history of the TM movement - some of them show what projects were important at the time, and some show how the claims that were made, the language that was used, and the expectations among people involved with TM, changed over time.

This is an example of one of those claims or expectations. Back in the early to mid-1980's, some years after the TM movement introduced the "TM-Sidhi" program that featured bouncing on foam rubber and calling it "flying," the movement rolled out its own version of "ayurveda" and other dubious products. Around that time, primed by the expectation created by gatherings with names like "Taste of Utopia," there was a lot of talk about "immortality." Some might claim in hindsight that most people didn't take those claims seriously. But some obviously did.

This is a 1986 yearbook advertisement for the local Maharishi Ayurveda store. It suggests that for at least some around the MIU and the TM movement at the time, the expectation of a lifetime of more than 200 years among those who participated in the TM movement's programs was perfectly normal. It wasn't something that could easily be found in print, but it was obviously a common enough belief that this ad was accepted and printed in the school's yearbook. Putting the last line in quotes makes the claim perfectly deniable; it could be defended as the statement of some random person who could have expressed the hope of being around for a 200 year class reunion. Unlike the movement's direct claims made when marketing its products, it seems to originate from the expectations that were generated among meditators, from the people who bought the movement's claims, hook, line and sinker.

Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi, and Immortality

I received an interesting email today and thought I'd share it. The anonymous author represents himself as someone who knew the Maharishi face-to-face. I look forward to reading your comments below on the ideas my correspondent puts forth.

Maharishi, in our first lecture on my TTC, talked about “getting an Absolute Body”; in other words, becoming immortal in the flesh. My first reaction on hearing of his death was: you were lying or you were deceived, Maharishi, to be speaking about deathlessness in the body when you yourself were unable to avoid physical death. For me, the greatest illusion that was implicit in all that Maharishi did and said, was that he was beyond the laws of the physical universe. That he therefore could determine his own destiny—and this especially included the matter of the contingency of his own death. That he actually died of old age explodes the very basis of the hallucination he impressed upon the consciousness of all of us who were so convinced of his spiritual authority and superiority: that we could even aspire to a kind of changeless biological integrity. Maharishi proved in the example of himself that he was powerless to effect any difference in his own ultimate fate as a human being.

But here’s what I really want to say, something that cannot of course be empirically confirmed: Maharishi did have a human soul; that soul now is getting confronted by the powers which mete out the consequences of one’s deeds in this life. And in this process Maharishi is getting humiliated, disgraced, and punished—this is a spectacle that is being witnessed throughout the entirety of invisible creation. If I may say it, I think Maharishi was in some very personal sense the enemy of his creator; he was born to hate his creator. But—and yes, this is only but my intuition—his individual integrity (which became corrupted over the course of his lifetime) is being weakened in his post-death existence, and therefore his influence, objectively, over his followers is attenuating. Whether they know this or not.

Maharishi is face-to-face with the reality of who he allowed himself to become, and yet his ordeal can never bring about contrition or shame; it is too late for that. It never was in Maharishi to take moral responsibility for his actions. Maharishi is a damned soul—whether you think about that metaphorically or literally. Certainly all the powers of evil in the universe got behind Maharishi to make him capable of giving extraordinary mystical experiences to thousands of human beings (including myself). Experiences which had no real efficacy at all in making an individual a more beautiful human being. These powers (the mantra demons especially) on the contrary ultimately sought (and still seek) to alienate human beings from reality. And this is what happened to each and every person who practiced Maharishi’s techniques. The damage done by Transcendental Meditation and the Sidhis is incalculable—and I have seen this in every person who has been devoted to Maharishi. The whole thing (at least outside of India) will inexorably come to an end: within a decade I predict everyone in the TMO will be living virtually on faith alone.

There was something about Maharishi’s death that signaled the ironic declaration of what reality thinks of him and the validity of his techniques. It seems to me the whole TM phenomenon was the most marvelous deception ever perpetrated upon the human race. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was the arch-seducer—even of the very best of persons. But I believe only the baby-boomer generation felt the real power of this false grace; it cannot be efficaciously transmitted to successive generations—and won’t be. We are going to see the gradual disillusionment of those who most believed in Maharishi. Some day perhaps we will know who Maharishi really was. For myself (who got to know him face-to-face) he turned out to be the antithesis of what I first thought he was: from the most charming and inscrutable sage to the most subtle and treacherous scoundrel.

I want to be clear, I agree with much and disagree with some of what our author has written. But I think he represents his viewpoint clearly and well -- and I believe many people will agree with what he wrote.

On my TTC in 1978, the Maharishi also talked about physical immortality being possible through the Transcendental Meditation program. He said something to the ffect that since change is always taking place in our bodies anyway, that change could improve our health rather leading to death. He said that physical immortality was possible through TM. I don't remember the words exactly. He went on to say some physical substances, some preparations might help this process. I believe he was alluding to Rasayanas and ayurvedic preparations, although he did not use those words. Also, he did not use the phrase "Absolute Body" on my TTC, although I may simply have forgotten this phrase.

If you are interested in sharing your experiences with Transcendental Meditation, whether anonymously or not, consider emailing me at jmknapp53@gmail.com.

From the Los Angeles Times- Ayurvedic Medicines Often Contaminated Study Says

UPDATE: Here is the missing link to the LA Times.

Mercury Poisoning related to Ayur Vedic Medicinals

Some old TM friends suffered from mercury poisonings, presumably related to their use of Maharishi Ayur-Ved formulas.

They are wealthy so easily afforded medical treatment, as well as their prior extensive use of Maharishi Ayur-Ved products which created their mercury toxicity in the first place.
They avoided a public suit because they have family still devoted to Maharishi.

However, today's Vancouver Sun reports hospitalizations of Indo-Canadians whose mercury poisoning is attributed to AyuVedic medicinals.

Worthwhile links

It's about time! Read this :

Vedic City woman charges herbs caused lead poisoning


Photo documentary of Maharishi's funerary procession and banquet.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Final Sanskara; Images of a Pilgrimage

Vaastu Architecture goes maintstream

The Bay Area - great marketplace!

Feng shui? Forget it. Vaastu shastra is now attracting followers.


Hindu home design ideal makes its way west

Another Great "Load of Bright" Article -- on AyurVeda

Read all about it.

J.