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. 

Maharishi's meeting with Hindu supremacist, right-wing political leaders

The close relationship between Maharishi and his successors, and some of India’s Hindu supremacist political leaders, has been hinted at from time to time. Even as far back as 1968, Paul McCartney and John Lennon were warned that Maharishi was connected with right-wing politicians there.

Destruction of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992.
Image from video of an October 2016 meeting at the
TM organization's Vlodrop headquarters.
Meaning of "Jai Sri Ram"

An essay written in 2006 by an Amsterdam teacher who did liaison work for the Embassy of India in the Netherlands reveals that two of India’s most controversial right-wing politicians met with Maharishi in the early 1990s. This meeting occurred around the time that both of those political leaders directed the violent and deadly destruction of a prominent Muslim mosque in Ayodhya.

A brief story in the India Post of June 13, 2014, partially attributed to a TM teacher, suggests that there’s long been a relationship between the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, and Maharishi’s organization.

In 1992 Modi is said to have been among a political delegation from India that Maharishi invited to MERU, Holland to meet with him. Modi was allegedly already practicing Transcendental Meditation at that time. After the visit, Maharishi is said to have commented that Modi would some day bring about some very good changes.

Without corroborating evidence from some other direction, it’s difficult to take such a statement seriously. But in fact, there exists an eyewitness report of such a meeting with a political delegation, at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s residence in Vlodrop, Holland, around that time.

Allen Ginsberg on Maharishi: "he sounds inexperienced or ignorant and unfamiliarly authoritarian"

There's this widespread misconception about the basic nature of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that shows up in a lot of news reporting and reminiscing about him, even in his New York Times obituary, where they say, "he was often dismissed as a hippie mystic."

What doesn't seem to have been mentioned very often is that the yogi detested "hippies." His politics, as much as he ever expressed them, were quite illiberal and entirely supportive of the "establishment," and he maintained ties with right-wing, Hindu nationalist politicians in India. Here in the US, many of his followers were of that class that are today often called the "one percent" - celebrities, businessmen, and billionaires like Oprah Winfrey ($2.7 billion) and Ray Dalio ($18.7 billion). (That's why I often call TM "the favorite meditation technique of the om percent.") Maharishi's fabled ashram in Rishikesh was paid for in 1963 with a $100,000 donation (almost a million in today's dollars) from tobacco heiress Doris Duke ($1.3 billion at her 1993 death).

Girish Varma with India defense minister, and former
president of the BJP, Rajnath Singh, August 2019

The not-so-obvious political leanings of the founder of TM are still relevant today, when it turns out that his nephew and apparent heir to the TM movement in India, Girish Varma (aka Brahmachari Girish Ji) spends a lot of time hanging out with politicians of the ruling party in India, the Hindu supremacist/nationalist, right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Rather than obscuring or avoiding mention of those connections, as they used to, today all you need to do is follow Varma's Facebook to see the photographic evidence. In this photo he's meeting with the defense minister, congratulating him on his party's recent election victory.

With all that in mind, here's philosopher and poet Allen Ginsberg's description of his brief meeting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in January of 1968. This was published in the London underground newspaper, The International Times, and this article was reprinted in other underground and alternative newspapers in the following months.

---

The Maharishi and Me
by Allen Ginsberg

International Times, #26, Feb 16 - 29, 1968
Fifth Estate, #54, May 16 - 31, 1968

Allen Ginsburg in 1979.
Dutch National Archives -
 Wikimedia Commons

I saw Maharishi speak here January 21st and then went up to the Plaza Hotel that evening (I’d phoned for tickets to his organization and on return telephone call they invited me up, saying Maharishi wanted to see me)… so surrounded by his disciples I sat at his feet on the floor and listened while he spoke.

At a previous press conference I’d not been at I heard he’s said all sorts of outlandish things like poverty was laziness and I saw in “IT” (International Times, an English underground paper) his equatory communism—weakism. So after I was introduced I sat at his feet and literally started yelling at him… spoke for half an hour almost, challenging, arguing… all in good humor though his business managers and devotees gasped with horror occasionally. But I never got impolite and he stayed calm and rather sweet so no harm.

the end of playing the game

TM: religion, cult, science? 

Sure, why not! 

It's how you play the game, plain and simple. 

An old-time friend wanted to know why I, such a devoted, committed, true-believer (in the old days), quit TM. When I said I began to feel that I was living a lie, he declared a whiff of bovine excrement. He was right.

It was so much more than that. But the words that told the story were short in coming, suddenly. Hard to believe, I know, given my propensity for rants.

What was really going on? what had really gone on?

Some folks find that TM is ok, lets them feel rested and lets them go about their business feeling free-er ... ok, less stressed. Is that a lie, too? Mahesh said, I thought quite rightly, that we judge the effectiveness of meditation by our results in activity. I don't know any TMers any more. Haven't met one in years. Are they good, kind, effective, happy people? Does anyone know? Or is expecting to find good, kind, effective, happy people anywhere a contemporary myth and fantasy?

Unfortunately, like drivers on the highway, we only notice the ones who cause accidents, vehicular trouble. Just as unfortunately, I met lots of TM casualties. To me, they were "proof" that there was something absolutely NOT universal about Mahesh's panacea. Something whiffy about the TMO party-line.

When I compare the true-believing big-wig organizational whoo-has on YouTube (including the head whoo-ha, David Lynch) I wonder just who Maheshism is benefiting, other than whoever is in charge of Mahesh's bank account. I don't see and hear solid-based logic and clarity. I hear proselytising and belief-based fantasy. Perhaps I am jaded (oh, horrors). Yet, I think that is not the case. Logic is logic and I hear alternative-logic, alternative-facts and lofty "spiritual" crap-speak.

Any ideas? experiences, commentaries?

Friends tell me that Leigh Remini's TV episodes on Scientology are informative, worthwhile watching. I shy away from even clarifying-cult talk; it's just too full of the old days, somehow. Will there, ever/someday, be a post-TM-version of Leigh Remmini's courage, clarity and forthcoming? I hope, but do not restrain my respirations.

Mahesh envied Hubbard (his apparent success, anyway) and I guess, like the current U. S. President, tried to outdo what he considered a rival. I see a lot of similarity between Mahesh (the one I knew in private) and the very public current President. One shudders at the thought of what goes on in private in the oval office one hears so little about! but that's probably another story inappropriate for this Blog.

So, what are current TMers like, the Fairfield variety, the ordinary other-than-Fairfield variety, the run-of the mill variety? do they talk like the YouTube variety? are they really successful, skilled in action and so on?

 I, a curious reader, want to know.

Review of "Greetings from Utopia Park; Surviving a Transcendent Childhood" by Claire Hoffman

Greetings from Utopia Park; Surviving a Transcendent Childhood

by Claire Hoffman

(2016) HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 265 pages

Claire Hoffman offers a tender and honest memoir about her childhood in Transcendental Meditation’s mecca in Fairfield, Iowa. Born in 1977 to parents practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM), Claire lived in TM’s Iowa community from age 5-16. For those seeking a full exposé about TM's lifestyles, this would not be the story for you.

The preface opens with the author in present time, in her mid-thirties. As a successful journalist, she is a happily married young mother living away from cult origins. She returns to her former community to resolve what she labels as youthful cynicism. She wants to believe and thus registers for an advanced TM program to learn to fly. Belief versus cynicism is the thread winding through her narrative.

Clare then weaves a beautifully written story from the 1970’s seduction of her hippy parents by the Beatles’ guru during TM’s heyday. The young adults find Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s promise of inner tranquility, world peace, and eventually a community with other meditators to be a welcome respite from their own abusive childhoods. Claire is their second child. When her father stops practicing TM, succumbs to alcoholism, and abandons his young family in New York City, her mother lacks the means to support her children. Initially they relocate from New York to the Florida home of Claire’s grandmother, then resettle in Fairfield, Iowa with Maharishi’s so-called “Ideal Society” outside his university. 

Young Claire eagerly anticipates enrolling in her third kindergarten that year to join classmates who share a lifestyle and also practice TM’s childhood mantra meditation, or “Word of Wisdom” - she quickly learns she will not attend Maharishi’s private school because the private tuition is prohibitive. Instead, she and her brother attend a local public school where classmates taunt them as “Ru’s”, short for “Guroos”. An anonymous sponsor eventually enables Claire and her brother to attend Maharishi’s school. She happily dons the requisite blue jumper and bow tie to blend with other children who together sing Maharishi songs, learn their guru’s teachings interwoven with the three R’s, and receive grades for meditation.

When they move into one of two hundred dilapidated trailer homes in “Utopia Park”, Claire and her brother merge with a close-knit subculture of unsupervised children who create excitement while parents daily attend hours of group “Program” meditation. A few unusual childhood deaths provide a shadowy backdrop to other childhood mishaps. She has a close brush with a man who befriends children and targets Claire alone for physical exploration; she runs from his apartment while he showers with the bathroom door open. She mentions others’ stories of wild teenage explorations, fathers who have affairs with teenage babysitters, and easy access to recreational drugs. She describes her world as “binary”, divided between those who follow Maharishi’s teachings versus those who are not to be trusted. Their mother struggles financially through a series of jobs with meditator companies and a series of heartbreaks with sequential boyfriends. In contrast to her family’s struggles, Claire provides a brief overview of TM’s history and mentions Maharishi’s multibillion dollar global empire.

Their father becomes sober and reenters the lives of his now adolescent children to explain that they live in a cult. Her father is a writer who encourages his children to express themselves. As Claire prepares to enter high school, her anonymous sponsorship for Maharishi school evaporates. She enrolls in Fairfield’s public high school along with other TM kids who are stigmatized because their families cannot afford Maharishi School. She finds her way with “townie” teens. After a drug laden party at an abandoned rock quarry, sixteen year old Claire can no longer tolerate the confusing lifestyle. She apologizes to her mother and joins her father in California to finish school and pursue mainstream education and lifestyle.

The story jumps forward fifteen years to find Claire, an accomplished professional, flipping perspective on her early years. She holds a faculty position with the University of California and has published articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Rolling Stone. With a supportive husband and crying baby, Claire has a crisis of meaning in her seemingly mundane life. She misses her community and connection to a higher purpose. In an ironic twist, she writes she misses the “safety” of her childhood community. 

TM luminaries David Lynch and Bobby Roth invite Claire to meetings in Los Angeles with Hollywood celebrities recently recruited to Transcendental Meditation, causing her to question her youthful cynicism. She feels that her negativity from a TM childhood should not interfere with celebrities’ benefitting from TM. Lynch and Roth meet individually with Claire, tempting her back to her roots. The memoir concludes as it began. Claire attends advanced meditation retreats and returns to her childhood home to learn TM’s advanced meditation to fly, bouncing on high density foam. She experiences the inner bliss that initially captivated her mother. However, she fails to mention the $5,000 price tag for TM’s advanced flying program; she does not disclose her mystical meditation mantra nor advanced techniques. When Claire's daughter learns her “Word her Wisdom”, she reveals her meditation mantra is “wisdom” which Bobby Roth verifies. Claire is surprised that it’s not a meaningless sound, but fails to mention TM’s touted meaningless sounds are derived from Hindu deities.

In the Epilogue she reflects that utopia didn’t exist, but the quest for bliss, satisfaction and inner peace were hard to relinquish. She states the TM Movement was not a failure, and that her community was not fooled. She acknowledges their sincere desire to build utopia and pursuit of a shared dream… “what mattered was the believing. The willingness to believe is everything.” She admits that today “. . . one of the hardest things to see are the staff members who have worked there for decades, giving their time and their lives to a cause that is no longer there. Their guru is dead and the fortune he amassed from his followers is being fought over in Indian probate court.”

The author tenderly describes both idealism and frank details of destructive neglect in her childhood community. However, when summarizing TM’s scientific benefits, she does not question research methodology, nor mention alternatives.

In the acknowledgements section Claire thanks lifelong friends, alluding to other experiences, “I know you all have different lenses with which you view our shared past but I hope you recognize the one you read here.” She thanks Bobby Roth for “his openhearted invitation to me to keep Transcendental Meditation in my life, despite my cynical and questioning heart. It is in many ways thanks to him that I still practice - and enjoy - meditation today.” She is grateful for her mother’s love and hard work to raise her children, stating that this memoir “is really just a bumbling, inept love letter to her and to the religious experience, even though it may not always feel like it.”

Claire’s humble and honest memoir is a quick read. I recommend “Greetings from Utopia Park” for one perspective on making sense of a confusing cult childhood.

As reviewer, I must state my inherent bias. I was also raised in TM. My conclusions differ from those expressed by Claire Hoffman in “Greetings from Utopia Park”. Claire and I share many personal connections, much as would distant cousins in a small community. Some TM kids, now adults, tell me Claire’s story mirrors their own. Others share more gruesome tales. Unlike Claire Hoffman who concludes with an upbeat note about TM, my own cynicism remains unabated even as I love people from my past. I suspect that Bobby Roth and David Lynch lured Claire back to the dissociative high of TM’s prolonged meditations because her journalistic skill risked exposing their organization. In this memoir, Claire does not reveal TM’s mystical mantras nor the price tag of TM’s advanced programs, thus sheltering key first steps to cult indoctrination. She glosses over mention of TM’s many costly add-ons and monastic programs. When reading that Claire’s daughter’s mantra is “wisdom”, I wondered - did the TM Movement change mantras from Sanskrit to English after Maharishi's death? Or only for Claire’s daughter? In either case, there is no magic.

HOW I MADE THE MANTRA GO AWAY

one of our readers has sent us his TM story:

HOW I MADE THE MANTRA GO AWAY

by Dave H.

When I tell my friends that I once was involved with a cult, their eyes get wide and their response is generally, “You?” And then they want the details.

So I tell them that I was one of those people who got caught up in Transcendental Meditation when it was sweeping the U.S.A. in the 60s and 70s. I explain the initial meetings, the Puja ceremony, the post initiation checking meetings, etc. I even tell them that for awhile, TM actually brought me some benefit.

I was never one of those uber-movement types, although I did attend a residence course or two in Fairfield, Iowa, where I was introduced to “rounding” and the whole TM thing took further root. Had I not awakened, I could have easily been drinking the Kool-aid.

Then MMY announced that we could all learn to levitate and the Sidhis program was launched. The shock of it forced me to examine what I had become involved with and thankfully, the critical thinking I had learned in college began to kick in. Levitating? Becoming invisible? How could I belong to an organization that advanced such thinking and demanded high fees for the “knowledge?”

I immediately stopped doing TM and promised myself I would never think my mantra, “Shirim,” again.

But it wouldn’t go away. For over a decade that pesky mantra would creep into my thoughts: waking, sleeping, dreaming. At first I gave it no notice, just shutting it off whenever it would appear. But after many, many years of putting up with it, combined with all of the wacky stuff coming out of the TM movement, its continued presence became a major concern for me. I wanted it gone.

I consulted with a therapist, a very capable person, but not experienced in cults. He suggested that I pretty much do what I had been doing, shut it off when it showed up in my thoughts. But that was not good enough for me.

I live in a very beautiful part of Southeast Minnesota, an area with 300-foot bluffs and an incredible paved bicycle trail system. One weekday summer morning I walked out a couple of miles on the trail. Not many people out there that early in the morning. I stopped on a bridge and decided to shout Shirim as loud and as many times as I could. It was strange how guilty I felt for even thinking about doing this. Guilt and fear manifested themselves, as if something really bad would happen to me. That’s how deeply the movement hooks had gotten into my psyche. 

But I did it. I shouted that mantra out into the light of day, loud, clear and often. Then I came back a couple of days later and repeated the experience. And then a third time.

It didn’t happen overnight, but after a couple of weeks I noticed that the mantra and I were no longer joined at the hip, and its encroachment into my life began to diminish. And today, it doesn’t show up at all.

When I read of all the junk that the true-believers in the TM movement accept as truth … Jyotish, Yagyas, Sidhis and such … I am so blessed to have my once-abandoned critical thinking skills and pleased that the mantra no longer has power over me.

And all I had to do was shout it into the atmosphere.

Book Review: "The Secret of the Mantras" by Richard Blakely

I just finished reading "The Secret of the Mantras" by Richard Blakely, and I highly recommend it.  This memoir of a baby boomer growing up in the U.S. and moving to France in time for the student uprisings of 1968 includes a 3-month TM Teacher Training course in Rishikesh, India with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Beatles. 

What a fun read!  What a witty sense of humor Blakely exhibits as he confesses his own foibles, as well as the foibles of TM life.  Of particular interest to readers of TM-Free Blog may be the following revelations:

- In 1968, Mahesh gave new initiators three mantras, chosen by age.  (Nowadays there are about 16 mantras, chosen by age.)

- In 1968, Mahesh taught initiators only the Sanskrit and the hand gestures for the exotic ceremony preceding TM instruction.  (Nowadays, initiators must also memorize the English translation and the emotions one is attempting to experience during the rite.)  

-  In 1968, students meditated for hours non-stop on courses.  Due to the emotional unraveling of some Westerners, Mahesh added yogic stretching.  (Nowadays, short meditations are alternated with yoga stretches and breathing exercises.)  

- In 1968, Mahesh taught that TMers shouldn't force themselves to change habits such as smoking, drinking and meat-eating if they found the change stressful.  Mahesh said that with continued meditation, unhealthy habits would automatically fall away.  (Nowadays, "advanced" TMers are encouraged to take up vegetarianism, celibacy, early bedtime, silent meals, etc. etc.)

This last point particularly catches my attention.  I find Mahesh's level of hypocrisy? extent of unclarity on fundamental principles? unfathomable.  Whatever could he have been thinking, either then or now?  What kind of teacher is this?  

New book published: "Roots of TM"

  

(Note:  In book cover photo above, Guru Dev is seated in center, surrounded by some of his close sannyasi [renunciant] disciples in traditional orange robes.  In front of dais, far right, is the young Brahmachari (bachelor student) Mahesh, later known as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.  He is not wearing orange because he is not a sannyasi.  Those of his caste are not permitted to become sannyasis. - Laurie) 

Just published: 

ROOTS OF TM:

THE TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION
OF
GURU DEV & MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI

by Paul Mason

more than 50 illustrations
304 pages, 234mm x 156mm

ISBN 978-0-9562228-8-6

UK £14.99   Europe €18.99   US $24.99  
Canada  $27.99  Australia $27.99

Paul Mason, the author of "Roots of TM" is a former contributor to TM-Free Blog.

"ROOTS OF TM" enables readers to better understand how and why Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spread the teaching of Transcendental Meditation around the world.

"ROOTS OF TM" provides background information on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his master, Swami Brahmanand Saraswati, (also called "Guru Dev,") and provides a source book of information about their teachings and techniques.

"ROOTS OF TM" is not intended as a general guide to Indian philosophy, nor as a study of the many ancient spiritual practices of India, nor as a mantra handbook.

"ROOTS OF TM" offers information about Maharishi's "missing years," from the time when his master passed away through to the gradual build-up of his stated mission: "Why can't we spiritually regenerate the world through this technique?"

"ROOTS OF TM" contains numerous quotations and rare transcripts of lectures by Guru Dev and by Maharishi. Furthermore, it details the course of events that would eventually find Maharishi lecturing at the Masquers Club, an actor's social club in Hollywood. It also tells how Maharishi came to adopt a businesslike attitude to financial matters, and how he planned to create a headquarters in the Himalayas where he intended to train others to teach Transcendental Meditation.

"ROOTS OF TM" digs deeply into rare materials in order to give detailed profiles of the teachings of both master and disciple, thus affording readers an opportunity to make informed comparisons of both these teachers' methods and their objectives.


Author Paul Mason explains:
 

"By the mid-1960's the term 'Transcendental Meditation' became fixed after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had already spread the message of meditation far and wide across the free world. Maharishi then became very famous himself, largely due to his public association with celebrities and in particular the world-famous pop group The Beatles, who in 1968 attended an advanced training course with him in India.

When I traveled to India in 1970, I did so by hitch-hiking from Britain; and, having traveled across many countries, finally found myself in North India. Possibly because The Beatles had done so before me, I decided to visit the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for 'a cup of cocoa and a chat about philosophy.'  I therefore made my way to the pilgrimage town of Rishikesh, close by the foothills of the Himalayas. Having crossed the River Ganges and climbed up to Maharishi Ashram, I was introduced there to a practice referred to as 'Transcendental Meditation.'

The teaching of this 'Transcendental Meditation' or 'TM' is preceded by a short ceremony called a puja, conducted before a portrait of the ascetic Indian teacher Swami Brahmanand Saraswati, known to TM meditators as 'Guru Dev.'  [Note:  The TM organization says the puja is a 'traditional ceremony of gratitude.'  According to merriam-webster.com, 'puja' is defined as 'a Hindu act of worship or propitiation.' - Laurie]

Surprisingly, despite the fact that Swami Brahmanand Saraswati was a prominent and influential public speaker, Maharishi's organizations share but scant information about Guru Dev's life story and disclose nothing about his teachings.

Very little seemed to be known about the early life of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or about the origins and history of the teaching of Transcendental Meditation, so I set myself to discover as much information as could be found.

In the 1990's I was commissioned by Element Books to write the biography of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which was published as 'The Maharishi: The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World.'

Later, in 2007, an ambition was fulfilled when a three-volume set of books on Guru Dev was published, all based on my translations of Hindi works on Swami Brahmanand Saraswati.

Then, in 2013, I compiled a book entitled 'Dandi Swami: Tales of meetings with Dandi Swami Narayananand Saraswati, the Guru's Will, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi & the Shankaracharyas of Jyotir Math.'

'Roots of TM' is the distillation of decades of research into the teachings of Maharishi, Guru Dev, and the Shankaracharya tradition."

"Roots of TM" can be purchased through Amazon.
 
I (Laurie) haven't read it yet, but I hope to read it soon.  I would love to hear peoples' reaction to the book.  Personally, I'm most interested in learning if Maharishi spread the teaching of his Guru Dev whom he claimed to adore, or if he spread contrary teachings.
                                                

TM Kids "Returning to Ananda" Trailer

For a taste of issues of TM - kids - now adults, see this video trailer of a 20 minute Television Pilot

Click on the link below for trailer of
"Returning to Ananda" by Déjà Cresencia Bernhardt-Leazer  of Skwatta Camp Productions


Returning To Ananda (Sizzle) from Déjà Cresencia Bernhardt-Leaze on Vimeo.

"Eternal Truth" from Maharishi Changes Once Again

I believe I have uncovered another example of the changing teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Click on this link to watch an old videotape of Maharishi talking about TM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ajEzVsuhg
 
Or skip the tape and go straight to my transcription of it, below. 

(The videotape is from an official TM website.  Although their website includes a transcription, I have watched and listened to the tape a half dozen times and have spotted a few minor errors in the transcription.  So my transcription below is slightly different from theirs.)

There is no date (or location) given on the videotape.  However, judging from the color of Mahesh's hair; plus the fact that he uses the word "pencil" as his sample mantra, rather than "flower," which became his standard sample mantra later; plus his stumblings and hesitations in explaining TM, cause me to guess that the tape was made in the mid to late 1960s.

Plus the fact that he offers an explanation for the basic mechanism by which he says TM works,  i.e. "the natural tendency of the mind."  The natural tendency he refers to in this tape is different from the "natural tendency" that he dwelled on in subsequent years.  (I haven't listened to 2015 TM Introductory Lectures - maybe our readers have, and can let us know if this concept is still taught today.)  The "natural tendency" that was impressed upon my generation (1971-1981) was that TM is easy, effortless, natural and effective because it makes use of "the natural tendency of the mind to go in the direction of increasing charm."  This pronouncement has virtually become canonical in the basic teachings of TM. 

Here is my transcript of the relevant first three minutes:

"...The teaching has been set up in a very, very standard form. What we do is…actual practice involves thinking of a word - a word devoid of meaning. We don't know the meaning.  We don't try to know the meaning. And the principle is that if we know the meaning - then meaning is a static thing. If we say 'pencil, pencil,' someone who doesn't know what 'pencil' means in English, he just hears the sound 'pan-sool.'  And someone who knows the 'pencil'…you see, the meaning is static.

"The sound changes in its pitch.  It could be loud sound, it could be low sound or some…so.  And the meaning is the same at every pitch, high or low.  So if the mind is on the meaning, then there is no chance of refining the meaning.  If the mind is not on the meaning, then there is a chance of refining the sound.  Then there is a chance of experiencing the sound in its finer values; til the finest could be transcended, and the awareness could reach that inner wakefulness, devoid of any perception.  This will be transcendental consciousness.

So we take a thought, and experience it, and in experiencing the thought, the simple formula is, that the thought functions as an impulse, as a motivation for the impulse, like that, like that. Then the mind is pulsating. If we don't try to manipulate the thought in any sense, concentrate or hold it on or anything, then the thought will start to be refined, refine, refine; it will sink out.  The activity will start to die out, die out, die out. So this is what we say:  naturally greater activity of the mind reaches its least value - in a very, very natural way. Any activity has a tendency to settle down and be quiet. So this natural tendency of the mind to be quiet is all that we use in meditation, and nothing else. (Emphasis added - Laurie.) So in a very innocent manner we think of the thought. And every time we think it, it becomes finer and finer and finer. We experience its finer states, and then it dies out...."

Have you ever heard this earlier explanation before?  Does this explanation make sense?  Does the newer explanation make sense?  Or can you suggest a better explanation for how and why TM produces the results it does?  What do you think is actually happening when a person does TM? 

Mahesh told my generation that his name, "rishi" means "seer;" that is, seer of the Vedas, which he told us is the Eternal Truth.  So what do you make of Mahesh changing his core explanation?  Was it opportunistic, or sincere, or what? Did this "great seer" not see the "eternal truth"? 

And anything else you'd care to comment on!

"TM-Kids" Open Up Publicly

Willy Blackmore's essay about a young father's childhood hometown was published online October 24, 2014 : Growing Up in Utopia .

He describes the contrast between growing up as a non-Iowan in Iowa.  How do you tell your current friends that you learned to fly when you were 17?  Why do local Iowans think "you're not from around here" when you really did grow up in their backyard? He eloquently describes coming of age surrounded by cornfields, idealistic ex-hippies who believe they bring world peace by holing up to bounce on padded foam for hours daily, shmoozing with visiting celebrities, and his peers' angst.

Click here to read Willy's : Growing Up in Utopia

After years of declining invitations to make a formal presentation at San Francisco's reputable intellectual forum The Commonwealth Club of California, On October 20, 2014 I presented  Cult or Benign Cure-all? Life in Transcendental Meditation's Hidden Society

With an illustrated Power Point presentation and screen shots of TMO's active websites, I described the lives of my loved ones and myself in the TM Movement from 1966-2014.  By coincidence fifty years of my family life were defined by the TM Movement, even though I physically left in the late 1980s with my own three TM-born children. Without throwing slanderous stones, I shared stories of loved ones as TM's focus changed from mysticism to mystical science, of child neglect, psychosis, suicides, thousands of dollars spent for promises, fortunes lost and the next generation's struggles for self definition.  Such stories lay doubt on the David Lynch Foundation's promise of one-shot panacea for Transcendental Meditation in public schools, the Veterans Administration and elsewhere.  Listeners might appreciate post-talk objections that were raised by TM true believers.

You may listen to the 45 minutes audio track by clicking here : Cult of Benign Cure-all? Life in Transcendental Meditation's Hidden Society