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.

Musings on the process of getting caught up in a cult and breaking free

I learned TM in 1968. Mahesh had just been dumped by the Beatles, something I didn’t know at the time; he  hadn’t yet started showing the world just who could out-perform some of the greatest performers of his time. TM was, at that time, just a nice thing, twice a day, and meeting with other meditators once in a while and hearing a talk by Mahesh was also nice (even though looking back I knew full well that he didn’t always say things I could understand). No, it probably wasn’t a nice thing, but it seemed like that at the superficial level.

Two years later, I quit a perfectly good, well-paying job to become a TM teacher and the year after that, Mahesh asked me to stay on as a member of his “international staff”! This lasted 3 years, until one day I got a call: Maharishi wants you to go and teach. And that was the end of my sojourn with his travelling psychotic circus. The year after that, I quit TM.

So, here’s what I am thinking: I noticed when I moved house, recently, that it was very hard to remember to do little things, small matters of daily routine previously established. I’d forget to floss or I’d forget to put something away, forget where I had put something that used to have a “special” place; I’d reach out to put my hand on something, but it wasn’t there any more. Alas, the “old ways” have ceased to function.

I had created patterns, pathways of behaviour that were dependent upon the relatively stable objects in my environment (where furniture was, what set of behaviours to follow after watching TV in the evening, for example) — I had previously been prompted by a routine that had become dependent upon the objects in my environment and now those prompts were gone but the behaviours remained, the tendencies remained, the patterns remained - but didn’t exactly work! This is obvious to almost all of us the first time we come home and find that the furniture has been re-arranged! We keep stumbling over the furniture as well as the routines set up by the old arrangements.

No, this isn’t news.

But what might come as something of a surprise is when we put this exact same thing into the TM-Maheshism context: we established patterns of behaviour based on the relatively fixed or stable things in our environment. For example: we are prompted to do and think specific things dependent upon either the objects or people who remind us of what comes next. So, it’s easy to get set into patterns we have created in order to easily navigate our environment, whether or not that environment is physical, mental, or, in another sense, emotional. Because TM-Maheshism is based on very subtle suggestion, subtle prompts established during our highly susceptible moods generated by TM, our patterns are deep-set, almost ingrained, deeper than “superficiality”.

We depend on our environment to remind us what to do after we do this or that. Otherwise, almost every activity would be new learning, take a lot of time and we’d become very frustrated and stressed; our productivity would decrease and our quality of life would be less skilfully managed.

People who travel constantly (salesmen, military personnel, etc.) spend a lot of time reminding themselves of routines because there are no external prompts or because external prompts are constantly changing. It’s somewhat of a tiring life! It’s a lot like living in the constantly changing rooms of the fun-house at the amusement park – but not very amusing on a long-term basis.

So what point am I making‽

First, I want to be very clear that I am in no way seeking to perpetuate the all too familiar defence mechanism followed religiously by the Maheshites! I am not seeking to blame the victim here. BUT, we all have to, at one time or another, recognize that we were “victimized” by Mahesh. We were beguiled by his charms and built up patterns of behaviour in order to find our way around his various teachings and attempts to control our lives. Really, simple as that.

So, here’s the point: if we built patterns, we can change the patterns we built. It doesn’t matter why we built the patterns. The patterns, in and of themselves, are neither addictive nor demanding nor powerful. They are just patterns, means to save time and thought. They do not have meaning inherent in their being. They only have the meaning we attribute to them, the meaning we let them have. Same for the mantra, by the way, and Mahesh, and the beliefs he led us into about all the stuff he made up and convinced us was real, important, vital and necessary to the survival of the whole world (actually meaning his organization and meal ticket).

I am not an exit counsellor, not a professional psychotherapist, so please do not simply take my word for this. YOU have to weigh and consider, seek your own information, do some introspection, do some work. Sorry. I know that following the leader is so much simpler – that’s what the Germans were doing before WWII ! It didn’t turn out so well. I have difficulty seeing that following Mahesh/Maheshism has turned out well.

What patterns are you following? What pathways have you created (based on TM-Maheshism) that you are letting manage your activities, your mental and emotional behaviour? Can you look at them, see their context, move your mental and environmental furniture so that new pathways can be created?

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.

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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.

The light of accomplishment

I have been thinking about III 32 in Mahesh’s (most likely Vernon Katz’) translation of the yoga sūtras - by saṃyama on the light in the head, vision of the siddhas is gained.

For the past 30 years I have known a different understanding of this sūtra, perhaps key to the whole yoga sūtra, “sidhi” conundrum. I have been thinking I might write about it for TM-Free, but I hae me douts  that this could be of any interest. Today, I decided to take the leap anyway.

The Sanskrit Scholar, Arthur A. Macdonell, put Patañjali, the compiler of the yoga sūtra anthology, in the 2nd century BCE. This would be at least 300 years after the Buddha. Personally, it has always seemed to me that the Brāhmaṇical revival of the 8th or 9th century CE (whenever the time of Śaṅkara is thought to have lived), attempted to incorporate Buddhist ideas and make them seem Brāhmaṇical. Not altogether unlike the early Christians who kept the Egyptian, Roman and Greek (as well as Persian) myths and just called it Christian (i.e. same old stuff you love, just new names to make you feel special).

This is not necessarily a problem in that the Buddha never claimed he owned or possessed his teachings; he didn’t copyright them, trademark them, restrict them or charge money for them. He widely and consistently proclaimed that they were for the benefit of everyone.

Hence, we see a lot of Buddhist ideas in the yoga sūtras and this number will vary depending upon which version of the yoga sūtras one gets hold of … there are 4 versions, but the only difference is that two of the sūtras which are commentarial in nature are either both included, neither is included or one or the other is included … both of these are in the 3rd section, the “siddhi” section. Here, versions should not be confused with translations. Sūtra III 32 or whatever its number is in whatever version you have to hand, is usually translated more or less as Vernon has done. There are lots of variations, but they seem to say the same thing. This, I think is a trick of the grammar. The point at which Mahesh could have turned TM into something of monumental importance for everyone rather than turning it into a circus of never-ending futility, a constant bazaar of things to buy hopelessly trying to make it work. I question his competence to teach, but it would be dangerous to underestimate his mastery of great depth when it comes to skilfully wielding the carrot-on-the-stick.