Revisiting TM Initiation, Part 2: The Puja ("Traditional Ceremony of Gratitude")

Please note: This is a four-part series. "Revisiting TM Initiation, Part 1," was posted 11/11/2008. "Revisiting TM Initiation, Part 3: The Mantra" was posted 12/5/08. "Revisiting TM Initiation, Part 4: Bowing Down" was published 1/1/2009.

The initiator finishes instructing the initiate, and he leaves. The initiator is now alone.

The initiator is striken with a bout of conscience. "Good heavens!" she thinks to herself. "I told that initiate one lie after another. I thought I was a person of integrity. I'm ashamed of myself. I've got to turn over a new leaf. I hereby promise myself that from this moment forward, while keeping my promises to Maharishi, I will also be truthful with my initiates."

There is a knock at the door. The next initiate enters with his basket. They both sit down.

Fantasy Initiation #2:

Question from initiate: Is it OK if I ask you a few questions as I'm learning?

Answer from initiator: Sure.

Q: Why do you do the ceremony of gratitude in the traditional way? Why don't you express gratitude in a Western way?

A: Well, Maharishi said that to assure the purity of the teaching of TM, we should start with this traditional ceremony.

Q: But you do so many other things that deviate from the tradition, that are the Western way.

A: You're right. Maharishi was very strict about us wearing Western clothes - he forbade us from wearing Indian costumes when representing TM. And he told the men that they were absolutely not to grow their hair long in imitation of him - they had to keep their hair cut short. Also he modified the traditional meditation posture into sitting in a chair to make it comfortable for Westerners. And he was insistent that we use Western scientific research to sell TM. He changed the language from traditional "God" to "Creative Intelligence" to make it more Western. So you're right - I really can't prove to you that the traditional way is essential.

Q: You said in the preparatory lecture that the reason you do the ceremony is to remind yourself to teach TM in its purity, accurately. Why do you have to remind yourself? My school teachers taught me all sorts of things accurately, without a big reminder priming themselves to teach it accurately. Isn't it enough to just have a minimum level of integrity?

A: Well, when I was learning to be a TM teacher, Maharishi told us to tell the public something different from what was the real reason for the ceremony. He said that when the initiator invokes all those great teachers or gods during the puja -

Q: Gods? Didn't you assure us that this wasn't a religious ceremony?

A: Yes, that's what I said, but there are gods named in the puja.

Q: And didn't you assure us that TM wasn't a religious technique?

A: Well, yes, it isn't. Anyhow, when the initiator invokes the names of the gods and masters, it sort of enlivens the room with the qualities of those beings -

Q: What are you talking about? This sounds like some weird spiritualist religion.

A: Oh, no, it's not a religion. TM is a simple natural non-religious technique. Anyhow, when the initiator invokes the names of the gods and masters, it sort of conjures up the essence of those beings, and Maharishi said that the initiator takes on some of the qualities of those beings -

Q: It sounds like Maharishi trained you to be a medium. It sounds like you're channeling these creatures. Now you're taking on their qualities. Do you think you're "possessed?"

A: Of course not. I continue to say the words I had planned to say; I don't find myself speaking the being's words.

Q: I don't believe in this conjuring stuff. To put it in Western terms, don't you think it would be accurate to say that you go into an altered, highly suggestible state?

A: I've never heard that. But anyhow, when the initiator is vibrating with the qualities of the gods and masters, in that state, we can teach TM properly.

Q: You said in the introductory lectures that TM is a mechanical technique that uses the natural tendency of the mind to go to increasing charm. If it's such a natural technique, why do you have to go into an altered state in order to teach it properly?

A: Maharishi told us on Teacher Training that when the initiator is in that state, the initiate becomes sort of in awe of or intimidated by the initiator, sort of like "cat and mouse" were his words. If the initiator does something, the initiate does it back.

Initiate: That sounds nefarious. It sounds like you're trying to control me. Why can't I just follow your instructions of my own free will, because I want to learn? Why do you have to entrance me into obeying you?

A: I don't know. Maharishi didn't cover that point.

Q: You told us that the ceremony is just a reminder for yourself. But you want me in a suggestible state, right? That's why I have to be present, right?

A: Well, I wouldn't put it that way.

Q: Well, does the puja do anything else aside from supposedly making you resonate with these beings and making me compliant?

A: Well, during the ceremony, I sing out loud in Sanskrit as I simultaneously translate it into English in my head. Then there's a certain point where I start offering objects to the painting of Guru Dev in a very prescribed way. And at the same time, I am supposed to be thinking prescribed "puja feelings" that the actions and words are supposed to be inspiring in me. Like when I am offering water, I am supposed to be thinking of feeling "I feel an upsurge of purifying waves of knowledge." So I am doing four things at once.

Q: Yeah, so what's the point?

A: Maharishi said that the purpose of thinking the "puja feelings" was to amplify the feelings that I was already having.

Q: What's wrong with the feelings you're having naturally? Why do you have to amplify them?

A: I don't know.

Q: So Maharishi wants you to amplify your feelings. You mean talking yourself into feeling an emotion strongly that you may only feel slightly?

A: Yeah, I guess so. Embroidering. Embellishing. Mood-making. It's strange, because Maharishi had such contempt for, and taught us the worthlessness of, what he termed "mood-making." That was the term he used for when people kidded themselves that they were having a spiritual experience. He used the term contemptuously for people who claimed spiritual experiences but did not practice TM. And here he was encouraging us to "mood make."

Q: Well, did you find it successfully amplified your feelings?

A: No. Most of the time I find it sort of disorienting, because it's not easy to keep two thoughts going at the exact same time. (I don't know if other initiators have that same problem. ) Even though he said it was a "feeling," we had to memorize the feeling as specific words. I think it made me sort of woozy. By the end of the puja, I am thoroughly zonked.

Q: Why would Maharishi want you in an altered state by the end of the puja?

A: He said that between invoking the beings to possess some of their qualities, and amplifying the feelings, we get into a deep state, and it is from there that we "pick up" the mantra. Then when we impart it to the initiate, we are "planting" the mantra, and it heads right back inward from whence it came, thus facilitating the inward direction of the meditation.

Q: Wait a minute. In the preparatory lecture, you said that the mantra moves inward due to the natural tendency of the mind to seek increasing charm. Now you're giving me this mumbo jumbo that the mind moves inward because with the help of these beings and your trance state, you have dug up the mantra from some esoteric realm and the mantra wants to go back there. This doesn't make any sense to me, and it certainly doesn't square with what you told us, that this is scientific and non-religious. You have a whole esoteric spiritual teaching going on here. So Maharishi told you that you virtually channel these creatures, and that you and the initiate go into a hypnotic state?

A: Isn't it strange that you should put it that way; because at the end of the teacher training course, he told us there were two things we should specifically avoid: channeling and hypnosis. Well, do you have any more questions? No? OK, then shall we begin?

- End -

(Note: The author attended TM Teacher Training in La Antilla, Spain in 1974, and is using those experiences to inform this article. People on other Teacher Training courses may have learned different things.)

The Nature of Experience, some random thoughts

Wifey, Philip – your insights and introspections are very valuable to me. I think you have seen exactly what this strange business of experience is all about. AND, you have helped me clarify my own thoughts on the matter of experience. Thank you, especially, Wifey, for bringing up this captivating idea which, I hope others can chime in on.

If experience brings about change, then I think we can conclude that it was valid, if not, then, not so much, perhaps. For me, this is one of those rare touchstones that enables the spiritual quest. I am grateful to you, Wifey. Many, many things.

Not all change seems good. But that’s more in the nature of evaluation and relative consideration than experience per se, at least that’s what I think.

I began TM in 1968 and have had many diverse experiences during TM as well as after in Zazen, Śamatha-Vipassanā, Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā. (I have omitted Kriya Yoga as I failed to be able to take it or Yogananda or his organization seriously.) My first real experience doing TM was very, very real (to me), lasted maybe a minute and years later when I told some initiator friends, they started jumping for joy, for me! But it didn’t change anything for me or them, unless their getting all bunched up about it changed something for them.

My first genuine, life-changing experience happened when I was at University. This was during my third year in 1964. I had been very worried and distressed because a very gifted friend was ruining both his life and his chances for a career he seemed destined to discharge brilliantly. His family and other mutual friends were also deeply concerned. I was sitting alone in an empty lecture room pondering his fate and my own helplessness to affect his course of action when, suddenly (then, as now, I know this was real in my mind, not “real” in the room), I literally “saw” (as in my mind’s eye) angels ascending and descending a latter that went up and up, I assumed, then as now, to heaven. It was literally breathtaking. I have no idea how long it lasted, 5 seconds? 2 hours? No idea.

Literally I staggered out of the room into the sunshine (it was towards the end of May; 4 years later, at the end of May I began TM – relationship? questionable). I felt both wiped out and light. From that day onwards everything was/has been totally different from my life before that day. What happened? I have no idea. (No, drugs were not involved.) This is as close to an explanation as I have ever come. From that day I was no longer interested in Church or any of the religious ideas in which I had been raised. Everything was subject to scrutiny and questioning. I had had notions of entering the ministry at one point. Such notions no longer existed. I was, on the contrary, interested completely and unaccountably in Eastern “stuff” and searched the libraries for something about China and Chinese religion, although the concept of “religion” doesn’t quite say what I mean. Other than Christianity, there was no such thing as any other religion then, there. I was also young, inexperienced and largely unaware that there was a world outside the limited worldview in which I had been accustomed. That, too, began to change.

This experience continues to resonate as “alive”, even now, 44 years later, as does that first major TM experience; but the TM experience didn’t change anything for me, I have watched movies that changed me more. Possibly, that first TM experience impressed me, but I was so new at TM that I don’t think I made a connection between it and TM or it and anything else.

Four years later, when I saw a copy of Science of Being, my curiosity instantly peaked and when I began to read the book, that first line to be is to live struck me as utterly fantastic and exactly what I was searching for. It just seemed so right. So, maybe a connection can be made between the experience I had had 4 year previous. I cannot make that determination.

I really thought TM was “it”. But had Mahesh not asked me to stay with him in Mallorca in 1971, I would probably not have continued with it much longer as TM was beginning to be routine and life was not particularly fulfilling. However, I did feel compelled (I’m not sure that that is the right word) to continue seeking. I had thought that seeking more and more deeply into the promise of TM was the way to go, yet, because of Mahesh and because he kept me close to him and I did get more and more deeply into the “promise” of TM, and I was increasingly discouraged by its prospects.

I hope that this is valuable to others, to someone. If not, that’s ok. If it does help, that’s good, too.