Transcendental Meditation property listed in New York City

The Global Country of World Peace has listed their Wall Street Maharishi Invincibility Center, The Global Financial Capital of New York, onto the real estate market.

Article: Wall Street Meditators Seek $45 Million for Property (Update1).

Cult critics have long suggested that the Transcendental Mediation Group's push to build "Peace Palaces" with donated funds and tax-exempt bonds was merely a real estate investment program backed by tax payer funds.

This "Global Financial Center" is still functioning to recruit and teach various TM programs in New York City's financial hub, such as their latest (inauguration pending October 9) Center for Leadership Performance.

A September 18, 2009 Bloomberg article describes the recent listing of this TMO property in New York City's financial district.

The article explains that most New York office buildings have dropped in value by 30 to 50 percent, since their peak in 2007.

Yet, this " Wall Street center for transcendental meditation is being offered for sale for $45 million, eight times more than the followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi paid for it in 2004"

"The non-profit Global Country of World Peace bought the property in the Financial District, two blocks south of Wall Street, for $5.5 million in May 2004. The Iowa-based group used the city’s backing in 2005 to obtain $6.2 million in financing through tax-exempt bonds. The group uses the building to teach meditation."

“Thanks to a remarkably flexible zoning, 70 Broad Street can be used either as an office, mixed-use property or residence and is ideal for a corporation, individual, or institution,” reads the listing by broker Danielle Grossenbacher. The building was subject to “an extensive and complete renovation” this year.

Grossenbacher referred calls to Brown Harris Stevens spokeswoman Amy Gotzler, who declined to comment. Robert Roth, a spokesman for Global Country of World Peace, confirmed that the group is selling the building.

“The whole place is going great, there’s a great interest in this now,” Roth said.

Luxury Apartments

One of the luxury apartments inside the building is sometimes used by John Hagelin, the Natural Law Party’s 1996 and 2000 candidate for U.S. president, Roth said. Hagelin is the chairman of the Center for Leadership Performance, the transcendental meditation program based at 70 Broad that is geared toward CEOs and business professionals.

Roth said the center was formerly known as the “Maharishi Invincibility Center,” while the Web site refers to it the “International Center for Invincible Defense.”

Meditation classes at the Broad Street location cost between $750 to $1,500 for a one-hour-a-day program that spans four days, Roth said.

Global Country of World Peace benefited from a city economic development program that allowed non-profits to use triple tax-exempt bonds to help pay for capital projects."

The full Bloomberg article, September 18, 2009 :

Wall Street Meditators Seek $45 Million for Property (Update1)

New Books About Guru Dev

Paul Mason has published a set of three texts on the life and teaching of Guru Dev.

These are available at http://www.paulmason.info/gurudev/gurudev.htm (see new book!)

I am in no way connected with the production of these texts and in no way benefit from their sale, but I wanted to let everyone know that they are available.

For me, there is a significant distinction to be made between the heuristic presentation of Maheshism and the far more traditional grounding of Guru Dev. While everyone will have to come to his or her own conclusion upon studying these texts, I know that Paul has made every effort to find the most meaningful translation and to supply every photograph and illustration available.

Sudarsha

DailyKos Diary on TM in Public Schools & Church/State Separation

I just wrote a Daily Kos diary on the implications of the McCartney/Lynch benefit concert's goal of teaching TM in the schools for the separation of church and state. Click here for the article. If civil liberties are important to you, I'd urge you to comment on the article -- no matter what your opinion is. The more discussion the better!

And if you like what you read, I'd sure appreciate your recommendation. Just click on "Recommend" in the right-hand column near the top.

J.

UPDATE: Sudarsha mentions a TM "holy day" celebration in his comment to the post above. Take a peek and tell me TM is not a religion!

YouTube VIdeo by a well-known TM "Governor": Celebrating the Maha-Shiva-Ratri Holy Day

Transcendental Meditation: No Place to Be Gay?

I recently received an email from a man who posted his personal TM story on the old trancenet.net site. "Mark" discovered there was no place in the TM movement for "what Nature made him."

His original TranceNet story follows, along with his most recent email to me.

Should I tell you my story?

I mean I guess you are a very busy man and I appreciate the fact that you could not possibly handle all the requests for help that are sent to you. I will try to make it brief and to the point as I believe that my experience could be of value to people like me who maybe are trying to fit in and being abused by organisations like TM in the name of helping them to overcome [their] differences.

I am referring to being gay, John, and some people who would use organisations like TM to either find themselves or run away from [their] sexuality.

My story starts on the day I read Perfect Health by Deepak Chopra (more on him later!).

It was May of 1992 and I was a naive, sensitive and closeted gay person. I had no one to talk to about my sexuality and decided the only option was to suppress it. So anyway I read the book and was really interested in the technical side of Ayurveda. I had a real understanding of it and thought that this was what I wanted to do, not only learn more about it but maybe practice as well.

I rang the number on the back of the book for further information[.] I spoke to [a local TM teacher], and he said that the best thing to do was to come into the centre and have a consolation [sic, consultation]. I went along and was taken [a]back by his friendly, professional manner and of course his knowledge of Ayurveda which was what I really was after. After a brief talk he convinced me to learn TM as part of finding out more about Ayurveda (Maharishi Ayurveda, I had no idea there was any other sort).

That was the first deception... You must meditate to learn the most from Ayurveda.

My father had done TM many years ago to help control his anger and it worked (he no longer practices TM and I understand why!) and is still an angry man, but I digress.

So I knew that it was a technique to help reduce stress and had certainly never heard of other claimed benefits.

My group of six other people who started mediating together were are [sic] [an] odd sort of housewives, another gay person (as I later found out), managers and office workers. Of that group I know for sure that four including me no longer practice TM and never will again. So I started to meditate and from the first day I had the most amazing special affects [sic, effects] while meditating. I mean these were like out of body experiences the works! [The teacher] said that these were very special things but not to concentrate on the[m] too much and it all would settle down soon.

I[t] didn[']t. I started to have spontaneous transcending at my work (I was a printer working with dangerous machines!) and would have to stop working and sit down to rest during them. I was having up to 5 per day at one time.

The experiences, although felt wonderful, were not getting less, and I started to have psychic manifestations or maybe they were hallucinations? Anyway [my teacher] couldn[']t offer any real help or guidance but the usual rubbish (and I got the feeling that he had no idea what I was talking about).

My beloved aunt died that year and she came to me in the most moving experience I have every had during meditation (ghost?). It rocked me to my soul and all [my teacher] could say was, "Let[']s check your practice." I think he was scared of my experiences.

I put up with 12 months of on and off experiences but in no way was I getting enlightened. I was [losing] friends fast and my job wasn[']t looking too good either! I was putting pressure on friends to learn and family too. I must have been a real pain in the ass to my loved ones, but they are a[n] understanding lot, thank goodness!

It was when [my teacher] and his new wife went to Germany for a holiday that I started and did have my first break from TM.

I was living in [their] home, house sitting for them while they were away, and I had my first sexual experience with another man. It was a total disaster but [it] gave me a new understanding of my self and my sexuality and how I could incorporate into my medi[t]ation!

I was very excited and when [my teacher] came back from Germany I arranged a meeting with him on our usual group meeting night (being 7:30pm on Thursdays) we met at 7:00pm and by the time we went into the meeting with the others at 7:30pm I [k]new that I would be never coming back to TM again.

I sat throughout the meeting and didn[']t even talk the whole way through — my world was shattered. I went home that night and cried for 4 hours. A TM friend came around to comfort me and called [my teacher] who also came round, but by then it was too late I was out of TM.

What Bruce said to me that caused the death of part of me and the birth of another and sent me on my way to become free of TM forever was, "You can never become a[n] Ayurvedic doctor, you can never become a TM teacher, you can not be gay if you want to be involved with TM."

I must say coming from someone that I loved dearly (I really did love him, now I only pity him) sent me into a bit of a spin. His only correspondence to me (through a friend) was that, "Martin you are limiting yourself by choosing this lifestyle," but it fell on deaf ears. I was not going to listen to him.

In a way I was so happy to be free of TM, it was like a release from prison. You think that you[']ve got it made and then you see what[']s really outside and you think that you can never go back. Of course I was wrong.

My last contact with [my teacher] was at the meeting in which I learned the Primordial Sound Technique. I wanted to learn it for two main reasons, to meet Deepak Chopra and to experience (what I thought) was a[n] Ayurvedic technique.

I spent the $700 and had the personal consultation with Mr Chopra, which consisted of two [minutes] of pulse touching and mantra-giving (something like 'Trapus-vena'? can[']t really remember it clearly). Anyway I never did it once and it was a complete waste of $700 (of which I couldn[']t really afford to spend!) although the tape of Maharishi chanting (supposedly) is actually quit[e] good (boy was that the most expensive tape I ever bought!)

The brainwashing was deep but my sexuality was deeper. You can[']t fight nature. They always said so, who was I [to] argue, my sexuality was what nature made me.

The one thing that I resent was the loss of Ayurveda. It was my life and I just couldn[']t continue with it under Chopra.

I [now] understand that TM [doesn't] own Ayurveda or, in fact. meditation — anymore than Christians own the words of Jesus. However with TM and my experience of Ayurveda being so linked I have a totally block now, and it is sad for me.

It was a surprise and real pleasure to hear from Mark last week:

When I look back at my story its amazing how my life has moved on[.] I am doing well and have a stable loving relationship and great job.

Just as a note from my story, around about 1999 I have a call out of the blue from my old TM teacher[.] [H]e asked if I remembered him and them went on to say he had felt guilty even after all those years after what he said to me, and that he himself is gay!

It’s amazing what people do to each other out of their own insecurities and inadequacies.

John I hope that are well and keep up the good work.

I know a number of stories that tend to show the TM Org as not gay-friendly. If people are interested, just ask in the comments below.

Thirty Years Later: What was all that about? (Part 11 of a series)

(To read this series from the beginning, start here.)

There was a time in the early 1980’s when the then - “World Government” sought to increase its presence in the Washington, DC area, to seek government support for the organization’s programs, and as it was alleged, to have a positive effect on the federal government through the mere presence of tiny numbers of meditating people. Groups of meditators were encouraged to relocate to the area, while the organization purchased two buildings, one an aging downtown hotel, the other the Dickson Mansion in the Carter Barron neighborhood on 14th Street, N.W. The relocated meditators moved into a number of homes within a few blocks of the mansion.

This was during the same time that I was involved in one of the local center’s small projects, spending some time with the core group of meditators. Since the “National Capital of the Age of Enlightenment” was not yet open, afternoon group practice of the so-called “Yogic Flying” program was held in one of these homes. During one of my visits, while I was meditating in an upstairs room, the group bounced on foam rubber laid out in the first-floor rooms, shaking the whole house.

Some of the relatively wealthy individuals involved with the local TM center - then in the process of being renamed “Capital of the Age of Enlightenment” - were introduced to me that afternoon. Two of those people were a man from the family who owned a real estate development firm in the Washington area, and a woman from the family who owned one of the area’s well-known auto dealerships.

Proposed "Tower of Invincibility" rendering, from towerofinvincibilitydc.org

Fast-forward some twenty-five years later, and the man who's now a full partner in his family’s real estate development firm, Jeffrey Abramson, is today still involved with the TM organization in the Washington, DC area. In October 2007 he announced his plans to construct a “Grand ‘Tower of Invincibility’” in the area with a press conference hosted by longtime TM movement publicist Bob Roth. While his proposal gained some coverage in the city’s media - where a Washington Post writer, copying Abramson’s press release, called it “a 12-story monument dedicated to peace and freedom” - there really isn’t much of an explanation why Abramson believes that this building is somehow connected to either “peace” or “invincibility.”

Actually, the vagueness of the plans is in a way the most notable thing about the announcement. While clearly Abramson is talking about building a physical building, the statement he issued to the press has that ethereal quality of most of the TM organization’s rhetoric. Like a lot of that rhetoric, he briefly mentions TM, physicist and TM poster boy John Hagelin, and throws around the words “science,” “coherence” and “research,” but after that there really isn’t much of an explanation of why Abramson needs to build this tower. After all, the exhibits to be contained in the tower, and the process of initiating people into the organization’s programs, can be located in conventional buildings, and Abramson himself has already helped finance one of these for the organization in the area, in nearby Rockville, Maryland.

This vagueness is even a bit weirder when Abramson, standing at the podium during his press conference, expresses some urgency that construction on this building get started right away. “I’m in a hurry. I think it needs to be built now, we don’t want to debate it, we don’t want to wait.”

So what is this tower really about? Why the sudden urgency to build it? And why, if it’s the TM programs that supposedly bring about “world peace” and national “invincibility,” would he need a tower, too? Is there some thing special about the tower that might in itself, in the minds of the promoters, be very important, perhaps as important as TM itself?

Certainly Abramson himself, after repeatedly saying the tower was merely a “monument” to his favorite form of meditation, hinted that the tower was so important that Congress should quickly approve the use of federal land to build it. “Congress has shown that it can act quickly if it wants to,” he said, “and I think in the name of national invincibility it certainly ought to.” The peculiar way he phrased this sentence certainly implies that “national invincibility” brought about by the tower’s mere existence should be enough to prompt Congress to immediately act.

As is often the case when examining the rhetoric the TM movement has spewed in recent years, the usual notions of cause and effect are clearly not helpful in making sense of such statements. Yes, we are talking about people who think “national invincibility” is something that can be brought about by bringing together a mass of people who bounce on foam rubber for an hour or so a day. The creation of a monumental building that has a similar magical effect on the nation in their minds is apparently not that much of a stretch, since as can be seen in later movement pronouncements, this proposed tower is no ordinary monument.

A few months after Abramson’s announcement, after what little attention he gathered from it had long faded, the “Global Government of World Peace,” that is, the TM organization, announced “groundbreaking” ceremonies for 48 of these “Maharishi Towers of Invincibility” around the world. In the usual manner in which the organization announces projects that may or may not ever even be started, this doesn’t necessarily mean that construction of 48, or even one, of these towers is imminent. The January 2008 announcement of these ceremonies appeared on a new website with a number of supporting documents on it. One of these documents was a ‘backgrounder’ which included comments made by the organization’s leader about these towers. While most of those comments are self-congratulatory and shed little light on the question of the actual need for these towers, one paragraph stands out.

[Maharishi Mahesh Yogi] said that the Rajas should have the 12 Jyotir Lings in that place too where the people are practising their Yogic Flying for national Invincibility in each country. These would be the representations of the 12 Jyotir Lings in India which express the full value of Shiva, pure Cosmic intelligence, the Constitution of the Universe, the point where the Grace of Guru Dev is most lively to bless all mankind.

In another more lengthy document placed online in February, the wording describing the towers is somewhat different. Here it says that the “Towers of Invincibility” are actual representation of lingas:

Maharishi explained that the Maharishi Towers of Invincibility will be the representations of the twelve Jyotir Lingas in India, which express the full value of Shiva, pure Cosmic Intelligence, the Constitution of the Universe, the point where the Grace of Guru Dev is most lively to bless all mankind.

What, then, are the Jyotir Lingas, or alternately, Lingams? A lingam, more generally, is a symbolic representation of the Hindu god Shiva, used in worship. Physically, it’s usually a rounded stone set in a circular base. The 12 Jyotir Lingam are located throughout India, in traditional shrines of special reverence where Shiva is worshipped.

Thus the series: a linga is a symbol of Shiva, and the “Maharishi Tower of Invincibility” is a representation of a linga. It follows, of course, that these towers are somehow intended to be a symbol of the god, Shiva, and are somehow related to the practice of Shiva worship.

We might also reasonably conclude from all this that the construction of these twelve story tall lingas, presumably to aid in the worship of Shiva, are intended to bring about “national invincibility” through the creation of what can only be described as a religious shrine. But it’s historically true that all of the programs associated with this organization, as I first pointed out in part 3, have had an element of extreme decontextualization. Things that have always been clearly religious at their origin in India are stripped of original meaning and given new descriptive terminology. Shiva, formerly a deity, becomes mere “Cosmic Intelligence” or the “Unified Field” in a “theory” uniquely presented by a particular physicist involved with the organization. Bija mantras used in TM, once widely known to be associated with Shiva and other gods of the Hindu pantheon, become meaningless sounds, and meditators are told they need not concern themselves with the original meaning or context.

Historically, of course, the TM movement’s attempt to cast its programs as purely secular in nature has run aground, most spectacularly when the teaching of TM and other programs in public schools was interrupted by a federal court ruling finding that “the teaching of the SCI/TM course in New Jersey public high schools violates the establishment clause of the first amendment.”

Here the movement’s longtime habit of stripping obvious Hindu iconography and even Hindu theology of any original religious or cultural context has taken an extreme form, moving from the language of textbooks thirty years ago to the construction of multimillion-dollar buildings today. An outright appeal has been made for direct government support for construction of a building that at minimum will contain religious artifacts, and that is strongly suggested to itself be a religious artifact that will somehow, as is implied by its proponents, have influence on its surroundings. It’s as if the movement’s mere reluctance to point out the obvious religious nature of the project is expected to transform it into a completely secular monument suitable for government support.

Image of lingam on the Maharishi Channel, April, 2008

Meanwhile, on the movement’s satellite television channel, an image of a white, featureless lingam has recently regularly appeared, without explanation or even a description of what is in the image. Whatever the reason, the image is important enough to appear between other programs on the channel. Why it is there, while likely known to at least some of the organization’s devotees, is apparently not important enough for public explanation.

With the passing of the movement’s founder, it’s possible that the realization of what may have been his original inner goal - to spark a Hindu revival transported to the West, complete with ritual worship of Shiva - has become a priority. (The middle name of the founder, Mahesh, is a popular alternate name for Shiva.) But that revival, continuing the peculiar habits of the founder when he first arrived in the West, must be sheathed in his old habits of vagueness, confusion, denial and deception. It must not appear religious, by retelling the traditional religion with substitutions of language, confusing religion with science on a grand scale. It must deny its origins while its origins are obvious; unlike the 1960’s when the culture and religion of India were truly obscure to many if not most Westerners, anyone with Internet access can explore those origins in detail and draw the connections.

Perhaps all that accumulated denial explains the peculiar - some would say, pathological - culture of the TM movement today. This culture has developed to the point that a wealthy donor to the organization stands before the press of the nation’s capital and says he’s going to build a ten million dollar tower as a monument to meditation, while simultaneously, we may reasonably infer that he doesn’t dare clearly explain in public why that tower is so urgently important to him.

(Continue to Part 12)