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Meditation,
Delusion and Deception
David J. Bardin
He's
really not so
transcendental
A true
master of mental
manipulation has targeted
Washington, D.C. He calls
himself Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi. His devotees adore
him, simply, as "Maharishi."
He sells Transcendental
Meditation, with a Capital
"M." It differs from many
kinds of small "m"
meditation. So better
examine it carefully before
you buy.
His
trademarked product, TMTM,
has reputedly made him a
billionaire. He lives
reclusively on a luxury
estate in Holland, far from
the tax collectors of his
former headquarters, in
India, Switzerland and the
U.S.A. But Maharishi's
agents are again in
Washington, D.C., hunting
for government funds to
propagate TM and donations
from unwary individuals.
Public
funding by the District of
Columbia, the federal
government or a state would
be unlawful because TM is a
religion not the science
it pretends to be.
Donations would be unwise
because TM can harm people
in the large doses Maharishi
promotes though it carries
no warning labels.
TM
is a religion
Federal courts ruled years
ago that Maharishi's TM is a
religion (Malnak v. Yogi,
440 F.Supp. 1284 (1977),
affirmed, 592 F.2d 197 (3rd
Cir. 1979). Government
funding to propagate TM is
therefore unconstitutional.
During
the Carter Administration
the Department of Health,
Education & Welfare (HEW)
and the New Jersey
Department of Education
funded an "experiment" to
teach TM and its "Science of
Creative Intelligence"
(TM/SCI) as an elective in
five public high schools.
Teachers specially trained
by TM taught students four
or five days a week. If it
"worked" the course would be
taught statewide.
Several parents, the
Spiritual Counterfeits
Project, Inc. (a Christian
group based in Berkeley,
California) and Americans
United for Separation of
Church and State asked the
U.S. District Court for New
Jersey to enjoin this
experiment. These
plaintiffs argued that TM
was a religion and that the
teaching of TM in public
schools and the government
funding were both an
"Establishment of Religion"
in violation of the First
Amendment to the
Constitution. TM
representatives argued that
TM is a secular science, not
a religion.
Federal Judge J. Curtis
Meanor ruled that TM is a
religion. He enjoined HEW
Secretary Joseph A. Califano,
Jr., N.J. Commissioner Fred
G. Burke, school officials
and TM's umbrella
organization itself from
using public funds to
propagate TM. The Third
Circuit Court of Appeals in
Philadelphia unanimously
affirmed. Judge Meanor's
injunction is still in
effect today.
These
judges looked to the
religious nature of
Maharishi's SCI textbook,
which was being taught, and
the religious nature of his
puja initiation ceremony,
which TMers must go through
individually to receive
their secret meditation
mantra. Without that mantra
it is impossible to practice
TM.
At the
compulsory puja ceremony,
held outside the school
building, each student
brought some fruit, flowers
and a clean white
handkerchief that were taken
and laid on a table in a
closed room. The student's
teacher would bow and make
offerings many times to an
8" by 12" color photograph
of Guru Dev, said to be
Maharishi's teacher, who had
died in the 1950s. Each
student's teacher also sang
a chant in Sanskrit and the
student received "his own
personal mantra which is
never to be revealed to any
other person." (592 F.2d at
198.)
TM
witnesses swore that the
chant was a purely secular
expression of gratitude to
teachers. However, Judge
Meanor read an English
translation prepared by TM
and found not one word of
thanks in it. Rather, the
chant describes a deified
Guru Dev as "the Lord" and
"Him" (with a capital H),
among a slew of divine
epithets quoted by Judge
Meanor. For example:
The
Unbounded, like the endless
canopy of the sky, the
omnipresent in all creation
to Him, to Shri Guru Dev, I
bow down, the Eternal, the
Pure, the Immovable ... to
Shri Guru Dev, I bow down.
Nonetheless, a Catholic
priest, Protestant minister
and Jewish rabbi who
practiced TM, testified that
TM and the puja chant had no
religious meaning even
after they had read TM's
English translation. For
example, Rabbi Harry Sprig
of Los Angeles practiced TM,
recommended it to his
congregants, called it
"primarily a scientific
technique," studied
Maharishi's SCI and somehow
found no conflict between
his own religion and either
the translated text or the
accompanying ceremony. In
sharp contrast, Rabbi
Seymour Siegel, Professor of
Theology at the Jewish
Theological Seminary in New
York City, swore that in
"the cultural setting of the
United States and in the
tradition of both Hebrew and
Christian theology" such
terms are "descriptive
exclusively of a Supreme
Being or God."
Researchers will find that
the District Court opinion
in Malnak v. Yogi
extensively excerpts
Maharishi's "scientific" SCI
textbook and reprints the
full text of his puja
ceremony chant.
TM
is not a science
TM's
"scientific" claims as a
branch of physics are
spurious. Physicist Heinz
R. Pages, Ph.D., executive
director of The New York
Academy of Sciences,
prepared an affidavit on
behalf of ex-TMer Robert
Kropinski in 1986 for a
court case here in
Washington, D.C. Pagels
wrote as a "theoretical
physicist specializing in
the area of quantum field
theory":
My
summary opinion is that the
views expressed in the
literature issued by [TM]
that purport to find a
connection between the
recent ideas of theoretical
physics unified field
theory, the vacuum state and
collective phenomena and
states of consciousness
attained by transcendental
meditation are false and
profoundly misleading. No
qualified physicist that I
know would claim to find
such a connection without
knowingly committing fraud.
TM
hurts people
Maharishi's lieutenants
speak of promoting 20-minute
doses of relaxation. How
could that really hurt you
(even if how-to lessons and
"your own" secret mantra
were overpriced at $600)?
They
don't tell you about the
advanced (Sidhi) courses
(priced at over $2,000) that
Maharashi began to sell in
the late 1970s. Advanced
TMers meditate for hours at
a time. That can stimulate
delusions and
hallucinations.
TM
insists it can teach you to
levitate and fly. ("Yogic
flying" lessons may cost
$3,000.) TMers don't really
fly. They hop, from a
cross-legged yoga position.
They develop awesomely
powerful thigh muscles.
They may develop aches.
After hop, hop, hopping
across a room, TMers coming
out of their altered mental
state may believe that they
flew even though it never
happened. Major TV programs
have shown how "flying"
TMers really hop. You can
borrow a videotape to see
for yourself.
The
Washington City Paper
reported (July 13, 1990, p.
14) that former TM teacher
and yogic flyer Diane Hendel:
"saw little creatures with
wings" during intensive
meditation periods. They
were like my pets. They'd
tell me things. " Hendel was
encouraged to believe that
these winged beasties were "devas"
Hindu spirits of nature.
"I began not to be able to
tell who was a person and
who was a deva," she said.
Hendel sought counseling,
eventually quit meditating,
and left the movement.
Intensive meditation can
make TMers seem lifeless or
flat, their personalities
crushed and buried, devoid
of emotion. In some cases,
the meditator may go into
involuntary meditation,
which could be devastating
if driving a car or at many
kinds of jobs. Stanford
psychologist Leon S. Otis
(who believed many people
could benefit from the
20-minute relaxation)
concluded that his data
raise serious doubts about
the innocuous nature of TM.
In fact, they suggest that
TM may be hazardous to the
mental health of a sizable
proportion of the people who
take up TM. (Adverse
Effects of Transcendental
Meditation, Update: A
Quarterly Journal of New
Religious Movements, 9,
37-50 [1985]).
Maharishi has taught
devotees that a TMer is
healthfully "unstressing"
when symptoms of distress
accompany his meditation.
Ex-TMers have sued TM,
alleging severe harms. TM
has generally settled out of
court, including cases in
Washington, D.C.
TM's failure to communicate
"warning labels"
Dr.
Otis urged TM to "publicly
recognize that problems may
be engendered by meditation
and so instruct potential
initiates as well as to
provide guidelines to both
the general public and the
psychotherapeutic profession
for their amelioration." An
ethical guru would prepare
for harmful side effects,
and would immediately
instruct sufferers to ease
off on their meditation.
Instead of "warning labels"
about harmful side effects,
however, Maharishi taught
his aides to welcome adverse
symptoms as evidence of "unstressing"
and to encourage even more
intensive meditation.
Debunking the "Maharishi
Effects"
It is
intensive, prolonged
meditating that TM promotes
and for which it claims all
kinds of marvelous
"Maharishi effects" when it
is performed by masses of
meditators. It is hard to
keep up with TM's claims for
mass meditation. TM's
"intellectual" center at
Fairfield, Iowa, called
"Maharishi International
University" (MIU) churns
them out.
TMers
claimed they influenced the
weather at MIU while
concrete was poured for
buildings (the "Domes") in
which hundreds could
meditate. A dispassionate
study showed that the
concrete contractor checked
the National Weather
Forecast each time before
deciding to make a delivery
the next day and that the
meditators sought warm
weather only later in the
day, after the forecast on
which the contractor relied
was already made. (Trumpy,
An Investigation of the
Reported Effect of
Transcendental Meditation on
the Weather, The Skeptical
Inquirer, VIII, 143 [Winter
1983/84]).
TMers
claimed that if 1% of a
city s population meditates
regularly the crime rate
would go down. In
Fairfield, Iowa, 13% of the
population meditates, yet
crime has not gone down.
(Randi, Flim-Flam, cited in
Rational Enquirer,
newsletter of the BC
Skeptics [Vancouver, April
1989]).
TMers
claimed that meditators
massed in Jerusalem in 1983
brought about social
benefits including "a
solution to conflicts in the
region that were impossible
of solution until now."
Mordecai Kaffman, Director
of the Research Department
of the Kibbutz Child and
Family Clinic, dismissed TM
methods as unscientific and
TM "claims of positive
results in the Israeli
context" as unconvincing; he
branded TM's theory of
"unified field" as
incredible. (The Use of
Transcendental Meditation to
Promote Social Progress in
Israel, Cultic Studies
Journal, 3:1 [1986]).
TM
is a tyrannical sell-out of
the New Age
Pulitzer prize winner
Michael D'Antonio recently
surveyed the status and
varieties of the "New Age"
movement in America. He
discusses TM in Chapter 6 of
HEAVEN ON EARTH DISPATCHES
FROM AMERICA'S SPIRITUAL
FRONTIER (Crown 1992). As a
friend of the New Age, who
wanted to find something
positive in TM, D'Antonio
concludes:
I
would have welcomed the
discovery of a middle way, a
path to spirituality that
was consistent with reason.
But TM, as it is practiced
at MIU, isn't a middle
ground. For the first time
in my travels through New
Age America, I worried that
I was observing a cult
rather than a culture . MIU
and the Maharishi would take
control of everything
right down to matters of
food, shelter, and child
rearing for the most
devout.
TMers,
D'Antonio sadly concludes,
"have accepted rigid,
authoritarian control in
exchange for security. Far
from being a place where
individuals grow and
innovate, the Fairfield TM
community is regimented and
constricted. All conflict,
doubt, perhaps even all
genuine emotion, is stifled
and covered over with a
pleasant veneer."
Conclusion
The
Department of Education
recently published the
student loan default rates
for all universities and
other participating
institutions in the
country. MIU was listed as
a 5-year private institution
with 175 student loan
borrowers in 1992; of whom
12.9% were in default (the
highest default rate of any
4 or 5 year college or
university in Iowa). As a
taxpayer, you are already
subsidizing MIU. Think
twice before giving TM any |
