Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by TimidGuy (talk | contribs) at 16:01, 29 October 2006 (→Questions about research on herbal products: JAMA article focuses primarily on marketing). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Totally disputed

Transcendental Meditation or TM is a trademarked form of meditation introduced in 1955 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It is also the name of a movement led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. According to this movement, a body of scientific research shows its meditation techniques produce a variety of positive effects, for the community as well as individual practitioners. Issues include the validity of that research, as well as the nature of the movement itself.

History

In 1957, at the end of a great "festival of spiritual luminaries" in remembrance of the previous Shankaracharya of the North, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, his disciple Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (or simply "Maharishi" to followers) announced the formal beginning of the TM Movement. In the movement's initial stages, Maharishi operated under the auspices of an organization he called the "Spiritual Regeneration Movement." His publications during this period include a translation of the first six chapters of the Hindu scripture known as the Bhagavad-Gita, a practical manual titled The Science of Being and the Art of Living, and the long devotional poem Love and God.

In the early 1970s, Maharishi launched his "World Plan" to establish a TM teaching center for each million of the world's population, which at that time would have meant 3,600 TM centers throughout the world. Since 1990, Maharishi has co-ordinated his global activities from his headquarters in the town of Vlodrop in the municipality of Roerdalen in the Netherlands.

The TM Movement founded a nationally accredited university, Maharishi University of Management (formerly Maharishi International University), in Fairfield, Iowa, USA, in 1971; a number of schools around the world, including the K-12 school, Maharishi School for the Age of Enlightenment; Maharishi Vedic City in southeast Iowa, (incorporated 21 July, 2001); political parties in many countries around the world known as the Natural Law Party, all of which are now defunct, the US branch having closed on April 30, 2004 (see ) in favour of the "Global Country of World Peace," founded in 2002.

The movement says more than 6 million people worldwide have learned the Transcendental Meditation technique since its inauguration , including celebrities such as the Beatles, radio personality Howard Stern, film director David Lynch, Scottish musician Donovan, and actresses Mia Farrow and Heather Graham. For nearly eight years until leaving the movement in 1993, Deepak Chopra was one of Maharishi's most prominent spokespersons and promoters of Maharishi Ayurveda. In 1989, Maharishi invested Chopra with the title "Dhanvantari, Lord of Immortality of Heaven on Earth."

Procedures and theory

The Transcendental Meditation technique comes from the ancient Vedic tradition of India and is practiced for twenty minutes twice daily while sitting with the eyes closed. The TM technique involves effortless, mental repetition of a simple sound known as a mantra given to the meditator at the time of initiation. The new meditator is informed that the mantra should remain private. Often, agreement-forms to that effect are signed.

The first research on the Transcendental Meditation technique, conducted at UCLA and Harvard Medical Schools and published from 1970 to 1972 in Science, American Journal of Physiology, and Scientific American, indicated that the Transcendental Meditation technique produces a state which the TM movement calls “restful alertness” in the mind and body.. The deepest state of rest in this form of meditation, according to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, is called "Pure Consciousness". The TM organization emphasizes in its teaching that the procedure for using the mantra is very important, and can only be learned from a trained teacher authorized by the TM movement. TM is considered a form of "dhyana", using the terminology of Patanjali. While most translations suggest that dhyana means "concentration," the TM movement says this is misleading from a TM perspective, because TM is "concentration" in the same way as one's attention can become attracted to a beautiful sunset, rather than as something the mind is forced to pay attention to.

Theory of Consciousness

According to Transcendental Meditation theory there are seven major states of consciousness, of which the first three are familiar to non-TM meditators. The last three states fulfill the definition of Enlightenment - the ultimate goal of long-term TM-practice:

• waking state of consciousness
• dreaming state of consciousness (REM)
• dreamless sleeping state of consciousness
• Transcendental Consciousness (TC)
• Cosmic Consciousness (CC)
• God Consciousness (GC)
• Unity Consciousness (UC)

Learning TM

The technique has been taught to people in a variety of formats over the years. Currently, it is taught for a fee in a seven-step process over a five- to seven-day period. The process includes an introductory lecture, group instruction, personal interview and instruction, and a free lifetime-followup program called "checking," to assure that the technique is being performed properly . Personal instruction begins with a ceremony conducted in Sanskrit called a puja, and proceeds according to this TM teachers' directive: "Teacher has prepared an altar to Guru Dev, lit a candle and incense, and spread camphor, sandalwood paste, rice, and other ritual offerings in the appropriate ritual containers prior to student's entrance." The inititate enters and presents the teacher with fresh fruit, flowers, and a clean handkerchief, who then places them on a table set up as an altar with a picture of "Guru Dev" – Maharishi's guru, Brahmananda Saraswati. At the ceremony's end, the teacher kneels and invites the initiate to kneel before the "picture of Guru Dev, His Divinity Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Maharishi's Master, from whom we have this meditation." As the teacher rises, he or she presents the initiate with a mantra by repeating it and gesturing to the student to repeat it.

TM-related research

Medical indexes, such as PubMed, show that over 200 studies have been conducted on Transcendental Meditation. The universities and medical centers where this research has taken place include Harvard Medical School, Yale Medical School, Stanford University, Princeton University, MIT, Purdue University, UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan Medical School, and the University of Texas.

The research suggests that numerous health benefits are associated with the TM technique, including reduction of high blood pressure, younger biological age, decreased insomnia, reduction of high cholesterol, reduced illness and medical expenditures, decreased outpatient visits, decreased cigarette smoking, decreased alcohol use, and decreased anxiety.

Some studies indicate that regular practice of TM leads to significant, cumulative benefits in the areas of mind (Travis, Arenander & DuBois 2004) harv error: no target: CITEREFTravisArenanderDuBois2004 (help), body (Barnes, Treiber & Davis 2001) harv error: no target: CITEREFBarnesTreiberDavis2001 (help), behavior (Barnes, Bauza & Treiber 2003) harv error: no target: CITEREFBarnesBauzaTreiber2003 (help) and environment (Hagelin et al. 1999) harv error: no target: CITEREFHagelinRainforthOrme-JohnsonCavanaugh1999 (help). One study showed that TM had positive effects on arterial wall thickness in African-American people with high blood pressure. (PMID 10700487).

A more recent study published in the American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine found that coronary heart disease patients who practiced TM for 16 weeks showed improvements in blood pressure, insulin resistance, and autonomic nervous system tone, compared with a control group of patients who received health education. The researchers concluded that TM may be a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of coronary heart disease.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $21 million funding research on the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program on heart disease . In 1999, the NIH awarded a grant of nearly $8 million to Maharishi University of Management to establish the first research center specializing in natural preventive medicine for minorities in the U.S. The new research institute, called the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, was inaugurated on October 11, 1999, at the University's Department of Physiology and Health in Fairfield, Iowa.

In 2005 the American Journal of Cardiology published a review of two studies that looked at stress reduction with TM and mortality among patients receiving treatment for high blood pressure The review was funded in part by a grant from NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Also in 2005, the American Journal of Hypertension published the results of a study that found TM may be useful as an adjunct in the long-term treatment of hypertension among African-Americans.. Most recently, a functional MRI study of 24 patients published in NeuroReport found that the long-term practice of TM may reduce the brain's response to pain.

Questions about research on Transcendental Meditation

A review for the U.S. Army Research Institute, a National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council committee concluded that Transcendental Meditation is no more effective in lowering metabolism than are established relaxation techniques.NRC 1991

A subsequent study found that this report was based on a report commissioned by the U.S. Army in 1986. "The NRC review was based almost entirely on a single unpublished review (Brener & Connally, 1986) and overlooked virtually all of the research current to the review, including numerous studies directly bearing on its conclusions. Even though the review cited a bibliography of hundreds of studies on meditation in its reference section (Murphy & Donovan, 1988, 1999), it did not include this material in its review."

Questions about marketing of herbal products

In May 1991, an article on the benefits of Maharishi Ayur Veda was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). When JAMA's editor, Dr. George D. Lundberg learned that the journal was misled about the authors' financial involvement with the TM movement, he assigned associate news editor Andrew A. Skolnick to investigate and write an article on the movement's efforts to promote its trademarked line of traditional Indian remedies. "An investigation of the movement's marketing practices reveals what appears to be a widespread pattern of misinformation, deception, and manipulation of lay and scientific news media," Skolnick wrote. "This campaign appears to be aimed at earning at least the look of scientific respectability for the TM movement, as well as at making profits from sales of the many products and services that carry the Maharishi's name.". It also countered the article's claim that Maharishi Ayur-Veda was more cost effective than standard medical care.

In July 1992, Dr. Deepak Chopra, the Lancaster Foundation, and the American Association for Ayur-Vedic Medicine filed a $194 million libel suit against Lundberg, Skolnick, and the American Medical Association alleging in part that statements in the article were false and defamatory. The case never went to trial and was resolved in 1993 by a confidential settlement agreement. No part of the JAMA article was retracted.

The article quotes a former TM teacher and chair of the TM center in Washington, DC, as saying: "I was taught to lie and to get around the pretty rules of the 'unenlightened' in order to get favorable reports into the media. We were taught how to exploit the reporters' gullibility and fascination with the exotic, especially what comes from the East. We thought we weren't doing anything wrong, because we were told it was often necessary to deceive the unenlightened to advance our guru's plan to save the world."

Other programs offered by Maharishi

Beyond the initial meditation technique, the TM organization offers numerous other programs and products, such as its TM-Sidhi program, which involves the silent mental recitation of selected yoga sutras of Patanjali , followed by portions the ninth and tenth mandalas of the Rig Veda chanted by Vedic pandits. The TM movement says the advanced meditation technique taught in this program brings many additional benefits to practitioners -- who are called "Yogic Flyers," because Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says its practice will eventually lead to levitation. So far, only hopping not hovering has been demonstrated to non-practitioners.

The TM movement also offers Maharishi Ayurveda, its own trademarked version of Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India; Vedic Astrology, which the movement calls Maharishi Jyotish; Vedic ceremonies called "yagyas" to purify the individual of karmic obstructions; and a trademarked brand of food, Vedic Organic Agriculture.

Sthapatya Veda

In his televised press conference of November 16, 2005, Maharishi said he believes it is vital for everyone in the world to live and work in buildings constructed according to Sthapatya Veda or Vastuarchitecture. Sthapatya Veda is based on Vedic principles, according to which the arrangement and layout of one's home has important effects on all areas of one's life (similar beliefs exist in Feng Shui). According to Sthapatya Veda, it is most auspicious for the main entrance of all structures to face the east, and all the rooms in a Vedically-correct building must be arranged around a central "Brahmastan" or seat of divinity.

At the press conference, Maharishi said it is imperative that all members of the organization quickly move into dwellings constructed according to Vedically-correct principles and that he would no longer talk or deal with any member of the TM community who lived in structures that are not consistent with Vedic principles.

According to the chief architect at Maharishi Global Construction in Fairfield, Iowa, building a home according to Maharishi's Vedically-correct principles "connects the individual intelligence of the occupant of the house to the cosmic intelligence of the universe." Homes with entrances facing west invite "poverty, lack of creativity and vitality," according to a pamphlet.

In keeping with Maharishi's suggestion, Maharishi University of Management has demolished approximately 40 campus buildings, including a Christian chapel, in order to replace them with buildings constructed according to Vedic principles. In the Netherlands, the TM movement is encountering resistance over its plans to tear down a former Christian monastery and replace it with Vastu-compliant structures.

Maharishi’s Supreme Military Science

The TM organization is offering world leaders a method to make their armed forces "invincible" through the technology of "Maharishi's Supreme Military Science." One published TM study claims: "Over 50 studies indicate that groups practicing this Invincible Defence technology alleviate problems in society that may derive from collective stress, which is viewed by Maharishi as the root cause of adversarial relationships leading to war.…It has been field-tested by the Mozambique military to prevent hostilities and avert the rise of enemies. This approach could greatly improve the military's peacemaking and peacekeeping abilities, while reducing risks to personnel and civilians."

Criticisms and controversies

Compared to many other Eastern-inspired religious movements with a footing in the West, the Transcendental Meditation movement has experienced no high-profile controversies. Critics include scientists, former TM teachers and practitioners, and Christian and Jewish fundamentalists.

TM-Sidhi Program and the Maharishi Effect

In the mid-1970s, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced his TM-Sidhi Program, which involves advanced meditation techniques by which meditators are said to achieve many great benefits. Early promotional posters for the advanced technique offered meditators powers of levitation, invisibility, the ability to walk through walls, and the "strength of an elephant." . The TM movement eventually stopped talking publicly about these powers, except for the ability to hover and fly; the movement says that TM-Sidhi meditators (called Sidhas) have already achieved the first of the three stages of "Yogic Flying" – hopping. Further practice of the technique is said to lead to the second stage, which is hovering or levitation. When the meditators achieve the third stage, they will be flying though the sky without the aid of airplanes. Accounts within the movement of yogic flyers advancing beyond the hopping stage have varied over the years. For example, in 1978, when the host of The Merv Griffin (TV) Show asked Maharishi Mahesh Yogi how many of the 40,000 TM-Sidhi students he taught learned to levitate, the guru answered, "Thousands."

The TM movement also says that regular practice of TM and TM-Sidhi programs produces a "Maharishi Effect," which benefits society in general, not just individual practitioners, by increasing "the influence of coherence and positivity in the social and natural environment."." According to Maharishi, if just the square root of one percent of the population regularly practices the TM Sidhi program together, the entire population will be blessed with the fruits of greater coherence - including reduction in violence, crime, disease, deadly storms, and other destructive natural forces. They will enjoy more abundant crops and a decrease in poverty.

The movement has presented a number of public demonstrations of Yogic Flying, such as the one in 1999 described by Bob Park, professor of physics at the University of Maryland and author of the weekly science Internet column, What's New. The Yogic Flying demonstration was presented at a press conference at the Washington, DC Press Club by physicist and Natural Law Party Presidential candidate John Hagelin. Hagelin had called the press conference to offer help in ending the war in Kosovo by sending 7000 Yogic Flyers to create positive coherence in the violence-torn country. This is how Park described the demonstration:

"Mattresses were spread right there on the floor, and 12 fit-looking young guys seated themselves in the lotus position. The audience was cautioned to make no sound as they meditated. After a few minutes, one of them suddenly levitated. Well, he didn't exactly float, mind you, just sort of popped up a couple of inches and thumped back down. Then another levitated, and another, till the scene looked like corn popping. There was nothing to suggest they didn't follow parabolic trajectories. My guess is they were suddenly contracting their gluteus maximus. It must be hard work. They were soon panting heavily."

James Randi, a magician and critic of paranormal claims, investigated the claims of Dr. Robert Rabinoff, a former Maharishi International University physics professor and researcher on the "Maharishi effect," that a large gathering of TM meditators had reduced crime and accidents and increased crop production in the vicinity of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. Rabinoff made the claims during a talk at the University of Oregon in 1978. Randi spoke with the Fairfield Police Department, the Iowa Department of Agriculture, and Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles and was unable to substantiate the claims

A later study on the Maharishi effect said it found a correlation between the installation of a group of 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs in the District of Columbia, and a reduction in violent crime in that city.

At a press conference to announce the analysis of that study, John Hagelin said that, during the period of the experiment, Washington, D.C. experienced a significant reduction in psychiatric emergency calls, fewer complaints against the police, and an increase in public approval of President Clinton -- all of which was consistent with the hypothesis that a coherence-creating group of TM experts can relieve social stress and reverse negative social trends. Overall, there was an 18-percent reduction in violent crime, he told the press. When a reporter asked, a 18-percent reduction compared to what, Hagelin answered, compared to the level of violent crime had the TM meditators not meditated. Hagelin said that criminologists have shown that violent crime fluctuates significantly relative to the temperature. Crime goes down when it's cold and up when it's hot. The standard methodology for assessing whether the crime rate changed or not is to compare it with what is expected for that particular season. Hagelin said that by using the standard methology (time series analysis), they were able to show the level of violent crime in Washington had dropped well below the expected level based on previous data.

In his book Voodoo Science, physicist Robert Park called the TM study a "clinic in data manipulation." Study coauthor Maxwell Rainforth writes that Park gives "no supporting data or analysis for that assertion, and makes not another comment about it," either in his book or in the shorter version that appeared in Skeptical Inquirer. Further, Rainforth writes that "Park’s objection to our use of time series analysis is not based on any scientific argument . . . ." The researchers also question whether Park read the published study, since his criticism focuses on a preliminary Interim Report released at a press conference in 1994.

Park questions the validity of the study by saying that during the weeks of the experiment Washington D.C.'s weekly murder count "hit the highest level ever recorded." He doesn't give a reference for this on the cited page. According to the study, statistical analysis suggests that the murder rate, which typically goes up during hot weather, fell within the range of what would have been expected for that time of year.

In 1994 John Hagelin received an Ig Nobel Prize in peace to commemorate the study. This spoof of the Nobel Prize is given annually to recognize "achievements" that "cannot, or should not, be reproduced."

In July 2006, Hagelin said that the United States government would "enjoy greater success" if the country had just 1730 (the square root of one percent of the U.S. population) Sidhas flying regularly together as a group. With at least that many practicing Yogic Flyers in the United States, "Peace and prosperity will reign, and violence and conflict will subside as America rises to become a lighthouse of coherence and invincibility for the world,” he said.

Political activities of the TM organization

Natural Law Party

The TM organization founded the Natural Law Party in 1992 in support of candidates for public office dedicated to promoting both TM and Maharishi's far-reaching political goals at all levels of society. The NLP ran Dr. John Hagelin, former physics professor at Maharishi University of Management, for president of the United States in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections, when he received fewer than 84,000 votes-or less than one tenth of one percent of the total number of votes. In 1998, psychiatrist and self-help book author Harold Bloomfield was the NLP candidate for Governor of California. In 2001, Bloomfield was charged with having used Ecstasy and methamphetamine to drug and then sexually molest seven women patients. In an agreement with the prosecutor, he pleaded guilty to all but one of ten counts. Bloomfield was sentenced to probation and ordered not to practice medicine for five years.

According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the NLP spent nearly $2.3 million on its presidential campaign in the 1999-2000 election cycle . The Natural Law Party did not run a candidate for president in the 2004 U.S. election and it is no longer a registered party in the United Kingdom.

Global Country of World Peace

Maharishi unilaterally established his own government and on October 12, 2000 crowned neuroscientist Tony Nader Raja Raam (Vedic king) - the "First Sovereign Ruler of the Global Country of World Peace." Its government is devoted to achieving Maharishi's goals, including the teaching and practice of TM in public schools and global reconstruction of all public and private structures in accordance with Vedic principles. In many of his recent weekly press conferences, Maharishi has repeatedly expressed his opinion that democracy is an ineffective and weak form of government. The Global Country of World Peace is administered by 40 ministers appointed by Maharishi, all of whom are males.

In the late 1980s, when Nader was a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, he came under criticism from his MIT advisor and his superiors at Harvard, where he was a research fellow, for using his positions at the institutions to misleadingly promote Maharishi herbal products. They censured him in writing and warned him not to claim to be doing MIT- and Harvard-sanctioned research on Maharishi's herbs. Despite their warning, the claims continued. Deepak Chopra, the most prominent promoter of Maharishi Ayur-Veda, at the time, defended Nader against what he said was "prejudice and bigotry." Nader's superiors "were threatened by his paying more attention to Ayur-Veda research than to projects that they were interested in," Chopra explained. "Dr. Nader was censured and asked to discontinue his Ayur-Veda work. This in no way reflects on the quality of the research. If anything, it reflects the prejudice and bigotry of so-called objective scientists, even in prestigious institutions." Nader also drew the ire of the organizers of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany, which was held at the University of Illinois at Chicago in June 1987. According to the organizers, Nader submitted a research abstract for a presentation that turned out to be nothing but "a bait and switch ploy and a publicity stunt" to promote Maharishi's herbal remedies. However, a decade later, Nader was honored by the TM movement for what Maharishi called one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. For Nader's "supreme scientific discovery that the human physiology is cosmic - the sun, moon, planets, and stars are the cosmic counterpart of the human physiology," Maharishi awarded Nader his weight in gold in a ceremony broadcast live over the Internet on February 6, 1998. "Professor Nader's discovery has made it possible for human beings to realise their cosmic potential, and has opened a new highway to perfection for human life," a TM press release announced. "Therefore his discovery is the supreme achievement in the history of science – more beneficial than any Nobel Prize winning research." Two years later, for this discovery of "the Constitution of the Universe," Nader received more gold in the form of a large gold diadem, when Maharishi crowned him, "His Majesty Vishwa Prashasak Raja Nader Ram, First Sovereign Ruler of the Global Country of World Peace."

Raam currency

Although recognized by no other nation in the world, Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace has issued its own currency called the "Raam." According to its web site, Raams are now in circulation side by side with Euros and U.S. dollars in numerous countries, including parts of Europe and the United States. One hundred thousand Euros worth of Raams have been offered for sale in the Netherlands . To support its currency, Maharishi Global Financing has been set up to raise a "supremely divine figure of 10 trillion dollars," through the sale of "World Peace Bonds," costing 50,000 Euros (about US$63,000 on July 24, 2006) per share.

According to the Maharishi Global Financing web site, the 10 trillion U.S. dollars are "needed immediately" to develop organic agriculture on 2 billon hectares of unused land in 100 countries, in order to "eliminate poverty in the world." The investment offer claims that the three-year bonds will yield 10 to 15 percent annual interest - far higher than bonds of any nation in the world - and that "insurance companies will be involved to maximize the safety of the project." In a letter to potential investors, President of Maharishi Global Financing Benjamin Feldman tells them to consider their bond purchase, "a risk-free investment."

However, a spokesperson for the securities regulation agency in the Netherlands, where Maharishi Global Financing is based, urges caution before anyone invests. "A ten to 15 percent interest rate is almost impossible to guarantee," said Werner van Bastelaar, spokesperson for the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). "The amount of $10 trillion looks impossible. All in all, any investor wanting to put their money in this should really question whether or not it is too good to be true." Although the AFM will monitor this bond sale, "there's not much that we can do." Securities with a minimum investment of 50,000 Euros are exempt from many of the provisions of Dutch law that were designed to protect widows and orphans, he said.

Efforts to obtain sovereignty

In 2002, the TM Organization had hoped to set up world headquarters for Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace on the tiny Pacific island of Rota. The 33-square-mile island, 47 miles north of Guam, is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a protectorate of the United States. The people of Rota were offered the construction of great gardens, a peace university, and as much as a billion dollars worth of investments, if they agreed to provide land for the world headquarters of Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace. While many citizens of Rota found the offer attractive, they objected to the hitch: The deal required Rota to grant Maharishi's Vedic king, Raja Nader Raam sovereignty over a 100-acre portion of the island, which would have required Rota to secede from the Commonwealth. Preferring to stay in the U.S.-affiliated Commonwealth, the islanders turned the offer down. A similar offer to buy sovereignty over a parcel of land was also turned down by the small Latin American country of Suriname. Other small, impovished nations have also been approached, but so far, the TM organization has not been able to purchase sovereignty for its country.

One such attempt in Costa Rica resulted in expulsion of the "prime minister" and other officials of Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace, after they pressured and paid members of a native Indian reservation for the right to appoint a king. On June 23, 2002, a ceremony was held on the Talamanca reservation, 140 miles (230 kms) south of the capital, San Jose, to appoint a TM-chosen Indian as the reservation's first king. The community balked and asked the Costa Rican government to step in. It did by ordering the TM representatives to leave the country. "It was obvious that they were promoting an independent state within Costa Rica, and we can't tolerate that," said the Central American nation's security minister Rogelio Ramos .

Religious nature

According to the web site TM.org, the Transcendental Meditation technique is not a religion. In fact, it encourages its practitioners to continue practicing whatever religion they might already pursue.

In 1979 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Malnak v. Yogi (592 F.2d 197) that under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution the teaching of the theory and philosophy of the Science of Creative Intelligence (SCI) is religious and thus cannot be taught in New Jersey public schools. The Court based its decision in part on close scrutiny of the puja ceremony of gratitude performed by the teacher of Transcendental Meditation prior to giving instruction.

Cult-like

The Cultic Studies Journal has published two articles on the TM movement, lists it as a cult, and notes that four articles have been published about TM in the Cult Observer. . The Cult Awareness Network, which is now owned and operated by associates of the Church of Scientology, lists TM as a cult , as does Steve Hassan, editor of two books on cults. . A 1995 report "Cults in France," commissioned for the French National Assembly , lists Transcendental Meditation as one of 175 cults. The report defines cults broadly and includes Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Church of Christ, and Rosicrucians. It provides estimates of each cult's size in France and the rest of the world. A number of books have been written on the cult-like behavior of the TM movement, including Michael A. Persinger's 1980 book "TM and Cult Mania". . And many former TM teachers, such as Joe Kellet and Curtis Mailloux have also claimed it is a deceptive and harmful cult.

Adverse effects

The movement claims to consistently screen potential meditators for psychiatric problems as well any use of controlled substances, which both might disqualify a person from being initiated into Transcendental Meditation or any other of the movements mentally-based techniques such as Yogic Flying.

The possibility that a minimum level of mental health is required for safe TM practice might recently have been confirmed by a stabbing at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa . The murder witnessed by many of the students in the campus dining hall, took place on March 1, 2004.

The family of the murdered student and a student who was non-fatally stabbed earlier in the day are suing MUM and the Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation. Their separate suits claim that the twice-daily practice of Transcendental Meditation, which the university requires of all students, can be dangerous for people with psychiatric problems. They also charge the university with failing to call the police or take action to protect students from a violent, mentally ill student (Butler v. Maharishi University of Management, US District Court, Southern District of Iowa, Central Div., Case No. 06-cv-00072; and Kilian v. Maharishi University of Management, US District Court, Southern District of Iowa).

The first of the violent incidences occurred when Shuvenda Sem, a student with schizophrenia who had enrolled at MUM six weeks earlier, stabbed a classmate in the face and neck with a pen in a sudden, unprovoked attack. According to the complaints, Sem was taken to the Dean of Men's house and the wounded student was discouraged from seeking medical attention or reporting the incident to authorities. A few hours later, the dean went to meditate and left Sem unattended. The psychotic student took a knife from the dean's kitchen, went to the campus dining hall, and stabbed a second student, five hours after the first stabbing. The student died from multiple stab wounds to his chest. Sem was found not guilty by reason of insanity and has been committed to the Iowa Medical and Classification Center at Oakdale.

The lawsuits, filed on Feb. 24, 2006, claim that the university's required twice-daily regimen of meditation can be dangerous for a mentally ill student: "In particular, Transcendental Meditation can magnify psychological problems, including the likelihood and severity of aggressive and violent behavior.".

Scientific research

The TM Movement says that more than 600 scientific studies now show the benefits of practicing TM. In 2003 a study published by Canter and Ernst assessed the evidence from randomised controlled trials for cumulative effects of TM on cognitive function. They conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature and selected only those studies that used randomised controlled trials with objective outcome measures. Trials that measured only acute effects of TM, or used only neurophysiological outcome measures were excluded. Ten studies met the inclusion criteria. Of these, four reported finding positive effects on the cognitive function of the meditators. The other six reported only negative or largely negative results. Furthermore, the reviewers found that the four studies reporting benefits had recruited subjects who were favourably predisposed towards TM. The six, which found no benefits, had recruited subjects with no bias towards TM. The reviewers concluded: "The association observed between positive outcome, subject selection procedure, and control procedure suggests that the large positive effects reported in four trials result from an expectation effect. The claim that TM has a specific and cumulative effect on cognitive function is not supported by the evidence from randomised controlled trials."

The TM movement says that scientific studies in support of TM as an effective relaxation technique vastly outnumber studies that found otherwise, and that such positive studies continue to be published in respected journals -- most recently The American Journal of Cardiology, the American Journal of Hypertension, and the Archives of Internal Medicine, a specialty journal published by the American Medical Association.

Attorney Anthony D. DeNaro, who served as Director of Grants Administration and legal counsel for Maharishi International University for appproximately 18 months in the mid-1970s, approximately 5 years before it attained accreditation, accused the university of deception in an affidavit he signed and presented to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 1986.

"It was obvious to me that organization was so deeply immersed in a systematic, wilful pattern of fraud including tax fraud, lobbying problems and other deceptions, that it was ethically impossible for me to become involved further as legal counsel.

"I discussed this with Steve Druker , but agreed to remain as Director of Grants provided certain conditions and restrictions were met. In practice, however, because I recognized a very serious and deliberate pattern of fraud, designed, in part, to misrepresent the TM movement as a science (not as a cult), and fraudulently claim and obtain tax-exempt status with the IRS, I was a lame duck Director of Grants Administration."

Philosophical framework

Quantum physicist Heinz Pagels said the TM movement's philosophical claims are deliberately deceptive: "I would like to be generous to the Maharishi and his movement because it supports world peace and other high ideals," he wrote. "But none of these ideals could possibly be realized within the framework of a philosophy that so willfully distorts scientific truth."

In his capacity as executive director of the New York Academy of Science in 1986, Pagels submitted an affidavit on behalf of a former TM member who was suing the movement for fraud. "There is no known connection between meditation states and states of matter in physics," he wrote. "No qualified physicist that I know would claim to find such a connection without knowingly committing fraud. ... To see the beautiful and profound ideas of modern physics, the labor of generations of scientists, so willfully perverted provokes a feeling of compassion for those who might be taken in by these distortions."

Fees

In the late 1970s, the fee for basic initiation in the United States was $75. Now in 2006, the initiation fee is $2,500 ; although the initiation fee is not the same in all countries and it appears that the high fees in e.g. United States and Europe are in fact used to fund large-scale TM projects in e.g. India, Indonesia, Kampuchea, and other countries.

Fees are also reduced or waived for students, for people on welfare benefits, and for maintenance staff who work at TM centres.

The recent developement of the Invincible America course (www.invincibleamerica.org), in wake of recent global events, has inspired the movement to offer the TM-Sidhi program, a meditation technique, for free - requiring only the practitioner pledge to meditate in group practice for one year. This is an unprecedented developement within the meditating community, as the price of TM has continually gone up in recent years.

Maharishi University of Management

Maharishi University of Management is accredited through the Ph.D. level by The Higher Learning Commission and is a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

For many years, the TM Movement has cited its ranking in US News and World Report's annual education guide, "America's Best Colleges," as evidence of the superior education provided by Maharishi University of Management. One recent example cites its number-two ranking among Midwestern universities for "Highest Proportion of Classes Under 20." This claim doesn't disclose that the well-known education guide has consistently given MUM the lowest "peer assessment" score among Midwest universities. This year's guide shows MUM received a rating of 1.5 out of a possible 5, the lowest rating of Midwestern colleges and universities in the opinion of educators who were surveyed.

Maharishi University of Management cites the results of the ACT survey of students and the National Survey of Student Engagement, which show that students and alumni rank MUM far higher than the national average.

Some TM teachers breaking away

Some TM teachers feel that the course fee of $2,500 (USA) to learn TM is unreasonable, in view of Maharishi's longstanding claims that the technique is everyone's birthright and that everyone should practice it. They are also alienated by the emphasis on destroying and rebuilding all homes having entrances facing to the south or west, his forbidding the teaching of TM in England, among other policies, all repeatedly stated in his weekly press conferences. Some of these teachers have broken with Maharishi to offer their own techniques at much lower prices. They include TM Independent in the UK and Natural Stress Relief in Italy and the USA.

References in pop culture

• The George Strait song "All My Exes Live In Texas" contains the line "Through Trancendental Meditation I go there each night. But I always come back to myself, long before daylight".

• Greg Brown's album, Over and Under, includes the song "Fairfield," which describes the effects of the TM movement's presence in the town:

If the floaters come to your town, your town, your town,

Floaters come to your town, You might wanna stick around.

They meditate and get focused, focused, focused,

They do a little hocus pocus, And the money just rolls in.

• New Age
• Pseudoscience
• Meditation