On Dec 4, 2011, at 5:50 PM, feste37 wrote: > I find this interesting but am not convinced by the idea (hardly a > "psychological fact") that those who start TM constitute "a certain type of > person," since such a huge variety of people have learned TM over the years.
That's true. You could easily argue, it's just a sample from one stretch a time. The broader number of samples, the better. It would be interesting to see how well it would replicated, for example, if there was a sudden "Oprah wave" that would be a perfect oppurtunity. > I think the self-selection idea could be better applied to the TM campus > community here in Fairfield, since that is certainly a self-selected group > from among the many thousands of people who have learned TM, and they may > well have some traits in common that would make your question, "What unique > vulnerabilities does this group of humans have?" a valid and an interesting > one. But I think it would have to be balanced by a more positive question: > "What unique strengths, including gifts, talents, and spiritual vision does > this group of humans have?" Then we might be able to reach a more fair-minded > conclusion. One of the problems with sampling TMers in questionaire formats of any kind is "how much have they been already biased by research they've been shown or indoctrinated in"? And unfortunately the answer with someone who is so deep into the TM worldview as to be enrolled in a TM university culture is "hugely biased". In fact a lot of those people may have become involved because of research they were shown. Because of this fact, I'm afraid most if not all subjects would not be neutral or "naive" to the questions. Of course the opposite side of the coin is that disreputable researchers, understanding the lack of naiveté and because of the their ability to cherry-pick certain "true believers", they can skew almost any research in their favor. Plus if you have a group like 1000-headed Purusha or MD as a PR mechanism, you can flood the web nowadays with so much counter-information and disinformation that modern consumers gobble it right up.
