Ex-Followers Demonstrate Against
TM
>From "Grounding
the Guru," by Susan Gervasi, City Paper (Washington, DC), 7/13/90;
14,16.
More than 800 members of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental
Meditation, attending a week-long convention at Washington, DC's
Omni-Shoreham Hotel in June, faced the protest of members of TM-EX, an informal
anti-TM group that educates the public about TM and offers "exit counseling" to
those who want out of the movement.
One TM-EX, former 15-year follower Curtis Mailloux, a 33-year-old real estate
broker from Fairfax, VA, denounced the organization as a cultist religion that
is exploitative, deceptive, and damaging. Mailloux is a 1979 graduate of
Maharishi International University, in Fairfield, IA, who in 1985 became head
of
TM's Washington Center.
TM-EXers do not dispute that TM can be an effective relaxation technique,
though
they say it is no better than similar relaxation regimens. The danger in TM,
they say, comes when the discipline takes over the meditators'
lives.
TM-EX member Joe Kelley said: "When we started we were told it was a simple,
effortless technique for releasing stress with no religious implications.
Initially, it was a 20 minute technique." But by taking advanced residence
courses and other activities, "I was effectively made into a Hindu believer,"
said Kelley.
Former TM teacher Diane Hendel, who has sued the organization for fraud and
extortion, said the many bizarre mental experiences she had were considered a
sign of spiritual superiority. "I saw little creatures with wings" during
intensive meditation periods, she related. "They were like my pets. They'd tell
me things." She 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.
Mailloux said involvement in the movement becomes "a prison of specialness.
Especially as a leader in the movement, there's no way you can leave this group
and be [regarded by other devotees as] OK or leave with dignity... I was only
special as a nervous system which is a 'generator of purity,' not as an
individual."
Mailloux's "specialness"earned him three years in Florida with a group of
celibate TM men, living monastically within the movement, where he enjoyed the
adulation of female movement "groupies" drawn to his hard-to-getness -- a
common
ego-trip among the celibates, he said. Some movement women with low
self-esteem,
he added, tend to get fixated on these celibate men and get milked for
donations
to support them.
