---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote :
Another intelligent post. Re "The TM website . . . looks like a health page from a women's magazine": Indeed. A depressing insight into the concerns of current TMers. In my time at the TMO we had plenty of celebs who didn't want to be publicly associated with us because of yogic flying. It's seen as just too weird and would be the kiss of death for many a career. Russell Brand might get away with it but that's about it. Ditto the Maharishi Effect, I remember when the Washington Study was published and Geoffrey Clements made a stirring speech that we didn't have to be embarrassed any more as it was considered proper peer reviewed science. What he didn't mention was the editor's caveat in the Journal of Social Indicators Research saying that if the conclusion of this research was correct we might as well abandon the scientific method. I kick myself for this. When the journal was published I questioned why we didn't have an actual copy in the press office as I thought it would be good for our collection of published articles, but I didn't get a good answer and didn't question it. This is the danger of being a believer, you suspend critical faculties in favour of being told what to think and towing the party line. Same in every job I suppose but this involved a compromise I wouldn't have been happy with as I joined up thinking they were serious about using science to further their goals of spreading the word. You'd love the story about when I found out they were into astrology. Anyway, celebrity endorsement is gold and is what everyone aims for, for some reason things are considered more likely to be effective if some actor or model does it. Strange really that the quest for the deepest level of consciousness and the highest state of life depends ultimately on such shallow concerns as "My skin looks better when I meditate, I could stay a model into my thirties" or "My football is better". I got into TM via a profound book about consciousness and human potential, I don't think I would have been so easily seduced if all they had to offer was an out-of-date picture of an actress and a simpering quote about happiness being easy. Re "One of the main attractions [of TM], an immunity to what life throws at you": That's true for me. On many days, after my meditation session, I've felt that take-it-as-it-comes acceptance of what the day brings. It's nothing flashy. It's just the absence of those bad-tempered or petty thoughts and feelings that can mar one's enjoyment. I was always very up and down with it, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I used to tell myself it was all part of the process but got fed up with it all eventually. Stopping the TMSP was the best thing I ever did. There are many ways of achieving ones goals, I think the message of the TMO could be improved to be more embracing and realistic. Re Barry's comment: "I would bet that it would be difficult to find even a single long-term TMer reporting "good experiences" who had NOT heard those experiences described to him or her beforehand.": I'd claim myself as an exception to Barry's rule. Within a week or so of learning TM I found my senses heightened and alive to the sights and sounds of nature. Out walking I would stop every few minutes in front of a garden in bloom simply amazed by the beauty of the flowers on display. Was anyone ever told to expect such an experience in advance? I certainly wasn't. In fact, the first time it happened I was seriously wondering if someone had spiked my lunch with a psychedelic (I'd fallen in with a bad crowd. I like that expression! Whenever I use it I always wonder if right now someone I knew back in the day is talking to a friend and - thinking of me - is shaking his head saying: I'd fallen in with a bad crowd). I was told that experiences like that were to be expected but not how so it was all very innocent at first. And very liberating. But my experience of the higher states one after the other looks suspicious with hindsight but they were real experiences or at least, changes in information processing in existing experiences - see how a slight change of focus alters the interpretation? I often get accused of being a TM hater but it isn't the case, I really like it. Not as much as I used to but that was mixed up with a belief in what it was going to do rather than a sober assessment of what it was doing. Taking the hyperbole seriously can slow you down, or is it the thing that keeps you going? ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote : salyavin, I was about to post a message making pretty much the same points : MMY touted TM as a universal panacea ; That the TMO should release such a document now is an encouraging sign of progress ; As the TMO moves at a snail's pace we'll probably all be dead by the time it develops a sober assessment of TM's (undoubted) strengths and limitations. What limitations? Well, I don't rule out the possibility that for some disturbed individuals doing TM could actually exacerbate their condition. It can indeed, and maybe not even in extreme cases. I lived and worked with the TMO for ten years and met a lot of people and talked a lot about TM and what it does or doesn't do. My overriding impression is that there is sometimes a huge disconnect between what people expect TM to do (or claim it has already done) and what they have actually achieved using it. I've met people who would talk endlessly about how spiritual they are and the benefits they've gained but when I've got to know them better it's turned out that they are seriously damaged and/or unpleasant people to greater or lesser degrees. The funny thing is they had no idea, one girl I knew was astonished when I told her that she had no self awareness whatsoever, she was amazingly unpleasant when you got past her social persona. I wondered what the point of devoting your life to meditation is if it can't touch the very things that probably drive you to seek it out as a therapy in the first place. But here's the thing, they don't know that it hasn't worked, part of the TM teaching is elitist in that you are taught from day one that you are a better person for being in touch with the "transcendent". I honestly think that it can make people more eccentric, this can be endearing but can result in them just not fitting in with normal society any more. There are plenty like this in the long term movement in the UK and all of them are really genuine spiritual people but they don't realise that obsession with beliefs, routines and ritual has turned them into inflexible maniacs. Some of the people I've known have developed mental health problems since learning TM which isn't what you'd expect if you listen to the TMO. The claim is that releasing stress cures neuroses and makes problems less likely to arise. Clearly something wrong there. I know a lot of siddhi practitioners who see therapists, it was a standing joke at the academy in fact. But am I looking on the dark side and seeking out the worst case types to bolster my argument? I don't think so, I became aware of what was going on just by listening to others and that was only after I got past my own programming that everything was fine and I was on the fast track to enlightenment. But I have no idea about the actual percentages of TMers who didn't get what they expected are. The trick for any researchers is going to be finding people that learnt TM and weren't exposed to the belief system and so aren't full of BS, maybe a search for neurotic traits in long term meditators would be be a fun way to start. I'll volunteer. So what will be left if a proper root and branch examination of TM was carried out? The Maharishi Effect will be gone by the end of the day obviously. In fact, if you look at the TM website it seems to have gone already, the whole things looks like a health page from the sort of women's magazine that you see in dentist's waiting rooms: http://tmhome.com/ http://tmhome.com/ I think the mental health claims will be amended to "Can be effective for some people with some conditions but may exacerbate the same thing in others. For yet others it works only at first and that's as long as you don't get swept up with the hyperbole and keep up another sort of professionally led treatment plan if you have a particular condition". Not very catchy but seems to reflect the sort of disappointments I've seen, it just doesn't deliver what is promised for a lot of people. Or maybe the people I met are so desperate for it to work they signed up for endless courses in the hope of forcing a breakthrough? One thing is for sure mental problems aren't caused by "stress" trapped in the nervous system that could be released by being more relaxed, that's just the sort of cultish snake oil that has tripped up the Scientologists too. and the TMO's attempts so far are just more vedic nonsense simply because they have no other way of looking at the world - it has to have a vedic solution because everything is vedic. They will come to see the error of that in the coming years if they keep up the inquisitiveness. If you don't have any actual problems TM may be more effective. I remember a Buddhist I knew saying that anyone with problems should get them sorted before they learn to meditate. Maybe it will still turn out to be the best thing ever, just with a lot more caveats on the website.. I still do it BTW, I just don't tell myself that it's doing anything at all and enjoy the experience and I'm not obsessive with it and even [gasp] do other techniques. You've spared FFL from my disjointed thoughts with your admirably lucid message. (Are you a writer in some professional capacity?) Thanks, but no. Most of what I write is "letters to the editor" stuff or sarky remarks on newspaper websites, but it's nice to know I can pull some sort of coherent sentence together when I'm eating me porridge. As there has been an alarming rise in mental health problems in recent years I've wondered if a combination of meditation and mainstream techniques of psychotherapy could be a helpful marriage. For the TMO to investigate different combinations of TM and assorted therapies could be a fruitful area of research. I'm sure it would. One of the things TM does that is of benefit is that it kind of resets the mind when you first learn. We all get used to thinking in our normal ways and TM throws the brain into a previously unknowable state, it's a good way of realising there are other ways to be. Hallucinogenics do the same thing but more reliably, I think TM has different initial effects but I've no idea if it could be predictable for different personality types. Everything seems to be the cure for everything these days. I suspect that at least one contribution to modern neurosis is that people feel guilty that they are not happy! In the West we've created stable, peaceful and affluent societies and are subject to a constant stream of ads telling us how this or that consumer good will bring us fulfilment. But anxiety and depression are endemic as there's always something missing. One thing that TM hopefully does is develop that sense that right here and right now you lack nothing essential. That has to help inculcate an ability to live at peace in each moment as it arises which, other things being equal, should have a spiritually beneficial effect. I remember that as one of the main attractions, an immunity to what life throws at you because of strengthening the inner self. Has it worked for me? It's an interesting question, I was always an anti-establishment type and didn't live the consumer lifestyle so I can't say if I'm happier or not because of that. I'd like to have done a 'before and after' personality test and then another every five or ten years of meditating to see how I'd changed. Too late for any sort of reliable self-reporting I think. It would be hard to select from long term meditators a group that hadn't also been exposed to the non-materialistic spiritual belief system and, as I outlined above, weren't just kidding themselves anyway. Lawson posted a link to some research that studied long term TMers and they were self-reporting all sorts of wonderful inner evolutionary developments in how they relate to themselves and the world. Inspiring stuff but made me wonder where mine was after 20 years? As all the respondents were from Fairfield, maybe they'd inadvertently proved the Marshy Effect. Or maybe they'd been swept up with the mythos and were incapable of interpreting their lives in any other way? I wonder how much my scepticism would help in research like that. And it won't do any harm to tackle the social insecurities and inequalities that also plague our existence. Even a dismal subject like politics has a role to play. Is there a cure for the modern world? It's changing so fast, I feel like I'm on a carousel sometimes but I'm standing in the middle with it all swinging round me so that's a good sign. Sometimes it drags me in and I can't cope any better than I used to, which isn't a good sign! ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote : ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <mjackson74@...> wrote : At least they are addressing the issue. Not really addressing it though, this reads more like that article on Scientology that Turq posted a few days ago. In particular the chapter on how they cover up the homophobia that was a major part of Hubbard's teaching and is apparently caused by subconscious "stress" that could be relieved by Scientology auditing. They cope with that intellectual and therapeutic error nowadays by denying that Hubbard ever said it, and they have the tapes to prove it - not that you'll ever hear them - but it's all in the books in black and white. In the same way, TM being the cure for all psychiatric problems is a major part of Marshy's teaching and forms a chapter of its own in his main book "The Science of Being and Art of Living". Seeing a counsellor was actively discouraged and the techniques they employ were rubbished as being "shallow" compared to TM which deals with problems from the infinitely powerful level of the unified field. But it's good the TMO is climbing down from that demonstrable absurdity, sooner or later everyone knows someone with mental health problems or has them themselves, what they were telling us clearly wasn't true. But the trouble for them in future is that once you start questioning hallowed teaching you can't just stop with one example. Sooner or later someone is going to put other aspects of the teaching under the microscope, this will be seen as a "bad thing" at first and will face the usual denial and counter activism, until the evidence becomes too well known for them to hide behind the "knowledge" any longer and more caveats and contradictory clarifications will be published. But it isn't a bad thing as it's how knowledge - genuine knowledge and not religious dogma - progresses. Someone has an idea and it gets tested for accuracy and is either accepted or rejected or modified depending on how well it stands up to scrutiny. Nothing to be scared of but it will be interesting to watch how the TMO adapts to a reformation, especially one caused by the scientific processes they were hoping would ultimately justify their beliefs as revealed to them by Marshy. Which sacred cow will be next? This is straight off the MUM web page for faculty. What does it mean when someone practicing the TM technique develops a mental illness or commits suicide? It does not mean the technique does not work. The TM program is neither an instant nor a stand-alone cure for all the illnesses people may suffer, nor is it represented as such. People may be born with certain conditions, stresses, and susceptibilities that emerge at various stages in their lives. As published research has indicated, the TM technique triggers a global repair mechanism in the physiology and psychology of everyone — but it cannot be predicted how, when, or to what degree the benefits of the TM program will unfold for a particular individual.
