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Rose
http://www.globalcountry.org/EasyWeb.asp?pcpid=68

Well, one way of stopping it would be to make sure EVERYONE saw where your "TM DOLLARS AT WORK" are really going! Not for World Peace or to teach a safe and effective stress release technique, but rather for idiotish and delusional "Global Countries" which are being funded by all that amassed fortune of Mahesh Yogi. Check out www.globalcountry.org and click around until you see the images of the actual Ceremony where someone is crowned "Raja" of this new Global Country and take a gander at the fancy Royal Carriage made of Gold that he gets to tool around in. Anyone who thinks TM is a benign teaching after looking at that nonsense REALLY needs to be deprogrammed! "Maharishi" doesn't appear to be all that happy teaching his enlightenment technique while remaining a poor monk...he seems rather to be obsessed with becoming King of the Universe and Top of the Heap!

Do you really want your children indoctrinated at a young age with someting that has THIS as it's goal? And remember, boys and girls, it won't be YOU who EVER gets to ride in the golden carriage! No! You will be stuck making 40 dollars a month steaming rice in the back kitchen for these 'Inauguration Ceremonies!"

You are absolutely right about the grandiosity of Maharishi mahesh Yogi's ambitions and delusions. He even has "political" ambitions and claims to be nothing less but the "US Peace Goverment" (not just a party, but a Government ... replacing the Natural Law Party!) as can be seen on the following link:

[www.uspeacegovernment.org]

Also, on his Maharishi University website, it is said: "In just the last few years, quantum physics has identified the most fundamental field of Nature’s intelligence, the Unified Field of all the Laws of Nature ... Functioning from this fundamental level, Maharishi points out, we command the total potential of Natural Law; ... bringing marked reductions in hypertension, stroke, heart disease, and other stress-related illness. Our potential is unbounded."

In my opinion, this is manifest of grandiose fantasies of unlimited powers (like levitation!).

The problem however is that TM is presented to the public and to government authorities (like the NIH) as being just a discipline for the mind and health very similar to the status of Yoga for example. But it is well known that Yoga is connected to Hindhuism and it is said that "There is no Yoga without Hindhuism, and there is no Hindhuism without Yoga". So teaching Yoga also means teaching Hindhuism to some degree. That doesn't prevent Yoga to be fully integrated to our Western culture, as we find it on TV, in bookstores, in the media, at your nearest community activity center and at school. And now, TM is becoming more and more popular just like Yoga. Both disciplines have their origins in the Hindhuism religion, but this is not being claimed openly by the main promotors because it wouldn't be good for their business.

I am an ex-member/post-TM-er. I was involved very, very deeply in the late-60's through the end of the 70's.

Unhappily, I don't have much to offer here except to note that in the late 70's Mahesh and his band of TM zombies lost a court case trying to get TM operative in schools.

It didn't stop them, however, they just keep on doing the same thing changing the wrapping and the name under which they were doing what they are doing. Mahesh, now quite old and sick, remains adamant that he is right, that TM is the universal solution and that only he can save us from ourselves. He knows not the meaning of failure and does not recognize it an an actual occurrance with reference to anything he is doing. Only he is right and everybody else either sees it his way or is just plain wrong, wrong, wrong and at fault for slowing him down and therefore it is they who are contributing to the world's problems.

I babble on and on about this because if his totally committed (as in [i:3f268e610d]ought to be committed[/i:3f268e610d]) followers have gained nothing else, they have totally bought into this mind set of persistance, persistance, persistance.

Whether your concerns are about yourself, a loved one or an organization, [i:3f268e610d]per se[/i:3f268e610d], you absolutely must be careful, precise and unyielding ([i:3f268e610d]i.e.[/i:3f268e610d], persistent) in your endeavours to ferret out exactly what is and is not going on, check backgrounds and learn how to ask the right questions ... remember, it isn't lying (or so think the apologists for cults and destructive organizations) if you are asking one thing and they are simply responding to something slightly different that sound like a response to your question.

M

Scarey:

[www.davidlynchfoundation.org]

[www.davidlynchfoundation.org]

I frowed up.

Hmmmm...interesting. I agree that one needs to be careful that there isn't any afflilation/hidden agenda (!) but aside from that can't see that mediation could ever be anything but a good thing.

That said...even more important, in my mind, is what these kids are eating. It seems to me that chef Jamie Oliver in England has the right idea. He's going after the school lunch program. Parents are reporting the kids are calmer, more focused and sleeping better. Kids can meditate all day ever day but if they're starved for essential vitamins and minerals, and their omega-3 levels are at zero from all the processed "food" they're fed, not to mention the everpresent vending machines, nothing is going to change.

E.

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Hmmmm...interesting. I agree that one needs to be careful that there isn't any afflilation/hidden agenda (!) but aside from that can't see that mediation could ever be anything but a good thing.

That said...even more important, in my mind, is what these kids are eating. It seems to me that chef Jamie Oliver in England has the right idea. He's going after the school lunch program. Parents are reporting the kids are calmer, more focused and sleeping better. Kids can meditate all day ever day but if they're starved for essential vitamins and minerals, and their omega-3 levels are at zero from all the processed "food" they're fed, not to mention the everpresent vending machines, nothing is going to change.

E.

Livingthequestions: I totally agree, meditation in and of itself is beneficial, even TM. The problems arise from the way in which the meditation method is used (abused) in order to gain the ends of the guy at the top.

I differentiate TM from other meditation methods (like Buddhist meditation) in that Mahesh, the Guru, Guy@Top, has used TM to feather his nest, his very, very expensive nest. TM (here I mean Mahesh and his organization) teaches that the nature of the mind is to go in the direction of more and more [a basic definition of greed]. Then he says that because of this, TM takes you to more and more deeper levels of the mind and in turn, you achieve more and more in life.

It sounds wonderful.

TM indeed is capable of taking one to deeper and deeper experience of mental quietness; except this causes dissociative experiences because it is not properly supported by the TM teachings. People begin to feel slightly crazy and eagerly buy (literally spend money, figuratively become more and more [that term again] convinced they must adhere to Mahesh's teachings) ... anyway, people eagerly buy into more and more of what Mahesh and his organization are selling.

The consequence is that adiction to the more-and-more nature of TM (Mahesh and his organization) becomes ingrained.

The Buddhist meditation, by way of comparison, indicates that experience in meditation must be experienced physically and mentally and seen for what it is, just as it is. The Buddha did not teach reliance upon himself but rather that his teachings pointed to liberation from suffering (from himself and his teachings as well). In other words, he taught self reliance, quite something different from what Mahesh did/is still doing.

But, yes, meditation in and of itself is beneficial.

I totally agree with you and Jamie Oliver. Food is important. Lifestyle is important -- the lifestyle of your own independent well-informed choosing, the the one imposed by the Guru-Guy@Top whose self-centred/self-serving agenda needs you to support him/her/it!

Apologies for the rant, but deciding which Guru is/is not corrupt or has an hidden agenda or is actually only interested in your personal growth and independence is a really, really, really difficult decision.

I like HH the Dalai Lama's cautionary advice: [i:da84345fee]examine your teacher, even if it takes 12 years[/i:da84345fee]

At the first level TM usually consists of repeating a one or two syllable word, or sometimes two. It does calm the mind down and could benefit young people. A book written on TM reported that the practioner got the same benefits repeating a TM mantra, and later repeating 'one' and then
'coca cola'.

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At the first level TM usually consists of repeating a one or two syllable word, or sometimes two. It does calm the mind down and could benefit young people. A book written on TM reported that the practioner got the same benefits repeating a TM mantra, and later repeating 'one' and then 'coca cola'.

Hi, Peppermint -- there was a time where there was only one TM "level", so no level at all. But in the 70's Mahesh fiddled with all the knobs and the twisty bits and turned what was a basically good thing into a money grab of gargantuan design. -- yes, TM is very like Dr. Herbert Benson's Relaxation response which Dr. Benson devised from his contact with Mahesh back in the days of the SCI Symposium (the late 60's through the early 70's).

TM can be misused and certainly has been, very specifically by Mahesh himself in those humungus teacher training courses in the early 70's.

But TM all by itself can have nasty side effects for people who have unknown or undetected (certainly [i:d10ad7c1f3]un[/i:d10ad7c1f3]asked about) psychological difficulties. It's been very difficult to pinpoint what exactly has been at the root of the TM disasters which the "movememt" (Mahesh and his organization) endeavours to deny exist. They do exist and I am not sure that even for these people Dr. Benson's relaxation response would be safe. That hardly excuses Mahesh from his money-grubbing attitude to teach everyone, take everyone's money, and damn the consequences. The organization's attitude is always and only "they" must have been doing something wrong. NEVER is there any suggestion tolerated that the organization could have been doing something near crimminal in its indiscriminate promotion of TM as if it were only good and could never be bad!!!!!!!!!

I have tried/studied many different meditation methods/approaches: some seem quite simple and some seem quite unnecessarily complicated. All, like TM, have a positive side; but we have to be very, very careful that we don't leap in or get sucked in when whoever's teaching starts sounding just a little too good to be true. Red Flags need to go up and we need to hit the caution button.

Since Mahesh started turning TM into his private money making machine, he destroyed much if not all of what was TM's positive side. I could no more, now, recommend TM than Scientology or getting vacuumed into the Moonies.

If you have endless amounts of money and no dependents and you actually want to live in someone's bizarre fantasy world and always be hoping for the next (more expensive) course to come along, well, I guess TM's for you.

There are lots of things I'd say [i:d10ad7c1f3]yes [/i:d10ad7c1f3]to, but TM wouldn't be one of them.

Hi Martin, thanks for the reply. It's true I'm out of touch with TM. In early days it was free. I think its also true that some forms of meditation, unless practised under guidance, can have negative effects, but this is with excessive practise, more than 10 or 20 minutes. I think what happens is some are depressed or disturbed beneath the surface, but have effectively concealed it in day to day life. Meditation can bring this disturbance to the surface, I've experienced this myself.
I'll check the recent sites on the maharishi soon. I didn't realise it was such a money-oriented venture today.

[i:7d78cf5ada]Venture group[/i:7d78cf5ada]. That's really apt, Peppermint. TM is all about Mahesh and his sense of self-importance and how important it is for meaningless people (that'd be you and me and anyone we could ever possibly know) supporting him.

I have very grave concerns about the actual practise of TM. I used to think that, by itself, TM was probably ok, especially in moderation; but I am just not sure I can hang on to that conceptualizaiton any longer. Mahesh certainly has used TM to make himself rich and to delude people into being his endless source of wealth.

The actual TM technique (method of using a mantra) certainly spells out catastrophy for some psychologically susceptible types [and I lack the fundamental education to articulate this further].

AND, as always, no matter how much TM is done and no matter what Mahesh teaches, there will always be those who succeed in doing well with TM and not being deluded in the way Mahesh had in mind.

But both are exceptions to the general, but very cautious rule, that TM 2x20 (twenty minutes twice a day) is possibly not harmful. The same can be said about a little arsenic on a daily basis, but I still wouldn't recommend it.

Even if a doctor successfully supervised daily doses of arsenic, there's no reason to feel it's ok to try, although, as Mahesh said: [i:7d78cf5ada]we'll use science to prove it[/i:7d78cf5ada] so the fact that there have been people who have had good experience with TM PROVES that TM is absolutely, scientifically, universally necessary for everyone and all these people should submit to Mahesh.

That's simply how the little weasel thinks. He's scarrier than the possibly negative side effects of TM!