Posted by John M. Knapp, LMSW on October 6, 2007, at 13:26:14
In reply to Re: Considering transcendental meditation » widget, posted by peer-reviewed on October 5, 2007, at 10:11:15
Widget,
I think it's a sad commentary on the effectiveness of TM that a 35+ year practitioner of a spiritual discipline such as yourself would engage in personal attacks and name calling to my rather mildly worded, brief post. If the value of TM is so self-evident, what do you need to defend? Why do you need to attack?
There is no doubt that there are many people that disagree with you, Widget, on the benefits of TM or its allegedly cult-like nature. But there is no reason to suppose that they are "pathological." The TM Org, which began benignly enough 50 years ago, has become stranger and stranger over the years. Today they claim to teach people to levitate (for thousands of dollars) but have not been able to demonstrate levitation at any time in the past 30 years. They charge $2,500 USD to learn a basic mantra-based meditation that takes less than an hour to learn -- while a similar technique can be learned off the Internet or at your local yoga center for free. And advanced courses, for which there exists constant pressure within the organization to sign up for, can cost as much as <i>$1 million USD.</i> They claim to be able to control the weather and war by application of their mental technique. The Maharishi has indulged in a kind of "spiritual terrorism" -- fortunately without any measurable effect -- when he withdrew his teachings from England, threatening that country with war and ruin because they would no longer be "protected" by advanced TMers presence.
I, too, was a teacher, widget, for nearly 20 years. There is no doubt that the Maharishi has a "hidden agenda." I believe, although I could be wrong, that you live in the Maharishi's city on the outskirts of Fairfield, Iowa. Living in such a sheltered enclave perhaps this agenda is so prevalent that it has become invisible to you. But most third-party observers of the Maharishi's movement that I am aware of long ago came to the conclusion that the man and the movement, by any meaningful definition of the term, long ago went insane.
J.
poster:John M. Knapp, LMSW
thread:780763
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070929/msgs/787276.html