Article: Transcendental Meditation

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Transcendental Meditation or TM is a trademarked form of meditation developed in 1955 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a disciple of Brahmananda Saraswati. It is also the name of a movement led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which claims Transcendental Meditation is reminiscent of and possibly derived from Hindu tantric practices. The movement claims to have a body of scientific research that shows its meditation techniques produce a variety of positive effects, for the community as well as individual practitioners. However, critics of the movement question the validity of that research, as well as the nature of the movement itself. Many critics consider the TM movement a religious cult.

History

In 1957, at the end of a great "festival of spiritual luminaries" in remembrance of the previous Shankaracharya of the North, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, his disciple Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (or simply "Maharishi" to followers) announced the formal beginning of the TM Movement. In the movement's initial stages, Maharishi operated under the auspices of an organization he called the "Spiritual Regeneration Movement." His publications during this period include a translation of the first six chapters of the Hindu scripture known as the Bhagavad-Gita, a practical manual titled The Science of Being and the Art of Living, and the long devotional poem Love and God.

In the early 1970s, Maharishi launched his "World Plan" to establish a TM teaching center for each million of the world's population, which at that time would have meant 3,600 TM centers throughout the world. Since 1990, Maharishi has co-ordinated his global activities from his headquarters in the town of Vlodrop in the municipality of Roerdalen in the Netherlands.

The TM Movement founded a nationally accredited university, the Maharishi University of Management (formerly, Maharishi International University), in Fairfield, Iowa, USA, in 1971; a number of schools around the world; Maharishi Vedic City in south-east Iowa, (incorporated 21 July 2001); political parties in many countries around the world known as the Natural Law Party, the US branch having closed on April 30, 2004 (see [2]) in favour of the "Global Country of World Peace," founded in 2002.

The movement claims more than 6 million people worldwide have learned the Transcendental Meditation technique since its inauguration [3], including celebrities such as the Beatles, radio personality Howard Stern, film director David Lynch, and actresses Mia Farrow and Heather Graham.

Procedures and theory

The Transcendental Meditation technique comes from the ancient Vedic tradition of India and is practiced for twenty minutes twice daily while sitting with the eyes closed. The TM technique involves effortless, mental repetition of a simple sound known as a mantra given to the meditator at the time of initiation. The new meditator is informed that the mantra should remain private. Nevertheless, former TM teachers have published the mantras used in TM [4].

The first research on the Transcendental Meditation technique, conducted at UCLA and Harvard Medical Schools and published from 1970 to 1972 in Science, American Journal of Physiology, and Scientific American, indicated that the Transcendental Meditation technique produces a state which the the TM movement calls “restful alertness” in the mind and body.[5]. The deepest state of rest in this form of meditation, according to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, is called "Pure Consciousness". The TM organization emphasizes in its teaching that the procedure for using the mantra is very important, and can only be learned from a trained teacher authorized by the TM movement. TM is considered a form of "dhyana", using the terminology of Patanjali. However, while most translations suggest that dhyana means "concentration," the TM movement claims this is misleading from a TM perspective, because TM is "concentration" in the same way as one's attention can become attracted to a beautiful sunset, rather than as something the mind is forced to pay attention to.

Theory of Consciousness

According to Transcendental Meditation theory there are seven major states of consciousness, of which the first three are familiar to non-TM meditators. The last three states fullfill the definition of Enlightenment - the ultimate goal of long-term TM-practice:

• waking state of consciousness
• dreaming state of consciousness (REM)
• dreamless sleeping state of consciousness
• Transcendental Consciousness (TC) In Sanskrit, Tur¥ya Chetanå
• Cosmic Consciousness (CC) In Sanskrit, Tur¥yåt¥t Chetanå
• God Consciousness (GC) In Sanskrit, Bhagavad Chetanå
• Unity Consciousness (UC) In Sanskrit, Bråhm¥ Chetanå

Learning TM

The technique has been taught to people in a variety of formats over the years. Currently, it is taught - for a fee - in a seven step process in a weeks time or 5 days, which includes an introductory lecture, personal interview and instruction, and checking afterwords to verify the technique was learned properly. [6] Personal instruction is part of a traditional puja ceremony conducted in Sanskrit the vedic language, during which the initiate must place an offering of fresh fruit and flowers on an altar, as an act of thanks, and to kneel before an image of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's guru Brahmananda Saraswati. It was largely this ceremony that led a federal judge in New Jersey to rule that the TM is too religious to be taught in public schools, under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause.

TM-Related Research

Research conducted or supported by the TM movement suggests that numerous health benefits are associated with the TM technique, including reduction of high blood pressure ^[1], younger biological age ^[2], decreased insomnia ^[3], reduction of high cholesterol ^[4], reduced illness and medical expenditures ^[5], decreased outpatient visits ^[6], decreased cigarette smoking ^[7], decreased alcohol use ^[8], and decreased anxiety ^[9].

Some studies indicate that regular practice of TM leads to significant, cumulative benefits in the areas of mind (Travis, Arenander & DuBois 2004), body (Barnes, Treiber & Davis 2001), behavior (Barnes, Bauza & Treiber 2003) and environment (Hagelin et al. 1999). One study showed that TM had positive effects on arterial wall thickness in African-American people with high blood pressure. (PMID 10700487).

A more recent study published in the American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine found that coronary heart disease patients who practiced TM for 16 weeks showed improvements in blood pressure, insulin resistance, and autonomic nervous system tone, compared with a control group of patients who received health education. The researchers concluded that TM may be a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of coronary heart disease. [7]

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than $21 million funding research on the beneficial effects of the Transcendental Meditation program on heart disease alone [8]. In 1999, NIH awarded a grant of nearly $8 million to Maharishi University of Management to establish the first research center specializing in natural preventive medicine for minorities in the U.S. The new research institute, called the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, was inaugurated on October 11, 1999, at the University's Department of Physiology and Health in Fairfield [9].

However, many critics, such as James Randi and Robert Todd Carroll, author of the Skeptic's Dictionary[10], charge that most of this research is either trivial, poorly designed and conducted, or even cooked up to help promote the TM movement's business and recruitment campaigns.

In May 1991, an article on the benefits of Maharishi Ayur Veda was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). When JAMA's editor, Dr. George D. Lundberg learned that the journal was misled about the authors' financial involvement with the TM movement, he assigned associate news editor Andrew A. Skolnick [11] to investigate and write an expose on the movement's efforts to promote its trademarked line of traditional Indian remedies [12]. "An investigation of the movement's marketing practices reveals what appears to be a widespread pattern of misinformation, deception, and manipulation of lay and scientific news media," Skolnick wrote. "This campaign appears to be aimed at earning at least the look of scientific respectability for the TM movement, as well as at making profits from sales of the many products and services that carry the Maharishi's name." It also countered the article's claim that Maharishi Ayur-Veda was more cost effective than standard medical care. In July 1992, Dr. Deepak Chopra and two TM organizations filed a $194 million libel suit against Lundberg, Skolnick, and the American Medical Association. The suit was dismissed without prejudice in March 1993 and no part of the JAMA article was retracted.

The article raised questions about the integrity of at least some of the reports from scientists involved in the TM movement[13]. It also quotes a former TM teacher and chair of the TM center in Washington, DC, as saying: "I was taught to lie and to get around the pretty rules of the 'unenlightened' in order to get favorable reports into the media. We were taught how to exploit the reporters' gullibility and fascination with the exotic, especially what comes from the East. We thought we weren't doing anything wrong, because we were told it was often necessary to deceive the unenlightened to advance our guru's plan to save the world." [14]

Articles on the benefits of TM and Maharishi Ayurveda products have continued to be published in medical journals, for example: The American Journal of Cardiology [15], which was funded in part by a grant from NIH's controversial National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and in the American Journal of Hypertension [16].

However, reviews of the scientific literature, such as the one published in the medical journal, Wiener klinische Wochenschrift in 2003, suggest that at least some of the published benefits of TM appears to be the results of biased and poorly conducted studies.^[10]

Other components of TM

Beyond the initial meditation technique, the TM organization offers numerous other programs and products, such as its TM-Siddhi program, which involves the silent mental recitation of selected yoga sutras of Patanjali [17], followed by portions the ninth and tenth mandalas of the Rig Veda chanted by Vedic pandits. The TM movement claims the advanced meditation technique taught in this program brings many additional benefits to practitioners -- who are called "Yogic Flyers," because Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says its practice will eventually lead to levitation. So far, only hopping not hovering has been demonstrated to non-practitioners, despite wide circulation of photographs showing TM-Siddhi practitioners hovering in the air.

The TM movement also offers Maharishi Ayurveda, its own trademarked version of Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India; Vedic Astrology, which the movement calls Maharishi Jyotish; Vedic ceremonies called "yagyas" to purify the individual of karmic obstructions; and even its own trademarked brand of food, Vedic Organic Agriculture. [18]

Sthapatya Veda

In his televised press conference of November 16, 2005, Maharishi stated that he believed that it was vital for everyone in the world to live and work in buildings constructed according to Sthapatya Veda or Vastu, architecture based on Vedic principles according to which the arrangement and layout of one's home has important effects on all areas of one's life (similar beliefs exist in Feng Shui). According to Sthapatya Veda, it is most auspicious for the main entrance of all structures to face the east, and all the rooms in a Vedically-correct building must be arranged around a central "Brahmastan" or seat of divinity.

In his November press conference, Maharishi said that it was imperative that all members of the organization quickly move into dwellings constructed according to Vedically-correct principles and that he would no longer talk or deal with any member of the TM community who lived in structures not built according to Vedic principles.

The Maharishi University of Management demolished a Christian chapel on its campus because it was not constructed according to Vedic principles [19]. The TM movement has encountered public resistance to its plans to tear down historic buildings in order to replace them with Vastu-compliant structures, including a former Christian monastery in the Netherlands [20].

TM-Sidhi Program and the Maharishi Effect

Among its most controversal assertions, the TM movement claims that regular practice of TM and TM-Sidhi programs produces a "Maharishi Effect" which benefits society in general as well as individual practitioners, by increasing "the influence of coherence and positivity in the social and natural environment."[21]." James Randi, noted skeptic and critic of paranormal claims, investigated the claims of Dr. Rabinoff, an MUM professor and TM researcher on the "Maharishi effect," that a large gathering of TM meditators had reduced crime and accidents and increased crop production in the vicinity of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. After speaking with the Fairfield Police Department, the Iowa Department of Agriculture, and Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles, Randi concluded that Dr. Rabinoff's data were simply made up ^[11]

A later study on the Maharishi effect purportedly found a correlation between the installation of a group of 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi programs in the District of Columbia, and a reduction in violent crime in that city ^[12].

At a press conference to announce the analysis of their study, John Hagelin claimed that, during the period of the experiment, Washington, D.C. experienced a significant reduction in psychiatric emergency calls, fewer complaints against the police, and an increase in public approval of President Clinton -- all of which was consistent with the hypothesis that a coherence-creating group of TM experts can relieve social stress and reverse negative social trends. Overall, there was an 18 percent reduction in violent crime, he told the press. When a reporter asked, an 18 percent reduction compared to what, Hagelin answered, compared to the level of violent crime had the TM meditators not meditated. In his book Voodoo Science, physicist Robert Park called the TM study a "clinic in data manipulation." ^[13] The study has become a target for many other critics and wags: Most notably, in 1994 John Hagelin received an Ig Nobel Prize [22]to commemorate the study. This generally uncoveted spoof of the Nobel Prize is given annually to recognize "achievements" that "cannot, or should not, be reproduced." What astounded the critics most was the TM researchers' excuse for why Washington D.C.'s murder rate during the study periord had climbed to the highest rate in history. It would have been much higher had the TM meditators not meditated, the researchers explained.

Political activities of the TM organization

The TM organization founded the Natural Law Party in 1992 in support of candidates for public office dedicated to promoting both TM and Maharishi's far-reaching political goals at all levels of society. The NLP ran Dr. John Hagelin, former physics professor at Maharishi University of Management, for president of the United States in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections, when he received fewer than 84,000 votes-or less than one tenth of one percent of the total number of votes[23]. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the NLP spent nearly $2.3 million on its presidential campaign in the 1999-2000 election cycle [24]. The Natural Law Party did not run a candidate for president in the 2004 election and it is no longer a registered party in the UK. Following repeated NLP failures at the polls, Maharishi unilaterally inaugurated his own Global Country of World Peace [25] and crowned Dr. Tony Nader [26] Raja Raam (Vedic king) [27] of the new government, which is devoted to achieving Maharishi's goals, including the practice of TM in the public schools and global reconstruction of all public and private structures in accordance with Vedic principles. In many of his most recent weekly press conferences, Maharishi has repeatedly expressed his strong opinion that democracy is an ineffective and weak form of government. The Global Country of World Peace is administered by 40 ministers [28] appointed by Maharishi, all of whom are males.

Maharishi’s Supreme Military Science

The TM organization is offering world leaders a method to make their armed forces "invincible" through the technology of "Maharishi's Supreme Military Science." One published TM study claims: "Over 50 studies indicate that groups practicing this Invincible Defence technology alleviate problems in society that may derive from collective stress, which is viewed by Maharishi as the root cause of adversarial relationships leading to war.…It has been field-tested by the Mozambique military to prevent hostilities and avert the rise of enemies. This approach could greatly improve the military's peacemaking and peacekeeping abilities, while reducing risks to personnel and civilians."[29]

Criticisms and controversies

Compared to many other Eastern-inspired religious movements with a footing in the West, the Transcendental Meditation movement has experienced no high-profile controversies. Nevertheless, the movement has outspoken critics, including scientists, former TM teachers and practitioners, and what the movement's defenders call "Christian and Jewish fundamentalists." http://www.fundamentalbiblechurch.org/Tracts/fbctm.htm

The TM movement's policy for dealing with critics has been consistent throughout the movement's history: a rather Gandhi-like or Christian "turn-the-other-cheek" approach, summed up in the phrase, "don't engage in negativity."

Among the major complaints of the TM movement's critics:

• The TM movement is a cult or religion

The TM Movement does not claim to be a religion. In fact, it encourages it's practitioners to continue practicing whatever religion they might already pursue. Still, the connection between TM and Hinduism, from where the movement's founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi comes, appears to become increasingly evident as time passes. In the 1960s and 1970s, critics focused on the fact that the mantras or sounds used in TM are known to be short names for Hindu gods[30]. Later on, in the mid-70s, as the movement began teaching the TM-Siddhi Program, critics noted that this advanced meditation program makes use of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali[31].

Today, the TM Movement offers a wide array of practices, which also appear to echo features found in Hinduism, such as Jyotish (Astrology), Ayurveda (Health care), Sthapathya Veda (Architecture). However, the TM Movement says any similarities with Hinduism should present no problem, because the use of its techniques, products, and services does not require adherence to any particular way of life or belief system.

Nevertheless, in 1979 the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Malnak v. Yogi (592 F.2d 197) that under the Establishment Clause[32] of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, TM and its corollary, the Science of Creative Intelligence (SCI), are too religious to be taught in the New Jersey public schools. The Court based its decision in part on close scrutiny of the puja ceremony required of TM initiates.

• TM has an adverse effect on its practitioners

The two scientific papers usually invoked by critics of TM include (1) a review made in International Journal of Psychotherapy [33], which reportedly claims an array of negative side effects from TM practice; and (2) an anthology of selected papers dealing with the "sixties counterculture," including contemporary music celebrities and drugs[34].

There appears to be an issue hinted at (though not explicitly formulated) by the criticism found in these papers - that safe practice of TM requires a minimum level of mental health.

Even though the TM Movement does not appear to have made any public statement about this, the movement claims to consistently screen potential meditators for psychiatric problems as well any use of controlled substances, which both might disqualify a person from being initiated into Transcendental Meditation or any other of the movements mentally-based techniques such as Yogic Flying.

The possibility that a minimum level of mental health is required for safe TM practice might recently have been confirmed in a tragic way by a fatal stabbing at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa [35]. The brutal murder witnessed by many of the students in the campus dining hall, took place on March 1, 2004.

Parents of the murdered student are suing MUM and the Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation on the basis that TM might be dangerous for people with psychiatric problems and for not calling the police or taking action to protect students from a violent, mentally ill student (Butler v, Maharishi University of Management, US District Court, Southern District of Iowa, Central Div., Case No. 06-cv-00072). After the emotionally disturbed student stabbed a classmate in the face and neck with a pen, he was taken to the Dean of Men's house. According to the parent's complaint, the dean left the violently ill student unattended in order to meditate. The distubed student took a knife from the dean's kitchen, returned to campus, and stabbed a second student, five hours after the first stabbing attack. The student died from multiple stab wounds to his chest. [36].

The only known official TM statement about the incidence was: ..this is an aspect of the violence we see throughout society, including the violence that our country (the United States of America) is perpetrating in other countries. [37]. The MUM campus newspaper, The Review, never reported anything about the brutal slaying, although it was witnessed by many students in the dining hall[38]. A search of MUM's web site for the victim's name or his assailant's also finds nothing[39].

• Scientific research in support of TM is biased

Despite the TM Movement's claim that more than 600 scientific studies now show the benefits of practicing TM[40], a systematic review of the scientific literature in 2003 found only a tiny number of studies, which looked at the cumulative cognitive effects of TM, were properly conducted, controlled, and randomized. The reviewers found only 10 studies, and of these just four reported finding positive effects on the cognitive function of the meditators. The other six reported only, or mostly, negative results. Furthermore, the reviewers found that the four studies reporting benefits had recruited subjects who were favourably predisposed towards TM. The six, which found no benefits, had recruited subjects with no bias towards TM. The reviewers concluded: "The association observed between positive outcome, subject selection procedure, and control procedure suggests that the large positive effects reported in four trials result from an expectation effect. The claim that TM has a specific and cumulative effect on cognitive function is not supported by the evidence from randomised controlled trials."^[14]

Nevertheless, the TM movement claims that scientific studies in support of TM as an effective relaxation technique vastly out-number studies that found otherwise, and that such positive studies continue to be published in respected journals; most recently The American Journal of Cardiology[41], reportedly funded in part by a grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the American Journal of Hypertension[42], and the Archives of Internal Medicine[43], a specialty journal published by the American Medical Association.

Critics who claim that the TM movement has been very successful in getting research funding and publications largely through deception often cite the testimony of attorney Anthony D. DeNaro, who served as Director of Grants Administration and legal counsel for Maharishi University of Management in the 1970s. In an affidavit he signed and presented to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 1986, DeNaro stated: [http://skepdic.com/tm.html

"It was obvious to me that [the] organization was so deeply immersed in a systematic, wilful pattern of fraud including tax fraud, lobbying problems and other deceptions, that it was ethically impossible for me to become involved further as legal counsel.

"I discussed this with Steve Druker [the University’s Executive Vice President], but agreed to remain as Director of Grants provided certain conditions and restrictions were met. In practice, however, because I recognized a very serious and deliberate pattern of fraud, designed, in part, to misrepresent the TM movement as a science (not as a cult), and fraudulently claim and obtain tax-exempt status with the IRS, I was a lame duck Director of Grants Administration."

It is clear from his affidavit that Denaro possessed a highly critical, some say exaggerated view of TM's leader, of whom he wrote: "In his more subtle and very sophisticated way Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his charlatanism is [sic] a far more destructive and dangerous cult leader than Jim Jones who induced more than 900 people to commit suicide in Guyana."

• The TM Movement is sexist

Many critics also charge the Movement with being sexist and cite segregation of women during practice of i.a. Yogic Flying (the MUM campus has a separate "Golden Dome" for female "flyers") and Panchakarma treatments (which includes herbal enemas claimed to rid the body of "ama," said to be foul, sticky poisons), and a belief apparently held by senior TM staff that females should consider abstaining from too strenuous and/or gross activities because their nervous systems are more subtle and delicate than those of men.

• TM is expensive

In the late 1970s, the fee for basic initiation in the United States was $75. Now in 2006, the initiation fee is $2,500 [44]; although the initiation fee is not the same in all countries and it appears that the high fees in i.a. United States and Europe are in fact used to fund large-scale TM projects in i.a. India, Indonesia, Kampuchea, and other countries.

Altruistic as this scheme appears to be in a global context (rich countries helping needy countries), what critics are highlighting here without explicitly saying so is the presence of what might be described as a strategic shift of focus the TM Movement has experienced during the last twenty five years: from an "open door" or "counter culture" pricing policy in the 1960s and 70s, to a financially more sustainable business-like approach that appears to have finally taken root.

• The Maharishi Effect doesn't exist

Many critics ridicule the TM Movement's claim of a Maharishi Effect, which the movement says is produced whenever a sufficient number of TMers practice the TM-Sidhi program together. This effect, they claim, reduces crime, prevents and ends wars, detours hurricanes, and improves life in many other ways for everyone within the area, not just the TM-Sidhi practitioners. One of the most controversal studies published to support the TM movement's claim of a Maharishi Effect is the 1993 National Demonstration Project. In this study, the TM researchers led by John Hagelin, claimed to have produced an 18 percent reduction in violent crimes in Washington, D.C., by having about 4,000 TM-Sidhi practitioners practice the program daily during June and July 1993. The findings were ridiculed by critics as an example of pseudoscientific data cooking [45] Skeptical Inquirer, and won the study's lead researcher, an Ig Nobel Prize. Members of the TM movement have dismissed all criticism of the study and stand by the findings[46].

• The TM Movement is led incompetently

This vein of criticism is primarily internal to the TM Movement and appears to be a reaction against perceived incompetences of mostly mid-level TM leadership.

• TM Movement misleads people about Maharishi University of Management's academic standing

For many years, the TM Movement has cited its ranking in US News and World Report's annual education guide, "America's Best Colleges," as evidence of the superior education provided by Maharishi University of Management[47]. One recent example cites its number-two ranking among Midwestern universities for "Highest Proportion of Classes Under 20[48]." However, the claim doesn't disclose that the well-known education guide has consistently given MUM the lowest "peer assessment" score among Midwest universities. This year's guide shows MUM received a rating of 1.5 out of a possible 5, putting it at the very bottom of all Midwestern colleges and universities, in the opinion of educators who were surveyed[49].

It should be noted that the University prefers to cite the results of the ACT survey of students and the National Survey of Student Engagement, which show that students and alumni rank MUM far higher than the national average.

Footnotes

1. ^ Hypertension 26: 820–827, 1995
2. ^ International Journal of Neuroscience 16: 53–58, 1982
3. ^ Journal of Counseling and Development 64: 212–215, 1985
4. ^ Journal of Human Stress 5: 24-27, 1979
5. ^ The American Journal of Managed Care 3: 135–144, 1997
6. ^ The American Journal of Managed Care 3: 135–144, 1997
7. ^ Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 11: 13–87, 1994
8. ^ Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly 11: 13–87, 1994
9. ^ Journal of Clinical Psychology 45: 957–974, 1989
10. ^ Canter, P., Ernst, E. (2003) The cumulative effects of Transcendental Meditation on cognitive function--a systematic review of randomised controlled trials Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2003 Nov 28;115(21-22):758-766
11. ^ "Carroll RT" "Carroll, RT, Skeptics Dictionary"
12. ^ Hagelin, J. S., Orme-Johnson, D. W., Rainforth, M., Cavanaugh, K., & Alexander, C. N. (1999). Results of the National Demonstration Project to Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness in Washington, D.C. Social Indicators Research, 47, 153–201
13. ^ [1]
14. ^ Canter, P., Ernst, E. (2003) The cumulative effects of Transcendental Meditation on cognitive function--a systematic review of randomised controlled trials Wien Klin Wochenschr. 2003 Nov 28;115(21-22):758-766