First published in Column 8, 26.6.91
Every time I open the paper these days I see something about TM, more fully known as Transcendental Meditation.
I note that the same old lines are being trotted out. for
instance, because it so much improves health the Government should seriously
consider making TM a part of the health service – it will save us so much
money.
None of this is new. It’s been the line TM exponents have
taken since the Beatles became disillusioned with it back in the 1960s.
At the risk of stepping on people’s toes, I’d like to express
some of my concerns about TM.
Let me say first, meditation can ease stress – but there are
plenty of other styles of meditation around. TM is only one in the bag. When it
comes to mind over matter, then TM, like any other form of meditation, works –
up to a point. but it’s a lot cheaper to relax in front of an open fire in the
winter and watch the sparks fly up, or sit in the garden looking at the birds
swinging round the trees in summer. And you don’t have to endlessly repeat some
mysterious word.
It might be okay if that was as far as TM went. But TM
is religious in origin, and has in no way lost its roots.
Newcomers, before starting to learn the techniques of TM,
are asked to bring some simple offerings, such as fruit. They will remove their
shoes, and be asked to bow down before a portrait of Swami Brahmenanda
Saraswati, the Divine Master (or Guru Dev). This was the man who trained Maharashi
Yogi, who later brought TM to the West. (It seems he felt it was more
profitable to do so, since there were already plenty of impoverished Yogi in
India. And as he said, ‘people in the West are in the habit of accepting things
quickly.’ In fact, until he found the
right way to sell it, they didn’t.)
Then the teacher will intone a Sanskrit hymn of praise in
Hindu – to traditional Hindu gods.
TM enthusiasts usually deny it’s a religion, but in at least
two countries (one of them being the USA) it has been legally ruled as such. By
appearing in various disguises, TM has been passed off as a political movement
for world peace (the World Plan Executive Council), a source of calm for the
use of stressed-out businessmen, or a method to keep children from unruly behaviour.
But there’s more. I remember hearing a man who’d seen the
error of his ways in regard to TM talking about the fact that people learnt to
levitate when they became real disciples.
Even stranger was the behaviour of his flatmate whom he
heard bumping around his bedroom. After some weeks of being given the
brush-off, he finally got the fellow to tell him what he was up to. This guy
was supposed to be flying.
From there it was only a matter of time before the first man
was trying it too, going to Wellington to what might be called the ‘flying school.’
The flying room was like a large gymnasium with lots of padded mats around, and
ordinary New Zealanders trying to get off the ground.
If all this sounds rather foolish, it isn’t. in 1977 TM
offered a Sidhi programme which promised advanced students the ability to
levitate, fly, become invisible, walk through walls and have superhuman
strength.
In 1980 five former TM disciples told the Guardian newspaper
that they’d paid £30,000
between them to learn such skills. In spite of the great financial outlay, none
of them could do any of these things.
Beatles and Maharashi 1967
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