Started TM in 1976 (gads, was it that long ago?). Eventually made my way to Siddhis. In another post I will talk about the good experiences I had with TM/Siddhis. I was not a teacher but was married to a Governor who was also my initiator.
When I started TM those years ago I was not overly concerned about the religious implications of TM and this accurately reflected my own disinterest in my own religion. That was to change as I got older and raised a family. For years I just accepted the standard party line as told by MMY which was that TM and all of its branches was "Vedic" and not Hindu and that it was cosmically clean and of no concern to any other religious group. In time I came to question just what this here Vedic really meant. As well in time I came to read more about the Mantras and in what context that came from. Years later I took a more in-depth interest in my own religion and began to reflect much closer on what Vedic meant. After a while I realized that it was just a pale ruse to call TM stuff "Vedic" when in fact it was just dressed up Hindu practices, familiar to all Hindu's around the world. In coming to know my own religion better I chanced upon a sentence in the Torah which just sealed the whole affair for me. I quote: "the name of other gods ye do not mention; it is not heard on thy mouth..." Source: Exodus 23:13. I have read various commentaries about what this means. While the OT is open to interpretation I think that the words can be taken here at face value. Since these Children of Israel were spiritually open vessels and sensitive to all kinds of influences, the wording is not ambiguous. You do NOT put the names of other (pagan) gods in your mouth....lest they sway you, influence you. It is surmised by some that these people were also taught meditational techniques by Moses, some standing/walking techniques, others maybe sitting/contemplative, prayer-like techniques. So, back to mantras: they are the names of Hindu deities, end of story. That was the end of TM for me, although there were other factors that were involved. The movements famous or perhaps infamous inability to address the psychological changes a person undergoes when meditating is one of the biggest failures. TM has the [possible] ability to alter much and the fallback of "you're just unstressing, go and lie down and feel the body" is laughable and probably irresponsible. I can see that some people would have been harmed by this flippant and ridiculous attitude while they were undergoing changes. I will end for now on one more note. When my "faith" in the Movement was undergoing the evaluation that led me to quit that path I could not digest the possible dissonance of seeing MMY lie to us and also keep the assumption that he was an enlightened man. I had a simplistic idea that enlightenment could not allow a person to issue a lie. I was wrong and/or he was never enlightened, or enlightenment really is something I do not clearly understand. In any case I could not hold the two ideas in my mind at the same time. Clearly he had hoodwinked us ignoramuses in the West by the constant "Vedic" answer and many of us just didn't ask enough questions or do our homework out of fear of confronting the hidden and having ourselves outted from the group. I mean, if you want or need to belong to a group, you swallow and suppress anything that will be a problem. Up to the point you cannot do this any more. For a long time I held rageful feelings towards MMY because I felt he had lied to me and I had been misled about many things. I had listened to him discuss how easy it seemed to get to some enlightenment.....how we only needed 6 or 7000 fliers and all would change for the better and a long list of constantly changing promises and explanations for what is going to be a better day. All of which did not come about and all of which enriched the movement to incredible heights. I became bitter and felt very badly about these feelings. In another post I will share positive feelings/experiences and where I currently hold MMY in my heart. I cannot recommend TM to anyone in my faith as I feel that it would be a direct contravention of the Torah. Outside of my faith I have neutral feelings but I would warn them of cheaper and safer alternative measures/techniques. With the recent photos of the leadership now splashed all over the world, how anyone in their right mind can take these people seriously and not see them as faux-Hindu wannabe's is beyond me. They look so silly I just laughed out loud. I wish them well and best of luck. Regards, Fred
