Richard Hughes wrote: > Apologies to any TM folk who are upset by me > glibly posting my, secret and never to be spoken > aloud, mantra here but I'm interested in where it > came from. > The TM bija mantras are derived from the tantric Sri Vidya tradition of Karnataka. Swami Brahmananda Saraswati belonged to the Saraswati sampradaya which is headquartered at Sringeri. Swmaiji's guru was Swami Krishananda Saraswati. All the Saraswati gurus follow the Sri Vidya tradition. The TM bija mantras are enumerated in the main scripture of Sri Vidya, the Saundaryalahari which was composed by the Adi Shankara.
Read more: Auspicious Wisdom: http://www.rwilliams.us/archives/srividya.htm Excerpt from 'Auspicious Wisdom": "Like the other Sankara texts, it is possible that SL was composed either in the Sankara matha of Srinigeri or Kanchipuram. The attribution of these four works to Sankara solidifies connections between smarta brahmans, who identify with one of the southern Sankara pithas, and Sakta and Srividya traditionalists. Srividya appears to have undergone something of a reformation in the south in the period of the composition of these texts. Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, southerners distance themselves from Kashmiri Kaulism in order to distinguish Srividya from morally suspect Tantrism. Sakta non-dualism is broadly construed to be compatible with Sankara's advaita Vedanta, though points of difference are rarely articulated and no serious effort is made to address them." Work cited: "Auspicious Wisdom" by Douglas Renfrew Brooks State University of New York Press, 1992 (page 47-48)
