Dear Ms. Enlightened: On Sep 29, 2008, at 12:10 PM, enlightened_dawn11 wrote:
The generally accepted figure is that around 2 million people have learned TM worldwide, Mr. Vaj. Even if just one half of one percent are continuing the practice (assuming 99.5% no longer do TM), that is still 100,000 meditators globally. You would have had to have done an awful lot of talking with practitioners of the technique to be making your claim of majorities faking witnessing and ranting about enlightenment. Perhaps you are right. However to continue claiming these are facts as you represent them speaks more to the attachment of you to your story than it does any basis in fact.
Since scientists have already determined the EEG criteria of both Patanjali yogins in samadhi and Buddhist yogins in samadhi as the same: High-Amplitude Gamma coherence; and the fact this has yet to be observed in TMers, I'd say the prospect looks pretty grim, esp. given the numbers you propose and zero so far. As soon as I see good scientific evidence of this in TM practitioners, I'll stop and celebrate with everyone else. As I pointed out in my post to Ruth, yogic-style enlightenment has some long-known and pretty darn impressive qualities. You know as well as I do that if these were observed in TM practitioners that not only would they be touting the scientific evidence, we'd be hearing about it all over the media!
That's of course not to deny the benefits of TM which a well-known relaxation effect, the so-called relaxation response. Relaxation is a good thing.
Do you have some evidence we're not aware of?
