A few facts to balance the hyperbole:
* As far as I can tell, the book being touted is *not* on the New
York Times Bestseller List, at least not in the Top 35 listed on its
hardback non-fiction page, or in the Top 30 listed on its paperback
Non-Fiction page.
* It also fails to appear on Amazon's page listing the "The New York
Times Bestsellers," either for hardback or paperback non-fiction.
* It appears to be ranked at #662 on Amazon, which is admirable, but
hardly a best seller. (More interesting, the author of this blog's book,
so conveniently touted at the bottom of this article to hype sales of
it, is #11,876.)
* Harold Bloomfield, one-time TMO poster boy and author of the first
book Phil Goldberg waxes so nostalgic about, was later arrested for
drugging his female patients and taking sexual liberties with them. He
plead guilty to two felony counts in the matter and had his license to
practice medicine suspended (at least for a while...I can find no
information about whether it was ever reinstated). So much for the
benefits of meditation.
We now return you to your normally-scheduled reality.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, nablusoss1008 <no_reply@...>
wrote:
>
> HUFFINGTON POST: Transcendental Meditation: Topping The Bestseller
> List Since 1975 by Philip Goldberg Posted: 06/21/11 08:10 AM ET
> When I saw that a book about Transcendental Meditation
> <http://www.tm.org/> (TM), written by a scientist, had landed on the
New
> York Times bestseller list, my reaction was to quote the great Yogi of
> Berra: "It's déjà vu all over again."
>
> In 1975, "TM: Discovering Inner Energy and Overcoming Stress" was
> propelled onto the list when its lead author, psychiatrist Harold
> Bloomfield <http://www.haroldbloomfield.com/> , appeared on Merv
> Griffin's <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv_Griffin> syndicated TV
> talk show (the Oprah of its day) with TM founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
> <http://www.maharishi.org/> . The book remained a bestseller for six
> months, and then had a solid run on the paperback list. During that
> period, Merv devoted a second show to Maharishi, and TM centers could
> barely keep up with the demand. By the end of 1976, over a million
> Americans had learned to meditate.
>
> This was the culmination of a remarkable eight-year run that began
when
> the Beatles famously learned TM and sojourned at Maharishi's ashram
> <http://www.thebeatlesinindia.com/> in India. Between that watershed
> moment and the two Merv programs, meditation moved from the
> counterculture to the mainstream, from weird to respectable, from
> youthful mind expansion to middle-age stress remedy. Now, the
celebrity
> meditators were not rock stars but Clint Eastwood and Mary Tyler
Moore,
> and you could not get more mainstream than the nation's big screen
hero
> and its TV sweetheart.
>
> The route from esoteric mystical discipline to respectable relaxation
> technique was paved by science. It started in the late '60s when a
young
> meditator named Robert Keith Wallace was persuaded by his guru,
> Maharishi, to study the physiology of TM. The research became his
Ph.D.
> dissertation, and then a Science magazine article in 1970. Wallace's
> follow-up study, conducted with Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson,
was
> published in 1971 in The American Journal of Physiology and Scientific
> American. The data sparked an avalanche of research. By 1975, a
> substantial body of evidence had demonstrated the efficacy of
meditation
> on various measures of physical and mental health.
>
> Now comes another psychiatrist, Norman E. Rosenthal
> <http://www.webmd.com/norman-e-rosenthal> , with "Transcendence:
Healing
> and Transformation through Transcendental Meditation
>
<http://www.amazon.com/Transcendence-Healing-Transformation-Through-Medi\
\
>
tation/dp/1585428736%3FSubscriptionId%3D1E2MCMDX6VVV67W7T882%26tag%3Dabs\
\
>
-bookdetailsapi-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26\
\
> creativeASIN%3D1585428736> ." Once again, celebrity endorsements add
> pizzazz, in this case Mehmet Oz, David Lynch, Martin Scorcese and
> Russell Simmons, with cameo appearances by the gray eminences, Ringo
> Starr and Paul McCartney. And once again science confers credibility.
> Whereas Bloomfield was fresh out of his Yale residency when Merv
Griffin
> showcased his book, Rosenthal has 30 years of distinguished clinical
> research and more than 200 scholarly articles under his belt. And by
now
> TM has been the subject of over 300 peer-reviewed articles. The book
> describes the most recent findings, many of them involving common
> maladies such as ADHD, PTSD and hypertension, but not limited to
medical
> conditions.
>
> That meditation is good for you is no longer an eye-opening news
flash.
> But the new book's bestsellerdom suggests that a new generation wants
to
> hear the message. In this era of soaring anxiety, depression and
health
> costs, perhaps the only people who don't think that's a good thing are
> the makers of pharmaceuticals.
>
> As someone who has chronicled the transmission of Eastern spirituality
> to the West <http://www.americanveda.com/> , I hope that this time
> around we can avoid some of the pitfalls of the past. As the title of
> Rosenthal's book "Transcendence," suggests, meditation is not just a
> medical intervention. The deeper purpose has always been the
development
> of higher consciousness, as described in the Vedic tradition from
which
> practices like TM derive. But when yogic methods become medicalized
and
> their benefits quantified, they tend to get disconnected from their
> spiritual roots -- a loss for all of us.
>
> Another consequence of the popularization of meditation was the rise
of
> imitation practices. Health experts, self-help mavens and
entrepreneurs
> did everything they could to de-Hinduize and de-Indianize the
practice.
> Recently, we've seen a similar tendency as practices derived from
> Buddhism were secularized as "mindfulness." The advantage of this
> adaptation, of course, is that it makes such practices far more
> accessible. The downside is that something vital can be lost in
> translation, thereby diminishing their effectiveness. Modernizing the
> language is one thing, but tinkering with the ingredients of a
> meditation practice is not unlike changing a medical formula or a food
> recipe.
>
> Finally, in the past, all forms of meditation were lumped together as
if
> their differences were inconsequential. People who should have known
> better assumed that the initial TM data could be applied to just about
> anything that resembled meditation. That techniques practiced
> differently would produce identical outcomes defies logic, yet the
> premise was accepted on faith and promoted by both healthcare
> professionals and New Age promoters. Recent findings have corrected
that
> mistake to a large extent, and current researchers are sorting out
which
> practices produce which results under which circumstances.
>
> The scientific investigation of ancient spiritual practices might be
one
> of the most important advances of the modern era. But we have to
proceed
> with care and discernment, assimilating the methods without obscuring
or
> dishonoring their roots. If we get careless, we can dilute them,
corrupt
> them and otherwise fail to harness their full potential. It's happened
> to some extent already, and it's happening as we speak in the trendy
> world of yoga studios, where complex and profound teachings are being
> reduced to fitness exercises. Rudyard Kipling's assertion that "East
is
> East and West is West and never the twain shall meet" turned out to be
> mistaken, to our everlasting benefit. But we have to make sure that
East
> does not become West.
>
> This Blogger's Books from [Amazon] <http://www.amazon.com/>
> [indiebound] <http://www.indiebound.org/?aff=HuffingtonPost>
> [American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation
How
> Indian Spirituality Changed the West]
>
<http://www.amazon.com/American-Veda-Emerson-Meditation-Spirituality/dp/\
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>
0385521340%3FSubscriptionId%3D0JJEH4PKQM4ZHS8QY102%26tag%3Dthehuffingtop\
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>
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> 0385521340> American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and
> Meditation How Indian Spirituality Changed the West
> by Philip Goldberg
>
<http://www.amazon.com/American-Veda-Emerson-Meditation-Spirituality/dp/\
\
>
0385521340%3FSubscriptionId%3D0JJEH4PKQM4ZHS8QY102%26tag%3Dthehuffingtop\
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>
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> 0385521340>
>
