emptybill, it's not only the Roman Catholic Church that thinks this of TM. Back in the 80s some Jehovah Witnesses told me that TM is "the work of the devil," that "it says so in the Bible." I asked if the Bible actually used the phrase Transcendental Meditation. They admitted that it didn't but added, "but you know that's what it means." They finally left when I told them that, based on my own experience I did not think TM to be the work of the devil and thus would continue it.
I was once told by a conservative spiritual teacher of great learning that there is a Council on the non physical plane that meets regularly and that determines which spiritual system has ascendency at which time in history. This resonates as true to me and is how I understand the seeming ignorance of some systems. I guess wisdom too unfolds over time even though on the deepest level, it is always alive. On Thursday, October 17, 2013 8:15 AM, "emptyb...@yahoo.com" <emptyb...@yahoo.com> wrote: I had a long time friend who was a TM teacher in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore in the mid-70's who talked with Basil Pennington on ATR. Basil's concern was how to port over the TM technique to revive the Catholic contemplative tradition. He believed this could be done and was working with a few others who had learned the technique to make it happen. We now know who those others were. This Rock Catholic Evangelical magazine (now called Catholic Answers) has repeatedly condemned the entry of "Hindu TM" along with Buddhist Vipassana into Catholic practice. They consider it all to be the devious subterfuge of the "Evil One" working to overthrow the "pure teachings" of Roman Catholicism. I agree with their premise. TM and its Vedic roots are in contradiction to the Sin-Guilt-Redemption miasma of Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity. These Western Christian lineages are an Augustinian deviation from original Christianity - which only still exists (to some extent) in the Eastern Orthodox church. However, the Eastern Orthodox teachings and contemplative practices are solely Christo-centric and have no place (nor need any) for TM practice or theories. ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote: Buck wrote: > Dear Turq; to give credit where credit is due, actually Centering Prayer >> was drawn from the range of Christian and Eastern mystics but to be >> more honest and accurate was distilled from Transcendental Meditation >> in the 1970's by the three monks and their brethren at St. Joseph's >> Abbey in Spencer Massachusetts. >> >> I know, I was there and watched them rip Transcendental Meditation [TM] >> off for their own purposes. >> >> -Buck in the Dome > >I'll confirm that the assumption among TMers that these three clerics' version of Centering Prayer was based on TM was current back in the late 1970s. It isn't something Buck made up. Photocopies of the chapter entitled "TM and Centering Prayer" from Pennington's 1977 book "Daily We Touch Him" were routinely passed around among TMers. Moreover, if Barry had any curiosity at all, or any desire to get his facts straight, he would have checked out the PDF that Xeno uploaded. It would be extremely difficult for anyone familiar with TM instruction to read those two pages on how to do Centering Prayer and claim that it had "nothing to do with TM." It's obvious that the clerics did indeed "rip off" the instructions for TM, just as Buck says above. The mechanics of the techniques are virtually identical. The only two significant differences are (1) that TM uses a teacher-assigned Sanskrit mantra, whereas Centering Prayer uses a self-chosen "sacred word" from the Christian tradition; and (2) that the explicit context of Centering Prayer is Christian, whereas TM's is either secular, religious/nondenominational, or Hindu, depending on one's approach. --The Corrector Barry wrote: (snip) > > I think we all know that The Corrector will probably rip Buck a new asshole > > for >> > running this tired and intentionally misleading routine again, but just on >> > the off >> > chance that she doesn't, I will. The bolded section in brackets above comes >> > only from Buck's fevered imagination. Anyone who reads the rest of the >> > descriptions on that page knows that it has nothing to do with TM. >> > >> > Buck's as bad as Willytex at making shit up and presenting it as fact.
