We've all seen the perils of trying to market your meditation technique by using "celebrity endorsements." It's fine when the celebrities in question are popular, but more difficult when the celebrities become known for things like drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes non-stop while filming women being degraded onscreen, getting caught smoking joints while on music tours, or drugging their medical patients so that they can have sex with them.
So my suggestion to the TMO is that it focus on more down-to-earth, normal people, and allow THEM to write endorsements talking about all the wonderful things TM has added to their lives. Surely when the general public hears testimonies from people it can identify with because they're so much like them, the number of TM initiations will soar again. Here are a few fictional sample testimonials, just to illustrate my idea: * Hi. I'm just a normal horse rancher living outside of Fairfield, Iowa who goes to the flying dome twice a day and spends much of my free time trying to convince those who don't go to the dome that they should, because otherwise they're eroding the moral foundations of America and jeopardizing world peace and lowlife scum. I also testify on the Internet correcting the erroneous impression some have developed that TM is a religion. In my spare time I like to "translate" old scriptures to make them more accessible to people in modern times by replacing the words with better words. Thus "God" becomes "the Unified Field," and "grace of God" becomes "transcendence," and "the godless" becomes "non-meditators." I think everyone should practice TM, and that strong laws should be put in place to *make* them practice it if they don't sign up willingly. You should -- nay, MUST -- all learn TM, so your lives can be as magical and moral as mine. * Hello. I'm an overweight, often-out-of-work programmer who really, really believes in the scientific evidence that proves that TM is not only an effective form of meditation, but that it's by far the BEST form of meditation. To this end I spend hours and hours arguing with people who believe otherwise on Reddit, trying to convince them to believe the things I believe. I also think that TM should be in every school, so that all kids have the opportunity to grow up and have as fulfilling a life as I have. * Hallo. I am a long-term TM practitioner living in Norway. When I'm not working as a photographer, I spend my time trying to convince people like yourselves that if anyone says anything bad about Maharishi or TM that they're doing it only because they're on the payroll of the CIA or the Dalai Lama. I think, and have said many times, that anyone who is "off the program" and does anything other than what they're told to do by Maharishi and their TM teachers should be forcibly thrown out of the TM movement. In my spare time, because I am an exception to this, of course, I hang out with another famous spiritual teacher, and love to hear him tell stories about the Saviour named Maitreya that he's been promising will appear Any Day Now for 30 years, and hearing about the Space Brothers who are trying to communicate to us via crop circles. If you learn TM, you can have as normal and as fulfilling a life as I do. * Hi. I am an older woman living a fabulous life in a beach town in a fabulous resort area of the world. For work I correct the writing of people hoping to get their books published, and for fun I correct the writing of anyone on the Internet who is WRONG, and who thus *needs* to be corrected. I am so good at this that I have never once been WRONG myself, and I have never once lost an argument, no matter how petty. I rule. In my spare time I hold grudges against anyone who fails to recognize me as the most knowledgeable, most truthful person ever, and stalk them on the Internet until they finally do. I've stalked some of them for almost twenty years now, the scum. I'll get them...and their little dogs, too! In spite of all these pressing duties, I am known for my sense of humor and my cheerful laughter, which lights up any chat room I appear in. Which is a lot of them, because I haven't actually seen the sun in nearly ten years...there are just SO many people out there who need correcting. Learn TM, and your life can be as fulfilling as mine. * Yo. I'm a retired tech trainer who has been meditating for many years now, long enough for me to become fully enlightened, and in fact more enlightened than anyone else in the whole world. Any time anyone talks about a spiritual experience they've had, I can top it by talking about the "better" and "higher" experience I've had. THAT is how powerful TM is, and how much it's done for me. Since I'm no longer working, I travel around in a camper, because that allows me to stay up until 4:00 AM obsessing on the people who don't believe I'm enlightened and insulting them any way I can think of. If this sounds like your idea of a fulfilling and enlightened life, you should do TM like I did. * Howdy. I am not only a long-time TM meditator, I was the first person ever initiated, ever...or the third...or the 23rd...I forget. Anyway, it was a long time ago. I live in Texas and have so little to do at work that I fill the rest of the time posting to chat groups on the Internet all day, making up whatever I want in an effort to get a rise out of people. Some people call this trolling, but I find it fulfilling because I'm from Texas and it beats what most other people do for entertainment around here, which is to fuck prairie dogs. I hold the World's Record for posting inane stuff to the Internet, and am so proud of this that I have my own website, where you can go to reread anything I've ever posted, if you missed it the first time. You could have as fulfilling a life as this, too, if you just learned TM. That's enough for now...you probably get the idea. I figure a few "normal people" testimonies like these will do much more to improve the number of people learning TM than the celebrity endorsements will. Please pass the idea along to the TM movement.