I've been staying out of the mock furor over one silly planted article in the NYTimes, allowing those who feel somehow invested in it one way or another to shoot their wads, and allowing at least one TB to make 38 posts in two days, either arguing about it or playing other ego games to puff up her imaginary self image. :-)
But I will comment on the SADNESS of the TM movement these days, in terms of how it feels the need to market its products. First, as I commented on earlier, it has since Day One based most of its marketing appeal on the idiocy of the general public, and their tendency to believe that "If someone famous does it/wears it/drives it, I should, too." Maharishi, like many Indians, was the utter personification of celebrity-worship and using these celebrities to make people believe that he had similar celebrity. It can be honestly speculated that if he hadn't run into the Beatles, no more than a few thousand people would *ever* have started TM. ( As an aside, and to underscore that it's not just TMers who are suckers for this blatant use of celebrities to sell things, did you know that companies pay celebrities *millions* of dollars to shill for them as their "celebrity spokespersons?" Kim Kardashian -- that vapid, unattractive, talentless bimbo who made herself famous by releasing a video of herself fucking and claimed it had been "leaked" -- now gets $10,000 every time she mentions a product on one of her TWEETS? Now *that* is insane. ) But the sad part is that the TMO *still* use this technique, because the OLD PEOPLE who run the TM movement 1) are so lacking in creativity that they can't think of any way to market their products that Maharishi didn't use himself, 2) they're OLD PEOPLE, still caught up in celebrity- worship themselves, and 3) the primary target of all of their marketing efforts are OLD PEOPLE like themselves, the hangers-on to the myth of the TM movement, not new TMers at all. The TMO has done such a shitty job with its image over the years that it simply *cannot* market TM as a stand- alone product competing with better and more reasonably priced forms of meditation. So they have to use celebrities to sell it, and *primarily to existing meditators*. THAT has been their real "marketing strateqy" since the late 1970s -- "preaching to the converted," trying to get *them* to feel good about practicing TM so that they'll continue to flood the movement with donations. Fascinatingly, that is the approach that Maharishi fell back upon and that is still being used today to try to market TM to new people. It's still completely based on an appeal to OLD PEOPLE, and in particular *wealthy* OLD PEOPLE. *No one even tries* to present TM as a standalone product and sell it to the end users. Instead they pitch it as a panacea for social ills, and as a way to "help" the Victim Du Jour -- children, PTSD veterans, etc. The *entire appeal* is to rich OLD PEOPLE, to try to get them to "contribute," either with their names (if they are celebrities) or with money, or both. One can say that the use of "science" to try to sell TM is an extension of the same idea. In our era, "science" itself is a bit of a celebrity -- claim that something is "scientific" and an astounding number of people will actually believe it. So they concocted pseudo-science based on Bad Protocols to make it *look* as if TM had some scientific validation, and again a large number of people bought into this. In my opinion, this all started NOT as an attempt to market TM to new people, but as a way to "preach to the converted" and keep existing OLD PEOPLE -- the TMO "base" -- on the hook and still contrib- uting by sending in donations or paying for courses. And again, it worked, because people never seem to tire of being told, "You're so smart...you made the right decision... lookie here...even *science* thinks that TM is worth doing." And of course hoardes of OLD PEOPLE, wishing to be told that the hours they'd spent sitting on their butts (let alone bouncing on them) weren't wasted, lapped it up like dogs, and continue to. TMers *still* salivate over every celebrity mention, and every crap study presented as if it were real research. But the bottom line is that the TM movement is OLD, and dying. And so is its "base." IT CANNOT COMPETE in the "meditation marketplace" with tech- niques that present themselves more honestly, such as mindful- ness meditation or other techniques still taught cheaply or for free. So it still tries to rely on celebrity and on pseudo- science to market itself to the rich people who are anxious to work their *own* image by appearing to be benevolent donors to "good works." THERE IS NO OTHER SOURCE OF INCOME. That's ALL that the TMO has got. Pretty sad, for a technique that once had the ability to be sold as what it was, a simple, easily learned technique of relaxation to be practiced max twice a day for 20 minutes, and sold for what it was actually worth -- 35 bucks. That actually *succeeded* in the marketplace for a time presenting itself that way (with the help of a lot of celebrities, of course). Now it's just OLD, and in the way.
