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When we think of the cult "Transzendentale Meditation (TM)", usually the Beatles come into our minds. It was Paul McCartney and colleagues making the Guru Maharishi famous. A little later, most Beatles just left because they found out that the Guru has nothing to offer but taking their money.
The Israeli paper YEDIOT ACHARONOT published in its last Shabbat edition (5 August 2011) an advertisement of the TM cult. The advertisement can be found in one of the newspaper editions called "Yediot Tel Aviv" on page 42, where Transzendentale Meditation is promising free classes. Relaxation, meditation against high blood pressure and further healing methods. No address is given but just a phone number.
The Israeli paper YEDIOT ACHARONOT published in its last Shabbat edition (5 August 2011) an advertisement of the TM cult. The advertisement can be found in one of the newspaper editions called "Yediot Tel Aviv" on page 42, where Transzendentale Meditation is promising free classes. Relaxation, meditation against high blood pressure and further healing methods. No address is given but just a phone number.
TM advertisement in "Yediot Tel Aviv".
Not only the Beatles brought fame to Guru Maharishi but also photos where "Transzendentalen Meditation" members sit in Yoga positions and start flying. The sect / cult works very similar to what "Scientology" does: Trying to get clients by offering free classes. If the client becomes interested and wants to know more, he has to pay. TM as well as Scientology never leave you alone and continue promising you true happiness in life. Success, health, anything as long as you are willing to pay. They drag people into their weirdo ideologies in order to suck all the money out of them. In the meantime, the client has become dependent on the cult and is willing to pay. Even if he doesn't have money and is forced to be in debts.
A former TM member and his report about the cult:
What I do have a problem with is that TM teachers use that as a starting point to recruit people into a cult. For one example, many people who start off thinking that they will just learn how to relax end up paying several thousand dollars for classes in developing supernatural powers such as levitation. Here is a videoof people who started off just wanting to relax but who now (several thousand additional dollars later) are practicing what they sincerely think is actual physical levitation (the music is whimsical but that's actual footage of a "group flying session)!
These well-intentioned TM teachers will deceive you in two ways. The first way is that they freely employ a technique of deception called "mental reservation." This form of deception involves hiding information from you while letting you believe that you have all of the information that you need. This was the form of deception employed by Bill Clinton when he said "I did not have sex with that woman." He wasn't "lying" (at least not according to his private unstated mental definition of "sex") but he was still deliberately "deceiving." As he famously said "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is". TM advocates are pulling identical deceptions on you!
As I will discuss in detail this is how TM works: (a) first a person is told that by following a certain procedure he will attain deep relaxation, and (b) then he is then shown how to induce a trance state in himself in which that suggestion is acted out. Of course TM is very elaborate and effective in how it carries this out and I discuss this in great detail at that link.
And once some people are in a trance state they become so "suggestible" that in addition to acting out the suggestion that they should relax deeply, they will swallow doctrinal indoctrination whole without rationally analyzing it. This process of trance induction followed by immediately by doctrinal indoctrination is how all cults recruit. The only difference between the many various cults is how they induce the trance state and what the specific doctrine is that is thus inculcated.
Further information from a German sect information site:
The newly initiated student does not participate actively, but must bring offerings (flowers, fruit and a white handkerchief). The ceremony takes place in a darkened room. In this room there is a table with a picture of the "Guru Dev", surrounded by offerings and objects. The TM-teacher speaks or sings a hymn in Sanskrit. At the end, the student receives a mantra. The TM teachers will all have a specific set of mantras, the meditator will be awarded according to their age. The TM, however, students are held to the belief that they were given a personal mantra assigned. This mantra should be repeated constantly during the morning and evening meditation to achieve higher states of consciousness. According to the Transcendental Meditation is at the initiation, "but by no means a religious ceremony." (Reller, 2000)
The German Federal Administrative Court in a decision adopted by the 23.05.1989, that the federal government is entitled to the statement that Transcendental Meditation can lead to psychological damage or a personality disorder and meditation accompanied by the TM teacher is not sufficient to sound a therapeutic claim. (Federal Administrative Court, decision of 23.05.1989, NJW 1989, p. 2272ff)
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