At the end of the ritual, she whispered my word to me, and asked me to repeat it back to her. I kept getting it wrong. “Good enough”, she said on my tenth try, and instructed me to continue repeating it, quietly, more quietly still, until it was just a silent whisper in my mind. I still wasn’t sure if I was saying the word right. I sat in the chair, thinking my mantra. At a certain point, I heard her get up and leave the room. I became very aware of my breathing and was horrified to remember that I was a sack of meat. After some time had passed, she returned to the room, and asked me how long I thought it had been. “Fifteen minutes?” I guessed. She looked disappointed and said it had only been ten minutes. This suggested that time had been dragging for me. I asked her whether that meant I was doing it wrong. “No,” she responded. “It’s not possible to do it wrong.”
In the days that followed, I took myself through the TM course via an app on my phone. The filmed tutorials were led by Tony Nader, the clean-cut Lebanese neuroscientist who assumed leadership of the TM Organization after the death of the Maharishi in 2008. These were interspersed with questionnaires and short archival videos of the Maharishi, in which the guru sat cross-legged atop a gold-draped couch, dressed in white robes, behind him an arrangement of flowers laid out in front of a portrait of his own teacher. I was instructed to meditate twice a day for twenty minutes. I was told repeatedly not to share the technique with anyone, as I was not trained to do so and might inadvertently ruin their experience.
During this period I had daily check-ins with my teacher and a twenty-something-year-old photographer who was learning TM at the same time as me. Each evening the teacher would ask us how we were doing. “Amazing,” the photographer would say. He’d never had more energy. He was starting to experience brief glimpses of transcendence. He described the feeling as a sort of sudden dipping, as if he’d been dunked in a great well of energy. “And you?” the teacher would ask me, thrilled with his answer. “I don’t think I’m doing it right,” I said, and explained that I was having trouble shutting off what I think I described as “the skeptical part of my brain.” In response, I received the smile reserved for the unenlightened. “As long as it’s easy,” she said sympathetically. Ease is perhaps the central principle of Transcendental Meditation, which is where it differs from most other popular techniques. By reciting the mantra, TM teaches, the mind will automatically journey inwards towards “pure consciousness.” You simply have to trust that it will do so on its own. Having thoughts is not a hindrance; this is a sign that the body is releasing stress. The only obstacle to transcendence is effort.
Before beginning to teach TM in 1955, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had learned the technique from Swami Brahmananda Saraswati (also known as Guru Dev), who reportedly entrusted him with the task of spreading Vedic knowledge to the masses. In the 1950s, he began teaching what he then called a traditional meditation technique around India and took on the title of Maharishi, which translates from Hindi as “great seer.” By the 1960s, he was setting up international meditation schools and touring to promote the program. It was on one of these tours, in 1967, that he first met the Beatles, who in 1968 would famously travel to his then-residence in Rishikesh. There, they wrote much of the White Album and were joined by Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence. Over the course of their stay, however, the band began to doubt many of the Maharishi’s claims, including his avowed celibacy, especially after Mia Farrow attested that the Maharishi had made unwanted advances on her—claims that the Maharishi and his followers vehemently denied. The Beatles’ disillusionment with their beloved guru became the rumored basis of the song “Sexy Sadie,” which was initially entitled “Maharishi.” Maharishi, what have you done, you’ve made a fool of everyone.
Farrow’s reports and the Beatles’ disillusionment tarnished the Maharishi’s reputation but did little to halt the growth of the TM empire in the years that followed as it expanded into education, medicine, media, politics, and real estate. At the time of the Maharishi’s death, the Transcendental Meditation organization—officially a nonprofit—was estimated to be worth over £2 billion. The TM headquarters were established just outside Vlodrop, Holland (now the Maharishi European Research University), an elaborate compound ringed by a barbed wire fence and patrolled round-the-clock, where the Maharishi himself resided in a suite on the first floor. From there, he headed a largely volunteer staff of around twenty-five thousand people and broadcast TM courses to subscribers via a satellite television channel that reached 144 countries.
The history of TM is a warren of rabbit holes.
by Lauren Collee, The Baffler | Read more:
Image: © Sebastian Cestaro[ed. I've used TM off and on for most of my life (mostly 0ff). There's no denying it does something, and is a good relaxation technique.]
