TM - Meditation

[Guest guest]

TM - Meditation

 

Hi evil_djinia ! I am tempted to say, "a good question", but I have

seen that more often than not when someone says it is a good question

that means he does not have a ready answer. It is not that I have a

ready answer, but as a person who has been initiated into TM, I do

have some opinions.

 

1. In TM Maharshi Mahesh Yogi is not the Guru. The Guru is the

Sankaracharya of Dwarka Peeth. This was the position in 1975 when I

was initiated.

 

2. The mantras for TM are supposed to be without any meaning. The

initiator is supposed to choose the mantra depending upon your

suitability. Beeja Mantras are also used. Beeja mantras are used in

Mantra Sasthra.They are used not only in SriVidya but also in

Hinduism in general. In TM they are not used as Beeja mantras, but as

a source of sound. TM is meditation by sound. I know people who have

been initiated with meaningless Sanskrit sounds. The Beeja mantras

have no significance in TM, as they are not used as Beeja Mantras.

You are also not told that it is a Beeja mantra.

 

3. I got myself initiated into TM in 1975. I was told that it would

relieve stress. All the literature given to me emphasized the stress

relieving aspect of TM and effect on reducing blood pressure. A

similar meditation was taught in the Stress Management Programme

conducted in a 5 star hotel that I attended. In my company we were

conducting meditation classes and getting people initiated into TM as

a part of our Executive development programmes. What I am trying to

emphasize is that for most of the people TM is not spiritual.

 

Nowadays you will find a number of Meditation courses, which stress

mostly on the Health and other non-spiritual aspects. They address a

market in which there is a need for reducing stress. Meditation has

proved extremely useful in relieving stress and also helps in

improving your concentration so that you make better decisions. It is

reported that the captains of the Industry in Japan are all Zen

masters.

 

The meditation courses are being marketed like any other consumer

product. One of Swamijis in India for whom I have a lot of respect

regularly conducts programmes in five star hotels for the CEOs and

top executives of companies. The explanation is that these programmes

are tailored to suit the requirements of these people, and as these

people can afford to pay, the programmes are made expensive. In fact

if you make the programme free or at a nominal cost these people will

not attend.

 

The same marketing techniques are used whether it is a consumer

product or charity programmes or meditation programmes. Some of the

Non governmental organizations pay fabulous salaries to recruit

highly qualified and experienced marketing professional for their

organizations. You will find experienced marketing professionals in

Spiritual organizations also. Here most of them do it for free.

 

The justification for such courses is that such programmes bring at

least some of the rich and famous in contact with the spiritual

world. Some of them may turn spiritual later. When a CEO of a company

attends a programme, in many cases he goes back and initiates this

programme as part of HRD in his company.

 

Today thanks to Maharshi Mahesh Yogi and Swamijis of his kind,

meditation is an accepted practice all over the world. Even if one

percent of these people who are initiated into different kinds of

meditation turn spiritual that will be an achievement worth striving

for. I know of many people who started with TM and who have become

spiritual later. You must be aware that there is a spiritual basis

for even the Martial arts like Kung Fu and Karate. In my case in our

childhood one of our favourite pastime was to put a black spot on the

wall and stare at it. We firmly believed that it would give us

magical powers. Though we almost always landed up with a solid

headache we never gave it up. Since I grew up in a family where we

looked upto Swami Sivananda in our day-to-day living, I read his

books and was fascinated by meditation. Unfortunately I had mistaken

the power of concentration for meditation. So all my attempts at

different methods of meditation ended in a failure. Then I was

initiated into TM and for the first time was successful in

meditation. The TM people gave me books on spirituality. But at that

stage in my life I was not ready. I still practice Meditation but not

TM.

 

I am writing all this because I owe at least this to Maharshi Mahesh

Yogi. He was a pioneer in the art and science of Meditation. He made

the practice of meditation known all over the world. He is a very

much-respected figure in India. He has his own Maharshi TV channel,

University and a host of spiritual and charitable activities. In

India he is not controversial and continues to attract followers.

 

I am not an expert on TM or any other kind of meditation nor will I

ever be one.

 

About charging $ 2000, we meet many people from the west who have

spent their life savings to travel to India in search of

spirituality. Again I have also seen people from all over the world

coming to India and paying US $ 2 as donation for boarding and

lodging in an ashram. Rs.100 per day. That is US$ 2 per day. Tell me

does two dollars buy anything in US other than peanuts. They come

after spending a holiday in Java or Maldives where they pay upto US$

200 per day. As a matter of principle these ashrams do not fix their

rates.

 

I am unable to understand why people expect courses in meditation to

be inexpensive. If you spend $ 2000 for a meditation course you will

think very hard before giving it up half way. Last year we had gone

on a long pilgrimage cum trekking trip to Kangra valley. One of my

colleagues had remarked that with the money I spent on the trip, we

could have gone on a vacation tour to Europe. So it all depends on

your priorities.

 

About not being successful in the practice of TM there could be two

reasons.

 

1. Regular testing is to be done by the initiator to ensure that TM

is practiced properly. If you do not get yourselves tested regularly

you may fail.

 

2. The kind of meditation may not be suitable for you. I have seen

many people who did not find TM useful.

 

My suggestion is that you can do some reading up on meditation and

try some other form of meditation.

 

Other than Swami Sivananda's works on the subject the two good books

are

 

Meditation - Monks of the Ramakrishna order - Ramakrishna Math,

Madras - Contains articles by different monks.

 

Meditation and Mantras - Swami Vishnu Devananda - Om Lotus Publishing

Company - New York

This is an Authoritative text by one of the great masters of Yoga.

 

I thought someone in our club who has a better knowledge of TM than

myself will reply. Since no one has come forth so far, here I go. In

Tamil we have name for such person. Mundhirikottai.

 

 

Sankar

[Guest guest]

Pujya Omprem

 

Thank you for the lucid explanation of the Bija Mantras and their use.

 

I was talking only about Bija mantras as they are used in Transcendal

meditation. In TM you are not told about the significance of the

mantra. So the practitioner does not know that it is a Bija mantra.

Abut the effect of the Bija mantra

 

I give below the words of a Buddhist Govinda

 

The power and the effect of the Mantra depend on the spiritual

attitude, the knowledge and responsiveness of the individual. The

sabda or sound of the Mantra is not a physical sound (though it may

be accompanied by such a one) but a spiritual one. It cannot be heard

by the ears but only by the heart, and it cannot be uttered by the

mouth but only by the mind.

 

So I believe that the Bija Mantra does not affect the TM practioner.

This has been my experience with TM.

 

In Mantra Yoga every Deity has a Bija mantra associated with it.

 

Gham - Ganapathi

Kreem - KAALI

Shreem - Lakshmi

Kleem - Krishna

Aim - Saraswathi

Hrim - The Saktha/Tantrik equivalent of OM - Bhuvaneshwari

Hlrim - Bagalamukhi

Dhum - Durga

and so on.

 

Again in Mantra Yoga single Beeja Mantra are used rarely. It is

always one or more Beeja mantras with some other words.

The only Bija mantra that is used alone is Hrim. It is called Suddha

Bhuvaneshwari mantra. But the Diksha is given only to a person who is

an advanced Sadhaka. There are some mantras and also worship of some

deities, which are intensely purgative in nature. These are not

suitable for most of the people.

 

Though Mantras are used in Hatha Yoga, Laya yoga, Jnana yoga, Raja

yoga and Bhakthi yoga, it is in Mantra yoga that they are used

exclusively. Because of the wide misuse of mantras, nowadays noone

wants to call himself a Mantric.

 

I love talking about Mantras.

 

Jai MAA KAALI !!!

 

Sankar

[Guest guest]

> The power and the effect of the Mantra depend on the spiritual

attitude, the knowledge and responsiveness of the individual. >>

 

Let me first say a special hello to a fellow TMer. I am a TMer -

with the TM siddhi instruction for the last 12 yrs. While I follow

some other techniques too, it remains as my anchor. I sought it, not

as a stress release technique, but as a spiritual tool, one of the

few that was that was made available through his extensive teacher

training programs. I am not, however, part of the institution, I have

trouble giving blind loyalty to anyone. Thank you for addressing some

of the questions posed here.

 

Yes, awareness does effect ones benifits from mantras; at the same

time, its potency helps the person move towards increased awareness,

which in turn takes them to higher level benifits. I am also grateful

to Maharishi for making this available to the common public.

 

He was a physicist by early training, and his approach to the Vedas

has been from a physics point of view. Unfortunately most of his

material is only available to those who go into further studies,

beyond the basic TM course, in the form of video tapes. His students,

who were first attracted to his approach were mainly scientists, and

he was one of the first Yogis to encourage his disciples to take the

technique to their labs. As a result it is the most widely researched

tecnnique, presented in the world's most prestigious, peer reviewed

technical journals. This research was specially boosted during the

the early days of bio-feedaback (60's) where scientists were studying

existing meditation practices to develop the basis of the bio-

feedback technology. (Swami Rama was among the only yogis who himself

participated in the Menninger (sp?) Institutes research project on

bio-feedback research.

 

As far as the costs go, it is certainly the highest in the US as

compared to even its headquaters in The Netherlands. However the high

fees go to support the millions of programs in India and other

developing countries, which range from schools for poor children

educated in the vedic tradition to the "army" of pundits whose

collective meditative force is harnassed through group meditation.

Maharishi believes if 10% of the population sincerely meditates one

can raise the consciouness of the world.

 

The institution certainly hasn't been free from its own troubles, but

it has managed to help millions of people at any level they have

chosen to learn.

 

For most problems, as you have suggested, it is imperative to go to

the teacher for "checking". It does make a difference. Further

obstacles constantly arise as one progresses through the journey, and

it is again important to talk with ones teacher on a regular basis.

 

One gets from it according to how much ones puts into it. And one

certainly reaches a time when one may need to move on to different

sources of guidance.

 

A recent email from an old practitioner -

 

"On another note, I had an interesting experience in my neuropsych

class this weekend. A woman in my class brought in EEG equipment to

demonstrate biofeedback training, and she wanted to hook up a couple

of people for training sessions. I volunteered to demonstrate alpha

waves, but only if I could do TM and not her alpha training. Well,

the long-term goal of alpha training is first, to train the person to

produce alpha waves (8-12 Hz, relaxation with awareness), and then,

to teach them to substitute the alpha with delta (4-7 Hz, deep

relaxation with awareness). There's a little bell that chimes every

time the delta goes above the alpha, as a reinforcement for reaching

the goal.

 

Well, as soon as I started meditating, the bell starting ringing and

wouldn't stop, even when she was talking to me, and in 14 minutes the

bell rang 487 times. She was taken aback because she was expecting

to have to train me to try to get the bell to ring, and she never saw

anything like it. She asked how long I had been doing TM, and even

as I muttered, "30 years" the bell kept ringing. She then went on to

tell the class how biofeedback people went into the hills of Tibet or

wherever and hunted down people who had been practicing Zen

meditation for many years, and how they walked around with so much

delta. I debated whether or not I should tell her that, probably a

new meditator would produce as much alpha and delta during meditation

as many of those Zen people, but I was in the middle of meditating

and, in any case, I wasn't sure if it was polite to push it since it

was her demonstration and not mine. Anyway, as I told Mark, my heart

was pounding the whole time and I was afraid that nothing but stress

would show up in my brain waves, but they couldn't even tell

how "nervous" I was being up there, and it was the first time in

almost 30 years of meditating and only having sudden deep breaths as

my experience, that I knew that I was doing it correctly!"

 

As for Maharishi's credentials, I won't even begin to talk about

it. "The Shankaracharya of Jyotir Mat who followed MMY's Master,

Swami Shantanand Saraswati, gave his full blessing to MMY. In fact he

oftened came to teacher training courses in Rishikesh specifically to

give his blessings to the teachers before they returned home to begin

spreading the knowledge."

 

 

_/\_ Tat twam asi

 

Uma

 

 

**************************************

In reply to Post 3429 by "sankarrukku"

*************************************

[Guest guest]

Om Uma

 

If Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Guru was of the Saraswati lineage

that's more than good enough for me. Swami Sivananda and his

disciples, such as Swami Vishnu-devananda, are also of the

Saraswati lineage.

 

Incidentally, Swami Vishnu used bring a team of Eurpopean

scientists to his headquarters, the Sivananda Ashram Yoga

Camp, in Quebec, Canada, for 2 months each summer. They

would perfom similar experiments and measurements on the

staff as your post describes.

 

Jaya Guru

 

Omprem

 

, "tatwamasi" <tatwamasi> wrote:

> > The power and the effect of the Mantra depend on the

spiritual

> attitude, the knowledge and responsiveness of the individual.

>>

>

> Let me first say a special hello to a fellow TMer. I am a TMer -

> with the TM siddhi instruction for the last 12 yrs. While I follow

> some other techniques too, it remains as my anchor. I sought

it, not

> as a stress release technique, but as a spiritual tool, one of

the

> few that was that was made available through his extensive

teacher

> training programs. I am not, however, part of the institution, I

have

> trouble giving blind loyalty to anyone. Thank you for addressing

some

> of the questions posed here.

>

> Yes, awareness does effect ones benifits from mantras; at the

same

> time, its potency helps the person move towards increased

awareness,

> which in turn takes them to higher level benifits. I am also

grateful

> to Maharishi for making this available to the common public.

>

> He was a physicist by early training, and his approach to the

Vedas

> has been from a physics point of view. Unfortunately most of

his

> material is only available to those who go into further studies,

> beyond the basic TM course, in the form of video tapes. His

students,

> who were first attracted to his approach were mainly scientists,

and

> he was one of the first Yogis to encourage his disciples to take

the

> technique to their labs. As a result it is the most widely

researched

> tecnnique, presented in the world's most prestigious, peer

reviewed

> technical journals. This research was specially boosted during

the

> the early days of bio-feedaback (60's) where scientists were

studying

> existing meditation practices to develop the basis of the bio-

> feedback technology. (Swami Rama was among the only yogis

who himself

> participated in the Menninger (sp?) Institutes research project

on

> bio-feedback research.

>

> As far as the costs go, it is certainly the highest in the US as

> compared to even its headquaters in The Netherlands.

However the high

> fees go to support the millions of programs in India and other

> developing countries, which range from schools for poor

children

> educated in the vedic tradition to the "army" of pundits whose

> collective meditative force is harnassed through group

meditation.

> Maharishi believes if 10% of the population sincerely

meditates one

> can raise the consciouness of the world.

>

> The institution certainly hasn't been free from its own troubles,

but

> it has managed to help millions of people at any level they

have

> chosen to learn.

>

> For most problems, as you have suggested, it is imperative to

go to

> the teacher for "checking". It does make a difference. Further

> obstacles constantly arise as one progresses through the

journey, and

> it is again important to talk with ones teacher on a regular

basis.

>

> One gets from it according to how much ones puts into it. And

one

> certainly reaches a time when one may need to move on to

different

> sources of guidance.

>

> A recent email from an old practitioner -

>

> "On another note, I had an interesting experience in my

neuropsych

> class this weekend. A woman in my class brought in EEG

equipment to

> demonstrate biofeedback training, and she wanted to hook up

a couple

> of people for training sessions. I volunteered to demonstrate

alpha

> waves, but only if I could do TM and not her alpha training.

Well,

> the long-term goal of alpha training is first, to train the person

to

> produce alpha waves (8-12 Hz, relaxation with awareness),

and then,

> to teach them to substitute the alpha with delta (4-7 Hz, deep

> relaxation with awareness). There's a little bell that chimes

every

> time the delta goes above the alpha, as a reinforcement for

reaching

> the goal.

>

> Well, as soon as I started meditating, the bell starting ringing

and

> wouldn't stop, even when she was talking to me, and in 14

minutes the

> bell rang 487 times. She was taken aback because she was

expecting

> to have to train me to try to get the bell to ring, and she never

saw

> anything like it. She asked how long I had been doing TM, and

even

> as I muttered, "30 years" the bell kept ringing. She then went

on to

> tell the class how biofeedback people went into the hills of

Tibet or

> wherever and hunted down people who had been practicing

Zen

> meditation for many years, and how they walked around with

so much

> delta. I debated whether or not I should tell her that, probably a

> new meditator would produce as much alpha and delta during

meditation

> as many of those Zen people, but I was in the middle of

meditating

> and, in any case, I wasn't sure if it was polite to push it since it

> was her demonstration and not mine. Anyway, as I told Mark,

my heart

> was pounding the whole time and I was afraid that nothing but

stress

> would show up in my brain waves, but they couldn't even tell

> how "nervous" I was being up there, and it was the first time in

> almost 30 years of meditating and only having sudden deep

breaths as

> my experience, that I knew that I was doing it correctly!"

>

> As for Maharishi's credentials, I won't even begin to talk about

> it. "The Shankaracharya of Jyotir Mat who followed MMY's

Master,

> Swami Shantanand Saraswati, gave his full blessing to MMY.

In fact he

> oftened came to teacher training courses in Rishikesh

specifically to

> give his blessings to the teachers before they returned home

to begin

> spreading the knowledge."

>

>

> _/\_ Tat twam asi

>

> Uma

>

>

> **************************************

> In reply to Post 3429 by "sankarrukku"

> *************************************