Introduction

My name is Joe Kellett.  Although I am a former "Transcendental Meditation"^® (often just called "TM"^®) teacher I no longer in any way represent the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or any or his organizations. 

On the contrary, the purpose of this site is to provide information and arguments recommending against involvement with said individual or with any of his organizations. 

If you want the official TM position, go to an official TM organizational source.  You also can find links to many additional official TM organizational sources at AllTM.org.

It all sounds pretty innocent to me!

If you know anything at all about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and if you're old enough to remember the British Invasion and Johnny Carson, then you undoubtedly think that MMY was a harmless eccentric. After becoming internationally famous as the guru of the Beatles, he appeared on "The Tonight Show" with Carson. MMY giggled constantly through the entire interview and became secondarily internationally famous as "the giggling guru." And he presented the same giggly facade in every public appearance for decades.

If you've heard of him at all more recently, perhaps from his Larry King interview, then you also probably considered him at worst a harmless eccentric. For example, he was always coming up with incredibly bizarre schemes for attaining world peace, as demonstrated in that interview.

Or you may have heard about TM from the publicity generated by the famous director David Lynch. A TMer for many years, Lynch has in the past few years been making college tours to speak about TM. And he has put his money where his mouth is by putting up millions of dollars to promote TM in public schools.

And if you know any details at all about the Transcendental Meditation technique itself then you probably think that it is just a harmless 20-minute-twice-a-day relaxation exercise.

Don't judge a book by its cover

However, this is all a facade for a psychologically dangerous cult that is also a full-blown religion. That probably sounds extreme to you, so first let me show you just part of the fantastic things that a TMer will come to believe. Please read about TM's King of the World (I'm dead serious). Please read the whole thing, or at least read from "Custodian of the Constitution of the Universe." Incredibly, a fully believing TMer believes every single word of this!

Are you laughing? Just wait, I'll show you more interesting things as we go further. It's all just as nuts. And there are things that are tragic rather than laughable. For example, here is the story of my own "fall down the TM rabbit hole": A Simple, Natural, Relaxation Technique?"

Yes, I was completely nuts. The strange thing is that I was a very pragmatic un-imaginative fellow before starting TM. Nothing like what I became.

And I also believed absolutely in lots of other strange stuff .

How did I get that crazy? In exactly the same way that Tom Cruise got so crazy, i.e. via cult indoctrination. Tom Cruise believes absolutely that 75 million years ago the evil galactic ruler Xenu perpetrated massive atrocities that are causing the population of the entire world to suffer intensely to this day. The reason that we are suffering is that our own souls are encrusted with "body thetans", migrant souls that were created when Xenu blew up volcanoes containing millions of people who were in suspended animation. So the reason that Tom Cruise is so passionate is that he believes that he is helping to undo the damage that was caused by the evil Xenu all of those millions of years ago by helping everyone in the world rid themselves of their body thetans. Cruise is thus literally saving the world.

Hey, I'm not pointing fingers. I was just as bad.

And I got crazy in the exact same way that Lynch (yes) did. Lynch (through his foundation), wants every school child to come to know the principles summarized in this message from His Majesty King Nader Raam, First Soverign Ruler of the "Global Country of World Peace." Don't give up on the "message" until you at least reach "Ramayana", but skimming through the rest might be interesting. By the way, Lynch believes that Maharaja Raam is "Custodian of the Constitution of the Universe." Yes, he really does. (And some of the kids benefiting from his foundation will end up believing the same thing.)

Furthermore, Lynch believes this:

Students who meditate, Lynch assured the New York Post yesterday, will: "Start shining like a bright, shiny penny and their anxieties will go away. By diving within, they will attain a field of pure consciousness, pure bliss, creativity, intelligence, dynamic peace. You enliven the field, and every day it gets better. Negativity recedes."

There's more. With his new outfit, Lynch also intends to ease tension for all the rest of us by putting together "peace-creating super groups of 8,000 meditators" around the world, who will all chant simultaneously for peace and harmony. It is important that each group has 8,000 participants because "it's the size of the square root of one per cent of the world's population."

So Lynch also thinks that he is saving the world, just as Cruise does (this is actually a very common theme in cults). Also, Lynch thinks that he has learned to levitate!:

Lynch has insisted in recent interviews that he still has some way to go with TM before achieving full enlightenment. A few years ago, however, he did achieve the status of "siddha", or yogic flier. In other words, he is one of those people whose state of meditation becomes so profound that they are meant to levitate from the ground. (In practice this seems to involve a lot of hopping about one knee, hopefully on a rubber mat.) "I'm not a great flier," he said recently.

Here's an official Maharishi University of Management (MUM) video of what Lynch absolutely believes is "levitation" (play the video in the upper right). Here's a larger screen version. Seriously, Lynch really believes that these people are rising up into the air via supernatural powers! He also firmly believes that by continuing to practice this budding skill twice daily it will only be a matter of time until they will be able to hover in place, and that after that they will eventually be able to zoom about at will. And as a trained "yogic flyer" himself, you can be sure that Lynch practices this skill himself, faithfully, twice a day, whenever possible.

So I am comparing myself to Cruise and Lynch? Most emphatically not in terms of such things as talent and accomplishment. But all three of us are human beings who put our pants on one leg at a time. All three of us share that we have a human psychology. And most, importantly, all three of us also share that our paths to our crazy beliefs involved the exploitation of the same extremely common vulnerabilities in human psychology. These are the vulnerabilities that are exploited by all cults.

But TM is just a relaxation technique!

TMers will tell you over and over again that TM is just a "simple, natural relaxation technique" that involves no faith in order for it to work. So what am I talking about? How can a "relaxation technique" be a "cult"?

When TMers say that TM is just a relaxation technique they are using a "mental reservation." Using a mental reservation can best be described as "lying through omission." TMers are lying through omission when they say that TM is just a relaxation technique because there are two meanings to the name "Transcendental Meditation":

• There is, indeed, "TM-the-relaxation-technique."
• But there is also ""TM-the-dogmatic-spiritual-teaching."

TMers are lying through omission when they tell you that TM is a simple relaxation technique because their hope is that you will become involved in TM-the-dogmatic-spiritual teaching. In other words, they are pushing both "TMs" at you at once, one overtly and other covertly. I discuss this at length elsewhere in this site.

It is TM-the-dogmatic-spiritual-teaching that is a cult. Saying "TM is just a relaxation technique" is much like saying that "Scientology is just a personality test." This is because in both cases the covert goal is that you will come to believe in the spiritual teachings. Both the TMers and the Scientologists are very good people. (Yes, I include the Scientologists, most people in cults are very good people, Tom Cruise is a very good person who truly and sincerely cares greatly about you.) These good people only want the best for you. They are just afraid that if they tell you the real plan for you up front that you will run away to your own very great spiritual detriment.

(A note... I can't be saying "TM-the-relaxation-technique" and "TM-the-dogmatic-spiritual-teaching" throughout this web site. You'll have to figure out which one (or maybe the combination) that I mean by the context.)

Was my own experience uniquely bad?

Maybe my own experience with TM was uniquely bad? No. attorney Anthony DeNaro, who is a former professor of economics and business law at MUM, as well as being a former legal counsel to the same institution, described a very serious and deliberate pattern of fraud, and that "outright lies and deception, are used to cover-up or sanitize the dangerous reality on campus of very serious nervous breakdowns, episodes of dangerous and bizarre behavior, suicidal and homicidal ideation, threats and attempts, psychotic episodes, crime, depression and manic behavior that often accompanied roundings (intensive group meditations with brainwashing techniques)."

But... Scientology?

Tom Cruise jumps on couches, gets in Matt Lauer's face, and has crazy-eyes. But David Lynch seems quite normal except for some apparently harmless eccentric views. So how can I compare TM with Scientology?

Because TM and Scientology differ in degree but not in kind. The things that I'll be talking about are much more obvious in Scientology, which makes the comparison an effective way of pointing out the same things in TM.

A quick tour?

In this website I'll go into much more detail. Perhaps more detail than you really want. If you're intimidated by the Table of Contents below then at least take a look at the following to see if you want to read more of the site:

• It might be interesting to just quickly skim the Table of Contents below.
• Perhaps check out this partial list of crazy TM beliefs.
• Here's a one-page description of how the TM technique itself is merely trance and suggestion.
• Here's an explanation of how TM is a full-blown religion.
• Most importantly, I describe how TM is a psychologically dangerous cult.
• But it needn't all be gloomy, have a look at "Fun with TM web links." Also try clicking on some of the trademarks below.

Also, as perhaps you've noticed, I've underlined some passages. The intent is to allow you to skim through the site if you want and just glance at those passages to get a very general idea of the page's contents.

Table of Contents

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