Cheers for another interesting video. Id be interested to learn more of Patrick's explain for the experience he described of sitting in a lotus position on one side of a room, and suddenly hitting the wall on the other side of the room. I'm not quite sure what he would say this experience was about. Was he meaning it were merely just an experience what had occurred within his mind.Figment of his own imagination. Or was he meaning it were more physical. I'd be interested to know more Anyway very interesting to see the usual technique of turning people into follower. The same secrecy . The same fear that other people might try to infiltrate. The similar manner of needing to do some specific special quirky thing so as to help revere the leader to help create a inner sanctum sense of jubilance or whatever.Help get members all hyped up. At the end of the day its still business as usual
I physically moved across the room (hopping), mentally, I thought I was zooming. Dissociative states are induced via the practice and learning environment.
@@PatrickRyanPA hello,thanks for your reply Patrick.I'd guessed as much that this would be what you'd meant.Its interesting to learn about other peoples experiences.I was doing some meditation exercises on a regular basis some months back.I awoke one night and became wide awake, and felt that i'd just seen a actual vision of the particular meditation instructors face, hovering in the dark right beside my bed.It looked to me to be in great detail too.I never freaked out or anything at the time, but just calmly rolled over in bed and had promptly went back to sleep.There didn't feel to be anything particularly scary about the experience. Next morning i remembered the phenomena, i then noticed that the face i'd seen during the night was also an exact splitting image of the face in the video i were about to watch that morning.I figured it was likely due to repetition of my focus on certain thoughts ,that in some way were also connected to this particular person who were involved. I found it highly interesting because it also made me think again about Paul's vision of Jesus ,on the road to Damascus,of whats discussed in the bible. Whenever human mind become extra acutely focused on certain objects. It can begin to recreate the image vividly. Even at times whenever ive gone white baiting too, which are small fish that are caught in shoals,of what fishermen also have need to focus hard on,if they'd want to catch them. Or at other times too, when ive gone to do apple picking season ,for work. At the very beginning of each of these seasons i'll tend to have vivid dreams of these objects at night. So vivid your mind begin to recreate the image. You wake up feeling so convinced you'd definitely just seen these object. I'd guess that its due to the time we spend during the daylight hour in highly acute concentration state, in focusing hard on these things.
I can testify what this guys is saying. I practiced TM for two years, everyday, for 20 mins, twice a day. I thank God I had a TM break due to a very tight agenda this summer. So when I stopped doing TM for a couple of weeks it became a nightmare! I started feeling dizzy and my anxiety had NEVER been the worst in my life. I was scared all the time and obsessive thoughts came through my mind all the time. I spoke with some TM people and they were upset that I had quit. I needed to get back ASAP. I told them about my feelings and constant dizziness and anxiety and they disregarded it. I started using a different type of meditation and I started healing. I wanted to give TM and a chance and when I practiced TM again my dizziness and anxiety came back horribly. So, I knew it was TM the culprit. I am glad so glad I came across this video.
My oldest half-brother is very high up in the TM movement. His initials are R. G.. And my other older half-brother has always been like a follower of the eldest brother, his initials are A.G.. My oldest half-brother "initiated" my younger brother and myself when we were 7 and 5 years old, respectively. We were, of course, told not to tell each other our secret mantras but we were kids and we were rebellious. My younger brother's mantra was "me" and mine was "I'm". I always thought that was kind of odd and would very much fit in with the engendered of 'specialness' that my older brothers seemed to want to be perceived as in their quest for "enlightenment". Thankfully, my Mom ensured that my younger brother and myself were not going to participate in any further TM stuff if we did not want to and thankfully we didn't. We became passive observers of our family in relation to and watched how it divided our family over the years. Those two brothers constantly tried to convert me and other members of the family to join TM. My Mom was a Christian (a very quietly devote woman who never once preached to convert others) and I remember how it was like she had to 'nod yes and do no' when it came to my older brother's insistence that she should join TM. My eldest half brother in particular was very insistent with her. He would criticize the smallest things like the fact that she ate cold salad with a meal and tried to make her chamge her eatimg habits. I think she felt that if she did not appear to have some openness to him and what he was saying then she would lose his love. But she thankfully held her own course and belief system (I am more of a pantheist). I grew up as a kid listening to my brothers and their wives "hopping" - trying to levitate. To me and my younger brother and Mom it was something amusing and not to be talked about to respect their choices when they were visiting. My oldest brother talked about how wouldn't it be cool to be invisible and tried to make me feel as though that was a possibility for me as a kid. Thank goodness I had a mind of my own and a grounded older sister who was quite against TM with sense that my older half-brothers were "brainwashed". Throughout my life and even to this day my oldest half-brother (the other older half-brother knows better than to try) has only been able to talk about TM or try to convert people to TM. His go-to saying with me when I was a teen and young aduly was that I was not enlightened and that any belief I had in Western thought or medicine was unbased and "unenlightened". And that every decision I made would not be one of enlightenment becasue I was not practicing TM. It was and is like being around someone who is extremely insistent, monothematic in their ability to have open conversations, and extraordinarily judgemental. Truly like speaking with someone who is brainwashed. I decided after many years to stop speaking or communicating with my older half-brother. And so have other siblings except in the rare occassion like the deathbof our mother. I thankfully took a course in university called New Religious Movements and it was at that time that I learned that TM qualifies as a NRM, which is an academic term for what in lay languageeand cult. Tmers only ever refer to TM as "movement". I could then see all of the markers and how TM qualifiesas one. During that course I wrote a paper on my subjective experience as a family member and my prof gave me an A++ and invited me to go to the front of the class and answer questions from other students. My half-brothers' children attended schools operated by TM which I believe they called the "Maharishi school of enlightenment for children" in Victoria, BC. I am not sure if it is still running. They later switched to the general school system. My oldest half-brother is highly involved in things like selling Ayurvedic products (high end -gold packaging) and I believe he is very involved in the building of a school for TM in India and other such activities. My other older half-brother was involved in a political party that ran in BC and probably elsewhere called the Natural Law Party which is TM-related. TM and TMers are always trying to invent new ways of drawing people in. They are, ipso facto, marketing and sales reliant. My half-brothers have not harmed me with their practice but I can credit myself for not getting involved and my younger brother and half-sister haven't either. On a psychological level I am healthy and resilient. I take an observer stance with regards the TMers in my family and try not to judge them too harshly. But I have experienced many things from them over the years and have noticed that there is a gender-based sexism in the way they expect women/females to behave: Ambition in their female partners (or any women) seems to be frowned apon and they uphold a way of thinking that women should focus on being excellent caregivers, mothers, and wives without career ambitions unless those ambitions tie into TM. Taken together, TM has a dividing effect within families because of the implicit judgement and elitism that underpins it. I am very clear-eyed about TM and would not go near it with a ten foot pole because of the behaviors I have experienced from the few family members I have who are involved. I try to take an each to their own approach to life and the healthiest thing for the non-TMers within my family is to stand firm in their own beliefs. I have learned how to meditate for free while travelling in India (Buddhist style silent meditation) and have found it very helpful. But I don't practice regularly and it took me a long time to even think of trying to learn because of the bias that the TMers in my family created in me against even the idea of meditating. I know TM tries to marry Western thought around success and capitalism with a perceived stereotypes about Eastern thought and lifestyles and gender roles. I did not know Maharishi had published their own version of the Bagavad Ghita and that is interesting: My older half-brother says he has his "master's in Sanscrit" and I don't know if he does or not but it would not surprise me. My TMer brothers do not share my last name as they have a different father and I would rather not share their names, just their initials as above. But I cannot even spend 5 minutes in my oldest half-brother's presence because he comes across as extraordinarily arrogant. Like the biggest ego you can imagine. As though people around him are beneath him. If he can twist someone's ear about TM he will and it is very disturbing to witness him try with those with no prior knowledge of TM. He fancies himself enlightened and what few conversations around that I have had with him where I attempted a philosophical discussion have gone nowhere. He truly carries himelf as though he is special in a narcissistic manner that is entirely off-putting. I generally tell people that there are layers to the TM "movement" and if people do their homework yhey will learn that not as it seems on the surface. TM innocuously tries to sell itself as an easy to learn 5 minutes a day meditation method that will make you smarter, more successful, more at peace with whatever. It is like slowly turning up the heat on a lobster. But dig a little deeper and the ugly underbelly exists as you are exposing. Again, each to their own but at the end of the day I recommend don't join into anything without first investigating it well. Stay real. Be grounded. Thank you for this historical lesson on TM and I watched your other video. I truly appreciate your candid and objective reporting on TM. I imagine it took and continues to take great psychological strength to see things the way you do and to be at peace with your OTP. I am completely Off the Path. I carve my own and avoiding TM has been its own life lesson for me. I feel very thankful for my life and I hope this further insight helps someone out there make their decisions on whether to join or avoid TM. I recommend the latter.
This is an awesome answer to read, very in depth and insightful. I learned TM 6 years ago and have practiced on and off.. and mostly have found it to be beneficial. I am due to learn my first advanced technique soon. What would you say is a red flag with regards to this practice? At what point should I back out do you think?
@@jamessaltlife I would say there are better and free methods of meditation that do not involve "initiation" and are not tied to buying or selling or profit. But listen to your intuition and do what feels right for you.
@@jamessaltlifeTM is a cult. Do not learn from them. There are plenty of other meditation methods that are more useful. TM’s meditation method is dangerous because of the system and framing around it.
Is it the case that it's impossible to spend time in the organisation without getting pulled deeper into it? Or are there people who are able to 'just meditate'? I remember in the martial arts group I was in, it was totally possible to be a member without getting involved in any of the other stuff, but after a few years these people would tend to fall away. And the ones who stayed were constantly fighting pressure and we made fun of them.
You can, I managed mostly but what I did get drawn into didn't convince me for long. There's no real pressure to believe things but just being in a group means you'll adopt their beliefs to subconsciously fit in. Most of the brainwashing is done by giving you lectures after meditation when your mind is pliable. I used to critique the teachings but they said you shouldn't think about them and let it sink in unconsciously!
@@aarthoor can you talk about the "secret mantra"? Do you feel you learned anything interesting or useful about mantra or meditation? Cults seem to often have some knowledge, but use subversive techniques to get you to pay for it.
I go for Maharishi ayurveda panchakarma twice a year for 10 days at a big TM place/village. The folks there are pretty chilled out towards me, they don't push their agenda or TM stuff on me. I have zero interest in TM because I have no interest in meditating twice a day.
Cheers for another interesting video. Id be interested to learn more of Patrick's explain for the experience he described of sitting in a lotus position on one side of a room, and suddenly hitting the wall on the other side of the room. I'm not quite sure what he would say this experience was about. Was he meaning it were merely just an experience what had occurred within his mind.Figment of his own imagination. Or was he meaning it were more physical. I'd be interested to know more
Anyway very interesting to see the usual technique of turning people into follower. The same secrecy . The same fear that other people might try to infiltrate. The similar manner of needing to do some specific special quirky thing so as to help revere the leader to help create a inner sanctum sense of jubilance or whatever.Help get members all hyped up. At the end of the day its still business as usual
I physically moved across the room (hopping), mentally, I thought I was zooming. Dissociative states are induced via the practice and learning environment.
@@PatrickRyanPA hello,thanks for your reply Patrick.I'd guessed as much that this would be what you'd meant.Its interesting to learn about other peoples experiences.I was doing some meditation exercises on a regular basis some months back.I awoke one night and became wide awake, and felt that i'd just seen a actual vision of the particular meditation instructors face, hovering in the dark right beside my bed.It looked to me to be in great detail too.I never freaked out or anything at the time, but just calmly rolled over in bed and had promptly went back to sleep.There didn't feel to be anything particularly scary about the experience. Next morning i remembered the phenomena, i then noticed that the face i'd seen during the night was also an exact splitting image of the face in the video i were about to watch that morning.I figured it was likely due to repetition of my focus on certain thoughts ,that in some way were also connected to this particular person who were involved. I found it highly interesting because it also made me think again about Paul's vision of Jesus ,on the road to Damascus,of whats discussed in the bible.
Whenever human mind become extra acutely focused on certain objects. It can begin to recreate the image vividly. Even at times whenever ive gone white baiting too, which are small fish that are caught in shoals,of what fishermen also have need to focus hard on,if they'd want to catch them. Or at other times too, when ive gone to do apple picking season ,for work. At the very beginning of each of these seasons i'll tend to have vivid dreams of these objects at night. So vivid your mind begin to recreate the image. You wake up feeling so convinced you'd definitely just seen these object. I'd guess that its due to the time we spend during the daylight hour in highly acute concentration state, in focusing hard on these things.
I can testify what this guys is saying. I practiced TM for two years, everyday, for 20 mins, twice a day. I thank God I had a TM break due to a very tight agenda this summer. So when I stopped doing TM for a couple of weeks it became a nightmare! I started feeling dizzy and my anxiety had NEVER been the worst in my life. I was scared all the time and obsessive thoughts came through my mind all the time. I spoke with some TM people and they were upset that I had quit. I needed to get back ASAP. I told them about my feelings and constant dizziness and anxiety and they disregarded it. I started using a different type of meditation and I started healing. I wanted to give TM and a chance and when I practiced TM again my dizziness and anxiety came back horribly. So, I knew it was TM the culprit. I am glad so glad I came across this video.
Thank you for sharing, it sounds like you went through withdrawals or something. What kind of meditation did you do after TM?
My oldest half-brother is very high up in the TM movement. His initials are R. G.. And my other older half-brother has always been like a follower of the eldest brother, his initials are A.G.. My oldest half-brother "initiated" my younger brother and myself when we were 7 and 5 years old, respectively. We were, of course, told not to tell each other our secret mantras but we were kids and we were rebellious. My younger brother's mantra was "me" and mine was "I'm". I always thought that was kind of odd and would very much fit in with the engendered of 'specialness' that my older brothers seemed to want to be perceived as in their quest for "enlightenment". Thankfully, my Mom ensured that my younger brother and myself were not going to participate in any further TM stuff if we did not want to and thankfully we didn't. We became passive observers of our family in relation to and watched how it divided our family over the years. Those two brothers constantly tried to convert me and other members of the family to join TM. My Mom was a Christian (a very quietly devote woman who never once preached to convert others) and I remember how it was like she had to 'nod yes and do no' when it came to my older brother's insistence that she should join TM. My eldest half brother in particular was very insistent with her. He would criticize the smallest things like the fact that she ate cold salad with a meal and tried to make her chamge her eatimg habits. I think she felt that if she did not appear to have some openness to him and what he was saying then she would lose his love. But she thankfully held her own course and belief system (I am more of a pantheist). I grew up as a kid listening to my brothers and their wives "hopping" - trying to levitate. To me and my younger brother and Mom it was something amusing and not to be talked about to respect their choices when they were visiting. My oldest brother talked about how wouldn't it be cool to be invisible and tried to make me feel as though that was a possibility for me as a kid. Thank goodness I had a mind of my own and a grounded older sister who was quite against TM with sense that my older half-brothers were "brainwashed". Throughout my life and even to this day my oldest half-brother (the other older half-brother knows better than to try) has only been able to talk about TM or try to convert people to TM. His go-to saying with me when I was a teen and young aduly was that I was not enlightened and that any belief I had in Western thought or medicine was unbased and "unenlightened". And that every decision I made would not be one of enlightenment becasue I was not practicing TM. It was and is like being around someone who is extremely insistent, monothematic in their ability to have open conversations, and extraordinarily judgemental. Truly like speaking with someone who is brainwashed. I decided after many years to stop speaking or communicating with my older half-brother. And so have other siblings except in the rare occassion like the deathbof our mother. I thankfully took a course in university called New Religious Movements and it was at that time that I learned that TM qualifies as a NRM, which is an academic term for what in lay languageeand cult. Tmers only ever refer to TM as "movement". I could then see all of the markers and how TM qualifiesas one. During that course I wrote a paper on my subjective experience as a family member and my prof gave me an A++ and invited me to go to the front of the class and answer questions from other students. My half-brothers' children attended schools operated by TM which I believe they called the "Maharishi school of enlightenment for children" in Victoria, BC. I am not sure if it is still running. They later switched to the general school system. My oldest half-brother is highly involved in things like selling Ayurvedic products (high end -gold packaging) and I believe he is very involved in the building of a school for TM in India and other such activities. My other older half-brother was involved in a political party that ran in BC and probably elsewhere called the Natural Law Party which is TM-related. TM and TMers are always trying to invent new ways of drawing people in. They are, ipso facto, marketing and sales reliant. My half-brothers have not harmed me with their practice but I can credit myself for not getting involved and my younger brother and half-sister haven't either. On a psychological level I am healthy and resilient. I take an observer stance with regards the TMers in my family and try not to judge them too harshly. But I have experienced many things from them over the years and have noticed that there is a gender-based sexism in the way they expect women/females to behave: Ambition in their female partners (or any women) seems to be frowned apon and they uphold a way of thinking that women should focus on being excellent caregivers, mothers, and wives without career ambitions unless those ambitions tie into TM. Taken together, TM has a dividing effect within families because of the implicit judgement and elitism that underpins it. I am very clear-eyed about TM and would not go near it with a ten foot pole because of the behaviors I have experienced from the few family members I have who are involved. I try to take an each to their own approach to life and the healthiest thing for the non-TMers within my family is to stand firm in their own beliefs. I have learned how to meditate for free while travelling in India (Buddhist style silent meditation) and have found it very helpful. But I don't practice regularly and it took me a long time to even think of trying to learn because of the bias that the TMers in my family created in me against even the idea of meditating. I know TM tries to marry Western thought around success and capitalism with a perceived stereotypes about Eastern thought and lifestyles and gender roles. I did not know Maharishi had published their own version of the Bagavad Ghita and that is interesting: My older half-brother says he has his "master's in Sanscrit" and I don't know if he does or not but it would not surprise me. My TMer brothers do not share my last name as they have a different father and I would rather not share their names, just their initials as above. But I cannot even spend 5 minutes in my oldest half-brother's presence because he comes across as extraordinarily arrogant. Like the biggest ego you can imagine. As though people around him are beneath him. If he can twist someone's ear about TM he will and it is very disturbing to witness him try with those with no prior knowledge of TM. He fancies himself enlightened and what few conversations around that I have had with him where I attempted a philosophical discussion have gone nowhere. He truly carries himelf as though he is special in a narcissistic manner that is entirely off-putting. I generally tell people that there are layers to the TM "movement" and if people do their homework yhey will learn that not as it seems on the surface. TM innocuously tries to sell itself as an easy to learn 5 minutes a day meditation method that will make you smarter, more successful, more at peace with whatever. It is like slowly turning up the heat on a lobster. But dig a little deeper and the ugly underbelly exists as you are exposing. Again, each to their own but at the end of the day I recommend don't join into anything without first investigating it well. Stay real. Be grounded. Thank you for this historical lesson on TM and I watched your other video. I truly appreciate your candid and objective reporting on TM. I imagine it took and continues to take great psychological strength to see things the way you do and to be at peace with your OTP. I am completely Off the Path. I carve my own and avoiding TM has been its own life lesson for me. I feel very thankful for my life and I hope this further insight helps someone out there make their decisions on whether to join or avoid TM. I recommend the latter.
This is an awesome answer to read, very in depth and insightful. I learned TM 6 years ago and have practiced on and off.. and mostly have found it to be beneficial. I am due to learn my first advanced technique soon. What would you say is a red flag with regards to this practice? At what point should I back out do you think?
@@jamessaltlife I would say there are better and free methods of meditation that do not involve "initiation" and are not tied to buying or selling or profit. But listen to your intuition and do what feels right for you.
@@jamessaltlifeTM is a cult. Do not learn from them. There are plenty of other meditation methods that are more useful. TM’s meditation method is dangerous because of the system and framing around it.
Very very interesting interview as always! So well put together
The similarities between miu and Scientology are grotesque! A cult is a cult
Is it the case that it's impossible to spend time in the organisation without getting pulled deeper into it? Or are there people who are able to 'just meditate'? I remember in the martial arts group I was in, it was totally possible to be a member without getting involved in any of the other stuff, but after a few years these people would tend to fall away. And the ones who stayed were constantly fighting pressure and we made fun of them.
Sure, it possible not to get pulled in. Although, you can learn for free, and have no chance of getting pulled in.
You can, I managed mostly but what I did get drawn into didn't convince me for long. There's no real pressure to believe things but just being in a group means you'll adopt their beliefs to subconsciously fit in. Most of the brainwashing is done by giving you lectures after meditation when your mind is pliable. I used to critique the teachings but they said you shouldn't think about them and let it sink in unconsciously!
@@aarthoor "don't listen with your mind, just let it enter you". Heard that one before too!
@@gobiwaq It sounded so reasonable at the time but then I found myself believing all sorts of odd things.
@@aarthoor can you talk about the "secret mantra"? Do you feel you learned anything interesting or useful about mantra or meditation?
Cults seem to often have some knowledge, but use subversive techniques to get you to pay for it.
Good
I know what you are talking about Thank you again
Wow. Suspected of the crime of owning blue jeans
Sexy Sadie what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
that is not levitating why even try.? it just ridicules it.
I go for Maharishi ayurveda panchakarma twice a year for 10 days at a big TM place/village. The folks there are pretty chilled out towards me, they don't push their agenda or TM stuff on me. I have zero interest in TM because I have no interest in meditating twice a day.