The Dangers of Meditation - Particularly TM

[SimonJ]

There are many styles of meditation around at present which are based on older, traditional forms, and which will seem to be valid methods in their own right. But unfortunately, not all meditational styles are equally effective - or good for you.

The problem is that the brain is far easier to 'program' than you might imagine. After just a few regular periods of being held at one level of awareness (whether that's deep concentration while driving, or day-dreamy internalisation while you garden, or work on a factory line), that awareness can become ingrained into you so deeply that it ends up as one of your primary states of being. That isn't to say that you aren't able to be aware in any other way, but that it becomes a frame of mind that you tend to return to automatically without thinking. After more repetition, this state eventually begins to define you and, rather than it just being something that you enter into now and again, it stays with you and affects how you think and interact with the world for hours, days or even years. We can become ingrained with anger, or bitterness, grief, fear - and happiness too - in just the same way as we can our working state of mind.

It's obvious really, work for 8 hours a day holding your mind pretty continually this way or that, and it's bound to have an effect on your overall awareness. But it doesn't need long stretches of being in a single mind-set to create this effect, you can do it just as easily with overly intense meditation, done for just an hour or so a day. This means that the state you're reaching in meditation has to be right, or it can be anything from barely useful to downright damaging.

If you were, for example, to continually practise just the recitation of a mantra by itself, then it would lead to you staying permanently locked into the mantra state of awareness. This will tend to make you not just block unwanted thoughts as you might hope, like worries, but also unfortunately dull your more positive normal reactions too, like pleasure and well-being. You can't practice sitting holding your mind in one state for any length of time, then expect to feel the full effects of other mental states when you stop practising.

Becoming locked into the meditational mind, held with subtle control to prevent thoughts and in a state of contrived calm, is just as bad as being riddled with worries. It's not productive, and actively precludes anyone from reaching a state of peace. It can also lead to de-personalisation, a sense of separation from the world, and very few of the positive effects that meditation is meant to bring. Meditation is not meant to be about training yourself not to feel emotions, or reaching a permanent state of non-thought. If it isn't also practiced with all the other supporting techniques of relaxation, mindfulness and metta (being able to generate a sense of well-being and directing it at self or others), then the awareness that it will bring can be emotionally flat and internalised, and even lead to the practitioner feeling anxiety rather than peace and calm.

Practice any and every method of meditation with an equal amount of attention paid to:

1) Gaining 'mindfulness', a clearer attention to this present moment. This is to counteract the possibility of you locking yourself into in an internalised state.

2) Generating a sense of well-being (metta) towards self and others, which helps to counteract emotional flatness developing.

3) Relaxation, first and foremost. It's quite feasible for someone to sit and meditate for a lengthy session and hold onto their physical and mental tensions throughout - and to even increase these tensions. Begin every meditation session with a period of complete and total relaxation. If you don't have time to meditate, just relaxing is the next best thing.

Constantly evaluate your meditation methods, and think about the state that your practice puts you into, or risk wasting time and effort - and the possibility of negative effects.

Simon

[Hashassin]

Firstly let me say that I don't think that meditation per se is dangerous, just that some modern forms teach incomplete methods, which may lead to problems for their students.

After I'd read the thread OP I decided to do a Google on 'Dangers of Meditation' and was surprised by what I found. I didn't realise the depth of anti-meditation activism that has been growing up in some places, particularly in the USA, and particularly by christian groups. In meditation's defence I would like to say in all honesty that the evidence they're using to rubbish meditation as a whole is based on the performance of forms like TM, and that the writers also tend to display poor understanding of what meditation really is.

Author Mary Gordon is a vociferous critic of meditation (after suffering at the hands of two unscrupulous Gurus) and is quoted on her site as saying:

"...The most common types of meditation taught include sitting still and concentrating on the breath, silently repeating a sound (mantra) or visualizing an image. What is often overlooked is that these Eastern meditation techniques were never meant to be methods to reduce stress and bring about relaxation. They are essentially spiritual tools, designed to apparently "cleanse" the mind of impurities and disturbances so as to attain so-called enlightenment--a concept as nebulous as God. "

The kinds of meditation talked about here are not things to be practiced to excess, or without the other techniques that are needed to be practiced with them to make meditation worthwhile. Also, the types of meditation mentioned here actually ARE 'used to reduce mental and physical stress to bring about relaxation.' - as preparation for the further, deeper techniques that follow it. Reducing physical stresses reduces mental stresses, thus meditation does 'cleanse the mind'.

Garden's articles show that people such as the Dalai Lama have said that SOME forms of meditation can have bad repercussions - but what all these people also say is that they mean meditation practiced without proper training and usually by people with the wrong idea of what meditation is. We can also add to the list of sources for the wrong kinds of meditation, quite a number of modern day cults and New Age books that also only give part of the story to would be meditators, and those people following those forms may thus experience problems. But in traditional, properly taught forms of meditation there are no such problems.

Transcendental Meditation, is to me personally, one of the main sources of the problems. TM may be popular in the West, but it's seen in less than glowing terms by any serious meditator from the East. One of its many downsides is that whilst it does teach some supporting techniques for its meditation style, unless you are prepared to pay a lot of money you may not even see these teachings, so will suffer its side-effects.

Hashassin

[Hashassin]

HARMFUL EFFECTS: Studies have found TM results in tiredness, anxiety,
depression, regression, suicidal tendencies, headaches, sleeping
difficulties, neck pain and involuntary twitching for many. The
German government studies found that the teachers of TM were not
qualified to deal with the problems associated with its practice.

WARNINGS: Warnings have been issued about the dangers of TM by the
German government, the Vatican, the Cult Awareness Network, the Task
Force on Missionaries and Cults, the Interfaith Coalition of Concern
about Cults and various professional organizations.

Hashassin

[meditationsolution]

Hi Hashassin,

Thanks for the posting that information does TM has so much effect . Where did you get that information from I would like t know the source.

Thanks,

[SimonJ]

Hi Mediasolution/'Iamthat'.

Sadly, TM is a quite well-known modern form of meditation that many people who aren't aware of traditional methods will tend to try, to their detriment. Because it's taught in an incomplete way (unless of course you're able to pay heavily for the advanced courses), practitioners will usually end up suffering because of it, in just the way I say above.

Even with these supporting techniques, TM is a very poor form of Shamatha meditation that can't help but lead nowhere. It may well aid in relaxation and have other physical effects, just like other forms of meditation, but it's efficacy stops there, and as a method of reaching realisation it's a none starter. There are far simpler and less damaging methods available that people should to try first.

However, I'm also well aware that, through the efforts of the Maharishi (god rest his devious soul), tens of studies have been paid for by his foundation that show TM in a good light, seemingly over and above any other form of meditation. But as I'm sure you're well aware, these same studies would have shown exactly the same benefits in any decent style of shamatha meditation too. One interesting paper on TM is here:

Quote:
"...TM-EX NEWSLETTER
TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION EX-MEMBERS SUPPORT GROUP

LIMITATIONS, PERILS, HARMS, LOSSES FROM THE PRACTICE OF TRANSCENDENTAL
MEDITATION

Abstracted Independent TM Research With Related Subject Documentation

MIU and the TM movement place great emphasis on their ''independent"
scientific research on Transcendental Meditation. A guest column
special to the Des Moines Register on December 28, 1990, A View of TM
from the MIU Perspective by public relations director Robert Oates,
made grandiose claims for TM, holding that 430 research studies to
date clearly validate all the many behavioral and physiological
benefits.

Oates emphasized that ``far more scientific research on TM has
appeared than for any other program of self-improvement.'' He
neglected to say, however, that the 430 studies which ''have
appeared'' were performed by TM movement people or by people they
sponsor without using double-blind or expectancy controls.

It is in the TM movement's self-interest to create and then quote from
such research for TM claims [levitation, invisibility, etc.] put
forth about the practice--to enhance belief among followers; to
attract and hold more proselytes and students; to promote Maharishi's
worldwide enterprise of enlightenment services and products worth $3.5
billion plus, and his plans for a quantum leap in new sales..."

Also:

"...Suppressed by MIU and the TM movement are many independent research
studies with tighter controls which have uncovered the following
actual effects from the practice of TM:

1. No specific or broad scale special benefits.

2. Partially impaired mental faculties.

3. Depersonalization.

4. A high percentage of psychological disorders.

5. Aggravation of pre-existing mental illness.

6. The onset of mental illness...."

The rest of the article, and hundreds of complaints by former TM practitioners and Cult members (remembering that TM has been assigned as a cult internationally), can be found here and elsewhere: http://minet.org/TM-EX/Winter-94

There are other studies too, many backed up with scientific evidence.

I would seriously recommend everyone steer well clear of anything remotely to do with this form of meditation, not least for the reasons I outline in the OP.

Worse still though is the notion that anyone who does pay to learn TM is also supporting the TM Cult and all it stands for. For someone allegedly enlightened, the Maharishi was obsessed with money and power, which has to ring alarm bells in even the most ardent follower. As John Lennon said of him, "...he was a money-grubbing, sex-obsessed fraud who cynically abused his influence over The Beatles and many other awed celebrities who worshipped, cross-legged, at his painted feet during the Flower Power era..." And I'd agree wholeheartedly.

Interesting too that when he was dying, the Maharishi ('great seer' - a self-endowed title, not something that was bestowed upon him) chose to abandon all of the supposed Ayurvedic medicines he made millions from and booked himself straight into a western hospital to be treated instead. I wonder why? His medicines claimed to cure everything from depression to cancer, and yet he wanted nothing to do with them. One good reason he didn't use them is because the medicines TM sells aren't traditional Ayurvedic treatments at all - and there has been no proven efficacy from any of them. Please see more on Deepak Chopra's dealings with these medicines on this, elsewhere on this site.

Simon

[moorey]

metta meditation is great technique for mind relaxation. I have also founded a website which provides great tips on metta meditation . If you want to know more on metta meditation just click on the link below.



______________________________
Passionately wealthy

[Kelly222]

I began with TM and I had to be dragged away from it kicking and screaming. I was convinced that it was the only way to combat years of discomfort and headaches that I'd expereinced. Six months after stoping practise and getting onto more authentic work, all bad effects stopped. With the ways to mindfulness from the book and the use of metta I feel 100% better than I've done for years. Anyone reading this who is a TM practitioner who can't let go - DO IT! It's the best thing you could do.

Kels'

[JLeary]

Yes Kelly, it's sad the hold that TM can have over you, very few people want to hear that they may have been practising something that's pretty much useless for most of their lives, casualties of the 60's. I nearly went that way myself as it seemd an easy form of meditation to master. I'm glad I found other methods instead.

John