Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:13, 20 November 2016

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Transcendental Meditation technique article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 3 months

Transcendental Meditation movement B‑class Top‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Transcendental Meditation movement, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Transcendental Meditation on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Transcendental Meditation movementWikipedia:WikiProject Transcendental Meditation movementTemplate:WikiProject Transcendental Meditation movementTranscendental Meditation movement B This article has been rated as B-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Yoga Unassessed

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Yoga, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Yoga, Hatha yoga, Yoga as exercise and related articles on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.YogaWikipedia:WikiProject YogaTemplate:WikiProject YogaYoga ??? This article has not yet received a rating on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Altered States of Consciousness C‑class High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Altered States of Consciousness, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of altered states of consciousness on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Altered States of ConsciousnessWikipedia:WikiProject Altered States of ConsciousnessTemplate:WikiProject Altered States of ConsciousnessAltered States of Consciousness C This article has been rated as C-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article was nominated for deletion on 28 October 2013 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

Error: The code letter tm for the topic area in this contentious topics talk notice is not recognised or declared. Please check the documentation.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Transcendental Meditation technique article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Article policies Neutral point of view No original research Verifiability

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 3 months

This topic contains controversial issues, some of which have reached a consensus for approach and neutrality, and some of which may be disputed. Before making any potentially controversial changes to the article, please carefully read the discussion-page dialogue to see if the issue has been raised before, and ensure that your edit meets all of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines. Please also ensure you use an accurate and concise edit summary.

The following Misplaced Pages contributors may be personally or professionally connected to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view. Littleolive oil (talk · contribs) This user has contributed to the article. (link) TimidGuy (talk · contribs) This user has contributed to the article. (link)

Path to God

I failed to say something about this earlier, and in the meantime a bot moved it into the archives, so I hope it's OK if I just copy the last bit here:

OK, I"ve replaced the text including the "quote needed" tag which was placed there in June 2012. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:10, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The book does say, "Transcendental Meditation is a path to God." But it would be better if we included some of the context. TimidGuy (talk) 11:07, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree and Olive mentioned this also. However I don't have access to the source.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 19:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

I wanted to check on this quote because it didn't sound like Maharishi's way of talking about God. An acquaintance of mine has OCR'ed the above-mentioned book and the sentence is really in there, but I feel it's not a statement in itself, but rather a simplified repetition of the previous sentence: "Transcendental Meditation is a way to God realization."

So to sum it up, I'd prefer if we could replace the quote by the first sentence. Is a scan of a book good enough as a source? I could email the person who scanned the printed book to see if he still has it, but that may be too indirect too? Geke (talk) 12:55, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

On Misplaced Pages we don't have to provide a URL or a "scan" or file of a source. Citing it is enough. In this case the book at hand is out of print and not commonplace but it is available for those are willing to look around or buy used on Amazon etc. So you can just go ahead and cite the book without providing a scan of it. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

More specifically, we cannot accept a scan of a book, as (unless the book is very old) this would be a breach of copyright. Arjayay (talk) 19:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, another good point. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 20:18, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

On another note.... the section is about the view of religious leaders on TM. It seems like the quote from MMY is out of place. Once we determine the context of what the Maharishi was saying, can the quote or reference be moved to another more appropriate section? or maybe even to the Maharishi's bio? Thoughts?-- — Keithbob • Talk • 20:22, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Keithbob, your intuition is right on: I think quoting from this book is not a good idea, because 1. it's like a transcript and 2. it's very old, meaning not typical for Maharishi's way of talking later on. I put a sample paragraph here:

So when good life, which is the result which comes after God realization, when that was held as a path it never was found to be leading to God. Something that results from God realization, if we imagine that that is a path, is just imagination. It is not available, it will come to us when we have realized God. In the hope of God realization if we imagine being good, being good and thereby come to God, where is the path? Being good is not a path, it is the result of God realization. The path to God realization is this meditation. Transcendental meditation is a path to God. After realization of God, after gaining God consciousness, after gaining familiarity with that which is all right and controls the whole creation and evolution, after contact with the Almighty, one spontaneously becomes right and righteous and all life supporting. So when the results of God realization were supposedly thought to be the path then nobody could find a path and when nobody could find a path nobody could find the goal. Very simple. This is what the religions have made a mess of the way to God realization. God realization is simple, and that was thought to be very difficult.

as a demonstration. (The file I found is not a scan, but a PDF-text file--typed or probably OCRed, corrected and newly formatted--so I can't be sure how accurate it is, but it looks well-done.) As a conclusion, I'd say that this quote is not representative and would better be taken out.

I assume the above unsigned comment is from User:Geke.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 20:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree its taken completely out of the context of an intellectual and philosophical discourse. Placing it in context would require summarizing the entire paragraph above, and giving it undue emphasis and WP:WEIGHT. So if you would like to remove it, I would have no objections. Thanks for following through on this. Cheers!-- — Keithbob • Talk • 20:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I think another relevant point is related to MMY's definition of God: in his standard list of the higher states of consciousness available to anyone, state 6 is usually called God Consciousness. But this is not a state where one suddenly meets God, as defined by Christianity or another religion. The term "God Consciousness" actually means seeing subtle or divine values in ordinary daily sense perceptions. This reaches fulfillment in state 7, called Unity Consciousness, where the Absolute or unchanging nature of life, which was first realized in state 5, is cognized on the level of sense perceptions. What this all means in terms of individual experience is colored by that individual's previous history and experiences. It is doubtful that we suddenly meet an all-powerful white man with a beard. Maharishi used the word God because it seemed ideal for describing the highest that humans could perceive, and the joy of this perception. He most certainly did not mean it in a conventional religious sense. Religions have a valid place in revealing the Divine as they understand it based on revelation; they have nothing to fear from MMY or TM, which deals simply with the development of full human consciousness. David Spector (talk) 22:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

After more than two years, I see this has not been concluded. So I’m now removing that quote. (Yes, the unsigned stuff above was mine, as Keithbob assumed.)

Re. David Spector’s comment, I could add that Maharishi calls perception in God Consciousness "celestial" and explains that one sees how the Creator works in everything in that state. So it’s "God-appreciating Consciousness", not "God’s Consciousness"! Maharishi has made it very clear at other occasions that "man is man and God is God"...--Geke (talk) 14:41, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

List of religious leaders

The list of religious leaders endorsing the TM technique includes almost only US people, as far as I can see (one priest from Ireland). Is that intentional, or could others be added? What's the criteria for including people here? Some of the ones in the current list have nice links like YouTube clips, others have no link at all so I'm wondering if they are useful to have in. Geke (talk) 13:45, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The English WP tends to be US-centric but that is something we want to avoid whenever possible. In notice that several of the clergy and religious leaders mentioned are not from the U.S. For example Michael Ramsey is English, Jaime Sin is from Manilla, Placide Gaboury is Canadian, William Johnston is Irish, and I believe Kevin Joyce and Keith Wollard are also Canadian. If you are aware of other religious leaders who have expressed an opinion on TM then you could add them, assuming they are reliably sourced.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 20:32, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

So it's better than I thought after all. I had a very strong video in mind, but it's about a priest in Colombia, so he is Spanish-speaking, and all other people mentioned (except Cardinal Xin maybe) are English-speaking, so I dunno... Geke (talk) 21:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I think what we would need to include him in that section is a reliable secondary source that gives his views on TM and religion. The You Tube video you've cited doesn't say that. This Huff Post article also doesn't clearly state Father Meija's views on TM and religion even though it says he uses TM in his shelters.

• Father Gabriel Mejia, a Catholic priest, has been sheltering street children in Columbia, South America, for over 25 years..............As part of their rehabilitation, the children learn the Transcendental Meditation technique.

So I think we have to keep looking for a valid source before we consider including him in that section. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:28, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Father Mejia may be deliberately low-profile about this in order not to irritate, and I've started to think that the safety of his projects is more important than having his name added in this Misplaced Pages article... I've once seen a version of this YouTube clip where he is doing the TM initiation ceremony, but it seems that was taken out. In the current version he just talks about "meditation", and nowhere did I find him speaking about the relationship between religion and TM. On his project's home pagehttp://foundationclaret.org/ there is a video of him talking to an audience of only TM practitioners, yet he uses the word "TM" only after a reminder by the interpreter. Geke (talk) 20:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

So then we can just leave him out until we come across a reliable source that gives his view on TM and religion. Thanks for your research and efforts to improve the article.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 20:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

This article seems to have a positive bias towards TM

It intentionally uses vague language and generous omissions to cloak the spirit of the scientific findings. As far as I know -the scientific consensus is that the benefits of TM are no different from virtually any other type of 'meditation', and are simply the result of 'relaxation' and that similar results can be attained by engaging in anything you find relaxing like massages or even taking a nap.

I only have a cursory familiarity with TM so I'm not going to edit anything but someone should -it is very misleading to anyone otherwise unfamiliar with the topic and it seems this was done quite intentionally.

It may be true that most people think "that the benefits of TM are no different from virtually any other type of 'meditation'" but I don’t believe there is "scientific consensus" for that. Not mentioned in the article is, for example, that the AHA has stated that among all meditation techniques only TM may be called effective in lowering high blood pressure. In general, I think the article does a good job in showing the various views, although not in giving them proper weight: 300 peer-reviewed "positive" studies are presented as almost outweighed by only a few "negative" ones. But I can live with that, as long as the numbers of people learning TM are up :) --Geke (talk) 14:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Transcendental Meditation technique. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Corrected formatting/usage for //religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/tm.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—_{Talk to my owner:Online} 20:03, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Transcendental Meditation technique. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.mum.edu/msvs/Chandler1.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—_{Talk to my owner:Online} 13:44, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Contentious statement in article summary challenged several times, still no citation

Before continually restoring the edit, please source the following uncited statement per WP:CS, WP:NPOV, and WP:V.

"Proponents have postulated that one percent of a population (such as a city or country) practicing the technique daily may affect the quality of life for that population group. This has been termed the Maharishi effect."

"Proponents": Who? "This has been termed": By whom? Where?

These are weasel words and this is an uncited, unverifiable statement that purports to be statistical data, which is unencyclopaedic. Per WP:PROVEIT : "All content must be verifiable. 'The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material', and is satisfied by providing a citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution." If the subject "has been termed" something it should be relatively easy to cite an origin for the term. See WP:WHYCITE.

All the other statements in the article summary are cited. This can be addressed with a single inline reference. 124.148.152.143 (talk) 00:13, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

• B-Class Transcendental Meditation movement articles
• Top-importance Transcendental Meditation movement articles
• Unassessed Yoga articles
• Unknown-importance Yoga articles
• WikiProject Yoga articles
• C-Class Altered States of Consciousness articles
• High-importance Altered States of Consciousness articles
• Misplaced Pages controversial topics
• Articles edited by connected contributors