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Talk:Transcendental Meditation technique

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Transcendental Meditation technique article.
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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.

Why do we have this at the beginning of the article?

This statement appears at the top of the article:

This article is about the technique. For the organization, see Transcendental Meditation movement.

Isn't it self-evident that this article is about the technique? That is, after all, the title of the article. It's unlikely that someone would arrive at this article expecting to read about the TM movement. The most likely landing point for a reader would be the main TM article, and that very clearly directs readers to the TM technique and TM movement articles. Seems like this statement isn't needed. TimidGuy (talk) 11:27, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

There is a similar statement referring back to this article on the TM movement article. We should either remove both or keep both. -- — Keithbob • Talk • 03:53, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
Any objection to my deleting both? TimidGuy (talk) 11:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The slightly clumsy statements are out while the links were kept. Nice! (I started responding to this point, only to see on inspection that it had been carried out. So this is just to close this Talk point somewhat.) Geke (talk) 13:45, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Geke and welcome to the TM topic area! -- — Keithbob • Talk • 15:39, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the warm welcome and the beer! (Virtual beer goes down well with me...) In fact, I've been here before, so I know it's good to remain relaxed! I was wondering how this page could be so short, until I read (just now) that a bot is/may be moving stuff into an archive after three months. So I could have left the above alone and it would have disappeared by itself, I guess... Geke (talk) 19:11, 3 July 2013 (UTC)Geke (talk) 19:07, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

You are welcome and yes the bot archives the talk page after 90 days. A good system! -- — Keithbob • Talk • 21:11, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
Agree. Simpler is better. Thanks for the removal. David Spector (talk) 22:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

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)

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)

Article scope

Much of this article is out of the scope set by its title. The extensive portions on courses, schools, marketing, organizations, etc may belong in TM movement, but not here. Some serious trimming is needed. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:02, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Content on the technique itself could be very limited. I would tend to agree with you, though. The boundary of where the technique info ends and where the technique is an integral part of something else established around the technique has never been easy to see. Editors have had different views on that. Its a discussion-worthy topic.(olive (talk) 19:09, 14 August 2013 (UTC))
On second thought, perhaps transcendental meditation business or transcendental meditation industry might be a better place for all that? LeadSongDog come howl! 22:01, 22 June 2014 (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)
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