What is Transcendental Meditation?

Transcendental meditation (TM) is one of the most popular means of mental and physical relaxation, stress relief, self-realization, and human evolution in the New Age scene.  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced it to the West in 1959.  TM is one of many yoga techniques that have been imported from the East.

Yoga is literally “yoking” or “union” with the one divine Reality.  There are eight stages to yoga:  moral restraint (yama), self-culture (miyama), posture (asana), breath control (pranayama), control of the senses (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dyhana), and a state of elevated consciousness (samadhi).1  The techniques of TM involve emptying one’s mind of distracting influence by reciting a Sanskrit word known as a “mantra,” and to engage in an initiation rite that is in essence a Hindu worship ceremony.  TM is a Hindu-based practice that pretends to be a science.

Maharishi originally introduced TM as a religion in his book, The Science of Being and Art of Living,2 published in 1963.  Later when the government as a religious practice excluded it, Maharishi began presenting TM as scientific.  He called it “The Science of Creative Intelligence,”3 substituting the term “creative intelligence” for “Being” (or Brahman).  Self-realization comes about by realizing one’s innermost nature as identity with the Being.

The scientific nature of TM was called into question in the 1977 Federal Court Case of Malnak v. Yogi.  One of the most important stages in the initiation ritual of TM is the puja, a Vedic hymn.4  Concerning the puja, Judge H. Curtis Meanor of the US District Court at Newark, New Jersey wrote:  “The puja chant is an invocation of a deified human being who has been dead for almost a quarter of a century….It cannot be doubted that the invocation of a deity or divine being is a prayer.”5  Furthermore, the teaching of “creative intelligence” as science was not validated and the religious nature of TM was raised.  The teaching of the course in New Jersey public schools was ruled to violate the First Amendment.6

Scripture never encourages one to stop thinking in order to concentrate on a mantra.  On the contrary, the exhortation is to be sober and alert, actively resisting the wiles of the devil (1 Pet. 5:8, 9).  Christian meditation focuses not on the vain repetition of a mantra, but on the solid foundation of God’s Word (Ps. 1:1, 2; 19:7-14).

1 Frank Gaynor, “Yoga,” The Dictionary of Mysticism (New York:  Citadel Press, 1968), p. 206.

2 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Science of Being and Art of Living (Los Angeles:  International SRM Publications, 1967).

3 Colin Martindale, Psychology Today, July 1975, p. 50.

4 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita (New York:  Penguin Books, 1969), p. 257.

5 TM in Court (Berkeley:  Spiritual Counterfeits Project, Inc., 1978), p. 64.

6 Ibid., p. 72.