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I've practiced TM twice a day for the last 12 years and there's no question that it's valuable and beneficial in many ways; I've also studied Indian philosophy in depth and visited India twice. By any estimate Maharishi's scholarship is superb and his commentaries, insights and translations from Sanskrit very impressive indeed.
However Maharishi and TM are just examples among many gurus and techniques exported from India and certainly the movement doesn't have exclusive claim to spiritual truth and personal development. Many thinkers and Indian philosophers accept the basic authority of the Vedas, among the most profound writings in humanity's possession, and then argue over details and interpretations. This is the sensible way to look at TM- a useful addition to the world's great spiritual backcloth that is the Indian tradition.
lkcl 22sep2006 Askolnick, what i think this anonymous person is trying to say is to point out that the 'editors' are getting a little over-excited, and making quite a mess of the page by not having a broad enough perspective, and that person is pointing out that TM is only one part of a much wider picture, which they have kindly pointed out. one of the editors is known to have been sued (and the lawsuit was unsuccessful) by deepak chopra (when he was still involved in TM) and two other tm organisations. one of the 'pro-tm' people is getting so overexcited that they're throwing out baby and bathwater, and got banned from ever editing wikipedia pages ever again.
this is a difficult subject to cover, not because it's actually difficult to follow and to understand, but because the current world climate is so materialistic and so dark. consequently, TM clashes _really_ badly with the 'Way Things Are'. and the 'Way Things Are' are leading to the destruction of life on this planet. perhaps that's an exaggeration, but the 'Way Things Are' can quite obviously and self-evidently seen to be pretty xxxxing bad: you only have to watch 'Fahrenheit 9/11' to get an inkling of how bad things really are.
so, it's not entirely surprising to find that the article is a pretty good micro-cosmic reflection of the resistance to the effects of TM and its practitioners are having on the world at large. if you believe that there are any effects at all, of course :) see the section 'hmm' below for a good example of what i mean.
As a newcomer to this article, I am amazed it has been allowed to get to this state: Surely the fact that the claims on the founders website quickly prove to be lies (I particularly loved the graphs of various cognative performance improvments which were basically meaningless, and the claim of 100s of scientific studies which, if properly examined, quickly dissappear!), is enough that wikipedia should dismiss the whole concept as "Scientology for gullible meditation-addicts". 128.86.161.242 21:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Simply the article can be termed as ATM antiTranscendental meditation.
For sure every thing has its own side effects .There will be a 10% ill effect in all stuffs existing in the world.I hope this article primarily focusses on the controversies ...i know more people who say they r benifited. We have to remeber that even jesus was crucified in this world.So obviously set of people will be always cristising their extent trying to critisise things.
But it is a shame that wikipedia hosts such writings.For sure the article has to be rewriten to capture best and ill of TM asap.
What i heard from other TM practioners that the mantra used in TM are basic mantras used in ancient vedic books.I dont think repetition of mantra is going to hamper anyones mental health. The thing for sure is that u must not compell and do meditation like a exercise .It will come naturally.It is a mental state without much tensions.Even we sit idle for quite some time we feel pleasantness Repetition of Mantra makes u stay focussed without any much efforts .
As per my opinion TM Meditation practice is simple and i have found lot of people benifited from it.Even i felt bit enregised for around 14 hours in my programming proffession.
Really iam not a supported of TM group but i wish to convey my words and experiences about TM. I have also experienced that iam bit focussed while playing cricket after practising TM.This is true. even iam not a regular practioned of TM.
Some of the rules of meditation 1.Deep sleep and enough sleep is a must and it is better than mediattion. 2.Dont compell urself to sit at Meditation.It will occur naturally like sometimes u may think of
going for a long pleasant walk.
3.Primary things--> rest for 5 mins before and after medittaion 4.Dont do meditation when stomach is loaded or after exercise.
Really meditation has lot of good effects if practised properly.There are lot of ways of meditation . I practised two and found myself comfortable with TM.
Bishonen, this IP address has been used repeatedly to vandalize Wiki articles and it has been blocked several times -- the most recent was just 3 days ago. Any idea what's going on with this IP address? Askolnick 13:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
While I agree that citing a newsgroup for Denaro's quote wasn't the best thing (I couldn't find the original online ANYWHERE, so I used the newsgroup reference "just because"), newsgroups CAN be a primary source of info. For instance, the first publication concerning Duff's Device was made by Mr. Duff in a newsgroup exchange. Additionally, the first public analysis that correctly identified the source of the Pentium Bug that I'm aware of was made in a newsgroup discussion. The guy was immediately hired by Intel to head up the team to identify and fix it. Sparaig 15:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Currently, as a volunteer (to get hopefully professional-level experience), I'm doing some 3D animation work for TM researcher Fred Travis, based on the theory of how TM works first proposed in [1]. All I'm doing is creating a 3D illustration of the theory. Is this "original research" or does it fall under the illustration guidelines? Sparaig 16:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Andrew, for all *I* know, it IS a case of adding particles to the hydrogen nucleus. However, *I* am not the one adding the particles. The proposal to add the particles is found in a theoretical paper published in a mainstream journal. All I'm doing is illustrating what the authors claim the particles look like at the request of one of the authors. Sparaig 07:24, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm sure the rest of the wiki community appreciates your tireless efforts to discredit the postings of Peter. I mean, they can't possibly figure where he's coming from on their own... Sparaig 02:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
All right, I think archiving round about now might be a good idea. I'm archiving all threads more than three days old in the usual way, same as archives 1-3, shutting my eyes firmly to the novelty of creating archive 4 and 5 by pointing to particular history revisions. Bishonen | talk 23:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC).
Bishonen or anyone else who can figure out what's wrong, please take a look at the footnote section of the TM article. I tried to fix the last footnote in the list, but in the editing mode, none of the footnotes are displayed. Askolnick 19:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems a tad biased to cite the same court ruling in 2 sections: learning TM and TM controversy. Sparaig 08:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, let me contrive ways to include the phrase "founder of the award winning K-12 school in Iowa" in several places... Sparaig 22:10, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
just clarified a few matters... Sparaig 22:27, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
As an aside, Dr. Coplin says MMY was born in 1912, so now we have a THIRD date.
This is from this guy's PhD dissertation in Sociology.
Socio-Historical Context for SRM's Emergence
SRM as Cultural Revitalization
Sparaig
17:28, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
An anonymous user has tried to sanitize this article by removing all material concerning allegations of Maharishi's sexual misconduct, which was well-documented. I therefore replaced it. (He/she had even removed the part about the most famous of all of Maharishi's past and present followers - the Beatles!). For the record, here is the rule he/she claimed justified his/her deletion:
Because the information he/she removed was well-sourced, that deletion was improper and needed to be restored. Askolnick 12:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Crossposting. Sorry guys, I wasn't watching very closely. I have now blocked Peterklutz's entire IP range for a month to give you a bit of peace. I'm hoping it won't cause a lot of collateral damage to innocent anons. And if he starts riding the open proxies again, I suppose I'll semiprotect Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental meditation if you give me a shout. Mind you, MMY is such a mess anyway... anybody feel like cleaning it up a bit? Bishonen | talk 02:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC).
The Maharishi University of Management which is invoked as a source for the early 1970s research at UCLA and Harvard in the section "Procedures and Theory" is a really bad source in such a context. (By contrast, it might well be a good source for, say, TM teachings and doctrine.) If you click on the link to the MUM website, it turns out to refer in turn, vaguely, to publication "from 1970 to 1972 in the respected journals Science, American Journal of Physiology, and Scientific American." Bah. What we need for the TM article are direct references to those published studies in those (indeed) respected journals. If those references exist somewhere on the MUM site, I haven't found them. I request that somebody takes the time to look up the 1970 to 1972 issues of the original journals and produces real references. The dream would be web versions of the articles in question, of course. If this is not done within a reasonable space of time, say four weeks from today, I'm going to remove the whole thing as unsourced. Talking about Harvard and Scientific American, while actually only having access to MUM's selected and rephrased version of what's in them just doesn't fly. Bishonen | talk 16:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=Pager&DB=pubmed
keyword: wallace RK
22: Wallace RK, Benson H, Wilson AF. Related Articles, Links
A wakeful hypometabolic physiologic state.
Am J Physiol. 1971 Sep;221(3):795-9. No abstract available. PMID: 5570336 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 23: Wallace RK. Related Articles, Links
[Physiological effects of transcendental meditation]
Rev Bras Med. 1970 Aug;27(8):397-401. Portuguese. No abstract available. PMID: 5487313 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 24: Wallace RK. Related Articles, Links
Physiological effects of transcendental meditation.
Science. 1970 Mar 27;167(926):1751-4. No abstract available. PMID: 5416544 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Sheesh. Earliest published research, all the ducks right in a row. That you don't trust MUM to get the references by their founding president right speaks volumes about you... Sparaig 17:34, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
BTW, for some reason, the 1972 Scientific American study doesn't show up in medline, but Herbert Benson has photos of it as well as the charts taken from it on his website Relaxation Response homepage:
[5] Sparaig 17:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I am just trying to understand Bishonen's earlier reverts about my heading changes. In fact I had applied what any German (I am german) Journalist would do, not being aware of the use of subjunctive in English. You might want to read this [6]:'By using the special subjunctive, the newspaper is asserting its own neutrality concerning the claim's veracity. English does not provide so elegant a means. "He said that he was an honest person" - as opposed to "He said that he is an honest person" - is a kind of modified subjunctive that provides some distance, but it cannot be sustained over longer passages as easily as German's special subjunctive. Instead, English must rely on words like "allegedly" and frequent repetitions of "he said...."' I am glad you left my second suggestion, even though I don't think its optimal..But let me just make a few points: That something is said to be claim, doesn't mean that one has to leave a 'neutral voice', the claim can be cited in a self-distancing voice and should be so in WP for NPOV. According to the article [7] the english subjunctive would be something like this: 'He said that he was an honest person' In our case the headings would be:
etc. instead of
etc. As I am no native English speaker, its hard for me to decide which one is more neutral. I would also be interested in the opinion of Spairag
I had erased increasingly from the sentence: Still, the link between TM and Hinduism, from where the movement's founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi comes, appears to become increasingly evident as time passes. Askolnik commented If these were NPOV, they wouldn't be complaints of critics. The comment is already qualified by "appears": "increasingly" is important point of the critics.) But this seems to be a wrong use of language, because, either something is evident or not. Of course something can become evident, but once it is evident, it is simply evident. So the qualifier increasingly is really completely unnecessary, and is in fact just a phrase of rethoric to emphazise. Askolnik argues that this is what the critics say, but here critics is just a generic term without anybody specific being cited. In stating the opinion of critics - in fact in a general way - any aditional emphazis should be avoided because of NPOV. WP policies state that the reader of the article should have the impression that the whole article is written in one voice, and that he cannot make out at any point the opinion of the editor. Leaving off words like 'increasingly' is just one example of following this rule. In fact, I think one should avoidof making POV statements, by (only vaguely) disguising them as anonymous statements. You can always say: Critics say: and then say whatever you want, but even then you have to take care of the tone AFAIunderstand. As long as you don't have a specific quote, within quotqtion marks, one should follow a distanced style, and avoid any expressive or strengthening words. Otherwise its a minor thing to me, and I won't fight for it, but all these things tend to add up. Even words like Still, .. express opinion. You can look it up in the WP guidelines.So I tried to make a better suggestion -- hanuman ॐ ^ 19:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think Maharishi has ever said he "developed" Transcendental Medtiation. He always seems to credit Guru Dev and the Vedic tradition. So I changed it to "introduced," which is more commonly used. TimidGuy 19:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
He refined the technique into its current minimalist form and developed the teacher training process. Sparaig 10:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I think I'll change it to "first introduced." TimidGuy 15:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
The Guideline on Words to avoid says that the word "claim" shouldn't be used because "it carries a very strong connotation of dubiousness." I'd like to change the lead to remove this word, and thereby foster a more neutral point of view. As I have time, I may change other instances in this article. I hope everyone will agree with this. TimidGuy 15:10, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Apologies. I should have included an item on the Talk page about the change of "techniques" to "technique." My thinking was that Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhi program are different tecnhiques. The majority of people who learn Transcendental Meditation don't also learn the TM-Sidhi program. Maybe we should consider focusing on Transcendental Mediation in this entry, and then have a separate entry for the TM-Sidhi program. And thanks for removing the redundancy in my earlier edit. I thought of that right after I posted it. TimidGuy 16:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Wow. Strong words. I guess that's my official welcome. : ) TimidGuy 17:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I hope we can work together to create an excellent Wikipedia entry, one that satisfies both of our perceptions of the reality of the situation. TimidGuy 20:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm new and am still trying to figure out how this works. I was just looking at the History, and it looks as if Askolnick added a section about Maharishi claiming that thousands levitate. Was this discussed in the Talk section? Do the Guidelines require that it be discussed because this has been flagged a controversial article? Thanks for patience with newbies. TimidGuy
(Wrote this before I saw your nice contribution, askolnick, on my talk page, which clearly explained that indeed it's necessary to discuss changes.) TimidGuy
Thanks much. This does raise a question in my mind, though, about the extent of the material that keeps getting added to this article.
I've skimmed the guidelines and feel that I have at least a vague understanding of NPOV, how to handle differing views, reputable souces, etc. But in my cursory look at the guidelines I haven't yet seen any related to the overall shape and scope of an article. For example, suppose I were to add well-sourced material in each of the sections that seem to me to be anti-TM so that both points of view are represented. It seems like the article will become impossibly long. In fact, it already seems a little shapeless and unwieldy. It's hard for me to imagine how this article could ever evolve to a point where it's on a par with some of the truly extraodinary Wikipedia articles that I've seen. No doubt as I get more experience I'll have a sense for how this could work, but right now it's hard to envision. TimidGuy 15:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Not at all. I'm just trying to imagine, given the way that things are headed, how we could ever arrive at an excellent article. But your comments are very helpful, and I realize that editors involved in contentious articles can have a more modest goal. I really appreciate your taking the time to respond. TimidGuy
I see that David Spector added a new section, which was discussed during July. Since this material doesn't reference a reputable source would it be considered "original research" and therefore disallowed? Thanks. TimidGuy 21:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Gradually I learn this. It's helpful to have this understanding of common knowledge not needing to be sourced. What I meant to say was that there seemed to be background information in his post that wasn't referenced on these pages, making it "original research." But truthfully, I had only glanced at them. And in any case, the common knowledge argument would make it acceptable. TimidGuy 11:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Hello, Sparaig. Yes, you're right. And it does seem a little odd that he uses this article as an ad for his technique. TimidGuy 14:48, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
In the Randi section of this article, there's a statement that reads "Randi concluded that Rabinoff's data were simply made up." I've read through that section of Randi's book twice and can't find where Randi concludes that. I even got out my reading glasses the second time to make sure I didn't miss something. : ) Could someone direct me to the page number where he says it? Thanks! TimidGuy 12:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I checked Carroll's page and found that he cites the book. So I got the book. Carroll's page says that Randi reported in his book that Rabinoff did a study related to crime, accidents, and crop production and invented the data. Rabinoff never did a study on crime, accidents, and crop production. TimidGuy 18:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I deleted "However" from the fourth sentence in the lead because Wiki guidelines say that the word "can imply that one alternative is less favored than another". In other words, it can imply that the latter insertion is true or better. They suggest the format: "A asserts Y. Others, including B, believe Z." This change seems to better reflect that suggestion. I eliminated "the nature of the movement itself" because the phrase seems vague and meaningless. First of all, we're describing TM in the entry, not a "movement" (whatever that is) and to question the "nature" of something appears here to be pejorative and unsubstantiated. Who are these critics and what exactly are they saying? I eliminated the final sentence, as the guidelines say it's often best to avoid the term "cult" except in specific, non-controversial contexts. Moreover, the sentence doesn't answer "who" these critics are, how many they number, and why they feel it's a "cult" as they define that. If one feels there's enough data to support this issue, it should be dealt with elsewhere in the context of specific clarifications, accompanied by the opposing view offered from those (many) who feel that it's not a "cult" at all. Purple iris 04:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)Purple Iris
Just as I feared, our new editor has touched off an edit war. Purple and TimidGuy, you are both Single Purpose Account editors. You are not going to win any edit war here, so please stop. If you want to make contentious changes to the article, you need to convince other editors of your point of view on this talk page first. Otherwise, I will ask an administrator to protect the article. Askolnick 12:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I've been making some changes to the research section, primarily replacing a couple of references to reports that appear to have been largely written from TM press releases rather than the actual studies. I've replaced them with links to the abstracts of the published studies, which more accurately describe the research. For example, the Forbes article exaggerates the study's findings: "Transcendental meditation (TM) reduces hypertension and cuts down on the need for blood pressure-lowering medications." The researcher's published conclusion is much more careful and cautious: TM "may be useful as an adjunct in the long-term treatment of hypertension in African Americans." Such a mistatement can cause a great deal of harm by convincing people with life-threatening hypertension that they should meditate instead of medicate. Even worse, the last statement about published research (re effect on pain) was not only inaccurate and misleading, it didn't even identify the reference! This section concerns published research, not exaggerations of research findings published in lay media. So I think it should stick to describing the actual research, rather than how it is being hyped. Askolnick 15:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
In two instances the article seeks to discredit the research on the Transcendental Meditation technique, which includes 160 peer-reviewed studies, by citing an allegation made in The Skeptic’s Dictionary by Todd Carroll.
These instances are:
“However, many critics, such as James Randi and Robert Todd Carroll, author of the Skeptic's Dictionary[16], charge that most of this research is either trivial, poorly designed and conducted, or even cooked up . . . .”
“James Randi, noted skeptic and critic of paranormal claims, investigated the claims of Dr. Robert Rabinoff, an MUM physics professor and researcher on the "Maharishi effect," that a large gathering of TM meditators had reduced crime and accidents and increased crop production in the vicinity of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. After speaking with the Fairfield Police Department, the Iowa Department of Agriculture, and Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles, Randi concluded that Rabinoff's data were simply made up [18]” [The citation given is to Carroll’s The Skeptic’s Dictionary.]
In the first instance the allegation is that the research is “cooked up.” In the second, it’s alleged that Rabinoff’s data “were simply made up.”
Here is the relevant paragraph from The Skeptic’s Dictionary in which Carroll says that Rabinoff did a study and says that, according to Randi, the data was invented:
“One TM study by a MUM physics professor, Dr. Robert Rabinoff, claimed that the Maharishi effect was responsible for reducing crime and accidents while simultaneously increasing crop production in the vicinity of Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa. James Randi checked with the Fairfield Police Dept, the Iowa Dept of Agriculture, and the Dept of Motor Vehicles and found that the Rabinoff’s data was invented (Randi 1982, 99-108).”
In summary, the allegation is that Rabinoff did a study on the Maharishi Effect as it relates to crime, accidents, and crop production and that he made up the data.
The problem with this is that Rabinoff has never done a study on the Maharishi Effect as it relates to crime, auto accidents, and crop production. The only record of this study is in Carroll’s The Skeptic’s Dictionary. This study cannot be found in any index of scientific literature. It is not contained in the multi-volume work that collects all research done on the Transcendental Meditation technique. The director of research at the time when this alleged study was supposed to have been done, David Orme-Johnson, says that Rabinoff didn’t do research on crime, auto accidents, and crop production. Further, Rabinoff wasn’t engaged in research on Transcendental Meditation during the time period in question. The one study that he did do, related to weather, came two years later.
I propose that if this article is to include a reference to claims that Rabinoff made at a meeting of a small group at the University of Oregon in 1978, we not use Carroll, given that he inaccurately represents what Randi says. We should directly use Randi, and try to be accurate. TimidGuy 17:35, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, askolnick, for your comments. I appreciate your helping to try to sort out this extremely important issue.
I don’t quite understand, though, your response. First you say that you feel the reference to Carroll in the context of Rabinoff should stand. Yet you seem to be agreeing that there are inaccuracies in Carroll’s paragraph in which he says that Rabinoff did a study and made up the data. And you agree that Rabinoff didn’t do the study.
It makes no sense for Wikipedia to reference a problematic secondary source (Carroll referencing Randi) when we can simply present the primary source (Randi). (And, one hopes, do it accurately.) TimidGuy 20:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I’ve shown that the Wikipedia entry on the Transcendental Meditation technique references an error contained in The Skeptic’s Encyclopedia, which alleges that Robert Rabinoff did a study and made up the data.
I’m gong to delete the reference to The Skeptic’s Encyclopedia in the paragraph discussing Rabinoff. In addition, I’m going to make a minor edit in the following phrase:
"Randi concluded that Rabinoff's data were simply made up [18]"
Randi didn’t say this in the chapter.
I’m going to change it to “Randi was unable to verify Rabinoff’s claims.”
And I’m also going to qualify the description of Rabinoff as a researcher on the Maharishi Effect, since he only did one study, and that came a couple years after the incident. I’m also going to add a phrase that says that this was during a talk to a small group at the University of Oregon.
These may seem like small changes, but the entry in Wikipedia alleges that most of the hundreds of studies on Transcendental Meditation are “cooked up.” And the allegation that Rabinoff did a study and made up the data is offered as evidence.
Rabinoff MAY have made unsubstantiated claims when speaking to a small group at the University of Oregon in 1978, and if he did that’s reprehensible. But it’s not the same as publishing a study with fabricated data. An encyclopedia entry should be precise. TimidGuy 20:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you that we don't know whether Rabinoff claimed to have done the research he mentioned. But that's exactly what's wrong with Carroll's account. He says that Rabinoff did it. TimidGuy 21:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
By the way, a good place for the Carroll citation would be in the sentence where it's claimed that the research is trivial. TimidGuy 20:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
When I first read this article, I came away with the impression that Rabinoff had published a study and made up the data. I think most readers come away with that impression. And I want to correct that by making the changes I stated.
I rest my case.
Regarding the point about the research being trivial. I was referring to the sentence in this article that says that most of the research is " either trivial, poorly designed and conducted, or even cooked up." Since there is no citation there, and since Carroll claims that most of the research is trivial, I thought that this would be a better place for a Carroll citation. TimidGuy 11:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I wrote "first read this article." I meant this article on Transcendental Meditation. And the impression I got when I first read it -- and the impression I had until I looked at Randi. TimidGuy 17:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I would like to discuss the last sentence of the lead paragraph, "Many critics consider the TM movement a religious cult." Askolnick insists that this sentence be kept in because it is well-substantiated and "noteworthy". I'd like to clarify with some questions, because I think clarification would serve any reader of this entry. 1) Who is the 'cult'? Is it Donovan, or David Lynch, or my sister practicing TM in Boston? Is it the athletes who have practiced TM through the years, or the rabbis, or the politicians? Just who are we talking about here? 2) Who are these critics - could you list them? Who commissioned a report for the French government on cults and what does it actually say? 3) Could you define 'cult' for me? Definitions range from "collective veneration" to "system of religious worship and ritual" to "transient fad" to "an interest followed with exaggerated zeal" to "groups that have deviated from normative religions in belief and practice" "followers under the guidance of a charismatic leader" and so on. The dictionary definitions vary widely. Is a cult just what someone thinks it is, or are there objective criteria for it as it's used in Wikipedia and this entry? If so, what are those criteria? Thanks for attention to this.
I forgot to sign my name above. 21:38, 18 September 2006 (UTC)Purple Iris Purple iris
I added some detail about the demolition on campus. It had a sort of odd ant-Christian emphasis. And removed the word "however" according to the guidelines on words to avoid. TimidGuy 11:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
lkcl 22sep2006 heya timidguy: yeh, i replaced 'facing public resistance' with 'facing controversy', because actually if you read the whole of the article that was referred to, it is the _top_ of the article that highlights the 'facing public resistance'. actually, the knock-down plans were approved pretty much straight away by the local council, due to the increase in taxes that would be received; plus, the cost of keeping the monastery running is about $USD 500,000 per year: the local councillors _understand_ why - simply on practical grounds - that the movement wants to do away with such a decrepid and badly-built building. they are quoted as saying 'there's a reason why the monks abandoned it'!
Thanks for fixing this. Good points. TimidGuy 20:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
transcendental meditation is a technique - nothing more. i am genuinely surprised by the respect given to hinduism on wikipedia, as compared to the mess made of transcendental meditation - but that is beside the point i want to make.
the point i want to make needs some explanation. all religions have one goal: to reach 'God'. what religions DON'T do is proscribe a simple technique by which that can be achieved. in fact, most religions make quite a mess of it. they usually have a leader, whose example you are advised to follow, because those leaders are human, and it is considered easier for humans to relate to other humans (and this is where 'cults' get their power: they emphasise the following-of-the-leader). they usually have a book of words, which you are expected to read: this book gives you examples of the kind of lifestyle that you are expected to follow.
mostly, however, proscribed religion, as followed by billions of people, is actually quite sad (and has been for thousands of years). ... then again - there are many people for whom religion is successfully working: these peoples lives are genuinely spiritual and genuinely improved by their adherence to religious practices.
so, on the one hand we have religion, where you are expected to... well... work out for yourself what you are expected to reach (spiritual enlightenment) - through examples handed down from leader to books and your peers; on the other hand, we have transcendental meditation which is a very specific technique which actually has a well-documented effect on the mind and body, the practice of which is claimed to help short-cut the goal of reaching spiritual enlightenment... AND it is claimed, by the transcendental meditation leader that this technique was at one time a world-wide recognised part of virtually every known religion - and that this technique was lost - ironically because it was so common that nobody thought that it would ever be lost.
putting that in a nutshell: TM is a technique aimed at short-cutting your way to spiritual enlightenment by jacking your mind and body into some deep cosmic well of universal one-ness; religion is a way of life by which you are expected to somehow absorb spiritual enlightenment on your own - presumably by osmosis.
now.
why is it so hellishly difficult for people to get this through their thick heads?? [such that even the CIA have to target the transcendental meditation movement and try to take control of it, with a view to either usurping it or destroying it]
i can't answer that - i can only give you some hints. things to consider:
the TM movement's adherents are people; these people are human. some of them are a mess (and would be a worse mess if it wasn't for TM. they really shouldn't be let out on their own ;) and perhaps a TM centre is the best place for them! but that isn't the point of TM: it's not an escape). some of them are actually quite successful people, getting on with their lives - and they swear by TM that it helps them to make their lives better and more productive, and more enjoyable. some of these people are religious; some of them are not.
collectively, overall, however, you see a group of people whose adherance to specific practices are 'akin' to religion.... but it's not _actually_ religion. this might take some explaining - oh dear: i'll try.
the fundamental thing behind transcendental meditation is something that they call 'Natural Law' - i.e. the 'Laws of Nature'. these 'laws' have some fundamental grounding in mathematics - quantum mechanics etc. which i don't pretend to understand - but they 'express' out into things like 'karma', 'gravity', 'intelligence as the unifying force which answers physicists holy grail quest for Grand Unified Theories' and of course 'the practice of repeating a mantra quietly and effortlessly as a means to attune a human psyche in line with the laws of nature - a bit like catching a wave when going surfing'.
it is claimed that the laws of nature can be expressed as mathematical equations, the terms of which can be each be represented by a symbol, which in turn can be 'spoken' directly in sanskrit. further levels of expansion of these mathematical equations into further terms results in further symbols, each of which again can be spoken as a phrase in sanskrit.
ultimately, it is claimed, these mathematical equations express the entire vedic scriptures.
(and if you believe what steven hawking is saying about the black hole memory effect - notice i said 'believe' because you really have to be a rocket scientist to understand steven hawking, otherwise you just have to take his statements at face value - i.e. you have to just trust and believe him. anyway: if you believe what steven hawking is saying about the black hole memory effect, namely that the black hole has a memory of what went into it, but the storage is 'compressed' - it's not so difficult to imagine that there might be a mathematical formula, its terms and the derivatives of its terms so elegant that it can be expressed in an actual spoken language, now, is it?)
anyway.
the point is that there are certain practices - certain ways of living - that fundamentally make humans much better off than they would be without them, and these ways of living are a beautiful expression of humans living in harmony with - and respecting - the Laws of Nature.
it _just_ so happens that many religions - and the adherents to those religions - get it right.
it _just_ so happens that the practitioners of transcendental meditation are _lucky_ enough to have access to someone who actually _understands_ what the hell is going on enough to _explain_ to people where those practices (which some religious adherents get right) happen to come from!
it _just_ so happens that a lot of the practitioners of transcendental meditation happen to _follow_ what their leader is saying is a 'Good Idea' on account of it being 'in tune with the laws of nature'.
consequently, practitioners of transcendental meditation _look_ like over-zealous religious fruitcakes - with their 'sexism' and their 'desire to destroy ancient revered monuments' - but actually for the most part, most of them are simply following the path to enlightenment and respecting the Laws of Nature.
and, due to the times in which we are living, which are pretty damn dark, what with science being the be-all and xxxxing end-all of most arguments - _including_ on wikipedia, where 'that which we can experience' cannot be a 'Point of View' because it is classed as 'Subjective' and 'Un-Scientific', it is perhaps not surprising that TM and its practitioners run flat-out into brick walls, and, rather unexpectedly, steam-roll their way over, round and through what _you_ thought was a brick wall.
so. in short: transcendental meditation isn't a religion, it's a technique. the practice of transcendental meditation encourages you and helps you to achieve the same end-result which religions try to get their followers to stick to. it's all to the same goal - enlightenment - so stop friggin arguing about it and get on with it! :)
lkcl 22sep2006
essay? i suppose it is :) i was just getting a bit fed up with seeing so much misinformation, and TM is a deceptively simple topic, from which a heck of a lot stems (and therein lies the confusion). yeh i'll look something up. there are a couple of news articles about how sthapadya ved has resulted in brushfires in california PARTING AND REJOINING around even just the _land_ that had had the ceremonies done. in the reports that i heard about, one plot had its fence singed (wow big deal), and it was the only one which had had a swimming pool built. the experts in sthapatya ved said that it was because the swimming pool was too close to the boundary of the plot, and also it put the plot out-of-balance. i.e. if they wanted a damn swimming pool they should have damn well said so when they had the place built, and it could have been taken into account. duh. but - yes, really, styapatya ved should really have its own section. Lkcl 02:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
from http://vedicarchitecture.org/ezine/2004_04.html
"...Then, as the fire roared up to the home from the National Forest only 50 feet away, the 40 to 60 mph winds made a sudden 90 degree shift and instantly the fire passed directly outside of the house's Vastu fence. This sudden sift allowed the Worlands to evacuate in safety and, the house and everything in or near the Vastu to be saved. After shifting the blaze away from the house, ten minutes later the wind shifted back to its original direction and consumed the acreage directly behind the home. The fire went on to destroy 3500 homes, and hundreds of thousands of acres of land. But its first would-be victim was spared by a remarkable last minute shift in the wind."
from http://www.maharishi-european-sidhaland.org.uk/News.htm
"... A friend phoned from Ramona, in the midst of the path of the fires..."
"... Another building was in process of being constructed with everything marked out and just the first timbers in place. It had nothing more than a piece of string marking the Vastu fence position. The fires surrounded the place, ate the string, but did not cross that vastu fence line. "
what is sthapatya ved: http://www.ads-vastu.com/whatissthapatyaved.html
hm. finding "official" news sources - ones where the newsreporters go 'duhhhh, we don't understaaaaand what haaaappunnnnd. duhhhh' are proving elusive. i'll have to ask around if anyone has kept any links to online articles. i tried lots of different google searches - couldn't find anything. Lkcl 03:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
In the section TM-Sidhi Program and The Maharishi Effect, there's a seeming criticism when a reporter asks, an 23% reduction in crime compared to what.
This is easily explained, and I propose to add an explanation, based on what the study says. Crime is known to fluctuate widely based on the weather. Had the course been held in October, the crime rate would have fallen -- because it would have been expected to fall anyway. So critics would suggest that the decrease in crime be relative to the decrease already expected.
The course was held in summer, at a time when crime typically shoots up. The prediction was that there would be a decrease relative to the expected rate. And that's what the study showed. TimidGuy 15:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I also propose to add a paragraph addressing the criticism of Park that the Washington DC experiment was a "clinic in data manipulation." I'll cite Maxwell Rainforth's refutation that appeared in Skeptical Inquirer and a longer version that appears online.
I would also like to delete two sentences which have factual errors.
"It took the authors nearly six years to find a journal that would publish the study." The experiment was done in 1993 and the analysis of data was completed in 1994. Whoever wrote this would need to determine when the journal article was completed and the authors began submitting it. It would also need to be determined when it was accepted for publication (often there's a space of 6 months to 2 years between acceptance and publication). But the period in question couldn't be six years, since the study was published in 1999.
"He didn't explain why the United States has increasingly become embroiled in violence and conflict throughout the world[27], even though there are nearly 2000 Sidhas in Fairfield, Iowa alone[28]." The hypothesis is that the effect is created when people practice the TM-Sidhi program together in a large group. There are not 2,000 practicing together as a group in Fairfield. The most recent totals have fluctuated between 1,000-1,250. TimidGuy 15:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
A source is needed for the following:
"What astounded the critics most was the TM researchers' excuse for why Washington D.C.'s murder rate during the study periord had climbed to the highest rate in history. It would have been much higher had the TM meditators not meditated, the researchers explained."
It's hard to believe that the researchers said this. This simple answer is that statistical methods reveal an aggregate truth but don't predict the behavior of individual elements that are part of the aggregate. Murder rate constitutes 3% of the aggregate. In other areas there was a dramatic decline. TimidGuy 11:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I propose to delete the above sentence. It needs a source for the critics' perspective and for the researchers' response. This point is more properly made in the other Maharishi Effect section with Park's point about the murder rate. I'll post Maxwell Rainforth's reply that appeared in Skeptical Inquirer and that appears online. And as propsed in the other thread, I hope to consolidate these two sections anyway. TimidGuy 11:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
It's odd that there are two sections about the Maharishi effect. There is almost complete redundancy between them. I suggest combining the two sections. And since most of the material in the first instance deals with issues and controveries, I suggest that the best location for the combined section would be in the Issues and Controversies section. TimidGuy 11:22, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
TG, I reversed many of your changes. I briefly explained them in the edit summaries. I want to comment a bit more here about the bogus Washington DC crime study. You quoted from it, including a nonsensical claim that crime leves can be "accurately" predicted from temperature. That's nonsense. While there's a well-noted increase in crime rates associated with days of hot temperatures, many other things influence violent crime rates. It's nonsensical to claim that one can "accurately predict" violent crime levels by average temperature. And to see just how pathological this TM study and apologetics are, please note how they explained the higher murder rate - they simply discarded 10 murders from their calculations - by calling them a statistical "outlier"!!! That is pure data manipulation. It accounts for why it took Hagelin nearly six years to find journal editors williing to publish this claptrap. Park accurately describes this study and the pseudoscience polemics that followed as a "clinic in data manipulation." Askolnick 16:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Study coauthor David Orme-Johnson responded to this point. At this time I don't propose to change the article, though, since I feel like the paragraph in question reads well.
Here's what he said:
"The issue is not that crime can be 'accurately' predicted by temperature, but that temperature does have to be taken into account in assessing crime rate change, since it increases during summer months relative to colder months. The prediction of crime from the temperature is not exact, but is a mean value that is bracketed by a measure of deviation, the standard error of the mean. The mean and standard errors of the mean are based on how temperature has affected crime in the past. If the actual values of crime during an intervention are less than (or more than) two standard errors from the mean, it means that it is highly unlikely that they occurred by chance, given the known effects of temperature on crime. That is, the effect is said to be statistically significant. That means that given the way in which crime has covariate with temperature in the past, something new and different happened during the intervention. State-of-the-art methodology for assessing the effects of crime was used in this study, and that is why it passed peer review and was published in Social Indicators Research, the leading technical journal in this field. Also, it is quite common for there to be a substantial lag between an experiment and its republication, especially when the research steps outside standard dogma.
"It is true that many other factors besides temperature influence crime, such as percentage of the population being males under 30 years old, percent of the population in poverty, population density, percent of the population unemployed, etc. However, these factors do not change appreciably on a day-to-day timescale, and therefore are not relevant to this study. Temperature is the only measure of all factor that change on a daily basis, which is relevant to crime." TimidGuy 11:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
The Wikipedia guideline "avoid weasel words" has this to say:
"Weasel words are words or phrases that seemingly support statements without attributing opinions to verifiable sources. Weasel words give the force of authority to a statement without letting the reader decide if the source of the opinion is reliable. If a statement can't stand on its own without weasel words, it lacks neutral point of view; either a source for the statement should be found, or the statement should be removed."
Also:
"Weasel words don't really give a neutral point of view; they just spread hearsay, or couch personal opinion in vague, indirect syntax. It is better to put a name and a face on an opinion than to assign an opinion to an anonymous source."
One of the phrases it advises against using is "critics say that...." I do think this needs to be addressed in the article and propose to give this some attention. TimidGuy 15:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Hello, Sfacets. Note that there are two instances of this in the lead. In the second instance, for example, I'd like to mention a specific book or journal or academic expert in the sentence about TM being a cult rather than saying "some critics." Then I'd like to balance that by adding a sentence that presents the other point of view. Seems like this would be more in accord with NPOV. It would also address the fact that the usage of "cult" in the lead isn't in accord with the guideline on Words to avoid. The sentence would read something like: "In his book, titled xxx, so and so says that the organization that teaches Transcendental Meditation has characteristics of a cult."
I counted 11 instances of the use of "critics" in the article. In a few cases the usage may be OK, but in many instances it seems like we'd do well to heed the advice of the guideline if we want to create an effective Wikipedia article. TimidGuy 15:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Also note this guideline:
"Some/many/most/all/few. Sentences like Some people think... lead to arguments about how many people actually think that. Is it some people or most people? How many is many people? As a rule, ad populum arguments should be avoided as a general means of providing support for a position."
Again, note the use of "some critics" in the lead. TimidGuy 11:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the guideline gives quite good advice for how to rewrite these instances and thereby avoid ad populum arguments:
Begin quote: The key to improving weasel words in articles is either a) to name a source for the opinion or b) to change opinionated language to concrete facts. Consider, for example, this weaselly sentence: "Some people have suggested that John Smith may be a functional illiterate." Or the equally weaselly, "His critics have suggested that John Smith may be a functional illiterate." If a source for the opinion is cited, the readers can decide for themselves how they feel about the source's reliability, e.g. "Author Ed Jones, in his book John Smith is an Idiot, wrote an open letter to Smith asking, 'John, are you able to read and write on an adult level?'" End quote. TimidGuy 11:52, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I've added information at the beginning of this section giving details about the scale of the research. I propose to also add information about more of the studies, including the research published in the last 10 years on cardiovascular disease. TimidGuy 15:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Sources such as David Orme Johnson [10] may or may not be reliable - it would be good if we could get a little more information on the man in question such as what his area of expertise is, and wether he has the credentials required to be cited here. Sfacets 23:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Here's your objecting parent, Andrew. I'm sure there will be a court case at some point:
http://www.marinij.com/ci_4474770 Sparaig 00:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of instances of redundancy in the article. I fixed one instance by consolidating the two sections on the TM-Sidhi program and the Maharishi Effect. Other instances include repetition of the Canter & Ernst study and repetition of the Rabinoff material. I'd like to consolidate this too. I think I'd like to consolidate all the science-related material into one section with subheads. TimidGuy 11:53, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
I've deleted several instances of conjecture or speculation for which no source was provided. Most recently I deleted a sentence that begins with this: "There appears to be an issue hinted at (though not explicitly formulated)."
It seems like this sort of conjecture isn't within Wikipedia guidelines. Statements should be well sourced. This appears to be original research, which isn't allowed. Someone is making inferences and then presenting it as evidence. In those instances where an expert states and opinion and that opinion is well sourced, as with the quotations from Pagels in the article, then it seems appropriate to use this sort of opinion. TimidGuy 11:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
This page has a lot of problem, but for now I'll stick to one. The website "truth about TM" is, fairly obviously, not a reliable source for scientific claims. I'm left with no choice but to doubt the validity of anything verified from only that source. If some of these things are factually accurate then it should be an easy task to find reliable sources from them. Jefffire 08:35, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
No, it is blatently obvious that "Truth about TM" is not a reliable source for scientific facts. It's clearly a highly pro-TM site, which has an agenda to push, the name alone is proof enough of that. To verify scientific facts, please cite scientific sites, or review articles from mainstream peer reviewed journasl. "Truth about TM" is not, nor will it ever be, a reliable source for scientific data, because it is not scientificaly respected. It is however aceptable to cite it for the claims made by various TM groups, but to cite it to verify facts is a clear WP:RS violation. Jefffire 16:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
None of these entries that you deleted appear to be scientific facts. They are general reporting of what others have said or done. - Will Beback 16:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
WP:RS explicitely states the opposite. "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who has made the edit in question", this means that it is up to whoever inserted the reference to prove that it is reliable. Jefffire 16:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC) Also, are you seriously suggesting that FlameOut is an acceptable source?! Jefffire 17:12, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
To be more explicit, I consider some of these source to be unreliable for "factual" information, and especially scientific information. I am yet to here any reason why TruthaboutTM is a reliable source for such material, and the onus is upon you according to Wikipedia policy. TruthaboutTM blatently has a bias, so I would prefer a site which is unambigously neutral for the material. For example, the statement about the NIH should be sourced from the NIH (preferably), or from an uninvolved party.
The section about students being happier in schools was removed for the general reason that it was completely irrelevent in the section it was in, other sections were removed as clear undue weight violations, such as the comparason between TM and relativity. Jefffire 14:18, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
The section on adverse effects really needs to change. It's based soley on singular circumstantial events, and takes up an inordinate amount of space for something that appears to be of very minor importance. A lot of it could be trimmed out, such as what appears to be original research and slight bias. Jefffire 14:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
C7jgd93
I've practiced TM twice a day for the last 12 years and there's no question that it's valuable and beneficial in many ways; I've also studied Indian philosophy in depth and visited India twice. By any estimate Maharishi's scholarship is superb and his commentaries, insights and translations from Sanskrit very impressive indeed.
However Maharishi and TM are just examples among many gurus and techniques exported from India and certainly the movement doesn't have exclusive claim to spiritual truth and personal development. Many thinkers and Indian philosophers accept the basic authority of the Vedas, among the most profound writings in humanity's possession, and then argue over details and interpretations. This is the sensible way to look at TM- a useful addition to the world's great spiritual backcloth that is the Indian tradition.
lkcl 22sep2006 Askolnick, what i think this anonymous person is trying to say is to point out that the 'editors' are getting a little over-excited, and making quite a mess of the page by not having a broad enough perspective, and that person is pointing out that TM is only one part of a much wider picture, which they have kindly pointed out. one of the editors is known to have been sued (and the lawsuit was unsuccessful) by deepak chopra (when he was still involved in TM) and two other tm organisations. one of the 'pro-tm' people is getting so overexcited that they're throwing out baby and bathwater, and got banned from ever editing wikipedia pages ever again.
this is a difficult subject to cover, not because it's actually difficult to follow and to understand, but because the current world climate is so materialistic and so dark. consequently, TM clashes _really_ badly with the 'Way Things Are'. and the 'Way Things Are' are leading to the destruction of life on this planet. perhaps that's an exaggeration, but the 'Way Things Are' can quite obviously and self-evidently seen to be pretty xxxxing bad: you only have to watch 'Fahrenheit 9/11' to get an inkling of how bad things really are.
so, it's not entirely surprising to find that the article is a pretty good micro-cosmic reflection of the resistance to the effects of TM and its practitioners are having on the world at large. if you believe that there are any effects at all, of course :) see the section 'hmm' below for a good example of what i mean.
As a newcomer to this article, I am amazed it has been allowed to get to this state: Surely the fact that the claims on the founders website quickly prove to be lies (I particularly loved the graphs of various cognative performance improvments which were basically meaningless, and the claim of 100s of scientific studies which, if properly examined, quickly dissappear!), is enough that wikipedia should dismiss the whole concept as "Scientology for gullible meditation-addicts". 128.86.161.242 21:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Simply the article can be termed as ATM antiTranscendental meditation.
For sure every thing has its own side effects .There will be a 10% ill effect in all stuffs existing in the world.I hope this article primarily focusses on the controversies ...i know more people who say they r benifited. We have to remeber that even jesus was crucified in this world.So obviously set of people will be always cristising their extent trying to critisise things.
But it is a shame that wikipedia hosts such writings.For sure the article has to be rewriten to capture best and ill of TM asap.
What i heard from other TM practioners that the mantra used in TM are basic mantras used in ancient vedic books.I dont think repetition of mantra is going to hamper anyones mental health. The thing for sure is that u must not compell and do meditation like a exercise .It will come naturally.It is a mental state without much tensions.Even we sit idle for quite some time we feel pleasantness Repetition of Mantra makes u stay focussed without any much efforts .
As per my opinion TM Meditation practice is simple and i have found lot of people benifited from it.Even i felt bit enregised for around 14 hours in my programming proffession.
Really iam not a supported of TM group but i wish to convey my words and experiences about TM. I have also experienced that iam bit focussed while playing cricket after practising TM.This is true. even iam not a regular practioned of TM.
Some of the rules of meditation 1.Deep sleep and enough sleep is a must and it is better than mediattion. 2.Dont compell urself to sit at Meditation.It will occur naturally like sometimes u may think of
going for a long pleasant walk.
3.Primary things--> rest for 5 mins before and after medittaion 4.Dont do meditation when stomach is loaded or after exercise.
Really meditation has lot of good effects if practised properly.There are lot of ways of meditation . I practised two and found myself comfortable with TM.
Bishonen, this IP address has been used repeatedly to vandalize Wiki articles and it has been blocked several times -- the most recent was just 3 days ago. Any idea what's going on with this IP address? Askolnick 13:25, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
While I agree that citing a newsgroup for Denaro's quote wasn't the best thing (I couldn't find the original online ANYWHERE, so I used the newsgroup reference "just because"), newsgroups CAN be a primary source of info. For instance, the first publication concerning Duff's Device was made by Mr. Duff in a newsgroup exchange. Additionally, the first public analysis that correctly identified the source of the Pentium Bug that I'm aware of was made in a newsgroup discussion. The guy was immediately hired by Intel to head up the team to identify and fix it. Sparaig 15:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Currently, as a volunteer (to get hopefully professional-level experience), I'm doing some 3D animation work for TM researcher Fred Travis, based on the theory of how TM works first proposed in [1]. All I'm doing is creating a 3D illustration of the theory. Is this "original research" or does it fall under the illustration guidelines? Sparaig 16:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Andrew, for all *I* know, it IS a case of adding particles to the hydrogen nucleus. However, *I* am not the one adding the particles. The proposal to add the particles is found in a theoretical paper published in a mainstream journal. All I'm doing is illustrating what the authors claim the particles look like at the request of one of the authors. Sparaig 07:24, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm sure the rest of the wiki community appreciates your tireless efforts to discredit the postings of Peter. I mean, they can't possibly figure where he's coming from on their own... Sparaig 02:59, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
All right, I think archiving round about now might be a good idea. I'm archiving all threads more than three days old in the usual way, same as archives 1-3, shutting my eyes firmly to the novelty of creating archive 4 and 5 by pointing to particular history revisions. Bishonen | talk 23:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC).
Bishonen or anyone else who can figure out what's wrong, please take a look at the footnote section of the TM article. I tried to fix the last footnote in the list, but in the editing mode, none of the footnotes are displayed. Askolnick 19:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
It seems a tad biased to cite the same court ruling in 2 sections: learning TM and TM controversy. Sparaig 08:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, let me contrive ways to include the phrase "founder of the award winning K-12 school in Iowa" in several places... Sparaig 22:10, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
just clarified a few matters... Sparaig 22:27, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
As an aside, Dr. Coplin says MMY was born in 1912, so now we have a THIRD date.
This is from this guy's PhD dissertation in Sociology.
Socio-Historical Context for SRM's Emergence
SRM as Cultural Revitalization
Sparaig
17:28, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
An anonymous user has tried to sanitize this article by removing all material concerning allegations of Maharishi's sexual misconduct, which was well-documented. I therefore replaced it. (He/she had even removed the part about the most famous of all of Maharishi's past and present followers - the Beatles!). For the record, here is the rule he/she claimed justified his/her deletion:
Because the information he/she removed was well-sourced, that deletion was improper and needed to be restored. Askolnick 12:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Crossposting. Sorry guys, I wasn't watching very closely. I have now blocked Peterklutz's entire IP range for a month to give you a bit of peace. I'm hoping it won't cause a lot of collateral damage to innocent anons. And if he starts riding the open proxies again, I suppose I'll semiprotect Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Transcendental meditation if you give me a shout. Mind you, MMY is such a mess anyway... anybody feel like cleaning it up a bit? Bishonen | talk 02:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC).
The Maharishi University of Management which is invoked as a source for the early 1970s research at UCLA and Harvard in the section "Procedures and Theory" is a really bad source in such a context. (By contrast, it might well be a good source for, say, TM teachings and doctrine.) If you click on the link to the MUM website, it turns out to refer in turn, vaguely, to publication "from 1970 to 1972 in the respected journals Science, American Journal of Physiology, and Scientific American." Bah. What we need for the TM article are direct references to those published studies in those (indeed) respected journals. If those references exist somewhere on the MUM site, I haven't found them. I request that somebody takes the time to look up the 1970 to 1972 issues of the original journals and produces real references. The dream would be web versions of the articles in question, of course. If this is not done within a reasonable space of time, say four weeks from today, I'm going to remove the whole thing as unsourced. Talking about Harvard and Scientific American, while actually only having access to MUM's selected and rephrased version of what's in them just doesn't fly. Bishonen | talk 16:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=Pager&DB=pubmed
keyword: wallace RK
22: Wallace RK, Benson H, Wilson AF. Related Articles, Links
A wakeful hypometabolic physiologic state.
Am J Physiol. 1971 Sep;221(3):795-9. No abstract available. PMID: 5570336 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 23: Wallace RK. Related Articles, Links
[Physiological effects of transcendental meditation]
Rev Bras Med. 1970 Aug;27(8):397-401. Portuguese. No abstract available. PMID: 5487313 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] 24: Wallace RK. Related Articles, Links
Physiological effects of transcendental meditation.
Science. 1970 Mar 27;167(926):1751-4. No abstract available. PMID: 5416544 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Sheesh. Earliest published research, all the ducks right in a row. That you don't trust MUM to get the references by their founding president right speaks volumes about you... Sparaig 17:34, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
BTW, for some reason, the 1972 Scientific American study doesn't show up in medline, but Herbert Benson has photos of it as well as the charts taken from it on his website Relaxation Response homepage:
[5] Sparaig 17:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I am just trying to understand Bishonen's earlier reverts about my heading changes. In fact I had applied what any German (I am german) Journalist would do, not being aware of the use of subjunctive in English. You might want to read this [6]:'By using the special subjunctive, the newspaper is asserting its own neutrality concerning the claim's veracity. English does not provide so elegant a means. "He said that he was an honest person" - as opposed to "He said that he is an honest person" - is a kind of modified subjunctive that provides some distance, but it cannot be sustained over longer passages as easily as German's special subjunctive. Instead, English must rely on words like "allegedly" and frequent repetitions of "he said...."' I am glad you left my second suggestion, even though I don't think its optimal..But let me just make a few points: That something is said to be claim, doesn't mean that one has to leave a 'neutral voice', the claim can be cited in a self-distancing voice and should be so in WP for NPOV. According to the article [7] the english subjunctive would be something like this: 'He said that he was an honest person' In our case the headings would be:
etc. instead of
etc. As I am no native English speaker, its hard for me to decide which one is more neutral. I would also be interested in the opinion of Spairag
I had erased increasingly from the sentence: Still, the link between TM and Hinduism, from where the movement's founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi comes, appears to become increasingly evident as time passes. Askolnik commented If these were NPOV, they wouldn't be complaints of critics. The comment is already qualified by "appears": "increasingly" is important point of the critics.) But this seems to be a wrong use of language, because, either something is evident or not. Of course something can become evident, but once it is evident, it is simply evident. So the qualifier increasingly is really completely unnecessary, and is in fact just a phrase of rethoric to emphazise. Askolnik argues that this is what the critics say, but here critics is just a generic term without anybody specific being cited. In stating the opinion of critics - in fact in a general way - any aditional emphazis should be avoided because of NPOV. WP policies state that the reader of the article should have the impression that the whole article is written in one voice, and that he cannot make out at any point the opinion of the editor. Leaving off words like 'increasingly' is just one example of following this rule. In fact, I think one should avoidof making POV statements, by (only vaguely) disguising them as anonymous statements. You can always say: Critics say: and then say whatever you want, but even then you have to take care of the tone AFAIunderstand. As long as you don't have a specific quote, within quotqtion marks, one should follow a distanced style, and avoid any expressive or strengthening words. Otherwise its a minor thing to me, and I won't fight for it, but all these things tend to add up. Even words like Still, .. express opinion. You can look it up in the WP guidelines.So I tried to make a better suggestion -- hanuman ॐ ^ 19:09, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't think Maharishi has ever said he "developed" Transcendental Medtiation. He always seems to credit Guru Dev and the Vedic tradition. So I changed it to "introduced," which is more commonly used. TimidGuy 19:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
He refined the technique into its current minimalist form and developed the teacher training process. Sparaig 10:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I think I'll change it to "first introduced." TimidGuy 15:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
The Guideline on Words to avoid says that the word "claim" shouldn't be used because "it carries a very strong connotation of dubiousness." I'd like to change the lead to remove this word, and thereby foster a more neutral point of view. As I have time, I may change other instances in this article. I hope everyone will agree with this. TimidGuy 15:10, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Apologies. I should have included an item on the Talk page about the change of "techniques" to "technique." My thinking was that Transcendental Meditation and the TM-Sidhi program are different tecnhiques. The majority of people who learn Transcendental Meditation don't also learn the TM-Sidhi program. Maybe we should consider focusing on Transcendental Mediation in this entry, and then have a separate entry for the TM-Sidhi program. And thanks for removing the redundancy in my earlier edit. I thought of that right after I posted it. TimidGuy 16:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Wow. Strong words. I guess that's my official welcome. : ) TimidGuy 17:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I hope we can work together to create an excellent Wikipedia entry, one that satisfies both of our perceptions of the reality of the situation. TimidGuy 20:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm new and am still trying to figure out how this works. I was just looking at the History, and it looks as if Askolnick added a section about Maharishi claiming that thousands levitate. Was this discussed in the Talk section? Do the Guidelines require that it be discussed because this has been flagged a controversial article? Thanks for patience with newbies. TimidGuy
(Wrote this before I saw your nice contribution, askolnick, on my talk page, which clearly explained that indeed it's necessary to discuss changes.) TimidGuy
Thanks much. This does raise a question in my mind, though, about the extent of the material that keeps getting added to this article.
I've skimmed the guidelines and feel that I have at least a vague understanding of NPOV, how to handle differing views, reputable souces, etc. But in my cursory look at the guidelines I haven't yet seen any related to the overall shape and scope of an article. For example, suppose I were to add well-sourced material in each of the sections that seem to me to be anti-TM so that both points of view are represented. It seems like the article will become impossibly long. In fact, it already seems a little shapeless and unwieldy. It's hard for me to imagine how this article could ever evolve to a point where it's on a par with some of the truly extraodinary Wikipedia articles that I've seen. No doubt as I get more experience I'll have a sense for how this could work, but right now it's hard to envision. TimidGuy 15:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Not at all. I'm just trying to imagine, given the way that things are headed, how we could ever arrive at an excellent article. But your comments are very helpful, and I realize that editors involved in contentious articles can have a more modest goal. I really appreciate your taking the time to respond. TimidGuy
I see that David Spector added a new section, which was discussed during July. Since this material doesn't reference a reputable source would it be considered "original research" and therefore disallowed? Thanks. TimidGuy 21:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Gradually I learn this. It's helpful to have this understanding of common knowledge not needing to be sourced. What I meant to say was that there seemed to be background information in his post that wasn't referenced on these pages, making it "original research." But truthfully, I had only glanced at them. And in any case, the common knowledge argument would make it acceptable. TimidGuy 11:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Hello, Sparaig. Yes, you're right. And it does seem a little odd that he uses this article as an ad for his technique. TimidGuy 14:48, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
In the Randi section of this article, there's a statement that reads "Randi concluded that Rabinoff's data were simply made up." I've read through that section of Randi's book twice and can't find where Randi concludes that. I even got out my reading glasses the second time to make sure I didn't miss something. : ) Could someone direct me to the page number where he says it? Thanks! TimidGuy 12:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I checked Carroll's page and found that he cites the book. So I got the book. Carroll's page says that Randi reported in his book that Rabinoff did a study related to crime, accidents, and crop production and invented the data. Rabinoff never did a study on crime, accidents, and crop production. TimidGuy 18:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I deleted "However" from the fourth sentence in the lead because Wiki guidelines say that the word "can imply that one alternative is less favored than another". In other words, it can imply that the latter insertion is true or better. They suggest the format: "A asserts Y. Others, including B, believe Z." This change seems to better reflect that suggestion. I eliminated "the nature of the movement itself" because the phrase seems vague and meaningless. First of all, we're describing TM in the entry, not a "movement" (whatever that is) and to question the "nature" of something appears here to be pejorative and unsubstantiated. Who are these critics and what exactly are they saying? I eliminated the final sentence, as the guidelines say it's often best to avoid the term "cult" except in specific, non-controversial contexts. Moreover, the sentence doesn't answer "who" these critics are, how many they number, and why they feel it's a "cult" as they define that. If one feels there's enough data to support this issue, it should be dealt with elsewhere in the context of specific clarifications, accompanied by the opposing view offered from those (many) who feel that it's not a "cult" at all. Purple iris 04:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)Purple Iris
Just as I feared, our new editor has touched off an edit war. Purple and TimidGuy, you are both Single Purpose Account editors. You are not going to win any edit war here, so please stop. If you want to make contentious changes to the article, you need to convince other editors of your point of view on this talk page first. Otherwise, I will ask an administrator to protect the article. Askolnick 12:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I've been making some changes to the research section, primarily replacing a couple of references to reports that appear to have been largely written from TM press releases rather than the actual studies. I've replaced them with links to the abstracts of the published studies, which more accurately describe the research. For example, the Forbes article exaggerates the study's findings: "Transcendental meditation (TM) reduces hypertension and cuts down on the need for blood pressure-lowering medications." The researcher's published conclusion is much more careful and cautious: TM "may be useful as an adjunct in the long-term treatment of hypertension in African Americans." Such a mistatement can cause a great deal of harm by convincing people with life-threatening hypertension that they should meditate instead of medicate. Even worse, the last statement about published research (re effect on pain) was not only inaccurate and misleading, it didn't even identify the reference! This section concerns published research, not exaggerations of research findings published in lay media. So I think it should stick to describing the actual research, rather than how it is being hyped. Askolnick 15:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
In two instances the article seeks to discredit the research on the Transcendental Meditation technique, which includes 160 peer-reviewed studies, by citing an allegation made in The Skeptic’s Dictionary by Todd Carroll.
These instances are:
“However, many critics, such as James Randi and Robert Todd Carroll, author of the Skeptic's Dictionary[16], charge that most of this research is either trivial, poorly designed and conducted, or even cooked up . . . .”
“James Randi, noted skeptic and critic of paranormal claims, investigated the claims of Dr. Robert Rabinoff, an MUM physics professor and researcher on the "Maharishi effect," that a large gathering of TM meditators had reduced crime and accidents and increased crop production in the vicinity of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. After speaking with the Fairfield Police Department, the Iowa Department of Agriculture, and Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles, Randi concluded that Rabinoff's data were simply made up [18]” [The citation given is to Carroll’s The Skeptic’s Dictionary.]
In the first instance the allegation is that the research is “cooked up.” In the second, it’s alleged that Rabinoff’s data “were simply made up.”
Here is the relevant paragraph from The Skeptic’s Dictionary in which Carroll says that Rabinoff did a study and says that, according to Randi, the data was invented:
“One TM study by a MUM physics professor, Dr. Robert Rabinoff, claimed that the Maharishi effect was responsible for reducing crime and accidents while simultaneously increasing crop production in the vicinity of Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa. James Randi checked with the Fairfield Police Dept, the Iowa Dept of Agriculture, and the Dept of Motor Vehicles and found that the Rabinoff’s data was invented (Randi 1982, 99-108).”
In summary, the allegation is that Rabinoff did a study on the Maharishi Effect as it relates to crime, accidents, and crop production and that he made up the data.
The problem with this is that Rabinoff has never done a study on the Maharishi Effect as it relates to crime, auto accidents, and crop production. The only record of this study is in Carroll’s The Skeptic’s Dictionary. This study cannot be found in any index of scientific literature. It is not contained in the multi-volume work that collects all research done on the Transcendental Meditation technique. The director of research at the time when this alleged study was supposed to have been done, David Orme-Johnson, says that Rabinoff didn’t do research on crime, auto accidents, and crop production. Further, Rabinoff wasn’t engaged in research on Transcendental Meditation during the time period in question. The one study that he did do, related to weather, came two years later.
I propose that if this article is to include a reference to claims that Rabinoff made at a meeting of a small group at the University of Oregon in 1978, we not use Carroll, given that he inaccurately represents what Randi says. We should directly use Randi, and try to be accurate. TimidGuy 17:35, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you, askolnick, for your comments. I appreciate your helping to try to sort out this extremely important issue.
I don’t quite understand, though, your response. First you say that you feel the reference to Carroll in the context of Rabinoff should stand. Yet you seem to be agreeing that there are inaccuracies in Carroll’s paragraph in which he says that Rabinoff did a study and made up the data. And you agree that Rabinoff didn’t do the study.
It makes no sense for Wikipedia to reference a problematic secondary source (Carroll referencing Randi) when we can simply present the primary source (Randi). (And, one hopes, do it accurately.) TimidGuy 20:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I’ve shown that the Wikipedia entry on the Transcendental Meditation technique references an error contained in The Skeptic’s Encyclopedia, which alleges that Robert Rabinoff did a study and made up the data.
I’m gong to delete the reference to The Skeptic’s Encyclopedia in the paragraph discussing Rabinoff. In addition, I’m going to make a minor edit in the following phrase:
"Randi concluded that Rabinoff's data were simply made up [18]"
Randi didn’t say this in the chapter.
I’m going to change it to “Randi was unable to verify Rabinoff’s claims.”
And I’m also going to qualify the description of Rabinoff as a researcher on the Maharishi Effect, since he only did one study, and that came a couple years after the incident. I’m also going to add a phrase that says that this was during a talk to a small group at the University of Oregon.
These may seem like small changes, but the entry in Wikipedia alleges that most of the hundreds of studies on Transcendental Meditation are “cooked up.” And the allegation that Rabinoff did a study and made up the data is offered as evidence.
Rabinoff MAY have made unsubstantiated claims when speaking to a small group at the University of Oregon in 1978, and if he did that’s reprehensible. But it’s not the same as publishing a study with fabricated data. An encyclopedia entry should be precise. TimidGuy 20:41, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you that we don't know whether Rabinoff claimed to have done the research he mentioned. But that's exactly what's wrong with Carroll's account. He says that Rabinoff did it. TimidGuy 21:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
By the way, a good place for the Carroll citation would be in the sentence where it's claimed that the research is trivial. TimidGuy 20:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
When I first read this article, I came away with the impression that Rabinoff had published a study and made up the data. I think most readers come away with that impression. And I want to correct that by making the changes I stated.
I rest my case.
Regarding the point about the research being trivial. I was referring to the sentence in this article that says that most of the research is " either trivial, poorly designed and conducted, or even cooked up." Since there is no citation there, and since Carroll claims that most of the research is trivial, I thought that this would be a better place for a Carroll citation. TimidGuy 11:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I wrote "first read this article." I meant this article on Transcendental Meditation. And the impression I got when I first read it -- and the impression I had until I looked at Randi. TimidGuy 17:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I would like to discuss the last sentence of the lead paragraph, "Many critics consider the TM movement a religious cult." Askolnick insists that this sentence be kept in because it is well-substantiated and "noteworthy". I'd like to clarify with some questions, because I think clarification would serve any reader of this entry. 1) Who is the 'cult'? Is it Donovan, or David Lynch, or my sister practicing TM in Boston? Is it the athletes who have practiced TM through the years, or the rabbis, or the politicians? Just who are we talking about here? 2) Who are these critics - could you list them? Who commissioned a report for the French government on cults and what does it actually say? 3) Could you define 'cult' for me? Definitions range from "collective veneration" to "system of religious worship and ritual" to "transient fad" to "an interest followed with exaggerated zeal" to "groups that have deviated from normative religions in belief and practice" "followers under the guidance of a charismatic leader" and so on. The dictionary definitions vary widely. Is a cult just what someone thinks it is, or are there objective criteria for it as it's used in Wikipedia and this entry? If so, what are those criteria? Thanks for attention to this.
I forgot to sign my name above. 21:38, 18 September 2006 (UTC)Purple Iris Purple iris
I added some detail about the demolition on campus. It had a sort of odd ant-Christian emphasis. And removed the word "however" according to the guidelines on words to avoid. TimidGuy 11:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
lkcl 22sep2006 heya timidguy: yeh, i replaced 'facing public resistance' with 'facing controversy', because actually if you read the whole of the article that was referred to, it is the _top_ of the article that highlights the 'facing public resistance'. actually, the knock-down plans were approved pretty much straight away by the local council, due to the increase in taxes that would be received; plus, the cost of keeping the monastery running is about $USD 500,000 per year: the local councillors _understand_ why - simply on practical grounds - that the movement wants to do away with such a decrepid and badly-built building. they are quoted as saying 'there's a reason why the monks abandoned it'!
Thanks for fixing this. Good points. TimidGuy 20:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
transcendental meditation is a technique - nothing more. i am genuinely surprised by the respect given to hinduism on wikipedia, as compared to the mess made of transcendental meditation - but that is beside the point i want to make.
the point i want to make needs some explanation. all religions have one goal: to reach 'God'. what religions DON'T do is proscribe a simple technique by which that can be achieved. in fact, most religions make quite a mess of it. they usually have a leader, whose example you are advised to follow, because those leaders are human, and it is considered easier for humans to relate to other humans (and this is where 'cults' get their power: they emphasise the following-of-the-leader). they usually have a book of words, which you are expected to read: this book gives you examples of the kind of lifestyle that you are expected to follow.
mostly, however, proscribed religion, as followed by billions of people, is actually quite sad (and has been for thousands of years). ... then again - there are many people for whom religion is successfully working: these peoples lives are genuinely spiritual and genuinely improved by their adherence to religious practices.
so, on the one hand we have religion, where you are expected to... well... work out for yourself what you are expected to reach (spiritual enlightenment) - through examples handed down from leader to books and your peers; on the other hand, we have transcendental meditation which is a very specific technique which actually has a well-documented effect on the mind and body, the practice of which is claimed to help short-cut the goal of reaching spiritual enlightenment... AND it is claimed, by the transcendental meditation leader that this technique was at one time a world-wide recognised part of virtually every known religion - and that this technique was lost - ironically because it was so common that nobody thought that it would ever be lost.
putting that in a nutshell: TM is a technique aimed at short-cutting your way to spiritual enlightenment by jacking your mind and body into some deep cosmic well of universal one-ness; religion is a way of life by which you are expected to somehow absorb spiritual enlightenment on your own - presumably by osmosis.
now.
why is it so hellishly difficult for people to get this through their thick heads?? [such that even the CIA have to target the transcendental meditation movement and try to take control of it, with a view to either usurping it or destroying it]
i can't answer that - i can only give you some hints. things to consider:
the TM movement's adherents are people; these people are human. some of them are a mess (and would be a worse mess if it wasn't for TM. they really shouldn't be let out on their own ;) and perhaps a TM centre is the best place for them! but that isn't the point of TM: it's not an escape). some of them are actually quite successful people, getting on with their lives - and they swear by TM that it helps them to make their lives better and more productive, and more enjoyable. some of these people are religious; some of them are not.
collectively, overall, however, you see a group of people whose adherance to specific practices are 'akin' to religion.... but it's not _actually_ religion. this might take some explaining - oh dear: i'll try.
the fundamental thing behind transcendental meditation is something that they call 'Natural Law' - i.e. the 'Laws of Nature'. these 'laws' have some fundamental grounding in mathematics - quantum mechanics etc. which i don't pretend to understand - but they 'express' out into things like 'karma', 'gravity', 'intelligence as the unifying force which answers physicists holy grail quest for Grand Unified Theories' and of course 'the practice of repeating a mantra quietly and effortlessly as a means to attune a human psyche in line with the laws of nature - a bit like catching a wave when going surfing'.
it is claimed that the laws of nature can be expressed as mathematical equations, the terms of which can be each be represented by a symbol, which in turn can be 'spoken' directly in sanskrit. further levels of expansion of these mathematical equations into further terms results in further symbols, each of which again can be spoken as a phrase in sanskrit.
ultimately, it is claimed, these mathematical equations express the entire vedic scriptures.
(and if you believe what steven hawking is saying about the black hole memory effect - notice i said 'believe' because you really have to be a rocket scientist to understand steven hawking, otherwise you just have to take his statements at face value - i.e. you have to just trust and believe him. anyway: if you believe what steven hawking is saying about the black hole memory effect, namely that the black hole has a memory of what went into it, but the storage is 'compressed' - it's not so difficult to imagine that there might be a mathematical formula, its terms and the derivatives of its terms so elegant that it can be expressed in an actual spoken language, now, is it?)
anyway.
the point is that there are certain practices - certain ways of living - that fundamentally make humans much better off than they would be without them, and these ways of living are a beautiful expression of humans living in harmony with - and respecting - the Laws of Nature.
it _just_ so happens that many religions - and the adherents to those religions - get it right.
it _just_ so happens that the practitioners of transcendental meditation are _lucky_ enough to have access to someone who actually _understands_ what the hell is going on enough to _explain_ to people where those practices (which some religious adherents get right) happen to come from!
it _just_ so happens that a lot of the practitioners of transcendental meditation happen to _follow_ what their leader is saying is a 'Good Idea' on account of it being 'in tune with the laws of nature'.
consequently, practitioners of transcendental meditation _look_ like over-zealous religious fruitcakes - with their 'sexism' and their 'desire to destroy ancient revered monuments' - but actually for the most part, most of them are simply following the path to enlightenment and respecting the Laws of Nature.
and, due to the times in which we are living, which are pretty damn dark, what with science being the be-all and xxxxing end-all of most arguments - _including_ on wikipedia, where 'that which we can experience' cannot be a 'Point of View' because it is classed as 'Subjective' and 'Un-Scientific', it is perhaps not surprising that TM and its practitioners run flat-out into brick walls, and, rather unexpectedly, steam-roll their way over, round and through what _you_ thought was a brick wall.
so. in short: transcendental meditation isn't a religion, it's a technique. the practice of transcendental meditation encourages you and helps you to achieve the same end-result which religions try to get their followers to stick to. it's all to the same goal - enlightenment - so stop friggin arguing about it and get on with it! :)
lkcl 22sep2006
essay? i suppose it is :) i was just getting a bit fed up with seeing so much misinformation, and TM is a deceptively simple topic, from which a heck of a lot stems (and therein lies the confusion). yeh i'll look something up. there are a couple of news articles about how sthapadya ved has resulted in brushfires in california PARTING AND REJOINING around even just the _land_ that had had the ceremonies done. in the reports that i heard about, one plot had its fence singed (wow big deal), and it was the only one which had had a swimming pool built. the experts in sthapatya ved said that it was because the swimming pool was too close to the boundary of the plot, and also it put the plot out-of-balance. i.e. if they wanted a damn swimming pool they should have damn well said so when they had the place built, and it could have been taken into account. duh. but - yes, really, styapatya ved should really have its own section. Lkcl 02:52, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
from http://vedicarchitecture.org/ezine/2004_04.html
"...Then, as the fire roared up to the home from the National Forest only 50 feet away, the 40 to 60 mph winds made a sudden 90 degree shift and instantly the fire passed directly outside of the house's Vastu fence. This sudden sift allowed the Worlands to evacuate in safety and, the house and everything in or near the Vastu to be saved. After shifting the blaze away from the house, ten minutes later the wind shifted back to its original direction and consumed the acreage directly behind the home. The fire went on to destroy 3500 homes, and hundreds of thousands of acres of land. But its first would-be victim was spared by a remarkable last minute shift in the wind."
from http://www.maharishi-european-sidhaland.org.uk/News.htm
"... A friend phoned from Ramona, in the midst of the path of the fires..."
"... Another building was in process of being constructed with everything marked out and just the first timbers in place. It had nothing more than a piece of string marking the Vastu fence position. The fires surrounded the place, ate the string, but did not cross that vastu fence line. "
what is sthapatya ved: http://www.ads-vastu.com/whatissthapatyaved.html
hm. finding "official" news sources - ones where the newsreporters go 'duhhhh, we don't understaaaaand what haaaappunnnnd. duhhhh' are proving elusive. i'll have to ask around if anyone has kept any links to online articles. i tried lots of different google searches - couldn't find anything. Lkcl 03:09, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
In the section TM-Sidhi Program and The Maharishi Effect, there's a seeming criticism when a reporter asks, an 23% reduction in crime compared to what.
This is easily explained, and I propose to add an explanation, based on what the study says. Crime is known to fluctuate widely based on the weather. Had the course been held in October, the crime rate would have fallen -- because it would have been expected to fall anyway. So critics would suggest that the decrease in crime be relative to the decrease already expected.
The course was held in summer, at a time when crime typically shoots up. The prediction was that there would be a decrease relative to the expected rate. And that's what the study showed. TimidGuy 15:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I also propose to add a paragraph addressing the criticism of Park that the Washington DC experiment was a "clinic in data manipulation." I'll cite Maxwell Rainforth's refutation that appeared in Skeptical Inquirer and a longer version that appears online.
I would also like to delete two sentences which have factual errors.
"It took the authors nearly six years to find a journal that would publish the study." The experiment was done in 1993 and the analysis of data was completed in 1994. Whoever wrote this would need to determine when the journal article was completed and the authors began submitting it. It would also need to be determined when it was accepted for publication (often there's a space of 6 months to 2 years between acceptance and publication). But the period in question couldn't be six years, since the study was published in 1999.
"He didn't explain why the United States has increasingly become embroiled in violence and conflict throughout the world[27], even though there are nearly 2000 Sidhas in Fairfield, Iowa alone[28]." The hypothesis is that the effect is created when people practice the TM-Sidhi program together in a large group. There are not 2,000 practicing together as a group in Fairfield. The most recent totals have fluctuated between 1,000-1,250. TimidGuy 15:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
A source is needed for the following:
"What astounded the critics most was the TM researchers' excuse for why Washington D.C.'s murder rate during the study periord had climbed to the highest rate in history. It would have been much higher had the TM meditators not meditated, the researchers explained."
It's hard to believe that the researchers said this. This simple answer is that statistical methods reveal an aggregate truth but don't predict the behavior of individual elements that are part of the aggregate. Murder rate constitutes 3% of the aggregate. In other areas there was a dramatic decline. TimidGuy 11:55, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I propose to delete the above sentence. It needs a source for the critics' perspective and for the researchers' response. This point is more properly made in the other Maharishi Effect section with Park's point about the murder rate. I'll post Maxwell Rainforth's reply that appeared in Skeptical Inquirer and that appears online. And as propsed in the other thread, I hope to consolidate these two sections anyway. TimidGuy 11:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
It's odd that there are two sections about the Maharishi effect. There is almost complete redundancy between them. I suggest combining the two sections. And since most of the material in the first instance deals with issues and controveries, I suggest that the best location for the combined section would be in the Issues and Controversies section. TimidGuy 11:22, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
TG, I reversed many of your changes. I briefly explained them in the edit summaries. I want to comment a bit more here about the bogus Washington DC crime study. You quoted from it, including a nonsensical claim that crime leves can be "accurately" predicted from temperature. That's nonsense. While there's a well-noted increase in crime rates associated with days of hot temperatures, many other things influence violent crime rates. It's nonsensical to claim that one can "accurately predict" violent crime levels by average temperature. And to see just how pathological this TM study and apologetics are, please note how they explained the higher murder rate - they simply discarded 10 murders from their calculations - by calling them a statistical "outlier"!!! That is pure data manipulation. It accounts for why it took Hagelin nearly six years to find journal editors williing to publish this claptrap. Park accurately describes this study and the pseudoscience polemics that followed as a "clinic in data manipulation." Askolnick 16:45, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Study coauthor David Orme-Johnson responded to this point. At this time I don't propose to change the article, though, since I feel like the paragraph in question reads well.
Here's what he said:
"The issue is not that crime can be 'accurately' predicted by temperature, but that temperature does have to be taken into account in assessing crime rate change, since it increases during summer months relative to colder months. The prediction of crime from the temperature is not exact, but is a mean value that is bracketed by a measure of deviation, the standard error of the mean. The mean and standard errors of the mean are based on how temperature has affected crime in the past. If the actual values of crime during an intervention are less than (or more than) two standard errors from the mean, it means that it is highly unlikely that they occurred by chance, given the known effects of temperature on crime. That is, the effect is said to be statistically significant. That means that given the way in which crime has covariate with temperature in the past, something new and different happened during the intervention. State-of-the-art methodology for assessing the effects of crime was used in this study, and that is why it passed peer review and was published in Social Indicators Research, the leading technical journal in this field. Also, it is quite common for there to be a substantial lag between an experiment and its republication, especially when the research steps outside standard dogma.
"It is true that many other factors besides temperature influence crime, such as percentage of the population being males under 30 years old, percent of the population in poverty, population density, percent of the population unemployed, etc. However, these factors do not change appreciably on a day-to-day timescale, and therefore are not relevant to this study. Temperature is the only measure of all factor that change on a daily basis, which is relevant to crime." TimidGuy 11:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
The Wikipedia guideline "avoid weasel words" has this to say:
"Weasel words are words or phrases that seemingly support statements without attributing opinions to verifiable sources. Weasel words give the force of authority to a statement without letting the reader decide if the source of the opinion is reliable. If a statement can't stand on its own without weasel words, it lacks neutral point of view; either a source for the statement should be found, or the statement should be removed."
Also:
"Weasel words don't really give a neutral point of view; they just spread hearsay, or couch personal opinion in vague, indirect syntax. It is better to put a name and a face on an opinion than to assign an opinion to an anonymous source."
One of the phrases it advises against using is "critics say that...." I do think this needs to be addressed in the article and propose to give this some attention. TimidGuy 15:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Hello, Sfacets. Note that there are two instances of this in the lead. In the second instance, for example, I'd like to mention a specific book or journal or academic expert in the sentence about TM being a cult rather than saying "some critics." Then I'd like to balance that by adding a sentence that presents the other point of view. Seems like this would be more in accord with NPOV. It would also address the fact that the usage of "cult" in the lead isn't in accord with the guideline on Words to avoid. The sentence would read something like: "In his book, titled xxx, so and so says that the organization that teaches Transcendental Meditation has characteristics of a cult."
I counted 11 instances of the use of "critics" in the article. In a few cases the usage may be OK, but in many instances it seems like we'd do well to heed the advice of the guideline if we want to create an effective Wikipedia article. TimidGuy 15:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Also note this guideline:
"Some/many/most/all/few. Sentences like Some people think... lead to arguments about how many people actually think that. Is it some people or most people? How many is many people? As a rule, ad populum arguments should be avoided as a general means of providing support for a position."
Again, note the use of "some critics" in the lead. TimidGuy 11:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the guideline gives quite good advice for how to rewrite these instances and thereby avoid ad populum arguments:
Begin quote: The key to improving weasel words in articles is either a) to name a source for the opinion or b) to change opinionated language to concrete facts. Consider, for example, this weaselly sentence: "Some people have suggested that John Smith may be a functional illiterate." Or the equally weaselly, "His critics have suggested that John Smith may be a functional illiterate." If a source for the opinion is cited, the readers can decide for themselves how they feel about the source's reliability, e.g. "Author Ed Jones, in his book John Smith is an Idiot, wrote an open letter to Smith asking, 'John, are you able to read and write on an adult level?'" End quote. TimidGuy 11:52, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I've added information at the beginning of this section giving details about the scale of the research. I propose to also add information about more of the studies, including the research published in the last 10 years on cardiovascular disease. TimidGuy 15:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Sources such as David Orme Johnson [10] may or may not be reliable - it would be good if we could get a little more information on the man in question such as what his area of expertise is, and wether he has the credentials required to be cited here. Sfacets 23:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Here's your objecting parent, Andrew. I'm sure there will be a court case at some point:
http://www.marinij.com/ci_4474770 Sparaig 00:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
There are a number of instances of redundancy in the article. I fixed one instance by consolidating the two sections on the TM-Sidhi program and the Maharishi Effect. Other instances include repetition of the Canter & Ernst study and repetition of the Rabinoff material. I'd like to consolidate this too. I think I'd like to consolidate all the science-related material into one section with subheads. TimidGuy 11:53, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
I've deleted several instances of conjecture or speculation for which no source was provided. Most recently I deleted a sentence that begins with this: "There appears to be an issue hinted at (though not explicitly formulated)."
It seems like this sort of conjecture isn't within Wikipedia guidelines. Statements should be well sourced. This appears to be original research, which isn't allowed. Someone is making inferences and then presenting it as evidence. In those instances where an expert states and opinion and that opinion is well sourced, as with the quotations from Pagels in the article, then it seems appropriate to use this sort of opinion. TimidGuy 11:48, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
This page has a lot of problem, but for now I'll stick to one. The website "truth about TM" is, fairly obviously, not a reliable source for scientific claims. I'm left with no choice but to doubt the validity of anything verified from only that source. If some of these things are factually accurate then it should be an easy task to find reliable sources from them. Jefffire 08:35, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
No, it is blatently obvious that "Truth about TM" is not a reliable source for scientific facts. It's clearly a highly pro-TM site, which has an agenda to push, the name alone is proof enough of that. To verify scientific facts, please cite scientific sites, or review articles from mainstream peer reviewed journasl. "Truth about TM" is not, nor will it ever be, a reliable source for scientific data, because it is not scientificaly respected. It is however aceptable to cite it for the claims made by various TM groups, but to cite it to verify facts is a clear WP:RS violation. Jefffire 16:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
None of these entries that you deleted appear to be scientific facts. They are general reporting of what others have said or done. - Will Beback 16:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
WP:RS explicitely states the opposite. "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who has made the edit in question", this means that it is up to whoever inserted the reference to prove that it is reliable. Jefffire 16:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC) Also, are you seriously suggesting that FlameOut is an acceptable source?! Jefffire 17:12, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
To be more explicit, I consider some of these source to be unreliable for "factual" information, and especially scientific information. I am yet to here any reason why TruthaboutTM is a reliable source for such material, and the onus is upon you according to Wikipedia policy. TruthaboutTM blatently has a bias, so I would prefer a site which is unambigously neutral for the material. For example, the statement about the NIH should be sourced from the NIH (preferably), or from an uninvolved party.
The section about students being happier in schools was removed for the general reason that it was completely irrelevent in the section it was in, other sections were removed as clear undue weight violations, such as the comparason between TM and relativity. Jefffire 14:18, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
The section on adverse effects really needs to change. It's based soley on singular circumstantial events, and takes up an inordinate amount of space for something that appears to be of very minor importance. A lot of it could be trimmed out, such as what appears to be original research and slight bias. Jefffire 14:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)