Meditation, Delusion and Deception

TM is a religion

Federal courts ruled years ago that Maharishi's TM is a religion. Malnak v. Yogi, 440 F.Supp. 1284 (1977), affirmed, 592 F.2d 197 (3rd Cir. 1979). Government funding to propagate TM is therefore unconstitutional.

During the Carter Administration the Department of Health, Education & Welfare (HEW) and the New Jersey Department of Education funded an "experiment" to teach TM and its "Science of Creative Intelligence" (TM/SCI) as an elective in five public high schools. Teachers specially-trained by TM taught students four or five days a week. If it "worked" the course would be taught state-wide.

Several parents, the Spritual Counterfeits Project, Inc. (a Christian group based in Berkeley, California) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State asked the U.S. District Court for New Jersey to enjoin this experiment. These plaintiffs argued that TM was a religion and that the teaching of TM in public schools and the government funding were both an "Establishment of Religion" in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. TM representatives argued that TM is a secular science, not a religion.

Federal Judge J. Curtis Meanor ruled that TM is a religion. He enjoined HEW Secretary Joseph A. Califano, Jr., N.J. Commissioner Fred G. Burke, school officials and TM's umbrella organization itself from using public funds to propagate TM. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia unanimously affirmed. Judge Meanor's injunction is still in effect today.

These judges looked to the religious nature of Maharishi's SCI textbook, which was being taught, and the religious nature of his puja initiation ceremony which TMers must go through individually to receive their secret meditation mantra. Without that mantra it is impossible to practice TM.

At the compulsory puja ceremony, held outside the school building, each student brought some fruit, flowers and a clean white handkerchief which were taken and laid on a table in a closed room. The student's teacher would bow and make offerings many times to an 8" by 12" color photograph of Guru Dev, said to be Maharishi's teacher, who had died in the 1950s. Each student's teacher also sang a chant in Sanksrit and the student received "his own personal mantra which is never to be revealed to any other person." 592 F.2d at 198.

TM witnesses swore that the chant was a purely secular expression of gratitude to teachers. However, Judge Meanor read an English translation prepared by TM and found not one word of thanks in it. Rather, the chant describes a deified Guru Dev as "the Lord" and "Him" (with a capital aitch), among a slew of divine epithets quoted by Judge Meanor. For example:

The Unbounded, like the endless canopy of the sky, the omnipresent in all creation .... to Him, to Shri Guru Dev, I bow down.

The Eternal, the Pure, the Immovable .... to Shri Guru Dev, I bow down.

Nonetheiess, a Catholic priest, Protestant minister and Jewish rabbi, who practiced TM, testified that TM and the puja chant had no religious meaning -- even after they had read TM's English translation. For example, Rabbi Harry Essrig of Los Angeles practiced TM, recommended it to his congregants, called it "primarily a scientific technique," studied Maharishi's SCI and somehow found no conflict between his own religion and either the translated text or the accompanying ceremony. In sharp contrast, Rabbi Seymour Siegel, Professor of Theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, swore that in "the cultural setting of the United States and in the tradition of both Hebrew and Christian theology" such terms are "descriptive exclusively of a Supreme Being or God."

Researchers will find that the District Court opinion in Malnak v. Yogi extensively excerpts Maharishi's "scientific" SCI textbook and reprints the full text of his puja ceremony chant.