The TM investigator confirmed to me that contrary to the implied claim, the pattern displayed was not of the flying or hopping meditator since the measurement was indeed impossible.
A similar degree of deception is to be found in the movement's claimed reduction of crime and other negative social phenomena if enough people in a country or in the world begin to meditate. Confirmed to me by investigators at MIU was the suppression of negative evidence that these investigators had collected. Strong bias was present in selecting only data favourable to a conclusion that was made prior to the data collection. Because of the strong authoritarian (essentially cultic) aspects of the movement, only results supporting ideas generated by the movement leadership could receive any hearing. The ``scientific research'' is without objectivity and is at times simply untrue.
While Chairman of Physics at MIU, I was asked to develop a quantum theory, a unified field theory, which would incorporate consciousness in such a way as to explain the ``flying'' technique as non-ordinary and which would give to the subjective experience of meditation a fundamental role in physics. I found then and I continue to find now such claims preposterous.
👉 This is what is normally called 'crackpot science.' Although there is substantial work in the physics of quantum mechanics giving to consciousness an essential role, even a causal role, there is no evidence or argument that could connect some sort of universal consciousness to be subjectively experienced with a unified field of all physics. In fact, the existing scientific work suggests just the opposite.
If consciousness can be talked about at all with regard to the physical world, then it must be in the sense of lying wholly outside of the physical system. Of course quantum mechanical explanations of ``flying'' in such a way as to suggest that this ``flying'' is an apparent violation of the simpler laws of nature, such as gravity, is entirely inappropriate because nothing unusual is happening in the ``flying'' technique which is only hopping. (On the psychological level, something unusual and probably dangerous is happening during this and other advanced TM techniques.)
The early attempts to relate the experience of TM to the physical nature of reality were by fuzzy analogies. Analogous reasoning may be useful to clarify ideas, but never to establish connecting relationships. Subsequent attempts to produce some sort of physical theory involving TM merely carry the analogies further into the realm of obscure thinking that can perhaps fool the person not conversant with the language of physics but will be usually quickly described as crackpot by the expert physicist.
My belief is that TM is in its practise and in its theories religious in nature and is based on a pantheistic Hinduism that has been reformulated to make it attractive to Western minds.
We in the West have great respect for science and often look to science and technology to explain our world and to solve our problems. (We probably have an over-reliance on science in fact and may turn it into a religion itself.)
By TM claiming to be scientific in a most fundamental way, it tries to demand of us a respect we reserve for things thought scientific, rational, efficient, and effective. Under the guise of this false scientific claim then, Hinduism seeks its entrance into our lives. Many innocent individuals who sought only for an effective (scientific) relaxation technique are then exposed to the real dangers of this TM technique and to the misleading philosophy and metaphysics claimed by its proponents. Sincerely,
Dennis E. Roark, Ph.D.~
(Nowadays -2020- have the TM - pseudo-flyers helmets with radio transmitters on their heads - but still use the arms...)
🗣 The Myth of the Relaxation Response
🗣 Research on TM and siddhis (PDF - from the sight of the movement)
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But Mr. Dillbeck and his colleagues carried on :
Higher States of Consciousness: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Vedic Psychology of Human Development, Michael C. Dillbeck and Charles N. Alexander, The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Autumn 1989), pp. 307-334 (28 pages),Published By: Institute of Mind and Behavior, Inc.
Quote (see link above): "A series of three stable stages beyond the currently imagined endpoints of development are described, based on the unfolding of “pure” or “self-referential” consciousness as a stable underlying basis of experience. Pure consciousness is consciousness that is aware of itself as an unlimited field independent of all mental activities such as thinking and feeling. The first of the higher levels is "cosmic consciousness", in which pure consciousness is permanently maintained during all other experiences.) ".. ...... Conclusion: Badly blessed only for laypeople: Cosmic awareness for everyone ...
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- and other bluffers followed : Travis, F., Arenander, A., DuBois, D. (2004) Psychological and physiological characteristics of a proposed object-referral/self-referral continuum of self-awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, Vol. 13 (2), S.401 - 420.
I am opening a German book review of TM-Independent :
The seventeen subjects in the third group had practiced Transcendental Meditation for an average of 24 years. For at least a year they had spontaneously maintained consciousness (pure consciousness, samadhi) while sleeping, dreaming and waking. They described themselves as separate from what they thought or did - their identities, their selves, were completely "disconnected" from the processes of thought and behavior. "My self is immeasurably vast ... on a physical level - not just limited to this physical environment," said one. Another said: “It is my BEING. There is a channel or a level below that underlies everything. It is my essence that is there and it doesn't stop where I stop. " (But I don't want to reveal the real experience of nirbilkalpa samadhi here ... Then the imitators come!)