The EPOCHS OF ARCHIVAL 'TM':
Doug Hamilton
A Contemporary (2023) Bibliography to the TM Movement
The Transcendental Meditation (TM) community is going through something of a self-inflicted conflict right now. This period of time could well be social scientists' nirvana to study. This is a draft of a bibliography as an access to recent proceedings in communal TM.
The EPOCHS OF ARCHIVAL 'TM':
1950's, its founding.
1960-70-80's growth,
A decline in Popularity, Late 1980's-90's-00's
The Post-founder era, 2008-
'The Separation', 2022
The M Sex Exposé, 2023
Understanding the $ Fraud, 2023
Rendering (boiling down) Maharishi (&Gurus), 2023
The Old TM founding stories, the "Roots of TM", are well told by old books and video.
The now accruing history of the 'Separation' of independent teachers over the lack of financial transparency in the TM organizations and any shiftings resulting from the renewed publication of old sex and long told financial fraud stories would seem to be starting a new era of study in TM.
As an accruing history, of the 'how' and 'why' things may progress now for the TMOrg and for the current TM community and TM practice then comes into being a work of a contemporary history story. An additional history appears to be fast in the making now.
Comment: Why have you marked 2022 as the official separation? As you well know, that had been happening for many, many years already.
Reply: Yes, there have been independents teaching TM all along.
However the formal separation erupted in 2022 within incorporations, formally organizing themselves.
In 2022 it got to be so bad between the teachers and the oligarchs of the Raja-TMO that the teaching teachers of the teaching movement in places like New Zealand and then Russia formed separate organizations for the teaching of TM in that time frame of 2022.
For instance, this announcement from the Russian and Eastern European teachers.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3041658679220545/permalink/5289289907790733
Comment:
I don’t completely agree with this perspective, the movement was growing strongly in the 1990’s, in Europe, especially in the ex-communist countries, very strong in Portugal and Spain, South America. Significant inroads in Africa. Major WPAs in the world (Washington DC 1993, Croatia etc), articles in major magazines and newspapers. MOU in 1999, large scale teaching of TM in big projects: the army in Brazil and other South American countries, and Mozambique, TM in schools in many countries in South America and Africa. Then you had all the explosion of the Upavedas. Nope the movement was not in decline. The turning point for me was when he came up with his Apurasheya Bashya, his booklets of Absolute Theory of…, that are actually a blueprint of turning TMO into a full blown cult and him as a God like master whose absolute power cannot be criticized or challenged. The Raja system of his creation, is the natural concretization of that totalitarian mindset. 2000 was when everything started to collapse.
Reply:
That is true.
Yet, as the TM meditator movement in the USA was imploding from the 1980's and on, the TM movement in Eastern Europe became the largest meditator movement, even up to the time of this recent separation that has happened in TM more broadly.
This to my eye was amazing to recently watch, the oligarchs of the Raja TM kingdom destroy what cohesion there was of a long time teacher movement in Eastern Europe.
Comment:
so true! I simply cannot see any other reason than the most unbelievable delusion and, or, stupidity.
Independently Published History Books of TM:
Older books Pre- 2022 ‘Separation'
Paul Mason:
-The Maharishi (The Biography of the Man who gave Transcendental Meditation to the West) -Dandi Swami (The Story of the Guru’s Will, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Shankaracharyas of Jyotir Math & Meetings with Dandi Swami Narayananda Saraswati)
-Roots of TM (The Transcendental Meditation of Guru Dev & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)
-The Beatles, Drugs, Mysticism & India (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - Transcendental Meditation - Jai Guru Dev OM)
Judith Bourque: -Robes of Silk, Feet of Clay (The True Story of a Love Affair with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Creator of Transcendental Meditation Movement)
Robes of Silk, Feet of Clay
by Judith Bourque
https://www.robesofsilkfeetofclay.com/
Susan Shumsky: -Maharishi & Me (Seeking Enlightenment with the Beatles’ Guru) -
Maharishi & Me: Seeking Enlightenment with The Beatles Guru: ISBN-10: 1510722688. ISBN-13: 978-1510722682. Kindle: ASIN: B079G8ZZ71. Audio Book: ASIN: B079J6C25L. MP3 CD: ISBN-10: 1543655610. ISBN-13: 978-1543655612.
Susan Shumsky:
The Inner Light (How India Influenced The Beatles)
The Inner Light: How India Influenced The Beatles: ISBN-10: 168261977X. ISBN-13: 978-1682619773. Kindle: ASIN: B0BFRWLFPF. Audio Book: ASIN: B0BK4ZZZW7. Audio CD: ASIN: B0C3G12F61.
Philip Goldberg: -American Veda (From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West) https://www.philipgoldberg.com/american-veda/
Dana Sawyer & Cynthia Humes (2023):
The Transcendental Meditation Movement -
Abstract: This Element provides a comprehensive overview of the
Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement and its offshoots. Several
early assessments of the TM movement as a cult and/or new religious
movement are helpful, but are brief and somewhat dated. This Element
examines the TM movement’s history, beginning in India in 1955, and
ends with an analysis of the splinter groups that have come along in the past twenty-five years. Close consideration is given to the movement’s
appeal for the youth culture of the 1960s, which accounted for its initial
success. The Element also looks at the marketing of the meditation
technique as a scientifically endorsed practice in the 1970s, and the
movement’s dramatic turn inward during the 1980s. It concludes by
discussing the waning of its popular appeal in the new millennium. This
Element describes the social and cultural forces that helped shape the
TM movement’s trajectory over the decades leading to the present and
shows how the most popular meditation movement in America distilled
into an obscure form of Neo-Hinduism.
Of the TM Post-Founder era,
a book written from interviews,
2014
Joseph Weber:
Transcendental Meditation in America: How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa
"..Today the guru is dead. His followers are graying, and few of their children are moving into leadership roles. The movement seems rudderless, its financial muscle withering, despite the efforts of high-profile supporters such as filmmaker David Lynch and media magnate Oprah Winfrey. Can TM reinvent itself? And what will be the future of Fairfield itself? By looking closely at the transformation of this small Iowa town, author Joseph Weber assesses the movement’s surprisingly potent effect on Western culture, sketches out its peculiar past, and explores its possible future."
Transcendental Meditation in America: How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa
< -by Joseph Weber
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1609382358 ISBN 13: 9781609382353
Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2014
https://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/transcendental-meditation-america
On the Cusp of Post-Founder era, Documentary Film:
David Wants to Fly is a 2010 documentary film..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wants_to_Fly
The TM Movement Self-published books:
Adding for perspective to the list above of published scholarship,
would be a whole sequence of books self-published by the TM movement dating
from the growth epochs of TM for insight. There is a sequence of large format books that Maharishi produced that was internal to the the TM movement once he bought four color Heidelberg presses and had a press department working.
These tell a history in sequence to those times. Examples of some of these publications can be found in special collections held at University of California Santa Barbara, University of Southern Indiana, Hamilton College in New York, and The University of Iowa Libraries.
Also Published Scholarship:.
Death of a Guru: An Analysis of the Postcharismatic Phase in the Transcendental Meditation Movement, by Lane Atmore.
Positing the potential for separation in the TM community..
this anthropology study was published as a paper in 2017
Death of a Guru: An Analysis of the Postcharismatic Phase in the Transcendental Meditation Movement.
Communal Societies, Journal of the Communal Studies Association, V37 1, Spring 2017, Lane Atmore,
A link to the published paper..
Other Books..
Also written about TM, would be a long list of other authors' books written during the growth epoch years of TM representing a genre of true-believer authors of a time. Search libraries.
The Current Epoch of 'Separation' in TM
Back in 2022 this summary was written to share at an academic conference. "..November 2022:
A 'summary' written for folks who were unaware of circumstances in the TM community:
"..for the last three or so years (2020-2022),
an administrative TM oligarchy has been expelling long time teachers of TM from the organizations, from teaching TM. This has been happening as administrative reaction in several places around the world as financial transparency and accountability has been asked for by peoples in the TM community.
This is quite a number of old TM teachers expelled in different places, of long time teachers who were taught to teach meditation by Maharishi. It has been very hurtful of people. The last six months or so it moved from requests for representation to outright separation and formation of separate groups to continue the teaching of meditation and other aspects of Maharishi's teaching, separate from "The Global Country of World Peace". The position of the oligarchs would appear irreconcilable at this point."
Within the fracturing now an outright 'separation' has occurred in the TM community.
Comment:
Why have you marked 2022 as the official separation? As you well know, that had been happening for many, many years already.
Reply:
Yes, there have been independents teaching TM all along.
However the formal separation erupted in 2022 within incorporations, formally organizing themselves.
In 2022 it got to be so bad between the teachers and the oligarchs of the Raja-TMO that the teaching teachers of the teaching movement in places like New Zealand and then Russia formed separate organizations for the teaching of TM in that time frame of 2022.
For instance, this announcement from the Russian and Eastern European teachers.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3041658679220545/permalink/5289289907790733
Current 2023:
Rendering (boiling down) Maharishi (&Gurus).
Current TM history is moving really fast recently.
Refining these 'epoch' now after the teaching 'separation' in TM over the lack of financial transparency in 2022, like mini ice ages that occurred in the longer geologic record, 2023 it seems is having two ages in the TM community happen in rapid succession: 1st was with the sex interviews as expose. The 2nd is following now with David Laird's presentation about the history of financial fraud. These seem to be ushering in an era of a " Rendering (boiling down) of Maharishi (&Gurus)."
A Most Current Reference,
Interviews and pdf's :
Manipulating, Evident Serial Predatorial Sex Addiction, and Financial Deceit..
Doug Hamilton
October 2023, an addition to published scholarship to add on to the above publications:
- A published scholarly paper by Professor Scott Lowe..
Describing a history of TM the paper also breaches up in time on to fragmentations in the present.
Authored by a career religious studies scholar who also was an insider of the TM movement.
Written for a more general audience who may know little about TM.
Also includes a more current bibliography of other published scholarship. .
https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/transcendental-meditation/