TM: The Drugless High

The name is grandiose--"transcendental meditation"--but the entry procedure is extraordinarily simple. After just 15 days of abstinence from non-prescription drugs, the novice is ready for initiation. If he goes through the typical ceremony, he takes one clean handkerchief, three pieces of sweet fruit and at least six fresh flowers, symbolic offerings to be laid before a portrait of the Indian guru who once taught the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the International Meditation Society. Alone with his own mentor in an atmosphere made mystical by candlelight, incense and the chanting of Sanskrit phrases, the neophyte is taught the word that he has come to learn: his specially assigned mantra, an apparently meaningless sound that is really an ancient Hindu incantation.

The recruit then takes three more two-hour "lessons," pays a modest fee ($75 generally, but only $45 for college students) and he is ready to reap the full benefits of transcendental meditation. Simply expressed, the goal of TM, which despite its Oriental trappings is not a religion but a quite secular relaxation technique, is to enjoy life more, to shuck tension by letting the mind travel far from mundane concerns a couple of times a day. To TM preachers, the practitioner is "expanding his awareness," developing his "creative intelligence," experiencing "subtler states of thought," and achieving "deep rest as a basis for dynamic action."

Harmless. It sounds absurd, of course; yet many otherwise rational people are enthusiastic about TM. And unlike many supposed remedies for psychic malaise, it has drawn little criticism from behavioral scientists. At worst, say the experts, the hordes of American meditators--an estimated 250,000 strong, with thousands of new converts a month--are doing themselves no harm, though they may be kidding themselves about TM's effectiveness. At best, the meditators may really be on to something.

Whatever its merits, TM has been taught for credit at dozens of U.S. colleges, including Yale, Stanford and the University of Colorado. The Department of Health, Education and Welfare has granted $21,540 to show 150 high school faculty members how to teach creative intelligence through TM. At the University of Michigan, a researcher has studied the use of TM to help stutterers, and at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., Psychiatrist Bernard Glueck Jr. is about to investigate the technique's possible value in treating both neurotics and psychotics. "If we laugh at the hocuspocus, we may overlook something," Glueck observes. "If there's anything that might possibly help patients, I'm willing to try it." Even more surprising, the Army has permitted experiments with TM to help drug addicts and alcoholics on eight bases, and some federal prison officials think that it might be of help in rehabilitating convicts.

Improved Sex. Most of TM's adherents in the U.S. and abroad see no need to await the verdict of research. They have heard International Meditation Society "initiators" (teachers) extol TM in free lectures, and they believe. There are no complicated philosophical or religious ideas to understand, as in classic Zen or yoga, and no ascetic life-style is demanded. The only requirement is to meditate for 20 minutes twice a day. "You close your eyes," explains one TM-er, "and after a few minutes the mantra just floats into your consciousness. Noises or worldly daydreams may distract you, but then you find your mind wandering back to the mantra. You feel a deep sense of rest and alertness."

When that happens, according to the maharishi (meaning great sage), the mind "flows and flows," like a river on its way to the sea, "to the level of life which is more than the most infinite unbounded." The white-bearded I.M.S. founder explains further that "the mind arrives at the source of thought," which is "a reservoir of energy, intelligence and happiness" that can. be found deep within every human being.

Most transcendental meditators put it more simply. San Francisco Actor Paul Shenar calls TM "a natural high," and a Silver Spring, Md., psychologist describes it as "the most beautiful thing that's ever happened in my life." Investment Counselor Ben Faneuil of Boston testifies that "my memory gets sharper, I feel more alert all day, and everything I've ever done well I now do better." In Manhattan, Architect Donald Levitin asserts, after ten years of psychotherapy, that "TM does what psychiatry, in a much longer time and at much greater expense, tries to do--and usually doesn't." A New Jersey dentist is positively ebullient: "My wife told me I was a lousy lover. In desperation I tried TM. Now my problem is keeping my wife from telling everybody about the dramatic improvement in our sex lives."

Some TM critics are put off by this kind of extravagant claim, and others* fault the maharishi for his flair for commercialism, his undoubted talent for getting publicity, and his global ambition. Having trained 3,000 initiators so far ($600 for a ten-week course), he is now in the process of establishing the Maharishi International University, which he hopes will graduate another 3,600,000 teachers, one for every thousand people in the world.

The movement may be more important than its leader. There is undisputed evidence that meditation can lower oxygen consumption and produce other physiological changes that may, in turn, have psychological side effects. Attempts to measure these effects have already been made. At Harvard, Researchers Herbert Benson and R. Keith Wallace questioned 1,862 meditators, of whom 80% had used pot and 48% LSD. After 21 months of TM, Benson and Wallace found, only 12% still smoked pot and only 3% took LSD. At Stanford, Neurobiologist Leon Otis has tried to evaluate TM by comparing the effects of 1) just sitting quietly with eyes closed, 2) repeating a simple phrase such as "I am a witness only," and 3) practicing TM. Those who followed the formal TM system gained the most in self-confidence, emotional stability and insight into themselves.

Both the Harvard and Stanford studies are inconclusive, as the experimenters themselves recognize. Part of the problem in trying to document the psychological effects of TM, says the British medical journal Lancet, is that it is "difficult to exclude the effects of suggestion." So difficult, in fact, that TM's true value--or lack of it--seems likely to remain in doubt for a long time.

* Including the Beatles, though they helped make the maharishi famous by embracing TM.

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