Showing posts with label David Lynch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Lynch. Show all posts
Aug 6, 2022
Germans sceptical about TM movement around David Lynch
"David Lynch, american filmmaker and strong proponent of the Transcendental Meditation Movement, visits Berlin, Germany as a part of his European TM-Tour in order to present a new education system. The German Raja joins him on the stage and presents his plans to build a "University of invincibility“ on the "devils mountain“ in Berlin, with the ultimate goal to make Germany invincible."
https://youtu.be/G8ArHOdDhR4
Feb 20, 2022
"David Wants To Fly"
2010
1 h 35 min
Amazon Prime Rental
"David Sieveking follows the path of his idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation. That leads him to the movement's founder, Maharishi. Today TM is a global conglomerate, promising world peace and yogic flying. How does this chime with the dark films of Lynch? Inspired by his idol, the young director starts to meditate, too, submerging himself deeper in the world of TM."
"David Sieveking follows the path of his idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation. That leads him to the movement's founder, Maharishi. Today TM is a global conglomerate, promising world peace and yogic flying. How does this chime with the dark films of Lynch? Inspired by his idol, the young director starts to meditate, too, submerging himself deeper in the world of TM."
Jan 7, 2022
CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/7/2022 (False Memories, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, LGBTQ, David Lynch Foundation)
False Memories, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, LGBTQ, David Lynch Foundation
Neuroscience News: An Element of Surprise Is the Recipe for Creating False Memories
LGBTQ Nation: Utah billionaire leaves Mormon church with blistering accusation it is actively harming the world
NY Post: Leonardo DiCaprio's old NYC bachelor pad price chopped to $7.5M
Neuroscience News: An Element of Surprise Is the Recipe for Creating False Memories
"Summary: Memory editing occurs on the fly, leaving the brain susceptible to creating memories that may not be accurate.
You're starting to tell that old story to a couple of new friends, and suddenly another person who was there says 'no, it wasn't like that!' Without a video recording to settle the dispute, it's pretty hard to know who has the real memory and who has an adapted version.
"Perhaps it's no big deal to 'misremember' like this in a social setting, but it's quite another in a courtroom or classroom.
It turns out that human memory can be edited on the fly, creating memories that are nowhere near set in stone. A team of researchers has figured out how that happens and proved it by making people misremember.
"I think a lot of people have the misconception that memory works like a video camera: We record something and then we can play it back," said Allie Sinclair, a Ph.D. candidate in Duke's Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, who started the research as an undergraduate at the University of Toronto.
Alas, it's not that simple or reliable. "When you recall a memory, your brain reconstructs that experience and sometimes, it edits the memory in the process," Sinclair said.
Memory editing is mostly a good thing, as it enables us to learn from our mistakes and integrate new information with old experiences. But the ability to edit leaves open the possibility of creating false memories as well."
LGBTQ Nation: Utah billionaire leaves Mormon church with blistering accusation it is actively harming the world
The state's richest native will give $600,000 to an LGBTQ group to assist any queer students at the church's Brigham Young University who might be forced to leave.
"Jeff T. Green, Utah's richest native, has announced he is leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In a blistering letter to LDS President Russell Nelson, Green accused the Mormon church of "actively and currently doing harm in the world."
Fantastically wealthy, the church has funded some of the most vicious anti-LGBTQ initiatives, including California's ballot initiative to overturn marriage equality, and has a racist history of banning people of color."
" ... 'The church leadership is not honest about its history, its finances, and its advocacy," he said in the 900-word letter. "I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women's rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights.'"
NY Post: Leonardo DiCaprio's old NYC bachelor pad price chopped to $7.5M
" ... The three-bedroom, 2½-bathroom pad is 3,663 square feet. It's located at 66 E. 11th St., the Green Delos Building, which was once marketed as the city's original "health and wellness" luxury condo, with more than 50 built-in wellness amenities.
If you're wondering, they're everything from vitamin C-infused showers to purified air and water, herbariums in the open chefs' kitchens, posture-supportive floors, bio-based sound insulation, in-duct aromatherapy and "dawn simulation" from "proprietary" circadian lighting.
DiCaprio was so into it that he even joined the board of Delos Living, a nonprofit promoting wellness in real estate. (Delos developed the building.) Spirit guru Deepak Chopra also bought a unit and joined the board.
Other board members include Bob Roth, CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, politician Dick Gephardt, former secretary of the US Department of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin, SR Capital's Scott Resnick and golfer Greg Norman."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
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Aug 19, 2021
Transcendental Meditation-based ‘Quiet Time’ program sparks Chicago school lawsuit
Complaint alleges spiritual indoctrination sessions, First Amendment violation
Mark A. Kellner
August 19, 2021
The Washington Times
A religious rights legal battle over Transcendental Meditation and classroom “Quiet Time” got new life this week when a federal district court judge reinstated the University of Chicago and the David Lynch Foundation, operated by the “Twin Peaks” director, as defendants along with Chicago’s public school system.
The suit, filed on behalf of Bogan Computer Technical High School student Amontae Williams and other plaintiffs, alleges Chicago Public Schoos (CPS) officials instituted the “Quiet Time” program sponsored by the Lynch Foundation via the University of Chicago, despite knowing of its intention to have students participate in Transcendental Meditation, a spiritual technique critics allege is rooted in Hinduism.
Federal Judge Matthew F. Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois Court said both the University and the Lynch Foundation knew about the religious motivations behind the “Quiet Time” effort and that it could reasonably be argued that the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) specifically targeted the students for religious indoctrination.
“The court does not view this as an implausible allegation with regard to either entity: DLF is claimed to have created the program as part of its mission of “widespread implementation of Transcendental Meditation,’” Judge Kennelly wrote. “[G]iven its background, it is certainly plausible that DLF knew of the aspects of Transcendental Meditation and the Quiet Time program that are claimed to have caused the program to run afoul of the First Amendment.”
Noting that the University of Chicago is said to have vetted and helped design the program, “it is likewise plausible that the university was aware of the same features of the program that are alleged to have made it unconstitutional,” the judge found.
The University of Chicago and the Lynch Foundation helped CPS initiate the “Quiet Time” effort in 2015 as part of an effort to see if the Eastern meditation program once promoted by The Beatles and other celebrities could reduce arrests for violence among the city’s youths. Chicago’s poorer neighborhoods are plagued by gun violence and other attacks, and it’s not uncommon for police to report dozens of gun-related attacks each weekend.
The school system ended the program in 2019 when students and parents complained at a school board meeting about the ceremonies and mantras that came with “Quiet Time.” Mr. Williams is seeking compensatory and punitive damages over what he said was his being forced to go through a TM initiation ritual and meditation sessions that left him disoriented. The plaintiffs also seek to make this a class-action suit, which could open the way to many more challenges of the program.
“One day when we were supposed to start a meditation session, I informed my classmates about how our mantras were the names of Hindu gods,” Mr. Williams said in a declaration to the district court. “I also warned my classmates that the TM instructors were lying about the ‘Puja’ [initiation] ceremony and chanting meaning nothing. The teacher then took me to the principal’s office for telling these things to my classmates.”
Mr. Williams said he was threatened with suspension for protesting the “Quiet Time” ceremonies, and that his coerced participation violates the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says in part that “government may not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.”
Aryeh Siegel, a former top executive of the Transcendental Movement’s U.S. branch who stopped practicing the discipline in 1981, called this week’s events “a massive victory, that a judge is allowing this young man to sue the Chicago Public Schools, on these grounds, that there was a coercive practice of religion.”
Mr. Siegel said he has devoted a section of his “Transcendental Deception” website to documenting the continuing efforts of the Lynch Foundation to promote TM in the nation’s schools.
Aug 9, 2019
What's wrong with a Chicago public high school teaching transcendental meditation? Plenty, critics claim.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
JULY 26, 2019
Students at a Chicago high school were led into a room with shades drawn and door windows papered over, lit only with candles and scented by incense. They were handed flowers and told to pay attention to instructors, according to one student’s account.
Jade Thomas, an incoming sophomore at Bogan Computer Technical High School, said instructors “chanted in a foreign language" and “threw rice, seasonings and oranges in a pan in front of a picture of a man.” She described the ritual, which she said involved a “secret mantra,” to a rapt audience at a Chicago Board of Education meeting Wednesday.
At one point, Jade said, "they tell us to place the flowers in the pan with everything else, and they ended the song. I felt uncomfortable because I didn’t know what they were saying or who the man was in the picture.”
The program, which brings transcendental meditation into schools, was developed by filmmaker David Lynch’s foundation. Known for movies including “Blue Velvet” and the “Twin Peaks” TV series, Lynch also is a longtime proponent of the meditation practice.
At Bogan on Chicago’s Southwest Side, the program, known as Quiet Time, is run through a partnership with University of Chicago’s Urban Labs, which is evaluating its effectiveness, according to a Chicago Public Schools official.
The university’s crime and education labs are working with CPS and the David Lynch Foundation “to test whether providing youth with training and time to practice Transcendental Meditation can help youth reduce their toxic stress, succeed in school, and stay safe,” according to the Urban Labs website.
Lynch’s program bills itself as a way to help youths, especially in low-income urban areas, cope with traumatic stress that can result from living in poverty, among violence and with fear, and can hinder health and learning.
Urban Labs is testing a version of Quiet Time that involves two daily 15-minute meditation sessions "to generate evidence about whether TM can improve outcomes for Chicago’s most vulnerable youth.”
Jonathan Guryan, faculty co-director of the University of Chicago’s education lab, said the program began three years ago at Gage Park High School and has since expanded to Bogan, Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine, Bowen High School, Percy L. Julian High School and TEAM Englewood Community Academy High School. Urban Labs and CPS worked together to identify schools in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty and violence, and where school leadership was interested in having the program. Within each school, classrooms were randomly selected, Guryan said.
The David Lynch Foundation provides full-time instructors, and sometimes students or teachers also may lead sessions, he said.
But Jade, the Bogan student, told the school board that the program “has caused me and many other students discomfort."
“The program is training us to practice different religious beliefs that I go against, and my family does too,” she said. “My mother, my brother and I are here to get this removed from our school.”
Urban Labs is testing a version of Quiet Time that involves two daily 15-minute meditation sessions "to generate evidence about whether TM can improve outcomes for Chicago’s most vulnerable youth.”
Jonathan Guryan, faculty co-director of the University of Chicago’s education lab, said the program began three years ago at Gage Park High School and has since expanded to Bogan, Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine, Bowen High School, Percy L. Julian High School and TEAM Englewood Community Academy High School. Urban Labs and CPS worked together to identify schools in neighborhoods with high rates of poverty and violence, and where school leadership was interested in having the program. Within each school, classrooms were randomly selected, Guryan said.
The David Lynch Foundation provides full-time instructors, and sometimes students or teachers also may lead sessions, he said.
But Jade, the Bogan student, told the school board that the program “has caused me and many other students discomfort."
“The program is training us to practice different religious beliefs that I go against, and my family does too,” she said. “My mother, my brother and I are here to get this removed from our school.”
Officials familiar with the program said it’s not religious and noted that a letter to parents included a consent form they had to sign for their children to opt out.
Jade described what she called an initiation ritual in which instructors took her and her friend into the Quiet Time classroom and turned all the lights out. After the ritual, students were told to keep their mantras a secret, she said.
Jade described the twice-daily sessions as mandatory but said she did eventually stop going.
“If you talk during this quiet time, they will threaten to drop your grades,” Jade said. “This program should be removed from any public school because it is religious and forces students to do things they don’t understand or agree with.”
CPS and Urban Labs officials said the program is not mandatory, and students who don’t participate have other options for 15-minute quiet periods. Students were offered the chance to opt out, and about 14 percent did so, Guryan said.
But Jade’s mother, Deborah Thomas, said the letters sent home explaining the practice were misleading.
The district’s chief education officer, LaTanya McDade, told the board she had personally checked out the Quiet Time program at Bogan and asked questions about it.
“None of this was shared with me,” McDade said. “... I would like to personally follow up on it and investigate the matter and address it accordingly.”
Another speaker, Dasia Skinner, said she learned about Quiet Time while working as a substitute teacher at Bogan during the past school year. Though she had no firsthand knowledge of the program, she said she spoke to more than 60 students about it and that they shared similar accounts.
“When I talked to students about it, I discovered some shocking news," Skinner said.
She said students described a “weird” ritual in which they were taken to a dark room where a Quiet Time facilitator led them through a ritual she perceived as Hindu-based.
“When you close your eyes and meditate on the guide, this is considered prayer or religious worship,” Skinner said, asserting it amounts to a violation of the separation of church and state.
“All of this was done without parents’ knowledge or the students’ understanding,” Skinner said.
But the Lynch Foundation website says the practice is meditation, not a religious practice.
“It does not involve any religion, philosophy, or change in lifestyle,” the website states. Hundreds of schools, both public and private, have adopted the meditations, according to the foundation.
Guryan said researchers have started a preliminary analysis but are uncertain whether they’ll continue evaluating the program in the upcoming school year.
So far, students trained in transcendental meditation have violent crime arrest rates about 65% to 70% lower than their peers and have reduced blood pressure, he said.
Christine Laadimi, an international baccalaureate history teacher who has worked at Bogan for 13 years, said the meditation program has also led to fewer arguments in school.
When she has sat in on sessions, she found them peaceful, starting with the ringing of a bell and 30 seconds to say a mantra and get into a meditative state of mind, she said.
“I’ve never had any religious undertones at all,” Laadimi said.
Laadimi said students can choose to meditate or simply to put their head down. The whole school is quiet during the 15-minute periods, whether or not they’re all meditating, she said.
“From the main office to the security guards, every single classroom is quiet during that whole time,” she said.
At other times during the day, students can choose to do their own meditation in designated Quiet Time rooms and talk to a meditation adviser.
Laadimi said her classes are always excited to meditate, and no students have come to her saying they felt uncomfortable.
“Our students are going, going, going so much during the day, they’re on their phones, using their Chromebooks,” she said. “Twice a day, 15 minutes, where they can just be quiet and give their brain a rest is really a good processing time for the students.”
hleone@chicagotribune.com
Hannah Leone
Hannah Leone reports on Chicago Public Schools for the Tribune. She spent a year covering crime scenes overnight and previously covered breaking news and courts in the west suburbs. She worked at newspapers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho before joining the Tribune in 2016. She lives in Rogers Park, where she enjoys running along the lake.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-high-school-quiet-time-meditation-david-lynch-bogan-20190725-72so6zr2gvganb2c54k4eq24zm-story.html
Jade described what she called an initiation ritual in which instructors took her and her friend into the Quiet Time classroom and turned all the lights out. After the ritual, students were told to keep their mantras a secret, she said.
Jade described the twice-daily sessions as mandatory but said she did eventually stop going.
“If you talk during this quiet time, they will threaten to drop your grades,” Jade said. “This program should be removed from any public school because it is religious and forces students to do things they don’t understand or agree with.”
CPS and Urban Labs officials said the program is not mandatory, and students who don’t participate have other options for 15-minute quiet periods. Students were offered the chance to opt out, and about 14 percent did so, Guryan said.
But Jade’s mother, Deborah Thomas, said the letters sent home explaining the practice were misleading.
The district’s chief education officer, LaTanya McDade, told the board she had personally checked out the Quiet Time program at Bogan and asked questions about it.
“None of this was shared with me,” McDade said. “... I would like to personally follow up on it and investigate the matter and address it accordingly.”
Another speaker, Dasia Skinner, said she learned about Quiet Time while working as a substitute teacher at Bogan during the past school year. Though she had no firsthand knowledge of the program, she said she spoke to more than 60 students about it and that they shared similar accounts.
“When I talked to students about it, I discovered some shocking news," Skinner said.
She said students described a “weird” ritual in which they were taken to a dark room where a Quiet Time facilitator led them through a ritual she perceived as Hindu-based.
“When you close your eyes and meditate on the guide, this is considered prayer or religious worship,” Skinner said, asserting it amounts to a violation of the separation of church and state.
“All of this was done without parents’ knowledge or the students’ understanding,” Skinner said.
But the Lynch Foundation website says the practice is meditation, not a religious practice.
“It does not involve any religion, philosophy, or change in lifestyle,” the website states. Hundreds of schools, both public and private, have adopted the meditations, according to the foundation.
Guryan said researchers have started a preliminary analysis but are uncertain whether they’ll continue evaluating the program in the upcoming school year.
So far, students trained in transcendental meditation have violent crime arrest rates about 65% to 70% lower than their peers and have reduced blood pressure, he said.
Christine Laadimi, an international baccalaureate history teacher who has worked at Bogan for 13 years, said the meditation program has also led to fewer arguments in school.
When she has sat in on sessions, she found them peaceful, starting with the ringing of a bell and 30 seconds to say a mantra and get into a meditative state of mind, she said.
“I’ve never had any religious undertones at all,” Laadimi said.
Laadimi said students can choose to meditate or simply to put their head down. The whole school is quiet during the 15-minute periods, whether or not they’re all meditating, she said.
“From the main office to the security guards, every single classroom is quiet during that whole time,” she said.
At other times during the day, students can choose to do their own meditation in designated Quiet Time rooms and talk to a meditation adviser.
Laadimi said her classes are always excited to meditate, and no students have come to her saying they felt uncomfortable.
“Our students are going, going, going so much during the day, they’re on their phones, using their Chromebooks,” she said. “Twice a day, 15 minutes, where they can just be quiet and give their brain a rest is really a good processing time for the students.”
hleone@chicagotribune.com
Hannah Leone
Hannah Leone reports on Chicago Public Schools for the Tribune. She spent a year covering crime scenes overnight and previously covered breaking news and courts in the west suburbs. She worked at newspapers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho before joining the Tribune in 2016. She lives in Rogers Park, where she enjoys running along the lake.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-high-school-quiet-time-meditation-david-lynch-bogan-20190725-72so6zr2gvganb2c54k4eq24zm-story.html
Oct 24, 2018
CultNEWS101 Articles: 10/24/2018
Transcendental Meditation, David Lynch, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Cult Recovery
"When the David Lynch Foundation held a gala for Transcendental Meditation at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. last year, it drew a star-studded crowd. Comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Margaret Cho were there. So was the singer Kesha, as well as White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who had recently published a self-help book which included a section extolling TM's benefits."
" ... The organization also takes credit for ending Mozambique’s civil war in the early 1990s, having set up an “international peacekeeping group” of advanced yogic flyers in India. Knock-on effects in Mozambique created by the group practicing roughly 4,000 miles away included a 12.4 percent economic growth rate, inflation that fell from 70 percent to 2 percent, and a zeroing out of the national debt, they said."
" ... In 2014, an independent meta-analysis of meditation research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association for Internal Medicine found “insufficient evidence that mantra meditation programs [such as TM] had an effect on any of the psychological stress and well-being outcomes we examined.” An earlier review of TM data by the NIH also found insufficient evidence that TM lowered blood pressure as claimed."
"Other assertions have been fact-checked to TM’s detriment. The organization’s American home base of Fairfield, Iowa has a population of roughly 10,000 residents. In 1993, reporter Scott Shane inquired about the crime rate in the area, figuring that crime must be virtually non-existent what with all the advanced meditating going there on all the time. “Crime here is about the same as any small town in rural America,” Fairfield police chief Randy Cooksey told Shane. In fact, Cooksey said, 'I’d say there's been a steady increase. I think, based on my statistics in Fairfield, I can show they have no impact on crime here.'”
" ... Dennis Roark, the former chairman of the physics department at Maharishi University has described TM’s research as “crackpot science.” Roark said he resigned his position after being told to link TM’s effects to legitimate physics—a notion he described as 'preposterous.'"
“The style of research they use is what I call ‘painting the bullseye around the arrow,” says ex-TMer Patrick Ryan, who attended Maharishi International University, the progenitor to MUM, against his... [Navy Master Chiefs] father’s advice, and spent 10 years in the movement as a “spiritual warrior” before quitting in the 1980s. “If a bunch of TM meditators get together and the stock market goes up, TM made it happen. If there’s another course and crime rates go down, or if accidents go down, TM created that. Find a positive thing that’s happened and take credit for it.”
"When the David Lynch Foundation held a gala for Transcendental Meditation at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. last year, it drew a star-studded crowd. Comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Margaret Cho were there. So was the singer Kesha, as well as White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who had recently published a self-help book which included a section extolling TM's benefits."
" ... The organization also takes credit for ending Mozambique’s civil war in the early 1990s, having set up an “international peacekeeping group” of advanced yogic flyers in India. Knock-on effects in Mozambique created by the group practicing roughly 4,000 miles away included a 12.4 percent economic growth rate, inflation that fell from 70 percent to 2 percent, and a zeroing out of the national debt, they said."
" ... In 2014, an independent meta-analysis of meditation research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association for Internal Medicine found “insufficient evidence that mantra meditation programs [such as TM] had an effect on any of the psychological stress and well-being outcomes we examined.” An earlier review of TM data by the NIH also found insufficient evidence that TM lowered blood pressure as claimed."
"Other assertions have been fact-checked to TM’s detriment. The organization’s American home base of Fairfield, Iowa has a population of roughly 10,000 residents. In 1993, reporter Scott Shane inquired about the crime rate in the area, figuring that crime must be virtually non-existent what with all the advanced meditating going there on all the time. “Crime here is about the same as any small town in rural America,” Fairfield police chief Randy Cooksey told Shane. In fact, Cooksey said, 'I’d say there's been a steady increase. I think, based on my statistics in Fairfield, I can show they have no impact on crime here.'”
" ... Dennis Roark, the former chairman of the physics department at Maharishi University has described TM’s research as “crackpot science.” Roark said he resigned his position after being told to link TM’s effects to legitimate physics—a notion he described as 'preposterous.'"
“The style of research they use is what I call ‘painting the bullseye around the arrow,” says ex-TMer Patrick Ryan, who attended Maharishi International University, the progenitor to MUM, against his... [Navy Master Chiefs] father’s advice, and spent 10 years in the movement as a “spiritual warrior” before quitting in the 1980s. “If a bunch of TM meditators get together and the stock market goes up, TM made it happen. If there’s another course and crime rates go down, or if accidents go down, TM created that. Find a positive thing that’s happened and take credit for it.”
Hollywood Reporter: David Lynch's Festival of Disruption Disrupts Ace Hotel
" ... David Lynch's Festival of Disruption returns to the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles Oct. 13, offering a dizzyingly eclectic lineup of musicians, filmmakers, and artists. All proceeds from the two-day event will go to the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), which works to eliminate trauma and toxic stress through Transcendental Meditation (TM), a form of mantra meditation developed by guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi that Lynch has been practicing since the early 1970s."
Yahoo: David Lynch talks toxic masculinity and escaping the 'suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity
"Some people might be surprised to learn that director David Lynch has been a passionate advocate and practitioner of Transcendental Meditation since 1973. After all, many skeptics associate any type of meditation with a hippie-dippie mentality, and Lynch’s incredibly dark and twisted cinematic classics, like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Twin Peaks, aren’t exactly about peace and love and hearts and flowers."
Times-Standard: Ex-Jehovah’s Witness, abuse survivor launches nonprofit
"A woman who said she was repeatedly sexually assaulted throughout her childhood by a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Fortuna, an experience she recounted in a televised documentary in May, has now launched a nonprofit organization to help fellow survivors of sexual abuse."
"Romy Maple has registered SAFE 707 — which stands for Sexual Assault Fighters Elite — as an official nonprofit."
"Romy Maple has registered SAFE 707 — which stands for Sexual Assault Fighters Elite — as an official nonprofit."
News, Education, Intervention, Recovery
Intervention101.com to help families and friends understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement.
CultRecovery101.com assists group members and their families make the sometimes difficult transition from coercion to renewed individual choice.
CultNEWS101.com news, links, resources.
Cults101.org resources about cults, cultic groups, abusive relationships, movements, religions, political organizations and related topics.
Selection of articles for CultNEWS101 does not mean that Patrick Ryan or Joseph Kelly agree with the content. We provide information from many points of view in order to promote dialogue.
Sep 3, 2018
Transcendental Deception: Behind the TM curtain—bogus science, hidden agendas, and David Lynch’s campaign to push a million public school kids into Transcendental Meditation while falsely claiming it is not a religion
Aryeh Siegel
Los Angeles, CA: Janreg Press. (2018). ISBN-10: 0999661507; ISBN-13: 978-0-9996615-0-5 (paperback). $17.99 (Amazon.com; $9.99, Kindle). 222 pages.
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart
ICSA e-Newsletter
August 18, 2018
Before I get into my review of the text, I want to relate an anecdote of my encounter with an average TM user in Santa Fe, New Mexico decades ago. I was in the French Pastry Shop of the La Fonda Hotel reading an article critical of TM. The headline caught the interest of a man in his 30s who sat at a table behind me. He was nicely attired in a sport coat without a tie. He told me that he was in town as a sales rep for a small business. Without any prompt from me, he launched into defending his TM practice that had helped him to become a success and kept him feeling well for 8 years.
At that stage in my cult-intervention career, I had helped hundreds of adults exit from a wide variety of controversial sects and self-help movements, including TM. I told him only that I thought the article was fair and well researched, and that I was an artist curious about new religions. His litany of arguments favoring TM were numbingly familiar to me: the “scientific” studies, the celebrities behind TM, “TM is not a religion,” and how anyone in any religion can practice TM. Predictably, his default dismissal of my critical stance was based on this common but spurious argument: You have not experienced TM, so how can you know what it is about?
My only pushback was to ask him whether he ever experienced yogic levitation or paid thousands of dollars to TM in India for a yagya ceremony. He appeared not to know about yagyas, but he gathered I knew more about the movement than he had experienced. He was never ritually initiated into (had never paid for and taken) the yogic-flying-technique course; nevertheless, he tried to defend the weird hopping-in-a-lotus-position as scientifically plausible by pointing to a “brain-wave coherence” study he had read. We had been talking for more than a half hour, with me mainly listening. I stopped him, stating I had to go. We shook hands, I wished him well, and I left my cold, unfinished coffee behind, with a tip. I wanted to finish the article somewhere else with my back to a wall.
It takes an enormous amount of patient, respectful, and educational exchange to open any true believer’s mind to new ways of looking at their experience and to assessing overvalued beliefs—days of that, in most cases. As my French Pastry Shop neighbor poured out his apologetic promotions for TM, I imagined listening to someone from a Christian evangelical sect, from Scientology, from est or Landmark, from Eckankar, from Ramtha, or from any number of similar groups with seemingly “coherent” if totalistic world views. As I said, his arguments were numbingly familiar.
Aryeh Siegel did experience TM, first as an initiate in 1971, then as a teacher from 1975. He and his wife finally quit the movement in 1981, noting that 4 hours of meditation daily and expensive techniques were not getting them anywhere. Aryeh later ran a community mental-health facility for several years and eventually became a real estate broker. He left that TM chapter of his life behind until 2015, when he discovered with alarm that TM was again being promoted as a secular technique to public schools through the David Lynch Foundation. And that is the purpose of this book: To offer a concise history and factual assessment of a controversial religious practice that promotes itself as a proven well-being technique with no occult (hidden metaphysical) agendas. This book is a clear warning to go beyond propaganda and experience before you absorb the snake oil or give it to your kids.
After one reads this book, it should become clear that TM is more than religion disguised as a science. The business model employed by TM’s founder relies on hijacking science to enhance a belief in occult powers. Religion’s chronic flaw has been the superstitious desire to manipulate reality through prayer, ritual, sympathetic magic, and the casting of spells. It is of interest here that one translation of mantra is to cast a spell. With the rigorous rise of the sciences in the past few hundred years, the occult arts have been discredited.
Protoastronomy, for example, divided into astrology and astronomy. Alchemy fell away from chemistry. Despite efforts by giants in science such as Sir Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who both diligently tried to apply occult arts, including alchemy, the scientific method won out as our best means to improve health, locomotion, and our grasp of reality.
Siegel’s book reminded me that humanity’s deeply ingrained impulse to use mental and spiritual power to transcend and manipulate reality remains in every culture, including the postindustrial nations. New cults continue to appear with techniques for sorcery, magic, extrasensory perception, and communication with metaphysical beings. Nineteenth-century New Thought and Theosophy groups have proven that mankind’s desire for occult powers has not waned in the scientific era. Science has been co-opted by movements promoting occult or paranormal powers, including Christian Science, Scientology, Science of the Mind, and the Church of Divine Science. The Maharishi of TM knew what he was doing when he made more and more outrageous claims for the occult powers one can gain through TM: levitation without wings or machines, for example. At the very least, the average person paying a hefty fee for a special mantra harbors hope that the puja ceremony to Guru Dev and the Hindu gods will tap a real cosmic force to enhance the power of their TM practice. That is religion—not science.
To support his allegation that TM is a deceptive business, Siegel cites court cases, properly run studies on effects of meditation, and ex-member testimonies. Siegel mentions the fine documentary David Wants To Fly by German filmmaker David Sieveking (2010). I bought Sieveking’s film when it came out, but I had to order it from Europe at the time because of TM’s legal efforts to block distribution in Canada and the United States. Why would TM want to stop freedom of speech? The film is an honest effort to document one young David Lynch fan’s effort to seek why TM has been so important to his hero’s filmmaking career. In his journey, Sieveking managed to interview Lynch, become initiated into TM practice (for a fee), then change course when his many questions were not being addressed by TM’s leaders. Sieveking turned to prominent ex-TMers to discover the hidden and not-so-hidden deceptions in the movement. He managed to expose the fraud behind the Vedic Cities where thousands of “pandits” (specially trained pundits) were supposedly meditating to bring peace and harmony to the planet. The one in India, the Brahmasthan, was practically a ghost town with a few dozen meditators at the time. The proposed Vedic Cities would have 8,000 pundits (meditators) doing what amounts to a mediation mill to send good vibrations to the universe. TM meanwhile has been fundraising for $400 million to support these silly ventures. In 2014, India Today reported that Maharishi Vedic City in Iowa recruited 1,050 young Indians, more than 150 of whom defected. These young men were promised high-school educations and room and board for their planet-saving efforts—if indeed they comprehended what they were hired for. They were not high-level TM members with purported TM powers.
In Siegel’s book, we learn that TM has relied partially on multimillion-dollar grants from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund services to schools and prisons to study TM. The NIH agencies gave TM nearly $23 million from 1992 through 2010, then the awards stopped. Siegel offers evidence that the NIH finally discovered or admitted that, with all the new studies about many forms of mindfulness and meditation that are equally effective yet offered for low fees or are free, TM is nothing special. TM’s latest effort at proselytizing through many high-profile celebrities who support the David Lynch Foundation may be an effort to rescue a failing and deceptive business model. Furthermore, studies have shown that all forms of meditation may be overhyped with respect to their effectiveness for lowering blood pressure and bringing about inner harmony. The one-size-fits-all offerings of most yogic and meditation styles may be too good to be true.
Another anecdote here regarding David Lynch: In 2014, Lynch had a major showing of art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia. David Lynch: The Unified Field was Lynch’s first major art show in the United States.[1] Lynch graduated from PAFA 2 years before I began attending in the early 1970s. As alumni, my colleague Brian O’Neill and I attended the show with hopes of hearing Lynch lecture, but his lecture was sold out. By coincidence, we were behind the lecture hall when Lynch appeared alone outside the back door, smoking a cigarette. Brian, an amateur photographer, walked up to him and requested a photo and brief interview, to which Lynch complied after he put out his cigarette. The scene made me wonder: What’s with the nicotine? A major promoter of TM does not have the means or desire to kick a bad habit.
On page 144, Siegel states the “goal of this book” is to “empower concerned citizens, particularly parents, to confront and expose TM’s deceptions and secrets . . . The welfare of children is what matters.” As TM exposés go—I have several in my collection—Siegel’s book functions very well. It offers a solid survey of what TM is all about for people new to the sect and is also a great reference for anyone familiar with TM. If any school director has questions about David Lynch’s foundation to promote TM in public schools, give them this book immediately. We owe it to the children.
About the Reviewer
Joseph Szimhart began research into cultic influence in 1980 and began to work professionally as an intervention specialist and exit counselor in 1986. Since 1998 he has worked in the crisis department of a psychiatric emergency hospital in Pennsylvania. He continues to assist families with interventions and former members in recovery. In 2016 he received an ICSA Lifetime Achievement Award.
[1] See: https://www.pafa.org/davidlynch
Mar 24, 2016
David Lynch named MUM commencement speaker
March 24, 2016
David Lynch, known worldwide for his movies and his Twin Peaks series on TV, will offer the 2016 Maharishi University of Management commencement address at 1 p.m. June 18 in the Maharishi Patanjali Golden Dome.
http://fairfield-ia.villagesoup.com/p/david-lynch-named-mum-commencement-speaker/1499855
Oct 7, 2015
Here's Your Chance to Earn a Film Degree With Director David Lynch
JOSHUA ESPINOZA
Complex
October 7, 2015
Are you interested in earning your master’s degree in filmmaking? Would you like to learn from one of the most celebrated directors of American film? Then keep reading.
Earlier this month, Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa announced it would offer the David Lynch MA in Film—taught partially by the Twins Peak director himself.
According to the school’s information page, the one-year program will teach “all aspects of filmmaking, but with the profound addition of Transcendental Meditation,” as taught by the university’s founder and Lynch’s mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
You can learn more about the program here. All applications for the 2016 school year are being accepted now until Nov. 1.
Watch Video
http://www.complex.com/style/2015/10/david-lynch-is-opening-a-film-school
Complex
October 7, 2015
 |
| David Lynch |
Earlier this month, Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa announced it would offer the David Lynch MA in Film—taught partially by the Twins Peak director himself.
According to the school’s information page, the one-year program will teach “all aspects of filmmaking, but with the profound addition of Transcendental Meditation,” as taught by the university’s founder and Lynch’s mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
You can learn more about the program here. All applications for the 2016 school year are being accepted now until Nov. 1.
Watch Video
http://www.complex.com/style/2015/10/david-lynch-is-opening-a-film-school
Jun 12, 2014
Nazi slogan sticking to yogi school
November, 20, 2007
Plans by Hollywood film director David Lynch to build a Transcendental Meditation university in Berlin have provoked a storm of criticism in Germany after the project's chief guru used a phrase of Hitler's propaganda minister in promoting the scheme.
Lynch's attempt to promote the project, before Berlin students last week, backfired. Lynch, who does not speak German, watched as his white-robed German guru Emanuel Schiffgens told the students about the university's aim to raise human awareness and understanding. But he shocked them with language that could have been lifted straight from a speech by Joseph Goebbels. Schiffgens, who also wore a golden crown and claimed to be the "raja" or prince of Germany, declared: "Invincible Germany! Invincible Germany! I want to hear you all say 'Invincible Germany!'"
In a country that has spent much of the past half-century attempting to atone for the evils of the Nazi era, his exhortations did not go down well. The raja was booed and shouted down.
One audience member yelled: "That's exactly what Hitler wanted." Schiffgens further enraged the audience when he replied: "Yes, but unfortunately he didn't succeed." The row brought the uncomprehending Lynch to say: "I don't know what he said but I think I understand that he used a word from the Third Reich. Let's just look at it this way, it's a new world now."
Plans for Lynch's universities are under way in Estonia, Finland, Bulgaria and Scotland, where the university is cosponsored by 1960s folk singer Donovan.
They will combine traditional academic subjects with meditation techniques developed in the 1950s by Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose followers included the Beatles.
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/2131923-nazi-slogan-sticking-to-yogi-school/
Plans by Hollywood film director David Lynch to build a Transcendental Meditation university in Berlin have provoked a storm of criticism in Germany after the project's chief guru used a phrase of Hitler's propaganda minister in promoting the scheme.
Lynch's attempt to promote the project, before Berlin students last week, backfired. Lynch, who does not speak German, watched as his white-robed German guru Emanuel Schiffgens told the students about the university's aim to raise human awareness and understanding. But he shocked them with language that could have been lifted straight from a speech by Joseph Goebbels. Schiffgens, who also wore a golden crown and claimed to be the "raja" or prince of Germany, declared: "Invincible Germany! Invincible Germany! I want to hear you all say 'Invincible Germany!'"
In a country that has spent much of the past half-century attempting to atone for the evils of the Nazi era, his exhortations did not go down well. The raja was booed and shouted down.
One audience member yelled: "That's exactly what Hitler wanted." Schiffgens further enraged the audience when he replied: "Yes, but unfortunately he didn't succeed." The row brought the uncomprehending Lynch to say: "I don't know what he said but I think I understand that he used a word from the Third Reich. Let's just look at it this way, it's a new world now."
Plans for Lynch's universities are under way in Estonia, Finland, Bulgaria and Scotland, where the university is cosponsored by 1960s folk singer Donovan.
They will combine traditional academic subjects with meditation techniques developed in the 1950s by Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose followers included the Beatles.
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/2131923-nazi-slogan-sticking-to-yogi-school/
Jun 8, 2014
California school loses funds over Transcendental Meditation controversy
AP
Marcus Wholsen
Thursday October 19, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO – Marin County may be etched in the public imagination as a liberal land of hot tubs, aging hippies and free thinkers, but even a bastion of alternative spirituality apparently has its limits.
Plans for a high school meditation club funded by filmmaker David Lynch evaporated this week after parents caught wind that students would be taught Transcendental Meditation, the method developed by a one-time spiritual teacher to The Beatles, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Amid protests that TM was a form of religious practice and therefore inappropriate for a public school, the David Lynch Foundation on Tuesday withdrew the $175,000 it had pledged to Terra Linda High School in San Rafael.
The grant would have provided funds for 250 students and 25 staffers to practice TM, a meditation style past adherents claimed allowed them to levitate. Lynch, best known as the director of dark, surreal films like “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet,” has meditated for more than 30 years and credits TM for nourishing his creativity.
Marcus Wholsen
Thursday October 19, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO – Marin County may be etched in the public imagination as a liberal land of hot tubs, aging hippies and free thinkers, but even a bastion of alternative spirituality apparently has its limits.
Plans for a high school meditation club funded by filmmaker David Lynch evaporated this week after parents caught wind that students would be taught Transcendental Meditation, the method developed by a one-time spiritual teacher to The Beatles, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Amid protests that TM was a form of religious practice and therefore inappropriate for a public school, the David Lynch Foundation on Tuesday withdrew the $175,000 it had pledged to Terra Linda High School in San Rafael.
The grant would have provided funds for 250 students and 25 staffers to practice TM, a meditation style past adherents claimed allowed them to levitate. Lynch, best known as the director of dark, surreal films like “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet,” has meditated for more than 30 years and credits TM for nourishing his creativity.
May 10, 2012
Does transcendental meditation to help veterans with PTSD?
By
Seeking new ways to treat post-traumatic stress, the Department of Veteran Affairs is studying the use of transcendental meditation to help returning veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The reality is not all individuals we see are treatable by the techniques we use,” said W. Scott Gould, deputy secretary for the Department of Veterans Affairs, told a summit on the use of TM to treat post traumatic stress Thursday in Washington.
The VA is spending about $5 million on a dozen trials involving several hundred veterans from a range of conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Results from the trials will not be available for another 12 to 18 months.
But Gould said he was “encouraged” by the results of trials which were presented at the summit.
Two independent pilot studies of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans showed a 50 percent reduction in symptoms of post-traumatic stress after eight weeks, according to the summit’s sponsor, the David Lynch Foundation, a charitable organization founded by the American filmmaker and television director.
Results from the initial phase of a long-term trial investigating the effects of Transcendental Meditation on 60 cadets at Norwich University, a private military college in Vermont, have been encouraging, school officials said at the summit, held at The Army and Navy Club.
Students practising TM showed measurable improvement in the areas of academic performance and discipline over a control group. “The statistical effect we found in only two months was surprisingly large,” Carole Bandy, an associate professor of psychology who is directing the study at the university, said at the summit.
“For us, it’s all about the evidence,” said Richard W. Schneider, president of the university, who added that he was a skeptic before the trial began.
“Conventional approaches fall woefully short of the mark, so we clearly need a new approach,” Norman Rosenthal, a clinical professor of of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School.
Operation Warrior Wellness, a division of the foundation, is providing TM training to troops recovering from wounds at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. Troops report “dramatic improvements” in sleep, according to the foundation, as well as significant reductions in pain, stress and the use of prescription medications
Lynch, the director of “Blue Velvet,” “Mullholland Drive” and the television series “Twin Peaks,” is a longtime practitioner of TM, a meditative practice advocates say helps manage stress and depression.
By | 02:45 PM ET, 05/03/2012
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