International Journal of Cultic Studies ■ Vol. 10, 2019 81
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
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart
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.
The subtitle indicates the content of this well-
researched yet straightforward response to the
quasi-religious sect founded after 1955 by
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918–2008). Mahesh
first taught his religion as “transcendental deep
meditation” in India. Later, this savvy
businessman trademarked Transcendental
Meditation (TM) for foreign consumption. A
major meditation cult was born: Cultus means to
care for TMers care for themselves and the
world through a special meditation technique.
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
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
Reviewed by Joseph Szimhart
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.
The subtitle indicates the content of this well-
researched yet straightforward response to the
quasi-religious sect founded after 1955 by
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1918–2008). Mahesh
first taught his religion as “transcendental deep
meditation” in India. Later, this savvy
businessman trademarked Transcendental
Meditation (TM) for foreign consumption. A
major meditation cult was born: Cultus means to
care for TMers care for themselves and the
world through a special meditation technique.
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
