One of the three civil cases brought against the David Lynch Foundation and the Board of Education of the City of Chicago has reached its conclusion, with judgments against both the DLF and the Board. Quoting the court: (1) Judgment is entered in favor of plaintiff Mariyah Green and against defendant Board of Education of the City of Chicago in the amount of $75,000. This is inclusive of any and all relief available to the plaintiff in this case against the Board including all types of damages; attorney’s fees; costs; interest; and litigation expenses. (2) Judgment is entered in favor of plain ..read more

The close relationship between Maharishi and his successors, and some of India’s Hindu supremacist political leaders, has been hinted at from time to time. Even as far back as 1968, Paul McCartney and John Lennon were warned that Maharishi was connected with right-wing politicians there. Destruction of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. Image from video of an October 2016 meeting at the TM organization's Vlodrop headquarters. Meaning of "Jai Sri Ram" An essay written in 2006 by an Amsterdam teacher who did liaison work for the Embassy of India in the Netherlands reveals ..read more

I've been following along with the latest developments in the lawsuit against the David Lynch Foundation, and others, in the aftermath of the DLF's latest failed attempt to insinuate the TM program into public high schools. The legality of any entanglement of any government entity in the United States with Transcendental Meditation was successfully challenged by the opinions in Malnak v. Yogi  - which may be forty years old, but that still serves as persuasive authority in US courts - which resulted in an injunction against the TM program in public high schools in New Jersey, wh ..read more

The Transcendental Meditation organization has consistently misrepresented the meaning and nature of the puja, TM's instruction ritual, for half a century. Recently, a new document has surfaced explaining, in detail, the puja's meaning in the context of the spiritual traditions of India. This ceremony is a religious transaction in which the prospective meditator is a co-participant, making offerings to the divine. These offerings are represented by the items set out on the puja table, for each of which, it’s alleged, the meditator will receive a blessing in the form of the advertised benefits ..read more

A filing today in the ongoing Federal court case against the Chicago Board of Education, the David Lynch Foundation, and the University of Chicago disclosed that, during the course of discovery, the Board of Education informed the plaintiffs that the Department of Justice, and not any of the other named defendants, financed the so-called "Quiet Time" program as part of a supposed research project involving Chicago public schools. Northern District of Illinois courtroom. (Library of Congress photo) This means that, according to this filing by the plaintiffs, the teaching of TM was dire ..read more

The Transcendental Meditation instruction ritual, the puja, is much more than just some “simple thank-you ceremony.” Its most important purpose is that it provides a certain unusual experience to the new meditator, of reverence and devotion, that they will remember. It’s intended to create an expectation for, and to reinforce the supposedly life-changing benefits of, the meditation itself. It is an expression of power, legitimacy and dominance of an inherently supremacist religious tradition over the new meditator, and also serves as a reminder of that dominance and authority to the TM teacher ..read more

A school yearbook from 2013 contains photos of the two 16 year olds charged as adults with first degree murder, whose families are known to be part of the meditator community in Fairfield, Iowa.  The Des Moines Register reports: A southeast Iowa town is reeling after two high school students were charged with first-degree murder in the death of their Spanish teacher. Police confirmed Thursday that human remains discovered Wednesday in Fairfield's Chautauqua Park were those of Nohema Graber, who had been reported missing earlier in the day, according to a news release from the city ..read more

Recent studies claiming that Transcendental Meditation is effective in treating PTSD, and that it provides other benefits, treat TM as a “black box.” As with many similar past studies, researchers fail to consider that this method of meditation instruction contains several hours of other information, which creates a context of expectation of life improvement, a structure or habit which will improve life, and an authority who provides the assurance that TM will unfailingly produce those changes. These inadequacies in the design of these studies would be obvious, if all aspects of instruction ..read more

The Transcendental Meditation instruction ritual, the puja, should be viewed in the context of a half-century long attempt to deliberately mislead the public, institutional and governmental authorities, and prospective meditators about the nature and purpose of the TM program. This misrepresentation is evident in the organization’s own descriptions of the nature of the puja, and the obvious conflict between its insistence that this ritual is somehow “secular” when its function in Indian spiritual culture, which is TM’s origin, is unambiguously a religious one. The Transcendental Meditat ..read more

Plaintiffs bringing legal action against the David Lynch Foundation (the DLF), a Chicago Public Schools district, and the University of Chicago, seeking redress as a result of the so-called "Quiet Time" program to introduce TM into public schools, have amended their complaint, making it a class action lawsuit. Puja table set up for TM instruction. The framed image is a registered trademark/service mark held by Maharishi Foundation Liechtenstein in the United States. Photo by the author. Previously, from August 2020:Lawsuit in progress: David Lynch Foundation abandons TM "Quiet Ti ..read more