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Other psychiatrists, always wary of anyone seeming to poach on their preserve, say that the TM organization does not screen prospective meditators and that the technique—especially a sequence of extra meditations called "rounding"—might well cause unstable persons to go over the edge.
Paradoxically, TM is also criticized for being too practical and not meditative enough. Most Hindu gurus, for instance, teach one or another form of yoga, which combines practical exercises with meditation to achieve union with Brahma—the ultimate reality or Absolute. Yoga itself is the Sanskrit word for a yoking, or union. The various branches of Buddhist meditation—Zen and Tibetan, for example—usually require great discipline and concentration to try similarly to gain nirvana, that ineffable state of liberation and union with ultimate reality in which suffering is eliminated and compassion and wisdom are attained. "Transcendental Meditation does not reach the stage of giving you awareness of your real self," complains Dr. Kumar Pal, secretary of the Yoga Institute of Psychology and Physical Therapy in New Delhi. "It is merely a technique, a very limited technique, and it is not yogic because it lacks the prerequisites of yogic meditation. A moral life is the sine qua non of yoga practice. The students and admirers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi have no need to give up sex, liquor and other immoral habits. They are reveling in immoral habits at the cost of basic moral values." TM, adds A.K. Krishna Nambiar, publisher and editor of Spiritual India, "can make you a better executive, but it cannot give you the spiritual ecstasy that other, more spiritual meditation techniques do. It can never lead the meditator to turya, the fourth and eventual stage of spiritual ecstasy which is the final aim of meditation and which makes the meditator one with and part of the universe."
On the other hand, some Jews and Christians, like the placard-carrying fundamentalists in Los Angles last week, say that TM, despite its claims to being purely secular, is really Hinduism in disguise. Their argument has at least some merit, and though the ordinary meditator sees traces of religion only in the initiation ceremony, the rites for TM teachers are permeated with Hindu words and symbols.
The invocation, for example, reads in part: "To Lord Narayana, to lotus-born Brahma, the Creator, to Vashishta, to Shakti, and to his son, Parashar, to Vyasa, to Shukadava . . . I bow down . . . At whose door the whole galaxy of gods pray for perfection day and night, adorned with immeasurable glory, preceptor of the whole world, having bowed down to him, we gain fulfillment."
Whatever it has borrowed from Hinduism, TM does owe something to religious tradition, and all major religions—Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as the Eastern faiths—at one time or another have included both meditation and the repetition of a mantra-like word. "Clasp this word tightly in your heart so that it never leaves no matter what may happen," advised a 14th century Christian treatise, The Cloud of Unknowing. "This word shall be your shield and your spear."