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Perhaps the most significant fact about the TM craze is that, in the words of Krister Stendahl, dean of the Harvard Divinity School, it suggests a "genuine hunger for mystical and religious experiences." It is the most visible manifestation of the industrialized nations looking for relief from the pressures of modern life in Eastern spiritual or quasi-spiritual movements. The ideal of combining Western technological society with Eastern spiritual serenity has long appealed to many American and European victims of what they regard as the tensions of the 20th century. Japan is sometimes cited as having achieved that ideal, with tycoons coming home from the shipyard or computer plant and slipping into their kimonos and into the serenity of the past. This is possible in Japan because it has preserved the framework of old traditions and values. Without those, TM or any similar movement in the West can be at best palliative.
Judged on its own terms and used as a technique and not as a religious panacea, TM works—at least for many. It will not necessarily make people better, but it may very well make them feel better or, if nothing else, think that they feel better.
And that is about as much as they can expect from 40 minutes a day.
* TM: Discovering Inner Energy and Overcoming Stress, by Harold Bloomfield, Michael Peter Cain and Dennis T. Jaffe (Delacorte; $8.95), and The TM Book, by Denise Denniston and Peter McWilliams (Price/Stern/Sloan; $3 95). both in third place this week. Another book that deals in part with TM, Adam Smith's Powers of Mind (Random House; $10), is due later this month.