Transcendental Meditation, Yoga, Contemplative / Centering Prayer - Dr. Walter Martin

we worship thee and crazy and sancti our Father the greater is he that is in us and he did is in the world and reacting now to the presence of God the holy spirit that I will protect us from the wicked one from all evil in all forms and that thy spirit may instruct us from thy word that we may walk in the light as thou art in the light and have fellowship one with another that the blood of Jesus Christ thy son may keep on cleansing us from all sin teachers from thy word exalt by son Jesus and help us to see the contrast that exists between truth and satanic error that we may be able to more adequately and effectively present thy gospel and love those who are entrapped by false Gospels in Christ dear name and for his sake with Thanksgiving amen we have sufficient time to discuss the subject of transcendental meditation or as it is known colloquially is TM but by no means is this lecture to be conceived as or interpreted as an exhaustive analysis of the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is the founder Discoverer of Transcendental Meditation and is an Indian physicist turned guru who has influenced quite a number of individuals as a result of his teaching we're going to be reviewing some of those teachings this morning we're going to look at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation which was previously entitled before he reached his present pinnacle of success as the science of being and the art of living also the meditations of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi because Transcendental Meditation has very distinct goals it has aims and desires and it means to implement these things today Transcendental Meditation has reached the floor of the Congress of the United States on at least two separate occasions one through Senator Tony recommending Transcendental Meditation the Illinois State Legislature has at this present time accepted TM as a means of drug prevention and as a methodology for increasing capacities to educate younger people and older people but particularly those in the colleges and in the high schools and inevitably in the grammar schools because TM allegedly gives you better health a more relaxed mind and nature the capacity to appreciate the world in which you live and meets many needs that individuals today feel that they have to have met because nothing else appears to work for them so from the Congress into the state legislatures and right here in California TM has already approached the California Legislature with requests to reach into the school system in California and they are doing this literally around the United States and hope to penetrate the world with it inevitably Transcendental Meditation therefore have goals and these very definite gold ought to be understood there's not our intention in discussing TM to attack Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a person nor people who sincerely and earnestly study this particular form of discipline it is our intention to find out whether or not TM is compatible with historic Christianity and it is claimed by the Maharishi and by his followers that there is nothing that can be represented as conflict between historic Christianity and the principle that he lays down in his books and in the discovery and promulgation of TM what I want to do is to check what they say by what the Word of God says because the only way we're ever going to be able to deal with it is to find out whether or not God has something to say on the subject and to weigh what they say in the light of divine revelation all experiences theories and various concepts of men and philosophical and theological systems of interpretation must be held subject to divine revelation divine revelation is that which cannot be known other than by God making it known we can be illumined about things we can pray our way to solutions we can find verses in the scripture which lead us to certain conclusions and helpful insights but inevitably we must turn to the revelation of God in Scripture and through the Holy Spirit to tell us whether something is right or wrong otherwise we can be led astray and not even know what's happening to us so we have no quarrel as Christians and should have none with the devotees of the Maharishi system if we're going to have any problem at all it's going to be with the content of Transcendental Meditation far more so than with the methodology of Transcendental Meditation now what is Transcendental Meditation a lot of people say that's a big word that's a mouthful well the word Trends and dental simply means to go beyond God that transcendent means God going beyond this dimension to reach him the transcendent God is the God who is beyond us in another dimension and ultra dimensional being the eternal omnipresent omnipotent all-knowing being this we are confident of by divine revelation he is transcendent and he is imminent that is he reveals himself in the world in his creation and through his prophets and inevitably incarnate that is in flesh in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth now meditation is simply to concentrate upon a specific thing to the exclusion of other things now that's a simplification of it but that is in essence what we are talking about when we use the term biblically and when we use the word in terms of the philosophy of the Maharishi it is a form of concentration it is a form of reaching towards a goal by the process of the my and and the exercise of the spirit in the case of Christianity meditation means to concentrate upon the things of God as he has revealed them and to be corrected by them chastened by them guided by them built up by them in effect to be so absorbed by them that the mind of God operates in us through the Holy Spirit and of course through the relationship the Christian has with the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior in Transcendental Meditation we have something quite different we have the concept that you can go beyond what you know in your conscious mind to the dimension where you can reach out and actually touch the ultimate ground of all being and as you do this by concentration upon your own higher self which is in effect part of God you are capable of moving forward on an evolutionary scale until inevitably you in the end consummate in union with the divine essence and you become what Hinduism has always taught part of the divine being so when you're talking about Transcendental Meditation make no mistake about it as we will see it is Hinduism pure and simple the Maharishi is a Hindu guru dressing-up Hindu concepts from the Gita's and from other areas of their philosophy in Western terminology lightly spraying it with psychological benefits which can be obtained in other areas just as easily by psychiatry psychotherapy depth psychology hypnotic therapy and most of all by meditation upon the things of God who can affect in us far more than Transcendental Meditation can ever make as a claim so what we're going to try and do is make the contrast and see what the Maharishi says and what God's Word says I reiterate this because there's no real way for the Christian to analyze TM unless the Christian looks at it from the perspective of Revelation if you look at it from the perspective of psychology there is much praiseworthy in TM but it's praiseworthy because it is applying already recognized psychological principles TM has discovered nothing new TM has only emphasized principles which good psychologists and psychiatrists have been emphasizing for many years let me illustrate this in the early 1950s a book was published by Josh Law liepman entitled peace of mind this rabbi went into how a person could arrive at peace of mind and anticipated quite a number of the things that the Maharishi later wrote upon I don't suggest that the Maharishi read the rabbi though he might have but there are principles in leadmon which are extremely sound and which parallel the maharishis yet Leibman published before the Maharishi did therefore there was really nothing new in what he said the claim of TM is that the Maharishi had discovered something brand new and this something brand new is that on the lowest level of man's unconscious mind if you will the Z level there are tiny thoughts patterns that can be traced back to your initial stages of prenatal development and gradually these bubbles as he uses the illustration move upwards on the scale from Z until they reach a which is the conscious level and then they are constantly reinforced the individual meditates the Maharishi says I have discovered the fact that you can reach into the unconscious and bring these bubbles of the past up through the levels of consciousness to the top level which is the conscious mind and then you are able to recognize them and being reinforced by them in your daily life it will enable you says the Maharishi to eat better to sleep better to be able to concentrate on things better it will improve your educational work it will improve your interpersonal relationships it will help you in your religious experience and it will be a constant source of calming you down in the midst of a hurried and chaotic world it would probably come as a great shock to the Maharishi to learn that the founder of Scientology first proposed this in 1950 in a book entitled Dianetics where l ron Hubbard who knows virtually nothing about psychiatry even less about psychology and has no credentials in this area whatsoever for making the pronouncements that he makes said that imprinted upon the unconscious mind were engrams or in effect memories of the past and an even prenatal experiences these things came through to the conscious mind as one was placed under stress and under the problems and vicissitudes of life until people became emotionally and mentally disturbed by the Engram bouncing around inside the unconscious or the subconscious mind and the only way you could get rid of this was naturally to go into Scientology you grasp two tin cans hooked to an e meter and there's someone who had the capacity to analyze the answers to the questions which you were giving them would tell you whether or not you could have ever inevitably become what is known as a clear now what clearer is somebody who engrams have all been removed whose inhibitions and problems and little bubbles back in the unconscious have all passed away and they have all shocked to the surface then reinforced they are clear psychologically and ready to go out and meet the world I've seen some of these clears and it is very clear they are not clear but what disturbs me about Transcendental Meditation is that the Maharishi claims he discovered it that's going to upset l ron Hubbard who already has the deity complex and the Maharishi is challenging this infallibility there's got to be some friction somewhere along the line but the principle is almost identical for the Maharishi therefore to claim it as he does in Transcendental Meditation is patently ignoring these facts of history so first of all lets us understand that there's nothing really new about TM the Maharishi has discovered nothing he has only rephrased it retranslated it or if you will volga rised it made it common so the average person can come to grips with it providing they have some basic orientation in vocabulary now you will read it you'll notice that the maharishi's Transcendental Meditation philosophy has a vast difference in its structure from that of Western philosophy and religion the Maharishi specifically is a paradoxes a paradoxes is somebody who can have a contradictory for a premise for the paradoxes it can be a wet-dry light dark day outside right now and if you say but there's contradiction the paradoxes will look at you and say well life is like that that's as far as you're going to get now that I know because I've done been this route as the saying goes and it can be very very disturbing because we have been raised in the context of Aristotelian logic the Western mind is molded after Aristotle dear ol Aristotle would have a philosophical hemorrhage if he were to talk to the Maharishi and the reason why is that Aristotle suffered from the illusion that you had to have a premise and steps and a conclusion and it had to be true and had to be valid otherwise you weren't making any sense and of course the person that reasons like that is going to get nowhere with Transcendental Meditation because just as there is no agreement between Athens and Jerusalem because one of them is still Oh Sophia the love of human wisdom and the other is say Oh Sophia the love of divine wisdom so there can be absolutely no agreement here simply because a paradoxes and an Aristotelian logician are never going to get together they begin on different premises and they're going to end up differently we in the Western world and those who are trained to think this way primarily are always frustrated frustrated by TM and by Eastern religious philosophies because most of the time they have abandoned any Aristotelian logic it is an experiential and emotional trip which you take totally abandoning any real rational content so that when you get to the end of the line you have a nice warm feeling but you don't know why and you know you have a sense of peace but you don't know where it came from and what's more elusive it doesn't stay Jesus said my peace I give you not as the world gives give I you now there is peace in Transcendental Meditation it can give you a measure of peace because if you can learn to float happily over the conflicts of life much like a ping-pong ball cascading over Niagara Falls you are obviously not going to be touched by these things but if you have to come down to the nitty-gritty hard world of personal conflicts and of living with sin and with evil and with the effects of it in the world in which we find ourselves you are not going to be able to honestly meditate yourself out of that kind of a conflict because there has to be a remedy for sin and simply trying to find the God within you or to reach a dimension beyond and get in contact with other higher beings or gods is not going to satisfy the person who is really looking for the peace of God which surpasses all understanding so I'd like to look at what the Maharishi says and to analyze it in that light I reiterate once more to really analyze TM you need a thorough background in Hinduism and in philosophy because much of the terminology is philosophic and many of the concepts are easily recognizable to anybody who has had any philosophic training the average person has heard the concepts but never in this type of language the Morgan trying to do is that the Maharishi speak for himself and we will judge TM on the basis of what the Lord says and some practical aspects of it also and see whether or not the Christian can truly find compatibility another important note that should be made TM is growing Transcendental Meditation centers are springing up all over the United States and the Maharishi has just bought a college in Iowa to train people their penetration on the basis of Education the relaxation of the body the ability to adjust people psychologically to a certain degree and to destroy in some people the desire for drugs and addiction to drugs and things of that nature has given it credibility with some people who are easily impressed but with pseudo scientific materials let me tell you right now Transcendental Meditation is not a science it is not an empirically verifiable science with results always predictable it has success but I think we'll be able to see some of the basis for that success and also get into what the scripture says is truly meditation on the level that God operates in the hearts and lives of human beings so let's go to what the Maharishi says and then contrast what the Maharishi says with the Word of God now this is a very free and open lecture and I intend to answer questions that you may have as we are going along so if you have a question which pertains to the specific subject that we're talking about then I'll be happy to try and answer it for you but I'd prefer that you save your questions to the end if at all possible so that we can bring all of these strings together and tie it up first of all from the book Transcendental Meditation serenity without drugs this is the great appeal we learn what the goals of Transcendental Meditation is the real goal of Transcendental Meditation it is the penetration according to appendix a number one of educational institutions of rehabilitation programs of Social Welfare and of the health and medical fields that is the goal of the meditation process to enter all of these fields and to use TM as a type of panacea to meet the needs of people who have problems in these fields now these particular goals are now in the process of being implemented and I don't think anybody should ignore the force and the success with which this is being done Amira she says on page 253 that he feels that one of the most successful ways to implement Transcendental Meditation is to bring it to the churches let me quote what he has to say talking about ministers their life must be an integrated life in God consciousness and if they fail to live life in God consciousness then they cease to be a link between men and God it is high time at the custodians of religion awakened here is something offered to them in all love of God and in all love for what they stand for it is high time that the transcendental deep meditation be adopted in the churches temples mosques and pagodas here is the fulfillment of every religion in the simple practice of transcendental deep meditation this belongs to the spirit of every religion it is existed in the early stages of every faith it is something which has been lost it has been lost and practiced certainly no one can be held responsible for that the responsibility for the loss of the spirit of religions lies with the Eternity of time but now is the time for revival now what makes this interesting is that the Transcendental Meditation people are running all over the United States the Congress of the United States legislatures and everything else saying well Transcendental Meditation is a technique but it's not a religion we're not a religion there's a dichotomy a division if you will between religion and technique we are not pushing religion we are pushing the concept of a technique of concentration which enables man to overcome the problems that he meets in modern society that statement is a lie because and I say it bluntly because the true TM can never be separated from Hinduism and the Maharishi apparently forgot in his meditations that he was the one who taught that I quote him though there be no doubt in our minds as to his Hinduism and the fact that TM is based squarely upon it the Vedas are a very basic study of the fundamentals of life that is the reason why through Vedic hymns it is possible for those expert in chanting those hymns to produce certain effects here there or there the universe is vast so many worlds and all that we do something here according to Vedic rites particular specific chanting to produce an effect in some other world to draw the attention of those higher beings or gods living there the entire knowledge of the mantras or hymns of the Vedas is devoted to man's connection to man's communication with the higher beings in different strata of creation close-quarter what is the purpose of the mantra the word which you are given to meditate upon that's what happens to you when you started meditation you're given a word only you know the mantra where does it come from Hinduism what is the idea why by meditating upon that even by chanting that one prepares one's conscious mind for the bubble that is rising from the Z level to the a level and when it gets up there as a bubble is small at the beginning it gets larger and larger and larger as it gets near the surface then the bubble breaks out upon the surface and the individual at that moment reaches a level where they can commune with the eternal essence of being of course the eternal essence of being is not a personal God the eternal essence of being is an impersonal God but the idea you can separate Transcendental Meditation as religion from the technique of TM is patently false you are getting Hinduism in the technique you are getting Hinduism from the people who are embracing the maharishi's philosophy and make no mistake about it the Maharishi is a Hindu guru and you are getting polytheism 88 million gods and goddesses in infernal and eternal contradiction these are things that people who go into it ought to be aware of you are not going into a new system you're going into one of the oldest the world more than 5,000 years old and if you want to see what that system has done for people who practiced it I suggest that you take a trip to India where the Maharishi came from and take a good long look at what it has produced it has produced the starvation and the disintegration of an entire culture and right now people are dying in India because of the practice of some of these principles which have led them away from responsibility to their own fellow human beings in a mad quest to actually reach godhood you've got to understand the TM is the doorway also to reincarnation and that the Maharishi teaches reincarnation but there's a twist all you have to do is go through seven reincarnation to reach union with the divine whereas in classic Hinduism you can go on through thousands and thousands and thousands of cycles of transmigration but the Maori she has simplified with his system it's only seven this of course is violently disagreed with by quite a number of Swami's and gurus and people who think that the Maharishi has lost his Hindu philosophy in reality he has simply updated it for the Western mind I'd like to look also at some of the other statements that the Maharishi says I wouldn't be concerned about this at all because most of it is so complex that the average person won't understand it anyhow and therein lies probably its greatest benefit because to wade through this without a philosophical orientation is the end I assure you in all most abject confusion I used to say this about the writings of Paul Tillich the great blessing of Tillich's writings gifted man though he was was the fact that the average person couldn't read them and know what in the world he was talking about therefore his theology won't hurt the average man too much might destroy some seminary professors which in some instances may be fruitful for the church there is indeed a great debate as to whether seminary professors can be saved at all but I do draw to your attention in a serious vein that what we are coming to grips with here is classic Hinduism and the person who says old TM is different than Hinduism has no concept of Hinduism and doesn't understand TM at all I've had people tell me with this perfectly straight face with no orientation in comparative religion no real study in philosophy well you know everybody thinks TM is a religion but it's not then I say to them do you know what a religion is oh of course I do you know what Hinduism is yes the syndrome of religion yes is the Maharishi a Hindu yes are the basic philosophies which he sets forth Hindu yes you mean to tell me that he'd discovered Transcendental Meditation which is the opposite of Hinduism no but it's got to have some roots someplace where's it come from oh well it's pure psychology you don't know it isn't in his own meditations he says the purpose of the mantra and the chanting and the concentration is to get you in contact with higher beings or gods the Bible says if you're going to get in contact with other beings or gods you are now in the doctrine of the demons and in the realm of spiritual darkness not like Satan loves to masquerade as an angel of light and if he can convince you that by meditating lowering your blood pressure kicking your desire for drugs and overcoming some bad habit by concentration on a focal point that will lead you inevitably to the real you you better believe that he's going to get you doing it and I have news for you you never want to meet the real you and if the Maharishi has any real recognizance of the issues he doesn't want to meet his real self either because the scripture says that the real you is depraved degenerate base despised rejected carnal and Damned and that it took Calvary to get you back to where God could have fellowship with you again therefore for a person to think that they're going to reach the real you the real I and that rely is really God the subtle form of madness or religious schizophrenia and this is precisely what you're in you are in an unreal dimension now some people say well you're pretty hard on the subject you're pontificating or not I'm a full professor of comparative religions I've traveled all over the world more than the Maharishi has and I have studied this for the last 25 years as he has I'm thoroughly conversing with Hinduism and what what he believes and I know Hinduism when I see it after all if I go outside in the street corner and something comes down the road with four wheels honking a horn and if it looks like an automobile and it sounds like an automobile and it passes all the qualifications of an automobile you are not going to sell me that it's a submarine this is exactly what you're getting into M you are getting people with the honking horn the roaring engine and all the characteristics of the automobile Hinduism very old model and then they're smiling at you and saying what you don't understand that's really your submarine that's TM something new no it isn't something new I challenge the credential to the people who are selling TM to the public on the grounds they don't know Hinduism most of them or 90% of them from any other pagan or cultic or occultic manifestation and therefore when they tell the people this isn't religion obviously the person's going to believe them because they're sincere and dedicated earnest people and they are when Varrick tummy tells the congress of the united states the TM has done marvelous things for people he's telling you truth it has as a technique for what barek tony doesn't understand is that the technique is based on religion which inevitably becomes the core of the expression and moves into the person's life and at that juncture you have a violation of church and state in the United States which is exactly the reason why M should be put out of the schools out of the all public operations and out of all subsidies because it's going to be subsidized and it's a religion and I can prove it's a religion and there quite a number of other people with ample qualifications who can testify and prove that it's a religion then I think that they should introduce a resolution to allow Orthodox Christianity to speak in the schools and I think they should let Judaism speak in the schools I think they should allow anybody with any religion whatsoever to speak freely in the schools simply because freedom for one religious philosophy must connote religions religious freedom for others but that is not what we're getting what we're getting is TM is a technique that will help you use it concentrate on it and you won't get on drugs it will increase your grades you'll sleep better your high blood pressure will go down you'll be able to cope better to that I answer Jesus Christ's gospel is infinitely superiors basically anything TM or Hinduism has ever done it reclaims homosexuals it reclaims dope addicts it reclaims alcoholics it reclaimed the dregs of society and recreates them in the true image of the Living God and Jesus Christ has been in the business of transforming human souls for almost 2,000 years the Maharishi has a long way to go to even start on this just from a statistical basis and we can demonstrate from Bowery missions from drug addiction centers and from so many other sources that we would be at it for years that the gospel of Jesus Christ when believed and applied to the lives of men not only does more for them than TM can ever advertise but it also transforms the culture into which those people are sent and TM is not a culture transforming mechanism it is an egocentric trip in which you are the one trying to get the power you are the one trying to find peace and then you want to get a hold of somebody else and get them into the same thing but you don't go out to the people who are really on the lowest level of society who desperately need transformation and sit down with them and give them the meditations of maha rishi Mahesh Yogi because if you went out to Central Africa to evangelize the arugula's or some other name and you started reading them how they could change their habits from the maharishi's principles and deep meditation you wouldn't get any further than the first course for dinner and you'd be it because this will not transform a cannibal it will not transform people who are in other religions that are hostile simply because they know not God and obey not his word the only people TM is going to work with are people that already have some religious foundation therefore the proselytizing religious psychological philosophy based upon the premise that they must be parasites where other religions exist they can never be pioneers they will never send out missions to the ends of the earth to transform cultures with TM because nobody's going to listen to them and that's very easily understood because when you start telling some cannibal that he's going to be one with the eternal cosmic consciousness and when he goes from zero to a level he's just going to commence filing his teeth and these are practical considerations that I suggest people look at long and hard before they start talking about the great effects of transcendental meditation and the Maharishi says another interesting thing which I think we ought to look at he speaks on the subject of man's salvation I caught him on page 254 of his book and what does he have to say about how a person reaches Redemption I quote in teaching truthfulness kindness love for others and fear of God the religions have virtually failed to provide any significant degree of evolution of human life because a practical technique of bringing the human mind into divine value has not been used unless the mind rises high in its values and attains a fair degree of divine intelligence the man will continue to err to err is human to be free from error is divine thus so long as man remains in the field of humanity he is apt to earth it is necessary therefore to take him above the field of error bring the divine intelligence within the range of the conscious mind and thereby infused by nature into the nature of man raised humanity into divinity then it does not matter what rituals are followed and which are ignored on the gross level of religion and life on the gross level of life these names such as God consciousness and so forth I should really go to the religions I give the whole quote as long as they are established in the spirit of religion and have risen to the state of God consciousness as long as they live the life in their day-to-day life as long as the stream of life is in tune with the cosmic stream of evolution it does not matter whether they call themselves Christian [ __ ] Hindu or Buddhist any name will be significant on the gross level of life these names carry significance but on the level of the being they all have the same value the key to the fulfillment of every religion is found in the regular practice of transcendental deep meditation transcendental deep meditation is the practice to live all that the religions have been teaching through the ages it is through this that man readily rises to the level of divine being it is this that brings fulfillment to all religions translated that means and not freely but very close to what he says you too can make it to divinity all you need is to rise above the level of error which is actually a synonym for sin and after you rise above this in TM on the higher plane you will be united with the divine nature and then free from sin free from error and that's the essence of it all all the great religions have taught this Jesus Christ never taught this Moses never taught this the prophets never taught this Hinduism taught this this is Hinduism pure and simple Jesus Christ said I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me he never said I am one of many equally good ways I am an aspect of the truth and a fragment of the life Christ did not have fragmented salvation he spoke with authority that's why people listen to him the Maharishi speaks Hinduism if you want to be a Hindu go to TM because that's updated Hinduism with a psychological twist some of which is borrowed without owning it from Scientology and l ron Hubbard's writings now the Maharishi makes no bones about his view of the Bible so we can understand it he thinks that the scripture is occupies a unique place so when you start discussing the authority of the scripture with a person involved in TM they will tell you without hesitation that the Bible contains truth but the Bible doesn't contain all truth the Bible is not solely the Word of God the Bible contains teaching which can aid you in meditation it's very important the Bible becomes subservient to the revelation of who Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Buddhism or Hamm Adam Mohammedanism Christianity all of the religions of the world the names mean nothing except on the gross level of human experience as all furs return to the sea so shall all souls return to me the Hindu Trinity Brown Vishnu and Siva but Brahma himself enunciates this you do not have a personal God in Hinduism you have many gods and goddesses the Maharishi doesn't have a personal God and Transcendental Meditation wants to put you in contact with other beings or other gods on the nature of God he makes the following statement again I think tremendously revealing because it gives us some insight into what TM wants you to do to get to God God is the most highly cherished word for hundreds of millions of people in the world the idea of God is the most highly cherished idea in human life for those who understand it the conception of God is a reality greater than the reality of any conception that the human mind has developed at any time he tells us the conception of the word path indicates a distance starting from one point and ending at another the paths to God realization means the methods or practices adopted by man in order to reach God to understand the path clearly it is first necessary to clarify what we mean by God and how far he is from man he then proceeds to say God is a reality more concrete than all of the realities of the entire cosmos God is found in two phases of the reality as supreme being of absolute eternal nature and as a personal God at the top of phenomenal creation thus God has two aspects the personal and the impersonal they are the two realities of the word God now of course you are involved in paradoxical reasoning personal means eggl impersonal means absence of a go God is both personal and impersonal it is a dark light wet dry day outside you are right at this moment in the area of the law of non-contradiction the moment you get yourself in a conflict with that law you have lost all capacity to communicate because you can use any word that you want and assign any meaning to it that you choose and a person can assign any meaning to it that they choose result you can talk for hours using the same terms and be discussing entirely different concepts and appear to agree with each other that's exactly what you get in the Eastern religions that's why they hate to define terms because the moment they define a term they've got to stick with the concept and that pins them down from this aimless wandering through the corridors of semantic drivel this of course should stimulate people to understand the real basic essential fact that unless you define terminology you will never ever understand what's going on you won't know what somebody's talking about unless you ask them what they mean by their words when I talk to a Jehovah's Witness and I say Jesus Christ I never make the assumption we're talking about the same Jesus because the Jehovah's Witness literature tells me that Jesus Christ for him is the Archangel Michael the first and greatest creation of Jehovah God but Jesus Christ in the Bible is the Word made flesh God the Son second person of the Holy Trinity creator of all things no there's a difference but I could talk to a Jehovah's Witness for hours using his terminology with my definitions and we'd appear to agree on almost anything it's only when we define the terms that we find out they are Aryans and I am a Christian I am a follower of the gospel they are followers of a man who attacked the gospel terminology is that important I like to cite Watergate is a classic illustration of terminology because it's true people got on the witness stand in front of committees and said we swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God which one they were referring to I have no idea but anyway they asked the question did you give such and such a money to so-and-so ah well actually did you bribe so-and-so no you did not bribe it no no way did you give him the money yes well if you gave him the money what was it for well that was for the expediency of expediting a problem which at that moment was confronting us in tactics the boy here says just a minute did you give them money to get something yes or no yes this is bribery there's also a law called perjury carries little price tag on a two and a half to five anybody's ever been in the slammer knows there's a lot of men there that's exactly what you're up against now I maintain that the Watergate mentality existed long before Watergate and primarily in religion because there you are dealing with people but we'll look right into your faces say yes I believe in God you believe in a personal God yes I do on the phenomenal level you say well what other level would you suggest we discuss him on that's the one I live on well he's on the transcendental level Oh what is he in transcendental level he's not he's it you mean on this level he's I on that level he's it right now you've got it you mean when he changed his dimensions he changes his identity well I wouldn't put it that way but what would how would you put it well we don't understand that you bet you don't because you're involved in contradiction if you think about it for a moment it becomes insane how can you have God as I hear and God is it there and talk to the same person I is a cognizant reflective Engel Descartes put it very beautifully cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am that there is one thing that I am certain of it is certain that I doubt because I doubt I know that I think because I think therefore I am don't try and talk me out of it that's Cartesian logic it is pretty powerful but turn around the same way somebody said to me I hear it there I just go back to Descartes and say to amela words you're talking to him here but when you get there you are part of it right you're nuts that isn't very scholarly but I assure you it's accurate that just comes the time you know when like Elijah with the prophets of bed you have to hold this type of reasoning up to scorn because it is madness to try and pursue it on the phenomenal level God is a person on the transcendental level I am part of him and he is no longer he's it you talk too long like that and start believing it too much and pretty soon you begin to wonder whether you're here on this level you know I've talked to some of these people it's amazing and some of them said to me without even a blush well I mean after all in philosophy and things like this you have to recognize nobody really knows everything about it I said oh I agree with you a hundred percent open knows everything about in fact we know very little about a lot of these things right then they'll look at you with a perfectly straight face and say what you can't even prove that you're here is it come again you can't even prove it you're here as oh that's supposing in the world I can empirically inductively and demonstrable prove that I am here oh no you can't I mean you think you're here and of course you could be but that doesn't mean that you can actually prove to me that you're here oh I certainly can well how would you do it are you talking to me yes then I'm here because if I'm not you're nuts only schizophrenic stalk to themselves if you're standing out there talking to somebody you think isn't there it won't be long before they'll be coming these choose UM's that a lot of people think is so profound is actually nonsense you've got to have mind presence enough to say now wait a minute if God is it and I am part of it there I've got to be part of it here well I mean in the final divine unfolding of the plan that's true but not now because you're on the level of the phenomenal you say well let me understand you when it finally all winds out I'm going to find out that all the time I was here he was it and I was it too right then at a point in time I thought I was I but I wasn't I I was it well that's part of it I even go on in this vein or ad infinitum ad nauseam and never get anyplace so it's vitally essential when you talk about TM to realize you're in Hinduism it abounds with contradictions when the Maharishi is talking about God he's not an impersonal God on one level a personal God on the other level and that's both logical and theological and philosophical on sense and yet this is supposed to be some marvelous new revelation nothing new about it at all very old very corrupt and totally unreasonable let's go a little bit further the impersonal God he says is not Almighty page 270 we are all part of this God but the impersonal God is not almighty and the Maharishi says on page join 76 he's not altogether sure that there even is a personal God so after we learned that there's an impersonal God on one level and a personal God on the other level we are subsequently told that we are not altogether sure the personal one is there after all which really confuses a person who has any degree of logical process of thought because I am cognizant a go and I have a subject object relationship to other cognizant Eggos I talked to them we talked back and forth that's how we know we're here no matter what somebody may say we still know well if I am personality and you are personality and we can say I but the divine essence is it not I then the creature is by definition greater than the creator because I at least am a reflective a goal and it is incapable of being it because there's no personality in fact the Maharishi goes so far as to spell it out in terms that nobody can misunderstand he says that God has is formless and supreme eternal and absolute being it is without attributes qualities or features because all attributes qualities and features belong to the relative field of life whereas the impersonal God is of an absolute nature it is absolute impersonal and attribute 'less but it is the source of all relative existence it is The Fountainhead of all the different forms and phenomena of creation so it made a and it is not a being cognizant and personal but I am do I have one thing up on it I can think and it can't because only an ego is capable of thought an impersonal force doesn't think the wind doesn't think water doesn't think fire doesn't think that impersonal even though the impersonal does have attributes fire is hot and water is generally cool and wind has form in the sense that it can move us and we can be aware of its presence but here you've got a being that has no form no attributes no personality and it's still called being what you're in is a confusion of terminology when he comes to the Lord Jesus Christ the Maharishi makes no bones about it you have to listen to him because people say TM is not religious well of TM is it religious listen to the Maharishi on the subject of Christ this is a terrible question but may I ask you it's about Christ you know he must have attained absolute God realization and st. Paul says being the likeness of God that your next step is to be equal with God do you see how the scripture is twisted st. Paul says being the likeness of God your next step is to be equal with God that's the misquote of Philippians chapter 2 let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who existing in the form of God did not think equality with God with something to grasp for but emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a slave that's what it's talking about the Incarnation is nothing to do with you becoming God or Christ attempting to become God one does not grasp after what is ones by nature being the likeness of God that your next step is to be equal with God and remain on the transcendental level and become obedient to death even the death of the Cross well now we see why he why did he at the transcendental level setting us as an example give up this God realization and end himself and come down and go right into the gross realization of matter instead of remaining as a star you might say for us to keep on the transcendental level that's my main problem answer transcendental being when realized is realized for all time when the white cloth goes into yellow color it becomes yellow and then the yellow color becomes fast then the yellow color doesn't fade a man realized in cosmic consciousness he is living the transcendental being living the transcendental being and experiencing the things of the outer field that is he has two types of status and both are in his person 1 status is that of an individual bound by time and space and causation and the other is the one in union with the universal being unbounded by time and space and causation remaining maintained in the field of unity maintaining unity of universal existence then he goes on to talk about it when Christ was behaving in the world lecturing and crucified it doesn't mean that he cast aside his cosmic existence no the man being cosmic behaves as an individual and this is full fullness of realization so Jesus when he was here didn't give up his cosmic realization he was the supreme meditator instead he was the god realization living among us that's why he's the supreme example Jesus was God just as the Maharishi is God just as Buddha was God just as Confucius was God just as Muhammad was God just as all the great leaders in philosophers and all the lesser luminaries and the peons of history are God because we all share in the divine essence there is a name for this in philosophy it is known as pantheism which means that all are partakers part of or make up the divine essence that is the core of Hindu philosophy question Maharishi why is in the Christian circles such an accent laid upon the sufferings of Christ the answer due to not understanding the life of Christ and not understanding the message of Christ I don't think Christ ever suffered or Christ could suffer the suffering man from the suffering platform sees the bliss of Christ as suffering I want you to hear that again the suffering man from the suffering platform sees the Bliss of Christ as suffering green specks on the glass and everything is seen as green the suffering man sees a man and he sees him suffering it's a pity that Christ is talked of in terms of suffering it is a painless suffering those who count upon the suffering it is a wrong and rotation of the life of Christ and the message of Christ it is wrong the one who says that the kingdom of heaven is within that I and my father are one where is the question of suffering the message of Christ has been the message of bliss the message of Christ has been the message of the kingdom of heaven here on earth now how could suffering be associated with the one who has been all joy all bliss who claims all that it's only the misunderstanding of the life of Christ this course is not religion that's a pure meditational state a technique nothing to do with Christianity obviously we're dealing with religion you cannot help but absorb this kind of thing when you're in TN what is the answer to it the Maharishi says Jesus never suffered invite your attention to Isaiah chapter 53 it was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the payment of our sins was upon him with his suffering with his suffering with his suffering we have been healed all we like sheep have gone astray each one has turned to his own path and the Lord has laid upon him the suffering suffering suffering of us all Paul reminds us he'd bear and Peter reminds us he bear in his own body our sins upon the tree you are not redeemed with silver and gold and other corruptible things 1st Peter 1 but with the precious blood of Christ as a Lamb that was slain and the Lamb suffered Jesus Christ agonized the scripture says in the garden father if this cup may pass from me let it but not as I will it as you will it even Jesus Christ did not please himself but subjugated himself to the will of the Father it says it pleased the Lord to bruise him when you have made his life a sacrifice ice for sin Christ sees his seed we are his children and the pleasure of the Lord prospers in his hand all New Testament accounts of Calvary indicates the meaning of suffering Christ suffered in the garden Christ suffered in the scourging I went if the Maharishi knows what a Roman scourging is I wonder if being beaten with lead tip thongs if being hit with spiked gloves if being driven to the limit of physical endurance prior to the cruelty of crucifixion with a crown of thorns added for indignity and agony is to be construed as an illusion and that's exactly what we are hearing we are hearing from somebody who ever saved anybody and can't save himself that the one who died to save him never really suffered at all that is not only blasphemy it shows a vast ignorance of New Testament theology and if the Maharishi is going to be the Guru of TM and speak on the unity of all religions it would behoove the Maharishi to understand those religions and it's patently obvious that he does not Jesus Christ on the cross cried out a Lee a lama sabachthani I God my God why have you abandoned me what did that moment in history mean and then Thesz God hath made him to become sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God by faith in Him O record of the scripture is a record of Christ's suffering in our place I first that suffering Father forgive them for they know not what they do forgive them for what nothing was happening he wasn't an agony they didn't do anything to him we just don't see it through the right glass there's too many green specks this is not an appreciation of the New Testament or even knowledge of what the New Testament teaches the suffering servant is the one who really suffered and I assure you crucifixion is suffering for somebody to drive a spike between your wrist bone and your arm in that little Hollow which you can feel with your fingers particularly if it happens to be a good sized spike without anesthetic and through your feet on the same level so that you can hang on a tree six or seven feet off the ground or across be has got to entail physical agony and you can meditate yourself from novel purgatory freezes over and it's real therefore when you get into TM understand the maharishi's basic genuine antagonism to the doctrine of the atonement he wants no part of the salvation of the Cross he doesn't believe in the resurrection of Christ he says Christ is deity only in the sense that we are all deity and his goals are to lead people into a meditation which is going to assist them towards becoming deity the paths to God are five ways page 274 and it is pathways to an impersonal God on page 270 he says God is the pinnacle of evolution what is the pinnacle of evolution God is at the top and we are all moving forward to that great moment of union with him this he borrowed with a few changes and without credit from Tihar de Chardin the great Roman Catholic philosopher and theologian who long before the Maharishi got the idea discussed in his teleological or end process the progression from the Alpha in time and space to the omega point of transcendentalism in which we inevitably end at the feet of Christ glorifying God for salvation the Maharishi just turned it around and said the you go from the Alpha point to the Omega Point but actually the grand scale of evolution brings you there not the blood of Christ till hard believed that Christ's sacrifice made it possible for you to enter into the presence of God he stuck with the basic concept of salvation in Christian terminology and in Christian revelation the Maharishi altered him a bit here and ends up with transcendental omega point and this of course is the antithesis of Christian theology and has nothing whatsoever to do with New Testament revelation now I could go on quoting page after page after page I have so many pages in reference to the maharishi's antagonism and TMS antagonism to Christianity that we could well be here all day but it abounds in contradictions page 276 the world is real number one number two the world is unreal number three therefore it is both yet it is neither have fun with that one now of course to be fair we can say the real world is what we experience with our senses and the mystical world is what is beyond our senses that we can accept but the Maharishi disdains matter as all Hindus do that's why they do not care about the concept of death in Hinduism because they simply go into reincarnation all cycles if you visit India go to the temple of the Jains religion in Calcutta a large red stained sandstone building you'll go in and see people worshipping the idols and there you will see a mother sitting on the floor next to her children and she is in the process of carefully picking lice off the child's body and dropping the lice on the floor because they wouldn't want to squish great-grandmother uncle Harry or cousin Omar and he might be a louse in reincarnation that's true you drive down the street in India and reverence for the bull exceeds reverence for a child starving to death a child can sit in the street and starve crying for food and emaciated and Hindu gurus will walk by with as much concern for that child as they would for a dog but if a sacred cow comes by they will hasten to rush over and after it has eliminated itself on the street smear the feces in their hair because it is a symbol of their ultimate union with the divine now of course there are people that say oh this doesn't happen I've been there it happens I saw it this is what the essence of Hinduism will produce that's what the Maharishi wants people to accept the idea that TM is not Hinduism but a higher form of contact with the divine if that's the kind of divine it puts you in contact with take a good look at the fruit of it now I'll close by saying that the tactics of transcendental meditation are well-known he spells them out on page 300 page 95 and it is to penetrate to penetrate schools colleges universities to penetrate churches to penetrate everywhere with a technique now the technique does show improvement of concentration and other things that benefit individuals but I would call your attention to the scripture in closing there is something which produces greater meditative value and greater benefit than anything Transcendental Meditation can ever give the scripture tells us Joshua 1:8 that we are to meditate in God's Word day and night Psalm 1 2 says meditate in the law of the Lord day and night Psalm 77 12 says I will meditate on all thy works creation some 119 says that we will meditate on thy precepts and meditate in thy service Psalm 148 that I might meditate in thy word Psalm 143 meditate on all thy creation first Timothy 4:15 meditate upon these things for in so doing thou shalt both save thyself and them that will hear thee I think it's important that we listen to the Word of God about what God wants from us give ear and consider my meditations not Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Psalm 19:14 let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my soul now my mind my soul be acceptable in thy sight O Lord my strength and my Redeemer not my guru my Redeemer sinners need saviors the Maharishi is not a sinner in his own eyes he will never acknowledge the Savior apart from divine grace meditate on him and thy meditations shall be sweet Psalm 104 love thy law I love it it is my meditation and thy testimonies are my meditation meditate meditate meditate what is God saying concentrate concentrate concentrate on me concentrate upon my word and be guided by my spirit and then the words of your mouth and the meditations of your soul will be acceptable in the sight of the Lord who is your strength and your Redeemer the meditations of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the darkness of TM do not lead men into contact with the Living God but into the domain of darkness there are people that have gone in to TM and into demon possession because of it one of them with more than a hundred Devils it was exercise I know personally of in Van Nuys California and she was into into TM very deeply I want to close with a happy positive note for what Christian meditation can do for you lecturing over here at Mel DeLand school of theology last week young fella came up to me and said I want to tell you something about TM I said what is it he said when I was in the hospital being treated for drugs I got off the drugs and there I found Jesus he said I haven't touched any sense the Lord's blessed me he said that they had in that drug Center which was not a Christian place a Transcendental Meditation worker who came in and worked with the patient subsidized by the public payroll and this person was giving me tests and I said what's this for that's to help you understand and adjust so that you will be able to go out in the outside world the regulation of the alpha waves of the brain and trying to check in the various levels to see how he was and when he completed the test he came back into the room where this fellow was and said I don't understand this he said you are absolutely perfect by all of our measurements in fact you show a higher degree of adjustment than anybody I have ever read it made a test of or know of having been tested it's phenomenal he said have you been in the meditation long and this brother said I don't even know what it is said well how did you get this and the Holy Spirit took the words and put them in the mouth of this babe he said Jesus Jesus I meditate on Jesus and on his word why don't you try it and as the saying goes he split but a wonderful opportunity to reach these people by showing them the dangers of TM showing them that it's really Hinduism showing them they can split the techniques from the theology inevitably it's going to get through by the process of osmosis what a great joy to be able to show people that they can get some peace in TM but it's transient but there is a peace that surpasses all understanding and Jesus Christ said my peace I give you not as the world gives do I give you it that peace and that salvation we pray and we hope for them our Father immortal God Jesus Christ has redeemed us and because of him we worship you cleanse us of all sin fill us with thy Holy Spirit help us everything that we do is see clearly thy will for our lives and have the courage to perform it go before us help us and uses in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth amen

Channel: Ken Zenk

Views: 23,321

Rating: 4.6845427 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, God, Jesus, Christ, Love, Hell, Death, Sex, Marriage, Drugs, Satan, Porno, Cancer, Sports, Girls, Music, Holy Spirit, Children, Family, Heaven, Healing, Pregnant, Aids, Gay, Movies, TV Shows, Animals, Israel Prophecy, Last Days, Christian, Jewish People, Gentiles

Id: PPR1Akq3Nfw

Length: 76min 20sec (4580 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 22 2015