Transcendental Meditation is a secretive mantra meditation movement founded by an indian yogi/guru. Most research on meditation benefits is on TM. To learn it, one has to pay for and participate in a course led by a certified TM teacher.
Does anybody here have had experience with TM, participated in a course and received a mantra chosen by their teacher?
Do you really need a teacher to learn it? Is the course worth it or just profiteering? Anything else one should know before going to a course themselves?
I think it’s mantra meditation (which is to say, it’s concentration meditation (aka samatha) with a mantra as your object). But I could be wrong. Maybe there’s something special going on there. I met some TM people once. They didn’t glow or anything.
When I do concentration meditation I prefer to use the feeling of breath in the tip of my nose as my object. I dislike mantra.
There are different types of meditation. Both mantra and breath meditation are types of focused meditation. I just wanted to know from people who learned TM, which is a secret technique, if it is actually worth it or if it is just a money making scheme, to ask people to pay to learn a certain meditation technique.
I have experimented with a few focus techniques. That is to say, the object differed.
I am of the opinion that the act of focus is most significant and the particular object focused upon is of much lesser significance. That the object should be selected simply for ease of use and minimal side-effects
Tho there are effects other than that of the focusing (stillness, clarity etc). Side-effects unique to some objects.
And I have heard of certain objects with special powers. Where the side-effect is of central importance. For example, the visualizations of the Tibetan Buddhists. Maybe the TM technique is one such.