25AR30-13

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AR 30:13 - "Our religious landscape has shifted in just five years"

In this issue:

AMERICAN RELIGION - "not proof of religion's obsolescence but of our enduring need for it"

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION - how it "had a negative impact on many of its most devoted members"

Apologia Report 30:13 (1,702)
April 9, 2025

AMERICAN RELIGION

"Faith in the Age of AI" by Nora Kenney (City Journal, Mar 21 '25) -- "Religious belief can feel like the last refuge from pervasive technology. When New York Times columnist Ross Douthat called our society 'decadent' in 2020, the threat of such technologies seemed comparatively distant. ...

   "Just five years later, the landscape has shifted. ... 'Can religion save us from artificial intelligence?' asked a 2023 Los Angeles Times piece. <www.tinyurl.com/3x59spr3>  Perhaps - but that religion would need to be something solid and enduring, not 'moralistic therapeutic deism,' tribal wokeism on the left, or neo-paganism on the right.

   "Enter Douthat's Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. His new book doesn't frame itself as a response to technological advances, but in the wake of his [book] The Decadent Society and developments since, it's easy to read it that way. ... Douthat outlines a blueprint for a return to traditional religion, offering guidance for a society transitioning from a period of dissolute stagnation to one of unsettling technological possibilities.

   "Though religion can serve as a stabilizing force, faith should not be embraced merely for its practicality. The central question is not whether belief in God is useful, but whether it is true. In Believe, Douthat tackles the question directly, arguing that 'reason still points godward.'

   "One of his key arguments is the role of human consciousness in shaping reality. ...

   "The universe's fine-tuning also suggests humanity's central role, Douthat maintains. Rather than diminishing our significance, discoveries from Copernicus to Darwin to modern science reveal a cosmos 'precisely balanced, exquisitely poised, in the alignments necessary to generate our specific kind of biologic life.' ...

   "Darwin's theory - that modern species emerged through a long process of natural selection - suggested a universe of 'purposelessness and accident, materialism and atheism,' making it, as Richard Dawkins exulted, 'possible at last to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.'

   "This need not be the case, says Douthat. Darwinism, even if true, does not disprove the existence of God. ...

   "Darwin's theories nevertheless fueled mass 'Christian unsettlement.' Today, artificial intelligence poses a similar threat to religious belief. ...

   "Some even seem to welcome this shift. Dan Faggella, <danfaggella.com> founder of Emerj AI Research, believes that artificial intelligence is an evolutionary force that should be allowed to run its course, even if it means humanity loses its supremacy over creation. He playfully refers to advanced AI models as 'sand god,' equating AI's rise with a new form of divinity.

   "Douthat, by contrast, argues that humans are central, not incidental, to creation. If humanity is uniquely significant - a 'key to the lock' of the cosmos - then humans are not mere steppingstones for a self-perpetuating higher intelligence but intrinsic participants in an order designed for them. Any vision of intelligence that ignores the rational structure of the universe and the unique role of human beings within it is, in his view, incoherent.

   "Ultimately, Believe is lopsided and a little unwieldy. It reads as a hastily written field guide rather than an exhaustive philosophical tome. But by Douthat's own standards, maybe this is a strength; it reflects urgency, a counterpoint to decadence. And the book is urgent. We live in an era when people once again speak of gods - this time, machine-made ones. That is not proof of religion's obsolescence but of our enduring need for it." <www.tinyurl.com/99t5v69e>

 ---

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

Doug Duncan (MS, LPC, a counselor practicing in the Dallas area) reviews The Transcendental Meditation Movement (Cambridge University Press. 2023), <www.tinyurl.com/4fvpsvms> by Dana Sawyer and Cynthia Humes (ICSA Reviews, Nov 11 '24) -- begins by observing that the authors come from the perspective of "the sociological approach that has tended to view cults as a mainly benign development in religious history...."

   The authors "also rely heavily on William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark's categorization of what sociologists term New Religious Movements (NRMs) into three types - audience cults, client cults, and cult movements." <www.tinyurl.com/bdhwhrn8>

   Sawyer and Humes write: "The majority of TMers fall into the first two of these categories, having joined the movement either in the audience of people who simply purchased TM as a product or - with only a bit more commitment - developed a loose client-consultant relationship with their local TM center. But in contrast, TM insiders, mostly drawn from the youth culture of the 1960s and early 1970s, deeply embraced Maharishi's teachings, finding meaning and purpose in his Advaita Vedanta philosophy...."

   Duncan comments: "I have observed that this structure is found in many cultic groups. People who are on the periphery often escape the abuse and resulting trauma, which tends to emanate outward from the leadership and most impacts the people closest to the center. This is one reason many former members of the same group will have different opinions about whether their group should be classified as a cult: their individual experience varied based on the depth of their commitment and exposure to the leader(s). ...

   "Sawyer and Humes begin ... with the early activities of Mahesh Prasad Varma (later the Maharishi), a student monk, when he started to preach his message of enlightenment through a simple meditation technique. ... However, as he started to branch out to other places in Asia, and eventually to California in 1959, he started to encounter a more receptive audience. 

   "Sawyer and Humes explain that Maharishi did not initially hide the fact that 'his philosophy was a traditional Hindu viewpoint; he was simply using language his students could understand.' The authors do a nice job of explaining the belief system and how it is in the deep Hindu tradition of Maharishi's teachers from a lineage of monks going back centuries. ...

   "By 1960, Maharishi realized the way to achieve his vision of taking his movement worldwide was by training others to teach his meditation technique so that the movement could grow exponentially - which is exactly what happened. ... 'Over the next twenty years the Maharishi would train more than 10,000 teachers, and they would in turn teach more than two million people in the United States."

   "The Maharishi continued to spread his message, traveling to London in 1960. While there, he encountered a group devoted to the esoteric teacher G.I. Gurdjieff and his disciple, P.D. Ouspensky. <www.tinyurl.com/mt8tju3c> He was initially well-received by this group, but it turned out that the group appropriated the practice of TM into their own philosophical practice. This clearly left a bad taste in Maharishi's mouth because it began what Sawyer and Humes describe as an obsession with keeping the teaching pure. This ultimately led in an authoritarian direction by the Maharishi, who began to strictly control how his followers were taught....

   "In 1975, federal funds were allocated to a research project to investigate the possible benefits of TM in six schools in New Jersey. This was challenged by a group of plaintiffs, who claimed that TM was just thinly disguised Hinduism and that teaching it in the public schools violated the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. <www.tinyurl.com/3z4e32fd> The TM organization argued that its meditation technique was not an inherently religious practice, but the court sided with the plaintiffs and said that it was. Sawyer and Humes say that the Maharishi was 'privately deeply upset [about the ruling], moving his attention toward other projects - particularly a new program that would quickly move meditators into enlightenment.'  This was the Siddhis Program, which became the focus of the guru and his organization.

   "The Siddhis Program <www.tinyurl.com/27fsy33d> was something, according to the Maharishi, that would allow practitioners to gain remarkable abilities, such as 'materializing objects, speaking with animals, becoming invisible, reading minds, seeing into the past, foretelling the future, [and, most notably], levitating in space….' The Maharishi had a spiritual rationale for the desirability of all of these activities, but his followers were never able to do anything  genuinely violating the laws of nature. The closest anyone came was a sort of hopping around while in the lotus position (termed yogic flying), which nevertheless did not result in anyone actually defying the laws of gravity. 

   "In the long run, the Siddhis program had the effect of turning the organization inward. The truly committed insiders became more cultlike in their devotion to the Maharishi and the TM organization, and more psychologically distanced from mainstream society. Moreover, the pivot toward emphasizing the importance of these supernatural powers alienated many people who were simply interested in the meditation technique, including many of the teachers...."

   Sawyer and Humes also write: "Peter McWilliams, a former TMer, offered a dark but plausible rationale for why the (Transcendental Meditation Organization) turned inward. He asserted that TM had been taught as a 'simple, twenty-minute, twice-a-day technique that would, in eight years of regular practice, lead to Cosmic Consciousness.' He practiced it for 'precisely eight years - without missing a single meditation - did not achieve Cosmic Consciousness and stopped.' In McWilliams' opinion, Maharishi intentionally developed the Siddhis Program to 'turn off the casual meditator while drawing the devout believers closer to him.'"

   Duncan adds that "in recent times, through its Quiet Time program, the David Lynch Foundation (DLF, an official organ of the Transcendental Meditation organization), is once again trying to introduce TM into public schools. <www.tinyurl.com/m629x5ze> The DLF asserts that TM is a secular rather than a religious practice, but that is belied by their insistence that the course of meditation be inaugurated by a puja ceremony, which involves veneration of Guru Dev (Maharishi's teacher) and prayers to Hindu deities. ...

   "They are evenhanded in saying that many meditators who practice the TM technique maintain they have derived some benefit from it, but as an anti-cult activist I am moved to say it is also the case that the organization has had a negative impact on many of its most devoted members - some of whom I know personally. These former devotees can find themselves disillusioned and even embittered about their experience with the organization." <www.tinyurl.com/h45ums48>

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