“Kingdom of the Cults-Transcendental Meditation”

Transcendental Meditation is supposedly just a technique for meditation and relaxation that has more purported benefits than a snake-oil salesman could think up. Actually, it’s a form of Hinduism that uses the names of Hindu deities as mantras or points of reference to oneself up to pure “meditation”. In recent years it has been successfully argued in the courts across the United States that TM is indeed a religion and the support of Federal, state, and County funds for the purpose of teaching TM has been virtually stopped. Dr. Walter Martin takes you to the U.S. headquarters of TM in tiny Fairfield, Iowa. Here, the Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has established the campus of the Maharishi International University on the 232 acre site of the former Parsons College. We show you the enormous gold domes where TM practitioners meditate and “levitate”. We also feature an interview with a spokesman for the University and interviews with several of the people of Fairfield, Iowa including former TM practitioners. TM is a perfect example of how a religion can disguise itself as a technique or intellectual exercise. None of the former TM practitioners realized that was a religion until after they got out of it. Even the very religious initiation ceremony didn’t tip them off to what they were opening themselves up to. This hard hitting documentary exposes TM for what it really is-a Transcendental Mirage.