Karen Sanchez19 said:You know why I don't like TM? Because it isn't exactly cheap.
Especially when you have to pay several hundred bucks just to be handed a mantra. 🙂 🙂
Think about it like going to a nightclub—you pay for the cover charge and your drinks, right?
That’s how you help the club stay afloat for a while longer, making sure the owner can cover the electricity bill, the DJ's fee, and everything else.
The truth is, I agree that TM is overpriced for beginners... but then again, you have tons of people who practice for two or three months and then just quit. In India, for instance, with some other traditional systems, you actually have to prove yourself to a teacher to show how much you care about them and their teachings... people spend years there, serving as apprentices, scrubbing floors at a monastery, or just patiently waiting for the teacher to call on them to learn a technique... here in the States, we basically achieve that through our wallets.
It doesn't make sense to just drop such a massive amount of cash all at once... you could probably save a hundred dollars a month for two years, or maybe two hundred a month for a year... what matters is proving to the teacher that you're persistent, and then you get the mantra.
Another thing is that TM teachers don't have "day jobs." Maharishi told them they have to be one hundred percent dedicated to the teaching calling and shouldn't be working elsewhere... those are massive overhead costs just for teacher salaries, and there are at least 20 to 30 of them in the US.
Then you've got the TM centers, of which there are about 22, and they all have to pay rent to the city... do you realize how high those costs are?
Yes, TM is expensive, but in return, you get access to weekly group meditations, the right to attend three-day residential retreats held every few months where you can learn a first set of Hatha Yoga for free, plus access to vegetarian cooking classes and Vedic architecture courses. You also have the right to buy Ayurvedic supplements, which are incredibly useful, and Gandharva music CDs—music designed to be played during Hatha Yoga or other activities like studying.
Not to mention, you'll find a whole crowd of people within the organization who will likely become lifelong friends, and maybe you'll even find a spouse to start a family with—kids you'll raise in the spirit of Transcendental Meditation from day one. When enough practitioners do that, you end up with a tradition that can last for hundreds of years.
What do you think? How else did Christianity spread and become a centuries-old tradition?