Reddit reviews Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

DISCLAIMER: I am not a therapist or medical professional.

I can't see how it can hurt. Indeed, TM has been shown to be an enormous help:

"Writers’ Voices welcomes world-renowned psychiatrist and author, Dr. Norman Rosenthal, to discuss his most recent book, “Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation”. This wide-ranging book uses stories, research, and his own clinical experience to show the benefits and value of TM. Interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Martin Scorsese, Russell Brand, and Laura Dern are also featured."

"Dr. Rosenthal is the author of a number of books and has been a leader in describing “Seasonal Affective Disorder” and pioneering the use of light therapy to treat it. He has maintained a private practice in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area for over thirty years."

http://writersvoices.com/podcasts/spirituality/dr-norman-rosenthal-transcendence/

https://www.amazon.com/Transcendence-Healing-Transformation-Transcendental-Meditation/dp/1585429929/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542741545&sr=1-1&keywords=transcendence

No "good" book on Transcendental Meditation will ever attempt to teach it to you as the tradition it comes from says it can only be taught by an enlightened teacher:

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Taught by an inferior man this Self cannot be easily known,

even though reflected upon. Unless taught by one

who knows him as none other than his own Self,

there is no way to him, for he is subtler than subtle,

beyond the range of reasoning.

Not by logic can this realization be won. Only when taught

by another, [an enlightened teacher], is it easily known,

dearest friend.

-Katha Upanishad, I.2.8-9

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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started a research program based on the belief that enlightenment is a physiological state of consciousness the same way that waking, dreaming and sleeping are, and so the same tools that study them can be used to study enlightenment.

This paper Transcendental experiences during meditation practice summarizes the research found in this list as well as summarizes Maharishi's transitional theory between advaita vedanta and modern theories on how TM works.



If you want a more layman's approach, Transcendence and SuperMind were written by Norman Rosenthal who is a former NIH researcher who discovered Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and pioneered Bright Light Therapy to treat it.

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More recently, Bob Roth, CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, published Strength in Stillness which is a collection of stories and quotes by people he has taught TM, both at-risk children and celebrities.

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Roth has taught a remarkable number of A-listers over the years, and they all got together to promote his book as all proceeds go to the David Lynch Foundation, which most of them do fund-raising for anyway.

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Few, if any, TM teachers are enlightened, but they believe that they can still claim to be teaching from the Vedic tradition because Maharishi Mahesh Yogi created an interactive teaching play that TM teachers rehearse for 5 months, in-residence, learning the words, gestures, body-language and tone-of-voice that Maharishi used when teaching, as well as how to modify the same to account for the experience-level of their students.

He spent 45 years of his life revising that play based on feedback from thousands of TM teachers who trained millions of people to meditate. He called it "duplicating myself" and so the TM teacher literally attempts to "play the part" of Maharishi when teaching. In a very real sense, there is only one TM teacher — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — and thousands of his clones.

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It is possible to get accredited degrees in TM-related topics through Maharishi University of Management including a pre-med BS, and a PhD in Physiology. A PhD in Vedic Science is offered as well.