Deborah Shah's Story
Former Transcendental Meditation Advocate
TESTIMONY OF DELIVERANCE
DEDICATED TO "MY SWEET LORD" JESUS CHRIST
"The cords of death entangled me"
(Psalm 116:3)
That phrase, "my sweet Lord" is the title of a song written
by the late George Harrison of the Beatles to sing the praises of his
Lord, Krishna, a mythical figure deified in Hinduism.
Growing up, I had been a Beatles fan and when I reached my early twenties
being somewhat stressed out, I reacted positively to media advertisements for a
relaxation technique called Transcendental Meditation. After all, it had been
the Beatles who had embraced this Transcendental Meditation and commended it to
my generation. And if the Beatles went for it, it must be OK!
TM (as it became known) was brought to the West from India by a friendly guru
named Maharishi and advertised persuasively as non-religious, even
non-spiritual, certainly not Hindu and therefore no threat or contradiction to
the Western mindset be that Christian or post-Christian.
It promised great things to all inquirers and at relatively little cost in
time or financially. I came from a secular Jewish background and had been
spiritually curious all my life. Still it wasn’t spirituality I was expecting
from Transcendental Meditation so much as a way to lose weight and to stop
smoking!
And those things it did deliver which proves that God is not alone in
providing solutions. The trouble is that so-called solutions and healing not
provided through Jesus Christ carry a price – a price I was only to discover
much later.
After a few introductory talks I was invited to a TM teacher’s nice
suburban house. TM students had been asked to bring along a white handkerchief
and a piece of fruit as an expression of gratitude. To whom or for what this
gratitude - actually this votive offering - was due, I had no idea.
That day, after the final introductory talk, I was invited to accompany the
TM instructor into an adjoining living-room and to kneel next to him in front of
a portrait of an Indian figure. The teacher then began to say something, but as
he was using not English but a foreign language, I didn’t know what he was
saying. Although it wasn’t as if I would have minded had I known that my
initiator was praying in Sanskrit to the figure above me. All religions were
much the same to me back in those days when I was wandering through the
spiritual marketplace.
The teacher whispered a word into my ear, telling me that this word was the
‘mantra’, a sound without meaning that I should repeat silently in my mind.
The sound would soon ‘disappear’ and this disappeared sound would then
translate into a sublimely peaceful state of mind, namely transcendental
meditation. The technique was so simple that a child could learn it, merely the
repetition of a meaningless sound. There was no complex or esoteric technique to
be acquired. Transcendental meditation was true meditation, we were told,
removed from religious tradition and available to everyone.
I felt no different than before as I went home that day, having now been
instructed in Transcendental Meditation. For the next fifteen years I meditated
as they taught, twice a day once in the morning and once in the evening. The
routine was to find a quiet place, sit in a normal way (not cross-legged like a
yogi), close one’s eyes and silently repeat that meaningless sound, the
mantra. The sound would then disappear from the mind leaving just a pleasant
state of relaxation, the only unusual aspect of which was that time seemed to
speed by extremely quickly so that often it seemed almost as soon as one had
started meditating, the twenty minutes had gone.
I never did regard TM as a spiritual exercise but accepted the organization's
line that this technique, at least on the basic level which I had been taught,
was designed to give busy people not spiritual enlightenment but relaxation and
a new mental freedom from the stresses of everyday life. It sounded not only
harmless but very attractive. And for a while, that’s how it would appear to
be.
Since I wasn’t interested in deriving anything spiritual from TM, I
continued on my spiritual journey and five years later, I was "born
again". By this I mean that I accepted I was a sinner in need of the
salvation only Jesus Christ could give and I gave my life to Him. I still had a
lot of questions. I knew He was Jewish yet it was mostly non-Jewish people who
worshipped him and yet I’d experienced anti-semitism from people who claimed
to worship a Jew. Still I knew I needed Jesus even with most of my questions
unanswered. A Christian work colleague prayed with me in the empty office one
evening. It was not yet though that I was saved from the effects of
transcendental meditation. That was to come later and in the Lord’s time.
Incidentally, He would also in time answer my questions
"the anguish of the grave came upon me" (Psalm
116:3)
I don’t remember exactly when TM began to be a problem. It may have been
through exposure to the Bible. It may have been because my experience of
meditation began to change from positive to negative. Certainly these two
factors began to express themselves slowly but insistently.
There was another factor in operation too and that was denial. Someone having
learned TM was pretty much left alone, not solicited for money or to join the TM
organization. So it was possible to meditate and not feel part of or subscribe
to anything related. I was aware that TM was derived from Hinduism. However, I
believed because they told me - and because I wanted to believe - that it was
possible to use meditation divorced from Hinduism, much as people imagine yoga
(a Sanskrit word meaning ‘union’) to be mere physical exercise.
The seemingly unobtrusive TM organization was organized into local groups and
occasionally I went to informal meetings which included a meal and listening to
taped teaching from the Maharishi. I would ignore or privately deride any
attention the group gave to this. Occasionally one heard talk of esoteric
experiences available to the advanced meditator but I was uninterested in
learning advanced meditation techniques. I just wanted the basic technique with
nothing spiritual attached. Here of course I was in denial and this was the
nature of the denial - that one could meditate on the basic level and be
untouched by its Hindu roots.
Set against this denial, two new realities began to emerge. Christians didn’t
approve of TM, I was learning, and included it with other forbidden practices
such as spiritualism and the occult and what I considered real, religious Hindu
or Buddhist meditation. The other reality manifesting over the years was that TM
was becoming less a choice I made every day to becoming a necessity.
So as these unpleasant realities refused to go away, my denial strengthened.
TM wasn’t what Christians thought it was. I had never gone in for the Hindu
element so it was just a physical and mental thing, not spiritual. I didn’t
want to learn advanced techniques so on the basic level I was OK, I told myself.
The trouble was that I was not OK. Where once TM had been an option it was
now becoming a necessity in that if I didn’t meditate morning or evening, I
would experience unpleasant sensations and only recover if I meditated. The
feelings were similar to feelings of stress – a feeling of tightness, almost
like a vice around my head accompanied by mental confusion – but different in
that they couldn’t be relieved by exercise or rest, like stress can be but
only by going into the meditative state.
The other change was that the duration of the meditation was increasing as I
would lose track of time for sometimes for over an hour.
The obvious answer was to stop practicing TM and I tried to stop but I couldn’t.
Any time I would try to go without meditating, the mental discomfort was such
that I had to give up and meditate. I asked the local TM group for an
explanation of these feelings. Their explanation was that the unpleasant mental
sensations I experienced when I didn’t meditate at the given time were simply
symptoms of stress, symptoms that people who didn’t meditate, experienced
routinely. They said that meditation relieved stress so these symptoms were only
what I experienced before learning to meditate. So it followed that if I stopped
TM, these unpleasant mental sensations would be with me all the time.
Certainly it did feel much like stress when I didn’t meditate – a
constriction around the head, mental confusion. Perhaps it was after all as the
TM instructors said, nothing more than stress. I remember visiting a friend who practiced
TM and I noticed she seemed also very stressed and confused. I wondered if there
were more to this than mere stress. Perhaps we were actually under some sort of
bondage. If we were, to what or to whom was this bondage due?
So for several years I remained in a trap. I wanted to stop practicing this
increasingly intrusive and compulsive TM but couldn’t. I knew I needed help
but couldn’t ask for it because I knew that Christians would want me to stop
meditating and I couldn’t. Caught in this trap I became more entrenched in
denial, telling myself that after all, Christians were wrong and TM was OK. Yet
I didn’t quite believe what I was telling myself. And so I remained – until
the appointed time described in the following section, titled: "He told
me everything I ever did"
"He told me everything I ever did"
(John 4:29)
In the summer of 1992 I participated in a residential week-long evangelism
course. Living for a week with other Christians, it felt particularly wretched
being in bondage to meditation – a practice anathema to evangelical Christians
and from which I was powerless to escape. One night as I fell asleep, I recalled
the commandment, "You shall have no other gods
before Me".1 I
understood that in meditating I was effectively serving another god. My last
thought before sleep was to wonder if God would forgive me.
The next day we had a free afternoon and I went for a walk, during the course
of which I happened to meet Howard, another course student. We stopped to chat
and then he did something rather unsettling. He asked me if he could ask me a
question. I said yes and he asked me: "do you really know that God loves
you?" I answered in theological terms. Inside, I was hurt and furious.
Of course I understood the Gospel! How dare this stranger ask me that? What did
he mean? What did he know? I headed back to the College deciding to avoid him
for the rest of the week.
By the next day my feelings had changed from wanting not to speak to
him to wanting to speak to him. Today we would be occupied in classes with
perhaps no opportunity to talk. Strangely though, it happened during the day
that everyone else seemed to ‘disappear’, leaving me alone with the strange
stranger! Curiosity got the better of pride and as we sat in the common-room
area, I asked him about his question to me. He said that he had been praying for
everyone on the course (at which point I had him pegged definitely as a
religious nutcase!). When he had got to me, he heard the Lord say to him these
words about me:
"She thinks there’s something I’ll never forgive her for. But I know
all about her. And I love her. And one day, I’m going to heal her."
Had this episode been portrayed on film, the screen may have shown the room
spinning at this point! I also felt as though time had stood still. I remember
thanking him and then there seemed to be people around and the day returned to
normal. The difference now was that I had been left with a promise and I held on
to that promise from God until the day He fulfilled it.
By the winter after the summer the Lord had promised to heal me, the
oppressive symptoms I experienced through TM were worsening. I would try not to
meditate and would feel such mental stress and confusion, as though a cord was
tightening around my head, that I had to give in and meditate. When I did
meditate, it would be for increasingly long periods of time and I would seem to
be blanking out or losing time, coming to after more than an hour but feeling
like a few minutes had passed.
I was feeling increasingly desperate to be able to stop meditating. I hung on
to the promise the Lord had made me:
"She thinks there’s something I’ll never forgive her for. But I know
all about her. And I love her. And one day, I’m going to heal her."
I knew that day would come but wondered when and just how bad things would
get before the day came. I visited the central London TM centre, went through
their standard meditation check and asked the instructor why I felt so bad when
I tried to stop. He gave me the answer I’d heard years ago, that these
symptoms were merely stress, stress that people who don’t meditate feel all of
the time. So it wouldn’t make sense to give up meditation, since I would then
experience that stress all of the time.
The instructor assured me that many Christians practiced TM and found it not
to conflict at all with their faith since TM was unaligned to any religion.
Leaving via their smart and friendly book-shop I saw various publications by
professing Christians advocating TM as a beneficial and non-religious part of
their lives. For a while I felt re-assured but soon the doubts and discomfort
returned. It was about a year after the Lord had promised to heal me and I was
feeling worse than ever!
"And we know that all things work together for
good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to
His purpose …"…"(Romans 8:28)
In this section you will be reminded of the intricacy, the care and even the
humour of our wonderful Lord Jesus in dealing with us. He knows everything about
us and He loves us and because He is Creator and Saviour He brings about big
results by using quite small detail!
In 1993 I was working for a large Italian company. My role was bilingual and
beside the Italian language I liked to import various Italian cultural features
into my life. One such was a coffee-percolator. Instant coffee is fine for me
but real, percolated coffee seemed really nice and sophisticated and ‘Italian’.
I was given a coffee-percolator and so I enthusiastically went through the
routine first thing every morning, of setting up the coffee-maker which meant
putting a filter into place, spooning coffee in and letting the water percolate
through it. For about twenty minutes the little machine percolated away in the
kitchen, a most satisfying concept to someone who aspired to things Italian! I’ll
return to the coffee-pot later …
Around this time I had bought a Christian book of testimonies of people
delivered from the occult and still partially in denial, didn’t associate
myself with them. Although the book included TM among occult practices, I just
thought the author didn’t understand. It was wonderful of course, that the
Lord Jesus had delivered these unfortunate people! At the back of the book was a
list of helping organizations. One of them, the Reachout Trust, was based near
me in Richmond Surrey.
I phoned them. I said that I was desperate to stop TM but couldn’t. I also
explained that I hadn’t learnt it with any interest in associating with
Hinduism. Derek at Reachout Trust has a great sense of humour but he refrained
from exercising it in that delicate moment. He told me that it is impossible to
separate the roots of something with its practice. He also told me that I wouldn’t
be able to just stop doing TM in my own strength. That could happen only through
Jesus Christ.
We agreed that I should visit the office. But for the next month, I couldn't
get any time off work. I felt disappointed at having to wait but we agreed to
make an appointment as soon as possible.
That night I felt very bad. It had been wonderful talking to someone who
understood. But it would be so long - at least a month - before I could visit
Reachout Trust. That night I prayed to Jesus for forgiveness and for help.
When I woke up next morning I began the normal morning routine. Since I had
got the coffee-pot, this routine had changed slightly. Meditation would
previously have been my first action of the day. This was because until I had
meditated, I would experience not just the normal fuzziness of waking-up, but
such mental confusion and oppression that any normal activity would be very
difficult. But now I would hold off meditating just long enough to set the
coffee-percolator up.
I went into the kitchen to set it up. It took a few minutes and in those few
minutes I began to notice something rather odd. If I hadn't spent those few
minutes making the coffee, I wouldn't have had the time or space to notice the
change but would have launched directly on waking into meditation. But now in
the kitchen I began to notice that something had changed. I didn't actually feel
confused or oppressed any more. I was making the coffee quite easily. This was
strange and actually quite scary. I went back to bed, feeling rather strange.
The compulsion to meditate still wasn't there. I felt something like fear. I
didn’t know what was happening. I was experiencing absolutely no need to
meditate, for the first morning in over ten years. I wondered what was going on.
This was a work-day and I would have to get ready soon. I got ready for work and
drank a cup of percolated coffee, still not quite believing what was happening.
As I went to work, I sang a song we’d sung in church
and this time I’d experienced directly: "Jesus is Lord of all, Satan
is under His feet …" I didn’t care who heard me! That day I phoned
Derek and told him that Jesus had delivered me from TM. The compulsion to
meditate had completely disappeared. There was no longer any tight band around
my head disappearing only when I meditated. Although I later visited the
Reachout Trust office, I had no need now to make that appointment. Jesus Christ
had freed me from TM.
Conclusion:
"... you have freed me from my chains"
(Psalm 116:16)
This is a personal testimony but in preparing it I wanted to find out
something of TM’s recent history.
When I learnt TM there was no internet to check it out on. Now TM has its own
website and an inquirer can access numerous testimonials both positive and
negative. (That’s happened in a very few years, being one facet of the
end-times’ information explosion prophesied in the book of Daniel.)2
I read elsewhere that in the mid-seventies every month thirty thousand
Americans were learning TM.3 TM had been brought into the school
curriculum, into business training and the professions. It was practiced and
endorsed by clergy who have believed the lie that TM is unaligned with religion.
Change came when the TM organization was successfully sued in the American
Federal court by concerned Christians who charged that it was in fact Hinduism
in disguise.
As a result, the TM organization was compelled to publish the English version
of the prayer recited in Sanskrit (the "puja"). The Indian figure
before which I had kneeled and my teacher had prayed years before is Maharishi’s
dead teacher, Guru Dev, considered in Hinduism to be divinity manifested in
human form. To quote a former TM instructor, now Christian author Vail Carruth:
"Thus the puja is intended to alter the consciousness of the …
candidate in a way that opens the mind to the influence of the ‘great Masters’.
Its function is understood to be the establishment of a spiritual … bond
between the new meditator … and Maharishi and his Hindu tradition of Masters
on the other …"4
The translation into English from Sanskrit reveals lengthy devotions and
prostrations to Hindu so-called divinities. No wonder meditation had made me
feel bad. Testimonies are now available of meditators who encountered demonic
manifestations while meditating and suffered spiritual/mental breakdown. The
mantra, far from being the "meaningless sound" that TM says it is, is
the name of a Hindu so-called deity – actually a demon.5 According
to former Hindu priest now Christian, Rabi R. Maharaj, "the mantra both
invites the being to enter the one using it and also creates the passive state
in the meditator to facilitate the fusion of beings" 6
Vail Carruth reports that while meditating: "I began to become aware
of the presence of spirit beings sitting on either side of me when I was
meditating. Sometimes at night, uninvited, they would sit on my bed. I thought
they were my guardian angels. Once I looked at one of them, and I saw a small
dark creature with sharp teeth, who looked more like it wanted to devour me than
to bless me. I did not consider the possibility of Satan or his demons at the
time …"7
Such phenomena commonly experienced by meditators remain unexplained by the
TM organization. I discovered that I hadn’t been alone in experiencing lapses
of consciousness while meditating of which I would have no later recall. The
so-called "black-out phenomenon’ evidently is common in TM but remains
unexplained.8
TM Today
Increasingly our secular Western society has become welcoming of Hinduism and
Buddhism as incorporated into New Age spirituality accepted in business,
education, and the Church. Indeed, TM no longer needs to hide its true spiritual
colours.
Today the Maharishi’s Indian base at Rishikesh welcomes young people from
all over the world. A high proportion of these like me are Jewish – young
Israelis including TM in their "gap year" after army service.
On the internet I found testimonies by meditators who had experienced
unpleasant symptoms similar to my own. However I found as many reporting
pleasant and affirming experiences and even my own meditation became oppressive
only after a few years. Meditators may be feeling good while meditating, at
least for a while.
I feel then that it is inappropriate to argue against TM solely from the
point of view of experience. I should emphasize that my literally overnight
transition from being unable to stop meditating to being completely free of it
was not explicable in terms of psychology, or positive-thinking technique or
wish-fulfillment. I had repented of my involvement in TM, of believing a lie for
many years and I had prayed to Jesus Christ. The next day I woke up unattached
to TM.
I would suggest that anybody associated with meditation, yoga, martial arts
or ‘alternative’ health treatment (reflexology, acupuncture, homeopathy,
etc.) recognize that because the roots of the practice (however distant) are in
Hinduism, Buddhism and the occult, then they may - like me - have unknowingly
invited demonic intervention although the effects of this may not yet be
apparent.9 We are free only by turning to Jesus Christ as Saviour and
Lord.10
In conclusion, my testimony is expressed in Psalm 116.
Psalm 116
1 I love the LORD , for he heard my voice;
he heard my cry for mercy.
2Because he turned his ear to me,
I will call on him as long as I live.
3The cords of death entangled me,
the anguish of the grave came upon me;
I was overcome by trouble and sorrow.
4Then I called on the name of the LORD :
"O LORD , save me!"
5 The LORD is gracious and righteous;
our God is full of compassion.
6 The LORD protects the simplehearted;
when I was in great need, he saved me.
7 Be at rest once more, O my soul,
for the LORD has been good to you.
8 For you, O LORD , have delivered my soul from
death,
my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling,
9 that I may walk before the LORD
in the land of the living.
10 I believed; therefore [I said,
"I am greatly afflicted."
11 And in my dismay I said,
"All men are liars."
12 How can I repay the LORD
for all his goodness to me?
13 I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the LORD .
14 I will fulfil my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people.
15 Precious in the sight of the LORD
is the death of his saints.
16 O LORD , truly I am your servant;
I am your servant, the son of your maidservant ;
you have freed me from my chains.
17 I will sacrifice a thank offering
to you
and call on the name of the LORD .
18 I will fulfil my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people,
19 in the courts of the house of the LORD -
in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Praise the LORD .
You may email Deborah by clicking
here.
1. Exodus 3:20
2. Daniel: 12:4
3. David Haddon and Vail Hamilton: TM Wants You! (Baker Book House, Michigan
1976), p.19
4. Ibid., p.46
5. 1 Corinthians 10:20
6. Rabi. R. Maharaj: Death of A Guru: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978, p. 219
7. David Haddon and Vail Hamilton: TM Wants You! (Baker Book House, Michigan
1976), p.67
8. Ibid., p.40
9. 1 Corinthians 10:20
10. 1 John 3:8
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