In late 2022, the seventh paper from the Varieties of Contemplative Experience (VCE) project was published. Entitled The roles and impacts of worldviews in the context of meditation-related challenges, the paper was authored by Jared Lindahl, Roman Palitsky, David Cooper, and Willoughby Britton, and was published in the journal Transcultural Psychiatry.
Cult Mediation Specialist Patrick Ryan discusses how cults operate and how to intervene when someone needs help.
Patrick Ryan is a graduate of Maharishi International University. He has been a cult intervention specialist since 1984. He’s the co-founder of TM-EX, the organization of ex-members of Transcendental Meditation, established ICSA’s online resource (1995-2013), and has presented 50 programs about hypnosis, inner-experience, trance-induction techniques, communicating with cult members, conversion, cult intervention, exit counseling, intervention.
Patrick Ryan found himself deeply involved in Transcendental Meditation during the 1970s until he started to believe he was part of a harmful group. He is now a cult mediation specialist, otherwise known as exit counselling. He is also the head of TM-EX, an organization of ex-members of Transcendental Meditation and has worked extensively with The International Cultic Studies Association.
Far from being a meditation method that’s misleadingly sold as “not a religion,” almost every element of the program, from its marketing, its initiation or instruction methods, and its advanced programs, are of a “religious nature,” fundamentally suspect, and are offered by an organization that isn’t trustworthy. Its internally toxic, cultish, sexist nature is well known among those formerly involved, who’ve experienced firsthand the practices and habits common among the movement’s lifelong devotees.
Developers Earl and David Kaplan later disavowed transcendental meditation, angering some who said they had invested with the understanding that transcendental meditation would be the basis of the community.