PASTORAL STATEMENT
“THE BASIC CONFLICT BETWEEN MAHARISHI
AND CHRISTIANITY”
October
16, 1984
The Maharishi’s
doctrine and teaching on (1) God, (2) man, (3) the way to go to God, (4) pain
and suffering and (5) sin are in open contradiction to Christian doctrine.
1. The ‘God’
of the Maharishi is impersonal, as opposed
to the God manifested in Christian revelation where God is a personal God
who loves each human person in an intimate way.
By denying the Creator as Supreme
and teaching that “All is One” Maharishi removes the distinction between the Creator and
the creature. This directly leads to, or is an equivalent form of, pantheism.
The ‘mantras’ given to the
followers of the Maharishi have been discovered
to be invocations, in most of the cases, to deities of the Hindu pantheon,
thus in a real sense denying the oneness of God and fostering polytheism.
2. Man is considered
capable of attaining unlimited perfection, of being totally liberated from
all pain and suffering through the instrumentality of Transcendental Meditation
practised in the Maharishi
way. Similarly, through this TM man can find solution to all human problems
ranging from the control of the elements to the attainment of indestructibility
and immortality.
Two flaws, among others appear
clearly in this doctrine: (a) It does not accept the immortality of the
soul, nor life beyond, as belonging to the nature of the soul; (b) ignores
completely the existence of original sin, a Christian dogma, and the
consequences for the realities of life.
3. The way to
God is placed by Maharishi in TM as understood by
him, his books and his followers, and it is placed on TM as exclusive way
to God.
Two flaws, again, are hidden
in these affirmations: (a) the abuse of the term TM which has been
appropriated by them as if theirs was ‘the’ TM par excellence, the
only authentic one (there is Christian mysticism, even authors speak of Hindu
and Buddhist mysticism, and certainly there is also the well-known za-zen
method of meditation) and (b) the way to God in the present economy for all
is the way of the Cross as long as we are pilgrims, as explicitly preached
by Christ himself, accepted in Christian doctrine and life. The heroism of
Christian faithful suffering with the greatest courage and dignity appears
to be absent in the Maharishi way to God.
4. Implicit
in the Maharishi approach to the problem of pain
and suffering is the rejection of the redemptive value of suffering and of
the existence of Christ as the Redeemer. In fact, Maharishi
in his book, Meditations of Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi (Bantam Books, New York 1968, p. 123), he writes explicitly:
“I don’t think Christ ever suffered or Christ could suffer.” (This statement
has been repeated in many places by the Maharishi
followers).
5. Sin.
Maharishi tries to ignore the existence of sin.
In this Maharishi follows the Vedic doctrine that
regards sin as a bodily matter and has nothing to do with the spirit or soul
of man. The whole concept of ‘sin,’ if implicitly accepted, is considered
as something external, legalistic. The real sense of freedom and responsibility
is absent and the ‘effects’ of sin are the object of rituals, mantras, TM.
There is no interior conversion, but a rather manipulative use of TM to attain
liberation.
At the basis of this concept
and approach is the concept of God, man, way to God, pain and suffering described
above. From this point of view, one cannot be a Christian and a Maharishi.
6. As for TM
it may be considered as doctrine (content) or as technique (method). From
the point of view of doctrine is not acceptable to a Catholic, or a
Christian at that. As for TM as technique, in the way the Maharishi
group presents it, is not acceptable either because of its intrinsic connections
with the doctrine (cfr. ‘mantras’ and 1 and 2 above).
This kind of TM is to
be distinguished from various forms of prayer proper to the Oriental religious
attitudes, some of which may be acceptable, and even beneficial, if properly
scrutinized and used. TM, however, as proposed by Maharishi
and as the end result looked by the Maharishi doctrine
and followers is, to say the least, quite risky. It becomes not a remedy but
an escape. Its unavoidable result, within the Maharishi
doctrinal context, is the desensitization of conscience by trying to relieve
not the guilt and the real disorder, but only its symptoms and its accompanying
restlessness.
(Sgd.) + JAIME L. CARDINAL SIN, D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
