Rajiv Malhotra’s Infinity Foundation has announced the publication of three new books
- “Emerson and the Light of India: An Intellectual History”, by Robert Gordon. National Book Trust, India.
- The Experience of Meditation, by Jonathan Shear. Paragon Press,
USA. - Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness by Don Salmon and Jan Maslow. Paragon Press, USA.
In his announcement, Rajiv has some interesting information about the second book.
One of the important outcomes from my interactions with Shear over the years has been an incredible treasure trove of evidence on how Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation got co-opted into Herb Benson’s “Western Science” and into Father Keating’s “Christian Centering Prayer”. Both these appropriations are based on TM by erasing the source tradition.
In the case of Father Thomas Keating, the Hindu source was seen as a sort of threat to Christianity’s claim of having developed meditation internally, with no positive help from the heathen others. In Benson’s case, by ignoring the TM origins of all his “scientific findings” he was able to launch himself as a “Western pioneer of mind science”; then this secured him a lucrative and powerful position with Templeton Foundation where he has been facilitating the migration of these scientific findings into Christian frameworks; and now he is established as the “originator” of the new complementary medicine in US research, hospitals and medical colleges. All this and much more will be elaborated in my forthcoming U-Turn Theory book.
