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[German Version] Transcendental meditation (TM) is both a method of meditation and a ¶ socio-religious movement (New religious movements) with an Indian background but active throughout the world. As spiritual praxis, it preaches a form of mental training adapted to the mechanistic and physical paradigm of science; its goal is a psycho-social transformation of the world. Its methods derive from the tantric form (Tantra) of the Indian Japa tradition, in which short semantically meaningless formulas or mantras are repeated audibly or mentally, effortlessly and without expectation, in order to concentrate all mental activity; this form of meditation promotes calm, alertness, and wellbeing (Manke). As a religious movement, TM was founded in India in 1958 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (probably born in 1918), initially as the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. The movement came to the United States in 1959 and to Germany in 1960. In 1965 the Student International Meditation Society was founded to promote TM; later came the American Foundation for the Science of Creative Intelligence. Commercial training o…

[German Version] I. The Concept – II. Religious Studies – III. History – IV. Philosophy of Religion – V. Practical Theology – VI. Islamic Mysticism – VII. Hindu Mysticism – VIII. Taoist Mysticism I. The Concept The concept of mysticism is closely linked to the development of the history of religion in Europe and the term must not be taken and applied uncritically as a general term for a phenomenologically determined group of phenomena in other religions (see also II, 3 below). Attempts at definition are either phenomenolog…