Transcendental

Press, 17 April 1980, Page 16

Transcendental

meditation schools Sir, — A. Delhanty (April 11) seems to envisage, transcendental meditation, as an attractively packaged religion, rather than as a technique, as noted by Anne Lovell-Smith (April 5). The technique of T.M. can be used to advance Christian growth, and this growth process is described by Fay Conlee Oliver, Director of the Weekday Christian Education programme of the BerkeleyAlbany Council of Churches in Berkeley, California, in her book “Christian Growth Through Meditation.” Another author, Morton T. Kelsey, a nationally recognised theologian, psychologist and .educator, mentions the T.M. technique in his book, “The Other Side of Silence — A Guide to Christian Meditation”. Kelsey writes of a Trappist monastery in Europe, where it has been found that training in T.M. was useful in helping novices to learn to become quiet. Hence, the technique of T.M. can be used so that Christian meditation can be made effective to open one to the

influence of love (or God). — Yours, etc., ' MAUREEN M. HOARE. I April 15; 1980.

Sir, — If Christian chauvinists writing to your columns confined themselves solely to historical facts there would be fewer letters alleging the superiority of their religion. Arthur Delhanty (April 15) is such an example. For his information all religions, “including’’ Christianity, come from the minds'of men. The doctrines of the Christian religion have no holy or divine basis whatever but are a confused mosiac of bits and pieces culled from the Pagans; Sumeria; Babylon; Egypt; Assyria; Phoenicia; Crete; Greece; Persia; Turkey; the Romans and of course the Jews. Even the supreme Christian concept of a Holy Trinity is the political work of a mass .murderer, Constantine, and another butcher of men, Theodosius, and was anything but divine in origin.— Yours, etc., ARTHUR MAY; April 15, 1980.