Transcendental Meditation and We

“Being is bliss in its nature.”  Those words were spoken by Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi.  What does this mean?  And how could someone come to such a conclusion after living in the same world as commutes, lines at the bank, 24 hour news stations, the constant threat of global nuclear war, and disease?  When we take into account that Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi was an avid proponent of transcendental meditation the answer becomes clear.

In our lives we all experience stressors, both long term and short term.  When we are made to go to a class we don’t enjoy, solve a problem we would rather not solve, and talk to people who seem hostile we in effect are being exposed to things that make the world out to be a frightening and hostile place.  The hostility comes from outside and plants its seeds in our mind, so that the only fruit we may enjoy from these seeds is poisonous to us.

Transcendental meditation is the process millions of people worldwide have been using for years in order to reacquire that health and lust for living we all have had at one time or another (even during times when remembering is difficult) and reminds us that underneath the whole current of awakened understanding of complex subjects there is an essential entity simply “existing” beneath it all.  And this being likes its existence.  There is an immutable joy to all life that the rest of the mind may sometimes overshadow in those who do not meditate.

The purpose of transcendental meditation is to quiet the mind.  The mind loses the stressors that once overwhelmed it in the form of impulsive thoughts and instead focuses on the very act of being.  Those engaged in the activity for 20 minutes every day over even a short period will describe it as a blissful state that puts all other life into perspective.  Those utilizing the right tools to achieve this state even describe the process as natural, requiring no special effort and simply moving with the technique.  The mind slowly dives into more and more subtle forms of thought and eventually arrives at the cosmic singularity where all is one, with all thought being in its primordial state (the essence of creativity itself) and touching the very face of our creative core.

Each individual has the potential for enlightenment, requiring only the happiness of existence.  It is this happiness that we can translate into creative potential even more effectively and quickly than using the same time to practice.  Some of today’s greatest artists have long been proponents of the technique, including The Beatles, Laura Dern, David Lynch, and Heather Graham.

Scientists studying transcendental meditation have also noted that the technique organizes the mind and creates neural pathways that may have once been seen as “holes” to an MRI scan.  It is to date the most widely researched and scientifically backed form of meditation.  Though the art has been around for over two thousand years, it is only recently being widely practiced again with far reaching benefits for artists, inventors, and critical thinkers everywhere.