Suddenly everybody is talking about Transcendental Meditation. Again!
Just when it seemed nothing could be holding for this practice except the 60’s love and peace clichés, from a time when hippie trails opened to India and The Beatles versed up their White Album from an ashram in the Himalayas, of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi- the grand rabbi of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) cult.
But beyond the cultish phenomenon, TM has drawn people in the loop again. From Oprah to Dr. Oz, and with David Lynch through his philanthropic initiative for Consciousness Education, PTSD care, and World Peace promotion, Transcendental Meditation today is successfully becoming an instrument for engineering of the inner selves. Invested in this form of meditative exercise, one becomes more peaceful within, more receptive to the universe but all the same, unwavering to its affectations. There is a plane of unqualified silence to be reached.
The Technique
The premise of the exercise is very same to that of yoga or aspect of the Vedic spiritual knowledge system for that matter. In this premise, all critical inquiries lead to the Consciousness, a realm of the within. There needs nowhere to search for but in the depths of the soul. Within an individual, there is a soul which is part of a wholeness.
This entirety, the all-pervasive presence has to be realized in the mirror of our souls, and that’s what this exercise is all about. Where lies within our very selves, this mirror, in which all the distracting multiplicities of nature converge into the one Truth?
Transcendental Meditation asks us to make this inner journey by the vehicle of a mantra. This mantra is not an enchantment like abracadabra! It is not meant to be interpreted as pregnant with symbolic meanings. This mantra is not even to be held in the context of any religion. It is simply a sound.
As in Vedic spiritualism, and in this era, recognized in modern science as well, the womb of creation is a sound field. It is through natural vibrations produced in this soundscape, that the universe had taken form. The primordial sound from which all other creations sprang forth manifests in Vedic mantras as Om.
There is a sheer resonance in these mantras that dispels disturbances and draws one’s mind to the depths of consciousness. Other traditions of mantra chanting might persuade the practitioner to reside in the meaning and significances of the verse. But TM executes only its sonorous boom to draw the mind into transcendental Pure Consciousness.
What is being transcended in this process?—is it the chattering of the mind and distractions caused by sense organs. Wait for the moment when even the mantra dissolves.
Enter the Silence!
Why Should You Practice Transcendental Meditation?
Really, what’s in it for a workaday person to sit still twenty minutes a day, doing nothing but lilting mentally over and over a verse. One who wishes nothing more than to simplify life, maximize good times, and complete the course of tasks assigned and expected of them, with some grace.
This question has an easy way of looking at it, and another a slightly more thought-provoking one.
You will know how necessary Transcendental Meditation really is in commonly led lives when you realize how less the procedure demands in exchange for relaxation of twenty minutes and lingering. It is a minutes-long oasis of thought-free peace every day amidst a desert of gnawing stresses. You know you need time-off just to settle in the peace of silence to rejuvenate your mind, like you need to rejuvenate your body with sleep, therefore.
The second perspective is of a spiritual nature.
Ask yourself honestly, have you ever conceived of a higher nature of life than the one you are leading right now? It may not has to be a “better” job, a “higher” societal status, or wielding more power over others, but simply an expansion of the feelings you feel, the experiences you experience, and knowing what you know.
If you sense such a thirst for this beyond, know it to be a spiritual one. Transcendental Meditation is a pathway which illuminates and leads to this higher state of being, the state of yoga. One must meditate to become stiller, more silent inside, to expand the experiential range and make the progression of the spirit.
A number of tangible mind-body effects also take place in the journey of transcendence, without which spiritual development is not possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Manmohan Singh is a yoga enthusiast himself; freelance writer Manmohan lets his free spirit flow with his thoughts as he pens them down in his writings. He loves travelling and believes that ‘knowledge shared is knowledge gained.’ He is the owner of the yoga blog http://www.yogaschoolblog.com.