| Good vibrations >> The Maharishi would
like you, and 39,999
by PATRICK LEJTENYI Scary old world out there. War with Iraq is on the horizon and it’s hardly comforting that the United States is led by “an ignorant man, who knows nothing of the frontiers of science, or of reason, or of the meaning of religion.” Those aren’t words to ignore: they were uttered by none other than His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the grand guru of Vedic mysticism, at a recent online news conference from his home in the Netherlands. Many people would agree with the Maharishi’s political analysis, but they might have some issues with some of the more esoteric aspects of his teachings. Basically, his teachings state that world peace can be created by achieving a higher state of consciousness among all humans, with the help of about 40,000 Yogic Flyers transmitting via Transcendental Meditation a unified field of positivity worldwide that would extinguish all negativity everywhere. This is not, his followers point out, woolly mysticism; it’s a science, based on superconductor theory and specific mathematical formulae. Last week, the Maharishi, now well into his 80s, held a news conference broadcast via satellite in Montreal. At the conference were several of his local followers, who were later eager to share their views on how and why they became devoted Transcendental Meditators. “In the 1970s, there was a lot of emphasis on stress, and there was a book about u-stress, which is good stress, compared to distress, which is bad stress,” says Michael Wilson, a retired banker in his 60s who’s been practicing TM since 1975. “If I look back on the past 60 years, I see that I was born in a time of war, and in spite of a number of peace treaties, there is still war. As a race, we don’t have a peaceful history. All our talking just hasn’t worked.” Stress relief is a major reason why a number of people get involved in TM in the first place. Ena Kahn, a psychiatric nurse also in her 60s, says she has experienced first-hand what TM can do, saying the practice “dissolves stress in your system.”
While it may seem a leap to move from stress relief to a commitment to solving the world’s conflicts, it is nevertheless a fundamental part of the Maharishi’s plan. A statement released before the conference opens with, “Crime and violence will drop dramatically in Canada and coherence and harmony will radiate throughout the family of nations when large groups of experts in Maharishi’s Vedic technologies of peace are established in Canada and every other country.” This is not new. The Maharishi has been
expounding on the benefits of TM for over 50 years, and has garnered
a large amount of press coverage and fame. And as the whims and ways
of the world change, so does the number of new TM practitioners. Another interesting aspect to TM lies in its openness to people of all faiths without supplanting any of them. “I was born and raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy and I served in mass,” says Wilson. “And I still consider myself a Catholic.” After a long explanation on transcendentalism as the fourth level of consciousness—after waking, dreaming and sleeping, but before cosmic, God and unity levels of consciousness—Wilson says TM allows its followers to have “a closer connection to the concept of God in their own religion.” Indeed, Rabbi Rueben Poupko, of the orthodox Beth Aaron Beth Israel congregation, says there is a long tradition of meditation among the Hasidim to bring one closer to God (“But I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of rabbi,” he adds. “I’d tell Jews at least to look in their own backyard for meditation and guidance”). Wilson says that generally people are more or less accepting of his practice, even though it probably isn’t 100 per cent kosher according to Catholic doctrine. “Religion and meditation are a very personal thing,” he says. “Some people are accepting of TM, some aren’t.” : |
