What Is Transcendental Meditation

Meditation has been practiced for centuries. In the years that followed, various movements have evolved and one of them is called transcendental meditation.

Transcendental meditation was a movement founded in 1957 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Today, it has over 6 million followers and some of them include Hollywood celebrities and singers.

The organization that practices Transcendental Meditation is better known as the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. What makes this form of meditation different from the others is the fact that you don’t just learn everything there is to know by reading a book but by learning from a transcendental meditation expert.

The ultimate goal of Transcendental Meditation is to make each member achieve pure consciousness. By doing so, the individual will be able to find peace with him or herself and also with the rest of the world.

The practice of transcendental meditation takes about 15 to 20 minutes each day. To be part of this organization, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi created a seven-step process that everyone must go through that also includes two lectures, a personal interview with a trained instructor, and four days of practice. Apart from that, you are required to pay a signup fee that is almost $2,500.

More than 500 clinical studies have been done on Transcendental Meditation. One study shows that members who are in their 50s feel much younger. Another study shows that it improves your academic achievement, creativity, and intelligence.

Those who have been practicing it claim that it reduces problems such as anxiety, insomnia, and stress. Even those who have had addictions to alcohol or drugs in the past say that this has helped them kick the habit.

In short, Transcendental Meditation can improve your physical health. Probably the biggest surprise is that one study showed that members of this movement have had fewer medical problems than those who are not.

Given the benefits it can do to those who practice it, this is probably the reason why some companies in the US offer this program to their employees. This is because management knows that stress costs them more than 200 billion dollars annually which means a decrease in the worker’s productivity.

One example of such a company that offers this to their employees is General Motors. This car company has been practicing Transcendental Meditation for several years and results from a study showed that this increased productivity in the workplace, improved morale, and had a good impact on the physical health of their workers.

There are even some who have mistaken Transcendental Meditation and the organization itself to be part of a religious cult. This is because another name by which it is known is the “Science of Creative Intelligence” which is a degree that you can get after you graduate at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.

It should also be pointed out that Transcendental Meditation is scientific so you don’t have to abandon your current religion. It can be done with little effort so you can achieve pure consciousness regardless of your age, gender, educational background, culture, or religion.

Transcendental Meditation makes you look inward so you can turn those dormant potentials into realities. Of course, this can only happen over time and with practice so you will soon be able to experience an endless world of possibilities.

Understanding Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation is a meditation technique introduced in 1958 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It is a simple, natural, relatively effortless meditation technique where the mind can easily and naturally look into the source of thought and achieve the settled state of the mind which is known as Transcendental Consciousness. It is said to be the pure consciousness which is the source of all creative processes in the human mind.

Transcendental Meditation's origins can be traced back sometime in 1955 when the Indian ascetic Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started teaching a new meditation technique that he said was derived from the Vedas. Maharishi had previously studied with Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. Maharishi even served as his secretary from 1941 until Saraswati died in 1953. It was sometime in 1957 that Maharishi began the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in Madras, India, after a festival that was held in remembrance of his deceased teacher. Maharishi then began going on several worldwide tours promoting and disseminating his technique sometime in 1958.

Maharishi started to plan on establishing one TM (Transcendental Meditation) teaching center for each million of the world's population in 1978. During that time, it would mean having to build about 3,600 TM centers throughout the world. Since then, Maharishi has continued the teaching of Transcendental Meditation from the Netherlands through an organization called the Global Country of World Peace. This organization has reported that over six million people all over the world have learned the Transcendental Meditation technique since it was introduced.

The Transcendental Meditation technique is taught in a standardized, seven-step process. The process is composed of two introductory lectures, a personal interview, and a two-hour meditation instruction session given each for four consecutive days. The instruction starts with a short ceremony that is performed by the teacher. After that, the student is taught and starts practicing the technique. The following sessions are given to further enhance the correct practice of the meditation technique as well as to provide more information that the student might need to know about.

The goal of practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique is, according to Maharishi, to achieve enlightenment. He states that enlightenment comprises seven major states of consciousness. The first three are commonly known as waking, dreaming, and deep dreamless sleep. The fourth state, Transcendental Consciousness, is said to be achieved and experienced during the practice of the technique.

Maharishi says that a person who practices Transcendental Meditation will eventually learn how to maintain the experience of transcendental consciousness even while living everyday life. This is what he refers to as enlightenment and calls it the Cosmic Consciousness, the fifth state of consciousness. The sixth and seventh states, the God Consciousness and Unity Consciousness, are further improvements of the Cosmic Consciousness.

Transcendental meditation can be practiced for as short as 15 to 20 minutes in the morning and evening. It is usually done while sitting comfortably with the eyes closed. While undergoing Transcendental Meditation, a person's awareness starts to settle down, and begins to experience a unique state of relaxing alertness. As the body further becomes deeply relaxed, the mind begins to transcend all mental activity to experience the simplest form of awareness, which is the Transcendental Consciousness. This is the state where the consciousness is open to itself. The meditation technique used is said to involve neither concentration nor contemplation.

Tina Rose

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