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This is the story of a boy born in India in the early 1900\u2019s (the place of birth given in his passport is \u201cPounallua\u201d, India with a birth date of January 12, 1918).\u00a0 Not a lot is known about his childhood but he was born to an upper caste family, the Kayastha caste, though not of the Brahmin Caste from which the priests and spiritual leaders came.\u00a0 It is known that he studied physics at\u00a0Allahabad University\u00a0and earned a degree in 1942.\u00a0 In the Allahabad University list of distinguished alumni his name is listed as M.C. Srivastava.\u00a0 He would later take the name of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi after finding the person that would become his mentor and Spiritual teacher.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maharishi actually means a great Hindu sage or spiritual leader but Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became such a well-known figure he has come to embody the word.\u00a0 Around the time he was completing his formal education in physics he would become acquainted with a man who had been pursuing his own life adventure for many years.\u00a0 This was Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. \u00a0<\/strong>Saraswati had begun his Spiritual quest at the age of 9 when he left home and journeyed on foot to northern India in search of a suitable Spiritual teacher.\u00a0 He traveled to the foothills of the Himalayas where he met many possible teachers but it was five years before he would find his chosen master and become a disciple of Swami Krishn\u0101nanda Saraswati. He would spend the next 20 years in study and solitude until he was named into the order of “Sanyas” by his master at the age of 34.\u00a0 He returned to a life of solitude living in a cave in central India until close to his 70th<\/sup> birthday when he was coaxed into becoming the Shankaracharya\u00a0(Spiritual master) of the Jyotir Math\u00a0monastery.\u00a0 It was at this time that he met the young man still known by the name of Mahesh Srivastava who would become his assistant and student as they rebuilt the monastery and reestablished the Jyotir Math as an important center of traditional Advaita teaching in northern India.<\/p>\n Maharishi would spend close to 12 years studying with and serving Saraswati until his teacher\u2019s death in 1951. He was trusted to take care of the bulk of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati’s correspondence without direction, and was also sent out to give public speeches on\u00a0Vedic\u00a0(scriptural) themes.\u00a0 Although Maharishi was a favorite student, he could not be named as the successor to Saraswati because he was not of the Brahmin Caste.\u00a0 Therefore, in 1955 Maharishi left the monastery in Uttarkashi and began publicly teaching a traditional meditation technique he had learned from his master teacher who he would begin to refer to as Guru Dev to more adequately respect his enlightened state and divine Spirit. The meditation technique was initially referred to as \u201cTranscendental Deep Meditation\u201d but it would soon come to be known simply as TM.<\/p>\n \u00a0According to one biographer of the Maharishi\u2019s life, William Jefferson, in 1958 Maharishi went to Madras to address a large crowd of people who had gathered to celebrate the memory of Guru Dev. It was there that he spontaneously announced that he planned to spread the teaching of TM throughout the world. \u00a0In 1959, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi began his first world tour,\u00a0writing: “I had one thing in mind, that I know something which is useful to every man”.\u00a0 This path would soon lead him to the West where cultural icons like The Beatles and Beach Boys would step away from their place in the spotlight of world consciousness to focus attention on the development of their inner peace and consciousness.\u00a0 This served to elevate Maharishi\u2019s TM movement quickly to the global stage he sought.\u00a0<\/p>\n I find it amazing how the tapestry of all of our lives comes together \u2013 all of us interacting and affecting each other in what is all really part of an ongoing evolution of consciousness.\u00a0 The real catalyst for much of my personal Spiritual journey started with a Comparative Religions class I took at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.\u00a0 It was right after finishing the final work of the class that I had one of those moments you might call an epiphany.\u00a0 What hit me was this sense of unity and oneness with everything that came with a realization that the central messages of all of the religious we had studied were the same.\u00a0 In a world where religion still so often divides us the thought of that reality was a revelation.<\/p>\n I had be brought up as a Presbyterian which meant, at least in the church I grew up going to, that you basically should try and be a nice person and enjoy life.\u00a0 We got all the basic Christian tenets but you did not need to be too rigid about things.\u00a0 We were big on tolerance and open mindedness.\u00a0 In our Sunday School Class during my High School years we studied Hugh Heffner\u2019s Playboy Philosophy for discussions on contemporary social values.\u00a0 Heffner\u2019s beliefs were inclusive and he promoted respect for all people regardless of color, religion or sexual preferences.\u00a0 These ideas \u2013 these ideas along with a magazine full of things promoting freedom of expression \u2013 definitely rung true with the developing values of the young mostly white affluent suburban teenagers who were my peers.\u00a0 So while I had knowledge of the tenets of the Christian Religion, my church experience had been primarily social.<\/p>\n Shortly after my epiphany about religious thinking and the realization I had experienced with what you could call a momentary awareness of a unified field of all possibilities, I came across a flyer that there was going to be a series of free lectures on Transcendental Meditation.\u00a0 Now, the word was out that this was a great way to get high without taking any drugs.\u00a0 I was very big into the concept of altered states of mind at the time.\u00a0 I already accepted that REALITY was a fluid thing that was really no more than a state of mind \u2013 a perception in the mind\u2019s eye so to speak.\u00a0 I was reading a lot of science fiction stuff \u2013 Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein \u2013 that filled my mind with far reaching possibilities.\u00a0 I had also gotten in to the stories of Carlos Castaneda and his encounters in Mexico with a Native American sorcerer or shaman known by the name of Don Juan.\u00a0 Traveling a much different path than Maharishi, Don Juan had also found enlightenment and a mastery of the physical world transcending what he would call ordinary reality.\u00a0 For him psychoactive substances were the magic carpet allowing him to move between various dimensions.\u00a0 His use of these substances and the ways he inducted Castaneda into his world were very formally structured around the step by step learning to use the powers that were revealed.\u00a0 While I enjoyed the experience of smoking marijuana and even trying LSD a couple of times I had no interest in jumping into what could easily be a very dangerous world that Carlos Castaneda was exploring.\u00a0 TM sounded like the right path for me.<\/p>\n A series of free introductory classes was being offered at Rutgers over the course of a few days.\u00a0 These were actually classes where I learned all about what can be best described as the science of meditation.\u00a0 We went through how meditation affects the body-mind system from brain functioning to physiology.\u00a0 We discussed the damaging effects of stress and anxiety.\u00a0 We discussed the benefits of TM as part of an overall program of good diet and moderate exercise.\u00a0 We learned that meditation took no effort and could be done by anyone.\u00a0 We learned what to expect as we began our practice.\u00a0 I believe we had three sessions of a couple of hours each before we were invited to have a final session where we would get our mantra to use for meditating.\u00a0 We were told the mantras were drawn from ancient Indian texts and were sound patterns \u201cwhose effect was known\u201d.\u00a0 While these mantras were from religious texts, there was no religious context given to TM \u2013 if there was a religion associated with it, it was Science.\u00a0<\/p>\n All the introductory classes were free but you had to pay for the actual instruction to begin your practice of TM.\u00a0 It was $250 at the time which was a lot of money for me to spend on an experiment \u2013 and ounce of good pot was only $35.\u00a0 I really didn\u2019t know for sure at the time but the $250 was one of the best investments I have ever made.\u00a0 It was somehow connected like a next step to the revelation that had come at the end of my comparative religions class and I \u201cknew\u201d this was something I was supposed to do.\u00a0 So I came up with the money and made an appointment for my private \u201cinitiation\u201d.\u00a0 We had been told to avoid all non prescription drugs and alcohol for a few days before the initiation which I had adhered to.\u00a0 The classes had created a great sense of importance for the big day.\u00a0 I totally anticipated a life changing event.\u00a0 We were told to bring with us a clean handkerchief and I believe some fresh fruit and a few grains of rice.\u00a0 We were told to wear lose, comfortable clothing.\u00a0 I was a bit nervous.\u00a0<\/p>\n I guess the session lasted about an hour.\u00a0 We reviewed some of the ideas from the introductory classes and then the teacher conducted a ceremony involving the handkerchief, flower and rice of which I have no memory.\u00a0 I was then given my mantra which I gather was chosen based on my date and time of birth which I had provided to the teacher when I registered for the final session.\u00a0 It was a sound that I was to only say in my mind and keep secret.\u00a0 Each step along the way the process was imbued with importance and power.\u00a0 And so I did my first session with TM.\u00a0<\/p>\n It really is a very simple process.\u00a0 I was told to sit in a relaxed position in a comfortable chair with my feet on the floor and my back straight.\u00a0 I was told to then take a few slow deep breaths and try and let all my muscles relax.\u00a0 Then came the big moment \u2013 I was to \u201cgently\u201d begin saying my mantra to myself \u2013 just in my mind not out loud.\u00a0 My instructor whispered it into my ear a couple of times.\u00a0 In a quiet voice the teacher told me to just keep repeating it slowly over and over in my mind.\u00a0 If I noticed I had lost the mantra and was thinking about what I needed to pick up at the store later I was just to gently shift my focus back to repeating the mantra in my mind.\u00a0 I believe there was some sandalwood incense burning somewhere nearby and some soft music playing in the background.\u00a0 With TM you meditate ideally twice per day for 20 minutes each.\u00a0 Sometimes that 20 minutes can take forever and other times it goes by in a flash.\u00a0 For me on that first day it was almost timeless.\u00a0 I kind of remember having an out of body experience of sorts \u2013 I definitely had a very clear sense of an expanded consciousness.\u00a0 Sometime later I was signaled that the session was over by the instructor quietly saying \u201cJai Guru Dev\u201d.\u00a0 <\/strong>\u00a0This was basically a praise and thank you to Maharishi\u2019s teacher.\u00a0 With that I was given back my handkerchief in which was wrapped the rice and flower I had brought.\u00a0 Over 40 years later I still have that handkerchief, a now well dried flower and the few kernels of rice.\u00a0 I have never told my mantra to anyone and I have not missed more than a dozen days of meditating in all of those years.<\/p>\n