Chapter Three
The Modernisation
of Meditation

Page One
How It Started

.

..

.

..

.

..

.

..

Swami Vivekananda

The next burst of interest came a few decades later and in a rather oblique fashion. Few people who had not been in the military knew India but everyone knew and admired the little man with round glasses -- Mahatma Ghandi. Everyone admired his valour, fortitude, his ascetic and simple lifestyle and his humanity, all of which were generally taken to be representative of the religion he avowed -- Hinduism. It wasn’t a breakthrough but it was general improvement in understanding what India was about.

Ghandi

There are a number of myths and legends surrounding Maharishi following the death of his Master, all of which are too ‘space cadet’ even to repeat here. It seems, however, that the Maharishi retired to the Valley of the Saints in Uttar Pradesh, famed for its ashrams, temples, caves and caverns and the Holy Men who occupy them. Living the austere life of an ascetic, Maharishi pondered how he could implement his Master’s instructions.

Emerging from seclusion some time around 1955, the Maharishi headed for Southern India. As told by Maharishi himself the story goes that he was in the capital city of the south western state of Karela, Trivandum. A wandering ascetic from the Himalayas was a rare sight in Trivandrum and he was approached on the street by a stranger and asked if he gave lectures. Although he replied in the negative, the young ascetic did say: ‘but if there are people to hear me I will give them a message.’

Taking the address where the Maharishi was staying, the man departed. A few hours later he was back and telling the Maharishi that arrangements had been made for him to give a series of lectures over seven days. Although he had never considered giving lectures and had never spoken in public before, the Maharishi took the challenge as an opportunity to bring the knowledge he had received from his Master to the people. Thus it was that Transcendental Meditation (originally called Deep Meditation) was born.

Whether he was aware of it or not the technique he had to offer was revolutionary in India. As a technique for ‘householders’ it overturned a tradition of and monopoly on the technique of meditation that went back to the very beginning of Indian religious practises. Disavowing the ancient practice of meditations lasting for hours and sometimes days, the Maharishi suggested that just two short periods of mediation a day constituted a progressive and valid path to spiritual growth. Not only that, but he said the inner practise would have extremely positive effects on life in the world.

The tale of the Maharishi’s travels throughout the world over the next decade is one of education on both sides. It must have been a devastating experience for the Maharishi to see the level of spiritual destitution, misguided materialism, skewed values, anxiety and fear that afflicted the Western World.

Without compromising any of its traditions, history or content, over the subsequent decades the Maharishi reformulated the doctrine of TM into a technique that represented itself in terms that were unequivocally modern and meaningful to those involved in the world. It was an impressive feat of cultural assimilation and transformation.

The Maharishi’s ‘big break’ came in late 1967 on the wings of a substance that had already created a wave of spiritual expansion -- LSD. One of the things about experiencing bursts of increased consciousness is that they tend to make one very open and honest and in that year there were a plethora of celebrity admissions of LSD-use. Among the most newsworthy of these were the Beatles. Of course, anyone who had ever listened to the last track on the Revolver album knew exactly what was going on but journalists . . . . well, ya know?

Later that year the Beatles made the headlines again when they attended a lecture on Transcendental Meditation given by the Maharishi. Dubbed ‘the Giggling Guru’ (he had a very infectious laugh,) Maharishi suddenly became big news not only in England but worldwide. Among those who learned the technique following that lecture were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Star, Patti and Jenny Boyd, Donovan and Mick Jagger.

In England, the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, which was used to initiating a few people every few weekends, found itself inundated with those wishing to learn. At one point the London TM centre had three teachers working in different rooms teaching a total of up to 60 people a day. As the teaching of TM involves a fairly lengthy puja (ritual of offerings and thanks) and includes the recitation of the entire list of names in the Great Tradition plus the actual teaching itself that was no mean feat. And it was the same the whole world over.

From just a few thousand meditators worldwide, the TM Movement expanded to hundreds of thousands and then millions. In 1975 there were still 40,000 people learning the technique in the States every month. A Gallup Poll conducted in 1976 suggested that 4% of Americans practised the technique. Although year-on-year the number learning would drop, today it is estimated that the TM Movement has taught up to 5 million people worldwide. It is, of course, impossible to say how many of them meditate on a regular basis.

There are many myths concerning what happened between the Beatles and the Maharishi. But if there was disillusionment, it was on both sides.

Although all the Beatles except for Ringo remained and remain meditators, John Lennon came back to the UK and exercised his sarcasm in the song ‘Sexie Sadie’ which appeared on the White Album. But if the practise of TM generated any music it was usually positive stuff. Let us remember ‘All You Need is Love’ and ‘Across the Universe.’ More positive still were Donovan’s, ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ (‘Here comes the hurdy gurdy man. He’s bringing songs of love.’) and ‘From a Flower to a Garden,’ the best album he ever produced, which is a quiet hymn to the TM technique. The TM technique also had a big influence on the Beach Boys, notably on the ‘Surf’s Up’ album.

It was, however, the Maharishi who was truly disillusioned. Although it brought him to worldwide fame and influence, the Maharishi always felt that his association with the Beatles, the hippie movement and the drug culture had brought the technique and the movement little but disrepute. In later years he would remove from the TM doctrine everything that might be associated with the mainstream alternative culture. But he did come up with a few alternative cultures of his own.

With fame and popularity came a worldwide organisation and that brought its own problems, usually in the form of accountants. With rooms to hire in which to teach and publicity to pay for, the Maharishi had always charged a fee for leaning the technique. It was one of his first innovations but it was not one based entirely on the needs of his infant mission. One of the first things that Maharishi discovered when he arrived in the West was that meditation was not valued in the same way as it was valued in India. In India the technique of meditation is regarded as priceless and sacred knowledge that is debased by any association with something as gross as money. That, however, was not the case in the West. In the USA, particularly, the Maharishi saw that everything had a price tag that defined its value. In a fairly simplistic way he rationalised that anything that was free, devoid of a price tag, was potentially without value. And he couldn’t have that. In his eyes and, perhaps, later in the eyes of those who learned and practised the technique, meditation was of far too much value to be thought valueless. Initially the fee -- called a donation -- had been one week’s salary which wasn’t much if you were an unemployed hippie. But the accountants soon changed that. Those who had learned the technique and valued it, watched with increasing sadness as the fee to learn went up and up. A technique that was intended to ‘Enlighten the world’ and should have been available to all became increasingly expensive and elitist. It became increasingly clear in the meditating community who was affiliated with the Maharishi and who was part of the Movement. It is a schism that has never been resolved. At the time of writing the fee to learn TM in the USA is $1500 and commensurate fees are charged worldwide.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh