'It should be high time for us to revive and emphasize this teaching of Christ, ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is within you’, and having the Kingdom of Heaven within you, you have no right to suffer in life, you have only to enjoy the grace of God.'
—Maharishi

Heaven is within you
by Global Good News staff writer
13 January 2010

An interview elucidating the compatibility of the Transcendental Meditation Technique and Christianity

In the following excerpt of this interview, printed in Thirty Years Around the World—Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, Maharishi brings out his deep appreciation of Christ’s teaching that ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is within you’ and concurs with the Abbot ‘that the condition which is reached in meditation is a condition in which we find God.’

People of all religions enjoy the Transcendental Meditation technique. Indeed, the practice deepens their spiritual understanding because it refreshes their mind and awakens subtler values of awareness. Please note that the explanations below are not doctrines to be believed in but principles that are verified through direct personal experience and scientific research.

[Interviewer Robert Kee] Kee: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is a teacher from the Himalayas, and he brings with him an allegedly very simple technique of meditation, which enables man to do away with all his inner conflicts and tensions both individually and in society as a whole. . .

Now, in America, this teaching of Maharishi has been hailed as a non-medicinal tranquilizer, and an improvement on sleeping pills. It’s been noted there that people who practise it look younger and even get along better with their relatives. But Maharishi contends that these are but ordinary side effects or by-products of his teaching, and that the important thing about his teaching is that it enables the ordinary man to get in touch with that Kingdom of God, which Christianity teaches is within everyone.

Now, it’s this particular aspect of Maharishi’s teaching that we’re going to examine this evening, and we are very fortunate to have the Abbot of Downside, Abbot Butler, to help us to do so. But first of all we will go into the practical side of Maharishi’s technique. . .

Kee: Can anyone learn it?

Maharishi: Everyone can do it because it doesn’t need doing, it only needs allowing the mind to fathom more joyful regions of one’s own inner personality.

Kee: Are there any physical requirements at all?

Maharishi: No, no. Well, one of course, that the nervous system should be intact; a disabled nervous system won’t do. The inner Being of man is blissful; the mind comes into that blissful Being, which is the Kingdom of Heaven within; Christ said, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.’ So that process of going within is very simple, and anyone can do it.

Kee: You say anyone can do it, and it is very simple. Could you just give us some idea of how one sets about doing it?

Maharishi: How one sets about doing it?  One thing is common in all the people. And that is, every mind wants to enjoy more. From a field of lesser happiness, everybody’s mind goes. This is one common factor by nature in every mind—all the people. Now, the joy that the mind experiences in the outside world is much less than that which it experiences in the subtler field of thinking.

As the mind goes nearer to the field of Being, it experiences increased charm, and this increasing charm at every step towards the subtlety of thought draws the mind on automatically. We don’t have to concentrate and make attempts to go to that field of Being. Only, we have to allow the mind to go that way, and the mind goes.

Kee: But this sounds like a very advanced state of thought and mind-control. Surely you can only learn this sort of thing after a great deal of discipline and preparation?

Maharishi: Oh, no. No discipline is necessary to enjoy a more melodious music when we are listening to an ordinary radio.

Kee: Abbot, could I ask you whether you, in fact, believe that it is—or could be—as easy to find God as Maharishi suggests?

Abbot: Well, that is one of the things which worries me very much about this. I think that for some people it may be so. But this is offered as a universal technique for everybody, and I think it’s our own experience in the West that for the ordinary person it’s a long and sometimes a rather painful struggle before they reach those heights or depths of union which, it seems to me, you’re speaking about, Maharishi.

Maharishi: The fact is, Abbot, that from centuries in the past we have been told that it is very difficult, and God is far away somewhere in Heaven, even though our scriptures keep on telling us ‘Kingdom of Heaven is within you, Kingdom of God is within you’. Even then, not receiving this message from the scriptures, we have been emphasizing other parts of the message of our prophets, and that has complicated the presence of almighty and merciful God to every man.

Now I think it should be high time for us to revive and emphasize this teaching of Christ, ‘the Kingdom of Heaven is within you’, and having the Kingdom of Heaven within you, you have no right to suffer in life, you have only to enjoy the grace of God, and it’s there, and to enjoy just dive deep within yourself, and to dive deep within yourself just follow the thread of the process of thinking, get to the subtlest state of thinking, and that is blissful.

Experience shows it’s a joy in meditation, it’s not that after long practice people experience those joys; I think hundreds of thousands of people by now in these five years have experienced that when they meditate they begin to feel happy.

Kee: But, Abbot, isn’t there more to Christianity than just this state of bliss? I mean, surely the whole doctrine of Christianity is that suffering is extremely important in it, and that you even achieve redemption through suffering; whereas, Maharishi suggests that suffering is unnecessary and even undesirable.

Abbot: I would have thought that that was one of the great difficulties in the whole situation. Because, after all, suffering is not something which we human beings go out to seek, suffering comes to us—

Maharishi: Exactly, exactly, unasked and unwanted.

Abbot: It’s unwanted, but it’s extremely real; it’s part of our existential situation, and it is not terribly helpful. Perhaps, if you got somebody who has some chronic painful disease, or someone who has been bereaved of a person that he loves very much, to say well, suffering doesn’t matter. It seems to me that one’s got to give them—

Maharishi: No, no. We can’t, we can’t say suffering doesn’t matter. What we can do is give him something so that he becomes happy and more energetic, more capable of not feeling the suffering.

Abbot: No, the suffering is there but there’s a way of meeting it, I think.

Maharishi: There’s a way of meeting it, and there is a way of living life so that suffering doesn’t come.

Abbot: Yes, Yes.

Maharishi: There is a way to it, and this is it—morning and evening meditation.

Later in the discussion, . . .

Kee: Maharishi, I’m very struck by the apparent similarity of approach between you and the Abbot.. But of course the basis of your meditation is the Hindu religion, isn’t it?

Maharishi: The basis of my meditation is the desire of the mind to go to a field of greater happiness . . . the inherent tendency of the mind to go to a field of greater happiness, to Being. And Being is of a blissful nature . . . the Being is blissful, and the mind travels to a field of greater happiness.

Kee: Maharishi, how important has the life of Christ been to you?

Maharishi: I loved his teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, and what you have to do is ‘first ye seek the Kingdom of Heaven, then all else will be added unto thee’.

Abbot: Well now, would you accept, with whatever reservations, the Christian description of that as a union of love with God, that it’s a resting in God by a love which is our main and greatest desire, and in this union we find satisfaction of that desire?

Maharishi: Very good, very good. Because it’s the love . . . it’s the love of God or love of bliss or love of happiness, and that takes the mind naturally to spontaneously settle down to the state of Being.

The Transcendental Meditation programme is a system: it is a systematic programme of self-development, with proven benefits for all areas of life—mind, body and behavior, as well as spiritual benefits. All human activities, from enjoying a movie to running a marathon to contemplative prayer, are enhanced by a healthier mind and body and a more efficient, fully functioning brain.

The enlivenment and integration of the brain that results from Transcendental Meditation practice naturally improves one’s spiritual life along with all the other areas of life that are improved. When you water the roots, you nourish all aspects of the tree.

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