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During the Transcendental Meditation Technique, the conscious awareness goes beyond or transcends the finest state of thought to experience pure awareness, Transcendental Consciousness.
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by Global Good News staff writer
8 March 2010
In 1970 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spoke at the Harvard Law Forum, in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, about the Transcendental Meditation Technique and education; this lecture was filmed by the local PBS station. During the film one man questioned Maharishi about the mechanics of Transcendental Meditation.
A man in the audience asked Maharishi: ‘When you practise Transcendental Meditation what do you meditate about? About silence, or the source of thought, or about the metaphysics of the soul, or about Being as Being, or about fullness of existence...or what, more concretely?’
Maharishi answered that we don’t meditate about anything. Transcendental Meditation is a procedure during which we do not meditate about anything.
‘Meditation about anything means contemplation,’ Maharishi said.
‘Meditate about the petal [of a flower that Maharishi was holding], pink and all this. This I call contemplation and contemplation is thinking about something on the level of meaning.’
Maharishi explained that contemplation is like swimming around on the surface of the pond. In thinking about something we come across newer and newer meanings, newer and newer phases about it, but it's like swimming on the surface. ‘We may find new horizons but we remain on the surface,’ he said.
‘Transcendental Meditation is diving into the pond. In this Transcendental Meditation we don’t meditate about something. What we do is experience the finer state of thought.
‘It's not an intellectual process,’ Maharishi continued. ‘It's a mechanical process of direct perception, direct experience: experience of thought, experience of finer state of thought, experience of finest state of thought, experience of the source of thought. Direct experience—not thinking about something.’
The questioner then asked what experiences thought?
Maharishi explained that mind experiences the thought. ‘The thought is the object of experience in this case,’ he said. ‘Gross state of thought and subtle state of thought.’
The questioner then said that he understood that Maharishi had said that the principle end of Transcendental Meditation is the expansion of consciousness, the expansion of [the mind]…
‘Expansion of the mind is the result of this process of experiencing finer state of thought,’ Maharishi answered. ‘When the finer states of thought are experienced, then the mind expands. So expansion of the mind is the result; it's not the process.’
The questioner then asked whether the mind experiences itself? Does the mind experience mind?
Maharishi answered that the mind experiences the thought. ‘Mind is the experiencer, and the thought is the object of experience.’
The Transcendental Meditation Technique is the process of bringing the attention from the active, conscious level of the mind to experience finer, more settled and quieter levels of the thinking process—the finer states of thought that Maharishi referred to. Conscious awareness goes beyond or transcends the finest state of thought to experience pure awareness, awareness without the experience of thought—Transcendental Consciousness.
When learning the Transcendental Meditation Technique correct instruction is given that allows this effortless and natural process to take place, so that the abstract difference between thinking about something—as in contemplation—or transcending thought—as in Transcendental Meditation—does become a concrete experience.
© Copyright 2010 Global Good News®
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