|
|
Sharpening the mind’s ability to experience through the Transcendental Meditation Technique Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation Technique allows the mind to effortlessly settle down and transcend—go beyond—the thinking process to experience the omnipresent field of pure consciousness. In the following excerpt from the book, Thirty Years Around the World, Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, Maharishi defines the nature of the transcendent and goes on to explain why it is that this omnipresent field of pure consciousness ‘has been missed in daily life and how it can be enlivened’. Maharishi: ‘I will give an illustration: we see the crystal. Now, a crystal has no colour of its own. Pure consciousness is like the crystal. It is pure, unmanifest, absolute, nothing of relativity. Like the crystal, it has no colour of its own. Coming into contact with the green colour it looks green. Coming into contact with the yellow it looks yellow. ‘The mind in itself is pure consciousness, of the transcendent nature. It has no colour of its own. It is devoid of activity, it is devoid of relative silence. It is the source of silence, it is the source of activity. But devoid of the qualities of activity and devoid of the quality of silence, it is absolute. All this activity and silence are a thing of relative order in the manifest creation, bound by time and space. Pure consciousness is unbounded by time and space. It is eternal, ever the same, never changing. That is why it is called Truth. . . . ‘The transcendent Divine is said to be omnipresent. Its nature is said to be bliss. How is it that we happened to miss that experience of the omnipresent? As a matter of fact, the experience of the omnipresent—that which is everywhere, that which is pervading everything—should have been the first experience of life and should have been the sustained experience of life. How did we lose sight of it? Because we engaged ourselves in experiencing only its expression rather than its initial state. ‘The glory of subtle creation is not our common experience. When the senses cannot experience the subtler fields of creation, then obviously we fail to experience the nature of the transcendent, which is subtler than the subtlest creation. This is how we happen to miss the experience of the omnipresent. In order to be able to experience the omnipresent, divine nature, bliss consciousness, it is only necessary for us to increase the capacity of experience. 'With long-time experiencing the gross objectivity, the capacity of experience has become blunt. We have to sharpen the capacity of experience. How can we sharpen it? We begin to probe into subtler fields of nature. We begin to experience subtler fields of nature and thereby increase the capacity for experience. . . . ‘Transcendental Meditation is a scientific process of culturing the mind, enabling the mind to be able to experience subtler fields of creation till it is able to experience the subtlest field of creation and experience its own nature. This is Transcendental Meditation. . . ‘Immediately it leads to Self-consciousness inside, that transcendent Self-consciousness. When Self-consciousness is infused in the nature of the mind, it becomes cosmic consciousness. Every time the mind goes inwards and transcends, the nature of the transcendent gets infused in the conscious mind more and more with practice. 'When the full value of pure consciousness is infused into the conscious mind and is maintained in the awareness, irrespective of the different modes of the mind, then we call it cosmic consciousness. . . .There is no chance of doubting or anything. This is not mysticism, this is not spiritualism;* there is no outside influence or anything. It’s a purely scientific way of self-unfoldment. . . . ‘We are born of bliss, of consciousness, of creativity. And born of bliss there should be no reason to suffer. There should be no reason for a fish to be thirsty in a pond full of water—only it is necessary to begin to drink, begin to drink—no training is necessary. Nor waste of time is needed. The path of satisfaction of thirst is not long. The goal is there—just begin to drink. So man is born of consciousness in omnipresent bliss; it is only necessary to begin to experience.’ Footnote: © Copyright 2010 Global Good News®
|
|
