During the practice of Yogic Flying, the silence of pure consciousness and the dynamism of activity are integrated in a profound way, creating greater coordination of mind and body and allowing increased access to the unbounded intelligence of Nature, which lies within all of us.

Optimizing your brain functioning
by Global Good News staff writer
9 March 2011

An extraordinarily powerful next step for practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation Technique to accelerate the unfoldment of their full potential was introduced by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation Programme, in 1976. The name of this programme, the TM-Sidhi Programme, incorporates the Sanskrit word for perfection, ‘Sidhi’, to reflect its purpose, the cultivation of, as Maharishi puts it, ‘perfection in thinking.’

Like the Transcendental Meditation Technique, the TM-Sidhi Programme, including Yogic Flying, is an effortless, simple, and natural practice. It forms a natural extension to the meditation. While the Transcendental Meditation Technique allows the individual’s mind to become more and more settled, experiencing finer and finer states of thought until it goes beyond or transcends thought and opens to the field of pure consciousness, the TM-Sidhi Programme cultures the ability of the individual to think and act from the field of pure consciousness.

Penetrating into the depths of the mind

To appreciate this more fully, consider the different layers of the world around us and the greater levels of energy and power available the deeper we go. While burning wood releases some energy from the level of molecules, accessing the nuclear level releases incomparably more energy.

This same principle applies to the human mind—‘the deeper we go, the more intelligence and energy we find.’ For the most part, we function from the surface level of the mind, which is the least powerful. But in the process of transcending through the Transcendental Meditation Technique, the mind passes through ever more powerful levels of consciousness, allowing more and more powerful levels of Natural Law to be available.

When you go beyond thought and experience the source of thought, you arrive at the most powerful level, your own pure consciousness, where the full creative potential of your mind, the total potential of Natural Law, is available to you.

Stirring the field of pure consciousness and optimizing brain functioning

Through the TM-Sidhi Programme, you gain the ability to enliven and activate this field of the total potential of Natural Law. ‘You gain the ability to move from there, to think and act from this deepest, most powerful level of Natural Law. You spontaneously gain the skill of engaging total Natural Law to fulfil your desires without effort. You learn how to put this field to work for you.’ The result is highly practical as all levels of life are enhanced. (See Excellence in Action article, ‘Blissful life with the practice of Yogic Flying’.)

While some TM Sidhi procedures increase perceptual and creative abilities, ‘the most dramatic and powerful is Yogic Flying, in which the body rises into the air by mere intention.’ During the practice of Yogic Flying, Maharishi explains, the silence of pure consciousness and the dynamism of activity are integrated in a profound way, creating greater coordination of mind and body and allowing increased access to the unbounded intelligence of Nature, which lies within all of us.

Yogic Flyers also optimize brain functioning. When the body lifts off the ground, brain wave coherence is maximal and ‘this increased coherence in brain functioning during Yogic Flying correlates with increased intelligence, creativity, concept learning, moral reasoning, and mind-body coordination.’

Your genetic birthright—life in freedom and enlightenment

It is exciting to realise that the TM-Sidhi techniques, including Yogic Flying, ‘represent intrinsic capabilities of the human nervous system.’ Physiologist, Dr Robert Keith Wallace explains:

‘In terms of neurophysiology, the Sidhi abilities can be considered to be encoded in the genetic potential of the human nervous system. They require, however, a certain level of coherence in the nervous system, achieved through neurophysiological refinement, before this potential can be spontaneously activated.’

If you were to watch Yogic Flyers during their practice of the technique, you would see their bodies rise, move forward, and come down in a series of short hops, the first stage of Yogic Flying. But what you would not see with your eyes—‘the stirring of the deepest level of consciousness, the coherent brain functioning, the heightened coordination between mind and body, the increasing attunement with Natural Law, the radiating of this coherence into the environment’—is what is most significant.

The purpose of Yogic Flying, and the whole TM-Sidhi Programme, is to develop one’s unbounded inner potential—the supreme state of human development that Maharishi terms enlightenment. In this state, life is lived in light, free from mistakes and problems. One can know anything and do anything. One lives in complete freedom and fulfilment.

Editor’s note: The information in this article and all quotations are from The Complete Book of Yogic Flying by Dr Craig Pearson.

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