Transcendental Meditation
In 1957, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi founded the movement of Transcendental meditation. The first name used for this movement was Spiritual Regeneration Movement. The aim of Maharishi was to establish a teaching institution of transcendental meditation for all the people in the world. This form of meditation has exact procedures that cannot be mugged up by reading books and literature on the subject. You would need a transcendental meditation expert who can teach you the techniques.
The Transcendental Meditation procedure is a natural, simple, effortless series of techniques through which the mind is slowly led to reach the source of all thoughts, the balanced state of mind, called Transcendental Consciousness, which is pure, self-referral consciousness, the ultimate origin of all creative outpourings. Transcendental Meditation is performed for minimum of 15 minutes and go up to 20 minutes, twice daily in the morning and evening, in the seated position, eyes closed. While this form of meditation is practiced a person’s experience of things all around him or her becomes neutral and senses a unique feeling of restful awareness. When the body is thus deeply relaxing, the mind goes beyond all mental activities to know the simplest state of awareness, Transcendental Consciousness, where consciousness is ready to welcome a balanced view of all life. This is the meaning of the self-referral state of consciousness.
The sensitivity towards Transcendental Consciousness helps in developing his or her dormant potentials of creativity by eliminating the high level of stress and fatigue through the extremely calming effect that is gained through the performance. Practicing Transcendental Meditation awakens the person’s creative leanings, dynamism, organizing strength, and orderliness. And we all know that all these bring effectiveness and success in day-to-day living.
The technique of Transcendental Meditation is based on science, thus neither asking for adherence to a particular mode of belief nor adopting a specific lifestyle. The performance does not call for any concentration or effort. It can be learned by anyone because no one is asked to posses a special ability. Any one of any age from any educational stream, religion, culture, and place through out the world can practice the procedures and everyone will reap similar benefits from Transcendental Meditation.
Having said that, studies have been conducted to show that Transcendental Meditation can also produce negative results. A scientist of an American teaching center said that the entire process of this form of meditation could be very risky to the mental constitution of certain kinds of people. The level of risk would depend on the time length the person has been doing Transcendental Meditation.
Critics have also pointed out the hefty fees for learning Transcendental Meditation. In 2000, the fee was shown to be as high as $2,500. A few other critics opine that the exorbitant amount of money is not justified because the Maharishi himself believed that this form of meditative practice is the birthright of all human beings.
Besides all these, Transcendental Meditation has also been the cause of much dislike for some people who have been miffed by its strict policies, specifically those that deal with making structures. Maharishi announced that all buildings should be made deriving principles from Indian philosophy like feng shui. According to the tenets, the main entranceway of the building should be east facing and the rooms should be constructed in a circular manner, whereby the rooms should leave space in the middle called the seat of divinity. Because of their loyalty to this system of thought, there was an incident when a Catholic church within the premises of a Maharishian University was caved in since it was not constructed as per as the regulations of this Indian philosophy.
It is true that the form of Transcendental Meditation had seen lots of criticism; there have also been proofs showing the improvement in the blood flow. Finally it could be said that whether an individual wishes to practice Transcendental Meditation or not is solely depended on his personal belief, practice and approach to this science and the benefits that he or she can reap from it would build conviction. Nothing else can.
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