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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (born Mahesh Prasad Varma in 1911) is the creator of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and leader of the Transcendental Meditation Movement.

Contents

[edit] Biographical overview

[edit] Early life

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is believed to have been born near Jabalpur, India in 1917, and to be a graduate of the Allahabad University (physics).

After completing his studies Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became a disciple and secretary to Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, a phase that lasted thirteen years, until his Guru abandoned his mortal coil in 1953. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is then believed to have retreated to the Himalayan foothills.

Two years later, in 1955, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came out and took up teaching a meditation technique later renamed Transcendental Meditation. In 1957 he founded The Spiritual Regeneration Movement, the first of several organizations now collectively known as the TM Movement, and began the first of many tours to teach the Transcendental Meditation around the world.

[edit] The Transcendental Meditation Movement

The official US website for Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation program claims that Transcendental Meditation has been taught worldwide to over 5 million people. The number of TM teachers appears to be in the tens of thousands. Over it's fifty year history the TM Movement have gone through various phases of reorganization.

  • the 1960s..
  • the 1970s..
  • the 1980s..
  • the 1990s..
  • 2000 and on..

The TM Movement has consistently used modern technology to teach. Today there exists an array of websites, of which the of greatest interest to the general public might be Maharishi Open University, which hosts His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's weekly webcasted press-conferences that are also broadcasted by satellite. More recent activities include Consciousness Based Education [1], the Maharishi University of Management and the award winningK-12 school, Maharishi School for the Age of Enlightenment.

During the 1960s and early 70s the TM Movement became seen as an attribute of the then counter-culture phenomenon, at which time also cultural celebrities flocked to the movement. Celebrity students at that time included the Beach Boys (singer Mike Love[2] in particular, who went on to become TM teacher and singer-songwriter Donovan who befriended Maharishi and put his picture on the back cover of his A Gift from a Flower to a Garden album. Comedian Andy Kaufman and magician Doug Henning were also Maharishi students, while Clint Eastwood and David Lynch are two notable directors who practiced TM.

Perhaps most well-known is when the the Beatles were initiated into Transcendental Meditation and went with the Maharishi to his ashram in Rishikesh, India where they reportedly wrote many of the songs on their famous "White Album" during their stay.

With the exception of George Harrison, who appeared to have kept some sort of relationship with Maharishi and indiviudals in the TM Movement until his death in 2001, the Beatles interest in TM and Eastern spirituality quickly faded.

[edit] Today

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Mahesh Yogi started issuing cautions, in weekly satellite press-conference and webcasts, about the prevailing directions of societal change in the world. The solutions to current world problems he proposes include creating large, permanent groups of TM-Sidhi practitioners performing their programs to create the so-called Maharishi Effect.

With reference to an on-going project to create a Maharishi Effect for the Netherlands, where Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has lived since the early 1990s, he stated on June 21, 2006 that what "is unfolding right now is the 'supreme level of evolvement of life on earth'"[3].

[edit] Meditation Programs

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his TM Movement offers courses to the general public in meditation and other Vedic disciplines. In the West, these courses are usually fee-based.

[edit] Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation is a mantra-based meditation performed while comfortably seated. Meditation sessions are performed twice a day and typically lasts for twenty minutes,during which practitioners regularly experience significantly reduced autonomous body functions (pulse, breath rate, heart rate). This radically decreased metabolism is claimed to be the result of the meditator Transcendental Consciousness which is a state where the mind is void of thoughts.

Unlike many other meditation techniques it appears TM meditation is not based on concentration or other forms of exerting forced control over the mind.

Taken together, the regular practice of transcending interspersed with normal activity between meditation sessions, are called the TM-program.

The reported significance of this is that over time the TM program results Transcendental Consciousness being established permanently with normal states of consciousness recognized by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; waking, dreaming and sleeping.

This fifth state of consciousness it within the TM movement known as Cosmic Consciousness.

Scientifically verified side benefits of the TM practicioner's progress toward the claimed state of Cosmic Consciousness include greater creativity, improved learning, higher IQ, better grades, higher moral reasoning, increased brainwave coherence, and improved neurological functioning of the body[4].

Confirming the suspicions that the TM program is similar to the established athletic's concept of improvment of physical capability through involvement in an exertion-rest cycle, is that experience of the apparently quite powerful TM technique is restricted to only twenty minutes to two times a day - as to not leave the practiioner too "spaced-out" or "blissed" (similarly to how physical over-exertion over time can have a detrimental effect on a persons physiology rather than strengthen it). The importance of keeping this balance is something teachers of the TM movement appears to be trained in and the TM movement have been known to recommend both shorter and longer periods of meditation on an individual basis.

[edit] Theory of Consciousness

According to Maharishi's teachings, the purpose of the Transcendental Meditation Program is to establish Transcendental Consciousness permanently together with the three other states of normal human consciousness acknowledged by TM: waking, dream and dream-less sleep. This fifth state of consciousness is called Cosmic Consciousness, or Self-realization - the first kind or type of Enlightenment. The three following states are: God Consciousness (GC); Unity Consciousness (UC); and Brahman Consciousness (BC).

[edit] The TM-Sidhi program

The TM-Sidhi program is claimed by the movement to be an extension of the TM program i.e. involving mental techniques to "activate" or "enliven" the Transcendental Consciousness established during the TM-phase of this program. The claimed medium- to long-term effect of the TM-Sidhi program is an accelerated spiritual progress for the practitioner (i.e. faster unfoldment of Cosmic Consciousness with a view toward Unity Consciousness). A claimed short-term effect is a beneficial influence on the surroundings (cf. Yogic Flying and the Maharishi Effect).

[edit] Maharishi Purusha Program

An extendable one year full-time experience for single men marketed as a "24-hours Bliss Program to Men Offering Enlightenment and Fulfillment for the Individual, for the Nation and for the World" [5].

[edit] The Mother Divine Program

The Maharishi's Mother Divine program, inaugurated in 1981, was created for the stated purposes of allowing women to "deepen their experiences of the TM and TM-Sidhi programs" and simultaneously "radiate a powerful influence of harmony and bliss throughout the whole world."[6].

[edit] The 'Maharishi Effect'

According to TM Movement the Maharishi Effect is based on the principle that individual consciousness affects collective consciousness. In particular the movement claims that when one percent of a population is doing the Transcendental Meditation program, it has a trend breaking effect (in a positive direction) for the whole population. In 1976, with the introduction of the TM-Sidhi Program (including Yogic Flying), a radically improved effect was claimed -- that now only the square root of one percent of a population is required to create the same effect[7]

So far, published research[8] supporting the proposition of the Maharishi Effect appears to have been conducted by the movement itself[9]. In the apparently most controlled studyof the Maharishi Effect to date, the Washington D.C. summer 1996 project, there reportedly existed a 27-member independent Project Review Board madeup of sociologists and criminologists from leading universities, representatives from the police department and government of the District of Columbia, and other civic leaders, who had approved the research protocol for this particular project in advance.[10]

[edit] Vedic Science

In the summer of 1980, at a "Vedic Science" course held in New Delhi, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced his movement to an array of ancient Vedic systems of knowledge. The systems include Maharishi Ayurveda (TM's trade-marked line of traditional Indian healthcare products and practices) and Maharishi Jyotish (predictive astrology, used on the principle of "preventing the danger that has not yet arisen").

In recent years there has been a strong focus on Maharishi Vastu which deals with architecture, and the "correct" alignment of buildings with the points of the compass.[11].

[edit] Research

A body of scientific research exists on Transcendental Meditation and other programs created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi[12], suggesting a number of beneficial effects from the practice of TM and the TM-Sidhi programs not only for the individual, but for society as a whole. [13]

The size of this body of research suggest that the decision to have the effects of TM verified in a scientific manner was a decision of strategic decision taken by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi early on in the growth of his movement.

[edit] Books by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is credited as the author of at least 14 books,[14] of which the two most important (published by non-TM publishers)are the Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation[15] and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, Chapters 1-6.[16]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Wynn, Ned (1993), We Will Always Live in Beverly Hills; Random House Value Publishing, ISBN: 0517108852


    [edit] External links

    [edit] Official TM sites

    [edit] Miscellaneous external links
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    [[Category:Indian religious figures]] [[Category:1917 births]] [[Category:Living people]] [[Category:New Age]] [[Category:New religious movements]] [[Category:Gurus]] [[de:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]] [[fr:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]] [[it:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]] [[he:מהרישי מהש יוגי]] [[li:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]] [[ja:マハリシ・マヘッシ・ヨギ]] [[no:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]] [[pt:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]] [[ru:Махариши Махеш Йоги]] [[sa:महर्षि महेश योगी]] [[sk:Maháraši Maheš Jogi]] [[sv:Maharishi Mahesh Yogi]]

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