Swami Chaitanya Keerti
Last century in the 60's and 70's, it was an Indian Guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's transcendental meditation (T M) that was being discussed all over the world. The western scientists, the universities, and psychologists were doing research work on this very simple technique of meditation. The reason was that the western world was living a very fast-paced life and a large number of people having sleep-disorders. All this was getting on people's nerves so much that some cure, other than sleeping pills, was needed very urgently. TM became the answer. Maharishi became very famous in the West after he was discovered by the Beatles in 1968, while he was on a lecture tour in England. The Beatles learned his Transcendental Meditation technique and over the following months spent a few weeks personally studying with him in Rishikesh.
A website
http://beatlesinindia.blogspot.com tells us: It is true that the Beatles involvement brought much attention to Maharshi and to meditation in general. Although meditation has been around for thousands of years and is still rising in recognition as a means to reduce stress, improve health and promote self-development, many people did learn the Transcendental Meditation technique when they first heard about the practice through publicity surrounding the Beatles. It happened that in 1969, Osho was giving his talks on Mahavira in Srinagar, Kashmir where Mahesh Yogi was also teaching TM to his followers. They invited Osho for a talk on the same subject. This was the first occasion on which Osho addressed a western audience for the first time, and the first time he talked publicly at length in English. It was a question-answer interactive session.
Osho did not support this meditation method and as a matter of fact, he was quite blunt in dismissing TM as a meditation for self-realization. He said that one has to be aware of the mechanism of the mind, how the mind works, how the mind needs constantly some occupation. Every moment mind needs to be occupied. It has become a mechanical tendency – you need occupation. Once you leave the so-called worldly occupations you become occupied in spiritual affairs, but you remain occupied. One is to be aware of this very process of the mind. That awareness of the mechanical process stops the process. Moments come – they break through – and you see something. And that is not your thinking, not a by-product of your thought.
Several times in his discourses Osho mentioned about this process of Transcendental Meditation. He says: If you cannot fall asleep in the night, if you suffer from sleeplessness, then methods like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation are perfectly good. That method has nothing to do with meditation; it is neither meditation nor transcendental. It is simply a non-medicinal tranquilizer. It is good as far as it can bring sleep and without any drug — I appreciate it — but it has nothing to do with meditation.
Once Osho saw an advertisement about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation was quite amused to see that: It promises everything: a good job, proficiency in your work, health, mental health, physical health, longevity; everything that a man can desire, it promises. It is a long list. Economic, spiritual, social, physical, psychological — all these benefits — just for sitting for twenty minutes and repeating something stupid-- Coca-cola, Coca-cola — or something like that. So simple! That’s why it is said that you should not tell your mantra to anybody — otherwise, they will laugh! It has to be kept private. If you say to somebody that I repeat Coca-cola, Coca-cola, they will think you have gone mad. So a mantra has to be kept absolutely private. You will keep it private anyway because it will look so absurd to tell it to anybody. Just twenty minutes repeating any nonsense word and you get so many benefits? It appeals to the mediocre mind immediately.
Such mantras create boredom for the mind--they make it dull and the person falls to sleep. This sleep may give a wonderful relaxation, but it has nothing to do with self-realization. It is true that most of the people in the world are not looking for any spiritual experience, all they want is to relax and carry on whatever they want to achieve in the world. So far so good. But the fact remains that it is not a meditation, maybe something hypnotic, may heal your body and calm your mind. This is what is going on in the name of yoga and meditation--and it is commercially very successful. The real transcendence is something else--it happens beyond mind and into the realm of consciousness.
Osho says: Life is a great adventure, but people are so afraid that they cling to the familiar, to the known, to the well-defined, to the logical. They never go beyond the boundary of the mind. If you live in the mind you are living in a grave. If you go beyond the mind you are really born, you have come out of the grave.
He adds: Each moment die to the past and remain fresh, and your life will be a great adventure. And it is only for the adventurous people to know what truth is. The non-adventurous live in comfortable lies.
