My mantra reaches middle age

I walked past the campus building the other day – the old squat office on John Street, near the railroad tracks  – where I learned to meditate.  

That was back in 1971, I think.  The early 1970s blur together for me.  I lost a year or two along the way.  No mental record or chronology.

Unofficially, it was still the Sixties, but we didn't know the revolution had already ended.  We were chomping on life and when you're eating quickly, you don't feel full for 20 minutes.  

Thanks to the Beatles, and Donovan, and the Beach Boys, and Mia Farrow, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's teachings were in Life Magazine and on the front page of the News-Gazette.  We listened to Sgt. Pepper and Good Vibrations and all wanted to be enlightened.

At least I did.

So I signed up to get my mantra. I went to a lecture in the Illini Union and then went to the initiation, a two-day operation of training and practice and the bestowal of the mantra.  

One had to come to the teaching place – the TM offices there on John Street – with fresh fruit, a white handkerchief, and the cost of enlightenment, which at the time was $15 for poor students like me.  Today, poor student or not, the cost is closer to $1000 for the same thing.

And it is worth it.

I have been meditating ever since, twice a day.  There have been lapses of days, weeks, months without meditating, yet once I find myself back in seated upright position, taking 15-20 minutes with eyes closed, letting the mantra roll in my head, I wonder how in the world it may have been that I stopped doing this, even for a short time.  

I have never revealed my mantra aloud to anyone, ever.

Science tested the Maharishi's methods and found that the "relaxation response" was effective in reducing metabolic rates and blood pressure and other quantifiables.  Science claims you can use any syllable, no special mantra needed.  But I think to have something one accepts with ritual, with sacrifice (even if only $15, a hankie and a banana), with purpose, and something given to you by another, carries more meaning and keeps you motivated.

We're still waiting for the world peace Maharishi promised, but I'm not cynical about meditation.

Over all these years, I have learned to let thoughts come and go like leaves floating across a wind-swept pond during these brief daily sessions.  Without sleeping, I have found myself aware and yet transported. I may forget where I am and when I end the practice, open my eyes refreshed, in a new place, as though waking from an eight-hour sleep.

I have meditated on Mayan pyramids in Mexico and Guatemala.  I have meditated in flea-bitten hotel rooms in Paris.  I have meditated on beaches and mountains, in closets and offices, alone and with others.

Have there been benefits?  Or has it been a waste of time?  

A waste of time?  Sitting still, doing nothing...  Some would say that is the very definition of creative productivity.  

I have never known insomnia.  

I don't preach TM.  I almost never speak of it and certainly make no show of it. We're supposed to pray in closets, not on the street corners, after all.  Maybe I'm mixing up my religions, but that's all right.  

I'm wary of even writing this.  Regarding Transcendental Meditation, it wouldn't yet be right for me to draw conclusions at this point.  I'm not finished.