The Uncarved Blog

Maharishi at Lake Louise

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation produced this beautiful documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation technique, during his visit to Canada’s premier hotel Chateau Lake Louise,  June 10-14, 1968, the course location for Canadian meditators. I was very lucky to have been on that course and met Maharishi for the first time. All of the course participants lined up to present Maharishi with flowers for the CBC to film. It was used to open and close that documentary profile, which was made for the CBC program series called Telescope.

This CBC documentary remains one of the best films ever made on Maharishi. Filmed inside the hotel’s main lecture hall and outside with the backdrop of the majestic Canadian Rocky Mountains, it respectfully portrays Maharishi as a great spiritual teacher. They filmed him walking in front of the glacier lake, the image of which he used to describe the nature of inner life, bondage and liberation, and contacting and integrating bliss consciousness into daily life through the regular practice of Transcendental Meditation.

Posted here is an edited version of that documentary, minus the opening introduction, segues, and commercials, which was aired on Canadian national television during the Fall of 1968. Here is a partial transcription of that segment of the video. To view the whole video click on the title, Maharishi at Lake Louise. It can also be viewed on the Maharishi Channel on You Tube: Transcendental Meditation – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at Lake Louise, Canada, 1968. Also, the Transcendental Meditation blog has a well-written comprehensive, historical, contextual description about this video by Bob Roth: Maharishi: A rare glimpse into the message of meditation from 40 years ago. It’s also embed here for you to enjoy.

The depth of the lake, and the ripples, and the beautiful reflection of the glacier, reminds me of the story of inner life. The mind is deep like a lake. The ripples on the surface represent the conscious mind, the activity of the mind on the surface. And the whole depth of the lake is silent. And that is the subconscious mind, which is not used by the wave. But if, the wave could deepen, and incorporate more silent levels of the water, the waves could become the waves of the ocean, the mighty waves.

This is what happens in Transcendental Meditation. The surface activity of the conscious mind deepens and incorporates within its fold the depth of the subconscious. And with practice, nothing remains subconscious. The whole subconscious becomes conscious, and a man starts using full potential of the mind.

And the reflection of the glacier on the water is like the impression of the objects that the mind perceives. And as long as the mind is not capable of maintaining its essential nature, which is bliss consciousness, so long the mind gets imprinted by the perceptions of the objects. And this is called the bondage of the mind. The mind loses bliss consciousness and gains the joy of the reflections of the world, the joy of the relative order, losing the bliss of the absolute eternal Being.

When the mind is not capable of maintaining its essential nature, bliss consciousness, and is overshadowed by the reflections of the object of perception, then only the object remains, and the subject, as if, becomes annihilated. This annihilation of the subjective nature within is a great loss. It’s a loss of eternal bliss at the cost of temporary joys. Such a life where the value of the matter dominates is called material life, and the spirit gets annihilated.

But, when through the practice of Transcendental Meditation, the mind goes deep within to the source of thought, transcends the thought, and gains bliss consciousness, and is capable of maintaining that even when it comes out into the worldly experience of objective nature, then it is called spiritual life—that the spirit is not capable of being overshadowed anymore by the objective experience. And this is spiritual life. This is life in eternal liberation. And without this, life is in bondage. A great loss. As if loss of a billion pounds, and gain of a million. Loss of eternal bliss consciousness and gain of a worldly fleeting joy.

The vision, the vision of the lake, brings about a great teaching of spiritual life. …

New Post: Watch the 1968 film of Maharishi at Lake Louise.

On September 30, 2014 I had posted how I learned #TMmeditation 47 years ago today. In there I share more information about the making of the CBC Telescope film, The Guru, of Maharishi at Lake Louise. Richard Day shared a story he had heard many years later about the director of the film who told Maharishi that he wanted to film him saying something that would encapsulate all his teachings. Maharishi said, “I’ll walk by the lake, you walk with me, and I’ll tell you everything about spiritual development.” He did it in one take!

Tags: bliss consciousness, bondage, indentification, liberation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, material life, source of thought, spiritual life, Transcendental Meditation

This entry was posted on May 9, 2010 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Education, Health, Peace, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.