Posts Tagged ‘Transcendental Meditation’

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@MaharishiU Sustainable Living students build adobe house from scratch in Texas desert

December 19, 2013

MUM Students Build Adobe House From Natural Desert Materials

Maharishi University’s Sustainable Living students study natural building and travel to the Texas desert to put up a 14′ x 14′ adobe bunkhouse made primarily from indigenous materials mum.edu/AdobeHousePR

MUM students build adobe house from scratch in Texas desert

MUM students build adobe house from scratch in Texas desert

As a continuation of the Sustainable Living Program at Maharishi University of Management where students learn how to build a tiny house, a group of 12 students traveled to the Texas desert during their October Natural Building class and spent 11 days putting up a 14 x 14 adobe house made primarily from local materials.

They first made 850 adobe bricks from soil near the construction site, created a frame of posts and beams from dead spruce trees harvested beforehand on campus, and then topped the structure with a waterproof thatched roof made of river cane.

“It really has an amazing feel,” said course instructor Mark Stimson. “It’s rectilinear and oriented toward the cardinal directions, and adobe walls give it an ancient, grounded feeling.”

Intended to serve as a bunkhouse for future visitors, it sits on land owned by Mr. Stimson and his wife that’s adjacent to Big Bend National Park. Also on site is a tiny house students built last year.

In addition to learning practical construction skills, the students had the opportunity to experience an extraordinary landscape that includes deep vertical canyons, distant mountains, and rock-outcroppings dating back 500 million years, fossils, petrified wood, and a hot spring on the Rio Grande River. Plus the occasional tarantula and scorpion.

“The students had a transformative experience,” Mr. Stimson said. “They’ve never seen anything like this desert, with its vast scale. The heights and distances reset your perspective on things.”

Mr. Stimson’s desert site is 80 miles from the nearest town on a road too rugged for ordinary cars. The students prepared and canned all their food in advance. That alone was a learning exercise in planning and execution.

They traveled to the site via the Sustainable Living Department bus powered by biodiesel fuel that was made by the students and staff member Steve Fugate.

Every aspect of the construction required learning new skills. The students began their work on campus, creating a plan and estimating the amount of materials they would need.

Once on site, the students learned to sift the soil used for the bricks, moisten it with water, and then use forms to create the bricks. Once skilled, they were able to make a brick in less than a minute.

But then the bricks, all 17,000 lbs. of them, had to be carried up a long hill. The students formed a chain, and accomplished the task with aplomb.

“The students were confronted with many challenges in this remote desert region,” said Stimson, “but in the process they learned a lot about teamwork, leadership, self-sufficiency, and how to be flexible in the changing conditions they encountered.”

He related an incident of the students trying to prepare and dry adobe bricks, when an early morning desert fog prevented the sun from drying them out. It happened three or four days in a row. Of the many things they planned for, he said, the desert wasn’t one of them! But the sun burned it off by noon each day, and the adobe blocks dried enough to be used.

In order to comply with Maharishi Vedic℠ architecture, they learned how to perfectly align the building by using the North Star and the meridian transit off the sun.

“It’s within a quarter or even one-eighth of a degree of being perfectly aligned,” Mr. Stimson said.

He said his desert site is intended to serve as a retreat for campus groups and students in other departments, as well as the Sustainable Living students.

MUM students complete adobe house from scratch in Texas desert

MUM students complete adobe house from scratch in Texas desert

Commenting on the success of this course and the happiness of the students who participated in it, Professor Lonnie Gamble, Co-Director of the Sustainable Living Department said, “They’re happy because they’re taking their part in creating the world that they want to live in. I think it brings out a great joy, a great satisfaction, something that many of them have been looking for at other institutions before they’ve come here.” http://link.mum.edu/AdobeHouse

Part of this report was taken from The Review, Vol. 29, #6, November 27, 2013. For more information visit http://link.mum.edu/AdobeHousePR.

Read the description under this video posted on the MaharishiUniversity YouTube channel with more details describing how the students prepared for their trip, built their tools when they got there, gathered and processed the local materials to construct the adobe house.

Founded in 1971, Maharishi University of Management (MUM) offers Consciousness-Based℠ Education, a traditional academic curriculum enhanced with self-development programs like the Transcendental Meditation® technique. Students are encouraged to follow a more sustainable routine of study, socializing and rest without the typical college burnout. All aspects of campus life nourish the body and mind, including organic vegetarian meals served fresh daily. Located in Fairfield, Iowa, MUM is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission and offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in the arts, sciences, humanities, and business. Visitors Weekends are held throughout the year. For more information, call the Admissions Office at 800-369-6480 or visit http://www.mum.edu.

Source: PRWeb: http://www.prweb.com/releases/MUM-SL/AdobeHouse/prweb11363060.htm

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Maharishi University’s Fred Travis talks about the brain and meditation on What Women Must Know

November 21, 2013
Sherrill Sellman

Sherrill Sellman

Sherrill Sellman, host of What Women Must Know, interviewed Fred Travis of Maharishi University of Management on the Progressive Radio Network, PRN.fm, “The #1 Internet Radio Station for Progressive Minds,” on November 21, 2013. Listen to this interesting interview as they discuss different stages of the brain’s development and how it is affected by PTSD, ADHD, and different meditations. Today’s show is titled Your Brain, Rejuvenation and Meditation with Dr. Fred Travis.

Dr. Fred Travis

Dr. Fred Travis

Dr. Fred Travis is Professor of Maharishi Vedic Science, Chair of the Department of Maharishi Vedic Science, Dean of the Graduate School, and Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition, at Maharishi University of Management. He earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in Psychology from Maharishi University of Management, and a B.S. in Design and Environmental Analysis from Cornell University. He is also the author of Your Brain is a River, Not a Rock. Visit his website for video presentations, publications and more: drfredtravis.com.

Listen to a Podcast of the show or search for it in the Archives.

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Posted in Audios, Education, Health, Maharishi University, Peace | Leave a Comment »

David Lynch on meditation in the NewStatesman: Heaven is a place on earth

November 1, 2013

This week Russell Brand was guest editor of the UK’s NewStatesman, which came out October 24, 2013. He invited David Lynch to contribute an article on meditation. The diagram looks like it may be the same one David drew during an interview with a French journalist in Paris as he was explaining Transcendental Meditation to her. A large part of the article reads like a transcription of that brilliant explanation, which was woven throughout a documentary film made of David’s 16-country tour, Meditation Creativity Peace.

David Lynch on meditation: Heaven is a place on earth

Transcending is the only experience in life that gives total brain coherence. Any other thing we do utilises different small parts of the brain, this small part for painting, another small part for mathematics, that small part for playing the piano.

By David Lynch Published 31 October 2013 14:45

Mind and matter: Lynch’s diagram of Transcendental Meditation. Image: copyright David Lynch

Mind and matter: Lynch’s diagram of Transcendental Meditation.
Image: copyright David Lynch

What is Transcendental Meditation? What is transcending? Where do you go when you transcend? And what good is it to transcend? To help answer these questions, I’ve done a little drawing and you can refer to it from time to time. You will notice a line at the top of the drawing representing the surface of life. We live on the surface and see surfaces everywhere. This right side represents matter and the left side will represent mind. Mind and matter.

About 300 years ago, scientists started wondering: what was matter, what was wood, what was air, what was water, what was flesh, etc? And they started looking into matter and they began to find things – things that we now learn about in school. They found cells and molecules. They went deeper and found atoms; they went deeper and deeper, all the way down to the tiniest particles – the elementary particles.

They found four forces that act upon the particles. And on a deeper level, they found that the four forces became three. Some unification started. And, on a deeper level, the three forces became two. About 35 years ago, modern science, quantum physics, discovered the Unified Field at the base of all matter. This field is the unity of all the particles and all the forces of creation. This is a field of nothing, but the scientists say that out of this nothing emerges everything that is a thing. This Unified Field is unmanifest yet all manifestation comes from this field.

Ancient Vedic science, the science of consciousness, has always known of this field. Believers say that it is an eternal unbounded ocean of consciousness. And this consciousness has qualities. So this Unified Field, this ocean of consciousness, is a field of unbounded intelligence, unbounded creativity, unbounded happiness, unbounded love, energy and peace.

Transcendental Meditation is a mental technique, an ancient form of meditation brought back for this time by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It is a technique that allows any human being to dive within, through subtler levels of mind and intellect, and then transcend – that is experience, that ocean of pure consciousness at the base of all mind and matter – to experience this Unified Field within with those all-positive qualities.

In Transcendental Meditation you’re given a mantra. A mantra is a very specific sound vibration – thought. The mantra that Maharishi gives is like a law of nature designed for a specific purpose and that purpose is to turn the awareness 180 degrees from out, out, out to within, within, within. Once pointed within, one will dive easily and effortlessly. It is easy and effortless because the nature of the human mind is always to want to go to fields of greater happiness.

Each deeper level of mind and each deeper level of intellect has more and more happiness – charm, as they say. So the happiness growing is like a magnet that gently pulls us within. And at the border of intellect, one then transcends and experiences the transcendent, the Unified Field, the ocean of pure consciousness, the kingdom of heaven that lies within – the Tao, the home of total knowledge, being or divine being; Atma, meaning the Self, the Self with a capital “S”.

There’s a line we’ve all heard: “Know thyself.” This is the Self they’re talking about. This field is also known as Brahm, meaning totality. First seek the kingdom of heaven that lies within and all else will be added unto you. All else is totality.

Every time a human being transcends, they infuse some of this all-positive consciousness and they truly begin to expand whatever consciousness they had to begin with. There is a side effect to expanding consciousness, and that side effect is that negativity begins to recede. Things like stress, traumatic stress, anxieties, tension, sadness, depression, hate, anger, rage and fear start to lift away very naturally.

The analogy is: negativity is just like darkness. When this light of consciousness begins to truly expand, it is like being in a dark room with a light on a dimmer. As the light gets brighter, the darkness starts to go. And when the light is full on, there is no darkness. Likewise with the light of unity – consciousness – growing, negativity very naturally starts to recede, automatically and without you having to worry about it. This heavy weight of negativity lifting gives such a joyful feeling of freedom to a human being. So you could say the person practising Transcendental Meditation each day is infusing gold and getting rid of garbage.

Transcending is the key word!!! Transcending is truly experiencing that deepest eternal level of life. It is this experience that does everything good for a human being. Every human being has consciousness but not every human being has the same amount. The good news is, every human being has the potential for infinite consciousness. Every time you experience this ocean of consciousness within, you expand more and more consciousness and you are unfolding your full potential as a human being. The full potential of the human being is called enlightenment – infinite consciousness, infinite happiness, total fulfilment. Totality.

Transcending is a holistic experience, meaning that all avenues of life will start improving. The things that used to stress you will still be out there in the world but they will not be able to hit you so hard. You’ll still be able to feel sadness but the sadness won’t last so long. It will lift away more quickly. The same with anger; the anger will leave more quickly. It won’t stay with you and poison you and the environment. Fears begin to lift – you work in more and more freedom. This is a field of infinite creativity. You will see creativity and problem-solving start to expand. Through research, scientists know that IQ can go up because of transcending each day.

Happiness comes more and more and you feel good in your body and enjoy the doing of things more and more. The field within is a field of universal love. This universal love feeds personal love and relationships improve. This field within is a field of infinite energy. People today are so fatigued and here within each of us is an infinite amount of energy to fuel our work and play. There is infinite peace within and that is deep, deep contentment, harmony, coming up inside the human being. It is so beautiful.

Transcendental Meditation is, as I said, easy and effortless. Many people might think that because it is easy it is not as good as other meditation techniques. This is wrong thinking. Concentration forms of meditation, contemplation forms of meditation, will keep a human being hovering on the surface. There will be no transcending. And it is hard work and it is boring and the reward is not there.

Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is a technique that has been here many times before and it is a blessing. It is the real thing. It works. Brain research scientists have found a wondrous thing. When a human being truly transcends, hooked up to an EEG machine, then the full brain gets engaged in concert. They call this “total brain coherence”.

Transcending is the only experience in life that gives this total brain coherence. Any other thing we do utilises different small parts of the brain, this small part for painting, another small part for mathematics, that small part for playing the piano, and so on. Scientists have always told us before that we use only 5 per cent or 10 per cent of our brain but transcending is an experience that utilises the full brain.

This shows us something of the relationship of the human being to this glorious Unified Field within. The more we transcend, the more this coherence stays with us and this eventually gives rise to higher states of consciousness, culminating with supreme enlightenment. On the EEG machine, Transcendental Meditation meditators are seen to transcend many times in each 20-minute meditation. Those meditators who practise concentration or contemplation forms of meditation do not transcend. They do not get the experience of that ocean of bliss consciousness, the Unified Field.

A ten-year-old child can practise this technique of Transcendental Meditation; a 110-year-old can do it, easily and effortlessly, and they will each get the experience they are yearning for. It is a sublime experience to transcend and feel that rejuvenation and that happiness and all those other all-positive qualities growing.

Transcendental Meditation is not a religion. People from all religions practise this technique and they see there is no conflict with their religion. On the contrary, they say they understand and appreciate their religion more because understanding and appreciation for all things grow by transcending each day. It is a technique for human beings, no matter what walk of life, what religion or where you are from. People who have experienced great suffering have gotten this technique and happily said, “Now I have my life back again.” The real story is: THE NATURE OF LIFE IS BLISS and THE INDIVIDUAL IS COSMIC.

Russell Brand’s article in this paper is about revolution. Revolutions are usually associated with violence or force. Transcendental Meditation leads to a beautiful, peaceful revolution. A change from suffering and negativity to happiness and a life more and more free of any problems. The secret has always been within. We just need a technique that works to get us there to unfold a most beautiful future.

Find out even more about Transcendental Meditation at: davidlynchfoundation.org.uk.

For American readers, visit www.tm.org and davidlynchfoundation.org.

See Russell Brand and David Lynch at LA Premiere of ‘Meditation, Creativity, Peace’ Documentary and related links to other videos and articles. Visit http://meditationcreativitypeace.com to see a preview of the film and where it may be playing.

This is an excellent interview: David Lynch speaks with Alan Colmes about his 16-country tour film Meditation Creativity Peace.

The NewStatesman article reads like a transcription from this film, which you can now see: “Meditation Creativity Peace”—A documentary of David Lynch’s 16-country tour during 2007–2009.

See an earlier article written by David Lynch published in Jane Magazine: Celeb Spiritual Report: One significant day in my life by David Lynch for Jane Magazine (May 2004).

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Alec Baldwin asks Jerry Seinfeld about learning Transcendental Meditation on Here’s The Thing

October 20, 2013

HerestheThing_web_header_alt3Monday, October 14, 2013 | Episode #52 | Jerry Seinfeld
Listen | Download | Stream m3u | Transcript

Jerry Seinfeld (Jason Sheldon)

Jerry Seinfeld (Jason Sheldon)

This month, Alec Baldwin sat down with comedian Jerry Seinfeld for his show, Here’s The Thing, which airs on WNYC. Jerry had debuted on HBO in 1981, the same year he first appeared on Johnny Carson. Jerry Seinfeld was 27 years old.

Seinfeld’s material stood out. It wasn’t about his upbringing or personal relationships. It was about our universal experience of small things. Eight years after his HBO debut, he and Larry David created a weekly series that changed both their lives. After Seinfeld ran for nine seasons, Seinfeld went back to stand-up, and to his audience. As he explains to Alec, Seinfeld feels uniquely connected to his fans: “You have this relationship with the audience that is private between you and them. Critics want to write, people want to talk. We have our own thing that nobody can break … once you build that it can’t be broken by outside forces.”

In the closing segment (last 3 minutes) Alec asks Jerry about meditation, how and when he learned it. Here’s that section of the transcript:

Alec Baldwin: Jerry Seinfeld has meditated for over four decades and it shows. He says it makes stress float away. I wanted to find out more about Jerry and meditation. So I called him.

Jerry Seinfeld: Transcendental Meditation, that’s what I do. TM.

Alec Baldwin: And how long have you been doing that?

Jerry Seinfeld: Since ’72.

Alec Baldwin: So when did that come into your life? You like saw a billboard when you were at the Long Island Railroad station?

Jerry Seinfeld: Yeah, I saw a flyer in the union at Oswego State University, where I was enrolled.

Alec Baldwin: Seriously?

Jerry Seinfeld: Because I couldn’t take senior year anymore so I left high school six months early, got into college, and left in the middle of senior year. Now I know you didn’t do that.

Alec Baldwin: No.

Jerry Seinfeld: Because you were handsome and the girls were hanging off of you, and senior year was fantastic for you. That’s what I know.

Alec Baldwin: Yeah. It was a vending machine of women. It was just endless.

Jerry Seinfeld: I know. Well it wasn’t like that for me, buddy boy. So I thought I gotta get out of here, and start a new life with people that don’t know me. So I went to Oswego and while I was there, now remember this is still in the flora and fauna of 60s experimentalism, so Transcendental Meditation, somebody told me about it, I don’t remember who. And I thought, well let me see what that’s about and I went to this thing and I learned the technique. It cleared up my acne immediately, I had this great energy and focus, and I’ve been doing it the rest of my life.

Alec Baldwin: So you sound, when you say you learned the technique, and it cleared up your acne, and your energy and focus, it sounds like you ultimately had the sex that had been evading you up until then, before you went to Oswego.

Jerry Seinfeld: That’s correct.

Alec Baldwin: So the TM was really a pathway to sex, correct?

Jerry Seinfeld: What isn’t?

Alec Baldwin: How can I do it? Like where do you do it? Can you do it anywhere? Or do you have to be in a sacred space?

Jerry Seinfeld: You can do it anywhere.

Alec Baldwin: You can do it anywhere.

Jerry Seinfeld: I’m gonna get you doing it now.

Alec Baldwin: I want you to get me doing it.

Jerry Seinfeld: You’re my next victim.

Alec Baldwin: I want more energy, more focus, I want my acne to clear up.

Jerry Seinfeld: Well you don’t need, you can’t have more energy, you can’t even dispose of the energy that you have.

Alec Baldwin: It’s true. But it’s toxic energy. It’s more like a Chernobyl than it is a kind of a babbling brook.

Jerry Seinfeld: Ok, well this is a different, this is a nice energy, really nice. Here’s how I’ll describe it to you. You know how three times a year, you wake up and you go, ‘Boy, that was a really good sleep?’

Alec Baldwin: Yes!

Jerry Seinfeld: Imagine feeling like that every day.

Alec Baldwin: Oh my god!

Jerry Seinfeld: That’s what it is.

Alec Baldwin: Meditation. I gotta try that.

(And I have a feeling he just might.)

Jerry Seinfeld – Personal Archives

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Looking for an episode of Here’s the Thing? View the Full Archive

Related clips involving Jerry Seinfeld and TM. These are funny!!!

@JerrySeinfeld talks about @TMmeditation at David @LynchFoundation #ChangeBeginsWithin

George Stephanopoulos interviews Jerry Seinfeld & Bob Roth on the importance of Transcendental Meditation for PTSD

Highlights of David Lynch Foundation honoring legendary manager and producer George Shapiro at first annual Night of Comedy

Jerry Seinfeld and Howard Stern share stories about their Transcendental Meditation practice

Newly added from Issue 20 of Enlightenment, The Transcendental Meditation Magazine: Jerry Seinfeld Talks TM with Bob Roth, a partial transcription from the Sirius XM radio show “Success Without Stress.” Click here to listen to the complete 60-minute interview.

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William T. Hathaway’s Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness, concerns future eco-crisis and TM

October 19, 2013

Wellsprings coverWellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness, William T. Hathaway’s just-published book, concerns Transcendental Meditation and the environmental crisis. It is set in 2026 as the earth’s ecosystem has broken down under human abuse. Water supplies are shrinking. Rain is rare, and North America is gripped in the Great Drought with crops withering and forests dying. In the midst of environmental and social collapse, an old woman and a young man set out to heal nature and reactivate the cycle of flow by using techniques of higher consciousness. But the corporations that control the remaining water lash out to stop them. A blend of adventure, ecology, and mystic wisdom, Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness is a frightening but hopeful look into a future that is looming closer every day.

Bob, 18, and Jane, 77, meet at a California hot springs and set out together on a quest. Jane is convinced North America’s water has retreated into a deep subterranean aquifer, and she is searching for the place where it comes close enough to the surface to access it. She teaches him to meditate, and their visions help them find the cavern that connects to the water.

A selection:

Jane and I drive around to the north side of Mt. Shasta, hoping to be able to sense the subterranean springs from there. In the moonlight the mountain looks like a silver pyramid soaring up from the horizon into the starry purple night. The ancient volcano is lord of all it surveys. Veils of clouds are blowing around its peak.

We find a grassy glade in the forest, but the grass is dry and brittle and the tree branches droop from the drought. As we are spreading our blankets out to meditate, motion on the other side of the clearing catches our eyes. Out of the trees steps a black-tailed doe. She sees us and pauses, one foot raised, sniffing, listening, looking. Jane and I stare enthralled. As the doe gazes at us, our eyes join across the space, across the species. Communication flows between us: cautious curiosity about a fellow creature. She breaks contact, begins nibbling, then looks back at us as if saying, As long as you stay on your side, it’s OK.

We watch her in delight until she trots off, then we close our eyes to meditate. At first my mantra goes with my heartbeat then slows and goes with my breath. The sound stretches out into a long hum floating through me. I seem to be beyond my skin, filling the whole clearing. I feel like I’m sinking into the earth. I want to hold on, to keep from disappearing, but something tells me to let everything go. I free-fall through space, then realize it’s impossible to fall because there’s no down. I’m hovering … like a dragonfly over water. The sound fades away, leaving me without thoughts. I seem to expand beyond all space and boundaries to unite with everything. For a moment I know I am everything, the whole universe, but as soon as I think, I’m everything, I’m not anymore. I’m just Bob Parks sitting on a blanket over cold ground.

I start the mantra again. Its whisper clears my thoughts away, and my mind becomes quiet. Part of me is watching the quietness of my mind and enjoying it. I never knew I had this watching part before. It doesn’t need to think. It’s just there, aware of everything but separate from it — a wise old part of me.

I realize I’m off the mantra, drifting on thoughts, so I pick up the sound again and follow it as it gets fainter and finer until it becomes more visual, pulsing light behind my closed eyes. It seems to shine into something, a big cavern that’s inside of me but also outside of me. The boundaries between me and everything else disappear — no difference now between inside and outside. I can see dimly into the cavern. The walls and ceiling are crystal, its facets glinting in the mantra light. Below them in all directions stretches a vast dark sea of water, its ripples gleaming. It’s deep, deep as the earth, and I want to plunge in and dive all the way to the bottom. I’m sitting above it. Down there beneath me, beneath these rocks and dirt, rests the water.

I can sense this sea’s immensity, stretching from California under the Great Basin of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, the parched American desert, the last place the corporate drillers would’ve looked. We’re sitting by the tip of it closest to the surface. From here it goes deeper and deeper, soaking through strata of sand and porous rock, a huge aquifer waiting to be freed and flow again.

I want to jump up and yell, “I found it!” but that thought makes it disappear. I take a deep breath and am back sitting cross-legged on my blanket. Too stunned to say anything, I lie back and feel the ground under me, this good ground with all that good water under it.

###

A further sample of Wellsprings: A Fable of Consciousness is posted at http://www.cosmicegg-books.com/books/wellsprings.

William T. Hathaway’s other books include A World of Hurt (Rinehart Foundation Award), CD-Ring, Summer Snow, and Radical Peace: People Refusing War. He and his wife, Daniela, direct the Transcendental Meditation Center in Oldenburg, Germany. A selection of his writing is available at www.peacewriter.org.

REVIEWS & ENDORSEMENTS

….. Although this is a little book (only 100 pages), its message is huge. It has so much to offer in the way of warning and of hope. It tells a vital truth about our connection with all life and with water, which is the basic component of life and which unifies us with all other forms of life. Hathaway warns us that we must do something about the ecological disaster that we are facing, and in order to succeed at this awesome task we must change our consciousness. This “Fable of Consciousness” provides an engaging lesson in unified consciousness and how to achieve it through meditation. It is a must read! ~ Jan Krause Greene, Goodreads

William Hathaway’s new novella, “Wellsprings – A Fable of Consciousness” – is a coming of age story located in a not too distant, nor unlikely, future. Hathaway weaves concepts of unifying consciousness as a mechanism for addressing environmental crisis in an age of corporate ownership of all natural resources. A second, though important, theme of the book is that we can control our reactions to situations. This is an important message in a time when everything seems to push us towards non-reflective responses. Hathaway’s novel serves as both a teaching tool and a cautionary tale. ~ Rowan Wolf, Author

Also see: Radical Peace: People Refusing War, by William T. Hathaway.

And here is another TM-based novel written from a different perspective: Writers’ Voices interviews B. Steven Verney, author of “The Best of All Possible Worlds.”

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Renowned (TM) meditation teacher Bob Roth featured on The Third Metric and HuffPost Live

October 14, 2013

Huffington Post Senior Writer profiled Bob Roth, Executive Director of the David Lynch Foundation, an exemplary representative for The Third Metric: Redefining Success Beyond Money and Power. huff.to/1albfF9 (10/14/2013)

Meditation Teacher To The Stars: His clients include Oprah, Russell Brand, Martin Scorcese and Dr. Oz, but renowned meditation teacher Bob Roth also serves low-income and under-served communities by sharing his passion: Transcendental Meditation.

Bob Roth was also interviewed on @HuffPostLive: Stress Is The New Black Plague: Meditation guru Bob Roth ‏@meditationbob joins host Nancy Redd ‏@nancyredd to explain the benefits of meditation: Bob Roth Talks Transcendental Meditation @TMmeditation. Watch this lively interview http://huff.lv/GZQpn9 (12:46).

Bob Roth: Bringing Calm To The Center Of Life's Storm

Bob Roth: Bringing Calm To The Center Of Life’s Storm

If there was a perfect year in which to discover Transcendental Meditation, it might just have been 1968. That was the year that Bob Roth was a freshman at UC Berkeley — a campus considered Ground Zero for the anti-war movement and the cultural changes sweeping through the country at the time. He remembers living surrounded by helicopters spewing tear gas over student war protesters and Army tanks parked outside his front door. Demonstrations. Riots. Chaos.

And against this backdrop, Roth did what many college students do: He took a part-time job. He sold scoops of ice cream at Swenson’s ice cream parlor, never expecting that amid the rush of pending social changes engulfing him, it would be at the ice cream shop where he would meet a guy who would ultimately alter the course of his life forever.

The college crew at Swenson’s was the usual motley collection of hippies, straights and everything in between, recalls Roth. But one guy stood out: Peter Stevens. “He was like a quiet reflection pool amid the chaos,” recalls Roth, “and I was drawn to him.”

“Peter was centered, energetic, super-smart, kind to all, easy-going, never agitated, with an ineffable calm about him,” Roth told The Huffington Post. He learned that Peter “meditated,” something that Roth said was a bit of a disconnect for him. “Meditation was not in my vocabulary.” But he was intrigued and curious, and went with Stevens to a class in Transcendental Meditation, a meditative practice derived from the ancient Vedic tradition in India. After just one class, Roth was hooked.

Today, Roth is the executive director of the David Lynch Foundation, where he has helped bring Transcendental Meditation programs to more than 300,000 at-risk kids in 35 countries, as well as veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and women and girls who are survivors of domestic violence. He’s also the national director of the Center for Leadership Performance, which introduces the TM program to business, industry and government organizations — and even some United Nations groups.

Today, Roth’s student roster includes a lot of very recognizable names: Oprah, Russell Simmons, Russell Brand, Martin Scorsese, Mehmet Oz, Hugh Jackman and dozens of others. He’d be embarrassed to be called “meditation teacher to the stars,” but such a description wouldn’t be far off. For the past 40 years, he has meditated twice a day no matter where he is, in places as discombobulating as an airplane when need be.

He explains Transcendental Meditation with the following analogy: The surface of the ocean is waves and white caps. But deeper down, the ocean is still. How TM differs from other meditations, he says, is that it doesn’t attempt to still the waves, but rather allow access to the stillness. By practicing it twice a day for 20 minutes, he said, studies have shown that people sleep better, reduce their stress, and lower their blood pressure. In children, the practice can reduce ADHD symptoms and symptoms of other learning disorders.

Not all Roth’s clients are rich and famous. One of the key focuses of the David Lynch Foundation is to target those who aren’t and improve their lives through TM. There’s a story that Roth likes to tell about the DLF’s Quiet Time program — where thousands of at-risk children are taught TM in school. It involves a little girl he called Jessica (not her real name) who lives in a crime-infested neighborhood of San Francisco. Jessica showed up one day at school wearing a white dress splattered with what her teacher, at first glance, thought was red paint. It was blood — blood from Jessica’s uncle who had been shot that morning in a random drive-by while waiting with her at the bus stop.

Instead of running home, Jessica ran to school so that she could meditate, she told her teachers. The DLF Quiet Time program had been in her school for about a year at the time and for her, it made school a safe place whereas her home often couldn’t be. “For me,” said Roth, “that says it all.”

As part of the Quiet Time Program, the foundation supplies teachers for each child to have one-on-one meditation instruction and follow-up. “In a school with 1,000 students,” he said, “we bring in 20 teachers.”

The results have been gratifying, said Roth, who believes that results must be quantifiable to matter. “Change needs to show up in grades, reduced number of suspensions and dropout rates,” he said. And the Quiet Time program has done all that. The San Francisco Unified School District reports an 86 percent reduction in suspensions over two years in schools where the program has been introduced; a 65 percent decrease in violent conflict at the John O’Connell High School; and the Journal of Psychiatry shows reduced ADHD symptoms and symptoms of other learning disorders among students who practice TM.

Carlos Garcia, retired superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, heralded the program as one which is “transforming lives.” He said, “It is transforming schools and neighborhoods, and it will transform our society.”

All of which is music to Roth’s ears. TM is a life-changer for individuals, he said, but also a game changer in the broader sense. It may start with an individual’s desire to sleep better or reduce stress, but results are similar to what happens when you pull on one leg of the table, said Roth. “The whole table moves.” And what moves in this case are blood pressure numbers, heart attack risk factors, and the overall ability to make better decisions with a more focused mind. “You are thinking more clearly, are able to make decisions more ethically, perform more creatively.” It’s like when you water a plant because some leaves are wilting, he said, but the whole plant benefits from the water. And it spills over into those around you in a chain reaction.

Companies interested in innovation are drawn to TM because of the positive impact it has on their work force. It’s why Oprah had Roth bring his program to her staff of 400. “It’s not just about learning to relax,” said Roth. “TM wakes up the brain and the executive functions. It resets the brain to perform in a less ‘flight or fight’ manner.”

And yes, it reduces stress. Whether he is teaching a homeless guy — the DLF has a program that works with New York City homeless — or a billionaire, “they both suffer from stress,” said Roth.

But as one celebrity who shall remain unnamed quipped when Roth asked her why she wanted to learn to meditate, “I want to maintain a permanent connection with the intelligence of the universe. I also can’t sleep.”

TM training allows people to access an ability they already are hard wired for: to take a profound rest at will.

Roth says the tipping point has been reached in regard to the public’s understanding of the value of meditation. As he wrote on Maria Shriver’s blog, “It feels like something foundational can be done to help transform lives through meditation, not only among those most at-risk to suffer traumas in life, but also the teen in the private school who battles the very real demons of substance abuse and unspoken thoughts of suicide; the parent who is struggling to survive an ugly divorce and still keep the family intact; or just the person — man, woman, boy, girl — who is navigating life’s daily vicissitudes and can’t seem to catch a breath, turn off the noise, get a good night’s sleep.”

Ann Brenoff can be reached at: ann.brenoff@huffingtonpost.com.

Here is a lovely reproduction of the Huffington Post article with more pictures created by the David Lynch Foundation: Meditation Man.

See The GQ Guide to Transcendental Meditation: The Totally Stressed-Out Man’s Guide to Meditation, an excellent article written by Josh Dean who learned TM from Bob Roth and interviewed him.

Bob Roth is also featured in the April 2, 2014 issue of MANHATTAN Magazine: Transcendental Inspiration.

Bob Roth (S)(C)On July 16, 2015, Harper Spero, a New York City-based lifestyle and career coach, published this wonderful interview on her blog: (So)(Co) Sit Down with Bob Roth. While working at Agent of Change, she produced the Women.Meditation.Stress. Luncheon and Panel Discussion for the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), which is how she met Bob, its executive director. It contains a nice large-sized photo of Bob at the bottom of the blog post.

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How TM helped calm and center a young woman’s busy mind—inspiring article in new Irish magazine

October 11, 2013

A new magazine, Upside News, came out on Dublin’s north side in Ireland. Their website is still under construction, but here is a description on their Facebook page. They asked someone for an article on Transcendental Meditation.

John Burns

John Burns

Since Christine Ryan was the contact person, John Burns, Communications Director for TM in Ireland, persuaded her to write about her experience of the technique. John said he sent the editor an article he had written along with Christine’s TM experience and told him he thought what she had written was so good that he should use it instead if space was an issue. The editor got back to John and said that he would print Christine’s piece.

Good decision; it’s a fantastic personal account! When I asked John to tell me more about the author, he said, “Christine is training to be a school teacher. She is just someone who really appreciates her TM.” I asked John to send a picture of Christine, a PDF of the magazine article, and a link when it’s posted online, which I’ll add when they’re available. Here’s what she wrote:

“As a twenty-four year old trying to find your place in the world, weaving your way around the many forks in the road that separate all of the possible paths down which to venture, it can be hard to tease out your own true voice in an increasingly noisy world.

I am an introverted, intellectual, always-something-to-think-about child of the technological generation. It seems easy to assume I would have trouble turning my awareness away from words on a page, the lure of the internet, my mobile phone, the radio buzzing and the drilling noise vibrating from the neighbour’s house a few doors down where a posse of hard-working, bellowing construction workers are knocking down two walls in her house only to put six back up. But TM is natural and it is effortless, when you learn how to do it.

What TM gives me is stillness and silence. For twenty minutes twice a day, I go to a place of silence that already exists within me. It happens effortlessly and spontaneously. As a helpless analyser of all things, this initially seemed impossible for me to swallow but I very quickly discovered its truth. The noise of the world disappears and I arrive at a place of beautiful quiet.

TM is like diving into a pool of light that washes away dirt and darkness, and emerging fresh and invigorated. During my TM practice, I feel my body settle into a deep state of rest and an overwhelming sense of calm and stillness pervades it. I feel free from the shackles of stress and exhaustion. I experience a sense of unity and peace. Without any resolve to do so, this sense of wholeness and calm lingers on when my meditation has ended; the effects of my TM practice spontaneously ripple forward into my activity.

Almost seven months into my second year of practising TM, I feel greater clarity in my thinking; as a busy thinker this has been such a profound change that TM has brought me. My relationships are infused with a sense of ease now. My thinking is sharper, ideas flow more easily, and my energy is lasting and productive. I feel less uncertain about decisions to be made and a greater vibrancy in my creative endeavours.

As I continue to meditate, the effects grow stronger. My wonderful TM teacher, Ann, put it simply: “It’s like going to the gym,” she said. “You feel great for the first few weeks that you’re going, but if you stop going, you’ll lose the benefits bit by bit.” I may not get to the gym (or exercise for that matter!) every day, but sitting in a chair in my sweats, with messy un-brushed hair, allowing my mind to simply settle down to a place of profound stillness and emerging twenty minutes later energised and renewed—now that I can do!

I was never one to easily identify with, or apply, the principle of “go with the flow,” but as I continue to practise TM I edge all the more closer to fully understanding exactly what that means. TM has resigned stress and anxiety to a state out of tune with the natural rhythm and flow of my body and mind. It puts things into perspective. To connect with that constant centre of calm and stillness that lies within me, regardless of what is happening in my life, and to find that stillness lingering during activity has been one of the greatest joys of learning TM.

Visionary filmmaker, veteran meditator, and prolific speaker and activist for TM, David Lynch, said it best when he said: “TM is for human beings.” The truth of his words find significance in the shared experiences of the benefits of TM by meditators around the globe, young and old, from all religions and all walks of life, from those behind bars to those raised high on a platform called “celebrity.”

In the monthly group meditation meetings I meet meditators of all ages: veterans to novices, students to retirees and everything in between. In a world that breeds so much disconnection and discord, it is a joy to practice a simple technique that allows for an awareness of the integral similarity between us all.

TM recharges me mentally and physically. My morning and evening TM practice have become the pillars onto which I anchor my day. I can hear my own inner voice more clearly again and those forks in the road don’t loom quite so ominously now.”

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Effects of TM Practice on Trait Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

October 10, 2013

A new meta-analysis published today (Oct 9, 2013) in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (2013;19(10):1-12)1 found the Transcendental Meditation® technique (TM) has a large effect on reducing trait anxiety for people with high anxiety. Trait anxiety is a measure of how anxious a person usually is, as opposed to state anxiety, which refers to how anxious we are at the moment. A meta-analysis is an objective means to draw conclusions from all the research in a field.

This meta-analysis covered 16 randomized controlled trials, the gold standard in medical research, and included 1295 subjects from various walks of life, age groups, and life situations. TM was compared with various control groups, including treatment-as-usual, individual and group psychotherapy, and various relaxation techniques. Studies on high stress groups, such as veterans suffering from PTSD and prison inmates, showed dramatic reductions in anxiety from TM practice, whereas studies of groups with only moderately elevated anxiety levels, such as normal adults and college students, showed more modest changes.

A chart shows that studies of individuals with anxiety levels in the 90th percentile (higher than 90% of the rest of the adult population) showed dramatic reductions in anxiety down to the 57th percentile from TM practice. This is just a little higher than the average anxiety level, which is the 50th percentile. Study groups that started in the 60th percentile, a little above average, showed more modest reductions, to the 48th percentile, a little below average.

Lead author on the meta-analysis, Dr. David Orme-Johnson, an independent research consultant, commented: “It makes sense that if you are not anxious to begin with, that TM practice is not going to reduce your anxiety that much. Groups with elevated anxiety received significant relief from TM, and that reduction occurred rapidly in the first few weeks of practice.”

TM was also found to produce significant improvements in other areas worsened by anxiety, such as blood pressure, insomnia, emotional numbness, family problems, employment status, and drug and alcohol abuse.

This chart shows that studies of individuals with anxiety levels in the 90th percentile (higher than 90 percent of the rest of the adult population) showed dramatic reductions in anxiety down to the 57th percentile from TM practice. This is just a little higher than the average anxiety level, which is the 50th percentile. Study groups that started in the 60th percentile, a little above average, showed more modest reductions, to the 48th percentile, a little below average. (Photo Credit: Dr. David Orme-Johnson)

Co-author Dr. Vernon Barnes of the Georgia Prevention Center, Georgia Regents University, Augusta, Georgia explains what happens with control groups in these studies. “Control groups who received usual treatment did not show dramatic reductions in anxiety. In fact, control groups that were highly anxious to begin with, if anything, tended to become more anxious over time.”

When asked about the effect of other approaches to reduce anxiety, he added, “However, progressive muscle relaxation was also effective in reducing anxiety. But, it did not have the other side benefits of TM, such as increasing overall mental health, and increasing the rate of recovery of the physiology from stressors.”

Dr. Orme-Johnson answered a commonly asked question about placebo effects. He said: “Since anxiety is a self-reported measure, one might wonder whether the effects of TM practice or any other treatment program were a placebo effect. Placebos are great. If you give a person a sugar pill and tell them that it will reduce anxiety, it probably will, but only for a little while before the effect wears off. But the effects of TM were shown to be lasting and include objective benefits. For example a recent study showed that TM reduces heart attacks, strokes, and death over a ten-year period. So we know its effects are real and are not just due to a placebo.”

The meta-analysis also examined the issue of bias with TM studies on anxiety. There was no evidence of missing studies and studies conducted by scientists who were in any way associated with Maharishi University of Management or any of its sister universities did not have stronger effects than research conducted at independent universities.

Two previous meta-analyses on TM have found that it is highly effective in reducing trait anxiety, and is more effective than other meditation and relaxation techniques, including mindfulness meditation.2,3

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Background Information on Transcendental Meditation

The Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique is a simple, natural, effortless procedure practiced 20 minutes twice each day while sitting comfortably with the eyes closed. It is not a religion, philosophy, or lifestyle. It is the most widely practiced, most researched, and most effective method of self-development. For more information visit: http://www.tm.org.

Background information on anxiety

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in the United States, affecting 40 million adults (about 18% of the population) and costing more than $42 billion a year.4,5 Anxiety is considered a negative mood disturbance that results from failure to predict, control, and obtain desired goals6 and is associated with dysfunctional cognition, behavior, and physiologic over-activity.7 Anxiety further impairs health by motivating increased use of tobacco and alcohol8 and predisposes the individual to chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease.7,8

  1. Orme-Johnson DW, Barnes VA. Effects of the Transcendental Meditation technique on Trait Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials. J Altern Complement Med 2013;19(10):1-12. http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2013.0204
  2. Eppley K, Abrams AI, Shear J. Differential effects of relaxation techniques on trait anxiety: A meta-analysis. J Clin Psychol 1989;45(6):957-974.
  3. Sedlmeier P, Eberth J, Schwarz M, et al. The psychological effects of meditation: A meta-analysis. Psychol Bull 2012;138(6):1139-1171.
  4. ADAA. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America. 2013; http://www.adaa.org/about-adaa. Accessed January 10, 2013.
  5. Greenberg PE, Sisitsky T, Kessler RC, et al. The economic burden of anxiety disorders in the 1990′s. J Clin Psychiatry 1999;60(7):472-435.
  6. Barlow DH. Unraveling the mysteries of anxiety and its disorders from the prespective of emotion theory. Am Psychol 2000;55:1247-1263.
  7. Kolzet JA, Inra M. Anxiety. In: Allan R, Fisher J, eds. Heart and Mind: The Practice of Cardiac Psychology. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association; 2012.
  8. Sawchuk CN, Olatunji BO. Anxiety, health risk factors, and chronic disease. Am J Lifestyle Med 2011;5(6):531-541.
Source: EurekAlert! and Maharishi University of Management.
Posted on Science Codex, Medical News Today, Helio: Psychiatric Annals, PubMed, and many other science and medical news sites. Also on the TM Blog: New Research on TM and Anxiety. Here is a PDF of the paper made available by Renncap.

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Watch the 1968 film of Maharishi at Lake Louise

September 24, 2013

See my earlier post on a segment from this film: Maharishi describes the nature of inner life: bondage and liberation, and gaining bliss consciousness through Transcendental Meditation. Maharishi is seen walking and talking about the nature of life, with the beautiful scene of Lake Louise and the Rocky Mountains behind him. He describes the lake, its surface and depth, and the reflections on it, as a metaphor to explain the spiritual content of life and how it gets lost and overshadowed when we identify with only the surface material objects of life, a state of bondage, at the expense of our own inner unbounded nature, bliss consciousness, which gets unfolded and integrated through the practice of his Transcendental Meditation technique, into a state of liberation. I transcribe Maharishi’s words there, the film’s essential spiritual message.

maharishi signs gita for ken

In the opening scenes of this complete video of the CBC documentary, we were all walking up to Maharishi to give him a flower. At 2:07-2:10, I’m seen coming up to Maharishi asking him to sign a copy of his translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita, Chapters 1-6. The film closes with more of the same footage, which was all actually shot towards the end of the course. That wonderful week was the first time a lot of us got to meet Maharishi. It was an unforgettable divine experience in a most sublime natural setting!

Four years later, my mother, two sisters and I would meet privately with Maharishi at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, where a Symposium on the Science of Creative Intelligence with many of Canada’s intellectual luminaries was taking place. But that’s another amazing story!

Forty years after I started TM, and thirty-nine years after having met Maharishi, I was able to assist an ITN Factual commissioned producer in making the A&E biographical film, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for the History International Channel (November 2007). Luckily I was able to procure vintage footage taken by Eileen Learoyd, a Victoria, BC journalist, and the first national leader of the Canadian TM Movement. Grania Litwin, her daughter and also a Victoria journalist, was kind enough to send us those home movies transferred to videos taken by her mother. We found one of Maharishi at Catalina Island from 1962 that was still in the original film canister! We had them all digitized and sent selections to the producer for use in the film. She was delighted to have received such historical footage. We also returned the videos with new DVDs to Grania.

I also put the producer in touch with Alan Waite, who had made the award-winning 1968 documentary, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – Sage for a New Generation, and she ended up using many segments from that film as well. Also lined up interviews for her when she came to MUM in Fairfield, Iowa, as well as Mike Love in LA and Donovan in London.

Eileen and Hubert with Maharishi

Eileen and Hubert with Maharishi at Emerald Lake, British Columbia

Eileen Learoyd and her brother Hubert Gray organized a seminar for meditators with Maharishi at Emerald Lake, British Columbia in 1964. Elieen would later organize the 1972 SCI Symposium. In June 1968 they arranged for the CBC to film Maharishi at the Lake Louise, Alberta course. Interestingly, after Maharishi signed my copy of the Gita, we both turned it toward the camera. That footage was edited out, but it seemed to be a symbolic gesture for what I would end up doing with a large part of my life in my own small way — helping to teach, promote and publicize Maharishi and his world-transforming Vedic knowledge and TM technique. And for that I am most thankful and fulfilled. Jai Guru Dev, Maharishi. Na Guror Adhikam.

And last year, (2012) a small crew from DLF.TV and I were fortunate to have assisted Oprah’s producers by providing them with more b-roll footage for the OWN program on the meditators of Fairfield, Iowa, referred to as “TM Town” by Oprah. They even gave us a credit! Here’s a post with Video segments of Oprah’s Next Chapter on OWN: Oprah Visits Fairfield, Iowa—”TM Town”—America’s Most Unusual Town.

I later found a photo of Hubert and Eileen on either side of Maharishi arriving in the lobby of the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise Five-Star Hotel. That’s when I saw him for the first time, from the other side of the lobby, and felt the thought, ‘Prince of Peace’. At the end of the course, we took a group photo with Maharishi outside in front of the lake to complete that sublime one-week residence course, June 9-14, 1968.

Enlightenment, the Transcendental Meditation Magazine, also published an article on Maharishi at Lake Louise discussing the blissful nature of the practice of the Transcendental Meditation® technique.

In the summer of 2014 I retired from my position at MUM. A year later I was featured on the TMhome website: PR to poetry – how things sometimes happen to Ken Chawkin. They followed up with The story behind the making of the International History documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (International History Channel documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). A nice way to go out. I continue to write, blog, and freelance as a publicist for the movement as needed.

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, Colin Smith, 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! That’s the part I had transcribed and posted in the first link above.

Save

On August 2, 2020, Bob Roth, CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, and Mario Orsatti, Executive Director of the Center for Health and Wellness, a division of the David Lynch Foundation, discuss this historic documentary on TM Talks.

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Writers’ Voices interviews B. Steven Verney, author of “The Best of All Possible Worlds”

September 10, 2013

Writers’ Voices: Author in the house –
B. Steven Verney and “The Best of All Possible Worlds”

Writers' Voices Verney up close

Monica Hadley and Caroline Kilbourn are delighted to welcome first-time novelist and former MIU student B. Steven Verney to KRUU 100.1 FM and Writers’ Voices, as he returns to Fairfield from his home in Massachusetts to join in the festivities of the MUM Literature Reunion being held this weekend, August 30 – September 2. See the press release: MUM Celebrates Literature Reunion 2013.*

The Best of All Possible WorldsIn “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” published May 2012, Verney combines story-telling, philosophy, and the history of the TM movement into a unique and engaging novel. Anyone who attended TM teacher training courses in Switzerland or learned to meditate at Amherst in the early 70’s may just recognize pieces of their own personal history in this novel, while younger meditators, and even non-meditators with no connection to those events, will get a much deeper perspective of what all the fuss was about. This interview aired live, Fri Aug 30 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm and replayed, Mon Sep 02 8:00 am – 9:00 am. Here is an MP3 of it.

A newer interview recorded before Christmas 2013 was later posted in the new year: @MaharishiU Dean of Faculty, Dr. Cathy Gorini, interviews author Steven Verney on MUM’s KHOE.

If you went to MIU, Bruce Verney, as he was known back then, was student body president and won the Enlightened Leadership Award. He graduated in 1981 in Philosophy and married fellow student Kay Noble the following year. For the next 24 years, Steve and Kay started and operated three different businesses while raising their two sons. They’ve resided in New Salem, MA and currently live in Wellfleet, MA. This is his first novel.

I highly recommend the book. It won’t disappoint. The ending is mind-blowing! Steven said it took him 18 months to get the first draft down, and 3 years to revise and shape it, with some help from an editor, who curiously enough, turned out to be the person who had taught him Transcendental Meditation in Cambridge, MA decades earlier!

Although Steve is now writing his second novel, this first one is finally taking on a life of its own. David Lynch loved it and gave Steven a quote to help promote the book. “This book captures the thrill and magic of the spiritual path and how things make more and more sense the bigger the picture gets.” — David Lynch, Filmaker

The book will no doubt spread by word of mouth. George Ellis, author of A Symphony of Silence: An Enlightened Vision, said it should be turned into a screenplay. I agree. It’s destined to become a classic. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more of B. Steven Verney.

Visit Steve’s new website one of his son’s designed for him http://steveverney.com and blog. Read the overview of the book and see the Xlibris Book Trailer: The Best of All Possible Worlds.

*You may also enjoy The Flow of Consciousness: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on Literature and Language, 1971 to 1976, edited by Rhoda F. Orme-Johnson, Ph.D. and Susan K. Anderson, Ph.D., two former chairpersons of the MIU/MUM Literature department who attended the Literature Reunion 2013.

Another novel about a meditating philosophy professor worth reading is, “To Be Enlightened” by Alan J. Steinberg.

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