My father is an ardent disciple of Transcendental Meditation . He is one among the scores who is really benifited by TM. what made me to write this article is the recent death of the Maharishi .
From my childhood days I used to observe that my father used to close the door of the bedroom and my grandma banging on the door as soon as the one-hour period was over. I used to think what the hell my father used to do closing the door everyday? Now I know that he was practicing meditation.
My Father was an Accountant in Remington Rand and he used to hold a stressful job. He was an honest man and he never used to compromise on his principles, so he retired as an accountant of the company. His juniors learning from him climbed the echelons of success and got promotions. They used to promise all nice things but instead they backstabbed him. They used to cover their mistakes and blamed him for their errors. . This stressed him and because of stresses his blood presure shooted up . He got his first attack at an early age of forty one. My father believed in hypnotique beliefs from a young age itself. He was an avid reader and as he read a Tamil book on occults he was attracted to it. Without knowing he got influenced by hypnotism. Slowly meditation also caught his interest It so happened once he visited a relative’s place and happened to glance at Sivananda Literature. He got hooked to the concept of meditation. His sojourn to meditation started from here. At first he followed this form of meditation. In this type of meditation one will have their Ishta devta (favorite God form like Krishna or Ganesha or shakti ) in their mind and meditate on him. He than followed the Japa meditation. In this formof meditation one will have to role the Japa or rosary bead and repeat the Lord’s name. However he was not satisfied with this type of meditation. In the mean time he kept on reading a lot of books on this matter. One day he happened to pass by a Transcendental Meditation center at T. Nagar in Chennai which is located in Southern India. He went inside only to his consternation to learn that they used to perform only pujas and they were not teaching meditation. However they informed him there was a trainer in Mandavalli who was training people in this form of meditation. After meeting him three times they trainer finally agreed to teach him. At last my father’s sojourn was over. He got satisfied with this type of meditation. In this type of meditation the expert will give you a sacred word or a mantra and you should mentally repeat it and subsequently watch for the sound. You should search where the sound comes from and the mind gets it absorbed and the sound gets dissolved. There will be subsequent silence and nothing else. My father is now practicising it and presently he is in his eighties has managed to lead a comparatively normal life.