Transcendental Meditation | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

I’ve been been getting quite interested and doing lots of reading up and learning about transcendental mediation recently. Has anyone else had any experiences of this?

We all know The Beatles got incredibly absorbed in transcendental mediation and we know that the John, Paul, George and Ringo who travelled to India were not the same individuals who came back and this then went on to greatly impact Beatles history. Could it even be said this was the catalyst which led to the slow and gradual break up? I think Mark Lewisohn may have mentioned this.

 I’ve always been interested in Zen Buddhism and have done some mindfulness type meditation which has become quite popular recently but this is a different form of meditation. Mindfulness is about either focusing the mind on a particular thing i.e the breath; the body (body scan) or by just noticing thoughts coming and going. Transcendental meditation is about using a mantra which is a meaningless word or sound which you repeat silently to yourself for twenty minutes twice a day which is supposedly a much easier and effortless form. The Marharishi took an ancient form of Indian meditation which he learned from his master who he called Guru Dev and developed his own form. I also listened to a good episode of Something About the Beatles where they discussed transcendental meditation with an ex member. Something that came out of that was there was a suggestion that when The Beatles were out in India they were not entirely drug and sex free which upset the Marharishi and he was going to ask them to leave. It was also said that to save face they  found a reason to leave and then upped and left. Whatever the reasons it is clear the George, Paul and Ringo remained supporters of TM and I’m sure I read John still practised it. Apparently George even travelled to see the Marharishi in Holland many years later to apologise for The Beatles behaviour. Paul and Ringo also did a recent benefit show in aid of TM. So perhaps the narrative which John mainly promoted and which has been written into history about The Marharishi being a fraud is not entirely true.

I’ve been attempting to practice it over the last few weeks. I should say that the version I’m practising is just what I’ve learned from my own research and may not be entirely authentic as they say you need direct one to one tuition from a teacher which is something I intend on doing eventually.  Something I have noticed is that I found an effect of doing this meditation is that there have been a few instances recently where lets say my capacity for putting up with bulls**t from those around me seems to have been lowered.  This made me realise that it seems to have had that affect on The Beatles too. They were changed people after experiencing it. I was also watching a video last night where someone who runs a course was explaining the background and it got to a point where he said that “You may find people around you notice you have changed and that you are more genuine than before”. That really struck a chord because it really fits into The Beatles history and it’s a piece of the jigsaw which makes sense to me and explains a lot. I would love to post the video in question but don’t want break any forum rules as it’s from an organisation which runs courses.