Can Transcendental Meditation Fix a Really Bad Day?

Oh, today was the worst! And what do you know, I was in Iowa. As hurricane moved towards Texas, it rained and rained in Iowa. All day. But that wasn’t the worst.

I can handle rain. I’m used to it on my bike. I know how much rain I can take before everything gets wet beyond the point of no return. So when I knew I had 50 miles to go from Fort Madison to Fairfield, I knew it’d take me six hours. It’s no big deal.

But my map said that a road between the tiny town of Salem and the almost nonexistent speck of Glasgow was a paved county road. It wasn’t. It was mud, sand, and grit. My bike and everything I own got soaked and covered in dirt. My gears would barely move. And it took me 10 hours. Ten!

When I got to Fairfield, I was supposed to stay at the house of a nice young girl who attends Maharishi College, where I was going today and tomorrow. Luckily, I wasn’t in a rush to get there, as the folks at Maharishi had kept telling me they’d get back to me about my visit, but never did. Unluckily, my phone was waterlogged and I had to wait under the awning of a gas station for an hour before it would work.

Then, when I got to her house, my computer was busted. Yes, busted. Currently, there’s water in the screen, and the image is jumping up and down. The bottom half is totally gone, and I have to peer through a one-inch space at the top to do anything. Iowa, you can certainly pull a punch.

But I finally met up with Ms. Donielle Freeburg, a lovely 21-year-old who goes by Pookie and adores the liberal town of Fairfield like no other. She let me dry off and took me to campus to get some food and see an open-mic performance that she was hosting.

In the dining hall, I met Wally DeVasier, the director of the Maharishi Enlightenment Center, the man I had been trying to get in touch with. He apologized, as he also works as a pilot, and was flying out of Texas, which was understandably hectic. But he sat to eat with me, and gave me a two-hour lecture about transcendental meditation in the span of five minutes.

Before I work on repeating what he said to me, let me explain Mr. DeVasier. He was evasive about his age, but has been teaching transcendental meditation for 36 years, so he must be in his 50s. He doesn’t look a day over 40. He constantly fidgets while talking, like a child full of bottled-up energy. His phone rang constantly.

To top it all off, he had two pairs of glasses in his shirt pocket. “That’s a lot for someone who doesn’t wear glasses,” he said. I didn’t get to ask why he carries around superfluous corrective lenses.

I didn’t have my camera with me (it was wet), but I snagged this photo of him from the internet:

But here’s a synopsis of our conversation:

He told me that transcendental meditation is not a religion. But it did come from old Vedic teachings, which are quite intertwined with Hinduism and Buddhism. But this is a secular version, and people of all faiths enjoy it. In fact, he said it brings people who were previously turned off from their faiths back to the fold. They gain the ability to see past the people in their places of worship that made them uncomfortable, and see the beauty in what they left behind. “They can see that the people are not the religion,” he said.

Then he told me of its wonders. As much as 50 percent of Fairfield practices transcendental meditation, and the town boasts the largest percentage of millionaires and restaurants in the country per capita. He said that was because transcendental meditation opened up their minds, allowing them to stop focusing on the little things and be more creative.

DeVasier said a lot of people have trouble believing in the practice, but that belief is not necessary. He compared it to bringing people to the top of a roof. You might explain to them the laws of gravity, but they might not believe you. Nevertheless, if you push them off, they’ll fall. Gravity still works, as does transcendental meditation.

I don’t know if I’d compare something I deeply believe in and want others to espouse to homicide, but to each his own.

But now to what transcendental meditation is: I don’t really know. I know what its effects are, according to DeVasier, but he didn’t tell me exactly how it’s done, and didn’t leave time for questions. I can’t come and see for myself, as meditation with the community requires a pass. Apparently, I have to take the course.

But here are the effects that DeVasier mentioned. He compared our consciousness to a pool of water, with the surface representing realization and the base our core being. As we have thoughts, they bubble up to the surface, starting small and getting larger as they rise, until they pop with realization. In normal life, we’re cognizant of only the top few layers of consciousness. With transcendental meditation, you can eventually delve deeper to the core being. But DeVasier said that the delving isn’t what it’s about, though. It’s coming out of transcendental meditation more aware of the world around you, a better functioning individual.

One of the few questions I did manage to squeeze in was how it compared to other meditation, like Zen Buddhist meditation. He said it had many of the same effects, but with one difference – it was quicker. Without the dogma and the tradition and the ritual, he said that deeper consciousness was easier. He cited a study which compared new transcendental meditators to practicing Zen monks. Apparently. the newly practicing meditators were able to achieve the same levels of consciousness in three months as the monks had in 17 years. The Transcendental Meditation program has a lot of studies like this on its website, but I’m not a scientist so I can’t judge their validity.

Anyhow, his phone rang and he bolted out of the room with a quick goodbye, saying no one could really show me around the place so I could see the benefits of transcendental meditation for myself. But I’ll take some pics tomorrow anyhow.

After the open-mic night, Pookie took me to a coffee shop with a few of her friends, all of which were practicing transcendental meditators. They said it works, and really wished I could see it. One of them offered to sneak me his badge so I could get in to the meditation rooms, especially to see flying meditation, in which people hop around for hours. But we took the high road, and no identities were stolen.

Some of her friends were studying Vedic medicine, however, and they read my pulses. In ancient Indian tradition, humans have three pulses which can be read, showing the active (hot), passive (cold), and digestive (neutral) areas of the being, which should be in balance. Apparently, I have too much heat, which is normal considering my level of exercise. They said I should put cumin, fennel, and caraway seeds in my water bottle.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m biking in the hot sun, I don’t want to cool down with a curry-flavored broth.