A psychiatrist's experience of Transcendental Meditation(TM)

Dr Rustom Bujorjee: Yoga, is to take you to God, and any form of meditation, which doesn’t do that is obviously not true. Now we have heard that TM (Transdental Meditation) takes you only to bankruptcy, mental illness and physical illness. When I was a young doctor in London. I was working in a very famous psychiatric hospital, the most famous in England. And there, I used to find a lot of patients used to come about 6 or 8 weeks after having started TM. In those days, I never used to understand, what it was the TM did? That it used to drive people mad. We used to have all sorts of theories and all sorts of ideas, and we discussed this many times amongst yourself, but we didn’t know the answer.

By next, it going to TM happen when I was in Shri Mataji’s ashram and the people from Scotland came down. There were 20 of them perhaps 25 and we tried to give them realization. The first thing that happened is when we began to take mantras, that they began to shake like people who are having epileptic fits. I was very surprised. I have never seen anything like this before. So to try to protect him, we try to put sindur on their forehead. When we tried to put sindur on their forehead, they began to shiver and to run away from us and they have no control over this. One person sitting on the ground, and he jumped so high of the ground, and ran like an animal on all four legs between the legs of somebody, out of the door into the garden. All these things really happened. They were used to growl and bark like animals. It was so bad that all the people around us wondered what was the matter?

Then, I attended a scientific seminar, a so-called scientific seminar on TM. And what we found them was the brain waves that TM eventually produces in people are the same as the brain waves that are produced in epilepsy. Most of the people who came from TM, in addition to having to be psychologically unstable. They are very irritating, they can’t bear any disturbance, their minds are not steady, they do not seem to be in control of themselves, and their intelligence is completely destroyed, their capacity to think is completely destroyed, they can’t do anything anymore. They are broken, empty.

I was a doctor. You see, so I was very interested in this. So it seems to be that, there is no technique for reaching God. Rather here is a technique which will enable you to destroy yourself. Many of the people who have done TM, either their families, members of families have had heart attacks, have bronchitis, pneumonia. The mother of this friend of Mr Marcus, who first brought him died in a hospital of a heart attack, and she was unconscious for I think something like 8 or 10 days.

So you see, anything that is auspicious, anything that is True, anything that is a good Yoga, should bring you blessings. It should not destroy you, it should not destroy your mind, it should not destroy your body, it should not destroy your family and it should not destroy your wealth. And I have never done TM, but I have never seen anyone who has benefitted from TM. All it does, it places your ego.

God does not make you governors of this Universe. He does not make big thrones to sit on, that is not his job. His job is to make you one with your spirit. And if anyone comes to you, and says if you give me money, and I will make you reach me, reach God. Then if you go to him, then you are a fool. Because you must know that God does not act through money, and it does not flatten your ego. He is not a diplomat. He is the master of this whole Universe.

Sahaja yoga is the opposite of all this. It is, in fact, the only way. You see, through Sahaja yoga, the first thing that happens by the grace of the God, which is manifested in Mataji Nirmala Devi that your Kundalini awakens. As your Kundalini awakens your attention, your Chitta which upon now going there, there, everywhere is drawn inside into your subtle body, into the chakras, which sit in the subtle body and into the gods and the deities who sit in this chakras and rule the subtle body.

In the technique of this Yoga, you say the mantras and you feel the chakras move. You take the names of Gods and you see where they are sitting. You see what qualities they rule over. You see what things you do which makes the chakra close, and you should not do them. And you see, what things you should do which makes chakras open. Your attention goes inside from outside and it becomes subtle and your chakras teach you the best way to live. And so your dharma is established in reality through your own feelings, not simply by listening. You learn from your own experience, and as you become deeper and deeper established in Sahaja yoga, you begin to feel the silence, that is your own spirit. And you begin to see the manifestation of your own spirit within you. So that it becomes, your attention becomes centered on your spirit, and you realize that your spirit is one with the Absolute.

Another side of Sahajayoga is that the Devi is ‘sarva vidya pradayini’. She is the giver of all True Knowledge. Now, I was educated at Cambridge, where I was taught by at least 20 noble prize winners. Whatever there was in science to know, I learnt and I knew. I did the research myself into brain cells. But what we know in science is very limited compared to what you can learn from the vidya of Sahaja yoga.

You see, why all the scientists are talked as medical scientists? All the scientists discovered that such a gland is here. If you do such and such thing to that gland, it will react in such a way. All that physicist discovered is what does atom in the Universe. If you do such and such thing to this atom, they will behave in this way, that’s all. It is not very deep, it is not very profound. And it takes you many centuries to discover all these things.

In Sahaja yoga, using your own instrument, you can feel the great shaktis of this Universe. How do they move to? How do they act? And how they have built this Universe? What is the architecture of this Universe? And knowing that, knowing the subtle skeleton, the subtle structure of this Universe, you know not only what things do? But why they do them?

For example, since coming to Sahaja yoga, I have discovered why certain endocrine glands are placed in certain situations. I will give you one example, you see, the Swadishthana chakra is a chakra that is concerned with the metabolism of fat of transforming fat for use in the brain or transforming fat into sugar for use by the Nabhi chakra. Now, this we know, and now we know why all the glands which deal with fat metabolism are placed there. Now the liver is the only organ in the body that can use fat, that is in the centre Swadishthana. The pancreas which controls the shift of sugar to fat and fat to sugar is also in the Swadishthana chakra. So it makes perfect sense.

We know the Vishuddhi chakra is the chakra which handles growth, height. And here the two great glands thyroid and parathyroid which control this, are placed there. We know the Agnya means command. It is a chakra of command and we know the pituitary, which commands all the endocrine glands are situated in Agnya chakra. And we know that the limbic area, which is the area of bliss. You are stimulated to get bliss and that controls the Agnya chakra that is the area of Sahasrara. So the Sahasrara integrated the whole sympathetic, para-sympathetic system which manifests in Agnya hypothalamus pituitary pineal glands and these control all the other endocrine glands all the over sympathetic and parasympathetic systems.

You see, it is very simple, if you go to the realm of chemistry, you will find the same thing. We know that the carbon atom with its four valencies is the tatwa of Lord Ganesha. We know that the nitrogen is the tatwa of Lord Vishnu, of the Satwa Guna. You know with carbon, hydrogen and oxygen you can produce any organic compound. But without nitrogen, you can not have a life. So it seems, without the power of Lord Vishnu there is no life, there is only material Universe. Now how many people of you know that that is why for life we need nitrogen. We put nitrogen fertilizers on our field. Did you know? Why it is so necessary?

You see how the other side of it is that we know that Lord Vishnu sits in the Nabhi chakra that he rules the Sushumna Nadi and he is the lord of Satwa Guna. How do we know this? I didn’t read this in any book. But when people come to Mataji’s feet you will see, where the Nabhi chakra is, that there is blocked, Kundalini below is moving. You can see it with your own eyes moving up and down. How do we know that it is Vishnu’s tatwa? You say the mantra of Lord Vishnu, very simple “Om twamev sakshat Shri Laxmi Narayana or Shri Laxmi Vishnu sakshat Shri Adishakti Bhagwati Mataji Shri Nirmala Devi namoh namah”. Then that block gives, the Kundalini rushes up to Sushumna Nadi and breaks into the Sahasrara. That is how we know.

You see, it is a direct experience. It far more satisfying than scientific experiment you can do in the laboratory because it is, you see it with your own eyes. You don’t measure with any fancy instrument. You see with your own eyes, you say your own mantra and you see the effect.

Though I am a scientist, many of Shri Mataji’s disciples are scientists. Shri Mataji herself is in fact scientist. She is a great scientist and she is the scientist of scientist and teacher of a scientist.

But those people, who refused because they say they are a scientist to believe what she says, they are many people, they are not really a scientist. Because, they are not looking, they are trying to say, it should be like this. A scientist never says, ‘It should be like this’. He always says ‘What is it?, How is it?’. He keeps an open mind. He never says it should be like this. If you say, it should be like this, then you will never discover anything.

As I can say as a scientist. Here you are many of you are students, you stand on the threshold. It is perhaps the biggest discovery that this world will ever know and use your scientific mind now to understand it, to discover it and later use your heart to enjoy it.