Bob Roth

26:58And now we're 20 years. Amazing. So David and I became really close, close. We traveled all over the world together. And the thing I wanted to say is He didn't care if anybody understood what he was doing. And my training was sort of in journalism and public policy. I wanted someone to understand absolutely every word. Absolutely every word. So we loved each other deeply. It was rooted in the same unboundedness. So we would just go places and we didn't get in each other's way. And the best story about this was there was a press conference that David attended with John Hagelin, Dr. John Hagel, the physicist, then president of Maharishi International University, on the peace proposal, where if you have enough people meditating together, you could reduce the violence in the atmosphere and promote peace.

27:47And press conference was going great, and Maharishi was really good with the press and very punchy answers and everything was specific and great. And he started talking about quantum physics, which he loved, and consciousness. And then he started talking, and all the reporters were like, where do we, how do we end up here? And then something called the Constitution of the Universe, which was the Vade from the ancient. And this whole thing, and people were getting fidgeting. And I'd worked hard to get all those press there and they were fidgeting. And I went, ooh, they're looking at their watch.

28:16And I leaned over to David and I whispered on the stage. I said, getting a little abstract. And David in a very loud voice looked at me, said, Bobby, for me, the more abstract, the better. So that was it. And we just called each other. And I talked to him every day, two weeks before he passed away on the phone. Did David get to spend time with Maharishi as well? Maharishi really loved him. Really loved him. Because authentic, truthful, immeasurably creative, really got what Maharishi was doing. And David had to overcome because there was a lot of, like the Beatles had to overcome, there was a lot of misunderstandings in the sphere about who Maharishi was.

28:58And it was all not true. and Paul and Ringo said that and I taught Sean Lennon and he said he grew up and he would see this was 10 years after Beatles had been in India and he said every morning he'd wake up and he'd walk into his parents bedroom and they were holding hands meditating together I learned because of the Beatles. Yeah I heard about it because of the Beatles. So he clarified a lot of misunderstandings for people and David's integrity helped with that When the lights go down, the body gets to work. Sleep is not passive time. It's an active biological state, one in which the brain clears metabolic waste, the nervous system resets, and the body begins repair at a cellular level.

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31:31Tell me the story of Fairfield, Iowa. So during the 1960s and 70s, when, because of the Beatles, a gazillions of people were learning, and I should say Donovan was involved in that. Beach Boys were involved in that. Mia Farrow as well. Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of college students learning to meditate. and someone said to Maharishi, well, you should just have a university, regular university that offers traditional courses, but meditation is an educational methodology that would help students be able to learn more. So some people donated some money first in Santa Barbara and then some property, a university, went under in Fairfield, Iowa, Parsons College.

32:14They got it for like a song and that was in 1974 and started. So it would be like a Christian university, but it's Maharishi Meditation University. Yes, except that there is a philosophy and a belief structure around the Christian university, whereas this was, they have people from 60 countries, and they had a Muslim temple there, and they had a Jewish, and they had all different things. So it was a secular university with meditation. With meditation, yeah, exactly. And it was, funnily enough, at the core of, said this should be at the core of learning. Students need to develop, as you say in your book, expand your awareness and the universe expand.

32:55The universe can't expand if your awareness isn't. So expand your awareness, then the universe surrenders. And then out of that, they used it, the research was done for other ancient, these Vedic approaches. Now, Veda has been misunderstood to be Hindu, but it's not. Vedic science predates Hinduism by forever. So Ayurveda came from that. Yoga came from that. Meditation came from that. So that's where research was done on Ayurvedic medicine and called Stapachived, which is green architecture. And so it was an amazing place. And the funny thing is, I was going out to lunch with a dean of students from Yale and NYU.

33:35And I'm not affiliated with the university, but I know about it. And they said, we love what's going on at Maharishi University because meditation is at the core of their learning. And at our universities, we have it set up that if a student wants to meditate, they have to find time outside of school hours and go over to the center and learn something. We want to have it be the core curriculum that will be at the basis because everything they're learning is going to be, and this was even before AI, is going to be out of date. And this is something, of course, they'll carry with them for the rest of their lives.

34:13So it was way ahead and continues way ahead of its time. How many students do you know? Yeah, they have online a thousand or something like that. And they have a doctoral program. They have a big dome where people meditate. Tell me about meditating with other people. I typically meditate by myself, but I've had the privilege of meditating in a large group and something happens. Yeah. Margie heard about that in the ancient text. It talks about that individual meditation is good to get rid of the stress and enlighten my brain. But when done in groups, it also helps to get rid of the societal stress.

34:50It has an effect on the collective consciousness of society. And collective consciousness is two levels. You can go to certain areas of a city and you can feel fear or the country. You can go into war-torn areas. And in those high-stressed areas, blood pressure rates are high, suicide rates are high. and you go to other areas and more nature and it's a different collective consciousness. But also, Rick, the hypothesis that there's a field of consciousness that underlies everyone and everything that we tune into and that the meditation accesses that and stirs that field and creates an influence of positivity throughout the whole collective consciousness.

35:34So the idea is to have hundreds or thousands of people doing that often and students. and someone said to Maharishi, people aren't going to believe that. And he said, doesn't matter, we're going to do it anyway. You don't have to believe in it. And then someone at the UN was saying, just try it. Everything else you've tried is largely failed. If it fails, it's just something else that failed. But imagine, imagine if it worked. And they have research, like 40 studies, that shows that violence goes down and crime goes down. And even for the individual meditators, I know you felt it when you're meditating with a large group.

36:11Something's huge. It gets very deep. People say, so are you praying for peace? I said, no, no. What happens when you turn on a light? You're lighting the filament. That's all you're doing. But the filament goes out to the glass and spreads out into the... Light fills the room. Light fills the room from that one filament. So we as human beings and our nervous systems, the hypothesis here is that... There's a couple of hypotheses. that there is a field that connects us all together, underlies everyone and everything. There's research that suggests that. But that we as human beings in our meditations can access that quite purely and have a powerful, positive influence for ourself.

36:50And then without even thinking about it, radiates outward. From the time you met Maharishi until the time he passed, did he change at all? First 25 years, he was at it for 50 years. First 25 years, he focused a lot on Transcendental Meditation, making that sort of understood and the research oversaw, you know, really encouraged research and explaining the mechanics and training teachers. He trained thousands and thousands of teachers. So then somehow in 1975 or 80, he switched and he said, now I want to start going back into these ancient texts of this Vedic science of consciousness. Because modern medicine was going askew, as we know, it's money and it's drugs and it's all that.

37:39And so he said, let's look at this Ayurveda, strengthen. And then he said, even with architecture, he said, okay, there's this whole boom on green architecture. 90 % of our life is spent indoors. And so there's an understanding that if you have toxic materials, that influences you. But Maharishi took it another step further. He said, just getting rid of the toxic materials isn't necessarily awakening a person. So he said from this ancient Ayurveda thing called Vastu Architects, it's the Bacchaved. He said, they told you, oh, when you build your house, orient it so you get a morning sun coming into your kitchen.

38:21And then in the evening, you don't want the sun coming into your bedroom. So your bedroom should be here. So orientation. Parallel to Finger Street. Very similar. Remember, it's just Himalayas. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like pulse diagnosis is something in Ayurveda and it's something in Chinese medicine. Yeah. A woman at the door said, come with me. And he and his sister, two seats had just opened up front row right in the middle. Meant to be. Meant to be. Yeah, the universe was supporting this process. That's exactly right. So that was the Merv Griffin Show. 50 ,000 people were learning TM every month in the United States.

38:58It was a big thing all over the world. and then Maharishi said, okay, now it's time to start. These other approaches, not just non-toxic, but you talk about more aligned we are with nature. So in Ayurveda medicine, it's harnessing the natural power of the human immune system. In building, it's harnessing the power of the sun along with the green. And so that was a big thing. David Lynch, 2005. And it's not obvious that David's interest would change things in the way that it did. People used to always stand up and say, what's Mr. Bliss? You know, what is new Mr. Bliss making these movies? Yeah.

39:44You know, how do you, because David started meditating in 1973. I'll tell you that story. So he famously talks about this, where he had everything he wanted. You know, he graduated film school and he had everything he wanted. he was working on Eraserhead and he wasn't happy. And he could figure out, I have everything. Why aren't I happy? He kept hearing the line, true happiness lies within. And he said it was a cruel statement because they don't tell you where their within is and they don't tell you how to get there. Very cruel, very frustrating to him, very literal. Where's the within? How do I get there?

40:21Then he said he kept hearing about that meditation could be a way to go within. but he didn't know what meditation to do. So he started looking at different things and he didn't know how to choose, didn't know how to choose. And then he tells the story that one Saturday he got a phone call from his sister and just about whatever, he said, what's going on? She said, what do you mean? She said, what's going on? Your voice, it's changed. And she said, what? He said, no, it's changed. What are you doing? And she said, I just started transcendental meditation. She said, that's it. And he just knew.

40:53So he learned transcendental meditation and - Because he heard the energy in her voice change. Did everything. Better. Better. Yeah. Better. And he wanted that. He wanted that. Authentic. He said he didn't really care about any of the research. Yeah. Although he liked it for, he understood we had to do it in order to prove it to the insurance companies in order to get, but he said that's not why he didn't like you. Yeah, he couldn't care less. It's the least interesting part to me is the science of it. I know. I just know that it works. Yeah. Like, wouldn't it be great if 300 million people could have access to this, to their health care system?

41:27One time a person said to me, do you want everyone in the world to meditate? And I said, that's very presumptuous. Yeah. I can't say that. I would like everyone to know what it is, have everyone access to it. And if you're a single mom and you don't have funding, or if you don't have a place, I'd like, the hospitals are now setting up meditation rooms. That I'd like. I can't tell a person they should do it. I'd like to have it available. But anyway, it was Mr. Bliss. And some of the great things he would say is, you don't have to die to do a death scene. And you don't have to suffer in order to show suffering.

42:06In fact, if you have broadened awareness, you're much more capable of really truthfully expressing that human emotion. than if you're lost in another human emotion, then you can't. But if you're back here, then you're free to do whatever you want to do. And the fact that David, when you said what were the biggest things, I think David Lynch, he just changed everything. And we started a foundation and the foundation is now one and a half million adults and children have learned to meditate in the U.S. and all over the world. And we're working in 100 hospitals, offering it to doctors and nurses and veterans and war-torn areas.

42:46And I would like it to be 5 million in the next three years. How many meditators are there, period? 12 million, 12 million. 12 million. Yeah, TM, TM. And it's not, as you know, it's not a quick fix sort of thing. It's not like you can just sign up for it. When you learn it, it's taught over four consecutive days. The first day is in personal instruction. The second, third, and fourth day can either be in personal instruction or it can be remote, but it takes more time. and then there's a whole follow-up program that you have access to for people who really fall in love with it are there more advanced techniques what would those be your advanced techniques maharishi described them as tm is like planting a seed when you learn tm you receive your teacher gives you a mantra which is a word or a sound that has no meaning associated with it no positive effects and then teaches you how to use it properly there's advanced techniques that can come along that he described as like fertilizer like okay you planted the tree and you can just water it but at certain times if you add a little nitrogen or something that can help it grow and in the ancient there's a a book called the yoga sutras of patanjali which is the sort of the classic yoga textbook 2500 years old and in it maharishi patanjali talked about the first half of the book he described transcending the dive within and again it's not controlling the surface it's accessing the depth and then the second half of the book is what can you do if you're established permanently on that level and so he came out with a city city s-i-d-h-i city program which patanjali said ways of strengthening how creative can we be how how refined and accurate can my senses be, my sense of sight, my sense of hearing.

44:38So he came out with the Siddhi program, which was more advanced than TM. But TM is the basis of the whole thing.

44:48Did Maharishi write any books? Science of Being and Art of Living, and also he did a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the first six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita. And then other books, but much more along these lines of ayurveda medicine and more more technical tell me about the first book the main book science of being and art of living yeah he came to the united states in 1959 he had been in india from 1955 to 1957 he traveled around india by himself teaching the meditation or to 58 and then someone in when he was in india said well you know you should go to the united you should take this take the go that go around the world in his 40s.

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47:09Air flight was new in the 1940s, no? Yeah, yeah. Well, this was 1959, 58. But he traveled around India just on train by himself. But it was a new idea even to be able to do this at that time. So new. And he'd never been anywhere. Yeah. He had never been anywhere. But nobody had been anywhere. Nobody had been anywhere. And he grew sort of rural India. So he was just, everything was brand new. And he just, the story he tells is he was in a cave for two years, which David and I saw the cave in India. Really? Where he meditated for two years in Uttarakashi, which is called the Valley of the Saints.

47:42And it's just, his master had passed away and this was it. he was just going to retire and he was just going to go in and then after about two years this thought kept coming up and it was ram ashram which ram ashram was this place in the south of india and it just kept coming up and he said why this what's this thought everything was so quiet and silent and pure and just ram ashram and so he asked one of his buddies yogis who was there and he said, I just keep having the thought. The yogi said, go to Ram Ashram and get rid of the thought. Yeah. So he traveled two years to get to Ram Ashram teaching transcendental meditation.

48:23He had to overcome a lot because in India, everybody knows what meditation is. So here's this person who's got, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. And he said, no, it's effortless. There's no effort and there's no dogma and there's no all this stuff around it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he was successful and he set up some centers. And then when he was in India, Ramashram, he gave a big talk. And at the end of the talk, there was like 10 ,000 people. He said, we want to spiritually regenerate the world. And for him, spiritual was not religion. It was the essence of humanity, awakened the essence of humanity in everyone.

48:59So then someone bought him a plane ticket. Basically, he went to countries in the East and then Asia, and then he came to San Francisco. Great story. He recalled it. So he gets to San Francisco and he's welcomed by a Buddhist society. And he's giving a speech one night to a group of people in a Buddhist society about enlightenment. And the next day, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, I've seen it, says, Yogi brings meditation to fight insomnia. And he read it and he said, it made me want to go home. He said, this, I'm bringing a message of enlightenment and people in America are using it to go to sleep.

49:44I don't know what I'm doing here. But then the next moment he realized, again, it doesn't matter why a person learns. They get all the benefits. You water the root of a tree for one branch, all the branches are nourished. And so he then came to Los Angeles and started traveling around. One of the biggest things was in 1959, he had a meeting with scientists at the Sequoia National Park. And they sort of planned how they could do this. Actually, you asked me the biggest thing from the Beatles. I forgot something. In 1968 and 1969, Dr. Robert Keith Wallace and a researcher from Harvard did the first research on transcendental meditation.

50:28And they looked at what happened to the brain. They looked at what happened to blood pressure and oxygen consumption. And it showed profound changes took place. And it ended up as a main published in the Science and Scientific American. And that really opened the floodgates. Because for Maharishi, there's no difference between physiology and consciousness, spirituality and matter. It's a continuum. Just like we know that there's no break between mind and brain and body. It's a continuum. And so if you see things that are going on in the brain that are distinct, that is a measure of what's going on in consciousness.

51:10So he said, we're in a very materialistic society. Let's look that. So he really pushed the science. I was told that the words used by a TM teacher when they teach meditation from the beginning, that it's always the same words and they're the exact same words as if Maharishi himself was teaching you meditation. Is that true? That's amazing. Carrying on the lineage. Because he wanted to be sure that if a person genuinely came to learn to meditate, there was no diminishment because this person or that person, he wanted it to be as impactful as possible. So when I learned it, I learned that my teacher Sylvia didn't speak great English, but I understood it enough.

51:54And it didn't matter how charismatic the person was or anything. Here is the instruction. The mind, there's choppy waves on the surface, silence at its depth. That's your own innermost self. How do I get from up here to down here? And so Maharishi brought up a few key teachings that had not been around. First of all, the idea that there's a transcendent, that it's not just surfing the waves, that you can access an ocean of consciousness within. That was a big one. But he also said, people said, well, meditation, you have to control the mind. You have to make effort, concentration. The mind is a monkey.

52:34Monkey mind has to be corralled. And that's hard. That takes effort. And he said, no, the mind is not a monkey. The natural tendency of the mind, given the opportunity, will be to be drawn to something more satisfying. Again, enjoyable. You're in a room listening to terrible music and beautiful music comes on in the other room. Your attention goes to that. So there's no effort for that. So then he said, okay, the mind is... There's nothing to figure out. No, nothing to figure out at all. The mind is drawn to something more satisfying. Inside, really not... You can have big words, pure consciousness.

53:13Doesn't matter. Innermost, quiet self, quiet self. So he said, all we have to do is give the attention of the mind an inward direction. Like teach a child how to dive, take the correct angle, and the mind will be drawn inward because deeper levels are increasingly more satisfying. So the settling is effortless. Any effort, any forcing, any strain, any agenda, any goal slows the whole thing down. And then he gave a mantra that had no meaning and told a person how to use it as a catalyst and taught them how to use it effortlessly. Do different people react to learning in a different way? So I've been teaching for 52 years, thousands and thousands of people.

53:58In the beginning days, everybody thought meditation was bogus and they didn't think they could do it. Now people will come to me and they'll say, I know it's good for me. I know it works. I don't think I can do it. I've tried. I've tried to clear my mind of thoughts. I've tried. And the comment that when they open their eyes from the first meditation, 98.9 % of the time it's, oh, I didn't know that was inside. That's easy. So, no, it's the same. And even because of David, I've taught well-known people, although I spend much more time just teaching veterans, and they're all the same. Doesn't matter how much money you have, you're worried about your kid or you can't sleep at night.

54:45So what is the relationship between TM and stress? There's two aspects to the stress process. One is called stressors. So stressors are demands and challenges that come at us. COVID was a stressor. Having a child who's sick when you have to get to work is a stressor. Change in job, change in this. Those are stressors, external. This other component to produce stress is called my stress response. How do I react to that news? How do I react to losing a job? Or my face is, I don't look as young as I used to. Or there's a change in a relationship. Or I have 10 things to do and I only have time to do two.

55:31My stress response, I have control over that. Did I sleep well? Did I exercise? Am I eating properly? Am I meditating? Then my stress response, my ability to handle is bigger. And then that thing doesn't conquer me. I'm not a victim. Whereas if I didn't take care of myself, the same thing happens. It's crushing. So stress is that product. Stress is a part of everyday life. The big question is chronic stress. That's the residue that builds up day after day after day after day. that doesn't go away, even though I've slept as much as I can and eaten properly. And all the medicines you have, they reduce the symptom of high blood pressure, the symptom of anxiety, the symptom of depression, but does nothing to get rid of the chronic stress at its basis.

56:21And I think that's the uniqueness of Transcendental Meditation. What does TM do for blood pressure? So the National Institutes of Health over the last 20 years have given$30 million and the Department of Defense to study the effects of TM on high blood pressure. And it turns out that TM is as effective, if not more effective, than all the antihypertensive medication for reducing high blood pressure. 110 million people suffer from high blood pressure in America. It's the number one killer. The news that just came out from the American Heart Association is that they looked at all the different types of meditation for heart disease and high blood pressure based on research, they said only transcendental meditation reduces high blood pressure.

57:08Amazing. Yeah. Because it gives the body rest. Yeah. It's not a cognitive process. It gives the body rest. There's something called cortisol, which is a stress hormone. And a good night's sleep will drop cortisol levels 10 % and 20 minutes of TM drop it 30 to 40%. Wow. Nothing else does. In 20 minutes. Stay, keeps it down. Is the level of rest achieved in 20 minutes of TM deeper than in a night's sleep? It doesn't take the place of sleep. Sleep has a whole scientific profile, does different stuff. It's actually unique. It's very deep, but it's a different state. It's a state of restful alertness where the body is profoundly rested and the mind is settled.

57:51When we go to sleep, we're unconscious. And when we're dreaming, it's sort of hallucinatory. but in that transcendent state in meditation, you're deeply rested and wide awake inside, you know, pure awareness. It's awareness. What is coherence? Coherence is that constructive interference. Coherence is, and you'll find it in your work when you're all on the same page. Yeah. Even the research shows when a musician and the audience or a musician with another musician or a musician with a producer are on the same page, their brainwaves line up. Yeah. They just, they line up like the same brain wave.

58:28So when you say we're on the same wavelength, it's literally true. Literally true.

58:36Tell me about TM in prisons. So when I was a kid, my dad used to volunteer once a week at San Quentin Prison. He was a radiologist to read x-rays. So I used to get to go with him. And that was eye-opening. And then in the evenings, there was, within the gates, but not within the actual walls, there was a cafeteria that was served by, they called them trustees, by the inmates. so everybody wanted to go out to dinner with the Roths, all my friends, because we could go to San Quentin prison and be served by, that was like when you're 12 years old, that's like the biggest thing. So I always had this desire when I became a teacher that I wanted to bring it to San Quentin and it was going on as a fellow George Ellis.

59:22This was the first.

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1:00:57Prison to have it? Yeah. No, there was one in, second one, there was one in Walpole Prison in Massachusetts, but in the U.S. And a fellow, George Ellis, was a pioneer, and he got the guy who was the head of Hell's Angels, who was behind bars, to become a great advocate for TM at St. Quentin. But I'll just tell you this one story that stands out. I'm like 24, 23. And to go into the prison, you have to go through four huge gates, walls, doors. And at each door, you have to sign something four times that says, if you're taken hostage, they will not negotiate for your surrender. So you do that four times.

1:01:39And then when I got behind bars, this is this grassy quad, almost like a university, very surreal. And then when you look around, the guy who was hosting us from behind bars said well that's where death row is and that's where this is and that's where that is and the stress was i could start feeling this because it's you feel the doors close behind you each time you go through time and lock yeah and and just the stress because the most violent of human beings in that area were all locked up so anyway the point is I did a group meditation. We went down into a basement and there were 30 men there and I had them all close their eyes and meditate.

1:02:21It was subjectively the deepest meditation to this day I've ever had in my life. Yeah. Just, I could barely open my eyes. And afterwards the guard said, you had members of the, at the time, the Mexican mafia, the Black Panthers, the Aryan this, the violent gangs. None of them within the prison themselves would have ever closed their eyes or turned their back to any of them. And we all sat there. I was so innocent, I didn't even know the significance. I thought, wow. And Maharishi used to call that initiative freedom behind bars. Beautiful. And if you think about the stress level in prison, how high it must be, the reason it could be as deep of a meditation as it was is because of the nature of how much stress they're under.

1:03:10There's so much room to go. Exactly right. The contrast is so great. The men and women, we did women's prisons too. And one of the research that came out from San Quentin initially showed that 80 % of all crimes are committed by repeat offenders. It's called recidivism 80 and the meditating men who left san quentin number was cut in half so it didn't completely eliminate it because we didn't have the support system when they got out but it was a huge contrast were the inmates receptive did they want to learn yeah oh desperate for it desperate i mean some people to put it this way the ones who wanted to learn but we had waiting lists.

1:03:54We had a waiting list of everybody on death row was wanting to learn in San Quentin. And then we did programs in Oregon State Penitentiary and outside of Salem and Walpole and different places and prisons around the world. How has your relationship to the practice changed over the course of your life? You know how you have the term second nature? Well, before second nature is third or fourth nature. So when you first learn it, it's sort of out there and you're sort of grappling with it. And again, to use the science terms, you form neural pathways. So when someone is learning a guitar to play guitar, they move their fingers around, but there's actual pathways in the brain that allows them to do that.

1:04:36And the more you do it, the more super fluid playing the piano or playing guitar is. You have the neural pathways. Your brain knows how to do it. So you can go from fourth nature, third nature, and then something becomes second nature. And now for me, it's like first nature. you had said in your book when it never leaves when that pure awareness of that awareness never leaves and that's called cosmic consciousness in the there's seven states of consciousness that's the fifth and that's cosmic consciousness so i'm not saying i'm cosmic consciousness but that that change is just me do you know the seven stages walk me through them sleep state unconscious dream state waking state and that's what we're in and those are called three relative states of consciousness and we go through them eight hours eight hours something like that now have you ever been when you're just waking up or just falling asleep and there's a sort of like a twilighty sort of zone where you're just sort of awake but your mind is settled and you're not awake or asleep you ever had that yeah gap that is a little hint of a state of consciousness that underlies all those three states it's sort of like you can have a curtain and there's a light and then there's a curtain and then there's a curtain but behind it is consciousness that's said to be consciousness so lots of people have had that experience of that's a pure consciousness or fourth it's called in sanskrit turiyatit fourth state and that is that when we have the feeling sometimes of falling yeah that's a process of that getting to that exactly yeah that transcending now the actual transcendent is not a sense of falling or motion it's just i am this it is ness is ness so that's a fourth state of consciousness And there's a neurophysiology of that transcendent state.

1:06:35And so anyway, that just move along. That's the fourth state. That's a meditative state. Wordsworth describes it. I'll send it to you, the quote. It's a beautiful quote where he said, in that serene and blessed mood, where I'm like laid asleep in body, but wide awake in mind. Beautiful. Yeah, it's a beautiful quote. Didn't know he was the TM-er. No, the nice thing is it's throughout time. You know, it's throughout time. So then when you go from living life and then meditating and then living your life and meditating and living your life, what happens is the neural pathways are established of that process of transcending.

1:07:10And then you don't lose it. Your connection to that, capital T-H-A-T, that, that awareness, that silence, that quiet. I mean, I have all these quotes. Awareness is not a state you force. There's little effort involved through persistence, though persistence is key. It's something you actively allow to happen. Brilliant mind. Here, one last one. Awareness needs constant refreshing. Meditating. If it becomes a habit, even a good habit, it needs to be reinvented again and again until one day, underline, you notice that you are always in the practice of awareness at all times, in all places, living your life in a state of constant openness to receiving.

1:07:57that's cosmic consciousness. That's the fifth state. So there's a meditative state where you're refreshing, where you're diving within. Cosmic consciousness is where I know myself in life. I am established and not losing that. And that is a big state. Sixth state is called refined cosmic consciousness. Religious people have called it God consciousness, called refined cosmic consciousness. And that is, okay, come out of a meditation or you're feeling particularly connected. And then your senses are so acute and you hear things and you see things and you know things and nature, beautiful. And so that sixth state is I'm infinite, unbounded in myself.

1:08:40Outside, I'm enjoying everything to its maximum, almost celestial perception. But there's one state beyond that, and that's unity. And that's the great ancient Vedic term. I am that. Thou art that. All of this is nothing but that. And so unity, you still see it's beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty. But then you transcend that. And then you see the one unity that underlies everything. Be still and know. Oneness. Oneness. You're not creating it. No. You are accessing it. It's coming to you. It's there. It's there. It's there. We just don't see it. That's right. And then as you go along, you become more sensitive to the fact that, oh, if I eat this stuff, or if I smoke that stuff, or if I do those things, it just puts a cloud on the nervous system.

1:09:35It's not necessary. What you have already, what the brain is producing, the dopamine and all the different things, endorphins, is a million times more satisfying than anything you could take from the outside. So does TM help people with addictions? 100 million percent. Because it doesn't tell you don't do that. It gives you an experience of the happiness that you're looking for outside or the relief from pain that you're looking for outside. So it opens your awareness to that. And where is that field? In yourself. Yeah. It was always there. And so it gives the brain and the heart a new experience that overrides that destructive experience.

1:10:19What experience does, it gives the heart the experience of happiness. And what knowledge does, it satisfies the doubts in the mind. You don't have true knowledge until you have both the experience and the understanding. Someone gives you something to eat. You say, that's delicious. What is it? Strawberry. Oh, okay. So that's what you have when you meditate. And when you learn TM, you're given the experience and then you're given this knowledge to explain the experience. I remember at one point in time, Maharishi wanted to build an amusement park. Vedaland. What do you remember about that? Yeah.

1:10:57He wanted to bring out the fact he was going to do it near Niagara Falls, but now I heard someone's building it in India. It's just expensive. He wanted to give this, like, I was like the statement when I was growing up, well, I'll believe it if I see it. Yeah. As if the senses had a clue what was going on in the world. The human senses in many ways are very limited. So Vedaland was going to give you, I guess with AI and computer, it's like dive deep into the molecular level, atomic level, subatomic, like have an experience. Would be like a demonstration. Yes. I see. Yes. And your demonstration of what that celestial perception would be and what, like, so you could see it for real.

1:11:41Because the notion that our senses have a clue, it's a standard of what's going, actually going on in the universe. I mean, the light, what do we see? Our band of light, it's just like nothing. Visible light is nothing compared to what the universe is expressing.

1:12:04What do you remember about your time in Italy and Spain with Maharishi? I was 20, 21 years old. I had gotten time off from Berkeley. Had you been to Europe before? I was a foreign exchange student, and for two months between my junior and senior year in high school, I went to Holland. And was that a great experience? It was a great experience. I really liked it. So I was 21, and there were 2 ,000 people from all over the world. and it was being run, the whole thing basically, the team organization was being just run by people my age, so sorting out hotels and all that. And every day we saw Maharishi and every day we could ask him questions and it was profoundly illuminating.

1:12:54There's a long tradition of reading sacred text slowly, allowing each word to settle, echo and reveal meaning over time. Rather than rushing to conclusions, this practice invites reflection, listening and attention. For centuries, this repetition has been used to stay close to wisdom, not by studying words as information, but by receiving them as something lived and experienced over and over again. This tradition is known as Lectio Divina. Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements, reading, reflection, repetition, and rest. A short passage is read, a single phrase is held.

1:13:56Silence becomes part of the practice, creating space for insight to surface naturally. Lectio 365 brings that ancient rhythm into the present moment. Designed for modern life, it offers brief, guided, scriptural reflections throughout the day. to begin with intention, pause at midday, and wind down at night. The readings are less about information gathering and more for returning to wisdom again and again, letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there, now and always.

1:14:56Learn more at lectio365.com How many people were there? 2 ,000 people. Wow. 2 ,000 people from all over the world. So that was a time when we wanted to change the world. And also at a time when people were taking drugs for whatever. And Maharishi's message was higher states of consciousness without drugs. And that the human brain is the best pharmacy and will release the drugs at the right time in the right proportions and far more than you could ever imagine from a plant. You know, I like to say I'm a leftover from the 60s. I still want to do the same thing I wanted to do then. It was make a better world.

1:15:44Tell me about the TM organization over the years from the earliest days and what it grew into. So the earliest days, there's an article from the Hawaiian, Hawaiian advertiser, I think it's called, in 1958 or something. Maharishi had arrived and he was staying in a YMCA in Honolulu. And it said, meet a yogi for meditation instruction, free. It was like that, you know, and people would come at this time. He was by himself. And so then he came to San Francisco. He went to Los Angeles. Did he speak English from the beginning? He spoke English from college days, and he got better and better and better at it.

1:16:26And then he went to Los Angeles. People started setting up centers everywhere. And he said there was no grand plan because it was the way you talk about creativity. The next thing emerged. Oh, here he is, fully present in Los Angeles. And then someone says, I know someone in London. And there's a house and there's this and there's that. When he was in Malaysia, I know a Buddhist temple in San Francisco. So it was just, which I love. It happened by itself. Happened by itself. As Maharishi used to say, nature knows best how to organize. And then there were the first people who were the leaders of the TM organization were in their 50s and Jerry Jarvis.

1:17:08Jerry Jarvis ran the TM organization in the United States from like 1964 to 65 until 1975 or 78. He told me that Maharishi had him learn how to fly helicopters so that he could bring Maharishi around. He was great. He was also a great jazz musician. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I loved him. Yeah. And then research came out and then the Beatle thing came. And then Maharishi turned it over basically to a new generation of college students. And it was Students International Meditations. society. And that was in place for decades. Was he involved much in the business end or did the business run itself?

1:17:46Well, Jerry would be in touch. Jerry would call up and say, this is, you know, periodically there'd be, it wasn't day to day, I don't think. It was like enough going on, but he'd give reports. And Margie was a great manager of people. They say an enlightened person is the ability to focus. You know, you have that go deeply into something and everything else disappears and go deeply, deeply, deeply. And then move on to the next thing. And move on to the next thing. And that the past is the past and here's the next thing. How does CM relate to creativity and making art? They used to think that in the brain, the hemisphere, the right hemisphere, maybe you ever hear that?

1:18:24You're a creative person. You're this type of a person. The left hemisphere, you are a scientist, a researcher, that sort of thing. And that was taught everywhere. Turns out that's not true. Turns out creativity is a product of networks within the brain. And there are three main networks within the brain. The brain works really hard when you're focused. So really on target, you're focused and you're churning and it's exhausting. Your brain is 2 % of the weight of your body, and it uses up 20 % of the energy. So that's why if you really focus for a long time, you're tired. So that's called the attention control center.

1:19:05And that's where Rick is just locked in. So then researchers wanted to know, well, what does the brain do when it shuts down? It's just not focused, when it just rests. So they said, okay, let's see what happens. And they said, what does the brain default to? And so they said, all right, the brain defaults to, it's not focused on anything. And they were very dismissive of that. And they called it the default mode network, creative name, what does it default to? And they said, it's a waste of time. You're daydreaming. Your mind is wandering. Well, now they have new names for the default mode network.

1:19:45One is called the imagination network, but here's the best one. the genius lounge. Is that great? Great. The genius lounge. That's when you're not focused, when you're gone for the walk, when you're taking the hot shower, when you're not concentrating. Some guy's trying to work on something, figure something out. And the wife says, honey, you just got to go for a walk too much. Genius lounge is when the brain is not focused. And that's where David Lynch says you can catch the big fish deep within. And you talk about it all the time in your book. So the genius lounge. And the creative process is you have the experience, the inspiration, the cognition, and then that shuts down and then you focus.

1:20:30And then you have the attention control network. So now your brain is focused. So that's the analysis. And the first is the creation, all of your words, one or the other. Stress undermines both. So if you're stressed, you can't focus. And if you're stressed, they call it the writer's block. Well, here's the interesting thing. They studied 200 of top creative minds, conductors and fast petitions, and they wanted to see if the brain was the same. Turns out that those brains have a unique ability to both focus and innovate, and they don't get in the way of each other. So while you're focused on something here, good ideas can come up.

1:21:15And so you're not lost on that thing. So the creative process is the process of the genius lounge and then the ability to make it happen. And David would answer, me having given you the Bob answer, David would say that transcendent field is a field of infinite creativity, infinite love, infinite power, infinite happiness, infinite truth. And when you experience that, then whatever you're doing embodies that. That's probably why I feel like learning TM when I was 14 was the most significant thing that ever happened to me in my life. A very formative time, the ideal time. How do children do with TM?

1:22:05From the age of about four or five to the age of 10 or 12, they get a word of wisdom. They get a walking mantra. So they're given a mantra, but they don't sit with their eyes closed to meditate. The nervous system is not strong enough yet. So the parents can take - From five to 10? From five, for about five years old to 10 or 12 years old. Okay. Yeah. And the parent, they can do it while drawing. They do it with their eyes open. They say a mantra silently inside. And it has a wonderful, at an early age, resonant quality to the nervous system and makes the nervous system more vital and resilient.

1:22:41From about the age of 12 on, they get the sitting technique. And they're 12, they do it for 12 minutes, 13, 13 minutes, 14, up to 20, and then 20 minutes, you're set. Nice. Talk to me a bit about the mantras. So a mantra is a word or a sound that has a couple syllables, has no meaning associated with it. And the reason for a mantra is the mind likes to think. And you tell the mind, don't think, clear your mind of thoughts, it's a battle. So a mantra in TM is a word or a sound that has no meaning associated with it. And the mantras in TM come from an ancient, ancient tradition, over 6 ,000 years old.

1:23:22Some people incorrectly say they're Buddhist this or that. They're not. They're just sounds with no meaning associated. Because if they're a meaning, then you're stuck up here. That part of your analytical part of your brain doesn't allow you to transcend. So some people will say, oh, it's just a mantra meditation. There's a, you know, TM is a highfalutin mantra meditation. There's a zillion mantra meditations. You can go on, you know, you can just get a book. They'll give you a mantra, you repeat it. Here's the other thing that Maharishi's insight was, that the thinking of the mantra is not a clear pronunciation.

1:23:56That's an effort. And that keeps the brain and your body, that's force. You're forcing. You're not letting it happen. So the reason why when you learn TM from a teacher in personal instruction, they give you the mantra and then they teach you how to use it effortlessly, gently, naturally, and no forcing that allows, frees the mind to dive within. Again, any effort, even a little bit stops the process. I remember the subtlety in learning. it's easy to question whether you're doing it properly or not. So having a teacher was very helpful in calming those concerns. And that's a tradition. I mean, that's an ancient oral tradition.

1:24:40Even now when you have all this stuff, people have said to me, well, you know, there's AI. You don't need to have personal instruction or whatever. And although there's a swing back of people don't want AI. They want a human being to human being. So a teacher teaches them. So you learn once and you learn it properly. Tell me about the relationship between our mind and our body. There's no difference. So there's a field in science called the PNEI, which is the Psyche Neuro Endocrine System Immune System. Psyche, that's you see something. Neuro, it impacts my brain. So now I'm afraid. I just saw something.

1:25:20Now I'm afraid. My brain registers something called the amygdala, registers fear. that sends a message to my adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidneys. Your adrenal glands pump out cortisol and adrenaline. And now you're in what's called fight or flight. And then when you're on fight or flight, you have cortisol. Absolutely too much of it destroys your immune system. That's why if a person's highly stressed, they get sick a lot. Or if they're seeing negative things all the time, it's not healthy for them. And that's a continuum. There's no door from the mind. So psych, mind, brain, the endocrine system, and your immune system.

1:26:03So it's one continuum. And that's why, you know, they have the lines, you are what you eat or what you see you become. You metabolize. If you're watching, they say, if you're watching horrible movies all the time or you're whatever, you're around people, that you become that. We metabolize everything. The beautiful thing about meditation is it gives us the freedom not to be a victim of that. So if that's the case, what, I can't leave my room? I have to stay inside? I can't? No. Because then you have that stressor, stress response. Then I've got to build up my resilience. And that's why it works so effectively with veterans.

1:26:43It helps them heal from PTSD who've been overwhelmed by that PNEI. Is there any relationship between TM and psychedelic drugs? Someone asked Marishi once about psychedelic drugs. They said, they're trying to kick in the door to heaven. It remains to be seen if it doesn't have a very destructive effect on some of the subtle mechanisms in the human nervous system, subtle fibers of the human nervous system. I remember when I was, I had a job at a a plant nursery in Berkeley. And during the holiday season, they'd bring in these azaleas that were just gorgeous, fully bloomed, just... And then they'd bring in these little azalea plants in these five-gallon cans.

1:27:28It had a few flowers on them, but, you know, this was so beautiful. Well, the forced bloom, those flowers never bloomed again. They were artificially jammed to create something, and it damaged, or if they did, it just almost destroyed them. Whereas the one that grew in the little five-gallon can and you put it in the soil and you water it and you grew and grew and grew and became something for years and years and years, azalea. So let's give the human nervous system what it needs to grow and it will help fulfill our desires. I believe Maharishi suggested not to drink alcohol or take any drugs two weeks prior to learning TM.

1:28:09That was marijuana and drugs. was marijuana was too alcohol i know alcohol was i'll tell you why it was a few days it wasn't a moral thing he wanted people to have a clear experience in the meditation and alcohol is a carbohydrate that metabolized through the system much faster marijuana had a longer residue i see so he just said afterwards you decide what you want to do but if you're going to learn this i want you to have a clear experience tell me about the spiritual aspect to transcendental meditation I think that true spirituality is the essence and the highest of humanity. It's the essence of human love.

1:28:51It's the essence of human creativity. It's the essence of human intelligence. It's the essence of human kindness. It's the essence of human strength. It's the essence. It's the highest. It's universal. And so a person can be spiritual and religious, but they're different. There's that essence, but when you read the experiences of the great saints of all religions, they all have the experience of transcendence. It's all there. Just the vocabulary is different. And when Maharshi talked about the spiritual regeneration movement, it was to regenerate all the institutions with that highest level and essence of humanity.

1:29:28Right now, the next biggest thing with Maharshi's passing in 2008, and he named, which was huge, but he named Dr. Tony Nader to be his successor, specifically named him. And Tony, Dr. Nader spent 20 years around Maharishi all the time. During all those years, studying with him, going deeply into Ayurveda. He is, in addition to being a big soul, also was trained at Harvard and MIT. What was his background? Neuroscience and medical doctor, both. MD, PhD, and he's really the voice now. And he's wrote a book called Consciousness is All There Is, which was really to take this idea that consciousness is primary.

1:30:15You have all these neurons, these sort of just neurons firing, and then somehow the idea is you get them all together, and now everything that we feel, touch, taste, smell, everything is a product, magically, of these little cells that have no consciousness. So the richness of your life is just somehow epiphenomenon, they call it, of these cells. So he said, no, there's another angle, an ancient angle, and actually more younger neuroscientists are agreeing that consciousness is a field. And he's also written another book, which is called The Power of Caring. And it's all about human compassion, human caring and relationships based on the development of consciousness.

1:31:00And I think that the TM, people used to say, well, what's going to happen to the TM organization when Maharishi passes? Could not be in better hands. I have beyond enormous respect for him and what he's doing. So that's where we're going forward.

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