If work and time are the four-letter words that rule your life and ruin your peace, then Steve Briggs has a prescription for you. The international director of the Maharishi Corporate Development Programme at the Maharishi Institute of Management says that Transcendental Meditation "" fondly known to many as TM "" is a nature-guaranteed vaccination against almost all ills.
Briggs exudes a determined cheeriness and ruddy good health, the result presumably of his daily mental elevation. The TM formula is simple the way Briggs explains it: Ninety per cent of all diseases are psychosomatic in origin. So in this age of increased competitiveness, increased levels of stress has been resulting in physical ailments such as high blood pressure, hypertension, heart disease, and so on. TM tackles the problem by doing away with stress.
So how does one transcendentally meditate? Briggs says that experienced TM practitioner can get results by simply setting aside five minutes of her time, twice daily. But you have to know how to do that, which is what the Institutes programme is all about. TM techniques are centred around breathing control and muscle relaxing methods combined with imagining pleasant images and sounds.
Practitioners guide first-time meditators through by asking them to focus on a specific image. For example, you could be asked to visualise yourself either walking up or down a flight of stairs inside your head, thus moving either into a deeper spiritual connection with yourself or ascending to a higher plane of consciousness.
Sports psychologists, psycho-analysts who employ hypnosis and regression therapy, yogis and martial artists all use variations on the same methods. Medical science would describe a person undergoing TM as experiencing a state of light trance. I cant really describe it to you, says Briggs. All you will see is a man sitting with his eyes shut. Hes right; perhaps its all in the mind.
If all that springs to your mind about the Maharishi is a simmering resentment that he and Yoko Ono, were responsible for the end of the Beatles, think again. He is, after all, one of the quiet successes of the business new age "" the Maharishi Institute of Management in the age of Deepak Chopra is not laughable. Success seldom is.
The Institute has recently done training programmes for corporates including Shri Ram Fibres, the RPG group, Hewlett Packard "" and the Andhra Pradesh council of ministers. Once initiated into the esoteric delights of TM, practitioners can go ahead on their own. Briggs repeats, All it takes is five minutes of your time. He is also careful to point out that TM doesnt get in the way of people living their lives normally. We have no set of dos and donts to prescribe. We know that people have lives that dont allow for much change.
