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I am a Teacher of Transcendental Meditation. What does made me so dedicated to this mental technique, so simple, effortless and natural? I kindly ask those who learn TM to help me with testimonials. Maybe it is the time of one written by me, which answers to the question I just made.

I kindly request you that after you read the text to also read the clarifications.

Nirvikalpa Samadhi

I believe the year was 1994 or 1995. Before this I inexplicably became obsessed with certain books regarding spirituality. While reading the Upanishads (Chandogya and Brihadaranyak) which I found by chance lying around the house (I always forget to thank my mother for her ant like patience with which she gathered so many books, although she seems to me like a simple woman) – actually trying to read them, Milarepa, Bardho Todol, etc. I started to wish stronger and stronger for the “samadhi” state. At that time I was thinking I would never experience something like that, in the communist and post communist Romania. I was dirt poor and India was far away.

It seems that the people who are talking about karma are not far off. In 1992, by chance, I watched some guy on TVR2, mr. Chiaburu, and a distraught guy, serbian national as far as I understood, named Ferenc Conti who was a teacher of Transcendental Meditation and they were talking about higher states of consciousness, using western terms. At some point Ferenc said the magic word “samadhi”. Bingo, so the transcendental state was actually “samadhi”?! Perfect. Afterwards I heard another “magic” expression, the tradition of masters. Double Bingo! From Milarepa (and not only) I was extremely familiar with this thing and I knew that if you want to experience “samadhi”, you need to find a chain (link, tradition) of masters to teach you. Whatever, that’s what those books said and it seemed to me to be very true.

In short, around september 1992 I managed to raise the money and to learn this technique. I meditated as often as I could in a day, aggravating (I think) Ferenc for the duration of the course. Irregardless, on the other hand the gates of the karma broke and some nasty stuff which I gathered came over me, nearly killing me. Moving on, what’s mine is mine and I always pay my debts, be they good or bad.

The year was 1994 or 1995, I survived the army, I was trying to readjust to society, I was learning to go to college, and I was meditating regularly for about a year (it wasn’t proper meditation in the army, although I managed to sneak it in). That evening I started rereading the Upanishads, trying to penetrate their cryptic meaning. “The sacrificial horse”, “the left eye purusha and the right eye purusha”, etc., when, reading about “pranavah”, I think at the beginning of Brihadaranyak, I had the feeling that I REMEMBERED how to use it properly.

I left the book, closed my eyes and used pranavah in the way I “remembered”. It took a few moments and darkness started to overtake me. I’m saying darkness because I have no other term to describe it. It was nothingness, nothing the human mind can conceive. I felt like I died, because the world around me was dissolving and it was actually dissolving. Whatever, I didn’t care and I kept going, but something was still there, so Andy kept on existing, the universe in some corner of what I became. How did I feel? Continuously falling, and it was a hell of a powerful sensation because it completely took over my small perception of the world which was left in me, the individual. Perhaps that’s how it feels to be imponderable, but I don’t know that. I became infinite. This magnifique universe in which we are now became just a speck of dust in the infinite ocean which I was. Actually, I was myself, who is Andy, who is you who is reading this, which is the floor on which you are sitting, the screen or paper on which you are reading this. I could FEEL it. The problem was not regarding knowledge or power, but of small Andy, the limited consciousness which was still active and in which it was rather difficult to bring anything, no matter what. If I would have known “the word” for rose, a rose would have came into being in my hands. It’s so easy to create from “there”. The potential of “that” is infinite. That which we have as intelligence is just a faint shadow of the unbounded spark of genius which lies quiet, perfectly conscious of itself, but there. Actually this is reality. We don’t “go” into the transcendent, we “are” in the transcendent. We never left. The creation and the “manifest” universe is just a play on the perception of this “something” with itself. Or with herself. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I was seeing how I exist, seeing in that, like a seed or seeds that define me and that would bring me into existence again and again whatever happened to me. You can kill me how many times you like, so long as you don’t touch those “seeds” I will be brought back into existence again and again. When I went to bed that night I slept and I didn’t sleep, because small Andy was sleeping like a log, but the other side which was now passing the individual consciousness at will was always awake, always there. Perfectly conscious and unconscious at the same time. Everything effortless. Completely stable.

I have to confess, in that state I took a peek at some things, especially at what Maharishi was doing, the last descendant of the Tradition of Masters, who brought the so called “transcendental meditation” to the world. I was amused at the way he packaged some things for the sake of people, just like you do for some children who need something shiny or sweet. However, Maharishi never lied, not even once regarding what he says he does and what he taught people, it’s just that he didn’t explain some things because there was no way of doing it. He just preferred to wait for those who would wake up and “see” for themselves. This being said, at that level of universal indifference, because I can assure you that if you are cut in half, or you are burned alive, that “something” instantaneously dissolves any thought, emotion or whatever is bothering you, I liked what Maharishi was trying to do overall and I decided to do my part to help (it’s impossible to be made to suffer when you are “that”, whomever would try be they human, god, demon, anything). So I sat down and I used the mantra which was given to me at the initiation into Transcendental Meditation. I immediately collapsed into the usual size, I became just Andy.

Clarifications

• Pranavah is a mantra for recluses. Those who are householders, who have wishes to fulfill must not use it. Transcendental Meditation uses sounds, or mantras who are upholds life as we know it. The transcendence given in this way helps to fulfill the desires, and not to cut them off from the root.
• What impressed me and made me decide to go in the new directions was the fact that the remained individuality would have continued its trajectory, and what I could observe filled my heart with compassion. Many bad things were stored there. Even though it would have been cleansed, one moment in time it would have been experienced. In the same time I have observed that Transcendental Meditation has the ability to correct such negative trajectories. So, on long term I would have been in the same place, but the road will be more pleasant.
• I am not enlightened. I am only a Teacher of Transcendental Meditation. You cannot boil something into an infinite volume, therefore you have to renounce to certain things. Of course, such an experience leaves a unique footprint, an eternal one – the eternity footprint. I have my natural fears, but nothing at psychological level. I do not need to believe anything, because from that moment I know.
• It is wonderful to advance towards a destination already known, while you can help the others. That happens being a Transcendental Meditation Teacher.
• Someone, close to Maharishi, after I told him this, he said that should have been nirvikalpa samadhi.

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The original post in Romanian can be found here. The English translation of the experience by Alexandru Manea.