I have been giving some thought to the concept of Heaven on Earth in this last week in between catching up on sleep. It’s not a topic that I give much time to, mainly because it’s too much like a refrigerator magnet, but as always after a difficult experience I’m noticing how close to the idea my life is.
Back in the 1960’s when Maharishi Mahesh yogi turned up on our shores having successfully bamboozled the Beatles and using them and Mia Farrow as a reference, I coughed up the princely sum of $120.00 to have bestowed on me a seed mantra and simple instructions.
Maharishi assured us that practicing his form of meditation for 20 minutes twice a day would not only bring about the state of Cosmic Consciousness, never too many details about what that was, but it had a nice ring to it, as well as Heaven on Earth. The Movement charges about 200 times that now and as much as a couple of years tuition at Harvard will cost you may learn to be a teacher, or “Governor of the New Age of Enlightenment”.
The procedure is very simple, though it’s probably a nuisance to learn the Puja in Sanskrit and there’s some seriously legal confidentiality agreements to be entered into as well as advanced techniques to speed up the process [ a nice idea for us impatient Americans with a consumerist bent] and extra indulgences to be bought by, really, only the very rich in order to hand over that Heaven on Earth thing.
After meditating for 15 years with no relief in sight, still finding meditation itchy, twitchy, angry, uncomfortable and completely devoid of the lovely experiences my friends seemed to be having while doing it, I decided to crank it up, so I took out a loan and attended the Citizens Invincibility Course. That’s the thing that was advertised as distributing the gift of levitation, which is of course absurd, however there are good effects. The idea of having a flexible nervous system able to recover quickly from stress was attractive and something called “support of nature” which as far as I am concerned amounts to things working out a little sooner and being able to find almost anything I need at the dump.
Also, it’s hard to find the time to raise any hell when you are devoting 2 hours twice a day to a meditation practice. Yes, 4 hours a day, that’s how long it takes.
Heaven on Earth though? hmmm. Not so much. Still struggled massively with the daily business of life, though whenever it gets me down the thing that really snaps me out of it is noticing the gap between CIC and CNN.
The idea that a group of people hopping on 4″ foam in the lotus position under a dome in Iowa is moving the consciousness of the planet toward World Peace is information that has not yet reached those who could actually do something about World Peace. Unless…. things could actually be worse than they are now? That’s the explanation of the Movement. The end of the world has been averted. I’m so relieved.
Tags: maharishi mahesh yogi
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