Radio program Copyright © 1979, Michael T. Doughney. Transcript Copyright © 1994, Michael T. Doughney. All rights reserved. Permission for unmodified electronic redistribution granted provided this header is included.
[MD] This is the Enlightenment Radio Program, a weekly in-depth look at the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program.
Our guest today is Dr. Stephen Druker. Dr. Druker is Director of the Institute for Law, Consciousness and the Science of Creative Intelligence in Washington, DC, part of Maharishi International University. This week, Dr. Druker discusses an advanced phase of the Transcendental Meditation program, and its unusual results.
[SD] The TM-Sidhi program, it's called, this advanced phase of the practice that allows people to develop abilities that are generally considered to be supernormal, such as flying, or developing just unbounded levels of friendliness or compassion, developing supersensitive hearing.
As we say these are generally thought to be supernormal, we just think of them as being fully normal. When the human nervous system is developing in a stress-free manner, and that full level of consciousness is available then actually anything is possible, the mind and the body are so coordinated and the mind is unbounded, then there's unbounded possibilities on the level of the physiology also.
And the TM-Sidhi program is an advanced phase of the practice, which is based upon a certain amount of proficiency in the nervous system, being able to experience and be stable in that unbounded state of consciousness. And when one has stabilized that state to some significant degree, then the TM-Sidhi program which also comes from ancient tradition, is a way of introducing certain, we could say, certain mental formulae, into consciousness, in a certain way, and consciousness begins to enliven the possibilities that are contained within these formulae. So one, as we said, one formula, the predicted result is the ability for the body to rise into the air and levitate.
[AC] Sustained levitation?
[SD] That would be the perfection. 'Sidhi' means 'perfection'. When one's consciousness is completely developed then one could levitate. Now along the way to that there are stages of learning, of training the mind and the body to be coordinated to sustain this activity. If one were to practice this sidhi, or any of the sidhis, without having maintained a very great fluency of the nervous system in the unbounded state of awareness nothing would happen. It would be like dropping a pebble onto a frozen lake, 'clunk', but no vibrations, really, no flows. If you would melt the ice and have this unbounded state of the lake and drop in a pebble you'd actually get very clear ripple patterns, and pebbles of different shapes and sizes would give you different ripples.
In the same way when one has this very fluid state of unbounded awareness then different formulae can be entertained by the consciousness, and the different potentialities that are contained within those actually set up flows within consciousness, and because the consciousness and the body are very intimately coordinated at that level, the entire physiology begins to reflect that possibility too. And therefore, one practicing the sidhi for friendliness immediately begins to feel his emotions becoming suffused with unbounded friendliness, but it doesn't stop there. Frendliness begins to manifest in his heart, his hands, every bit of one's body feels extremely friendly. And this, in fact the reason we practice these techniques is because they will speed up the integration of the mind and the body. And since the mind is in an unbounded state at the time, this unbounded level, this least excited very coherent level of functioning can be much more strongly integrated by practicing the sidhis.
So the reason that we practice them is not for the effect itself although the effect is very enjoyable. It's for a larger general effect of speeding up enlightenment. Then when one really has become enlightened, all of the sidhis in their perfect state are available.
[MD] Dr. Druker goes on to describe the practice of flying, and its effect on body, and mind.
[SD] Flying is practiced, and we emphasize flying because it speeds up the growth of enlightenment more quickly than the other sidhis. And the reason is when one is practicing the technique, and as one is becoming more proficient within in it, one's body starts to lift up. Now until one is completely proficient, then the body will come back down again. It will rise in the air for a mo, for ah, oh, a foot or two, move forward for a few feet, and then return. But it will continue to move up and move forward and return. So we practice the technique in rooms that are filled with foam, to make the process less jolting to the knees, and uh, people, as they begin to rise up and move forward and come down, they're in a room, they open their eyes, they move around. What we have is, a very quiet, coherent state of consciousness, in fact, the quietness of consciousness grows even stronger during the technique and yet the body becomes very active, the eyes are open. So what one is doing is integrating in a very profound way a very active state of function and a very quiet state of function and this trains the body to function in a state of enlightenment. So this is why we do the flying, and research shows that brain wave coherence is maximum as one is practicing this technique, and even though physiological rate increases, the metabolic rate increases, over when one was just sitting quietly in meditation, there's greater coherence then in meditation without the flying, yet greater physical activity. So therefore we're integrating much more quickly the growth of enlightenment.
[MD] Professor Druker notes that scientific research is being conducted on flying.
[SD] When we have actually perfected the flying sidhi, and the invisibility sidhi, they'll be demonstrated. But even now for serious scientists who wish to study these phenomena and their growth, because they are now in their growing stages, our university, our scientists, work with them, they submit proposals. We want to make sure that they're going to protect the integrity of our subjects, because one's in a very delicate state when one is practicing these. And also that they've designed the experiment so that they won't disturb the meditative state and test something other than what they're supposed to test. But once the experiment is designed properly, we're all for as we've been for every other phase of the TM program, extensive scientific research. So right now there are a few universities in which scientists are studying flying, to see what kinds of energy changes are going on, and are there changes in the gravitational relationship between the body and the earth during the practice. And we expect some very significant results will be found right now.
[MD] I questioned Dr. Druker on the development of psychic abilities through the program.
[SD] We would just call that just the normal abilities of the fully normal human nervous system; in fact Maharishi has a number of times said that actually the ordinary waking state in which most people consider to be normal is really quite abnormal from the point of view of enlightenment. That's a state that's full of stress if the stress were removed one would be living in unbounded awareness along with one's waking awareness and one would actually have all of these sidhis, all of these abilities which then would not be supernormal, they'd be normal, and looking back on the state of life in ignorance, life when one had stress in the system, that would be a state of abnormal psychology (laughs).
So again these powers like being able to see through a wall, or being able to levitate at will, being able to have unbounded friendliness, unbounded love and compassion, which most people don't think it's possible to have, it's quite possible to have that. All it requires is for the human nervous system to function in a fully normal way, and that means, dissolve the stress.
The Transcendental Meditation Sidhi program is just an advanced technology which builds on the pure consciousness state that has been established by a certain amount of practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique and it's a way of taking this state and allowing it to become enlivened and active. Actually it's a way of allowing the pure consciousness state which is inherently a silent non-active state to become active. As it becomes active it actually can spread its influence and benefit within the mind, within the physiology. So it's a way of increasing the coherence of the mind and the body, the coordination of the mind and the body and allowing that unbounded awareness to much more quickly grow within life and speed up the growth of enlightenment. So the sidhi techniques are practiced even before one is fully enlightened, to help accelerate enlightenment. But it's not until one is fully enlightened that one will spontaneously be able to manifest every one of the sidhis in their full value. And by then it will just be child's play, just something that is so natural that most people won't have much, any interest in it anymore, because it's so normal.
[MD] According to Dr. Druker, nothing is supernormal, or supernatural, or impossible.
[SD] Nothing is supernatural, everything occurs via natural laws. Everything that occurs occurs according to natural principles so there would be nothing that's beyond nature, beyond the operation of natural law. And again there really would be nothing that is supernormal because when the human nervous system is fully normal, then all possibilities are open to it. Everything is possible. Anything that can be thought can be manifested. Anything that can be thought, is possible. You know. One can think of anything that's possible and one could manifest any thought. And so, therefore, we would say that there's nothing supernatural, and nothing supernormal. Everything. It's just a matter of becoming fully normal and fully, in fact, becoming fully natural would be fully normal.
When one has no more stress in the nervous system and is operating in a fully normal way, one is also operating in total spontaneous harmony with all the laws of nature. And so everything that happens -- flying, seeing through walls, becoming invisible if one wants to -- that all would -- that all occurs according to natural laws, there's nothing mystical or strange about it. It only seems strange if one doesn't understand the principles, the natural principles involved, and it only seems supernormal for people who are living in a state of stress and can't conceive of how to do it.
Remeber for a long time it was thought that running a four minute mile would be superhuman feat, impossible. One man ran a four minute mile and then all of a sudden within a few years people were breaking that mark by three seconds, five seconds, doing the impossible. Every time there's a barrier that we think is impossible to achieve, once it's achieved all of a sudden that barrier is down and everybody is doing it and transcending it, and the history of human life has been always to make the impossible possible, just by understanding a little more about human potential and the laws of nature.
[MD] Dr. Druker comments on the public reaction to the sidhis.
[SD] Many of the public that have heard about it have started to take sidhi courses themselves. If they were meditating already and they heard about the sidhis then they enrolled in special courses that are designed for meditators to learn the sidhis and they're also flying and speeding up their own enlightenment and playing a major role in speeding up the full sunshine of the Age of Enlightenment for the world. Many of the public that have heard about the sidhis that aren't meditating have been, at least let's say, nobody has been able to have a mild reaction to it, either people are very excited about that new vision of possibilities and want to study it, or yes, there's some degree of shock because people don't think that that's possible, or if it's possible it shouldn't be talked about <laughs> or something. And again we feel that it should definately be discussed because it's a scientific phenomenon. It can be studied scientifically, it's very natural, spontaneous and normal, and it is adding to the increased health of human life, both in the individual and society.
And therefore, if people have misconceptions about these kinds of abilities, then it's time to clear them up. Because these abilities result from somebody who's acting in a very healthy, natural, spontaneously lawful way. And they're just natural by-products of people being very coherent in their mind and their body. And we want people to realize what the full range of human possibility is, so that we can speed up this sun of the Age of Enlightenment. We would like to see human misery and suffering which arises from a lack of full use of human potential, we would like to see that become the past as quickly as possible. But as long as there's still some vestiges of that in the present, more scientific knowledge is needed by more people.
So that's why we continue to talk about these new scientific discoveries, and we know that the history of science is, that where dramatic new scientific advances are often misunderstood by many people in the beginning, even sometimes quite strongly resisted by many people even people who should know better in the beginning, that that which is good endures, and the truth always triumphs, and we know from our own personal experience in the field of consciousness and we know from the extensive scientific research that these theories, these understandings of consciousness and how intelligence grows in life are very valid. They're very strong, sound theories, and so we're just confident to watch the triumph of scientific knowledge.
[MD] This program is produced by WMUC Radio at the University of Maryland, College Park, in conjunction with the Institute for Law, Consciousness and S C I of Washington DC and the University of Maryland SIMS club. Enlightenment Radio is produced by Mike Doughney. For more information on the TM program, look in the White Pages under Transcendental Meditation. This is Mike Doughney for Enlightenment Radio, presented as a public service each week by this station.
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