Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: Great saint & Vedic scholar
In just the last few decades, many of the world’s foremost minds, have given great credit to the teachings of a modern-day saint. His name was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a renowned Vedic scholar and teacher, who helped restore the ancient Vedic wisdom of life back to its original glory.
‘Maharishi’, as he was more commonly known, was actually not his name. Maharishi is a title bestowed upon rare teachers of the Vedic tradition in recognition of their ability to see and live the supreme reality of life. ‘Maha’ means great, and ‘rishi’ means a seer. A seer in this context is someone who can literally see the true reality of life – the fundamental ‘laws of nature’ that structure creation. Maharishi means ‘great rishi’ or great seer.
Thanks to the training of his own teacher, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, or Guru Dev, rather than solely relying on interpreting the ancient Vedic texts like others before him, Maharishi, having attained Unity Consciousness, was able to experience the primordial laws of nature firsthand. (The process is known as “cognition”.) In so doing, he was able to see all the various ways the ancient Vedic knowledge had become distorted and even lost over time. The most critical loss was the understanding that consciousness itself is the basis of life and how true health can only be realized by developing the inner field of consciousness within. This was the reason for his world-wide teaching of Transcendental Meditation – a simple, natural technology of transcendence – and his famous ‘water the root to enjoy the fruit’ analogy.
A New Vision of Veda
One of Maharishi’s many history-altering insights was in explaining how Veda is not what most people think it is. Veda is not a philosophy, a way of life or a collection of dusty old manuscripts sitting in a deserted library. According to Maharishi’s own cognitions, Veda is literally the eternally reverberating, self-referral dynamics of the universe itself. As such, he emphasized and renewed the truth that Veda is not ancient … it is eternal.
While Maharishi is most well-known for bringing the technique of Transcendental Meditation or TM to the West, what most people don’t realize is the many other unique contributions he made to the field of Vedic science and spiritual wisdom. These include;
- Re-introducing the primary importance of ‘consciousness’ and transcendence to the field of meditation. Back in the 1950s, meditation was generally regarded as something only suitable for monks or reclusive types. It wasn’t really seen as practical for busy people of the world. Maharishi taught how this was a complete misunderstanding based on the misnomer that meditation was hard work or required discipline.
- In bringing TM to the world, Maharishi helped re-establish meditation as something practical for everybody and that when meditation is done as it was traditionally taught, it is not only easy and indeed effortless, but naturally leads to the experience of a unique fourth state of consciousness – the state of Samadhi, or Transcendental Consciousness.
- Reviving many branches of ancient Vedic knowledge back to their original purity and effective application. These include Ayurveda, Sthapatya Veda (Vastu, housing & architecture), Jyotish (Vedic astrology, including knowledge of remedial yagyas), Gandharva Veda.
- Re-establishing the central importance of developing consciousness as the basis of true Ayurveda/Ayurvedic medicine. (While talk of consciousness had existed, the technologies of how to practically develop consciousness had largely been missing for many centuries).
- Completely overhauling the traditional understanding of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. Whereas many schools consider Patanjali’s Sutras on the level of intellectual understanding, Maharishi explained how their real power is only available at the level of “Sanyama”, i.e. the junction point between transcendental consciousness (Samadhi) and the finest level of thought. This is the basis of his TM-Sidhis Program that he brought to the world in the 1970s.
- Reinterpreting the understanding of Ashtanga yoga. That is, rather than ‘8 steps’ to yoga, Patanjali meant it as the ‘8 limbs’ of yoga. Most importantly, that Samadhi (transcendence) and becoming enlightened (higher states of consciousness) is the first stage of the process (by which all the other 7 naturally occur).
- Restoring the previously fragmented, lost and often misunderstood branches of Vedic knowledge back to their integrated and connected reality and re-establishing its structure as the 4 primary Veda and 36 branches of Vedic Literature.
- Discovering and clearly mapping ‘Veda and Vedic literature in the human physiology’ (together with Dr. Tony Nader). This discovery illustrates the reality that the ‘individual is cosmic‘. See Dr Nader’s Book Here.
- Highlighting and explaining the concept ‘Collective Consciousness’. I.e. that small numbers of individuals transcending (1%) or performing the TM-Sidhis in groups (square root of 1%) can actually increase coherence and subsequently improve the quality of life throughout an entire population. Scientists named these phenomena “The Maharishi Effect” and “The Extended Maharishi Effect” in his honor.
- Giving detailed descriptions of, and a roadmap to experiencing higher states of human consciousness and enlightenment. Maharishi outlined the 7 major states of human consciousness including the state of enlightenment (Cosmic Consciousness) as well as to even higher states of consciousness beyond this.