No, I don't wear saffron robes!

But all power to the elbows of those who do. A short account of my experience of TM.

This was written for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small online community of creators of various kinds. Once a month, STSC members create something around a set theme. This time the theme was “preconception.” To support the work of the STSC, do subscribe. If you are a writer, consider joining yourself. You gain access to a private Discord group and opportunities to have your writing seen by a wider group of people. To do so, sign up as a paid subscriber on our founder’s, Thomas J. Bevan, personal Substack . Tom will send you an invite for our Discord group. Do tell him I sent you. Please note: the number of contributing writers is capped at 300.

It was in the summer of 1973 that I first became aware — consciously aware, that is — that there is such a thing as preconception. I’d recently learnt to meditate (Transcendental Meditation) and some people had asked me why I’d taken that step and what it was like. We were sitting in a friend’s room at university. After an hour or so, and the lull in the conversation suggesting that perhaps it was time to turn our attention to other things, I said:

“Anyone fancy some chips¹?”

Me meditating. Note the halo.

“Oh, that is so refreshing”, one of my interlocutors said.

“Really? Why?” (I’d never heard of chips being refreshing.)

“Because I assumed you’d be into wholefoods, macrobiotics, all that sort of stuff.”

“Well”, I answered. “I’m more of a microbiotic I think.”

I heard, years later, that someone who was quite big in the TM community, Vincent Snell, once defined a fanatic as someone who drinks peppermint tea — and expects everyone else to.

I think, or I like to think, that things have changed since then. Meditation of one sort or another has become mainstream: it’s no longer something weird. Perhaps, along with that, people who meditate are no longer thought of as living on some sort of higher plane. I know there are communities where you can work with Nature, and spend hours every day meditating and chanting. If I ever joined such a community, I’d last a week, maybe two, at the most. I like listening to headbanging music, I like eating rubbish occasionally, I like doing the work I do. TM was devised for people like me, people who want to live a normal, western-style life, but also make room and time for growing.

While writing this I realised that I too was guilty of a preconception. When I first heard about TM², through an article in a newspaper, I thought that it sounded too good to be true. Findings showed, apparently, that people who’d been doing TM for just a short while were less stressed and generally healthier (as measured by physiological criteria) than those in a control group. Nevertheless, I went along to a talk about it³ because it was free, and only a ten minute walk from where I lived.

As it turned out, I wasn’t too convinced by the talk either, but decided to go to the follow-up talk⁴ because one of the speakers was a drop-dead gorgeous girl who kept looking at me and smiling. I thought that perhaps I’d get the chance, and work up the courage, to ask her out.

Just think about that for a moment. Some people take up TM because they seek spritual enlightenment. Some take it up because they want to be less stressed and more fulfilled. I took it up because I fancied a girl.

Anyway, I went along to the next talk and then I noticed something. That girl was still smiling at me, but she was also smiling at everyone else. (Blast!). Then I noticed something else: all the speakers had a kind of inner glow, and in the end it was that which convinced me to give TM a whirl.

At the time, I was working in the maintenance department of a large store. My hours were 8 till 6, but often I worked from 7 till 7 in order to earn some overtime pay. I would come in every evening, have a wash, have supper, sit in front of the TV, fall asleep for a couple of hours, and then raise my carcass and drag myself to bed.

On the evening of my appointment to learn TM, I hauled myself to the TM centre straight from work. During a brief ceremony, in which I was given a mantra, I spent most of the time thinking, “What a load of rubbish. What a waste of money.” Then I was asked to sit quietly and try out my new mantra for ten minutes, during which I fell asleep. After a short discussion, I was sent on my merry way.

Heading towards the station, I suddenly became aware that I wasn’t walking — I was trotting. I arrived home, had a wash, had supper — and then spent two hours reading. I was impressed, especially considering that I’d done a total of ten minutes meditating, half of which was spent snoring.

I very soon noticed other, more profound, effects of meditating for twenty minutes twice a day. I used to get terrible headaches that would last for three days, and I suffered from one every single week. After learning TM, I didn’t get a headache for six months.

I also used to get into terrible tempers, and they stopped as well. I don’t mean to say I’ve not been in a temper for fifty years, but now they happen once in a blue moon, not every week or two. In fact, without wishing to sound melodramatic, I think TM probably saved my life, because the tempers I got into would, I’m sure, have led to my having a fatal heart attack or simply being run down by a car while fuming about something as I crossed the road in a world of my own.

So what’s my situation now? I’d love to be able to tell you that I’ve become some kind of self-realised, enlightened being, but I’m afraid I can’t⁵. I still like headbanging music, eating pizzas, and being silly. What I can say is that when something untoward happens, I’m no longer completely consumed by it. For example, to take what is probably a trivial example, if I lose a favourite pen, say, I feel upset, but not devastated: there’s a level of inner peace underneath it all that seems to be untouched — or relatively untouched.

But I suppose TM benefits different people in different ways. I met someone once who said he used to be a thief, but stopped stealing after he’d been meditating for a few months. When I asked him why, he said “Because I just didn’t feel like it any more.” Perhaps TM is the answer to our overcrowded prisons.

I live in hope that one of these days I will wake up and realise I’ve joined the ranks of all those enlightened people one reads about.

But should that day ever come, I still won’t be donning saffron robes!

1. AKA French fries to my American friends.

2. I should like to say at this point that I am not involved with the TM community apart from, occasionally, going on courses. What follows are my own reflections on how I’ve benefited from the practice.

3. What was called an Introductory talk.

4. The Preparatory talk.

5. If I had, I wouldn’t say. As Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching, “Those who know do not talk, and those who talk do not know.”