166 Who Do You Think You Are?
about it. He said it was a great way of eliminating stress, so I said, “Okay,
that sounds good.”
I went and listened to the lecture. They presented the first scientific
research studies that had been done on meditation. I decided to learn the
TM technique. From the first time I closed my eyes, I noticed there were
some very significant differences in my experience. Over the next three
days they told us about higher states of consciousness and the ability to
go deep within and to experience aspects of reality that maybe had never
been activated before.
To be frank, at that time I thought it was all a bunch of bologna.
But, I could tell something was happening and so I continued to practice
the technique and chose not to worry about anything else. Over the next
year I practiced TM regularly, but I was still working sixteen, eighteen,
twenty hours a day and was still dedicated to transforming the world.
In the next year some remarkable things happened. I was able to
accomplish projects that I never thought I could accomplish before. I
was able to get the whole community re-zoned and get students bus rides
without charge, or for a low monthly fee. I was able to gather thousands
of people for various projects. It was a very dramatic time for me.
As I continued to meditate, I noticed an increasing level of
calmness and ease with everything that was going on, even with these
very big and seemingly major events. After a while, I stumbled upon the
opportunity to get some advanced training, and I ended up becoming a
teacher of the Transcendental Meditation® program. After being a TM
teacher for a time, I went back out into the world to get a job.
I ended up getting a position as a bookkeeper for $5 per hour at a
firm that sold government securities as investments.. I decided I wanted
to learn everything about what that company did, and after just nine
months on the job, I became President of the company. I got to a point
where I realized that as much as I was achieving in the world something
in my life was still lacking. It wasn’t deeply fulfilling to me, but I
continued to meditate through it all.
One day I thought to myself, maybe it’s time for me to take some
time off. I actually ended up taking ten years off, and I participated in a
program of extended meditation. I spent ten years meditating anywhere
from four to eight hours a day and I began studying the Vedic literature
of India. This ancient literature provided profound insights about who I
am, about the nature of life, about the structure of creation, and the
structure of life. That was an amazing time.