From the Dec. 22, 2004 press conference, Maharishi answers questions on Religion, Vedic Knowledge, and Enlightenment

Question: Religions and Creating Heaven on Earth

Dr Hagelin: ‘Here is a question from a writer for the Gulf Times of Abu Dhabi. He asks, “Respected sir, please explain how the Global Country of World Peace is going to approach the problem of poverty—including the problem of polluted drinking water—that is faced by third world countries. And how many years will it take before this problem will be solved?” ’

Maharishi: ‘As long as it takes the Muslim world to follow Mohammed, and as long as it takes the Christian world to follow Christ, and as long as it takes the Buddhist world to follow Buddha, and as long as it takes the Vedic world to follow the Veda, as long as it takes these religion’s religious people to follow their ideals—all that Mohammed said, and all that Christ meant, even though the Bible was written much later by his followers, and Buddha—so long it will take for the world to be Heaven on Earth.

‘As long as it takes a scientist to follow science, which is a systematic investigation into the reality because reality is everywhere omnipresent, it should not take long. But if it takes long, they are misguided people who are roaming in darkness and they have lost their path; they are not scientists.

‘If a Muslim is suffering, he is not Muslim. If a Christian is suffering, he is not the follower of Christ. If any religious man is suffering due to little water, or little air, or polluted this, or polluted that, he is not following his religion. Because following his religion means he is breathing that reality which is bliss, he is drinking that reality which is nectar—all those nice things. The religious platform has gone into the hands of misguided people.

‘There are religions and religious preachers in the world who say life is suffering, and if you do not suffer you are not a right man, you have to suffer. The whole thing is a muddle of reality. Reality is so simple! It is so simple, and that is the only thing which is simple. Anything else is complicated. Science is so simple because of its completeness. Religion is so simple because of its total infinite creative potential. It is so simple.

‘If a religious man is suffering, it means he has gone away from religion. They are fighting among themselves that I am Muslim, I am Christian, I am this, I am that. The whole thing is non-religious.

‘What the religious preachers lack is simplicity of praying. Meditation is just a prayer, but a silent prayer. Silent prayer, one would see, how difficult can it be? It is the simplest thing not to do anything! It is much simpler than the simplest to dive within oneself. Transcendental Meditation is simpler than the simplest thing, and it is the essence of every religion.

‘When we see religious people crying for this or crying for that, and one is being looted by the other, and the other is being dynamited by another, the whole thing is completely non-religious. “Religion” means “My Lord, omnipresent, omnipotent, within me, outside me, everything.” This is living religion. . . .

‘We have the knowledge of lighting the light and keeping everyone in the light. But if people want to suffer, nobody can make them enjoy, because they are dragging their life into suffering. No one can make you enjoy. Just follow the scientist, Dr Hagelin, a quantum physicist and expert in the field of nothingness. “Quantum scientist” means knower of nothing. That nothing is the potential of everything. It is a beautiful thing.’

Question: Location of the Divine

Dr Hagelin: ‘ Maharishi recently said that the divine nature of man is available to the human mind only on its own transcendental level. But if the mind has to go in to experience unity and divinity, what good does that do the outer world of change and decay? And why does the divine remain hidden on one level and not fully apparent on all levels?’

Maharishi: ‘Take the example of a tree. We can look at the tree at the emptiness of a seed, or we can look at a little more gross level on the level of the sap. The sap is there, and the concrete expressions of the sap are there—completely sap. Even then, the sap has its reality in the still more refined, finer values of the sap in the emptiness, nothingness. Nothingness is expressed in all the concrete, physical values of the tree.

‘What we find is that the answer from the Vedic field of knowledge is so complete. The answer is, in one word, Smriti. “Smriti” means memory. The tree is there in the unmanifest seed, but it is not the tree; it is the memory of the tree. Look at the excellence of the expression: the Veda expresses the whole tree in the nothingness of the seed. Like this the whole physiology has been found in the Unified Field; it is fluctuations of the Unified Field. There is nothing, but that nothingness is fluctuating within itself.

‘So the whole universe is not anything out of nothing. The whole tree is nothing other than nothingness in the unmanifest. That has been and will always remain within mathematical accuracy. It will always remain, in the Vedic word, sequential. There is a sequential evolution of nothingness into everything concrete. It is a sequential arrangement. There is a systematic progression, but in the end, the systematic progression is contained in the self-referral nature of the Unified Field itself. So the whole thing remains an abstract concept. An abstract concept is unmanifest, so we say an ocean of unmanifest, ocean of infinity, ocean of all possibilities, complete totality of Natural Law.

‘That is why it is very easy for the mind to settle down and get onto that level consciously and know that it is emptiness, but know its emptiness is the potential of everything. That is why throughout time the slogan has been, “Know thyself”. Then, in this knowledge of thyself, you will have the knowledge of everything that you do. Not only knowledge, but the power to do everything. “The power to do everything” means the power to create creation. By what? Just by being the basis of all creation.

‘ “Being the basis of all creation” is beyond the creation; it is the source of creation. That is why it is called transcendental, the transcendental Unified Field of all the Laws of Nature. Once the awareness is on that level, then the awareness is awake in all possibilities. Then, “I am an educated man. I have the ability to do anything that I want. And then what I have to do is just want. I do not have even to want. Whatever is necessary floats around me. All Natural Law serves me.” It is very beautiful knowledge. Unnecessarily people are suffering.’

Question: How to Recognize the Enlightened

Dr Hagelin: ‘Throughout the ages, during the time of Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed, and certainly in today’s world, there are always people who claim to be enlightened and claim to speak the truth. How does an unenlightened person, like myself, know when another person is, in fact, enlightened and is therefore speaking a truth worth following?’

Maharishi: ‘The answer is: the taste of pudding is in eating. Somebody eating a pudding says, “How nice and so beautiful.” How do I know if what he is saying is right? I have to eat the pudding, and then I can know whether he was saying right or wrong. There is no way for anyone, without experiencing the reality, to judge the emotions of another man and whether he is saying right or wrong. There is no way.

‘The taste of pudding is in eating, and then you get to know it. That is all. Without knowing it, you cannot, because it is a thing which is devoid of any duality. There is no experiencer, experienced, and process of experiencing in that field. It is it, that is all. It is it. Without being it, one could keep on gesturing about it. It is not through lecturing and not through hearing; it is not through anything other than Being, because on its own level it is that—not on any other level. That is why it is transcendental. That is the significance of Transcendental Meditation—a process that allows the conscious mind to trickle down in sequence and come to that field where the individuality is no more in space and time boundaries. It is unbounded. Being it, then one knows, “Yes, what I was hearing was a right thing.” Without experience, there is no way to know.

‘That is why those who start meditation, in the first five, ten minutes, open the eyes and say, “Thank you very much”. Those who have taken a dive do not know how far they have gone, but they have gone enough to say, “Thank you”. In one, first dive, whether it was a dive to the bottom of the lake or just the surface of the lake, but they have dived into it. Then they have had some kind of taste of it. So simple.

‘A man who has lived a life of suffering has never been given any experience of transcending or any peek into that reality—never in life. He has become old, 70 years, and all his children and grandchildren say, “You are the wisest among us because you are the oldest.” But the oldest knows he does not know. All these people, presidents and prime ministers, are aged people, and they talk better than others, they can have some lecturing capacity, but that is not administratorship.

‘Administratorship is in the technique of arriving at that door from where Natural Law obeys your command. It is open to everyone. Do it. Do not waste your life in either this little thing or that little thing. No, no.

‘It is not the name of religion that will help you. It is the experience of religious practice, which is the exploration of the light of God, that will help you. Your name can be Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or anything, but it is not the name of the religion that will help you. It is the experience of religious life, which is the light of God, that will help you. Start Transcendental Meditation, and know it. Do not waste your life in the name of religion or in the name of God or in the name of science or in the name of arts or this or that. It is a waste of precious life. Now our offer is invincibility.’