Transcendental Meditation Explained

Transcendental Meditation (TM) is the most widely practiced of mediation techniques and among the most widely researched. It is also the most monetized and overcomplicated. By design transcendental meditation is an effortless, easy to learn mediation practice that you do twice a day while sitting comfortably with your eyes closed.

Now if you go searching around the internet you find all kinds of stuff about how you need special mantras and instructor leads courses to learn this mediation technique. Most of these classes will cost you about 10 hours of time and around $1500 dollars.

So let me save you some time and money. Transcendental Meditation is sitting quietly with your eyes closed repeating a word in your head that has no meaning to you over and over again for about 20 minutes. You start about 2-3 minutes in repeating the nonsense word and stop about 2-3 minutes out.

The point is to help you quiet the mind from other thoughts and feelings and just focus on the mantra. If during the practice you find your mind wander then just take note of that and return to the mantra. This is very similar to breathe meditations where you focus on your breath, but this time it is a sound.

Those who teach and practice transcendental mediations typically use a sound from this list.

eng, em, enga, ema, ieng, iem, ienga, iema, shirim, shiring, kirim, kiring, hirim, sham, shama

Or any other sound that means nothing to you – so you clear your mind and don’t ponder on what it means, feels, taste, etc…

With this TM there are considered to be seven stages of consciousness or awareness. The first 3 are all well understood and very quantifiable. The next 4 start to get into the mystic speak that is highly up to interpretation. With that disclaimer here they are.

Transcendental Meditation Yogi Maharishi Mahesh (TM Creator)

  1. Waking: Normal everyday life
  2. Dreaming (REM sleep): You are asleep and dreaming. Sometimes you remember your dreams.
  3. Dreamless Sleep (non-REM): You are in a deep sleep, not dreaming, and completely void. Similar to death?
  4. Transcendental Consciousness: You remain relaxed and aware. You notice everything around you .
  5. Cosmic Consciousness (CC): You are fully aware and notice everything on the cosmic level. Understanding that everything and everywhere is somehow connected.
  6. Glorified State of Cosmic Consciousness (GC): You are not only aware of the the cosmic consciousness but guided by it
  7. Unity Consciousness: You work in harmony with everything in the cosmic consciousness to guide and be guided

The key thing to remember with transcendental meditation is to focus on the experience of the meditation and not trying to progress through the stages. I forget where the quote comes from but… “It is a journey, not a race”

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