University of Virginia Library

Expanding Creativity Through 'Drugless High'

By DARLENE SPRINKLE

A movement of thought,
new philosophy, theory – call
it what you will – is
progressively gaining
recognition as a key to all
knowledge and learning. The
Science of Creative Intelligence
is its name, and its practical
application is Transcendental
Meditation. They both have
possible future weight on
education and philosophy in
general. Medicine is even
interested.

Back in 1965 at UCLA the
Transcendental Meditation
movement was first formally
recognized in the context of
academic education. Now,
major research projects on
transcendental meditation
(TM) are being carried out at
over 40 universities and
research institutes
internationally. In addition, its
counterpart, the Science of
Creative Intelligence (SCI), is
taught at such institutions as
Stanford and Yale, and at the
junior and senior levels of high
school in the United States.

Recently, the Students'
International Meditation
Society (SIMS) of
Charlottesville conducted a
three-day introduction into
Transcendental Meditation and
the Science of Creative
Intelligence. Two University
students and their wives
maintain Charlottesville's SIMS

– Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence
Wardwell and Mr. and Mrs.
Alden Stallings. The four are
instructors of transcendental
meditation and conduct a
major part of the seminars.

'Drugless High'

TM has been called a
"drugless high," but it is
questionable whether the state
of meditation can be termed a
"high." "Transcendental
meditation is a natural, simple
technique that a person
practices twice daily for 20
minutes," explained Mrs.
Stallings. "Both the mind and
body are put into a state of deep
rest."

Mr. Wardwell interpreted it
this way: "For every state of
mind you're in, your body
reflects it. Say you fell asleep
in a chair. After about six
hours there would be a nine
percent reduction in the
metabolic rate. But during
transcendental meditation, the
metabolic rate drops twenty
percent immediately, which
means that there is a very deep
rest in the system."

After 5-10 minutes, there is
a 17 percent decrease in
oxygen consumption, and EEG
(brain wave) measurements
show alpha activity in the
central and frontal areas of the
brain, which causes the
meditative state to be
distinguished from the waking,
sleeping, or dreaming states. It
is referred to as the fourth
state of consciousness.

Noiselessness

Third-year Medical student
Mr. Caley, another participant
in the TM and SCI seminars,
said that during meditation,
noise has no effect. "As a
result, the things people never
understood before are
understood now – things like
the alpha wave, because tests
don't interfere with the
meditation," he said.

"The result of this," said
Mr. Wardwell commenting on
the scientific aspect of TM,
"has been a tremendous
interest in the scientific field.
The medical field is really
excited about it.

"People really don't know
what TM is," he continued.
"They hear the word and think
it must be some people doing
some occult, weird thing. But
it's such an incredibly practical
and valuable thing that it's
becoming increasingly
recognized by the more stable,
so to speak, elements of
society."

India's Maarishi Mahesh Yogi: Introducing The West To The TM Tradition

Physical reductions in the
body systems occur when one
meditates, because he begins to
experience "subtler" or finer
states of thought."When you're
just normally thinking, you
might say your thinking is on a
sort of gross surface level,"
explained Mr. Wardwell. "If
you experience finer states of
thought you experience a finer
mental activity, which requires
a lessened metabolic rate."

Comparing meditation to
diving, Mr. Wardwell said, "In
diving, you take the correct
angle with your body and then
you let go, and the whole dive
is automatic. That's what you
do in TM – you just take the
correct angle with your mind
and it just experiences these
subtler states of mind
automatically."

To experience these subtler
states is to reach the source of
thought. The analogy Mr.
Wardwell used to explain "the
source of thought" was a
bubble rising from the bottom
of the ocean. As it rises, it
expands. A faint impulse,
starting from the source at the
very basis of an individual's
consciousness, rises to more
surface levels of thought. It
becomes more concrete as it
rises, and eventually ends as a
real thought.

The value of TM is not in
the act of meditating itself, but
in its side effects. "You're
getting this very deep state of
rest but it's not anything that
makes you dull or groggy," Mr.
Wardwell observed.

He cited a reaction test of
two groups of people –
mediators and non-meditates.
The reaction time of the
mediators was faster than the
others'. After 20 minutes of
meditating, and relaxing for
the non-mediators, the
reaction time of the mediators
proved even faster than before.

"It indicates an increase in
body-mind coordination,"
emphasized Mr. Wardwell. "It's
not withdrawing from activity
as some people think, TM also
releases deeper stresses that
usually are not released during
sleep."

Consequently, the effects
of TM have important
educational implications. Since
TM reduces tension, drug abuse
can drop substantially. TM can
also improve a student's
attitude and behavior. "The
whole range of the mind is
expanded," Mrs. Stallings
emphasized. "Most people
agree we're only using 10-20%
now."

Transcendental Meditation
is not a product of the 20th
century, but has been practiced
for thousands of years – the
results being known for just as
long. "Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi," related Mrs. Stallings,
"comes from a long tradition
of teachers. He has brought TM
to the west, making the
technique available to the
public."

Teacher Training

He came here from India,
and is known as the founder of
the Science of Creative
Intelligence. A consequence of
TM's acceptance in the U.S. is
the Maharishi International
University, founded in 1971 to
formalize the training of SCI
teachers.

According to Mr. Wardwell,
creative intelligence manifests
itself in the creative process in
nature. "Man is a part of
nature; we hold that man has
an inner reservoir of creative
intelligence," he said. "We feel
he has a lot more than he's
taking advantage of. TM allows
the development of creative
intelligence – it allows the
expansion of the use of it."

Assistant professor of
Humanities, Curtis Brooks,
who has been working closely
with the Society, explained
creative intelligence this way:
"Man has something within
him which is divine, and this
divinity is creativity."

Poe's Insights

When Mr. Brooks was a
graduate student here in
English, he wrote a thesis on
Eureka, a work of metaphysics
by Edgar Allen Poe. While
doing this work, Mr. Brooks
discovered SCI through Poe's
insights at the same time that
Maharishi was formulating the
idea in another part of the
world.

"SCI tells us that spirit and
matter are two continuous
levels – grosser levels and
subtler levels of substance," he
said. "When Poe wrote
Mesmeric Revelation which
preceded Eureka, he talked
about the ways in which there
were atoms of matter, and
atoms of ether; how there's a
law of impulsion and
permeation."

From large gradations of
matter, such as the particles of
iron, to very fine particles, as
those of electricity, to
unparticled matter, which
becomes God, this law said
that grosser matter is
permeated by finer matter.
Without exception, unparticled
matter permeates everything.

Eureka, Poe's last work,
continued this theory. In fact,
he said, "I've penetrated the
origin of the universe," but his
contemporaries took no notice.
Poe connected man's creativity
with the creativity of the
cosmos. He believed that as
matter comes closer together,
the laws begin to change and
matter begins to change into