Vedic Influence in the West

Throughout history, the influence of the Vedas can be found in numerous civilizations around the world. In the past 200 years or so, after the West started to trade with India, the Vedic influence has penetrated Western philosophical thoughts. American thinkers and writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were inspired by Vedic literature. Emerson was known to have read the Bhagavad-gita, Vishnu Purana, Laws of Manu, etc. He wrote: "I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spake to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions that exercise us."

Henry David Thoreau is also an avid reader of Vedic literature and openly expressed his admiration for Vedic thought. He regularly read the Bhagavad-gita while staying at Walden Pond. He wrote: "In the morning, I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-gita, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial." (Walden, Chapter 16)

Another recognized writer influenced by Vedic philosophy was T.S. Eliot, who studied at Harvard University under the Sanskrit teacher Charles Rockwell Lanman. At Yale University, the teaching of Sanskrit started even earlier.

Outside America, Indian philosophy was also received with great interest in other countries. Thinkers such as Max Mueller, Aldous Huxley of England, Romain Rolland of France, Leo Tolstoy of Russia, and Schlegel, Deussen and Schopenhauer of Germany, were all influenced by Vedic literature. In fact, Schopenhauer went as far as to predict that the Vedas would by accepted as the religion of the world one day.

{The above is an abstract from the book The Secret Teachings of the Vedas by Stephen Knapp.}

Vedic Literature

"Veda" is the Sanskrit word for knowledge, and Vedic literature contains the "original knowledge" revealed by the Supreme Being directly to humanity. Thus it is the manifestation of the absolute truth. For millenia, this knowledge was passed down orally. But due to the degradation of the human faculty for memory, there was a need to write down this knowledge. Hence came the Vedic literature.

The entire collection of Vedic literature is huge. It consists of four primary Vedas: Rig-veda, Yajur-veda, Sama-veda and Atharva-veda. From these main vedas came the appedices called Brahmanas, which relate to rituals and ceremonies. Deriving from these are the Aranyakas. The Upanishads are the appendices of the Aranyakas. All these texts are collectively known as the "Shruti," which means the original revealed knowledge.

The rest of the Vedic literature consists of the Mahabharata, Bhagavad-gita, Ramayana and the Puranas. These are the histories and supplemental portions of the Vedic literature and are known as "Smriti," or that which is remembered.

Besides philosophical and spiritual knowledge, the Vedas also contain information on material science. The Ayur-veda, for example, is the original science of holistic medicine; Gandharva-veda contains knowledge about the arts (music, dance, drama, etc); Sthapatya-veda is the science of architecture, the Manu-samhita is the Vedic lawbook; Artha-sastram is the science of government; Dhanur-veda is the military science; and Shulba Sutras contains the advanced Vedic system of mathematics.

Why read Vedic literature, you might ask? According to the Bhagavad-gita, "This knowledge is the king of education, the most secret of all secrets. It is the purest knowledge, and because it gives direct perception of the self by realization, it is the perfection of religion. It is everlasting and it is joyfully performed."

If you are allergic to the word "religion" like I do, the following definition might bring some relief:
The word "religion" comes from the Latin word "religio," which means to bring back or to bind, while the Sanskrit word "yoga" means to connect with or to unite--with the Supreme. Thus the goal of religion and yoga are actually the same. Somehow, human beings have for thousands of years allowed ignorance, faulty interpretation, greediness and blind rituals to overshadow our true spiritual longing for the devine union. But I believe that studying the Vedas will help us achieve self-realization and enlightenment.

{The above information is based on the book The Secret Teachings of the Vedas by Stephen Knapp.}

Benefits of Meditation

There are over 500 scientific studies that have shown the beneficial effects of Transcendental Meditation in all areas of life. They include:

• Increased happiness
  
• Reduced stress
  
• Increased intelligence
  
• Increased creativity
  
• Improved health
  
• Improved relationships
  
• Increased energy
  
• Reduced insomnia
  
• Reversal of biological aging
  
• Reduced crime and improved quality of life in society
  
• Reduced high blood pressure
  

My first-hand experience has found all of the above, except the last one (which I have never had experience of), to be true.

The reduction of stress level is one that I particularly appreciate. When I first started to meditate, I was working as a journalist and later as a Web producer in New York. The jobs involved long hours and tremendous pressure. Besides, I had a busy private life on top of having the entire stress bundle of "New York living" to deal with. I never slept for more than five or six hours.

But as soon as I started to meditate, my sleep pattern changed automatically. I remember waking up and having overslept one more hour. I had slept seven hours for the first time since years! And strangely enough it was exactly seven hours I slept, no more, no less. Just as my TM teacher told me, the body adjusts and returns to its natural functions as one starts to meditate. It does whatever the body naturally needs. So in my case my body recognized that I had a shortage of sleep. It automatically adjusted my internal alarm clock after I started to meditate.

Since then, I have always felt a strong sense of calmness within and extra energy to boot. A roommate of mine once asked me, "How come you are so energetic the whole evening even after work?"

This was just one of the immediate benefits of TM that I can recall. Overcoming depression was another great step, which I achieved after practicing for about two months of meditation (disclaimer: everybody's condition is different, so my case does not necessarily applies to other people).

Today, scientific studies continue to prove the benefits of TM. Recently, a number of mainstream media has reported on the research that points to the ability of TM to make people live healthier and longer:

ABC News/Reuters: Meditation calms the mind, lengthens life: study

Forbes: Meditation Study Shows Life Gains

Science Daily: Meditation found to extend lifespan

Journal Gazette (Indiana): Calm moments ease stress

The Beginning

An old Chinese saying goes: "A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step." 千里之行，始于足下。My first step on the path to India started in 1999, when I learned Transcendental Meditation.

At that time, a series of events led to my decision to learn meditation. But in hindsight, this was really fate, written in my book long before I was born.

The first event was my contact with Maharishi's Sthapatya Veda organization in 1998, when I was researching an article for Management Review magazine, of which I was associate editor at that time. My article dealt with innovative office space arrangements that helped to create better working environments for employees. Sthapatya Veda was a solution that had proven to cure sick building syndromes and increase workplace productivity.

About a year later, I met my future husband in Pointe Rouge, Marseille, while backpacking in the South of France. When we were taking a walk on the beach there, he mentioned to me that he practiced meditation every day. When he mentioned the name Maharishi, it rang a bell. I told him I had written an article about his architectural design. It wasn't much of a drawn-out discussion, as we were just getting to know each other and we didn't know if we would meet again. But this little bit of conversation stayed in my mind. At least it convinced me that this meditating guy could not have been a junkie or weirdo. In fact, he seemed to be a super decent man, whose presence felt like a breath of fresh air to me.

When I went back to New York, where I was living then, I continued on my spiritual search, which started earlier during my clinical depression period. A large number of self-help books prepared me for the reading of Neale Donald Walsh's Conversation with God series. At the end of the first book, there is a resources page, which listed Transcendental Meditation (TM) as a way through which one can do good to the world. I was very socially minded and have always been a sort of humanitarian in my soul, if not by deeds. When I read that TM has shown to reduce crime rates and is an effective way for individuals to do their part to contribute to world peace, my mind was made. I decided to take the course.

All the while, my future husband, Durox the Swede, never tried to sell me on the idea of meditation. He felt that it would be best if I decided to do it on my own, which I did. So when I told him about my decision, he was overjoyed. He knew that it would be the greatest decision that I'd ever make, as it was for him, when he first meditated in the 1970s.

November 1999, I stepped out of the TM Center at Times Square, New York, and felt a sense of freshness in my mind that I had never experienced in my life. It was unexplicable. It felt like my mind suddenly opened up, and an ocean expanded inside it. It was so pure, so clean and so expansive. The noise of the busy city seemed so far away. I was not totally aware then, but now I know that I had contact with the source -- the soul within me.

Since then, meditation has given me the kind of calm, peace and stability that I had never experienced before. And it even helped me win the battle against depression. Realizing the harmful effects of anti-depressant pills, I went off it with the help of meditation (Disclaimer: this was done without doctor supervision--which some people might find risky.) It was my own initiative as I was confident enough of the effects of meditation. I knew that psychiatrists would disagree to this, which was exactly why I did not consult mine at that time because I could sense his motive to keep me on medication for as long as possible (and the part about Zoloft not being addictive was really bull shit.)

Over the past couple of years, Transcendental Meditation has been the source of light and power through the many ups and downs in my life. While I have heard voices of skeptics from various sources, I remain unwavered in my daily practice, because it is like a candle in the dark, and with this candle, I see the light of Truth. The skeptics out there are precisely skeptics because they have never even experienced TM themselves. How can you accuse an orange for being sour if you have never tasted it?