The Top 10 Moments in Meditation History
by Joseph Hooper

DETAILS.com    Translate This Article
14 August 2011

A photo essay in the September issue of the national magazine DETAILS, featuring the 'Top 10 Moments in Meditation History', includes three photos and commentary highlighting the Transcendental Meditation (TM) Programme and its founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Subtitled 'Trace Transcendence in America from Thoreau to Russell Brand', the photo essay is a companion piece to the article 'Meditation Nation' in the same issue, which describes the rising prominence of the Transcendental Meditation Programme as 'the new status symbol' among the 'movers and shakers' in national culture—largely due to its practical benefits as a 'systematic, stress-reducing, creativity-building technique'.

The 10 slides and text are arranged in a timeline that begins in 1845 with Henry David Thoreau's sojourn on Walden Pond and subsequent publication of Walden.

Midway through the timeline is the 1968 visit of the Beatles and Donovan to India to meditate and study with Maharishi.

Just following that is a post dated 1975: 'Maharishi appears on an episode of The Merv Griffin Show that's devoted to TM.'

The show created an enormous wave of interest in Transcendental Meditation across the country, the subject of a TIME magazine cover story later that year, which is also featured in the DETAILS photo essay. The cover displays a large illustration of Maharishi with the headline, 'Meditation: The Answer to all Your Problems?'

The final item in the timeline, dated 2005, is a photo of renowned film director David Lynch. That year Mr Lynch established the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, to raise support for teaching Transcendental Meditation to at-risk groups suffering from traumatic stress.

The 'Meditation Nation' article notes that Mr Lynch has practised Transcendental Meditation for over 30 years. Many celebrities and prominent leaders of society have learned the technique and come forward to support the Foundation's work with veterans with PTSD, inner-city schoolchildren, prison inmates, the homeless, and American Indians. (Celebrity meditators include British comedian and actor Russell Brand, noted in the photo essay subtitle.)

Click here to read the 'Meditation Nation' article.

* DETAILS is published by Condé Nast, owner of some of the world's most prestigious magazines, including The New Yorker, Vogue, and Wired.

© Copyright 2011 Condé Nast Digital



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