Bob Roth

Summary

Podcast Summary: Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin—Episode: Bob Roth (May 20, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this rich and wide-ranging conversation, Rick Rubin sits down with Bob Roth—longtime Transcendental Meditation (TM) teacher and CEO of the David Lynch Foundation—to trace the personal and global history of TM, its roots, practice, cultural impact, scientific research, and transformative power. The episode is a tapestry of stories, practical insights, philosophical explorations, and personal reflections, wrapped around Roth’s 54-year journey as a meditation teacher and his close experience with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, David Lynch, and the broader TM movement.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Early Encounters with Meditation and TM

• First Meditation Experience (00:23)

  • Bob Roth shares how, at 18, a trusted friend, Peter Stevens, introduced him to TM in 1969 at Berkeley.
  • He was skeptical, coming from a scientific family, but was told:
    “You don’t have to believe in gravity for the pen to fall. You don’t have to believe in this meditation.” (Bob Roth)
  • Roth's first meditation felt like a homecoming, “familiar and unique and comfortable…a glimpse into something that was.”

• Inspiration and Turning Point (02:17–02:19)

  • Roth immediately experienced “awe” in meditation, but not every session was the same.
    “Mother Nature was saying, we’re going to let you know there’s something real here and then you pay your dues.” (Bob Roth, 02:19)

• Meeting Maharishi & Becoming a Teacher (02:30–03:04)

  • Roth attended a 1970 teacher training course with Maharishi, profoundly moved by his authenticity:
    “Authentic and profoundly authentic. I felt very comfortable around him.” (Bob Roth, 03:09)
  • Chose to teach TM in prisons, VA hospitals, and under-resourced communities—his “dharma” was using meditation to make real-world change.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Democratization of Meditation

• Breaking Down Barriers (05:09)

  • Maharishi was credited with making meditation accessible to the masses and helping spark the wellness and yoga movement in America.

• TM as Medicine (05:38–06:35)

  • Roth’s focus: “meditation as a healthcare intervention to address…trauma and stress.”
    “You pull one leg on a chair, all the legs come. So you transcend. You dive deep within. All aspects get nourished.” (Maharishi, via Bob Roth, 06:10)

What is Transcendental Meditation? (06:35–10:16)

• Types of Meditation (06:38–10:16)

  • 1. Focused Attention: Concentration, effortful, produces gamma brainwaves.
  • 2. Open Monitoring: Mindfulness/Vipassana, observing thoughts, produces theta waves.
  • 3. Self-Transcending (TM):
    • “Recognizes a vertical dimension to the mind, like the depth of the ocean.”
    • “TM is an effortless process that just allows the mind to dive and access that field of pure creativity, pure consciousness, pure awareness that lies within… a state of restful alertness.” (Bob Roth, 09:54)

• Quote:
  “Prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening.” (Interviewer/Roth, 10:27)

Maharishi’s Journey & Views on Ancient Wisdom (11:06–14:43)

• Maharishi's Origin Story (11:06)
  • From college student in India to 13 years with his teacher, Swami Brahmananda, then two years of silence, before sharing TM globally.
• Role in Reviving Ayurveda and Ancient Knowledge (13:14–14:43)
  • “He was endlessly curious.”
  • Sought to merge Ayurveda, Western medicine, Vedic astrology, architecture (Vastu), etc., believing: “Whatever is scientifically proven to work.”

Roth's Path and Quest for Truth (16:36–20:58)

• Persistence and Dharma (16:45)
  • Roth's “ikigai”—personal delight in transcending, challenge of teaching meditation amid skepticism, and commitment to changing the world.
  • “No one is ever hurt by knowing the truth." (Marcus Aurelius, quoted by Bob Roth, 16:55)
• Meetings with Maharishi & His Principles (19:00–20:58)
  • Maharishi to Roth: “Go and make a better world.”
  • Core teaching: “Know thyself, be true to thyself, do what you know to be right, and don’t do what you know to be wrong.” (20:24–20:54)
  • On competition: “None... Whatever you want to do, always.”
  • Sense of humor: “Plastic. Man’s gift to God.” (21:40)

Spreading Meditation—From Personal to Institutional Change

• From Politics to Meditation (22:10–23:13)

  • Roth realized politics wouldn’t heal society’s wounds and shifted fully to TM.

• Scaling Access—Payment and Foundation Work (23:36–25:00)

  • TM should be paid for, but now often subsidized by institutions, insurance, etc., especially through the David Lynch Foundation.

David Lynch, Celebrity Influence, and Popularization (25:00–29:18)

• Meeting Lynch & Foundation Start (25:02–26:51)
  • Roth and Lynch’s friendship and collaboration brought TM to broader audiences.
  • “David's integrity helped clarify misunderstandings about Maharishi and TM.” (29:20)
• Beatles, Media, and Public Perception (29:18)
  • Sean Lennon’s story of his parents meditating every morning (29:07).

Fairfield, Iowa and the University Movement (31:31–34:16)

• Creation of Maharishi University (31:31–34:16)
  • Unique secular university with meditation as a core practice, focus on expanding awareness, offering research and programs in Ayurveda, green architecture, etc.
  • Vedic science is “pre-Hindu”—a foundational approach.

Collective Meditation Effect and Societal Impact (34:24–36:53)

• Meditating in Groups (34:24–36:53)
  • Group TM hypothesized to reduce societal stress and crime; supported by research and anecdotal effect of “lighting the filament” (36:14).

Milestones and Cultural Moments in TM’s Rise (38:41–43:40)

• Merv Griffin Show and the 1970s Boom (38:41–40:19)
  • Key media moments, celebrities, and massive public engagement: “50,000 people were learning TM every month in the US.” (39:41)
• David Lynch’s Journey (41:45–42:06)
  • Lynch learned TM after sensing a “cruel” gap between outer success and inner happiness—recognized the method as a means to reach the “within.”

TM: Access, Advanced Techniques, and Structure (43:44–45:37)

• How TM Is Taught
  • Four-day initial instruction, ongoing support.
  • Advanced techniques (TM-Sidhi Program) likened to “fertilizer” for the mind, with roots in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.

Books and Foundational Teachings (47:13–52:22)

• Science of Being and Art of Living

  • Maharishi’s main book discussed, along with the story of his global travels and how early research lent scientific credibility to TM in the West.

• Consistency of Instruction (52:07–53:53)

  • TM teachers use identical language, preserving the effectiveness of the original teaching and maintaining authenticity.

TM and Stress, Physiology, and Science

• Stress Reduction Mechanics (55:34–57:14)

  • TM provides a unique state of “restful alertness,” reducing chronic stress at its root, not just symptoms.

• Medical Evidence (57:14–58:54)

  • NIH and DOD-funded studies—TM rivals or surpasses antihypertensive drugs.
  • 20 minutes of TM drops cortisol by 30–40% versus 10% by sleep.

TM in Prisons and with At-Risk Communities (61:02–65:00)

• Impact in San Quentin and Beyond
  • Personal stories highlight TM’s ability to bridge violent social divides in prisons, reduce recidivism by half, and be eagerly received even on death row.
  • “I had them all close their eyes and meditate…subjectively the deepest meditation…[even] members of different gangs.” (62:54)

The Evolution and Practice of TM

• Habit Formation and States of Consciousness (65:05–70:13)

  • Meditation becomes “first nature,” leading to persistent expanded awareness (“cosmic consciousness”—the fifth of seven described states).

• Seven States of Consciousness

  • Sleep, dreaming, waking (ordinary); pure consciousness (fourth); cosmic consciousness (fifth); refined/god consciousness (sixth); unity (seventh).
  • “Awareness is not a state you force…it’s something you actively allow to happen.” (67:43–69:43)

Children, Mantras, and Teaching

• TM for Children and Mantras (82:49–85:15)
  • “Walking mantra” for young children; sitting technique from age 12 upwards.
  • Mantras are meaningless sounds—to allow the mind to transcend; personal instruction is essential for subtlety and effortlessness. “Any effort, even a little bit, stops the process.” (Bob Roth, 85:15)

Mind-Body Connection and Health

• Psychoneuroimmunology (PNEI) (85:53–87:41)
  • Mind-body are a continuum; TM gives freedom not to be a victim of stress or negative environments.
• TM vs. Psychedelics (87:41–89:19)
  • TM as “gradual, organic growth”—contrasted with the “force-blooming” and potential harm of psychedelics:
    “They’re trying to kick in the door to heaven... may have destructive effects on subtle mechanisms in the nervous system.” (88:48)
  • On pre-learning TM: abstain from drugs/marijuana, not alcohol (clears faster), to ensure a clear experience.

Spirituality and Succession

• TM’s Spiritual Essence (89:31–91:42)
  • “True spirituality is the essence and the highest of humanity…love, creativity, intelligence, kindness, strength, universal.”
  • All great religious traditions reference transcendence, “just the vocabulary is different.”
  • The movement’s continuity: Dr. Tony Nader (Harvard/MIT neuroscientist) as Maharishi’s successor.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “You don’t have to believe in gravity for the pen to fall. You don’t have to believe in this meditation.” (Bob Roth, 00:36)
• “Mother Nature was saying, we’re going to let you know there’s something real here and then you pay your dues.” (Bob Roth, 02:19)
• “Authentic and profoundly authentic. I felt very comfortable around him.” (Roth, on Maharishi, 03:09)
• “I call it the democratization of meditation. Anybody can do it. You don’t have to believe in it.” (Bob Roth, 03:42)
• “Prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening.” (Interviewer/Roth, 10:27)
• “No one is ever hurt by knowing the truth.” (Marcus Aurelius, quoted by Bob Roth, 16:55)
• “Go and make a better world.” (Maharishi to Roth, 19:00)
• “Know thyself, be true to thyself, do what you know to be right, and don’t do what you know to be wrong.” (Maharishi, via Roth, 20:24)
• “Plastic. Man’s gift to God.” (Maharishi, 21:46)
• “[Politics] was never going to heal the soul of the nation.” (Bob Roth, 22:10)
• “You water the root of a tree for one branch, all the branches are nourished.” (Bob Roth, via Maharishi, 48:26)
• “The more abstract the better.” (David Lynch, 27:21)
• “Group meditation is like lighting the filament…light fills the room from that one filament.” (Roth, 36:14)
• “If you’re a single mom…no funding…I’d like the hospitals are now setting up meditation rooms…” (Roth, 42:10)
• “The mind is not a monkey. The natural tendency…is to be drawn to something more satisfying…no effort for that.” (Roth, 53:53)
• “The contrast is so great [in prison]…deepest meditation to this day I’ve ever had in my life.” (Roth, 62:54)
• “Your brain knows how to do it. So you can go from fourth nature, third nature…and then something becomes second nature. And now for me it's like first nature.” (Roth, 65:05)
• “Awareness needs constant refreshing…until one day you notice you are always in the practice of awareness at all times.” (Roth, 69:33)
• “The mind likes to think. You tell the mind, don't think…it’s a battle.” (Roth, 83:46)
• “You are what you eat or what you see, you become. You metabolize everything.” (Roth, 86:00)
• “Azalea plants: The force-bloomed flowers never bloomed again... Let’s give the human nervous system what it needs to grow…” (88:52)
• “True spirituality is the essence and the highest of humanity... universal.” (Roth, 89:31)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:23–03:04: Roth’s early meditation, meeting Maharishi, choice to teach TM
• 06:35–10:16: Three types of meditation, TM defined, scientific differences
• 16:36–25:00: Roth’s path, teacher training, philosophy, institutional change
• 25:00–29:18: David Lynch, Beatles, celebrity and TM’s popularization
• 31:31–36:53: Fairfield, Iowa and collective meditation’s hypothesized social impact
• 38:41–43:40: Key cultural moments: Merv Griffin, research, Lynch’s journey
• 43:44–45:37: Teaching TM, advanced techniques, structure of training
• 52:07–53:53: Uniformity in TM instruction, mantra methodology
• 55:34–58:54: Chronic stress, science, blood pressure, cortisol
• 61:02–65:00: TM’s prison impact, social change
• 65:05–70:13: TM, habit formation, seven states of consciousness
• 82:49–85:15: TM for children, mantra teaching
• 86:00–89:31: Mind-body continuum, TM versus psychedelics
• 89:31–91:42: Spirituality, TM’s future, Dr. Tony Nader

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Structure and Flow

This episode unfolds organically, moving from personal memoir and storytelling to conceptual breakdowns, practical applications, historical context, and detailed reflections on TM, interspersed with memorable quotes and lessons from Maharishi and others. The tone is reflective but lively, marked by Roth’s gentle humor, deep experience, and Rick Rubin’s curiosity and warmth.

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For Newcomers

This episode is a comprehensive, inspiring, and approachable primer on Transcendental Meditation—its roots, mechanics, philosophy, scientific background, institutions, and transformative effects—making it valuable for longtime practitioners and newcomers alike.

Transcript

[Narrator]

Tetragrammaton.

[Bob Roth]

First time I sat to meditate I was at 18 year old between my freshman and sophomore year at the University of California at Berkeley in June 28, 1969. I remember it.

[Interviewer]

What were you studying?

[Bob Roth]

I wanted to be United States Senator. I wanted to change the world. I worked for Bobby Kennedy senior when I was in high school. And I grew up in a very political family. And so our thing was, you know, you have to change the world. And I thought politics at that time was the way to do it because you could make sustainable change and scalable change. And so I got to Berkeley and it was crazy. And I wasn't into drugs, I wasn't into. I was just trying to figure a way to make it. And a very good friend of mine named Peter Stevens, who I really trusted, said he was doing transcendental meditation. And I said, I'm sort of my dad's. My dad was a doctor and a scientist. So a little bit of skepticism there. I went, maybe. But he said, give it a try. And he held up a pen and he dropped a pen in his hand. He said, you don't have to believe in gravity for the pen to fall. You don't have to believe in this meditation. So my first meditation was sitting in this little room with this Sylvia Schmidt, 18 years old. I said, well, I can't be hypnotized. And first meditation. And it just blew me away because it was familiar and it was unique and it was comfortable and it was like, oh, because I had really like sort of David Lynch. I had worn thin of what the world had to offer. There had to be something more. It was not. It was almost depressing. So the meditation was a glimpse into something that was. Oh, there's an other. Well, you know, you talk about in your book spiritual world and expansion and awe. I love that awe. And so it was an experience of

[Interviewer]

awe right from the first time and

[Bob Roth]

then it didn't happen for a while and then it happened. But yeah, right from the very first one, it's like Mother Nature was saying, we're going to let you know there's something real here and then you pay your dues.

[Interviewer]

And from that time did you carry on or was there ever a time where you felt like this is not

[Bob Roth]

for me, it was just the right thing. And then August 1970, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was holding a one month course training course for teachers at Humboldt State College near Mendocino up in Northern California. And there were 2,000 people because the Beatles had learned to meditate. So it's a lot of interest on college campuses. And I remember when he walked in the door at this big hall and there was a. Again, there was like, wow, this is a real deal here. Something real. So, yeah. And I became a teacher and I've been teaching for 54 years full time.

[Interviewer]

Have you, over the years get to spend time with Maharishi?

[Bob Roth]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about him.

[Bob Roth]

I'll just say this one thing. One thing that I would do is at different points during the time, I would host reporters who would come to meet Maharishi. So I'd be outside the room and the press. The guy from AP or something, he'd be sort of skeptical and who's the Maharishi? And all that sort of thing. And then they would go in to meet with him and then 45 minutes later, they came out smiling because he wasn't anything what had been portrayed, you know, pre beetle and beetle time, real deal. I mean, like the real you write in your book. Authentic. You don't have to be original. Authentic and profoundly authentic. I felt very comfortable around him. And he never told me what to do. It was just like there's. I love transcendental meditation. I call it the democratization of meditation. Anybody can do it. You don't have to believe in it. And my whole thing is I want to change, you know, make a change in the world. He was that same message, you know. So anyway, the same guy who had the reporter asked him, what's your going to be your big contribution to the world? And he said, it's nothing. It's the same old, same old knowledge. So he was great. I love being around. But the point I wanted to make is there'd be lots of this is my nature. Lots of people would want to stay around him and study. And there would be these conferences with quantum physicists and Nobel laureates in chemistry. And then there'd be an imam and a rabbi and a priest and this person, that person. They'd all sit together with Maharishi sort of moderating, and they'd talk about deep truths of life in different vocabulary, deep truths of life. And I found it fascinating for a while, but I just wanted to take the meditation and go out and teach it. So I taught it at San Quentin Prison and I taught it at. My father was a injured war veteran and a doctor, so I taught at the VA Hospital in San Francisco. And my mom worked with under resourced kids in Marin County. I brought it in Marin City. So that was my thing. Just use it to do something like that.

[Interviewer]

Historically, was meditation kept secret before Maharishi.

[Bob Roth]

I think that you had Paramahansa Yogananda and you had some of these other great yogis who would come, teachers who would come. But I think I remember seeing Time magazine credited Maharishi with being the one who sort of broke down the barriers and made meditation accessible. And from that came the whole thing of yoga came out of that and health food stores and that sort of awakening.

[Interviewer]

It also was a four day course. And then you can do it for the rest of your life.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, it was a lifestyle. And now this is my perspective because my father was a doctor and my mother was an educator. And I wanted to be a U.S. senator. At the time, it was a sort of noble profession. I wanted to make a change. And so now our whole focus with meditation, and I run the David lynch foundation, is meditation as medicine, meditation as a healthcare intervention to address all these really significant problems, particularly trauma and stress that are gripping the world. And so do it that way. And one time someone asked Maharishi, you know, you brought this technique to bring enlightenment, and now people are using it to get rid of high blood pressure. Does that disappoint you? And he said, you pull one leg on a chair, all the legs come. So you transcend. You dive deep within. And in that transcendent. It's like watering the root of a tree. All aspects of life get nourished.

[Interviewer]

Tell me what transcendental meditation is, Rick.

[Bob Roth]

I like to use an analogy of a cross section of an ocean where you have choppy waves on the surface, and yet the ocean is silent at its depth. And the choppy waves can be likened to the. Some people call it the monkey mind. I call it the gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta, gotta mind. I gotta do this and I gotta do that, and I gotta call him and I gotta call all the godd. And it's a natural human desire to say, I'd like some inner calm, some inner equanimity, some inner connection, some inner access. And the operative word there is inner. And the question is, is there such a thing as an inner? And if so, how do we get there? And so now there's hundreds of different types of meditation. But when they do brain research, turns out there's three basic types. One is called focused attention. And that's your classic concentration form of meditation. The thinking on it is what disrupts a calm ocean? Waves. So if you could stop waves, you could have a calm ocean. So what disrupts a calm mind? Thought. So if you could stop Your thoughts or minimize thoughts. You have a calm mind, so that's a focused attention. Just that. And brainwave research shows that it creates something called gamma brainwaves, which is your brain really working hard, focus, hard, work. Second is called open monitoring. And this is a many mindfulness, observational,

[Interviewer]

open monitoring, like vipassana, maybe.

[Bob Roth]

Yes, yes, yes. I preface this by saying all these three types of meditation, absolutely fine. Just different, different things. So open monitoring, and I'm making it brief, says thoughts themselves are not the disruptor of calm, but the content of thought. So if I have a thought about a guy named Joe, and a few years ago Joe done me wrong, it's upsetting. Joe's coming. So vipassana, or open monitoring teaches me the key words here are dispassionately observe my thoughts, my moods, my feelings, be in the present moment, the reaction. That's right, be in the present moment. It's an observational. And when that meditation does something, many different types of brainwaves, but theta brainwaves, which are four to eight cycles per second and that's like onset of dreams. Now these are two cognitive approaches. They're pertaining to the waves. So then the third is self transcending, and that's transcendental meditation. Self transcending recognizes that there's a vertical dimension to the mind, that it's not just thoughts and reactions and movement and that sort of thing and how I react to things. It's a vertical dimension. And like the ocean has a depth, the mind has a depth, a vertical dimension. And transcendental meditation to transcend means, in this case you could say settle down allows your active thinking, noisy mind to just begin to settle inward and experience quieter and quieter levels of thought. And then experience what's called the source of thought. Transcendent. You talk about in your book, that field, that ocean, just unboundedness, no judgment, awe. It allows that experience effortlessly. No strain, because any strain, any agenda, any agency stops it. So it's an effortlessness. And when we do that, it creates something called Alpha 1 brain waves that's 8 to 10 cycles per second. And that's a state of restful alertness. So transcendental meditation is an effortless process that just allows the mind to dive and access that field of pure creativity, pure consciousness, pure awareness that lies within. And it has a whole constellation of

[Interviewer]

changes that take place when you bring up the vertical dimension. It sounds like the other side of it would be prayer.

[Bob Roth]

Explain what do you mean by that?

[Interviewer]

Well, prayer is connecting upward.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah. What do they say? About meditation. I don't know if you said, or someone said, prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening. Yeah. And so this is. While this is not religious, it's secular. It's just accessing the silence within. Actually, Psalms 46:10, you know, it says, be still and know that I am God. Doesn't say pray, doesn't say chant. Be still and know that I'm God. And Lao Tzu said, to one whose mind is silent, the universe surrenders. Which means you have insight into everything.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful. How did Maharishi learn this?

[Bob Roth]

He was a college student in Allahabad, came from a small town in India. And he also, I'm sure, in a much bigger way, was looking for something more. He was studying physics, he was looking for something more. And he was, I guess. And someone told him that a great yogi was going to be coming into town. And so he went to go see the yogi, and he was way in the back and he couldn't really see him because it was dark. But he just tells the story that a car drove by and the car lights flashed on. Name was Gurudev or Swami Brahmananda and flashed on his face. And it was like one of those. You just knew. It's not a question. It's not. The rational mind isn't thinking it through and analyzing it. It's just experience. And so then that was then. He wanted to stay with him, and his teacher said, no, finish college. So he finished college and then he came back to. Stayed with him for 13 years as his sort of number one, sort of chief of staff for 13 years. And then when his teacher died, Greer to have died then, Maharishi took two years of silence in Urakashi and then started traveling around teaching the meditation he had learned.

[Interviewer]

How much do we know about Pramananda, his teacher?

[Bob Roth]

Not that much. He was called a Shankaracharya of the north in one of these areas. He was very private. He had stayed in silence for. I think he was a true sort of yogi. He stayed in silence in caves in the Himalayas for 40 or 50 years. And they kept trying to bring him out and kept trying to bring him out. Finally, when World War II was really picking up, he said, okay, okay, but he didn't want us to talk that much. But he. He came out. And the idea is when you have a person of that Darshan experience, then it alone has an influence on the world. But then he got Maharishi and got people around him and collected and made practical. Meditation was so cloaked for so many years. I think the British coming to mess things up, and I think the British really fouled up a lot of the integrity of Indian culture. I mean, Ayurveda is a great healthcare system.

[Interviewer]

Practically erased.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, practically erased.

[Interviewer]

It seems like Maharishi really had a hand in bringing it back.

[Bob Roth]

He was really great. He described himself as being sort of endlessly curious. And he was having a meeting with some Ayurvedic doctors and Western doctors, both because he said they should be compatible. And someone leaned over to him to Maharishi, said, what do you know about Ayurvedic medicine? He says, not much, but in a few days I'll know a lot.

[Interviewer]

It seems like he was interested in all of the ancient wisdom, meditation being one aspect, Ayurveda being another, Vedic astrology, all of the different aspects of this, like lost wisdom that for thousands of years was the way people lived.

[Bob Roth]

That's right. And we thought it was primitive and we thought it was, you know, obscure. But actually any disease a person has, psychological, physiological, what is it? All you take the medicine but sleep, meditate, eat right, exercise, same thing. Because what are we doing? We are strengthening the body's own inner intelligence to ward off disease. So modern medicine says, you have a disease in your kidney. Let's destroy that disease in your kidney, also destroying everything. Ayurveda medicine would say, no, let's make the immune system so powerful that it can drive that out. Now, Maharishi was very adamant. He said, they work together. It's not you abandon. Whatever his thing was, whatever scientifically proven to work. He loved Chinese medicine and he loved a lot of the indigenous properties in Latin America.

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[Interviewer]

How did you go from being one of 2,000 students to spending time with Maharishi and working directly with him?

[Bob Roth]

You use the word persistence in your book. For me, it was. You know what the word dharma is? Yeah, it was my path. It was like. In Japanese, they call it ikigai. It met everything. For me personally, I loved the experience of transcending, of diving within and that silence and that peacefulness. I loved that it was a challenge because there was so much misunderstanding about Transcendental Meditation in general. Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi, I bring it on. There's a great quote from Marcus Aurelius. No one is ever hurt by knowing the truth. So I just wanted to know the truth. And the more I dug into the whole thing, beyond the sort of nonsense, it was very powerful. And so in 1972, I became a teacher. I came back to the Bay Area and I taught TM for two or three years. And then there was a Maharishi European Research University in Switzerland. So I interned there around Maharishi.

[Interviewer]

What was the research university?

[Bob Roth]

They did research on meditation. Yeah. And they would also bring in researchers. And it was also a sort of theoretical physics and consciousness. A lot of discussion about consciousness. Are you a physicalist who believes that this whole world and subjective experience is a product of the neurons in the brain? Or do you feel that consciousness is a field that. That we access as an antenna? And so Maharishi reveled in those discussions and debates. And so I just had a chance to be around a lot of wise people. And I'll say one more thing on this. I remember running video camera and there was a time when Maharishi was in the middle and it was a big conference. And on his right was Brian Josephson, who was a Nobel laureate in physics, Ilya Prigozhin, who was a Nobel laureate in chemistry. And over this side was this great rabbi and a great this. And they were talking back and forth, and it became clear it's the same reality, different vocabulary. But I remember looking through this little camera lens and thinking, this could be any time in the past where wise people got together to explore truth with no biases and no prejudices, just truth. It could have been Socrates. It could have been Jesus. It could have been Anything. And so then I had a chance to be around him more and more over the time.

[Interviewer]

What was the first time you ever spoke to him?

[Bob Roth]

I became a teacher, and I thanked him very much. I thought I had a. He taught me individually to be. To teach. He said, you know, go and make a better world. Because he felt like all the things we're doing to make a better world, yes, we have to change the healthcare system, and yes, we have to change education and government, but unless we equip human beings with the tools to awaken pure awareness, nothing's gonna work. So that was when he just. Those words and then different times. I didn't go to him to say, should I do this or should I do that? That wasn't my thing. It was like, you know, I really like to go back, and I was really into. I really liked sports when I was a kid in the San Francisco teams. And so I said, I like to bring this to, you know, sports or something like that. And. And he had a great line. Someone had told him, maharishi, good news. The Chicago Bears won or something at the Bears. And then he said, good news from the field of sports. And he said, what? Nobody lost?

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[Bob Roth]

It's a God. Yeah. Whereas. And that's the truth in anything in the outer life, one person wins. One person doesn't win, sort of. But in the transcendent, in that field of pure consciousness deep within, everybody wins.

[Interviewer]

Would you say he didn't have a sense of competition about him?

[Bob Roth]

None. He would. Sometimes people would say, well, should I see this person? He said, whatever you want. His whole thing was whatever you want to do, always. Whatever you. He used to cite this thing in the temple of Apollo in Delphi where it says, know thyself. So he took it further. He said, know thyself, be true to thyself, do what you know to be right, and don't do what you know to be wrong. You know to be wrong. Isn't that beautiful?

[Interviewer]

Four Commandments.

[Bob Roth]

That's right.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful.

[Bob Roth]

He said, that's the essence of all. That's right.

[Interviewer]

I love that.

[Bob Roth]

Can I tell you another funny Maharishi story?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Bob Roth]

So one time he was. They were building something. They were going to build a lecture hall. He had a great sense of humor. And so for me, he was like a grandfather.

[Interviewer]

How old was he when you met him?

[Bob Roth]

Well, 1970. They say in the papers that he was born in 1918. So I guess in his 52 or something like that. He first came to the United States in 1959. But anyway, so someone's showing him all these different materials that they were going to do. He didn't really need to see it, but, you know, upholstery for something. And so he'd be, what is this? This is linen. What is this? This is, you know, wool. What is this? And someone said, what is this? He said, what is this? And he said, nagahide person. He said, what's Nagahide? And the guy said, plastic. Marc said, ah, plastic. Man's gift to God. Just like that.

[Interviewer]

Very funny.

[Bob Roth]

Very funny. Very funny.

[Interviewer]

At what point in your experience of meditating did you realize, this is powerful enough that I'm going to dedicate my life to sharing this instead of going into politics as I had planned, Much

[Bob Roth]

to the chagrin of my father, who was, you know, put himself through medical school in Detroit during the Depression, delivering the Detroit News. Ahmed's oldest Jewish son, who was kind of not a doctor, a lawyer, you know something. It took me two months at Berkeley in 1968 to realize politics was not my path. Yeah, it's just too much divisiveness. It was never going to heal the soul of the nation. Politics important. But it wasn't my dharma, wasn't my path, didn't empower me. So when I started to realize that I had something that could impact scale, which is what we're doing now with the David lynch foundation, we're working with insurance companies so that TM's available to everyone in their insurance. Going to change a lot. So it just dawned. And then he passed away. I became a teacher in 1972, and he passed away in 1978. Probably was easier for him. I mean, by the. I mean, he was meditating and I would do these retreats. He came to. He was proud of me. It was a bit of a change. It was not his world.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, this wasn't his vision for your life, but this is your vision for your life.

[Bob Roth]

And he let me. And he became a doctor. And his father wanted him to stay in Detroit running their hardware store. And he went and did his thing.

[Interviewer]

So that's an interesting point you bring up about the insurance paying for meditation. I remember that Maharishi thought it was important for the meditator to pay for meditation, because you're paying for it, you treat it with the respect that it deserves.

[Bob Roth]

So he had two different things there. He wanted somebody to pay for it. Cosmically, it needed to be some gift back. And so individuals pay. But then we started with the David lynch foundation, and he loved. We were working with kids, I think it changed. Some people have criticism of TM in the past. Said, will you charge money? Well, the money is charged. We're a non profit organization and we want to have like an educational institution. So when a person learns to meditate, then for the rest of their life they can come back and there's a full time TM teacher there seven days a week or five days a week that they can have their meditation. It's not like I volunteer on Saturday afternoons. And he wanted to scale it. So the money that was charged was to help basically pay for the teachers to raise a family. When we started having schools paying for it and I taught in San Quentin Prison, he was happy about that. He just wanted it not to be out of the backs of the teachers. And also the interesting thing is now, for example, we're in a lot of hospitals and fire departments and they're under enormous stress and they're just getting crushed. And so now the hospitals and fire departments are paying for them to learn and they're doing research that shows that it actually saves money and they'll still get enlightened.

[Interviewer]

How did you come to meet David Lynch?

[Bob Roth]

I met David Lynch. I'd heard about him, that he was doing TM and then we were going to do something about. We wanted to build a meditation peace center in Los Angeles. And then we just talked a few times and I said, david, we want to try and raise awareness to build this community meditation center in la. So we held a press conference. I didn't know that much about it. Mobbed because it was David, because I'm not really this big film guy, you know. And then we just. Our paths crossed. And the thing about David and I is that we are as close to brothers as possible on a deep level and as different as possible as you could imagine. I learned so much from him. And then the foundation came up and I had always. Rick wanted to bring meditation to people in need. Always. And I think it was my upbringing. When I was 10 years old, sitting in the VA hospital in San Francisco waiting for my father to finish reading an X ray so we can go to a Giants game. He was held up. And I would see These World War II and Korean War veterans rolling by. And then he'd take me. He volunteered at San Quentin Prison. So I go over there with him. And so I always wanted to bring it to people in need. And I was talking to my friend Mario and I kept saying, why isn't there a foundation that would just give money so we could pay teachers to go into schools and just teach tm. No, there wasn't nothing. And why isn't there? And Mario finally said, oh, just stop complaining and do it yourself. I don't know what that meant. So I called up David and asked if he would do it. And then we did it together. We had not a clue what we were doing. No grand plan. I didn't know what a 501C3 was. He did not either. We didn't have any money. David was not a wealthy man. He said he made movies, famously, that people didn't pay to watch.

[Interviewer]

No, he was a true artist.

[Bob Roth]

True artist. But we started it. And then it just grew and grew and grew. And when we started it, said, you won't last a year. And now we're 20 years.

[Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Bob Roth]

So Dave and I became really close. Close. We traveled all over the world together. And the thing I wanted to say is he didn't care if anybody understood what he was doing. And my training was sort of in journalism and public policy. Is I wanted someone to understand absolutely every word. Absolutely every word. So we loved each other deeply. It was rooted in the same unboundedness. So we would just go places and we didn't get in each other's way. And the best story about this was there was a press conference that David attended with John Hagelin, Dr. John Hagelin, the physicist, then president of Maharishi International University, on the peace proposal, where if you have enough people meditating to get whether you could reduce the violence in the atmosphere and promote peace. And press conference was going great. And Maharishi was really good with the press and very punchy answers. And everything was specific and great. And he started talking about quantum physics, which he loved, and consciousness. And then he started talking and all the reporters were like, how do we end up here? And then something called the Constitution of the Universe, which was the ved from the ancient and this whole thing. And people were getting fidgeting. And I'd worked hard to get all those press there. And they were fidgeting. And I'd go, they're looking at their watch. And I leaned over to David and I whispered on the stage. I said, getting a little abstract. And David, in a very loud voice looked at me, said, bobby, for me, the more abstract the better. So that was it. And we just called each. And I talked to him every day before the two weeks before he passed away on the phone.

[Interviewer]

Did David get to spend time with Maharishi as well?

[Bob Roth]

Maharishi really loved him, really loved him. Because Authentic, truthful, immeasurably creative. Really got what Maharishi was doing. And David had to overcome because there was a lot of like the Beatles had to overcome. There was a lot of misunderstandings in the sphere about who Maharishi was and it was all not true. And Paul and Ringo said that. And I taught Sean Lennon and he said he grew up and he would see this was 10 years after Beatles had been in India. And he said every morning he'd wake up and he'd walk into his parents bedroom and they were holding hands, meditating together.

[Interviewer]

So I learned because of the Beatles.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, I did. I heard about it because of the Beatles. So he clarified a lot of misunderstandings for people. And David's integrity helped with that.

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[Interviewer]

Tell me the story of Fairfield, Iowa.

[Bob Roth]

So during the 1960s and 70s when because of the Beatles, gazillions of people were learning and I should, I should say Donovan was involved in that. Beach Boys were involved in that.

[Interviewer]

Mia Farrow as well.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of college students learning to meditate. And someone said to Maharishi we used to just have a university, regular university that offers traditional courses. But meditation is an educational methodology that would help students be able to learn more. So some people donated some money first in Santa Barbara and then some property. A university went under in Fairfield, Iowa. Parsons College. They got it for like a song and that was in 1974 and started

[Interviewer]

so it would be like a Christian university. But it's Maharishi Meditation University.

[Bob Roth]

Yes, except that there is a philosophy and a belief structure around the Christian university. Whereas this was. They have people from 60 countries and they had a Muslim temple there, and they had a Jewish, and they had all different things.

[Interviewer]

So it was a secular university. With meditation.

[Bob Roth]

With meditation, yeah, exactly. And it was, funnily enough, at the core of said. This should be at the core of learning. Students need to develop, as you say in your book, expand awareness and the universe. Expand. The universe can't expand if your awareness isn't. So expand your awareness, then the universe surrenders. And then out of that, they used it. The research was done for other ancient. These Vedic approaches. Now, Veda has been misunderstood to be Hindu, but it's not Vedic. Science predates Hinduism by forever. So Ayurveda came from that. Yoga came from that, Meditation came from that. So that's where research was done on Ayurvedic medicine and called Stepocha Veda, which is green architecture. And so it was an amazing place. And the funny thing is, I was going out to lunch with a dean of students from Yale and nyu, and I'm not affiliated with the university, but I know about it. And they said, we love what's going on at Maharishi University because meditation is at the core of their learning. And at our universities, we have it set up that if a student wants to meditate, they have to find time outside of school hours and go over to the center and learn something. We want to have it be the core curriculum that will be at the basis, because everything they're learning is going to be. And this was even before AI it's going to be out of date. And this is something, of course, they'll take carry with them for the rest of their life. So it was way ahead of and continues way ahead of its time.

[Interviewer]

How many students do you know?

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, they have online, a thousand or something like that. And they have a doctoral program. They have a big dome where people meditate.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about meditating with other people. I typically meditate by myself, but I've had the privilege of meditating in a large group and something happens.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, Mars, you heard about that in the ancient text. It talks about that individual meditation is good to get rid of the stress and enlighten my brain. But when done in groups, it also helps to get rid of the societal stress. It has an effect on the collective consciousness of society. And collective consciousness is two levels. You can go to certain areas of a city and you can feel fear or the country, you can go into war torn areas and in those war high stressed areas, blood pressure rates are high, suicide rates are high. And you go to other areas and more nature. And it's a different collective consciousness. But also, Rick, the hypothesis that there's a field of consciousness that underlies everyone and everything that we tune into and that the meditation accesses that and stirs that field and creates an influence of positivity throughout the whole collective consciousness. So the idea is to have hundreds or thousands of people doing that often and students. And someone said to Maharishi, people aren't going to believe that. And he said, doesn't matter, we're going to do it anyway. You don't have to believe in it. And then someone at the UN was saying, just try it. Everything else you've tried has largely failed. If it fails, it's just something else that failed. But imagine, imagine if it worked. And they have research like 40 studies that shows that violence goes down and crime goes down and, and even for

[Interviewer]

the individual meditators, I know you felt it. When you're meditating with a large group, something's huge. It gets very deep.

[Bob Roth]

People said, so are you praying for peace? He said, no, no. It's what happens when you turn on a light. You're lighting the filament, that's all you're doing. But the filament goes out to the glass and spreads out into the light fills the room. Light fills the room from that one filament. So we as human beings and our nervous systems, the hypothesis here is that there's a couple of hypothesis that there is a field that connects us all together, underlies everyone and everything. There's research that suggests that, but that we as human beings in our meditations can access that quite purely and have a powerful positive influence for ourself. And then without even thinking about it, radiates outward.

[Interviewer]

From the time you met Maharishi until the time he passed, did he change at all?

[Bob Roth]

First 25 years, he was at it for 50 years. First 25 years he focused a lot on transcendental meditation, making that sort of understood. And the research, oversaw the really encouraged research and explaining the mechanics and training teachers. He trained thousands and thousands of teachers. So then somehow in 1975 or 80, he switched and he said, now I want to start going back into these ancient texts of this Vedic science of consciousness, because modern medicine was going askew, as we know. It's money and it's drugs and it's all that. And so he said, let's look at this. Ayurveda strengthened. And then he said, even with architecture, he said, okay, there's this whole boom on green architecture. 90% of our life is spent indoors. And so there's an understanding that if you have toxic materials that influences you. But Maharishi took it another step further. He said, just getting rid of the toxic materials isn't necessarily awakening a person. So he said, from this ancient Ayurveda thing called Vastu architectures to Pacheved, he said, they told you, oh, when you build your house, orient it. So you get a morning sun coming into your kitchen and then in the evening you don't want the sun coming into your bedroom. So the sun, your bedroom should be here. So orientation parallel to fingers, very similar. Remember, it's just Himalayas. Yeah, absolutely. Like pulse diagnosis is something in Ayurveda and it's something in Chinese medicine. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Along the years, what have been the big moments that impacted the TM movement?

[Bob Roth]

I would say in 1975, Merv Griffin learned to meditate.

[Interviewer]

So Maharishi was on the Merv Griffin three times. I've never seen that.

[Bob Roth]

Oh, I'll see if I can get you a link, please. Yeah, and they hit it off really well. It's a great story. David said that because he was a super strong meditator right from the beginning and he used to go to group meditations every weekend and all that, he heard that Maharishi was going to be at the studio. So he was late and he and his sister I think got in the car and they raced through traffic in LA and they were late and they got there, place was mobbed and then everybody was being funneled upstairs. And he said, for some reason, and he knows not why, the woman at the door said, come with me. And he and his sister, two seats had just opened up, front row, right in the middle.

[Interviewer]

Meant to be.

[Bob Roth]

Meant to be, yeah.

[Interviewer]

The universe was.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, that's right.

[Interviewer]

Supporting this process.

[Bob Roth]

That's exactly right. So that was the merv Griffin Show. 50,000 people were learning TM every month in the United States. It was a big thing all over the world. And then Maharishi said, okay, now it's time to start these other approaches. Not just non toxic, but you talk about more aligned we are with nature. So in Ayurvedic medicine, it's harnessing the natural power of the human immune system in building, it's harnessing the power of the sun along with the green. And so that was a big thing. David Lynch 2005 and it's not obvious

[Interviewer]

that David's interest would change things in the way that it did.

[Bob Roth]

People used to always stand up and say, what's Mr. Bliss? You know, what is you, the mister. The new Mr. Bliss, making these movies, you know, how do you. Because David started meditating in 1973, I'll tell you that story. So he famously talks about this where he had everything he wanted. You know, he graduated film school and he had everything he wanted. He was working on Eraserhead, and he wasn't happy. And he could figure out, I have everything. Why aren't I happy? He kept hearing the line, true happiness lies within. And he said it was a cruel statement because they don't tell you where the within is and they don't tell you how to get there. Very cruel, very frustrating to him. Very literal. Where's the within? How do I get there? Then he said he kept hearing about that meditation could be a way to go within, but he didn't know what meditation to do. So he started looking at different things, and he didn't know how to choose. Didn't know how to choose. And then he tells the story that one Saturday he got a phone call from his sister. And just about whatever. He said, what's going on? She said, what do you mean? He said, what's going on? Your voice, it's changed. And she said, what? He said, no, it's changed. What are you doing? And she said, I just started transcendental meditation. He said, that's it. And he just knew. So he learned transcendental meditation.

[Interviewer]

And because he heard the energy in her voice change, did everything better?

[Bob Roth]

Better. Yeah, better.

[Interviewer]

And he wanted that.

[Bob Roth]

He wanted that authentic. He said he didn't really care about any of the research, although he liked it for. He understood we had to do it in order to prove it to the insurance companies, in order to get. But he said, that's not why he didn't like you. Yeah, he could care less.

[Interviewer]

It's the least interesting part to me is the science of it.

[Bob Roth]

I know.

[Interviewer]

I just know that it works.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah. Like, wouldn't it be great if 300 million people could have access to this, to their healthcare system? One time a person said to me, do you want everyone in the world to meditate? And I said, that's very presumptuous. Yeah. I can't say that I would like everyone to know what it is. Have everyone access to it. And if you're a single mom and you don't have funding or if you don't have a place, I'D like. The hospitals are now setting up meditation rooms that I like. I can't tell a person they should do it now. I have it available. But Anyway, it was Mr. Bliss and some of the great things he would say is you don't have to die to do a death scene and you don't have to suffer in order to show suffering. In fact, if you have broadened awareness, you're much more capable of really truthfully expressing that human emotion. Then if you're lost in another human emotion, then you can't. But if you're back here, then you're free to do whatever you want to do. And the fact that David, when you said what were the biggest things? I think David lynch, he just changed everything. And we started a foundation. And the foundation is now one and a half million adults and children have learned to meditate in the US and all over the world. And we're working in 100 hospitals offering it to doctors and nurses and veterans and war torn areas. And I would like it to be 5 million in the next three years.

[Interviewer]

How many meditators are there, period?

[Bob Roth]

12 million. 12 million.

[Interviewer]

12 million, yeah.

[Bob Roth]

TM. TM. And it's not as you know, it's not a quick fix sort of thing. It's not like you can just sign up for it. When you learn it, it's taught over four consecutive days. The first day is in personal instruction. The second, third and fourth day can either be in personal instruction or it can be remote. But it takes more time. And then there's a whole follow up program that you have access to for

[Interviewer]

people who really fall in love with it. Are there more advanced techniques? What would those be?

[Bob Roth]

There are advanced techniques. Maharishi described them as TM is like planting a seed. When you learn tm, your teacher gives you a mantra which is a word or a sound that has no meaning associated with it, no positive effects, and then teaches you how to use it properly. There's advanced techniques that can come along that he described as like fertilizer, like, okay, you planted the tree and you can just water it, but at certain times if you add a little nitrogen or something that can help it grow. And in the ancient, there's a book called the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is the sort of the classic yoga textbook, 2,500 years old. And in it Maharishi Patanjali talked about the first half of the book. He described transcending that dive within. And again, it's not controlling the surface, it's accessing the depth. And then the second half of the book is what can you do if you're established permanently on that level? And so he came out with a city S I D H I CIDI program which Patanjali said ways of strengthening. How creative can we be? How refined and accurate can my senses be? My sense of sight, my sense of hearing? So he came out with the city program program which was more advanced than tm. But TM is the basis of the whole thing.

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[Bob Roth]

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[Interviewer]

Do you admire if you write any

[Bob Roth]

books, Science of Being and Art of Living which. And also he did a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita. The first six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita and then other books, but much more along these lines of Ayurveda medicine and more technical.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about the first book, the

[Bob Roth]

main book, Science of Being and Art of Living.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Bob Roth]

He came to the United States in 1959. He had been in India from 1955 to 1957. He traveled around India by himself teaching the meditation. 58. And then someone when he was in India said, well, you know, you should go to the United. You should take this, go this, go around the world in his 40s. So someone bought him a plane ticket to go to San Francisco.

[Interviewer]

Air flight was new in the 1940s. Yeah. Yeah.

[Bob Roth]

Well this was 1959. 58. But travel. He traveled around India just on train by himself.

[Interviewer]

But it was a new idea even to be able to do this.

[Bob Roth]

So new. He'd never been anywhere.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, he had never been Nobody had been anywhere.

[Bob Roth]

Nobody had been anywhere. And he grew sort of rural India, so he was just. Everything was brand new. And he just. The story he tells is he was in a cave for two years, which David and I saw the cave in India where he meditated for two years in Uttarkashi, which is called the Valley of the Saints. And it's just his master had passed away, and this was it. He was just going to retire, and he was just going to go in. And then after about two years, this thought kept coming up, and it was Ramashram, which. Ramashram was this place in the south of India, and it just kept coming up. And he said, why this? What's this thought? Everything was like, quiet and silent and pure and just Ramashram. And so he asked one of his buddies, yogis, who was there, and he said, I just keep having the thought. The yogi said, go to Rama Asram and get rid of the thought. Yeah, yeah. So he traveled two years to get to Ramashram, teaching transcendental meditation. He had to overcome a lot because in India, everybody knows what meditation is. So here's this person who's got. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. And he said, no, it's effortless. There's no effort and there's no dogma and there's no all this stuff around it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he was successful, and he set up some centers. And then when he was in India, Ramashram, he gave a big talk. And at the end of the talk, there was like 10,000 people. He said, we want to spiritually regenerate the world. And for him, spiritual was not religion. It was the essence of humanity, Awaken the essence of humanity in everyone. So then someone bought him a plane ticket. Basically, he went to countries in the east and then Asia, and then he came to San Francisco. Great story. He recalled it. So he gets to San Francisco, and he's welcomed by a Buddhist society. And he's giving a speech one night to a group of people in Buddhist society about enlightenment. And the next day, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, I've seen it, says, yogi brings meditation to fight insomnia. And he read it, and he said, it made me want to go home. He said, if this. I'm bringing a message of enlightenment and people in America are using it to go to sleep. I don't know what I'm doing here. But then the next moment, he realized again, it doesn't matter why a person learns, they get all the benefits. You water the root of a tree for one branch, all the branches are nourished. And so he then came to Los Angeles and started traveling around. One of the biggest things was in 1959, he had a meeting with scientists at the Sequoia national park. And they sort of planned how they could do this. Actually, you asked me the biggest thing from the Beatles. I forgot something. In 68 and 69, Dr. Robert Keith Wallace and a researcher from Harvard did the first research on Transcendental Meditation. And they looked at what happened to the brain, and they looked what happened to blood pressure and oxygen consumption. And it showed profound changes took place. And it ended up as a main. Published in the Science and Scientific American. And that really opened the floodgates, because for Maharishi, there's no difference between physiology and consciousness, spirituality and matter. It's a continuum. Just like we know that there's no break between mind and brain and body. It's a continuum. And so if you see things that are going on in the brain that are distinct, that is a measure of what's going on in consciousness. So he said, let's. We're in a very materialistic society. Let's look that. So he really pushed the science.

[Interviewer]

I was told that the words used by a TM teacher when they teach meditation, from the beginning, it's always the same words, and they're the exact same words as if Maharishi himself was teaching you meditation. Is that true? That's amazing.

[Bob Roth]

Carrying on because he wanted. He wanted to be sure that if a person came to. Genuinely came to learn to meditate, yes. There was no diminishment, because this person or that person, he wanted it to be as impactful as possible. So when I learned it, I learned that my teacher Sylvia didn't speak great English, but I understood it enough. And it didn't matter how charismatic the person was or anything. Here is the instruction. The mind. There's choppy waves on the surface, silence at its depth. That's your own innermost self. How do I get from up here, down here? And so Maharishi brought out a few key teachings that had not been around. First of all, the idea that there's a transcendent, that it's not just surfing the waves, that you can access an ocean of consciousness within. That was a big one. But he also said, people said, well, meditation, you have to control the mind. You have to make effort, concentration. The mind is a monkey. Monkey mind has to be corralled, and that's hard. That takes effort. And he said, no, the mind is not a monkey. The natural tendency of the mind, given the opportunity, will be to be drawn to something more satisfying, again, enjoyable. You're in a room listening to terrible music and beautiful music comes on in the other room. Your attention goes to that. There's no effort for that. So then he said, okay, the mind is.

[Interviewer]

There's nothing to figure out, no, nothing

[Bob Roth]

to figure out at all. The mind is drawn to something more satisfying inside. Really not. You could have big words, pure consciousness, doesn't matter, Innermost, quiet self. Quiet self. So he said, all we have to do is give the attention of the mind an inward direction, like teach a child how to dive, take the correct angle, and the mind will be drawn inward because deeper levels are increasingly more satisfying. So the settling is effortless. Any effort, any forcing, any strain, any agenda, any goal slows the whole thing down. And then he gave a mantra that had no meaning and told a person how to use it as a catalyst and taught them how to use it effortlessly.

[Interviewer]

Do different people react to learning in a different way?

[Bob Roth]

So I've been teaching for 52 years. Thousands and thousands of people. In the beginning days, everybody thought meditation was bogus and they didn't think they could do it. Now people will come to me and they'll say, I know it's good for me, I know it works. I don't think I can do it. I've tried. I've tried to clear my mind of thoughts. I've tried. And the comment that when they open their eyes from the first meditation, 98.9% of the time it's, oh, I didn't know that was inside. That's easy. So, no, it's the same. And even because of David, I've taught well known people. And although I spend much more time just teaching veterans and they're all the same, doesn't matter how much money you have, you're worried about your kid or you can't sleep at night.

[Interviewer]

So what is the relationship between TM and stress?

[Bob Roth]

There's two aspects to the stress process. One is called stressors. So stressors are demands and challenges that come at us. Covid was a stressor. Having a child who's sick when you have to get to work is a stressor. Change in job, change in this. Those are stressors. External. This other component to produce stress is called my stress response. How do I react to that news? How do I react to losing a job? Or my face is I don't look as young as I used to, or there's a change in a relationship, or I have 10 things to do, and I only have time to do two. My stress response, I have control over that. Did I sleep well? Did I exercise? Am I eating properly? Am I meditating? Then my stress response, my ability to handle is bigger. And then that thing doesn't conquer me. I'm not a victim. Whereas if I didn't take care of myself, the same thing happens. It's crushing. So stress is that product. Stress is a part of everyday life. The big question is chronic stress. That's the residue that builds up day after day after day after day. That doesn't go away even though I've slept as much as I can and eaten properly. And all the medicines you have, they reduce the symptom of high blood pressure, the symptom of anxiety, the symptom of depression, but does nothing to get rid of the chronic stress at its basis. And I think that's the uniqueness of Transcendental Meditation.

[Interviewer]

What does TM do for blood pressure?

[Bob Roth]

So the National Institutes of Health over the last 20 years have given $30 million and the Department of Defense to study the effects of TM on high blood pressure. And it turns out that TM is as effective, if not more effective, than all the antihypertensive medication for reducing high blood pressure. 110 million people suffer from high blood pressure in America. It's the number one killer. The news that just came out from the American Heart association is that they looked at all the different types of meditation for heart disease and high blood pressure. Based on research, they said only transcendental Meditation reduces high blood pressure. Amazing. Yeah. Because it gives the body rest.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Bob Roth]

It's not a cognitive process, gives the body rest. There's something called cortisol, which is a stress hormone. And a good night's sleep will drop cortisol levels 10%, and 20 minutes of TM drop at 30 to 40%.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Bob Roth]

Nothing else in 20 minutes keeps it down.

[Interviewer]

Is the level of rest achieved in 20 minutes of TM deeper than in a night's sleep?

[Bob Roth]

It doesn't take the place of sleep. Sleep has a whole scientific profile. Profile does different stuff. It's actually unique. It's very deep, but it's a different state. It's a state of restful alertness where the body is profoundly rested and the mind is settled. When we go to sleep, we're unconscious, and when we're dreaming, it's sort of hallucinatory. But in that transcendent state in meditation, you're deeply rested and wide awake inside, you know, pure awareness. It's Awareness.

[Interviewer]

What is coherence?

[Bob Roth]

Coherence is that constructive interference. Coherence is. And you'll find it in your work. When you're all on the same page.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Bob Roth]

Even the research shows when a musician and the audience, or a musician with another musician or a musician with a producer or on the same page, their brainwaves line up. They just. They line up like the same brainwave. So when you say we're on the same wavelength, it's literally true.

[Interviewer]

Literally true.

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[Interviewer]

Tell me about TM in prisons.

[Bob Roth]

So when I was a kid, my dad used to volunteer once a week at San Quentin Prison. He was a radiologist to read X rays. So I used to get to go with him. And that was eye opening. And then in the evenings, there was within the gates, but not within the actual walls. There was a cafeteria that was served by, they call them trustees by the inmates. So everybody wanted to go out to dinner with the Roths, all my friends, because we could go to San Quentin prison and be served by. That was like when you're 12 years old, that's like the biggest thing. So I always had this desire when I became a teacher that I want to bring it to San Quentin. And it was going on as a fellow George Ellis.

[Interviewer]

This was the first prison to have it.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah. No, there was one in. Second one. There was one in Walpole Prison in Massachusetts, but in the US And a fellow George Ellis was a pioneer. And he got the guy who was the head of Hell's Angels who was behind bars to become a great advocate for TM at San Quentin. But I'll just tell you this one story that stands out. I'm like 2423. And to go into the prison, you have to go through four huge gates, walls, doors, and at each door, you have to sign something four times that says, if you're taken hostage, they will not negotiate for your surrender. So you do that four times. And then when I got behind bars, this is this grassy quad, almost like a university. Very surreal. And then when you look around, the guy who was hosting us from behind bars, he said, well, that's where death row is, and that's where this is, and that's where that is. And the stress was. I could start feeling this because it's San Quentin.

[Interviewer]

You feel the doors close behind you

[Bob Roth]

each time you go through each time. And lock.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Bob Roth]

And just the stress because the most violent of human beings in that area were all locked up. So, anyway, the point is, I did a group meditation. We went down into a basement, and there were 30 men there. And I had them all close their eyes and meditate. It was subjectively the deepest meditation to this day I've ever had in my life. Just. I could barely open my eyes. And afterwards, the guard said, you had members of the. At the time, the Mexican mafia, the Black Panthers, the Aryan this, the violent gangs. None of them within the prison themselves would have ever closed their eyes or turned their back to any of them. And we all sat there. I was so innocent. I didn't even know the significance. I thought, wow. And Maharishi used to call that initiative freedom behind bars.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful. And if you think about the stress level in prison, how high it must be, the reason it could be as deep of a meditation as it was is because of the nature of how much stress they're under. There's so much room to go.

[Bob Roth]

Exactly right. The contrast is so great, the men and women. We did women's prisons, too, and one of the research that came out from San Quentin initially showed that 80% of all crimes are committed by repeat offenders. It's called recidivism. 80%. And the meditating men who left San Quentin. Number was cut in half. So it didn't completely eliminate it because we didn't have the support system when they got out. But it was a huge contrast.

[Interviewer]

Were the inmates receptive? Did they want to learn?

[Bob Roth]

Yeah. Oh, desperate for it. Desperate. I mean, some people, to put it this way, the ones who wanted to learn. But we had waiting lists. We had a waiting list of everybody on death row was wanting to learn in San Quentin. And then we did programs in. In Oregon State Penitentiary and outside of Salem and Walpole and different places. And prisons around the world.

[Interviewer]

How has your relationship to the practice changed over the course of your life?

[Bob Roth]

You know how you have the term second nature? Well, before second nature is third or fourth nature. So when you first learn it, it's sort of out there and you're sort of grappling with it. And again, to use the science terms, you form neural pathways. So if when someone is learning a guitar to play guitar, they move their fingers, but there's actual pathways in the brain that allows them to do that. And the more you do it, the more super fluid playing the piano or playing guitar is. You have the neural pathways. Your brain knows how to do it. So you can go from fourth nature, third nature, and then something becomes second nature. And now for me, it's like first nature, you had said in your book, when it never leaves, when that pure awareness of that awareness never leaves. And that's called cosmic consciousness. In that there's seven states of consciousness. That's the fifth, and that's cosmic consciousness. So I'm not saying I'm in cosmic consciousness, but that change is just me.

[Interviewer]

Do you know the seven stages? Walk me through them.

[Bob Roth]

Sleep state, unconscious, dream state, waking state. And that's what we're in. And those are called three relative states of consciousness. And we go through them eight hours. Eight hours. Something like that. Now, have you ever been when you're just waking up or just falling asleep, and there's a sort of like a twilighty sort of zone where you're just sort of awake, but your mind is settled and you're not awake or asleep? Ever had that? Yeah. Gap that is a little hint of a state of consciousness that underlies all those three states is sort of like you can have a curtain and there's a light and then there's a curtain and then there's a curtain. But behind it is consciousness. That's said to be consciousness. So lots of people have had that experience of that's a pure consciousness or fourth. It's called in Sanskrit, turiyatit, fourth state.

[Interviewer]

And that is that when we have the feeling sometimes of falling.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, that's a process of that getting to that. Exactly. Yeah. That transcending. Now the actual transcendent is not falling, a sense of falling or emotion. It's just I am ness. It is ness is ness. So that's a fourth state of consciousness. And there's a neurophysiology of that transcendent state. And so anyway, that just move along. That's the fourth state. That's a meditative State Wordsworth describes it. I'll send it to you. The quote, it's a beautiful quote where he said, in that serene and blessed mood where I'm like, late asleep in body but wide awake in mind.

[Interviewer]

Beautiful.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, that's a beautiful quote.

[Interviewer]

Didn't know he was a tmer.

[Bob Roth]

No. The nice thing is it's throughout time, you know? Throughout time. So then when you go from living life and then meditating and then living your life and meditating and living your life, what happens is the neural pathways are established of that process of transcending, and then you don't lose it. Your connection to that capital T H a T, that, that awareness, that silence, that quiet. I mean, I have all these quotes. Awareness is not a state you force. There's little effort involved through persistence, though persistence is key. It's something you actively allow to happen really in mind here, one last one. Awareness needs constant refreshing. Meditating. If it becomes a habit, even a good habit, it needs to be reinvented again and again until one day, underline. You notice that you are always in the practice of awareness at all times, in all places, living your life in a state of constant openness to receiving. That's cosmic consciousness. That's the fifth state. So there's a meditative state where you're refreshing, where you're diving within. Cosmic consciousness is where I know myself in life. I am established and not losing that. And that is a big state. Sixth state is called refined cosmic consciousness. Religious people have called it God consciousness, call it refined cosmic consciousness. And that is, okay, come out of a meditation or you're feeling particularly connected, and then your senses are so acute and you hear things and you see things and you know things and nature. Beautiful. And so that sixth state is, I'm infinite, unbounded in myself. Outside, I'm enjoying everything to its maximum, almost celestial perception. But there's one state beyond that, and that's unity. And that's the great ancient Vedic term. I am that thou art that. All of this is nothing but that. And so unity, you still see it's beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty, beauty. But then you transcend that. And then you see the one unity that underlies everything. Be still and know oneness. Oneness. You're not creating it. No, you are accessing it. It's coming to you. It's there, it's there, it's there.

[Interviewer]

We just don't see it.

[Bob Roth]

That's right. And then as you go along, you become more sensitive to the fact that, oh, if I eat this stuff or If I smoke that stuff or if I do those things, it just puts a cloud on the nervous system. It's not necessary what you have already, what the brain is producing, the dopamine and all the different things. Endorphins is a million times more satisfying than anything you could take from the outside.

[Interviewer]

So does TM help people with addictions?

[Bob Roth]

100 million percent. Because it doesn't tell you, don't do that. It gives you an experience of the happiness that you're looking for outside or the relief from pain that you're looking for outside. So it opens your awareness to that. And where is that field in yourself was always there. And so it gives the brain and the heart a new experience that overrides that destructive experience. What experience does, it gives the heart the experience of happiness. And what knowledge does it satisfies the doubts in the mind. You don't have true knowledge until you have both the experience and the understanding. Someone gives you something to eat. You say, that's delicious. What is it? Strawberry. Oh, okay. So that's what you have when you meditate and when you learn tm, you're given the experience, and then you're given this knowledge to explain the experience.

[Interviewer]

I remember at one point in time, Maharishi wanted to build an amusement park, Veda Land. What do you remember about that?

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, he wanted to bring out the fact he was going to do it near Niagara Falls. But now I heard someone's building it in India. It's just expensive. He wanted to give this, like, I was like the statement when I was growing up, well, I'll believe it if I see it. Yeah, as if the senses had a clue what was going on in the world. The human senses in many ways are very limited. So Vaderland was going to give you, with, I guess with AI and computer is like dive deep into the molecular level, atomic, atomic level, subatomic. Like have an experience.

[Interviewer]

It'd be like a demonstration. Yes, I see.

[Bob Roth]

Yes. And your demonstration of what that celestial perception would be and what, like, so you could see it for real. Because the notion that our senses have a clue of what's going, actually going on in the universe. I mean, the light, what do we see? Our band of light, it's just like nothing. Visible light is nothing compared to what is the universe is expressing.

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[Interviewer]

What do you remember about your time in Italy and Spain with Maharishi?

[Bob Roth]

I was 21 year. 2021 years old. I had gotten time off from Berkeley.

[Interviewer]

Had you been to Europe before?

[Bob Roth]

I was a foreign exchange student and for two months in my June, between my junior and senior year in high school, I went to Holland.

[Interviewer]

And was that a great experience?

[Bob Roth]

It was a great experience. I really liked it. So I was 21 and there were 2,000 people from all over the world and it was being run, the whole thing. Basically the team organization was being just run by people my age, so sorting out hotels and all that. And every day we saw Maharishi and every day we could ask him questions. And it was profoundly illuminating.

[Interviewer]

How many people were there?

[Bob Roth]

2,000 people. Wow. 2,000 people from all over the world. That was a time when we wanted to change the world and also at a time when people were taking drugs for whatever. And Maharishi's message was higher states of consciousness without drugs and that the human brain is the best pharmacy and will release the drugs at the right time in the right proportions and far more than you could ever imagine from a plant. You know, I like to say I'm. I'm a leftover from the 60s. I still want to do the same thing I wanted to do then. It was make a better world.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about the TM organization over the years, from the earliest days and what it grew into.

[Bob Roth]

So the earliest days. There's an article from the Hawaiian Hawaiian Advertiser, I think it's called. In 1958 or something, Maharishi had arrived and he was staying in a YMCA in Honolulu. And it said, meet A yogi for meditation instruction. Free. It was like that, you know, and people would come at this. This time he was by himself. And so then he came to San Francisco. He went to Los Angeles.

[Interviewer]

Did he speak English from the beginning?

[Bob Roth]

He spoke English from college days. And he got better and better and better at it. And then he went to Los Angeles. So people started setting up centers everywhere. And he said there was no grand plan because it was the way you talk about creativity. The next thing emerged, oh, you know, here he is fully present in Los Angeles. And then someone says, I know someone in London and there's a house and there's this and there's that. Or when he was in Malaysia, I know a Buddhist temple in San Francisco. So it was just. Which I love.

[Interviewer]

It happened by itself.

[Bob Roth]

Happened by itself. As Maharishi used to say, nature knows best how to organize. And then there were the first people who were. The leaders of the TM organization were in their 50s. And Jerry Jarvis. Jerry Jarvis ran the TM organization in the United States from like 1964 to 65 until 1975 or 78.

[Interviewer]

He told me that Maharishi had him learn how to fly a helicopter so that he could bring Maharishi around.

[Bob Roth]

He was great. He was also a great jazz musician.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

I loved him.

[Bob Roth]

Yeah. And then research came out and then the Beatle thing came. And then Maharishi turned it over basically to a new generation of college students. And it was Students International Meditation Society. And that was in place for decades.

[Interviewer]

Was he involved much in the business end or did the business run itself?

[Bob Roth]

Well, Jerry would be in touch. Jerry would call up and say, this is. You know, periodically there'd be. Wasn't day to day. I don't think it was like enough going on. But he'd give reports and Maharishi was a great manager of people. They say an enlightened person is the ability to focus. You know, you have that go deeply into something and everything else disappears. And go deeply, deeply, deeply. That's.

[Interviewer]

And then move on to the next thing.

[Bob Roth]

Move on to the next thing. And that the past is the past. And here's the next thing.

[Interviewer]

How does CM relate to creativity and making art?

[Bob Roth]

They used to think that in the brain, the hemisphere, the right hemisphere, maybe. Do you ever hear that you're a creative person, you're this type of a person, the left hemisphere. You are a scientist, a researcher, that sort of thing. And that was taught everywhere. Turns out that's not true. Turns out creativity is a product of networks within the brain, and there are three main networks within the brain. The brain works really hard when you're focused. So really on target, you're focused in your journey, and it's exhausting. Your brain is 2% of the. The weight of your body, and it uses up 20% of the energy. So that's why if you really focus for a long time, you're tired. So that's called the attention control center. And that's where Rick is just. Just locked in. So then researchers wanted to know, well, what does the brain do when it shuts down? It's just not focused when it just rests. So they said, okay, let's see, what, what, what happens? And they, and they. What does the brain default to? And so they said, all right, the brain defaults to. It's not focused on anything. And they were very dismissive of that. And they called it the default mode network. Creative name. What does it default to? And they said, it's a waste of time. You're daydreaming, your mind is wandering. Well, now they have new names for the default mode network. One is called the imagination network. But here's the best one. The genius lounge is that Great, Great. The genius lounge, that's when you're not focused. When you're gone for the walk, when you're taking the hot shower, when you're not concentrated, Some guy's trying to work on something or something out, and the wife says, honey, you just gotta go for a walk too much. Genius lounge is when the brain is not focused. And that's where David lynch says you can catch the big fish deep within. And you talk about it all the time in your book. So the genius lounge and the creative process is you have the experience, the inspiration, the cognition, and then that shuts down. And then you focus, and then you have the attention control network. So now your brain is focused. So that's the analysis, and the first is the creation. All of your words, one or the other. Stress undermines both. So if you're stressed, you can't focus. And if you're stressed, they call it the writer's block. Well, here's the interesting thing. They studied 200 of top creative minds, conductors and mathematicians, and they wanted to see if the brain was the same. Turns out that those brains have a unique ability to both focus and, and innovate, and they don't get in the way of each other. So while you're focused on something here, good ideas can come up. And so you're not lost on that thing. So the creative process is the process of the. Of the genius Lounge and then the ability to make it happen. And David would answer me, having given you the Bob answer, David would say that transcendent field is a field of infinite creativity, infinite love, infinite power, infinite happiness, infinite truth. And when you experience that, then whatever you're doing embodies that.

[Interviewer]

That's probably why I feel like learning TM when I was 14 was the most significant thing that ever happened to me in my life.

[Bob Roth]

A very formative time, the ideal time.

[Interviewer]

How do children do with TM from

[Bob Roth]

the age of about 4 or 5 to the age of 10 or 12, they get a word of wisdom. They get a walking mantra. So they're given a mantra, but they don't sit with their eyes closed to meditate. The nervous system not strong enough yet. So the parents can take 5 to 10 for about 5 years old to 10 or 12 years old. Okay, yeah. And the parent, they can do it while drawing. They do it with their eyes open. They say a mantra silently inside. And it has a wonderful, at an early age, resonant quality to the nervous system and makes the nervous system more vital and resilient. From about the age of 12 on, they get the sitting technique and they're 12. They do it for 12 minutes. 13, 13 minutes, 14 up to 20, and then 20 minutes, you're set.

[Interviewer]

Nice. Talk to me a bit about the mantras.

[Bob Roth]

So a mantra is a word or a sound that has couple syllables, has no meaning associated with it. And the reason for a mantra is the mind likes to think. And you tell the mind, don't think. Clear your mind of thoughts. It's a battle. So a mantra in TM is a word or a sound that has no meaning associated with it. And the mantras in TM come from a ancient, ancient tradition over 6,000 years old. Some people incorrectly say they're Buddhist, this or that. They're not. They're just sounds with no meaning. Because if it a meaning, then you're stuck up here. That part of your analytical part of your brain doesn't allow you to transcend. So some people will say, oh, it's just a mantra meditation. There's a, you know, Kiem is a highfalutin mantra. Meditate. There's a zillion mantra meditations. You can go on, you know, you can just get a book. They'll give you a mantra, you repeat it. Here's the other thing. That Maharishi's insight was that the thinking of the mantra is not a Clear pronunciation, that's an effort. And that keeps the brain and your body, that's force. You're forcing, you're not letting it happen. So that one reason why when you learn TM from a teacher in personal instruction, they give you the mantra and then they teach you how to use it effortlessly, gently, naturally, and no forcing that allows frees the mind to dive within. Again, any effort, even a little bit, stops the process.

[Interviewer]

I remember the subtlety in learning. It's easy to question whether you're doing it properly or not. So having a teacher was very helpful calming those concerns.

[Bob Roth]

And that's a tradition. I mean, that's an ancient oral tradition. Even now when you have all this stuff, people have said to me, well, you know, there's AI, you don't need to have personal instruction or whatever. And although there's a swing back of people don't want AI, they want a human being to human being. So a teacher teaches them. So you learn once and you learn it properly.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about the relationship between our mind and our body.

[Bob Roth]

There's no difference. So there's a field in science called the pnei, which is the psyche. Neuroendocrine system, immune system, psyche, that's. You see something neuro, it impacts my brain. So now I'm afraid I just saw something. Now I'm afraid my brain registers something called the amygdala, registers fear. That sends a message to my adrenal glands that sit on top of your kidneys. Your adrenal glands pump out cortisol and adrenaline. And now you're in what's called fight or flight. And then when you're on Fight or flight, you have cortisol. Absolutely. Too much of it destroys your immune system. That's why if a person's highly stressed, they get sick a lot, or if they're seeing negative things all the time, it's not healthy for them. And that's a continuum. There's no door from the mind. So sight, mind, grain, the endocrine system and your immune system. So it's one continuum. And that's why, you know, they have the lines. You are what you eat or what you see, you become. You metabolize. If you're watching, they say if you're watching horrible movies all the time or you're, whatever you're around people, you become that. We metabolize everything. The beautiful thing about meditation is it gives us the freedom not to be a victim of that. So if that's the case, what, I can't leave my room. I Have to stay inside. I can't know because then you have that stressor, stress response. Then I've got build up my resilience. And that's why it works so effectively with veterans. It helps them heal from PTSD who've been overwhelmed by that pnei.

[Interviewer]

Is there any relationship between TM and psychedelic drugs?

[Bob Roth]

Someone asked Maharishi once about psychedelic drugs. They said they're trying to kick in the door to heaven. Yeah. It remains to be seen if it doesn't have a very destructive effect on some of the subtle mechanisms in the human nervous system. Subtle fibers of the human nervous system. I remember when I was, I had a job at a plant nursery in Berkeley and during the holiday season they'd bring in these azaleas that were just gorgeous, fully bloomed, just. And then they'd bring in these little azalea plants in these five gallon cans that had a few flowers on them. But you know, this was so beautiful. Well, the force bloomed. Those flowers never bloomed again. They were artificially jammed to create something and it damaged or if they did, it was just. It just almost destroyed them. Whereas the one that grew in the little five gallon can and you put it in the soil and you water it and you grew and grew and grew and became something for years and years and years. Azalea. So let's give the human nervous system what it needs to grow and it will help fulfill our desires.

[Interviewer]

I believe Maharishi suggested not to drink alcohol or take any drugs. Two weeks prior to learning tm.

[Bob Roth]

That was marijuana and drugs. Marijuana was too.

[Interviewer]

Not alcohol.

[Bob Roth]

No, alcohol was. I'll tell you why it was a few days. It wasn't a moral thing. He wanted people to have a clear experience in the meditation. And alcohol is a carbohydrate that metabolized through the system much faster. Marijuana had a longer residue.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[Bob Roth]

So he just said afterwards you decide what you want to do. But if you're going to learn this, I want you to have a clear experience.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about the spiritual aspect to Transcendental meditation.

[Bob Roth]

I think that true spirituality is the essence and the highest of humanity. It's the essence of human love, it's the essence of human creativity. It's the essence of human intelligence. It's the essence of human kindness. It's the essence of human strength. It's the essence, it's the highest, it's universal. And so a person can be spiritual and religious, but they're different. There's that essence. But when you read the experiences of the Great saints of all religions. They all have the experience of transcendence. It's all there. Just the vocabulary is different. And when Maharishi talked about the spiritual regeneration movement, it was to regenerate all the institutions with that highest level and essence of humanity. Right now, the next biggest thing with Maharshi's passing in 2008, and he named, which was huge, but he named Dr. Tony Nader to be his successor. Specifically named him and Tony. Dr. Nader spent 20 years around Maharishi all the time. During all those years studying with him, going deeply into Ayurveda, in addition to being a big soul, also was trained at Harvard and MIT.

[Interviewer]

What's his background?

[Bob Roth]

Neuroscience and medical doctor, both Maryland. PhD. And he's really the voice now. And he's wrote a book called Consciousness Is All There Is, which is really to take this idea that consciousness is primary. You have all these neurons, these sort of just neurons firing. And then somehow the idea is you get them all together. And now everything that we feel, touch, taste, smell, everything is a product magically of these little neuro cells that have no consciousness. So the richness of your life is just somehow epiphenomenon, they call it, of these cells. So he said, no, there's another angle, an ancient angle, and actually more younger neuroscientists are agreeing that consciousness is a field. And he's also written another book which is called the Power of Caring. And it's all about human compassion, human caring, and relationships based on the development of consciousness. And I think that the TM people used to say, well, what's going to happen to the TM organization when Maharishi passes? Could not be in better hands. I have beyond enormous respect for him and what he's doing, doing. So that's where we're going forward. Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

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[Bob Roth]

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