June 2000 Acting From the Level of Pure Consciousness An interview with Drs. Doug and Linda Birx

Enlightenment: You’ve taught the TM-Sidhi program including Yogic Flying to thousands of Meditators in many countries. Are there any courses that stand out in your mind?

Linda Birx: One that stands out for me was in 1991. Maharishi gave us the great joy of teaching the very first TM-Sidhi course in the former Soviet Union, in Tallin, Estonia.

We often hear Maharishi speak about how the Unified Field of all the Laws of Nature underlies all of creation, and how when we enliven the Unified Field in one area it becomes enlivened in every area of creation. We were able to see this firsthand in Estonia.

In the West, Meditators had been transcending for 35 or 40 years, so the Laws of Nature were being directly enlivened for all that time. But the Soviet Union hadn’t had any Meditators until shortly before we arrived.

There were about 165 people on our first course, and they were all very somber and serious during the first instruction. By the second week they were starting to smile a little, and feel more secure with actually expressing how they were feeling.

By the third week something remarkable happened thanks to the many years of enlivening the Unified Field by Meditators in other parts of the world—the course participants’ experiences came up to the same level of experience as any other TM-Sidhi course.

Enlightenment: Are there specific benefits that Meditators notice once they begin the TM-Sidhi program?

Doug Birx: Yes, there are. The beauty of taking this step from practicing the TM technique to practicing the TM-Sidhi program is that a tremendous acceleration in evolution takes place.

Meditators have already laid the foundation of transcending with their TM practice—going from the surface thinking level to experience finer levels of thought, and transcending that finest level of thought to arrive at the source of thought, their own Being.

With the TM-Sidhi program, they start to act from that level of pure consciousness. By enlivening consciousness as a field of all possibilities, they notice a dramatic increase in their ability to maintain pure consciousness. At first they become more clearly familiar with this inner experience. Then they begin to feel it become more stable, both within their program and in activity.

When that starts to happen, there isn’t any area of their life where they don’t notice the influence—their stress level decreasing, creativity increasing, broad comprehension with the ability to focus sharply, the joy of understanding the full range of what life has to offer.

Linda Birx: They also begin to notice an increase in support of Nature—that ability to do less and accomplish more. They’re not overwhelmed by any situation in their life. They start to notice the greater resiliency that comes from this infusion of pure consciousness.

Maharishi has said that pure consciousness is like a shock absorber for stressful situations that arise in life. As a result of gaining the ability to maintain a greater value of pure consciousness along with activity, their flexibility grows. This makes them more able to avoid being overshadowed by situations or challenges in life.

Enlightenment: Are there any memorable experiences your students have shared with you?

Doug Birx: One man—about halfway through a recent TM-Sidhi course— said, "You know, I’ve always appreciated my TM practice, but I looked at it as a way to withdraw from activity. I felt like I was taking a mini-vacation. I had all these problems and was tired out, so I would go deeply into myself, settle down and take a vacation within myself, become refreshed, and then come back out to my responsibilities.

"I’ve always looked at meditation as being one of the most wonderful things in my life, because it gave me this opportunity, I could do it anywhere, and I could find this renewal within myself.

"Now that I’ve taken the Sidhis program though, I deeply understand that meditation isn’t just for withdrawing from activity and refreshing oneself. The inner value of life is not only the basis of our activity, but it’s completely integrated with all of our activity in every way. I see that we don’t need to just come and go from that field. Since it is the basis of our life, we could live that reality all the time. We could always have it with us."

After beginning the TM-Sidhi program, he really started to understand what Maharishi means by the development of higher states of consciousness.

Enlightenment: Young people can also learn the TM-Sidhi program. What is it like to teach them?

Doug Birx: This is one of the most wonderful aspects for me—teaching young people who have grown up in meditating families. They’ve heard Maharishi’s knowledge in many different ways, since it’s been a part of their family life. So when they step on to the experience of the TM-Sidhi program, nothing is foreign to them.

They understand when Maharishi talks about unfolding the full range of their life—from unbounded to bound— it’s all contained within their experience. They go from hearing the knowledge, to knowing the knowledge, to living the knowledge and deeply understanding it, because it is structured in their experience.

Enlightenment: At what age can they begin the TM-Sidhi program?

Doug Birx: Children can learn the TM technique when they are 10 years old. Then at age 13 they can start the Youth Invincibility Course. This is a very wonderful program that Maharishi structured for young people between the ages of 13 and 16.

They learn the TM-Sidhi program very gradually. Every six months they’re eligible for some new instruction. That keeps unfolding until they’re 16 years old. Then they join the Center Invincibility Course to finish the program and learn Yogic Flying.

Enlightenment: You’ve given hundreds of lectures on the TM-Sidhi program, in person and by conference call. What types of groups do you speak to?

Linda Birx: We particularly enjoy speaking to Meditators while they’re on a Residence Course. We like to talk with them on the last day of the course before they go home. By then they have a better understanding than ever before of the value of enlivening consciousness in a more accelerated fashion.

They’ve taken a step out of their activity and come together with a group of other Meditators. In this very restful environment they go deeper into their own experience of consciousness. Since they have no responsibilities, the Meditators can gain a deeper rest and accelerate their own experience of contacting pure consciousness. They become more familiar with what pure consciousness is.

On that basis of having rested the physiology for two or three days, we talk about the TM-Sidhi program. We tell them that the TM technique is for contacting pure consciousness, and the TM-Sidhi program is for enlivening it—putting it to work for you in your everyday life.

Meditators at a Residence Course have a greater appreciation of why they would want to add the TM-Sidhi program to their life, because they have just had a clearer experience of their own pure consciousness for an extended period of time.

Enlightenment: What is it that inspires Meditators to take the next step, to learn the TM-Sidhi program?

Doug Birx: The foundation is a good experience of transcending, and appreciating what a great value that is to their life. On that basis, there is an openness when Maharishi brings out the point, through a lecture or a tape, that we could accelerate this growth of consciousness.

When Maharishi first brought out the TM-Sidhi program he had been traveling around the world many times, and he said the Meditators’ experience was such that he felt something new could be added to the program. And this something new would be a different technique.

We would still practice our Transcendental Meditation program for going from the surface thinking level, experiencing finer levels of thought, transcending the finest level of thought and arriving at the source of thought.

Maharishi said this new technique would be something that would more quickly shrink the gap between our present ability to transcend and the time that would be coming in the future, through repeated transcending, when this experience would become an all time reality. arriving at that source of thought. Maharishi said this new technique would be something that would more quickly shrink the gap between our present ability to transcend and the time that would be coming in the future, through repeated transcending, when this experience would become an all time reality.

It is such a beautiful point: The TM-Sidhi program can shrink that gap in time and accelerate our ability to act from the level of pure consciousness.

Linda Birx: During the TM technique we contact the same level as is enlivened in the TM-Sidhi program. It’s not some new field that is added. It’s the same pure consciousness—it’s just that the experience of it is more profound and lasts longer in our activity with the TM-Sidhi program.

Doug Birx: We have a picture of this experience of acting from pure consciousness in the phenomenon of Yogic Flying. Scientists tell us there is maximum brainwave coherence at the point the body lifts up. If you ask the Yogic Flyers what their subjective experience is, they say that they are settled within themselves. And yet if you’ve seen a Yogic Flying demonstration, you see that their bodies are lifting up, moving forward and coming down.

Here we have a perfect picture of the integration of silence into activity. Inwardly the Yogic Flyers are settled within themselves; outwardly the body is found in activity.

Imagine if twice a day we could swing our mind-body coordination through a style of functioning that was both active and silent—the body moving while the mind is settled. When we come out of our program, the body would be used to that mind-body coordination that can be both active and silent.

This will have great benefits that carry over into our activity and our responsibilities. It’s a beautiful picture of Yogic Flying and developing higher states of consciousness.

Enlightenment: Is there anything else we should say about Yogic Flying?

Linda Birx: It’s fun!

Doug Birx: It’s great fun—and the more the merrier, when it’s practiced all together in a large group.

Enlightenment: One last question. What is your experience as teachers of the TM-Sidhi program?

Doug Birx: We feel that Maharishi has blessed our lives with the greatest occupation we could possibly have. We get to work with the most wonderful people in the world. We work with the people who are strong in their understanding and appreciation of what the TM technique is, just in that transition between being strong Meditators and the enlivening of their experience with the TM-Sidhi program.

Linda Birx: We feel that we have the best occupation in the world. If you told me I could do anything I wanted, I would choose this.

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