If you happened to pick up
Sports Illustrated magazine in December 1996, you might have had your first glimpse of two Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment students named Ted Hirsch and Noah Schechtman. They were profiled as statewide high school golf champions, along with their Maharishi School team.
But with Ted and Noah involved, the article quickly became about more than golf. "Our whole lives are a pre-shot routine," Noah said, telling the reporter about the team's healthy diet, early bedtime, and daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique. "We never put competing before enlightenment."
Five years later, Noah and Ted both live in Palo Alto, California, only a few miles north of golf Mecca Pebble Beach. But they are still putting enlightenment before everything else. They are full-time teachers of the Transcendental Meditation program.
"I always knew that I wanted to become a teacher someday," Ted says. "But it really clicked during my junior year of high school. I was on a Residence Course, and the first morning I meditated there, I had an incredibly deep experience. It was as if, at that point, I said, 'Ohh…! That's why this is so important!'"
Today, Ted and Noah are two of America's most dynamic teachers. After finishing their Teacher Training Course in Switzerland last year, they both decided to teach in California. "The Maharishi Vedic School in Palo Alto is one of the strongest in the United States," says Ted. "Bobbie Oetzel and John Black do an amazing job. There's always something happening, whether it's teaching or lecturing, meals or celebrations."
Ted and Noah are co-directors of the San Francisco and Marin County Transcendental Meditation program. In fact, their activities crisscross the entire region. On any given day, they will cross multiple bridges to give instructions, advanced lectures, and refresher courses in San Francisco, Marin County, Berkeley, Oakland, and the Peninsula. They've taught firefighters and architects, Silicon Valley vice-presidents and students at a Marin County high school. Whatever the age or profession of their students, Ted and Noah teach with the same brightness, intelligence and easiness.
"These young men came right off of their Teacher Training Course as though they'd been teaching the Transcendental Meditation program for the past 20 years," says John Black, who has taught in Palo Alto for two decades. "They have such a deep understanding, an ability to talk to people and answer any question that may come up. They're just living this knowledge, and it comes out effortlessly."
One of Ted and Noah's recent successes was organizing a Spring Celebration at a San Francisco restaurant. The event drew 75 Meditators, Citizen Sidhas, and Governors from across the Bay Area. Many long-term meditators said the day was the most inspiring they'd had for months. "That's great to hear," Ted says, "because we want to give Bay Area Meditators more chances to come together." Re-inspiring existing Meditators, even those who stopped meditating regularly decades ago, is one of his and Noah's main objectives. As a natural outgrowth, they hope to see more referrals and opportunities for private or "living room" lectures.
They also have another strategy for enlivening the area: Golf. "There are a lot of wealthy business people in this area," Noah says. "Some of them might not bring their friends to a lecture, but they'd definitely bring them to the golf course." Ted and Noah are planning a day at a top course tied in with a lecture on the Transcendental Meditation program. In the meantime, they enjoy playing with new or potential students.
"These two are the best exhibition of a life fully lived, relative and Absolute together," says Terry Ehrman, a Santa Clara consultant who practices the TM-Sidhi program with Ted and Noah twice every day. "They keep this whole area young and lively. And they keep it growing."
Jennie Rothenberg is a graduate of Maharishi University of Management and is getting her Masters in Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley
