June 2008

Copyright © 2001-2008 Maharishi Health Education Center - Lebanon, All Rights Reserved

Washingtonian Magazine and
Washington Business Journal
present first Green Awards to
The Tower Companies

On 15 May 2008 PR Newswire reported: Washingtonian Magazine has given The Tower Companies (based in North Bethesda, Maryland, near Washington, DC, USA) its first Washingtonian Green Awards for being green-building pioneers in the design and construction of the world's largest Vedic office building. In addition, the Washington Business Journal has given the company a Green Company of the Year Award. Tower Company partner, Jeff Abramson, is a well-known practitioner of the Transcendental Meditation technique. It is a joy for Global Good News service to feature this news, which indicates the success of the life-supporting programmes Maharishi has designed to bring fulfilment to the field of business.

On 6 May, Washingtonian Magazine presented the Corporate Leader in Green Building Award to The Tower Companies.

The newly created Washingtonian Green Awards are 'celebrating Washingtonians who preserve and protect the environment through education, by promoting green building, and by teaching the importance of living green.'
 

The Tower Companies were honoured for 'being green-building pioneers and fierce proponents of sustainable design and construction; one of the nation's largest buyers of green power, buying wind energy for its 13 buildings; (building) the first LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] apartment complex in the U.S. and for 2000 Tower Oaks Boulevard, the world's largest Vedic office building.'

The Washington Business Journal has also honoured The Tower Companies in their first green category, which recognizes businesses that promote environmentally sustainable economic development. The company won for the Green Company of the Year Award for Best Real Estate Deals.

Publisher Alex Orfinger stated that the award is designed 'to reward a real estate-related company that has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to improving the science and the art that goes into the design and construction of buildings in our region . . . to single out companies for whom green has never been a fad, but rather a longstanding principle that reflects their values and actions.'

He stated, 'The Tower Companies is a family run company and longtime D.C.-area developer responsible for some of the area's most successful retail and residential developments, including White Flint, the Blairs in Silver Spring and Tower Oaks in Rockville.'

Orfinger went on to say, 'From partner Jeff Abramson's well-known practice of Transcendental Meditation to its two major current projects, 2000 Tower Oaks in Rockville and 1050 K Street, downtown, both were designed to achieve Gold LEED.'

The Tower Companies is one of eight carbon neutral companies in the United States.

According to their website, the company has won numerous city, county, state, and national awards including:

• 2007 Business of the Year Award from the DC Chamber of Commerce,

• 2006 and 2003 Green Power Leadership Awards from the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy,

• 2003 Green Building Award from the Apartment and Office Building Association of Metropolitan Washington.

http://www.towercompanies.com 

Dr Vernon Katz reflects on Maharishi's unique contribution to the world

Early years with Maharishi
 

(10 June 2008) Dr Vernon Katz, Visiting Professor of Vedic Science and Trustee of Maharishi University of Management, recently addressed an assembly of faculty, students, and participants of the Invincible America Assembly at the university.

Dr Katz is an eminent Sanskrit scholar, renowned for his contribution to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, Chapters 1-6.* Maharishi's translation and commentary is regarded by scholars as a supreme contribution to the vast field of Vedic literature. Although the Bhagavad-Gita had a greater number of commentaries than any other scripture, Maharishi realized that no previous commentaries had brought to light the essential point of the teaching. He has described the Gita as the essence of the Vedic literature which offers a complete guide to practical life in enlightenment.

Dr Katz received his doctorate from Oxford University in England, studying Sanskrit under Dr Radhakrishnan, who went on to become President of India, and economics under Dr Harold Wilson, who became Prime Minister of Britain. He was one of the first to meet Maharishi during his first world tour when he arrived in London in 1960. Dr Katz was instructed by Maharishi in Transcendental Meditation, and has since participated in all the advanced programmes and courses offered by the Global Country of World Peace. In addition to his work with Maharishi on the Bhagavad-Gita, Dr Katz also contributed his expertise during Maharishi's translation of the Brahma Sutras, and is currently collaborating on a translation of the Upanishads with Dr Thomas Egenes, Professor of Sanskrit at Maharishi University of Management.

During his address, Dr Katz shared his reminiscences from earlier days of working with Maharishi and attending courses under his guidance. His anecdotes illustrated not only Maharishi's unique and deeply profound contributions in bringing to light the knowledge of integrated life in enlightenment, as taught in the Vedic literature, but also revealed Maharishi's own very blissful nature and deep joy of life.

Dr Katz began his talk with an observation that the innumerable aspects of the physical environment of Maharishi University of Management were all reflections of Maharishi's creativity—even the buildings had taken shape from principles of Vedic Architecture brought to light by Maharishi. Every aspect of daily life in the university, including the courses offered, the daily routine of the students, the entrepreneurial creativity of the numerous businesses in the community, had all sprung from knowledge given out by Maharishi in his fifty years of offering his Vedic knowledge to the world. 'He was so endlessly inventive, he would create and create, always some new initiatives,' Dr Katz said.  

Dr Katz remarked especially on the latest programme of bringing hundreds of Vedic Pandits from India to America, calling it a 'complete miracle' which only Maharishi could accomplish.

'This Maharishi could do', Dr Katz said, 'because of his establishment in Brahman Consciousness. Brahman is a field of all possibilities and for one established in that, there are no barriers, no obstacles. He is completely free to think the impossible, and that is what Maharishi has done.'

Dr Katz explained what he regarded as the source of Maharishi's greatness and wisdom, saying, 'He attributed everything to his Guru (teacher), Brahmananda Saraswati, he was the inspiration and guiding light for everything Maharishi accomplished. There was no ego involved, he did not appropriate anything to himself. Maharishi laid everything at the feet of his Guru Dev.' Dr Katz also spoke of the great joy and enthusiasm which Maharishi had for his many activities. 'He enjoyed what he was doing every minute, something good was happening and he was happy.' Here, Dr Katz was reminded of a quote from Maharishi, 'I was walking on the soft ground of Guru Dev's grace.'

Commenting on Maharishi's tendency for taking new initiatives, Dr Katz said that everything Maharishi did, others would follow. He spoke of the earliest people who learned Transcendental Meditation during the first years of Maharishi's teaching in western countries. 'Meditation was an outrageous thing when we started, it was simply not accepted. Today so many millions are doing it.'

Dr Katz also described all the vagaries of surroundings and circumstances which confronted Maharishi during his early days in the West. Maharishi would never mind the environments he found himself in, he would sometimes address an audience who were not always positive, not always receptive; but when he spoke, everyone listened. As Dr Katz said, 'He just shone, he spoke out his message and his focus was completely on what he had to do, no boundaries at all—he just spoke what he had to say, and I thought it was great.'

'One has to think,' reflected Dr Katz,' why did he subject himself to all this? He could have been in Himalayas, he could have had a life of silence, but he chose to come out to teach Transcendental Meditation to the world. It was just pure compassion.'

Dr Katz read the following excerpt from a booklet he had worked on with Maharishi, entitled, 'The Treasury and the Market'.

'Life has not to be suffering. Life is bliss, it is eternal wisdom, eternal existence. Absolute bliss consciousness is the natural characteristic of life. Yet somehow we have happened to miss it. As a matter of fact, this absolute bliss consciousness is the very nature of the soul. But if it is the very nature of the soul, how is it that we can possibly miss it? We cannot miss it. If we have missed it, it is only like missing the spectacles on the eyes—not really missed—but for practical purposes they are completely missed. Like that, the essential nature of the soul which is eternal bliss consciousness is our own, nobody has ever been able to be without it, no one has ever been without it, but it seems to have gone out of grip and it has gone out of grip only because we are not gripping it, that's all.'

As Dr Katz explained, 'The surprise is that it is not evident to everybody; this is why Maharishi had to come and bring it to life. He could see how people were suffering through not being aware of this level of their own Being. . . .

 

Continuing his reminiscences of early days spent with Maharishi, Dr Vernon Katz discussed the progressive unfoldment of the knowledge which Maharishi brought out. 'I implied to him sometimes that he was planning things (that everything came out according to a systematic plan), but he always said that 'it is completely natural, it just comes, Nature brings it out.'

It was in this natural way that Maharishi brought out the understanding of higher states of consciousness. As more people learned Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation technique, inner experiences deepened. Experiences of Transcendental Consciousness had become so clear that Maharishi was inspired to go deeply into the explanation of this fourth major state of consciousness and its practical significance in the daily life of the individual. Maharishi explained the necessity of regular practice in order that Transcendental Consciousness is spontaneously maintained more and more in the awareness during daily activity. As such experiences grew, Maharishi discussed how regular alternation of meditation and activity gives rise to Cosmic Consciousness, the fifth state of consciousness. In the same way, increasingly refined experiences inspired Maharishi to describe the sixth and seventh states of consciousness, which he called God Consciousness and Unity Consciousness.
 

'Then later, when people had very refined experiences and could see the fine fabrics within Atman, within the Self', Dr Katz continued, 'Maharishi gave out the whole Veda fully. He had talked of Veda before, but he gave it out fully only then. Maharishi revealed what is basically the internal mechanics of Atman, which is one of his great, great contributions to knowledge—that Shakti element within the Atman which is responsible for creation. He gave that out at the right time . . . for seventeen years, he just talked about Transcendental Meditation . . . . he wanted to have a firm foundation for his movement in Transcendental Meditation . . . . Everything he has done has been on the basis of Transcendental Meditation and on the basis of that, he could build up all this; it was great wisdom on his part.'

'It always interested me', Dr Katz reflected, 'what was the source of Maharishi's inspiration? It was so great and so unusual, he never said anything obvious . . . . When Maharishi was giving an introductory talk to someone in Kashmir, I listened for half an hour, totally absorbed in what he was saying. And I thought to myself, I've heard this a hundred times before, but it was new each time, because Maharishi was not remembering it, he was creating it. I thought, that is the reason for it.'

Dr Katz went on to discuss Maharishi's commentary on the Brahma Sutras, which progressed over several years and was a major focus in the summer of 1969. Taking one of the Brahma Sutras as an example, he described Maharishi's profound and unique insights into their true meaning, bringing out knowledge which had never before come to light.

Dr Katz related a beautiful comment from that time: 'Maharishi was talking about Vyasa, the great seer of the Brahma Sutras and many other aspects of Veda and Vedic Literature, and said, ''His insight into the situation during the time of dissolution where the world is non-existent yet Brahman (Totality) is—that is beautiful. That shows in what great calmness he has written those Sutras (Vedic expressions), just calm.''

'Then Maharishi said this beautiful thing, ''This morning I came just to these conclusions, when you just sit, sometimes you close your eyes, and sometimes you open your eyes, and you are. I was on the introduction to these Brahma Sutras and then like petals they opened. This point and this point: such an exhilarating, enjoyable situation. You are working and yet you are resting. You are there, and yet you are not there. That is how, in that calm and quiet atmosphere, Vyasa must have written these Sutras. This is beautiful because we can see how this Sutra arose.'' '

Dr Katz also recounted other stories revealing how intimate was Maharishi's knowledge of the mechanics of cognition through which the great Vedic Rishis (Seers) brought to light the various aspects of Veda and Vedic Literature.

In conclusion, Dr Katz drew a parallel between the unfoldment of Maharishi's teachings and the lives of many great men, citing Michelangelo and Beethoven as examples. 'I found a pattern with great people; they start by being very accessible and then later things become very abstract . . . . I think with Maharishi it is the same thing.'

Dr Katz noted that in the early years of his organization, Maharishi established a systematic path for everyone to rise to higher states of consciousness. Later, Maharishi went into ever-increasing depth regarding the fundamental structure of Natural Law and the fine mechanics of creation. 'In the first period, he helped us rise to higher states of consciousness', Dr Katz said, 'and in the second period he was as if sitting at the top of creation and telling us how it is, how creation comes about. . . .

'I was always interested in the developmental stages of his teaching . . . this huge corpus of knowledge he left us through his great compassion and kindness for us and for the whole world. It is something infinitely great and infinitely beautiful, and that is why we love and respect him and he will always be there for us,' Dr Katz concluded.
 

Announcing a new programme for businesses, organizations, and clubs to learn Transcendental Meditation

(6 June 2008) In a recent Global Family Chat, Raja Steven Rubin, Raja of Invincible China for the Global Country of World Peace, spoke about special new group programmes for learning Transcendental Meditation in clubs, businesses, and organizations.

Raja Rubin spoke first about the great value of those practising Transcendental Meditation who already have the inner experience and a taste of transcending*, a deeper understanding of Maharishi's knowledge, and what it can produce in terms of results in the world.

Raja Rubin said the idea arose last year from the many programmes in which Transcendental Meditation was already being offered to groups—for example in schools and universities through the David Lynch Foundation—and to expand that programme to include thousands of other groups—organizations, clubs, or associations in every city where people gather based on their affinity, interest, or professional career.

When this idea was presented to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Founder of the Global Country of World Peace, he was very enthusiastic and encouraged that the programme be implemented immediately.

'The Global Country of World Peace is providing this precious knowledge to private individuals and now to groups throughout the world as well, and as we place this knowledge in front of more people, the opportunity comes for more people to learn Transcendental Meditation,' said Raja Rubin.

These programmes will also feature special group rates. Both the group members and the organization can take advantage of this added benefit for a large group. Another advantage, Raja Rubin said, is that the group members would already know each other before learning Transcendental Meditation and would share in the inspiration and enthusiasm of the leaders of the organization arranging and endorsing this group programme.

'Now we have a programme we can offer to the organization rather than their simply coming to a local centre,' Raja Rbin added. 'The programme can be tailored to their specific interest, whether it is health, business, or education, offering a lower fee for a group rate, by virtue of the larger group.'

He explained that 'the idea is based on a simple concept that is prevalent throughout all business and service organizations'—that if an organization makes a commitment to involve their people or organization with a product or service on a larger scale, special financial arrangements can apply for that larger group.

Raja Rubin encouraged all those practising the Transcendental Meditation and Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme to introduce the local Teachers of Transcendental Meditation to such groups, clubs, or businesses so that they can gain the advantage of learning Transcendental Meditation through this programme for large groups.

*The process of the mind settling down and experiencing increasingly refined levels of its own activity, eventually going beyond the finest level of thinking and experiencing the unbounded field of Transcendental Consciousness. Transcendental Meditation is a simple, effortless, systematic technique to experience this most silent, peaceful level of one's own consciousness—the innermost Self.