I read a brilliant book called "Be Here Now" by Richard Alpert aka Baba Ram Dass 35 years ago. I took up TM for several years after that experience.
Those phenomenon allowed me to quiet my mind, live in the present and do things I imagined I could do, but could not have done otherwise. I got into and graduated from medical school (I am from a blue collar family), while going through a divorce. They put me into a place where I was able to woo and marry a special woman. Then I fell deeply into form, materialism, egoism while anguishing about the past as I awaited the future rewards I felt I richly deserved. Over these last 25 years my life completely unravelled. I became a bitter, angry, pain-ridden shell. Big house, fancy cars, world travel and a quickening descent into hell. (I even got a law degree. Maybe I could defend my-self). Nothing worked.
Until Eckhart emerged from obscurity (part of his story) into my story. Suddenly senselessness made sense. The past and the future began to shrink into, simply, now. Now I am so alive, full of joy, without being full of me. I work in a maximum security prison as a psychiatrist, the only death chamber in Florida is 200 yards from my office. The staff, the prisoners, the outside visitors see this place as a place of sadness and despair. Thanks to the universal channel that Eckhart has tuned me into, there is a little smile on my face every moment I am there. Amazingly, everyone around has begun to smile, every now and then. Not because of the little me, but because of what is flowing through me. What is flowing through me? The beauty and goodness and love that exists inside of them. They don't know that is where my smile is coming from. I hope and pray they discover that.
Thank you Eckhart for suffering so much, so you could bring me into the present, into the now, to feel the stillness in the midst of chaos.