Transcendence Quotes

“Men seek retreats for themselves in country places, on beaches and mountains, and you yourself are wont to long for such retreats, but that is altogether unenlightened when it is possible at any hour you please to find a retreat within yourself. For nowhere can a man withdraw to a more untroubled quietude than in his own soul.12”
― Norman E. Rosenthal, Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

“By my latest count, there have been 340 peer-reviewed articles published on TM,1 many of which have appeared in highly respected journals. For those unfamiliar with scientific publishing, “peer-reviewed” means that each article is subjected to scrutiny by independent reviewers who are authorities in their field. Even if the reviewers deem the article worthy, they typically suggest changes; only after these recommendations have been addressed does the paper get published. As a researcher who has been both reviewer and reviewee, I can vouch for the large amount of work that goes into this process.”
― Norman E. Rosenthal, Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

“it’s OK. Everything’s just different. David has no question that Transcendental Meditation has transformed his life from one of suffering to one of happiness, a transformation he compares to the healing of a sick tree. I like the analogy of the tree. You want to turn all the little sick leaves green. But when you work on the surface, leaf by leaf by leaf, it’s so difficult. By the time you get one leaf green, a bunch of others have gone yellow or brown. The secret is, the experienced gardener doesn’t worry about the leaves. He knows the tree is sick, so he gets nourishment to the roots, the deepest level. And that way you transform that whole sick tree to a state of perfection. All the leaves turn green. All the branches get strong. “Water the root and enjoy the fruit” is something Maharishi said for over 50 years. This image of the tree brings to mind work I have done over the years with patients who have a hard time managing their anger.”
― Norman E. Rosenthal, Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

“part three, “Transformation.” In closing, please reconsider the words of Hans Selye, the father of stress research, whom I quote also at the top of this chapter: It is not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.”
― Norman E. Rosenthal, Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

“way stress impedes healing.49 Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues have also examined how stress affects aging—at the cellular level. At the ends of each of our forty-six chromosomes, which house our DNA, are structures called telomeres. As we age, the telomeres become shorter and shorter. Once they become too short, mistakes start creeping into the way our DNA replicates, which is the leading edge of the aging process. Kiecolt-Glaser points out that there is “ample epidemiological data that stressed caregivers die sooner than people not in that role.” So she and her team compared various elements of the immune response as seen in the blood, as well as telomere lengths in circulating blood cells, in forty-one caregivers and forty-one matched controls.50 As you might suspect, not only was immune function off in the caregivers, but their telomeres were shorter. This shows that stress can age people at the very level of their cells, thereby potentially shaving years off their lives.”
― Norman E. Rosenthal, Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation

“Men seek retreats for themselves in country places, on beaches and mountains, and you yourself are wont to long for such retreats, but that is altogether unenlightened when it is possible at any hour you please to find a retreat within yourself. For nowhere can a man withdraw to a more untroubled quietude than in his own soul.”
― Norman E. Rosenthal, Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation