Several influential contemporary spiritual teachers including Ken Wilber, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and others have commented on the increasing numbers of individuals around the world who are experiencing rapid evolution in consciousness.
Their language might be somewhat different in describi9ng the phenomenon but their fundamental point is the same. We are at or near a “tipping point” at which a global shift of real evolutionary importance is at least possible.
If that is true we should ask why, and why now?
On one level, we can point to an overall global shift along a Maslow-like scale of need satisfaction. Never has a greater proportion of the global population been secure in its basic physical needs and able to seek higher intellectual, emotional and spiritual development. If the preconditions for evolution at the self-actualization end of the scale are actually in place we’d expect that to result in some observable effect. (Even if the “observation” were anecdotal.)
I recall reading the October 1975 Time magazine story on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and being strongly drawn towards the effects the Transcendental Meditation technique promised. In December 1975, I learned the technique and for many years TM and the TM-Sidhi programs were a very important part of my life.
One of Maharishi’s early teachings, supported by substantial academic research, was of the compounding power of the change in consciousness brought about by meditation. Early research suggested that if 1% of a given population were to practice the TM technique regularly, important measures of the well-being of the society of which that group was a part would show significant improvement.
Regular meditation by 1% of the population of a city, for example, would be expected to correlate to decrease in crime rate, decrease in stress-related disease, increase in measures of both individual and societal well-being, etc. This become known as “The Maharishi Effect”.
Later research suggested that it might take only the square root of 1% of a population meditating regularly at the same time and in the same place to have a similar effect. On that basis, the TM organization began its efforts to assemble large groups of meditators in locations around the world who would meditate together with the aim of generating major change in worldwide consciousness and well-being. Assembling those groups and maintaining them proved too large a logistical problem and the project never reached the scale desired.
I still receive notices and other materials from the TM and I recently received an invitation to an evening group meditation. The announcement noted that some original tapes of Maharishi’s talks would be shown.
At one time, I owned several hundred hours of Maharishi’s tapes and I found that being able to hear and see him as he discussed the theory and practice of meditation was a tremendously valuable addition to the written material then available. Tapes of Maharishi are a staple element of most TM-movement group activities.
There is great power in being able to consume the teaching in a multi-media format and, after becoming accustomed to the sometimes-difficult language and speaking style, it seemed that most “regulars” developed an almost individual relationship with both the teaching and the teacher that just isn’t possible from the written word alone.
There has been a resurgence of interest in TM in recent years but the technique that has captured the attention and imagination of millions has been “mindfulness”.
Some credit Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn with “creating” or “inventing” mindfulness. I suspect (and hope) that he would resist such a characterization. (Thich Naht Hahn is probably the most well-known and widely published among contemporary mindfulness teachers.) But the fact is that interest in the topic and practice has exploded.
A recent Forbes magazine article reports that: “In 2016, 667 papers on mindfulness were published in scientific journals—up from 47 a decade earlier.” There are over 100,000 Amazon titles that include the word mindfulness!
That same Forbes article suggests that our increasing engagement with digital technology has created a need to escape from the always-on, always-connected world; to find some peace and space and distance.
I suspect there is some truth to that but my suggestion here cuts the other way: that it is precisely that technology that has accelerated our movement toward the “tipping point” in global consciousness noted above.
The number of YouTube users has now reached 1.3 billion and over 3 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube each month. No matter how much of its content is mind- numbingly voyeuristic or narcissistic, the exploding access to some types of information and experience is immensely valuable.
I’ve just finished watching a YouTube video of an interview of Rupert Spira, a major figure on the contemporary spiritual scene. Spira is one of today’s most articulate exponents of the Advaita Vedanta tradition of non-dualism. His books are wonderfully clear but – as is the case with the Maharishi videos of 4 decades ago — the manner of his spoken presentation on the videos (available on his own website www.rupertspira.com and on YouTube) add an element to his teaching that just isn’t there on the printed page.
In hundreds of hours of videos, much of which are of Spira speaking or answering questions at retreats or in interviews, we can see and hear him tailoring his presentations or his answers to the specific circumstance or questioner. When one example doesn’t seem to work, he brings another. When one individual “gets” his point but another doesn’t, we can directly observe how he re-states the point. That kind of give-and-take is not available in a publication.
It quickly becomes clear that Spira is a master teacher. But more importantly, it becomes clear that his knowledge is firmly and unfalteringly grounded in his own experience.
But how is this different, except in quality of technology, from the VHS tapes of Maharishi that I collected so many years ago? Why might there be a “YouTube Effect” that is capable of creating an exponential pressure toward growth in consciousness?
When I owned hundreds of hours of Maharishi tapes I had ready access to a broad range of his expression. YouTube, however, adds the additional and invaluable dimensions of depth and connection.
Using Rupert Spira as an example (although in any subject or for any individual, the same sort of study is becoming increasingly possible): I hear Spira mention his teacher Francis Lucille. It was Lucille’s teaching that helped Spira through the last stages of his journey to realization.
So, I search YouTube for Francis Lucille and I find, again, hundreds of hours of his direct teaching. Some of that teaching is from the years when Spira was his student and some is contemporary. But hearing Lucille directly provides a perspective on his student, Spira, that I wouldn’t otherwise have.
I hear Lucille talk of his work with his own teacher, Jean Klein. And I find a few interviews of Klein, which add perspective to the work of both Lucille and Spira.
Spira also speaks of Sri Atmananda Krishnamenon and of Kashmiri Shaivism and he quotes both Rumi and Blake. And I can find information on all of them immediately.
Klein links to Ramana Mararshi on one axis and to Paul Brunton on another and I again find material that I would otherwise almost certainly have never found.
Not only do I find material but, critically, I often find that material in direct address from its source.
Ramana Maharshi was already known to me and I had books of his teaching. But it was through a commentary by a student of his, accessed on YouTube, that I learned of Nisargadatta Maharaj and Sri Aurobindo.
As I watch videos of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta, YouTube pulls up Papaji as a person I might have interest in, and I do.
And then there are the videos of those who have facilitated or chronicled the work of all those teachers; or who became teachers themselves. I find Robert Adams and Greg Goode, for example, as connections suggested by my YouTube search history.
More names are mentioned, more books are referenced, more connections and influences and incidents are related. And I get notifications; sometimes daily and sometimes several in a day, that new material is available on/from the people and topics I’ve indicated interest in.
What was available in the VHS tapes of Maharishi was the breadth of his teaching over time, which was tremendously valuable. But I understand that as providing a sort of linear path for growth in understanding.
What is available now, via YouTube (and other similar vehicles), is an exponential path.
The exponent is something greater than two. The connections multiply at an increasing rate as the amount of data increases and as the ability of the technology to anticipate my interest improves. That would be exponential in itself.
But then add depth and multiplication of connections. Access to one teacher becomes access to a lineage of teachers. Access to a lineage branches to commentators and interpreters at each level.
Access via video leads back to access via the written word, which leads to other influences and other lineages and then back to the videos in a more and more rapid feedback loop.
But it’s not a loop, it’s a coil. It has direction. And that direction is toward greater, deeper and more rapid understanding.
Critically, if multiple individuals each access potential at an exponentially increasing rate, the rate applicable to the group of which they are a part is even greater.
The TM Movement had difficulty gathering and maintaining the numbers needed to create the Maharishi Effect. I’ve had invitations over the past couple of weeks to attend, via internet, at least 3 or 4 events held by wonderful teachers. Some will be single-session event, others are full-blown retreats. These events are available to participants from anywhere in the world.
Never before have so many been able to access the best teachers of the age in real time at minimal cost and without travel requirements.
Never before has so much teaching been available at little or no cost, on demand.
Add to those conditions the fact noted above that never before have so many been able to focus on self-actualization rather than mere subsistence and security, and the conditions for the “tipping point” appear to be in place.
Is this different from the Maharishi Effect? Probably. In what ways? I suspect the differences will be found in the virtual community’s lack of some positive attributes of a physical community. But that’s a different subject.
It’s time that some credible research be done. Is there a YouTube Effect? I suspect there is.
©Charles R. Lightner