People meditate for many reasons. Among the most common goals are relaxation, stress reduction, and enlightenment. Achieving the first two benefits listed doesn’t seem like quite as daunting of a task as the third one, and achieving enlightenment while meditating doesn’t seem quite as difficult as maintaining a state of enlightenment throughout the day.
During the 1970s researchers found that meditation produces a fourth state of consciousness—the blissful state known as enlightenment. The biggest question for most of us is how to maintain that state of bliss as you go through the mundane tasks of every day life—working, sitting in traffic, standing in line at the grocery store.
According to researchers at the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, you can reach a state of near-constant bliss given enough meditation practice. Through a series of experiments they have discovered that the more you meditate, the more you can maintain that feeling throughout the day. According to Frederick Travis, dean of Maharishi University’s graduate college and director of its EEG, Consciousness, and Cognition Lab, “When you practice meditation regularly, you can maintain that feeling of wholeness and integrate it into your life. Your sensation of transcendence grows day by day.”
Read the full article, “Everyday Enlightment,” on Yoga Journal.