You keep on talking about this pool of consciousness and this place that you go inside. And I was wondering: Do you see anything when you’re there, visually? 

I’ll tell you the story of my first meditation. 

I had heard this phrase, “True happiness isn’t out there. True happiness lies within.” And I used to think about that phrase. And in this phrase, they don’t tell you where the “within” is, nor do they tell you how to get there. So I thought of it as kind of a mean phrase—like maybe another phrase or two were missing. And then, this “within, within, within,” you know, comes up.

And one day, I started thinking, “Wait a minute: maybe meditation is that way to go within.” And I started asking questions. There’s a thing that happens to us human beings: we go along just fine, and suddenly, they say, we become a seeker. And you want to know; you want to know. We’re all like detectives. There are so many clues out there. And suddenly, we start wondering, and we start asking questions.

And I started looking into different kinds of meditation and started asking questions. And right about then, my sister calls, and she says she’s started doing Transcendental Meditation. And I hear a change in her voice. And I’ve known her for a long time—I hear a change in her voice, a happiness. And she tells me about this, and I put that together with what I’ve been learning, and I said, “That’s it; that’s what I want to have.”

So I went down and I started. And I didn’t have a clue what it was; I just knew I wanted it. I wanted it. And I went in. And you get a mantra. And a mantra is your specific sound-thought. Now, like my friend Charlie Lutes used to say, “If you meditate on the word ‘buttermilk,’ you’re liable to go to the dairy.” You don’t want to go to the dairy. You want a specific mantra that will take you all the way within and experience this pure consciousness.

So I got my mantra. I was taken into a little quiet room, so I sit down, close my eyes, start the mantra. And boom! It was like I was in an elevator, and they snipped the cables, and I just jettisoned into pure bliss. And it was so familiar, and yet not like any other experience I’d had. It’s unique. And I say the word “unique” should be saved for that experience. It’s consciousness; it’s bliss; it’s lively. And you experience this, and things start getting better. 

And that’s been my experience. The joy of doing increases, increases, increases. That suffocating rubber clown suit dissolves more and more and more. You don’t get enlightenment overnight, but you go along the path. And like Maharishi said, “If you walk toward the light, with each step things will get brighter.”

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