While many people swear by meditation as most people swear by their morning coffee, others have stopped meditating. "I just don't have enough time," a pre-med junior said. "And I still have some questions about it." A senior from Quincy House stopped after meditating for ten months I didn't think it was doing anything after a while so I stopped.".

Larry Geeslin commented. In my experiences anyone who practices TM correctly always receives benefits. One implies the other. When a person stops TM he is really stopping an unrewarding or even difficult practice which he unconsciously turned meditating into.

LFARNING the technique of Transcendental Meditation entails seven steps at once dubbed the "Seven Steps to Bliss." After two free introductory lectures, the actual course-which costs $45 for college students and $75 for full-time working adults-consists of an initiation and four one-hour lessons on consecutive days. The beginner learns to meditate the first day through step-by-step instruction with his teacher and immediately starts the practice of regular meditation-once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. In the next three lessons teachers check their technique and discuss their experiences at meditation.

When I took the course up until the moment that I began meditation I doubted that anything would happen I was almost disappointed when it was so easy I thought I was doing something wrong. But my instructor informed me that the surest way to meditate incorrectly is to make an effort in any way to achieve a result is effortless.

Once you have taken the course, any center in the world is open to you. A major function of these centers is checking your technique. During the first year of practice, you are urged to go to the center to be checked, "as often as you want, but at least once a month."

These centers also provide advanced lectures, discussion groups, and video-tapes of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi--such as a discussion between Maharishi and Buck minister Fuller. The centers also sponsor weekend residence courses in which people meditate more frequently and attend discussion groups.

A step beyond in teacher training courses, students spend a number of months with the Maharishi himself. Last summer over 2000 people attended the teacher training course in Matorca-Spain Three undergraduates at Harvard graduated from the course Larry Geeslin Larry Farwell and Clark Easter.

Clark Faster said his initial involvement with TM was casual almost a by product of his other interests and pursuits. He starting meditating two summers s ago while he was working to earn enough money to go to India. The previous year as a sophomore at Harvard he quickly tired of majoring in Government and living at Dunster House and then of majoring in Anthropology and living in one of the Harvard Cooperatives.

At this point," Clark said, "I freaked out, hated Harvard, and wanted to leave." I through his academic studies, however, Clark became convinced that the spiritual experience he sought did in fact exist. He explored several different life-styles, ranging from macro-biotics to commune living. He even tried out guitarist John McGlaughlin's guru, but nothing satisfied him.

I decided to quit Harvard after finishing up the year, and go to India. In my naivete I thought that was the best place to go. Then I saw a course in TM advertized at John Hopkins, while I was working at home in Maryland, and decided to take it.

I began to feel a lot better, and calmed down quite a bit. But I was still planning on going to India. I had the visas, the shots and all the money ready. On the weekend before leaving. I took a residence course in TM. I realized that I hadn't known the extent of the philosophy involved. I was really impressed with the experience of more concentrated meditation, and with the video-tapes of Maharishi. It was the first time I had ever heard him talking. At the end of the course, I learned that I could leave in two weeks to attend the teacher-training course in Majorca. So I went there instead of India."

Clark admits that initially he was very skeptical of the Hindu monk. "I watched Maharishi like a hawk for three weeks," he recalled. "And then, finally. I decided that he made complete sense on both intellectual and experiential levels. Summing up his five months with the Maharishi Clark said. "It was the most intense and important experience I've ever had."

How did his family react to all this? After he got back, he initiated his mother, his father, an executive in a plastics company, and his brother, a computer technician. "I've even initiated some of my Dad's business associates," he said.

Here at Harvard. Clark is giving introductory lectures in several Houses this Fall. He said that he hopes to offer a House course this spring in the Science of Creative Intelligence (SCI), the intellectual study of meditation.

Transcendental Meditation has been incorporated into the curriculum of several universities already, including Yale. Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania. At Yale, over 1000 students and professors are meditating, according to the New Haven SIMS center. Some high schools are piloting TM programs. The Illinois House of Representatives last year passed a resolution recommending that Illinois schools give accredited courses in TM and SCI.

The organization's aspirations are still growing. SIMS-IMS has a plan to continue expanding and building centers all over the world. Under their "World Plan" formulated last year, there will be a center for every million people in the world. Each center will have the resources to train 1000 teachers. SIMS hopes to build a University or Training Academy in the United States, such as one now under construction in Austria. On a more immediate and approachable level of expansion, the SIMS center in Cambridge recently moved to larger quarters at 33 Garden St.--former headquarters for the International Student Association--to accommodate the growing number of meditators in the Cambridge area.

Initially the organization relied on donations but eventually SIMS-IMS decided that in order to finance such expansion they needed a steadier source of capital which course fees now provide, SIMS-IMS, a non-profit educational institution, uses the money for literature, building and maintaining centers, and constructing training academies. American money will eventually help support sister centers in poorer countries. Geeslin said the organization now hope experiments showing TM's beneficial effects on drug abusers will bring Federal funds for their programs.

At any rate, Transcendental Meditation is back in the news. No longer dismissable as a fad, meditation is stimulating interest from many segments of society. Research results in such areas as education and health are optimistic, although inconclusive. The stigma attached to meditation is dissolving, as more and more people look into it. Once attributed to hippies or monks. Maharishi's technique seems to have become an important regenerative factor in the lives of many people, whether they are astronauts, college students, or executives in plastics companies