Article with large photo of John Windsor teaching in front of picture of Maharishi, with caption:
INTO THE GAP John Windsor, journalist and follower of Transcendental Meditation.

"You know those moments when you are dozing off or the moments when you wake?" he asks.

"There's a junction between the waking and the sleeping state when you seem to fall down a gap between two places and you say afterwards 'gosh, that's nice' and you try to recreate it but you can't.

"Technically, that's transcending, but it's fleeting and it's unrepeatable."

But John (60) can access that state at will. He can meditate into the transcendental in the comfort of his armchair - a knowing visitor instead of an accidental tourist passing through the world of bliss.

John would not be complete without his two 20-minute TM sessions every day.

And he is not alone. There are five million devotees of Transcendental Meditation - known simply as TM - worldwide and 200,000 in this country.

For them, the transcendental is more than transitory and they claim their endeavours are rewarded with a huge boon.

"People don't know that place is there but when they learn to go there, they say it's like going home," says John.

John first discovered TM in 1970. He was a journalist whose brother swore by the technique, which was then being promoted by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the mystic champion of The Beatles.

"I considered myself pretty hard-nosed at that time and I thought I would go and try it for a story," says John.

"I went into it in investigative mode. I decided that if it did all my brother said it would, then fine. If it didn't, then I would expose it."

In 1973, he wrote an article in the Guardian about TM, an article he claims to be the first to back it as a worthwhile meditation technique, backing up his own findings with other research.

"It contradicted everything anybody else was saying about TM," John says. "I had evidence to prove TM was more refreshing than sleep."

The piece led to an invitation from the Maharishi for John to join him at his base in Switzerland.

He said: "I was a total letdown at it, but it didn't matter. It turned out the Maharishi was just grateful for me writing the piece. He wanted me to come and sit with him and get to know his mind.

"The Maharishi is quite different to other people. I don't think anybody can get within 10 yards of him without realising that. Being with him took my breath away.

"If people have no concept of what enlightenment might be, they do when they sit with him. "He was always 10 jumps ahead of me in thinking and seemed to see right through me. "This was both comforting and unnerving."

John stayed in Switzerland for two years. On his return to Britain, he started to teach TM full-time, until 1987.

He returned to journalism - he now writes a monthly art column for the Observer - and studies and teaches TM.

He is now the chairman of the Derbyshire TM centre, which he has set up at his home in Crich. The centre is launched under the Maharishi Foundation, a registered charity.

John estimates he has taught 1,250 people and has yet to find someone for whom the technique will not work.

"People say 'I bet I'll be the first person it doesn't work on'," he says, "and I tell them that if they are, I'll get a glass box and display them in it. They would be the first one in all that time."

John describes TM as though it is a scuba-diving trip. In our waking and sleeping hours, we are on a watery surface troubled with ripples caused by constant thoughts and brain processes.

TM takes us down into the depths, into the blue calmness below the surface. This is not a conscious state - all thought is absent as we hang suspended steadily beneath the waves, our mind quietened.

Over time, thoughts re-emerge as consciousness ebbs back in.

Each thought is like a bubble of activity which increases, bringing us to the surface again.

The process allows the mind to refresh but the key is how to reach the depths -and that is where John comes in.

He refuses to take a pupil for a one-off attempt at TM, without a day of instruction and without first performing a puja, a short one-on-one ceremony where he quotes passages in Sanskrit.

The art of TM predates Buddhism. It emerges from the Vedic tradition of India, an ancient strand of knowledge which also spawned yoga. TM is non-religious and first arrived in Britain with the Maharishi, who himself had been schooled in the art of TM by a guru.

There are now 80 teaching centres in the country.

To transcend, each participant needs a mantra - a thought for them to repeat to themselves over and over, a process which will take them into the transcendental. There are various mantras, John says, and different people need different mantras.

Each mantra is chosen to reflect a person's physiology.

It is selected by their teacher and is a sound which acts as a vehicle to carry the mind to its restful state.

This restful state is, John says, a product of nature. Scientific studies show that during the state of a deep sleep, our oxygen intake reduces by eight per cent. During TM, it goes down by a further eight per cent.

"That makes me conclude that it is natural," says John. "It must be - you can't do that by trying to do it.

"TM is easy to learn. It works for the first sitting and that is because it is based in a natural tendency of the mind. The mind wants to transcend.

"It's natural and, given the correct initial conditions, the mind will transcend and refresh. It's not a question of 'will it transcend', it's a question of getting those conditions."

That TM is natural makes John think at one stage it was part of our everyday life. Studies and anecdotal evidence suggests TM is a health boon in a whole range of areas.

These days, evolution has given us a more advanced brain and our natural tendency to go transcendental has been lost, but those who find it again report having more energy,;

feeling younger and sharper.

It is no surprise that John advocates us getting it back - although, at £1,280 for a four-day course (and three months of follow-up visits), the process is not cheap.

"I think that because of the New Age movement, the term meditation is bandied about and people are confused," says John.

"I think there'll come a time when the cost of stress in society is so great that the Government will have to explore solutions, even solutions as unusual as this."

There are two types of people who turn up to his courses. They are either stressed or they are creative types who want to be more creative.

"There is a market for it, there is a need," he adds.

"People say they haven't got time to do it but I say I haven't got time not to do it. The increase in one's efficiency is such that one achieves more with less effort.

"Those 20 minutes twice a day are an investment."

Copyright, Derby Evening Telegraph, 2003