John Hagelin: How meditation transformed my student years

The renowned American quantum physicist John Hagelin has described how he first learned Transcendental Meditation after a serious road accident as a teenager, and how his first few experiences of the technique inspired his lifetime's work.

He told Conscious TV, a UK digital channel, that at the age of 17 he had a very serious motorcycle accident that left him hospitalised,and in a 'hellish' body cast. Despite  rest, his body would not heal ... until, on his doctor's recommendation, he learned Transcendental Meditation for deep rest. (See video below.)

"It was a tremendous relief", he says, "and within days I started to feel better." But most unexpectedly, when he returned to his Physics studies, he found that 20 minutes of meditation transformed quantum mechanics, which he found dry and demanding, into a vivid, technicolour experience.

At the time, he had no explanation for this -- he and other researchers were yet to establish that the experience of Transcendental Meditation brings about global EEG brain coherence. Consequently, this experience and the ever-increasing mental benefits of his TM practice were the inspiration for  much of his distinguished career in elucidating the connection between consciousness and the unified field theory of modern physics.