I was sitting with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi one afternoon in the fledgling settlement called Maharishi Nagar, about fifty miles west of New Delhi. We were alone in the modest house he occupies, surrounded by the school and hospital buildings that were still under construction. This is already one of the rare spots that I consider the true India.

You feel that a great ancient culture retains its dignity there, and its enormous wisdom. Because of Maharishi, the ancient Vedic sages do not seem remote in time, separated from us by thousands of years, but very intimate.

Even the location is near the very spot where Lord Krishna spent the night educating the great warrior Arjuna in the secrets of enlightenment - the story is recorded in the epic poetry of the Bhagavad Gita.

Without preliminaries, Maharishi turned to me and said, "1 would like to see you alone in my room tomorrow. Can you come right after your morning meditation?" I was taken by surprise, but I didn't press him with questions.

The next morning I appeared at his door. Maharishi was sitting in lotus position on a silk-draped sofa. He beckoned me in, and we sat together quietly. Then he said very simply, "I have been waiting a long time to bring out some special techniques.

I believe they will become the medicine of the future. They were known in the distant past but were lost in the confusion of time; now I want you to learn them, and at the same time I want you to explain, clearly and scientifically, how they work."

Over the course of the next few hours he taught me a series of mental techniques, including those he called 'primordial sounds. "The way they are used is related to meditation, but they are prescribed for specific illnesses, including those we consider incurable in the West, such as Cancer.

Maharishi explicitly told me that these were the strongest healing therapies in Ayurveda, the ancient tradition of Indian medicine. He taught them to me quite simply, and I had no difficulty learning what I was to do when I got home to my patients.

At the same time, I realized that he was asking me to step far beyond the physician's role as it is known in the West. When we were through, I had filled several notebook pages with his instructions. Maharishi smiled with the penetrating sweetness and compassion I always think of when he comes to mind. "This knowledge is extremely powerful," he repeated. "By comparison, the drugs and surgery you are used to using are very crude.

It will take time, but people will grow to realize this." Very casually he turned to receive other visitors who had come to see him about children enrolling in school at Maharishi Nagar. A few minutes later I was standing alone on the porch, staring across the desert at the barren red landscape in the distance. We were at a place that most Western people don't know exists.

Would they really believe that a major shift in medical thinking started there? I know plenty of research doctors, and I had to laugh thinking about their reactions. To tell the truth, my doubts had a hard time reaching me just then. I started down the dust path toward my quarters, the broiling Indian sun beating on my neck, and I felt exhilarated.

It wasn't a feeling of self-importance but of almost impersonal, uncontainable joy. I did not know why, but some great secret had been opened to me, and I felt as if I had been carried up to the sky. I had been shown how to pierce the mask of matter, and for the moment the heat, the dust, and every other material bond were as nothing.

I didn't care even about my own skepticism, although I knew it would start pinching me soon enough. Some hard decisions faced me: I had to figure out how to make these techniques credible. People might dismiss them as faith healing; others would accuse me of selling false hope.

Indian thought has always been grounded on the conviction that Satya, the truth, alone triumphs. "The truth is simple," Maharishi encouraged. "Make it clear, let it stand on its own, and don't get lost in complications."

Excerpted from Quantum Healing