Stories of Kindness from Around the World

It was in the early 1970s that I was employed by Rockwell in Downey on the space shuttle program.  The pressure to produce was intense with constant demands to meet schedules with teams of people of disparate skills and motivation.  I had been involved in the Gurdjieff work for a short time and was beginning to experience a bit of the calm that comes from the meditation practice.  At lunch time, my habit was to walk around the area adjacent to the test facility.  One day while so occupied, I came across a small strip mall that had a space rented to a branch of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation organization.

Having a bit of curiosity about the technique, I entered the facility and spoke with a pleasant and slightly plump young woman who appeared to be quite calm.  Although it was not my interest to sign up for the courses myself, I picked up a flier and a small brochure from the TM center, partly simply being polite in front of the receptionist at the center, and partly with the intention of digesting the information a bit more and having something to refer to in the future.  For some reason that I still can't explain, a fellow worker came to mind.  I will call him Charles, but today I am no longer sure that was his real name.

Charles was a supervisor in another department.  He had the reputation of being hyper active, somewhat scatter-brained, and constantly pulled in multiple directions.  He chain smoked while speaking with lightning speed and switching subjects like a Mexican jumping bean.  His right hand seemed permanently attached to a coffee cup.  His nervous attitude and work habits were transmitted to his engineering team.  Through disconnected sentences, he revealed that the chaos in his work life was reflected in his home life with his wife and children.

After lunch on the day of my visit to the TM center, I passed by the cubicle where Charles worked.  I placed the flier and brochure in an inconspicuous place where I thought he would find them, leaving no indication of how they arrived and making sure that no once saw me leaving the material.  I had no idea whether there would be any result of my action.

It was some months later that I again had a chance meeting with Charles.  It was like night and day.  He had stopped smoking and was calm and collected.  We spoke again about his family.  He enthusiastically told me that he had run into a mediation technique and started practicing it some months earlier.  He said that initially his family had resisted, but that he had changed so much that they too had begun the meditation practice and his family relationships were very different.  He recommended that I check it out and consider trying it myself.

I never did tell him how the TM materials came into his possession.  It was reward enough to see the change.