“You've slept enough. If you fall asleep during meditation take some stimulants like tea or coffee.” -Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Switzerland (1977). I know, because I heard Maharishi say it directly to someone who needed a little direction in response to some pitiful experience, like taking the discipline of drinking a cup of coffee sometime prior to meditating so as to bring a better attentiveness to the spiritual practice in the transcendental meditative state of restful alertness while in transcending meditation. It was a very instructive moment for everyone listening who could hear it. It has served me very well thank you, Maharishi. -Buck
Anartaxius Writes: As usual this coffee seems to have a premium price. I can get Organic coffee 10oz for about $7.00 at the local supermarket instead of 8 oz for about $13 for 'Vedic' coffee so it is more than double the cost, a typical movement overcharge. Exactly what do the Vedas say about coffee? I bet nothing at all. According to Wikipedia '[t]he earliest credible evidence of either coffee drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century, in the Sufi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi Muslim monasteries around Mocha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mocha,_Yemen in Yemen'. That is long after all the Vedic liturature was written. So coffee is not really associated with the term 'Vedic' at all. As for coffee interfering with subtle levels of awareness, it sort of depends on how 'embodied' one experiences things. When the mind thinks consciousness is embodied, then how the body feels is strongly reflected in what you feel. When you are not identified with the body so much, coffee does not have that much effect on what is thought of as subtle. Having 'subtle awareness' is really a conceptual device to help one settle down, to become aware of things that might interfere with meditation etc. But when consciousness equals being in experience, subtle really does not make much sense since everything has that value so the differentiation between gross and subtle is seen as not significant. But it can be very important for people learning to meditate and for a number of years after that. I tend to drink regular coffee and Irish breakfast tea, which is pretty strong. Still caffeine can affect the body, so lately I have been tapering down on the stronger stuff in the evening, it just depends on whether I want to shift into the sleep state at midnight or 3am.
