In its weekly programme, Encounter, the Australian national radio broadcaster ABC looked at different techniques of meditation. One of the methods presented was Transcendental Meditation, with the programme’s host Gary Bryson refreshing a practice he had learnt 30 years earlier.
Meeting up with Transcendental Meditation teachers, Bryson wondered: Why is it actually called “transcendental” meditation?
The meaning of the word “transcendental”: simpler than it sounds!
“’Transcend’ means to go beyond,“ explained Dr Tim Carr, a teacher at the Sydney TM Center, “so this is where ’transcendental’ has come from. What is happening when we go beyond is that we go beyond our thinking processes. During Transcendental Meditation we experience ever more finer levels of thought until we experience the subtlest level of thinking process. Then we actually go beyond that altogether and we arrive at what we call ’the source of thought’. So we transcend the whole thinking process.“ 
Download the entire audio clip
(NB! The part on TM starts at 22:15 into the clip)
