About
Maharishi Foundation Australia has been operating in Australia for many years, teaching Transcendental Meditation and other related programs. Dr Richard Aldous of Guṇātīta Yoga instructs Maharishi Yoga Asanas on behalf of MFA. He has been teaching Transcendental Meditation and yoga-related teaching for over 30 years.
The mission of Guṇātīta Yogais is to help individuals find greater balance, harmony, and fulfilment in life through the full spectrum of yoga.
The heart of the approach is the Maharishi Yoga Asanas, practised in silence and stillness, supported by meditation and breathwork.
Transcendental Meditation®, Ayurveda (Maharishi AyurVed® and Vedic astrology Maharishi® Jyotish) are essential adjuncts to MYA in the journey toward “Yoga”, the deeper integration of mind, body, and spirit; a more balanced, natural, and fulfilling way of life.
The Meaning of Guṇātīta
The Sanskrit term Guṇātīta (गुणातीत) is composed: guṇa and atita.
Guṇa means “quality” or “strand of nature,” and refers to the three fundamental forces described in the Bhagavad Gītā and Sāṃkhya philosophy: sattva (purity, clarity, harmony), rajas (activity, passion, restlessness), and tamas (inertia, heaviness, obscurity). These guṇas weave together to form all experiences of the material world.
Atīta means “beyond” or “transcending.”
Thus, Guṇātīta literally means one who has gone beyond the play of the three guṇas. It describes a state of consciousness that is not bound by the fluctuations of purity and impurity, action and stillness, clarity and confusion.
The Bhagavad Gītā (14.20–14.26), sees a guṇātīta as a yogi who no longer identifies with the ups and downs of the guṇas, but rests in the Self, the silent witness beyond nature. Such a person is even-minded in pleasure and pain, light and darkness, praise and blame, and is established in unity.
Guṇātīta also points to the Supreme Reality itself—the Self, pure consciousness—since only that which is beyond change can be truly beyond the guṇas. As such, it is sometimes used as an epithet of Brahman, the divine beyond attributes.
The state of guṇātīta is the goal of yoga. It is not about rejecting the world or suppressing qualities, but about transcending them by realising the deeper Self that underlies them. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi emphasised that through meditation and the integration of silence and activity, one naturally rises to a state where the three guṇas lose their binding influence.
In essence, Guṇātīta means freedom—freedom from conditioning, from oscillation, and from the compulsions of nature—resting instead in the timeless field of Being.
