"I read the news today, oboy!" The baby boomers are getting religion. Well, better make that "spirituality." They're searching for some magic potion that will put the zip of meaning back into life. Some truth that's more significant than the right answer on Jeopardy. They want to find something of value in a world filled with too many of technology's toys. Something that'll steady the nerves for when things go bump in the night.

Make it something new . . .

"And make it something new," they ask. "After all, we've grown up challenging the old, cherished dogmas, and we can't be bothered with picking our way around some Christian boneyard to discover if we missed out on anything. We want something with a little more style, a little more class, a little more sophistication."

"Awwwuuuhhmm." What is that odd sound, anyway? It's coming from over there, from the front section of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Choir. They've all assumed the lotus position: legs crossed, fingers delicately touching tip to tip, wrists resting on the knees, eyes closed, faces blank. Their bearded director says, "All together now, breathe deeply and seek release. Get busy and chant those mantras, mentally move heaven and earth. Fill your head with the most perfect . . . nothing."

Again I say: oboy! But I suppose a head packed with nothing offers some kind of peace for people like us who find ourselves stuck on such a noisy planet. Sometimes it seems like we're living out our lives looking out the window of a bullet train. Images, information whiz by us so fast, we miss most of it. And though, truth be told, we're not missing much, it still makes us more than a little nervous. So I guess it's not too hard to figure out why this ancient Eastern recipe for calm might be appealing to hearts that have never known true rest. Just closing your eyes to gaze at eternal night must seem, at times, to be a great relief. Meditation, they call it.

Make it something better . . .

There is a better solution. Strangely enough, the Bible calls it meditation, too. But apart from the name, there's little similarity between biblical meditation and the stuff the Maharishi has been peddling. "In his law [teaching] doth he meditate day and night," says the psalmist about the godly man. In that place, the word "meditate" suggests a man making a low, humming sound as he repeats softly to himself the words of an ancient text.