TED CHADWICK does not flinch even a bit as he sits in Winthrop House dining hall. Light more intense than 10,000 suns is incandescing behind his sealed eyes, but he feels no pain. Only a sweet whiteness lies within his head. It overwhelms his thoughts, taking them away from exams, the dish of brown ice-cream melting on the table before him, and his father's plea that if he must give any money to a 15-year-old guru, he should turn over income only and keep his capital intact. Ted Chadwick has "had Knowledge" for over a year now, and it has given him a Divine Light precious beyond any earthly concerns.

Followers of the teenage Guru Maharaj Ji are among the many Harvard evangelists who have tried to offer students salvation for the past three years. Ministers of the Church of Scientology pressed hard on campus a while back, charging thousands of dollars to "clear" people of problems by using skin-sweat detectors. At the same time, figures caped in black and necklaced in silver swept down on the Square to proselytize for a religion called the Process, which installs Satan, Lucifer, and Jehovah as equal rulers in its universe. Neither of these religions has any visible following at the College today. But a widening constellation of religions and meditation groups now run over with converts, and light new paths to bliss. Heaven is very big at Harvard, and graduating seniors may wish to see what, if anything, they're going to miss.

THE FASTEST-GROWING of the new Harvard sects follows the teaching of a sad-eyed, bearded Indian yogi named Maharishi Mahesh. The Yogi has succeeded phenomenally in his efforts to spread his system of deep meditation in America. The number of users of his Transcendental Meditation (TM) shot from 200 to roughly 200,000 in the past eight years. The Beatles and Mia Farrow have tried Transcendental Meditation, and presently vocal users of TM include astronaut Russell Schweickart, the Beach Boys, and the majority leader of the Illinois House of Representatives. At Harvard, the number of student practitioners is not known precisely, but appears to be in the hundreds: Larry Geeslin, head of the H-R Students' International Meditation Society, says that over 85 students were initiated in the past year alone. The depth of local entrenchment is clear from other signs. About 30 undergraduates made a joint independent work project of the study of Transcendental Meditation this Spring, and a more advanced course will be offered this fall. And the Cambridge headquarters of the International Meditation Society--an amply lawned mansion at 33 Garden Street--testifies to the wealth of the enterprise.

In leaflets lining the shelves of the Garden Street center, Transcendental Meditation is said to require "a few minutes each morning and evening as one sits comfortably with eyes closed." The few minutes generally run to about 20 or 30 per session--whether alone or with others. Larry Geeslin, a tall, thin faced second semester senior, who found TM while on a leave of absence, describes the method as being simple and natural. A nonsense word called a "mantra" is assigned for life to each student by a teacher. Contemplation of the mantra allows the user to enter the transcendental state, during which Geeslin says meditators appear to be sleeping but in fact remain acutely alert to the outside environment. "What occurs during meditation is that everyday levels of thought become quieter and quieter until the quietest level can be transcended. The quieting is accompanied by physical changes--the breathing is shallower, brain waves are altered, and the heart load changes," he says.

The virtue of the practice comes not with a transitory feeling but with a lasting release from stress. Individuals say they emerge from meditation refreshed and alert. As evidence, one of the pamphlets cites studies made at the University of Texas, UCLA, and Berkeley. Bar charts of the results show Transcendental Meditators were much better at perceptual and motor tasks, as well as learning and short-and long-term memory tests, than normal people. The benefits are corroborated by students, who make up half the beginners in Transcendental Meditation today in America.

While the Society's claims may suggest a "Dare To Be Great course for hippies"--a description made by one visitor at an introductory lecture last year--independent scientific literature supports the contentions of the pamphlet. Articles in Scientific American, Science, The American Journal of Physiology, and The Journal of the American Medical Association have documented changes in mental and physical states during meditation. The light sweat normally present in skin diminishes abruptly, signalling greater ease. Alpha waves in the brain, another indicator of relaxation, grow stronger. The heart beat and blood pressure drop.

Dr. Herbert Benson, an assistant professor of Medicine here, found evidence two years ago that drug abusers who tried TM broke away from their dependencies much more often than a control group. "It was clear that most were at one point heavily involved in drug abuse," he said of his sample of 1862 Transcendental Meditators. "But practically all of them--19 of 20--said that they had given up drugs because they felt that their subjective meditative experience was superior to what they achieved through drugs."

Drug abuse control is just one of the uses seen by some of the advocates of Transcendental Meditation. William J. Murphy, majority leader of the Illinois House of Representatives, steered through a resolution last summer immodestly praising the Yogi's system as a way to cool down student unrest as well as to fight drugs. "School officials have noted a lessening of student unrest and an improvement in grades and student-parent and teacher relationships among practicitioners of Transcendental Meditation," Murphy's resolution read.

Also last year, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare gave the Society a $21,540 grant to train 100 public school teachers across the country in the system. Murphy himself has meditated since the fall of 1969, and says "without fear of correction that it has aided me physically and mentally." The significance of the legislature's approval of his resolution, however, is open to possible correction: few legislators anywhere read proposed statements of legislative sentiment. Two years ago the Texas legislature unanimously affirmed a measure praising the Boston Strangler for his efforts on behalf of population control.

Strangely, one of the most out-spoken proponents of Transcendental Meditation is Major General Franklin M. Davis, commandant of the Army War College. The War College has few problems keeping its student body pacified, so Davis has other ideas in mind. He believes the Yogi's teachings may help to relieve combat fatigue as well as drug abuse among soldiers, and at his request, classes in Transcendental Meditation have begun at Fort Dix and Fort Bliss.

At Harvard, three of the most active undergraduates working with the Society's Garden Street center intend to teach the system when they graduate. To Geeslin, Transcendental Meditation will be a "life's work." He found that it gave him a reason to return to Harvard after a prolonged leave of absence, and it continues to allow him to "master life" and enjoy it.

"It's not based on any passivity, but on a very substantial increase in ability to utilize intellect and emotion," he says. One of its beauties is simplicity--meditation takes only a few hours to learn. Unlike religions requiring hugely sophisticated skills, Geeslin says that Transcendental Meditation involves "no manipulation or effort." Perhaps for that reason alone, laziness being what it is at Harvard and almost everywhere else, the users of Transcendental Meditation will continue to find a growing audience at politically apathetic campuses.

SEPARATING the mystical bliss of Maharishi and the doctrines of the Baha'i is a profound difference in essence and teaching. Where the emphasis of the Transcendental Meditators is on inner peace, Harvard Baha'is try to unify men. The Baha'is have a set of holy scriptures offering explicit, but vaguely worded, prescriptions for political and economic glory on earth, unlike followers of the Maharishi. A further difference between the two sects is size: the Baha'i community at Harvard numbers only half a dozen.

Michael Porter '73, a bespectacled math major who has been a believer for over two years, served as head of H-R Baha'i Association for the past year. "For me, it started with a mild curiosity," he said. "I met a Baha'i in an airplane. At the time she kept saying, 'Don't you see? World government based on spiritual values!'" Porter laughs at how ridiculous it all once seemed. "Later I went to a number of meetings, and asked questions for about six months. First came a period of skepticism that Baha'i principles would work. The teaching of world unity--I didn't see why that was a necessity. But I didn't feel any kind of heat until I decided all the intellectual things really held together." After deciding that they did, he spent some time trying to judge what it felt like to be a Baha'i. "Everything is different," he said. "You try to see the spark of God in every human."

His parents received the news with a close approximation of equanimity. Porter had drifted away from Judaism long before, due to "laziness" during junior high school toward Orthodox rituals, and made a conscientious breakaway in high school. The new religion had all the virtues of tepid liberalism, without the hungry search for righteous causes so dismally pursued over the past decade by many students and suburbanites. Porter was attracted by the religion's calls for men to "abolish extreme wealth and extreme poverty," "to choose an international language to be used along with the mother tongue," and to grant women "equal opportunities, rights and privileges." His parents were concerned only with the teaching of Baha'i which encourages interracial and cross-cultural marriages, he said.