Mass Meditation Planned in Iowa's Maharishi Vedic City

[Guest guest]

Mass Meditation Planned in Iowa's Maharishi Vedic City

 

--

 

By DAVID PITT

Associated Press

 

MAHARISHI VEDIC CITY, Iowa - Meditator Stephen Cardinal believes

this blip of a city in southeast Iowa could soon alleviate world strife.

 

Since the city's founding in 2001, hundreds of Transcendental

Meditation practitioners have meditated in unison, sending what they

say is a wave of positivity across the globe. In the coming weeks, nearly

2,000 meditators from around the world will gather here to bolster the

wave in a mass meditation.

 

"The solutions of our forefathers haven't worked," said Cardinal, 25, who

attends a TM university in nearby Fairfield.

 

The practitioners will meditate in this city as well as in Fairfield.

Workers are busy building homes for 500 meditators on fields where

sunflowers once stood. A short walk leads to a colony where meditators

stay in white houses with gold-colored roofs, topped with onion-shaped

domes.

 

"I do believe that this influence is true and that it is a technology that is

valuable," said Ed Malloy, the Fairfield mayor and a TM practitioner.

 

TM practitioners follow the precepts of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the TM

founder and a one-time spiritual teacher to the Beatles.

 

The Maharishi, reported to be about 89, contends that simultaneous

mass meditation creates a wave effect that calms the world, influences

stock markets, decreases crime rates and prompts other positive

societal behavior.

 

Supporters claim the positive energy from this city about 95 miles

southeast of Des Moines is already paying off.

 

Since the number of daily meditators in Maharishi Vedic City and

Fairfield reached about 1,200 on July 23, the Dow Jones Industrial Index

has hit record levels, the S&P reached a 5 1/2-year high, and the

Nasdaq climbed to a 5-year high, said John Hagelin, the assembly's

organizer.

 

Once the 2,000 meditators are in place for the assembly called

Invincible America, Hagelin predicts the Dow will surge toward 15,000,

oil prices will fall below $45 a barrel, the U.S. crime rate will drop 20

percent and tensions in North Korea and Iran will be resolved peacefully.

 

Violence in Iraq will also dramatically decline, said Hagelin, a former

Natural Law Party presidential candidate.

 

"We're clearly on the threshold of a global transformation," said Hagelin,

a quantum physics researcher educated at Harvard and Dartmouth.

 

The TM experts, called pandits, are men aged 20 to 30 who have

studied with the Maharishi for years, learning chants and other practices

of Vedic tradition from ancient India. The movement claims 6 million

practitioners since it was introduced about 50 years ago.

 

The Maharishi claims the men are adept at the art of "yogic flying," a

deep level of consciousness that causes the practitioner to hop into the

air involuntarily. He says the meditators tap into a unified field of

consciousness that affects society.

 

The pandits travel to Iowa with their own chefs who prepare specialized

organic vegetarian meals. Their 700-square-foot, two-bedroom

manufactured homes, which are now being delivered, will meet Vedic

specifications. They will face east in alignment with the sun.

 

A TM supporter's private foundation has kicked in $12 million for the

assembly. The money provides as much as $600 a month to cover

expenses for each participant willing to relocate to southeastern Iowa.

 

The pandits will rarely leave the largely closed community and will return

to India after two years, then be replaced by a new group, said

Maharishi Vedic City Mayor Bob Wynne.

:by indiawest

 

http://www.indiawest.com/view.php?

subaction=showfull&id=1164915449&archive=&start_from=&ucat=10