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Death of a Guru
By John W. Kennedy | February 13, 2008
I had more than a passing interest when I read that Transcendental Meditation founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died last week at the age of 91.
Throughout most of the 1980s I worked as a newspaper reporter and editor in Fairfield, Iowa, headquarters of Maharishi University of Management (MUM). One in five residents in the town of 10,000 was a meditator.
Officials of the movement have long called TM a “science” and denied it has any religious overtones, even though a 1977 federal court decision called TM teachings “religious in nature.” TM has its origins in polytheistic Hinduism and is based on elements of Vedic scripture. In Fairfield, practitioners sit in golden domes twice daily reciting a mantra while facing a large portrait of Maharishi and his mentor, Guru Dev.
Maharishi claimed he could create “heaven on earth” if only enough people around the globe gathered in groups to recite their mantras at the same time.
The strangest event I covered as a reporter occurred in December 1983 when 7,000 meditators from 45 nations gathered in Fairfield for what organizers billed as “A Taste of Utopia” conference. For more than an hour, the assembled stood in front of a golden dome on the MUM campus — amid 10 inches of snow and in 20-degree temperatures — for a group photo. During the three-week conference, TM officials issued daily press releases taking credit for anything positive happening in the world, such as hospital admissions declining in U.S. hospitals on Christmas. They ignored the fact that Fairfield experienced its worst December weather in history, including a wind-chill factor of 83 below zero.
While Christians may find the practices of meditators bizarre, they have at least one admirable trait: dedication to a cause. Meditators go to the dome twice a day, every day because they believe it has an impact in changing them and the world. I wonder what would happen if Christians showed as much devotion to prayer.
To read more about TM’s influence in Fairfield, see:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/january8/11.74.html
Topics: TM |
February 13th, 2008 at 10:47 am
John,
Glad to see you are going to share your thoughts on a blog. To check in on a blog will be a new experience for me. I saw in the newspaper of the passing of the guru, and wondered what the effect will be on his movement. I suppose the influence of TM has already been fading for some time. I wonder if it is still force fed to unwitting business professionals by their corporations the way it was a few years ago, along with multicultural propoganda, etc. For TM to take credit for all the good things while ignoring their obvious failures is comical, but doesn’t that seem to happen a lot with other groups, political and religious?
Dave
February 14th, 2008 at 8:26 am
John,
Read some of your thoughts, particularly interested in the TM blog as I am writing on meditation as a lost practice of Christians in America. There is a hunger to be quiet before God and we need to teach people not to empty their minds but to fill them with the presence of God.
February 14th, 2008 at 9:01 am
That was interesting, John. You might be interested in a letter to the editor, written by a man in our church, Dan Bowers. Can’t remember exactly what day it was–last Thursday or Friday, I think. But it was about how that the same day as the Maharishi’s death was also Super Tuesday and the day the storms hit so badly in the South. The Ledger’s entire paper was devoted to the Maharishi’s death, and very little (if anything) was said about the other two national events. Dan said his parents were visiting, had read the paper, and wondered if the Ledger was run by a meditator.
Always interesting living in Fairfield!
Laurie
February 27th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Nice! Does corn grow better near Fairfield because of the convergence of meditation?