Update on Maharishi Vedic Pandits

On January 24, 2014, Hi India, the newspaper serving the South Asian community worldwide, ran a 2-page article on the sorry plight of Maharishi Vedic Pandits residing in a fenced compound in Maharishi Vedic City, Iowa, U.S.A.

On August 30, 2014, Hi India published a second article about the Vedic Pandits. According to this article, (http://hiindialive.com/missing-pandit-brutally-killed/), despite their January expose, neither the Indian Consul General in Chicago, nor leaders of Chicago's Indian community, nor officials in India have initiated any action to help the Vedic Pandits.

Hi India suggests that after the posting of their first report, the following actions should have been taken, but were not:

- The TM university responsible for the pandits should have invested more resources into improving financial compensation and living conditions for the pandits, rather than into damage-control of their image.

And further, that the Consul-General of India situated in Chicago should have done the following:

- sent someone to the compound to take a first-hand look at the living conditions of the Vedic Pandits.

- raised concern about the passports of the pandits being held as ransom by the sponsoring University, and insisted that the passports be returned to the Consul General’s office, in accordance with Indian policy.

- investigated the plight of the "165 missing pandits." (This was a group of 165 pandits that the TM University drove to Chicago's O'Hare airport after the uprising, in order to send them back home. It was never made totally clear if these Indian men requested their return to India, or if, following the uprising, the University picked out the pandits whom they perceived to be "troublemakers," and forced them to leave. Whichever is the real story, it appears as if instead of boarding their appointed planes back to India, many fled the airport in the sub-zero weather and disappeared.)

- engaged with Chicago police and the local Indian community to locate missing Vedic Pandits who may have been wandering around Chicago.

- lodged a complaint with local police, Immigration officials, other Indian Consulates in the U.S. and the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.

 - issued a press release about the pandits.

- investigated the recruitment tactics and the contract between Vedic Pandits and their sponsoring university.

- demanded the complete list of Vedic Pandits who arrived, left and are missing from the compound.

- asked for travel and ticket details and matched this information with pandits' arrival (or failure to arrive) at Indian airports.

According to Hi India, the Chicago Consul General failed to do any of these things. The conditions of the pandits at the fenced compound at Maharishi Vedic City remains unmonitored by outsiders. And the "missing pandits," (who speak little English) who fled O'Hare Airport 8 months ago, are unaccounted for.

Well, we finally know the fate of one of those missing pandits. According to Hi India, Ajit Panday, age approximately 23, has been found in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. On August 24, 2014, he was shot to death by an unidentified armed robber at the Big Brother 2 Food Mart in Atlanta, while Ajit was closing up the convenience store for the night.

Ajit was brought to the U.S. by Maharishi University about two years ago. When the University brought him to the airport in January, he apparently snuck out of the air terminal rather than boarding a plane to India. He somehow ended up in Georgia, which is approximately 600 miles (approximately 1000 kilometers) south of Chicago, and entered the underground economy of undocumented workers.

 In their statements, the Indian owners of the convenience store and of the property it stood on shrugged off responsibility for his death, stating that they had cautioned Panday to be careful in the night time.

As for how his countrymen have treated this undocumented man, Panday had been working without pay at the store for more than two months. He worked more than 15 hours per day, 7 days a week. No proper food, sanitation or security was provided in the back room of the store, where Panday lived. The owners claim Panday was a friend who they were helping out by giving him a place to stay, and in return he willingly volunteered his time at the store.  There were insufficient security systems, insufficient security training and insufficient backup at the store.

Ajit Panday's body was still in the mortuary six days after the murder, apparently because his family in India is too poor to ship the remains home. Ajit was the only bread-winner in his family, which consists of a widowed mother and two younger siblings.

The owners of the store state the body is still in the U.S. because the family has failed to give authorization to ship the body.

Ajay Prakash Shrivastava, nephew of the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and head of global operations of the sponsoring Maharishi University, said that he could not trace the family, although all the information is available in office records.

Though Ajit is the first casualty that has come to light, there may well be other Maharishi Vedic Pandits being mistreated somewhere in the U.S.  Not to mention those being mistreated in their fenced compound in Maharishi Vedic City in Iowa.

TM-Free Blog has posted several articles about the Vedic Pandits.  Click on any of these titles to see the TM-Free article:  

Triumph of the Incurious: Oprah Visits Fairfield's Pandits 

Pandits in Captivity - Fairfield's Conspiracy of Silence

CPs : Course Participants or Captive Pandits

Invincible Combustion - Pandit residence enflamed

Inside Pandit Compound with Rekha Basu - Des Moines Register

Human Trafficking in Vedic City? 

Missing Pandits

"Pandits for Profit"

Rekha Basu : "There's a little disconnect" in TM Pandit Compound

Pandit Protest or Freedom Cry

Meet Mumosa!

To enhance your enlightened enjoyment!

A new site http://mumosa.com exposes fallacies of Maharishi University of Management and life in Fairfield, Iowa - the North American mecca for the Transcendental Meditation Movement.

Enjoy!

Rekha Basu : "There's a little disconnect" in TM Pandit Compound

Rekha Basu states "There's a little disconnect" when pandits for peace threw rocks at a sheriff, during a stealth 6 a.m. operation to remove their leader for an undisclosed reason.

In summary, there needs to be some oversight about this suspicious situation.

Rekha Basu, journalist for the Des Moines Register, explains Vedic City and Pandit compound clearly to non-TMers. In this video interview she reviews the noble purported goals of the TM Movement, the financial and cultural contributions to the larger community, and the pandits' apparent totalitarian controlled living situation :






She provides an excellent overview of the Pandit compound in the video interview and her article "Maharishi Vedic City: Inside the compound with Rekha Basu".

Ms. Basu investigated only the pandit compound. So she understandably made a mistaken assumption in introductory remarks, stating that Vedic City private homes are for faculty of Maharishi University of Management.  In reality, MUM faculty live primarily on campus, because (like the fenced-in pandits) MUM faculty are compensated with room and board and a minimal stipend. The only MUM faculty who live off campus either have an outside income, personal trust funds or married into wealth.

Vedic City private homes are owned by private TM devotees.

The psychological totalitarianism of the TM Movement extends beyond the physical pandit enclosure.

Thank you, Rekha Basu!

CPs : Course Participants or Captive Pandits

Essay 2 of a 3-part series.
For the first essay in this series on Vedic City's Vedic Pandits, please click here.

Oprah Winfrey’s televised visit to Maharishi Vedic City’s pandit compound provided an opportune excuse for a drive to the pandit compound during my recent visit to Fairfield, Iowa.

Oprah’s pandit visit is summarized in this short video clip : 

As I drive north of Fairfield on Highway One, in less than one mile I follow the highway's directional arrow left on Airport Rd toward Maharishi Vedic City.

Following the arrow due west 2 miles on Airport Rd / 180th Street, I drive through open farmland and pass a few vedic houses, identifiable by uniform east facing entrances with strange roof ornaments, and Fairfield's small airport where Fairfield's TM-wealthy house private airplanes and a leer jet or two. Two miles west of Highway One's turn off, I arrive at an empty country intersection for Jasmine Ave, the beginning of Vedic City.

Turning right, or north, onto Jasmine Ave I pass the turn to a few residences and the flagged Capital building for the Global Country of World Peace whose annual revenue, as a registered non profit agency, is in the range of $19 million,

And the entry sign for Maharishi Vedic Observatory, enhanced with bullet holes to document the sign's dual purpose for both vedic marker and target practice (click on image to enlarge).

I stop briefly at Vedic City's central information desk in The Raj spa which features costly Maharishi Ayurvedic treatments (more about visiting the "Observatory" and "The Raj" in another essay).

Exiting the Raj's tree-lined entry drive,I return to two-lane Jasmine Ave heading north as I pass farmland to my right and a few "Vedic" buildings on the left.

I turn left, or west, onto 170th Avenue’s country road along Vedic City's perimeter. After passing a few Vedic housing developments that are evidently slow on sales, I arrive to the lauded luxury Rukmapura Park Hotel's gravel entry.

Almost directly across from the most elegant hotel of Fairfield or Vedic City lies the fenced "Invincible America Campus", or pandit compound, with rows of white prefabricated buildings capped with golden ornaments, called kalashes, to maximize each building's spiritual energy.

An uniformed visitor could possibly mistake the pandit compound for an agri-business, but not for long.

“Women are not allowed past that fence. Actually, no one is allowed unless they have special permission and an escort. You can stand at the edge of this fence to take photos.” The friendly guard informs me from the simple wooden guardshack at the entrance to Vedic City’s pandit compound only a few miles north of Jefferson County’s courthouse in Fairfield, Iowa.

The guard sits alone or with one other at the fenced compound’s gate, surrounded by otherwise open farmland and a large torquoise sky. Maybe the job is boring or perhaps he enjoys sitting in the quiet countryside and reading.

I’m relieved that the friendly guard in khakis, a light plaid shirt and clip-on security badge is happy to chat. I hope this essay does not jeopardize his emplyment.  

"Since I can’t enter, may I walk along that road between the fences, still outside the pandit compound?" I ask while pointing to the moat-like dirt road separating the compound from the parking lot where we stand.  

"Nope." he responds. "Private property. You can take pictures from this parking lot fence." He extends his arm indicating the fence encircling the small gravel parking area.

I retort with a smile, “But Oprah filmed inside.”

The guard laughs, “But you’re not Oprah.”

"True enough.” I wink and continue, “Maharishi always gave extra benies to the wealthy. It’s about public relations and donations. Too bad I don’t have a zoom lens.”

The guard observes from his small shack while I walk freely in the fenced gravel parking lot, clicking photos with my red point-and-shoot camera across double fences to the pandits .

Pandits play baseball on a seemingly unmarked grass field. 

Three Indians in white gauze kurtas notice me. They walk closer to sit under a tree near the fence, watching the guard talk with me. They remind me of captive animals in a zoo who had watched my children and me from behind fences. I wave. The pandits wave back. 

Two beige former school buses parked beside the drive marked “Residents Only Private Drive” remind me of childrens' summer camp transportation. The guard informs me that buses transport pandits for occasional special performances at Maharishi University's Golden Domes or elsewhere, to return the same day.

Between snapping photos and chatting about the weather, I introduce myself.

“I just saw Oprah’s show and found this fascinating since I used to live here. I graduated from Fairfield High School 1975 as the first 'Ru to graduate from Fairfield High, before MIU began their high school here.

('Ru is slang term awarded by Fairfield residents to the meditators who invaded their town in 1974, shortened from Iowa-accented GuRUuuu. MIU, Maharishi International University, later became MUM, or Maharishi University of Management)

Seeking commonality, the guard names some high school classmates from his graduating class a few years before mine.

After thinking a moment, I respond. “No, I don’t remember them. I only attended FHS for my senior year; that’s when we moved here. You and your friends were out of school by then, so I didn’t meet them. I remember Myron Gookin who is now Iowa's local District Court judge. Myron was either our senior class president or the student body president. I think his family lived on North Main Street at the time, in a meticulous yellow house if I remember correctly. They moved to the other side of town after the 'Rus took over that end of town. I arrived with the first group that came here with MIU from California. My mother was an MIU Student. I fell in love with Iowa, but the old Parsons campus was such a mess!”

“I remember.” he smiles and nods.

We laugh together while sharing memories of 1974's awkward campus BBQ welcoming MIU’s arrival to Fairfield, when skinny vegetarian MIU students refused to eat barbequed pork donated by local farmers. 

I add, “I always loved Iowa. My children were born here. My daughter attended Pence elementary school on the south side of town,” thereby implying that I was not a die-hard 'Ru, since my own children attended a local public school rather than MSAE, Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment. "Eventually I couldn't take it and moved away."

The guard nods, then begins to open up. "There are 850 pandits here now. The Movement plans to have 1200 to keep the numbers here up for when dome numbers drop. They keep saying more will arrive soon," referring to Maharishi’s plan for a specified number of (TM-Sidhi) Program participants for the ever-promised "Super Radiance effect"  that would magically create World Peace.

"There are 88 buildings now and expanding." He points to one building with an orange and purple entry, "That's their Durga, or temple. The white entrance by a larger building is the administrative building. The large gymnasium is in back. Another building is the meditation building. All their needs are provided for.” 

He suddenly sounds scripted, “They meditate, have food, study and exercise time. They study Sanskrit and Vedic scriptures. You can see they’re playing baseball now.” He nods to the ball game before us, speaking as though this is normal. "A clinic will be coming to take care of their medical needs." he adds.

“They visit local doctors and the hospital now?” I ask.

“Usually. But there’s a doctor who comes to see them out here sometimes.”

“Have there been cases of tuberculosis or other infectious diseases?”

“I wouldn’t know.” He shrugs.

"I’m in the medical field. It’s good they provide medical care. This is impressive.” 

I wonder if the TM Organization is building a private clinic to avoid alerting public health authoritites, or if the clinic merely provides a cost-saving convenience.

We stand quietly looking at the compound and pandit baseball game for a few minutes in the Iowa sun. Not sure what to say next, “Where does the money come for all this?" I ask.

The guard shrugs, shaking his head,  "I'm not part of the Movement."

He points to his left, behind the guard shack, past open fields to a few rows of distant rectangular yellow buildings. 

"American pandit-types live there. I forgot what they're called."

"Purusha?" I ask,

"Yes. Purusha. Some Mother Divine women live near them. But most of the women are in New York or North Carolina.  Purusha men are sometimes allowed to attend pandit ceremonies. They once allowed a couple of Mother Divine women to attend a pandit ceremony, but apparently it became a scene. Women are too distracting for the pandits. So no more females." After a moment, guard adds, "There's no problem with Purusha men and Mother Divine woman living nearby. "

“I wonder how the pandits controlled themselves when Oprah visited.” I say.

The guard laughs.

After taking my few photos, I thank the guard and drive away, wishing I had better planned my questions.

Stopping briefly along the side the compound to photograph the street sign for "Vedic America Drive", one pandit approaches me. 

A moat-like ditch filled with knee-high prickly weeds deters me from getting close enough to the fence to talk comfortably. I wish I wore different shoes.

I wave “Hello" to the lone pandit.

He returns my greeting.

"It's a beautiful day!" I call to him from the roadside, standing beside my car.

"Yes" he agrees.

"How are you today?"

"Fine."

"How long have you lived here?" 

"One hour," he reponds while wobbling his head side to side, Indian style.

 I realize he does not understand. I speak more slowly.

"How many years you here?"

"Two years." 

"Are you happy?"

"Yes." He wobbles his head.

"May I please take your photo?" I hold up my camera.

"No." he turns to walk away from the fence, then quickly returns. "OK." 

I snap his photo while the guard watches us from his perch.

"I have to go now." We wave good bye.

The third essay in this series may be read here.

Pandits in Captivity - Fairfield's Conspiracy of Silence

Essay 1 of a 3 part series.
Part 2 may be read here.
Part 3 may be read here.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." 

 Edmund Burke (1729-1797) 

Young families and greying baby boomers chat outside popular restaurants on Fairfield's town square, accustomed to ignoring the fact that 850 innocents are trapped in a gated, barb-wired compound outside their town.

Turning to my friend I said "Everything is calm and peaceful. Folks chat and bask in sunshine. Fairfield’s TM community is more integrated and tolerant than in the past. But doesn't anyone question the pandit compound? This reminds me of small town Nazi Germany, when citizens colluded to ignore prison camps only a few miles away."

She responded with parroted remarks that I had heard elsewhere, "I don't feel badly for the pandits. They've been paid. They're sending money home to their families in India - as poor immigrants have done from time immemorial. In Indian culture it's common for one member of a family to sacrifice their entire life to benefit the larger family."

Her verbatim response echoed one of Maharishi’s favorite indoctrination methods - multiple repetitions of nonsense would eventually be accepted as truth.

She continued, "The Movement hired a private guard. The local sheriff didn't feel comfortable recapturing escapees any more." Her calm manner shocked me.

“They have a guard? Some escape? Where do they go?” I asked.

“Of course some escape!” She continued, “Some of those Indians came to see America. They are poor people who took this job. They’re not trained as holy men. They have a work contract to meditate and chant for a couple of years. Their families are supported in India while they are here. The escapees usually show up at a nearby farmhouse asking for help.”

"This is 21st century North America, not ancient India’s indentured servitude." I responded. "Everyone in town knows that a few miles away there are people locked inside a guarded compound surrounded by corn fields. In this country, only prisoners are so constrained. Can this be legal?"

"They have visas." My friend shrugged.

"Who holds their passports? Do they know their rights?" I asked.

After brief hesitation, my friend responded “It’s not my business. I just quietly conduct my life here. I have my own problems.”

I let the conversation drop. My friend has her reasons. So does everyone else.

On Highway One, only two miles north of the entry to Maharishi University of Management, a highway sign points west, towards an otherwise innocuous side road directing to the TM Movement’s incorporated Vedic City, which is governed by mayor Raja Bob Wynne.

The highway sign fails to name the fenced compound, around the back side of Vedic City, that encloses over 800 Indian men. Yet, everyone in Fairfield, Iowa knows about the secluded pandit compound.

The Spiral of Silence Theory may explain why citizens of Jefferson County Iowa, including local attorneys, government and law enforcement officials, avoid public discussion of questionable legalities surrounding the forced containment and minimal compensation for these indentured "Pandits" from India.

"How the Hidden has Power" and "Out of Sight Out of Mind - Making Silence Easy" provide further insight to the social milieu of such silent complacency.


My next post will describe a visit to this fenced Compound.
Click here for essay 2 of this 3 part series.

ABC "Nightline" "Transcendental Meditation Thrives in Iowa"

ABC Nightline finally aired their special on TM and Vedic City on July 5, 2010.

Click on link : Transcendental Mediation Thrives in Iowa for televised familiar views of places and dear old friends, the "TM family."

They claim they "are not a cult", but images portray otherwise.

A reader suggested "the video clips are sanitized", possibly due to liability concerns by ABC News, and that "the TM Movement is probably well aware of its wonky image."

"David Wants to Fly" update from Berlin Film Festival - Transcendental Meditation expose'

"David Wants to Fly" is receiving rave reviews at the Berlin Film Festival, per German links, below.

Please vote on the audience ranking awards (5 is the highest vote on their scale).

Invitations and negotiations are in place for showing the film at North American film venues, and possibly a Broadway version.

Of course, feel free to offer feedback to any reviews.
The Variety review is in English.

We can expect negative feedback and comments coming from True Believer devotees.
Imagine that!

The story behind the story:
A few years ago, a young film maker met his creative idol, David Lynch.
The young filmmaker wished to absorb all that he could learn from his creative guru.

Naturally, the young filmmaker was encouraged to learn Transcendental Meditation. When the young man, David Sieveking, began questioning the TM-Siddhi program, he was suddenly denied access to further TM information and no longer had access to David Lynch. Sieveking thought, "There's a story here!"...

Please help us with the internet voting for the audience award.

Audience Award Berlinale
Directions: click onto "David Wants to Fly", then click onto "5 punkte" (points), then click "absenden" (send)

Berlinale Blog

Variety on "David Wants to Fly"
(English)

Deutschlandradio Kultur on "David Wants to Fly"

filmrezension.de on "David Wants to Fly"

20Fmediathek on "David Wants to Fly"

Kurz & Kritisch on "David Wants to Fly"

Berliner Morgenpost on "David Wants to Fly"

David Lynchs Suche nach innerem Glück

Synopsis from Berlinale Public Program "David Wants to Fly"
(English)

Lichtblick Media summary "David Wants to Fly"
(English)


Enjoy!
Feel free to make comments on the various reviews!

TM's "Global Country" selling one third of its Fairfield land holdings

The mayor of Maharishi Vedic City, Bob Wynne, announced yesterday that the Global Country of World Peace, the organization that teaches Transcendental Meditation that we around here often call the TMO for short, will be auctioning off fully one-third of its land holdings in the Fairfield, Iowa area starting in five days.

This last-minute announcement is a bit odd since obviously this auction has been in the works for a while, and the open house at the building to be auctioned happened over two weeks ago. Here's a part of "Raja" Wynne's e-mail:

Dear Supporters of Invincible America,

It is a great joy to announce that on Tuesday, December 15th beginning at 10:00 a.m. CST, Global Country of World Peace will make available for sale at auction one of the most beautiful buildings in our Invincible America community and a number of parcels of organic farmland totaling 600 acres. This auction will continue Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. Please see the announcement for details of when each parcel will be sold.

Since Global Country of World Peace owns quite a lot of land in the community we want to make about 1/3 of it available for those who wish to take advantage of prime organic real estate along Route 1 and inside Maharishi Vedic City for development, organic agriculture or residential or commercial uses. We feel this will help stimulate faster growth in the community and make property available contiguous to Maharishi University of Management, between MUM and Maharishi Vedic City, and within Maharishi Vedic City.

In addition, proceeds of the sale of these properties will be used to support Global Country of World Peace Movement activities in the community and around the country.

Here's what the brochure announcing the auction, from the local auction service handling it, looks like. Click the image to see the whole thing. It's a real study in the clash of cultures often seen in the Fairfield area - an auction announcement, just like that you'd see for an auction of farm equipment, but with a photo captioned "Sthapatva [sic] Veda designed brick building."


I'm sure there will be plenty of speculation as to what this relatively huge auctioning of the TM organization's assets in the Fairfield area means for the future of the TM movement. It seems to me that this e-mail announcement, sent way too late to attract serious bidders, serves only to insure that most in the meditating community would learn of the sale from the TMO, and not by other means. For the mayor to say "It's a great joy" to announce such an auction is more than a bit peculiar, since this sale clearly indicates that the TMO's plans for Fairfield probably don't involve expansion, but more likely, serious contraction.

This announcement coincidentally comes on the heels of an earlier e-mail that, after a bit of study, might also indicate that the TMO is setting the stage for a worldwide contraction except for its operations in one country: India. I'd written recently about how the "Maharishi's Global Plan" e-mail sent one month ago, explained in detail here by John Knapp, is a clear indicator that the organization that teaches Transcendental Meditation does, in fact, see as one of its goals the creation of a social and political order in every country indistinguishable from that of a Vedic theocracy.

In a sense none of this is new; the TM organization's willingness to get involved in politics along with promoting TM as the solution for everything at every level of society, and the source of its cosmology, pretty much dictates a Vedic theocratic outcome, the recent difference being the leadership, in such e-mails, has been being a bit more explicit about it lately. But there's something else in that e-mail, the significant part I'll repeat here:

The spiritual counterpart for your country lies in India. Each country is connected to one of the twelve jyotir lingas in India, the seat of Shiva, the eternal silence at the basis of creation. Reviving the age-old knowledge about the spiritual connection of every country with the Jyotirlingas in India and the creation of 48 Brahmananda Saraswati Nagars is Maharishi's greatest gift for humanity.

If you look at that global plan, both at the linked website and elsewhere - in particular, at the "Vedic Pandits" website - what you'll see described is a 680 million dollar construction project to build what are called "Brahmanand Saraswati Nagars," or in English more understandable to the casual meditator, "Guru Dev Towns." Their plan proposes 48 of these towns across India, associated in groups of four with the 12 Jyotir Lingas, historically significant places of worship of Shiva. As described, they're talking about a construction cost of over $12 million for each of these towns, and in the mythology the TMO is spinning about these projects, each of those towns is somehow "associated" with four countries.

So now that these associations are being set up through these statements - which, like a lot of what Mahesh came up with during his lifetime, are contemporary fantasies specific to this particular evangelical Vedic sect, and as far as I know do not reflect the beliefs of any other strain of the religious traditions of India - what do they really mean by all this? Clearly all the action is back in India where the seats of Shiva are, and where all the mass facility construction is planned.

If all the other countries of the world are magically "connected" with sites the TMO is building in India, then why does the TMO need any facility in any other country, save as a means of generating revenue to send back to India to help finance these construction projects and ongoing operations there? While the intent to "transform every country into a Vedic country" implies that they'd need a presence in every country to accomplish that - what if the leaders, and their make-it-up-on-the-fly-as-needed theology, indicate that a physical presence anywhere else on Earth isn't necessary? Is the significance of the rest of the world, from the ultimate Vedic supremacist viewpoint of the TMO, merely that other countries serve as exploitable sources of resources to fuel its own myth-based version of a Vedic revival in its homeland?

There are certainly obvious indications that exactly this process is well underway. How many, or shall I say, how few substantial local facilities teaching the TM program exist in the United States today? Meanwhile in India, the chain of Vedic based schools incorporating the TM program in India run by Mahesh's nephew, Girish Varma, says it's in 118 cities and is the "largest chain of privately operated public schools in India." Clearly these schools were at least in part financed with funds sourced in the West, as can be explicitly seen in the tax returns filed by the U.S. based Maharishi Global Development Fund showing a transfer of $44 million in 1999 earmarked "for the construction of schools in India."

My point is that unexpected and eventually drastic changes may be on the horizon for the TMO. All of the activity we see in the West today, with slightly off-kilter Westerners like David Lynch still trying to popularize a expatriate Vedic spiritual movement long past its prime, may simply be irrelevant. The real power and influence lies back in India, and as global economic conditions change, the usefulness to the TMO of any significant physical presence elsewhere in the world may eventually decline. In that context, this land sale and a subtle yet clear message that all of its operations are somehow "connected" to a bunch of "Guru Dev Towns" in India may be more significant than what appears at first glance.

Transcendental Meditation Pundits Riot in Vedic City?

This news item comes from the "Fairfield Life" Yahoo group, a post by group moderator Rick Archer:

Recent incident in Vedic City. Incoming groups of pundits try to smuggle in betel leaf and tobacco for existing pundits, but the TMO is hip to them, so they search their luggage before leaving India and on arrival. This time, during the on-arrival search, the existing pundits saw what was going on, and feeling rather desperate because their supplies are running low, started throwing rocks, hitting some of the people searching the luggage, breaking windows, and also overturning tables. The main instigators were sent back to India.

The Vedic Pundit program pays young males from India to perform rituals and chant Vedic scriptures while living in Maharishi Vedic City, the Transcendental Meditation movement's suburb of Fairfield, Iowa. The movement alleges that these rituals somehow provide a peaceful influence to the surrounding community and are part of their so-called "program" to bring about world peace by Vedic means.

Thirty Years Later - the next generation's satire

A generational cohort of "kids" raised in TM and Fairfield are now in their thirties and younger.
They continue to support one another with friendships forged through shared confusion.

An insightful myspace site unites them after leaving childhood "utopia" to enter the "world of ignorance."

Myspace profile for "Children of the Golden Spaceships"

Read comments, view videos of Lynch w/ Raja while listening to Mother Divine voices - for shared memories, frustration, and looney loved ones still captured in group-think.

Be sure to scroll down their site for enlightening videos and comments!

Some "kids"continue familial devotion to Maharishi, blaming Movement dysfunction upon TM's administrative space-cadettes.

Others are angry about MVED's slick scam which governed their lives.

By and large, their lifelong friendships support one another across the belief spectrum.

While I am not of this cohort (I preceded them & babysat during their preschool years), all can appreciate enlightened satire!

Enjoy! Enlightenment at its finest!

Myspace profile for "Children of the Golden Spaceships"

AND.. more tongue-in-cheek! Myspace profile for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - while Donovan sings "Hurdy Gurdy Man" and links to our long-lost "family"!

g :)

Vedic City’s annexation plan approved by state

Ohio state has approved the annexation of 84 acres into Maharishi Vedic City, despite urgings against the move from local County officials. Yes, the article really talks about Fairfield, OH. Must be a typo?

Your next vacation destination... Maharishi Vedic City?

Maharishi Vedic City, incorporated in Iowa on July 21, 2001 (no doubt at an auspicious time according to Hindu astrology) is marketing itself like any other tourist spot these days. Check out their slick website:

Maharishi Vedic City website