Prem Rawat, Maharishi University, Maharishi Finance
Athmavidya Foundation: Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Finance
In 1979 the acquisition and customization of a Boeing 707 for Prem Rawat's exclusive use became the dominant focus within the then Divine Light Mission. The headquarters of DLM was moved to Miami and large numbers of the most skilled and dedicated ashram premies were moved to Miami into run-down, rat-filled hotels. Work on the 1961 Boeing 707 was completed in 1980 but it's emissions exceeded legal limits so the plane was soon sold to the more famous and much, much richer Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (he had begun his career working as the accounts clerk for a major Indian religious leader, so he could handle legal details like not letting your family steal your inheritance.) The plane was used by Rawat for a US tour and a trip to Australia and New Zealand and a holiday in Tahiti.
SE Iowa Union: The next film in the Fairfield History Series explores life after Parsons
In 1974, Fairfield was struggling. Over a year had passed since Parsons College collapsed and left a huge hole in the community. Colleges nationwide were failing and Fairfield found it difficult to find a college to purchase the campus from the creditors.
A small California college connected with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (famous for having taught meditation to the Beatles) was interested in purchasing the campus. Residents investigated Transcendental Meditation (™) and despite some lingering questions and concerns, they welcomed the newcomers in the fall of 1974, albeit with a healthy dose of skepticism.
The sixth film in the highly popular Fairfield History Series will tell the historical account of "When Maharishi Came to Town."
For the upcoming documentary, "When Maharishi Came to Town," Producer and Director Dick DeAngelis interviewed Gordon Aistrope (left), former bank president and chairman of the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, and Roger Leahy of Overland Outfitters and who was one of the first of the MIU students to arrive."
Celebs from Katy Perry to Ivanka say Transcendental Meditation helps them focus. The movement's chief promises more: quasi-magical powers and the ability to steer world events.
"When the David Lynch Foundation held a gala for Transcendental Meditation at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., last year, it drew a star-studded crowd. Comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Margaret Cho were there. So was the singer Kesha, as well as White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who had recently published a self-help book that included a section extolling TM's benefits.
It was a pleasant, 77-degree June evening in the District. The guests wore cocktail attire, and the event was set up almost like a Hollywood premiere, with pre-show celebrity interviews on a red carpet. That's where Kesha asked for a hug from Seinfeld, who brusquely refused her request while cameras were rolling (she later got one from Bob Dylan). Seinfeld laughed with Jay Leno for the cameras; Hugh Jackman, who co-hosted the event with Katie Couric, posed with real estate developer Jeffrey Abramson and his wife Rona. Jay Leno, Ben Folds, singer Angelique Kidjo, classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, and Seinfeld, Cho, and Kesha performed for the assembled luminaries.
The event was yet another sign that TM, with its lengthy (and growing) client roster of the rich and famous, had cemented a place among America's cultural elites. Although independent estimates vary, TM officials claim that roughly 10 million people have learned the technique, which is meant to control anxiety, reduce stress, and increase their overall well-being.
"Transcendental meditation is a practice I picked up several years ago and I couldn't do half of what I do in a day without it," Ivanka Trump wrote in her book. "Twenty minutes is ideal for calming the mind, eliminating distractions, and boosting my productivity."
The fundraiser promised to provide TM instruction so that underprivileged kids, military veterans, and trauma survivors could avail themselves of its benefits."
" ... David Vago, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who studies the effects of meditation, pointed out that all of the Maharishi Effect studies are basically correlation without causation. "As much as I'd like to believe that crime rates will reduce in a causal response to group meditation increases, I have a hard time buying this kind of correlational research," Vago told The Daily Beast.
Clinicaltrials [.] gov, which tracks accredited clinical research studies, found 910 studies of mindfulness currently underway, but only 14 studies of TM—half of which began before 2002. While TM officials often note that the National Institute of Health has funded research in TM to the tune of $24 million, that funding ended in 2010.
In 2014, an independent meta-analysis of meditation research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association for Internal Medicine found "insufficient evidence that mantra meditation programs [such as TM] had an effect on any of the psychological stress and well-being outcomes we examined." An earlier review of TM data by the NIH also found insufficient evidence that TM lowered blood pressure as claimed.
Other assertions have been fact-checked to TM's detriment. The organization's American home base of Fairfield, Iowa has a population of roughly 10,000 residents. In 1993, reporter Scott Shane inquired about the crime rate in the area, figuring that crime must be virtually non-existent with all the advanced meditating going there on all the time. "Crime here is about the same as any small town in rural America," Fairfield police chief Randy Cooksey told Shane. In fact, Cooksey said, "I'd say there's been a steady increase. I think, based on my statistics in Fairfield, I can show they have no impact on crime here.""
" ... Dennis Roark, the former chairman of the physics department at Maharishi University has described TM's research as "crackpot science." Roark said he resigned his position after being told to link TM's effects to legitimate physics—a notion he described as "preposterous."
"Although there is substantial work in the physics of quantum mechanics giving to consciousness an essential role, even a causal role, there is no evidence or argument that could connect some sort of universal consciousness to be subjectively experienced with a unified field of all physics," Roark wrote. "In fact, the existing scientific work suggests just the opposite."
"The style of research they use is what I call 'painting the bullseye around the arrow,'" says ex-TMer Patrick Ryan, who attended Maharishi International University, the progenitor to MUM, against his Navy master chief father's advice, and spent 10 years in the movement as a "spiritual warrior" before quitting in the 1980s. "If a bunch of TM meditators get together and the stock market goes up, TM made it happen. If there's another course and crime rates go down, or if accidents go down, TM created that. Find a positive thing that's happened and take credit for it.""
" ... The relentless focus on money is one of the main reasons Southern California meditation teacher Lorin Roche left TM in 1975.
"The whole focus of TM in the United States became to get all the teachers and all the half-million or more people who had learned TM, to go take expensive advanced courses and learn to levitate," Roche wrote on his personal blog. "Soon there were tens of thousands of Siddhas trying, but failing, to levitate, all across the United States and around the world."
Roche "benefited from TM tremendously, but it was a different organization when I was there," he told The Daily Beast. "Once it became worth a billion dollars, it just changed."
One billion may be a low estimate. According to The Economist, the Maharishi's land holdings alone were worth $3 billion in 1998. A 2012 investigation by India Today estimated Maharishi's real estate assets at the time of his death 10 years later to be worth Rs 60,000 crore—roughly $9 billion.
Although private donations have dwindled in recent years, from $31.6 million in 2008 to $1.5 million in 2015, there still seems to be plenty of money around, and there are dozens of separate but related TM organizations across the globe. The Daily Beast's detailed review of TM-related financial documentation revealed a byzantine tangle of non- and for-profit corporations, global land holdings, and hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe more—flowing each year through the various entities that make up TM."
Athmavidya Foundation: Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Finance
" ... In 1970, after having trouble with Indian tax authorities, he [Maharishi Mahesh Yogi] moved his headquarters to Italy, returning to India in the late 1970s. That same year, the City of Hope Foundation in Los Angeles gave the Maharishi their "Man of Hope" award."
" ... In January 1988, offices at the Maharishinagar complex in New Delhi were raided by Indian tax authorities and the Maharishi and his organisation were accused of falsifying expenses. Reports on the value of stocks, fixed-deposit notes, cash and jewels confiscated, vary from source to source. The Maharishi, who was "headquartered in Switzerland" at the time, reportedly moved to the Netherlands "after the Indian government accused him of tax fraud".) Following an earthquake in Armenia, the Maharishi trained Russian TM teachers and set up a Maharishi Ayurveda training centre in the Urals region. Beginning in 1989, the Maharishi's movement began incorporating the term "Maharishi" into the names of their new and existing entities, concepts and programmes."
" ... The GCWP unsuccessfully attempted to establish a sovereign micronation when it offered US$1.3 billion to the President of Suriname for a 200-year lease of 3,500 acres (14 km2) of land and in 2002, attempted to choose a king for the Talamanca, a "remote Indian reservation" in Costa Rica."
" ... The Maharishi is credited with heading charitable organisations, for-profit businesses, and real estate investments whose total value has been estimated at various times, to range from US$2 to US$5 billion. The real estate alone was valued in 2003 at between $3.6 and $5 billion. Holdings in the United States, estimated at $250 million in 2008, include dozens of hotels, commercial buildings and undeveloped land. The Maharishi "amassed a personal fortune that his spokesman told one reporter may exceed $1 billion". According to a 2008 article in The Times, the Maharishi "was reported to have an income of six million pounds". The Maharishi's movement is said to be funded through donations, course fees for Transcendental Meditation and various real estate transactions.
In his biography of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Story of the Maharishi (published 1976), William Jefferson suggests that the financial aspect of the TM organisation was one of the greatest controversies it faced. Questions were raised about the Maharishi's mission, comments from leaders of the movement at that time, and fees and charges the TM organisation levied on followers. Jefferson says that the concerns with money came from journalists more than those who have learned to meditate."
" ... Just four years after his death, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Rs 60,000 crore fortune is at the centre of an ugly battle between two groups of followers
Maharishi died in February 2008, leaving behind more than 12,000 acres of land across India. all vested with the Spiritual Regeneration Movement (SRM) Foundation, set up by the guru in 1959. The guru established several societies with the SRM Foundation and Maharishi Global University based in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh at the top of the list. The other four educational institutions are Maharishi Shiksha Sansthan, Maharishi Ved Vigyan Vidyapeeth, Maharishi Gandharva Ved Vidyapeeth and Mahila Dhyan Vidyapeeth that run 148 schools in 16 states across India."
" ... Maharishi Nagar Colony in Sector 39 of Noida, which the guru's followers built in the late 1970s, is in a state of neglect.The colony, spread over more than 900 acres, currently houses four buildings, each with more than 800 rooms. Most rooms lie in total neglect. A helipad once used by the guru is now dedicated to grazing cattle. Local real estate agents peg the worth of the land at Rs 15,000 crore. "The global university no longer operates from here.500-odd devotees of the guru stay in the colony, doing odd jobs to run the ashram.A mere four years after his death, the Maharishi's legacy in India is in tatters."
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