Believe it or not, Fairfield, Iowa (where I am staying at present) is one of the two major centers for these nuts in the US. I am, for my sins, a Citizen Sidhar (there is a good story to that too) and have visited the "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi" (a title which he lays claim to but which is disputed by senior Hindu clerics) in Vlodrop, Holland. My business partner is very senior in their movement and a huge donor to them, so I try to keep up to date on their doings :-O PS - they have two dome structures here (for boys and girls) which they use for meditating in, both with onion spires on the roofs. I believe they loath my description of them (which has taken hold nicely amongst the non-TMers here) as the "Dolly Parton Memorial".
When I have some free time I will write a bit about them and Kosovo. But in the meantime, visit http://www.trancenet.org/groups/tm.shtml and http://www.trancenet.org/index2.shtml to find out more about them. These guys and some of their spin-off organizations: TM, Maharishi Ayur-Veda, Maharishi Vedic Universities, Natural Law Party, Student's Natural Law Party, World Plan Executive Council, WPEC, Science of Creative Intelligence, Maharishi University of Management, Maharishi International University are not your typical jokers. They are organized, incredibly wealthy (assets over 10 billion US dollars) and extremely well connected.
Just for example, almost every book which makes the New York Times booklist is written by a TM author as the list is run by a bunch of TMers; and many major publishing and media companies now have TMers as their senior managers. It is not a coincidence that the Times and Newsweek websites frequently carry links to TM co-travelers. Following their leaders' instructions, they are "infiltrating" government; media; banking and investment companies; advertising agencies; law firms and other businesses all over the world. By posing as tree-huggers (which they most certainly are not), and preaching a nice "new-age" pseudo science liturgy (Natural Law) they are doing quite a good job of attracting rather goofy followers in all directions.
They are also rather bad news, being just as fond of suing people as the scientologists. I think their neatest scam is to collect tax dollars from around the world by getting their members to "donate time and services", which are valued at "market related rates" (about ten times what these guys could earn in any marketplace - so I guess it is related, vaguely... but it is of course a tax deduction for their members) and then they turn around and claim funds from various government "matching funding" programs around the world. Despite having been declared a religion in every case where this has been relevant, they continue to pretend not to be one in order to have access to US government funds. And somehow the government keeps ignoring its own courts verdicts. Last year for example, their "university" something I should write a book about, collected millions of dollars to run "scientific research" programs into the benefits of meditation and "Ayur Vedic" medicine...
Every now and then they shoot themselves in the feet, for example, I have a recent tape of their vice-presidential candidate recently saying that "People who do not meditate do not have souls!" which I will post on my website when I finally get time to work on it. But most of the time they do quite a good job of appealing to the more gullible around the world.
Don't you wish you were as good at inventing schemes... I mean memes :-)
TheHermit
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-virus@lucifer.com
> [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
> Of David McFadzean
> Sent: Sunday, May 02, 1999 3:48 AM
> To: virus@lucifer.com
> Subject: virus: Alternative solutions
>
>
> I bet at one time or another we have all thought to ourselves, "Gee,
> whatever happened to those crazy Maharishi yogis? I wonder what kind
> of zany antics they're up to these days!"
>
> <http://www.kosovopeace.org/>
>
>