Good Vedic vibes

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August 2, 2003

 

LATIMES.COM

 

CULTURE

Good vibes

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi plans to promote world harmony from a soon-to-

be-built 'palace' in L.A. An affluent area is preferred.

 

 

 

 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

 

 

By Gina Piccalo, Times Staff Writer

 

 

 

In this, the age of mass-marketed enlightenment, guru Maharishi

Mahesh Yogi has thrived, bringing his trademarked Transcendental

Meditation movement to more than 50 nations and building a vast

empire of universities, holistic clinics, meditation centers, a

construction company, even a political party.

 

Now the Netherlands-based Indian monk has a new spin on an old goal:

world peace. All it would take, according to his mathematical

calculations, is a group of people meditating for 20 minutes twice a

day inside a "peace palace" in each of the world's 3,000 largest

cities. The positive energy generated would prevent natural

disasters, car accidents, violent crime, chronic illness, even

terminally bad moods.

 

Fortunately for Los Angeles, we're next in line for a palace.

 

"It sounds too good to be true when you tell people," says filmmaker

David Lynch, a 30-year TM practitioner who has lent his celebrity to

the cause.

 

Yet, as he puts it, this is not "a doped-up world where everybody is

kicking back." These people are organized. Groundbreaking on the $4-

million palace is expected this month, with a ribbon cutting by

spring.

 

"There's physics behind this," says physicist John Hagelin, director

of the Maharishi University of Management's Institute of Science,

Technology and Public Policy. "If you put three loudspeakers together

they will produce nine times the sound of a single loudspeaker

because the sound waves will add constructive interference when the

speakers are close, provided they're producing the same music/sound."

(Read: Loudspeakers = meditators. Music = peace.)

 

As further proof, TM advocates cite recent history. Thanks to a

regular gathering of 1,600 meditators in Fairfield, Iowa, during the

1980s, Hagelin and others say, that decade celebrated a booming U.S.

stock market and the fall of the Berlin Wall. A two-month assembly in

Washington, D.C., during a July 1993 heat wave prompted a 23% drop in

crime, according to a TM study, and mass meditation after the

terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 delayed the U.S. invasion of

Afghanistan. In fact, actor Stephen Collins credits the current peace

palace movement for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's promise to

withdraw from the West Bank.

 

"What makes someone like Sharon ... willing to take on his own

hawkish Cabinet and put himself in the position of possible

assassination?" he asks.

 

Among certain celebrities in Los Angeles, namely Lynch, Collins,

Laura Dern, Heather Graham and Laura Harring, there's only one answer

to that question: TM. And at a recent news conference, they all came

out to support their local peace palace. Penny Hintz, co-director of

L.A.'s Transcendental Meditation Program Center and a longtime friend

of Lynch and Collins, was the brains behind this public relations

coup.

 

"I think it's always nice to have ladies instead of just men

speaking," says Hintz. "Laura Dern is very intellectual, Laura

Harring is very much from the heart, and Heather is very blissful and

lovely and wonderful, and I thought that they'd be a nice

combination.... If I were to get up there, the public doesn't know

who I am. They wouldn't be as ready to listen. It lends some

credibility."

 

There are many other TMers in Hollywood, says Collins, including

some "massively big stars," but few are willing to risk their image

by going public. Indeed, after demonstrating Transcendental

Meditation at the news conference and posing for the Aug. 4 cover of

Time ("The Science of Meditation"), Graham refused through her

publicist to be interviewed for this story, fearing overexposure.

Lynch's support, meanwhile, may bolster his reputation for out-of-the-

box thinking.

 

The director learned about Transcendental Meditation through his

sister in the late 1970s while shooting his film "Eraserhead." These

days, he and his staff meditate together in the soundproof screening

room at his Hollywood Hills home. Lynch likens it to a refreshing dip

in the "ocean of oneness."

 

The maharishi has preached for nearly 25 years that large TM

assemblies could bring about world peace. He has even devised an

equation to determine the exact number of meditators required to heal

the entire globe: the square root of 1% of the world's population.

 

Late last year, he called for construction of peace palaces around

the world, and thus far one has already been inaugurated — in Vedic

City, Iowa, on June 28. Others are planned in St. Louis; Long Island,

N.Y.; and Hamden, Conn.

 

In Los Angeles, Monty Guild, an early devotee, has committed funding

for the palace. A 10-member board of TM-practicing executives and

financiers has committed to a search for the perfect location. But

there remain a few hitches in the plan.

 

First, there are the skyrocketing land prices. Four million dollars,

after all, doesn't go far here. Then there's the maharishi's mandate

that the palaces be built according to the principles of Vedic

architecture, an ancient Indian tradition akin to feng shui. This

tradition dictates that bodies of water must lie to the north or east

and the sun must be visible from the front door 12 minutes after it

rises. Los Angeles, with its western coastline and mountainous

skyline, is inauspiciously positioned.

 

Nevertheless, the board has identified some lucky spots between

Robertson Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, as well as in the West San

Fernando Valley, Agoura Hills and, strangely, near Los Angeles

International Airport.

 

"The idea is if you're having people meditate together, you want

their positive influence to radiate," says Guild, who met the

maharishi as a grad student in the late 1960s and now owns Guild

Investment Management.

 

This isn't the first time the maharishi's belief in Vedic

architecture has complicated matters. Two years ago he ordered scores

of Transcendental Meditation centers around the globe closed because

they didn't meet Vedic standards. That meant a dramatic change of

venue for the Los Angeles TM center, from an 80-room complex with

meeting and dining areas near the Pacific Palisades to a cramped

office in a modest Beverly Hills-adjacent building overlooking the

busy intersection of South La Cienega Boulevard and Gregory Way.

 

"It became very clear that our building faced exactly the wrong

direction," says Hintz. In the new building, traffic noise is audible

and space is limited. But, she says, "it's nicer to face east, I do

have to admit that."

 

Once the L.A. site is purchased, builders need only follow the

prescribed blueprints available on the maharishi's Global Country of

World Peace Web site(http://www.globalcountry.org). The palaces are

designed in three sizes: small, medium and large.

 

Los Angeles' planned palace is 12,000 square feet, or medium, with

two stories and space for a health spa offering massage, aromatherapy

and diet consultations.

 

Like all other palaces, it will feature huge skylights in the atrium

that allow the structure to "breathe," the use of organic building

materials and a man-made body of water to the east if none occurs in

nature. The Web site adds: "Please note that for all these

preferences, parking space should be added by the side of the

building."

 

The maharishi provides a detailed business plan on long-term

maintenance of a palace. "Ten distinguished affluent members of the

business community" should be appointed as "founders," which

essentially guarantees a steady stream of funding. The plan also

recommends that the palace be located in an affluent community and

that an organic farm be developed to raise money for staff and

maintenance.

 

In Los Angeles, Guild estimates, "if we got 90 people meditating

together, that would be enough to create very positive influences

throughout the city. Or 30 in three different places would have a

similar effect."

 

"This is going to be a powerful thing for creating a beautiful life

for people," says Lynch. "I see it as: A guy could go to bed filled

with hate and anger and wake up in the morning and wonder where it

went."