Meditating Fairfield, Iowa

The arrival:

Transcendental Meditationists arrived first in Fairfield, Iowa in 1974.

An anthology of remembrances..

".This day was the beginning of a new era for Fairfield, Iowa and a new era for MIU and the TM movement.

Arriving on our new Fairfield MIU campus from Santa Barbara, September 3, 1974. This was the first group of students to set foot on the new campus that had been Parsons College a few years before. We had a bit of cleaning up to do. This photo was right next to Frat 111, where we set up our first little temporary dining hall. During our first meal on the new campus, Lee Gobble, owner of Gobble’s Clothiers on the square, endeared us all to him when he walked through the dining area with a sign that said, “Gobble, Gobble, Gobble.”

We spent a week or two mowing down the five-foot-high grass and weeds (including the illegal kind), cleaned up the food trays with two-year-old food left by the departing Parsons students, and got back into our core courses that we had started in Santa Barbara. In those days, 80 percent of the student body were TM teachers. Maharishi came to see us twice the following year."  -Tom Morgan

Doug Hamilton remembers: "Fairfield, Iowa came up within the TM movement as a place when word had been sent through the TM movement in 1973-4 that the then forming academic institution of MIU located in rented properties in California was looking for a campus suitable for a university.

Transcendental Meditation had taken off in Iowa City since Charlie Donahue arrived there to lecture on and teach TM in 1970. The TM movement in Iowa City then had taken off in activity with hundreds and then thousands learning meditation there.  Within the TM center in Iowa City in 1973-74 LB Shriver was teaching TM in Iowa City and then served at a point as the TM Center Chairperson. LB came down to Fairfield and after looking at the empty Parsons College campus it was reported up through the TM movement that a turnkey campus existed in Fairfield, Iowa. From there negotiations and a subsequent purchase for the old Parsons campus proceeded."

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Tom Morgan writes: "I remember that day very well. I’m off all the way to the right in the photo in the center. Though many of us were a bit sad to be leaving Santa Barbara, it was so exciting to have our own campus. Eighty percent of the student body at that time were TM teachers. We knew that acquiring and moving onto this new campus was the beginning of a new chapter for the movement. Here we are decades later and that certainly has turned out to be true."

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Doug Hamilton writes:  "I spoke with Janice Peterson who flew out ahead of the arriving students in 1974 to open up the kitchens and prepare to feed the students when they would arrive. She told of their arriving unlocking building doors and going in with flashlights finding food on the tables left from the moment of bankruptcy for Parsons.

MIU in earlier planning in looking for properties, Charles Borden recalls,

Charlie Lutes. Within a few weeks after Maharishi arrived in Santa Barbara to work with MIU faculty, he made a Forest Academies Committee to build one for every million population. He appointed Charlie and Curly to head the committee and me as sort of manager.

I almost entirely communicated with Curly Smith; and occasionally Bob Boyer at National. Curly sent me to Cobb Mountain, then San Jacinto, and some other properties to inspect. Curly finally delivered me to the Bates Motel on Burlington in Fairfield. Yes, there was a Bates Motel in Fairfield.

 Charlie Borden writes:  “ ..Some of friends in this article are in FF even now (2020). Two missing, who were there at this time,are mentioned in the last paragraph, two saints Marge and Jerry Leahy, who in last months (passed away) returned home. It is largely due to Jerry Leahy that there is a MIU in Fairfield.”

Doug Hamilton recalls:  Yes, I remember the Leahys from then. In the very early 1970’s they were of the people in Iowa who earliest learned TM.

We would see them Iowa City coming to the group meditations, advanced lectures and early residence courses given in the U. of Ia. Memorial Union by Charlie Donahue and Donna Seibert then.

The Leahys were ‘older’ than the mostly undergraduate and grad students who were learning TM in those days. Jerry was a bank officer in Pella, Iowa then. Yes, he was instrumental in having banks in the area come together to settle and release the purchase of the bankrupt Parsons College campus to a newly established MIU. MIU at the time then became incorporated in Iowa registered as a corporation with the Iowa Secretary of State. Along with others Jerry was facilitating in the middle of all that at the time.

Charlie Borden remembers, 

These days have come back to me recently, with the passing of Jerry and Marge Leahy, who, in my mind, were the instruments who prepared a home for us in Fairfield.

I still remember clearly the day I met Jerry in his office as President of Bank of Pella. Within days he resigned, and his entire family joined the team of 15 or so who were the first "settlers" in that community.

Jerry Leahy helped reassure them all would be ok.

..a telegram to be read to students when they arrived.

"It is my delight to receive you in this new campus where you will be developing your full potential. Let every day structure a new step of progress. Infinite is the range of knowledge and so is your consciousness. Rise to Wholeness and Prepare to Lead the World."  -Maharishi, Sept 3, 1974

Tom Morgan recalls:

On the day, those arriving were divided into work crews, each under one of the original 15. About 10 in each group.

Jim Belilove and Bob Boyer were two key organizers, Jim from Isla Vista, and Bob from 1015 Gayley.

We had help from two locals, non-meditators, without whom the work of restoration would have been impossible. Harold and Wray. Sounds like a movie title.

Electrician and plumber who had helped build the new Parsons campus.

Harold Neff and Wray Wollums.

Yes, Harold and Wray. <—I never knew it was spelled “Wray.” When I was on the administrative board of the university around ‘78, one big topic was how to replace them. They had much higher paychecks than everyone else but couldn’t easily be replaced because they knew every bit and bolt of the campus.

Charles Borden recalling, If they are still there, the Frats as they were called, and the High Rises, and some of the other 1960s Parsons buildings, one could inspect the plumbing.

When Parsons closed, to ensure that the water pipes would not burst in winter, the copper pipes were pierced with an ice pick.

Harold and Wray came up with a solution. We had to get stethoscopes. They hooked an air compressor to the pipes and their helpers went to each room to listen for hissing from the pipes. Then cut a hole in the wall and silver solder a screw into each hole.

The town turned out to cut the grass - knee high in some places.

Tom Morgan remembering, ..Yes, I remember, when the campus was still all high weeds, I was on my way to clean the learning center or building 402. I was trying to cross the campus through the weeds to get from the frats to the learning center. In the midst of the weeds, I came to the creek,

Iowans raised of conservative Iowa Quaker communities..

The Stakland brothers who became trained to teach TM by Maharishi came down in visits to Fairfield, to teach TM. They and Charles Borden taught quite a few local people, city leaders, particularly from economic development.

Maharishi's visit -

In the early 1970’s a meditating movement had taken off in Iowa, also. A lot of meditators from Iowa city, Des Moines, Ames, Cedar Falls, Mason City came down to Fairfield for meetings with Maharishi then. These meetings initially were held in the old Parsons College field house on campus.  As Iowa City meditators, Jennifer Hamilton and her sister Debra MacQueen remember coming down to Fairfield and seeing Maharishi then.

The University Trustees 

The university’s meditating faculty, staff, and students arrived in 1974 setting up and lived mostly on the old Parsons campus in Fairfield, Iowa.  Their focus on arriving in Fairfield was in developing the academic institution.  This university community by a focus with the academic mission and also working the acquired physical campus was more insular to itself for a period of years.

“We will count ourselves successful only when the problems of today's world are substantially reduced and eventually eliminated and the educational institutions of every country are capable of producing fully developed citizens.”

-Maharishi, from the founding catalog of Maharishi International University, 1974

The Meditating University’s Mission:

FROM THE ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION, “THE PURPOSES FOR WHICH THE (MIU) CORPORATION IS ORGANIZED ARE:

A. TO FULFILL THE HIGHEST IDEALS OF EDUCATION BY INTEGRATING THE STRENGTHS OF TRADITIONAL EDUCATION WITH THE STUDY AND EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE UNIFIED FIELD OF ALL THE LAWS OF NATURE OFFERED BY THE PROGRAMS OF KNOWLEDGE FOUNDED BY MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI..”

In one sentence..

The Meditating University’s Mission:

revised from the 1974 MIU Catalog!

"Maharishi University of Management was founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

to produce more fully developed individuals by developing the potential

of consciousness within every student through a higher educational system of

Consciousness-Based education giving traditional academic knowledge a foundation

coupled with the study of consciousness through the practice of Transcendental Meditation and other scientifically validated practices taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for developing consciousness."

MIU YEARBOOK, 1976

Flipbook view:

MUM Yearbook 1976 Pages 1 - 50 - Text Version | FlipHTML5

For the first few years of meditators arriving in Fairfield, Iowa most were affiliated with the university and lived on the campus.

Then, in August 1979,  At Amherst, Massachusetts

 five years after the meditators’ first arrival on the Parsons campus a larger call was then made for meditators to move to Fairfield, Iowa to enable large daily group meditations with people living in proximity in a place as a peace project of the larger TM movement. From then meditating families and individuals came moving into Fairfield neighborhoods around Fairfield and the Jefferson County area to live.  This began a much larger influx of meditators arriving to live in the town, in Fairfield, Iowa.

At this large summer meditation gathering on the campus of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 1979, from a podium to a large auditorium filled with meditators then, with Maharishi on the phone line, the call to come to Fairfield, Iowa was initiated. For several hours this was considered. “We have this place in Iowa where we could have large daily group meditations, who could move to Fairfield, Iowa to do this?” 

Hands were raised and after some time 400 people and then more had raised their hands offering to move to Fairfield, Iowa for the project. That started the movement of civilian meditators into the town of Fairfield to live. Over time some number of thousands have come to join this meditation. This became referred to as the 'town super radiance program' (TSR). There are still possibly two or more thousand meditators who continue living in the Jefferson County area.

This is interesting to see,

..from making evident observations, to drawing hypotheses, and then to testing hypothesis.. Science..

With Meditators from the Amherst course in ‘79 coming to live in Fairfield, Iowa to engage as a group in their spiritual practice this has been part of a much longer science research project:

- By employing the scope of the meditating movement all along Maharishi, even from the time of his leaving India to travel the world in teaching meditation, he pursued this with an urging to the bringing of science to bare on the evidence of meditation.

Looked at recently even up to now the science numbers seen also in hindsight are quite significant. Radical in fact. Revolutionary in effect.

In a historical sequence this 1975 discussion sets meditating Fairfield, Iowa into this larger context..

Press Conference October 2 1975: Five Percent Meditators for an ideal society

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crVFkOQBrPk&t=150s

Demographically a lot of the meditators attending at that summer 1979 Amherst course meditating were of the baby boom generation. Many in that time had earlier taken off to become TM teachers and others were yet finishing undergrad or graduate programs. There were some few of middle and older age and middle class and working folks who would come then too.

In an initial wave of meditator moves to Fairfield following the Amherst course it was evident there were two groups of people arriving. One had so much money that having a house in Fairfield was just another place to have a house. Another larger group were young adult boomers who did not have much that would keep them from joining this program in Fairfield. .

It was a moment to have been there in Amherst to watch this happen.  I was in the balcony seating of the auditorium there at U. Mass. in Amherst looking down on the main floor and the stage.

As the meeting progressed and numbers of hands were gathering, hands raised and people standing, counted for making the move, the meeting went on as a consideration for some longer time as this was weighed by people there in the auditorium. There was a point where some who evidently could not go were offering financial support altruistically for others to go join with this in Fairfield.  This probably all was something like the gathering of the core Mayflower group in Holland as they bought the ship, loaded and made the trip from England to the new world.

It was a decade then before a middle class of self-sustaining meditators emerged in Fairfield either having moved their lives there or having built their lives in Fairfield. . Stories of meditators building lives into middle class and home ownership throughout Fairfield deserves its own study and recounting.

In Surveying the meditating community, 1993-4 

By Age:

< 25 13 2%

25-35 65 10%

36-45 391 60%

46-55 138 21%

> 55  7%

In the arrival years of meditators to Fairfield, Iowa the early 1980’s were consolidation years for meditators scratching to get a foothold in Fairfield with finding homes, childcare and employment. The early 1990’s were in ways more explosive years in making an economy with more developed experience gained in self-made business, developing arts communities, employing artisan work and trades in construction.

Tom Morgan reflecting:

" I think that time and the environment Maharishi inspired and created was successful as a context in which many people began to explore their own creativity and dharma and ways to generate income. It was also successful as a means of supporting many people (meditating) doing longer program and creating coherence.

So many creative business projects began back then. Some continue to this day. Many people got started then in creative journeys that continued to evolve in different ways."

Also, "For me the bigger story was the waves of people who moved to Fairfield (starting in 1979 after a course in Amherst, Massachusetts) and the inspiration Maharishi gave us to tap into our creativity. I had been in Fairfield since September 1974, when we first acquired the campus. Fairfield was forever changed from 1979/1980 onward.  Prior to that it was mostly just the university and Maharishi School. From that time on we became a much more multifaceted, vibrant community."

• There are many good examples within the local Fairfield, Iowa economy of a variety (large and small enterprise) of self-sustaining meditators who have made lives having come to Fairfield.

In the earliest years of meditators arriving in Fairfield, Iowa group meditations and communal meetings of the initial meditating community were held in the old Barhydt Chapel on campus.  

In describing Fairfield, Iowa an important feature that is an asset of both the traditional town community and the meditating community in Fairfield is that both are relatively well educated with developed talents and skills.

As TM had come into the United States and Europe Maharishi methodically lectured and taught at the major universities around the world and as he taught people to also teach meditation many of those folks came out of universities. This is reflected in who came to Fairfield as meditators.

In 1993-94 a survey was conducted of Fairfield area meditators

Education:

High School 56 8%

College 292 41%

Graduate School 246 34%

MSAE Graduate 5 1%

MIU Graduate 120 17%

This aspect of higher education is similar in the traditional captains of industry and town's business community in Fairfield with many of the war generation and their boomer sons and daughters being educated at Parsons, Wesleyan, and State Universities. This shows throughout the community in the communities of business, services, schools and government.

Schooling the meditator family’s kids..

THE FAIRFIELD, IOWA MSAE,

With MIU in California before the move to Fairfield, Iowa.. FB:  “Caty tells us her memories of going to kindergarten in the chicken coop on Mike Love’s property along with Eden Youknowme. Caterina Bacal Titus.”  “Yes actually Eden Youknowme Ted Wallace Gareth Wallace and Monica Hayward and I did preschool in the chicken coop on Mike Love’s estate”.

In the arriving university community’s move to Fairfield, Iowa including some families with their children, a communal project of families then looking out for the education of their children was taken on, continuing as the formative ‘Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment’ (MSAE).

Initially using a ‘pod’ of the old Parsons campus, and building a new early childhood pre-k and kindergarten building at the north end of campus then in sequence a new building on the old central campus to facilitate a whole k-12 grades school.

As the meditating community in Fairfield grew by sequence including the arrival of a much larger meditator community following the Amherst course in 1979 and again after the 1983-4 ‘Taste of Utopia’ assembly the ‘Maharishi School’ grew as an aspect of the meditating Fairfield community by committee work and with resources given altruistically to this.

https://maharishischool.org/about-us-why-maharishi-school/our-history/

THE MEDITATOR CHURCHES IN FAIRFIELD, IOWA

Meditators in moving to Fairfield, Iowa have come from various cultural backgrounds.  Represented in the meditating community is a cross-section of many larger cultures. From early in the meditator migration meditators of background with different religions and religious denominations would visit and join with religious worship groups according to their own backgrounds. Some local accommodation of these outsiders was welcoming and some was not.

Coming with a flavored transcendentalism the individual meditator theology in religion often could be considered liberal by most religious traditions. Lutheran meditators found the more liberal or progressive Lutherans in town, Catholic meditators founded their own liberal Catholic group, Protestant meditators visited mainstreet churches. Quaker meditators met as Quakers.  A new Jewish Synagogue was established by meditators. A Vedic temple with a priest was opened by meditators in town. On campus there are spaces for meditators in Islamic worship. There is a Sufi center in Fairfield,  a Bahai group meets in town, and a Mother Divine Temple on the town square. Mormon meditators helped build a new Mormon church. A manifest feature that can be found now in Fairfield, Iowa is an accommodation of cultural diversity.

Remarkable in this diversity, in visiting the various meditator churches and temples, for instance during the December holidays, the homilies that are given are notably transcendentalist, expressed from within their own traditions in universal ways.

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Tom offers: I find it interesting that there are only 359,000 Quakers worldwide, with about 87,000 in the United States. And yet there are dozens of us in the movement and living here in Fairfield.

Irene notes: There are a lot of Jewish people in the movement too I think? At least when I was teaching, it seemed a lot of my colleagues were Jewish by ethnicity if not practice.

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Fairfield, Iowa's Meditating Quakers - Friends Journal article: https://sites.google.com/.../fairfieldiowasquietquakers/home

In leadership, 

The Fairfield meditating community in eras of tone over the years it seems has reflected characters of personality of the MIU president along with their exec. presidents through time. At first there was Robert Keith Wallace, then Larry Domash, then Robert Keith Wallace again, Bevan Morris and now John Hagelin in sequence as presidents of MIU.

Evidently the earlier eras of MIU were exuberant times of growth. As Bevan arrived in Fairfield to be President of MIU he called group meetings with university staff, faculty and what was then a larger “town superradiance” group declaring at each, ‘..that Fairfield was for those who have faith and belief in Maharishi and that everyone else should leave and leave us alone’. Towards the evident survival of the university following some decades of declining metrics Bevan was relieved from the Presidency by exec action of the university’s board of Trustees.

Within the Fairfield meditating community with John Hagelin serving now at the helm of the university, John Hagelin in coming forward currently brings a renewed era for the university academic institution.

Larry Domash and the MIU Physics department, 1979.    

P S recalls, ..I was at MIU from '74 to '78. Keith was President. The golden years of true intellectual inquiry integrating and expanding SCI. It was a wonderful experience. A number of years later returning to TSR when Bevan was president of MIU the entire vibe had changed for the worse. 

B R adds, I did comment to C G after a year or two that the spirit of lively intellectual fervor and debate, and creative use of Maharishi's knowledge to illuminate the disciplines, that we enjoyed when Keith and Larry were President, seemed to have diminished.

• When Bevan came in as MIU president after Keith’s interim position in the 1980’s Bevan called meetings in sequence with the university staff, faculty, and the town super radiance community, (TSR, as called then).  Proclaiming that ‘Fairfield was for those who had  ‘faith and belief’  in Maharishi and everyone else should leave, and leave us alone’. After 30 years of admin of this through the Morris-Patterson years of the TM movement the metrics tell the story simply. Towards a survival and even expansion of the University on the basis of the metrics by performance of the administration of ‘faith and belief’, Bevan was removed by the Board of Trustees of the university (2015). As a forced circumstance of this at the time by the Trustees, someone then in the President’s Office at the time Bevan wrote and posted the ‘resignation’ letter told that as Bevan had finished and the letter was sent out, walking out and had left those Offices people there threw their ties off and cheered then at the prospects.

Right away the report was that people felt safer in their places at the University. Jai Guru Dev. 

How has it gone, over the years? While many were and are here for altruistic reason there was a lot of fear at all levels for place under the personality of the Morris & Patterson administration. That fear has diminished in the University community now though Bevan is still one of the most powerful carrying a sway in the middle of TM and the  movement's Global Country. That Is a small, distant and diminishing group in TM, if only accounting by age, or as Dome meditation attendance numbers and the ‘badge-only’ TM movement meetings were showing in the Fairfield meditating community, up to the recent times of Covid-19's sheltering in for social distancing and closing group meetings.

- LJ adding, "Bevan did more to turn people away from the TM Movement than anyone else. He is brilliant, has a phenomenal memory of Maharishi and stories of him, but his very rigid thinking ruined it for a lot of people. - PS recalling.. My feelings exactly. He was very punitive to anyone even remotely "off the program". 

-Peter S. recalling, "If Keith Wallace had remained president we would have had so many more people in Fairfield and in the domes. When I was on TSR in the 80's, Bevan was out of town and Keith ran an open community meeting to listen to grievances and take suggestions from everybody regarding how to increase the dome numbers. It was a great meeting with a sense of openness and community spirit. The people that spoke ranged from the "bliss bunnies" who really needed to get grounded to practical, solution to focused business types. Every one left the meeting really feeling good about our meditating/siddha community. Then Bevan returned.......  - He heard about the meeting and immediately doubled the TSR price to attend the dome. He also announced that there was a "toxic" influence attempting to destroy the movement from within and that having the meeting was wrong and all suggestions and implied changes would not occur. Frankly, it was one of the most fucked-up responses I have ever heard in my life."

“In Strategy Reconstruction after a loss of communal cohesion from bad leadership.. 

the work of conscious reconstruction in cohesion of a group damaged by disordered badly behaving people steps back to ‘shoring’ the core values and organizational process that facilitate the group and its members. “

• One can feel badly for what trauma or stress was suffered by meditator practitioners who had simply been sympathetic to the work of the TM movement. 

A conclusion,

‘Communal Endurance’, evidently by how examples within these linked papers have gone, is not just with elders earnestly imploring or ‘listening’ but where there is communal group engagement and a bringing in of generational succession with clarity of mission and organization that groups may live on.

Beyond disordered behaviors clarity of mission and organization are the ‘vector and rudder’ of an enduring community.  

In Reclaiming Community, ‘Look to the Organization’:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/JMuMLcH9Xbo

ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION

OF

MIU CORPORATION

(As Amended, 1988)

“The name of the corporation is MIU Corporation.”

The governing body of the corporation shall be called the Board of Trustees.

The purposes for which the corporation is organized are:

A. To fulfill the highest ideals of education by integrating the strengths of traditional education with the study and experience of consciousness and the unified field of all the laws of nature offered by the programs of knowledge founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

B To establish conduct and maintain an educational institution offering secondary education and conferring certificates, diplomas and degrees.

C To establish conduct and maintain laboratory schools for offering pre-elementary, elementary and secondary education and conferring appropriate educational credentials for the successful completion of such education.

D To offer continuing education courses on a credit or noncredit basis and to offer educational programs and courses not leading to a degree or formal educational credential.

E To engage in research activities.

F To support or conduct activities which apply knowledge to help solve the problems of society and the world and to improve the quality of life for mankind.

G To engage in all activities and services to be found in universities.

H, I, J, K, etc., (boilerplate incorporation paragraphs)

/

Further down within the MIU articles of incorporation,

“Any trustee may be removed from office by a majority vote of the Board of Trustees in office whenever in their sole judgement the best interests of the corporation will be served by such removal.”

Though there may be interlocking Trustees it is noteworthy that the University was not, is not, ‘owned’ by the TM movement, or Vlodrop/ The Global Country.

Building the Domes, Communal Mission:

“..of the M.U.M. Board of Trustees in 1979, Maharishi's first request to them was to build two Golden Domes, which would be 'great particle accelerators of consciousness', in which 1,500 people—the number required at that time for national invincibility—would practise Yogic Flying together in an ideal environment.”

http://www.globalgoodnews.com/world-peace-a.html?art=125667743733208086

Solidarity and Constructing Communal Space,

Constructing the Fairfield Meditating Domes..

This link below is to a documentary that surfaced recently. In the viewing I appreciate the images as they also show a ‘solidarity’ that can occur as communal cohesion within the lives of communal society.

Including video images during the active construction of the Fairfield meditating domes this is an older documentary about the larger meditating community’s building of the big meditation domes to facilitate their communal spiritual practice in Fairfield, Iowa.

Once viewing past the introductory part there are video images of the construction and also commentary from the project architect and construction manager then describing the communal narrative of the construction.

In these narratives one can see an evident similarity with other historic spiritual practice groups in the throwing in of resources by individuals that would make things happen for their larger communal projects. The giving of talent, resources out of pocket, artisanship, a willing labor towards the construction, the climbing on and running bulldozers and excavators, forming, pouring and raking out concrete, framing and such assemblage for something larger.

This once probably was a similar sight like those down at Shaker Pleasant Hill in Kentucky out on the frontier with the engineering design, building and setting up of those hued wooden truss for the free span large meeting hall there, or further out west with the amazing hand hewn wooden structure of the Mormon tabernacle or the remarkable rock work in their temple. - See the job, do the job. - The Meeting halls at Zoar, at New Harmony, or communal Quaker Meeting Houses out on the frontier. The laying out, firing of bricks and constructing the buildings for their spiritual practice at Amana, a pooling of talents and resources like one can see in a cohesion of the work within the Netflix documentary ‘Wild Wild Country’ of the Rajneesh group out in Oregon at a time.

The cohesion that recurs in the artifacts of these communal stories appears as a thread that evidently is also very American.

Homespun: Video, Constructing the Domes in Fairfield, Iowa..

Scroll way down looking on the right side of the web page to find the documentary..

Scroll To where it says:

Maharishi Patanjali Golden Dome

https://mum.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/maharishivideolibrary

Dec. 1983 -Jan. 1984   -  'Taste of Utopia'

Testing the hypothesis, again in 1983:  "We expect to see very strong scientific evidence coming out in the next few days and next week showing that positive influence is coming from MIU,' said Steve Schulte, a spokesman for the southeast Iowa college. "

"More than 4,000 Transcendental Meditation practitioners arrived at the MIU campus over the Christmas holiday weekend, joining about 3,700 TM followers who came to Iowa when the conference began nine days ago, "

FAIRFIELD, Iowa -- Organizers of a 'Taste of Utopia' conference at Maharishi International University say the growing number of meditation practitioners soon may generate a worldwide wave of good will.

UPI report,

"More than 4,000 Transcendental Meditation practitioners arrived at the MIU campus over the Christmas holiday weekend, joining about 3,700 TM followers who came to Iowa when the conference began nine days ago, said MIU spokesman Michael Bush.

The new arrivals are significant because organizers of the three-week conference say they expect to achieve a 'unified field' of 7,000 meditators.

Bush explained that 7,000 represents the square root of 1 percent of the world's population and said, 'We're getting close to that square root formula so the effect should be larger now that the numbers are getting larger.' He added he expected the first 'unified field' could be assembled this afternoon."

https://www.upi.com/.../Taste-of-Utopia.../5601441349200/

TM’s Communal Mission..

“Our task of the day is to find a cure for this major ill of

humanity. The heart of man is so changed. The inner man has to be

transformed.. A direct experience of the Blissful nature of Soul and

the inner man is completely transformed. The mind, experiencing the

Great Bliss, feels satisfaction and this satisfaction of the mind

results in right understanding and virtuous action, kindness, love

and compassion for all....”

- from Maharishi's address to the 15th session of the World

Vegetarian Congress held at Madras on 30 November 1957

“LAST CHRISTMAS DAY (1958), A REMARKABLE PERSON, MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI, ARRIVED IN HONOLULU, ON A WORLD TOUR FOR THE PURPOSE OF SPIRITUALLY REGENERATING MANKIND.  ..MAHARISHI LEFT HONOLULU ON JANUARY 29TH TO CONTINUE HIS MISSION IN SAN FRANCISCO.  ..THE SPIRITUAL REGENERATION MOVEMENT WILL BE COMPLETED ONLY WHEN EVERY INDIVIDUAL ON EARTH IS ENJOYING ALL GLORIES OF LIFE, WORLDLY AND DIVINE.”

“THIS MAY DAY, MAY 1, 1959, THE GREATEST BLESSING WAS SHOWERED UPON LOS ANGELES, BECAUSE IT WAS THE DAY OF THE FIRST PUBLIC LECTURE OF HIS HOLINESS, MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI ON THE TOPIC OF A SIMPLE METHOD OF MEDITATION.”

“A group of about forty-five person was privileged to hear the great Master tell of his technique in arriving at the Kingdom of Heaven.  Those who were inclined to wonder how anything so simple could be effective were eager and anxious for initiation after the series of ten lectures was over.  Word spread quickly among the many groups of people in Los Angeles who had broken away from orthodox churches because of the lack of spiritual leavening, and they came almost as quickly and joyously to hear the words of truth, as the Maharishi’s quick technique for the mind to reach the field of happiness.  Larger and still larger accommodations had to be found so thirsty souls could be satisfied.”

..

“We owe all to His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, -the sponsor of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement- who is out to serve the entire humanity by infusing the system of deep meditation in every walk of life.”  -Torch Divine Vol 1, no, 4. 1959

Many many meditators have come to Fairfield, Iowa and served in different roles..

MEDITATIONIST FAIRFIELD, IOWA AND A TM MOVEMENT,

members IN MEMORIAM..

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/8LCTgvO26LM

Waging Radical Peace, 2006

The IAAssembly

in Fairfield, Iowa:

2006, the arrival of the Invincible America Assembly (IAA):

The Invincible America Assembly began on July 23, 2006, when Maharishi and Dr. John Hagelin saw a keen and obvious need to stop a war that had suddenly and unexpectedly broken out in Lebanon. Upon their timely call, hundreds of TM Governors, Sidhas, and Meditators poured into Fairfield and Maharishi Vedic City for Group Practice of the TM and TM-Sidhi programs.

“There is nothing more important to our global Movement than the Invincible America Assembly,” said Maharishi. Come and celebrate “the most powerful method of transforming society that exists -- or ever will exist”

"In these Domes, large groups of Yogic Flyers have been practising the Transcendental Meditation Sidhi Programme together twice daily for many years. These groups became part of the ongoing Invincible America Assembly, established in 2006 by Maharishi to ensure a permanent influence of harmony and peace in collective consciousness, sufficient to create invincibility for the nation and world peace."

TM has been a revolutionary movement evidently from the start to transform the wellbeing of people and society..

Revolutionary Radical Transcendentalists in Action, in Fairfield, Iowa?

Born and raised in Iowa City, Iowa I learned TM 50 years ago and I do still meditate regularly now. I meditate now because it is radical transcendentalism in practice, radical and revolutionary by its ability to effect change in life.

TM in waging radical peace, as a movement, is simply revolutionary in scope.  As practicing transcendental meditationists, revolutionists are who we are. We are revolutionary radical transcendentalists with a meditationist practice that is able to transform the wellbeing of life in the world. 

I know, I know, the movement administrative marketing types of cautious means by accommodation to the world hold their hope to control the TM message and they can get real nervous having words employed like these about TM.

But in fact transformation by revolutionary action is in our TM heritage plainly.  I was able to be with Maharishi a number of times from early on as a meditator and over the years. Maharishi made me a teacher of this meditation. I have been of the movement for these decades.

Positively Maharishi was one of the great revolutionaries of the 20th Century and early 21st Century.  As one parameter measure of change consider the magnitude of the recent ‘spiritual but not religious’ demographic culture shift that has occurred since he started touring the world from the 1950’s, teaching and organizing initially with the ‘Spiritual Regeneration Movement’.  In the waging of this practice of effect, his was an amazing run of revolution.

By Definition,

Foster's Critique of revolutionary movements to consider

Transcendental Meditation (TM) in the 20th Century.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/1di3VYUG13U

At a time, about 1 in 300 Americans had learned TM.

ALSO, COMING TO RESIDE IN THE EPIGENETICS OF A GENERATION,

ALONGSIDE WITH THE 1960'S CULTURAL REVOLUTION. TM ALSO LANDED FOR SOME IN A CULTURAL MOVEMENT OF THE BABY BOOM.

LIKE WITH THOSE JOINING  IN THE FAIRFIELD, IOWA MEDITATING COMMUNITY TO BE PART OF SOME THINGS LARGER IN A SOLIDARITY OF REVOLUTIONARY ACTION OF THE 1960’S & ‘70’S THERE WAS SET INSIDE CORDS IN REVOLUTIONARY SONG WHAT BECAME EPIGENETIC FOR SOME IN THE BOOMER GENERATION WHO CAME OF AGE IN A GENERATIONAL CULTURE REVOLUTION THEN..

VOLUNTEERS IN AMERICA!

Jefferson Airplane Volunteers (Live At Woodstock 1969)

HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=OZHBR0NDKUS

LIKEWISE IN SOLIDARITY, WAGING RADICAL PEACE:

“..Towards a better place people may join in with ‘campaigns’ to their own individual benefit but people may join movements with others to the transformational benefit of others. Solidarity, with others comes where individual campaigns ascend to become movements of transformation for others.”

MEDITATING IN SOLIDARITY WITHIN A MEDITATIONIST MOVEMENT IS BY MEDITATOR PRACTITIONERS AGAIN WINNING OUR FUTURE, STITCHING SOLIDARITY TOGETHER HERE AND NOW.

Taking Quiet Time, and Coming in to Solidarity in our meditationist practice means, “I attend to meditating for you and you attend to meditating for me,"

One key to expanding our attendees in the power of silent group meditations is in our aspiring ourselves towards attendance as a vote to improve the lives of people one may never have met or known.

In the meditating community setting our tone, reclaiming with: “I need to go back out and tell our meditating community, “that we need to fight for attendance.” For good reasons. We need to stitch this Meditator’s movement back together again, bit by bit, stitch by stitch, and that's how we're going to gather, inwardly, attendance now. That's not just how we're going to win just some peace campaign, but that's how we're going to win our collective future back. It is for ourselves and others.  That's how we're going to win our group meditations back. That's how we're going to win all.

In resolution actively invite friends to come sit gathered in stillness, gathered in meditation. Even the science of this age says all welfare is about attending to this inner quiet with discipline, for others with others.

In First Query.—Are group meditations and their discipline attended to? Do meditators avoid unbecoming behavior therein, or is the time of starting of meditations observed?

MEDITATING’S REVOLUTIONARY MISSION,

The Domes and Communal Premise (2016):

-John Hagelin:  ‘..now as matter of ‘statistical fact’:

Paraphrasing notes.. - It is time to rally to meditation by all that the best of modern science tells us is statistical truth and by what we know more objectively in our experience as quite fair rule of thumb. It is quite time now to come together in collective meditation for all that is good.

The Postulate..there are bodies of studies now authored, collaboratively with other reputable universities and institutions, and conducted independent of the .org, published studies that have extremely high statistical p values and then also aggregated high p values of meta studies, replicated too that correlate the effects of meditating. Gold standard stuff.

So the premise is that at a point the plain truth of such a series of extremely extraordinarily high p value published studies in the aggregate simply becomes statistical truth. A type of fact. What they correlate becomes fair ‘rule of thumb’.

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-Unless of course that as people may be anti-science or don’t understand science this way they may not grok what is completely current in the cutting edge of knowledge. This does not deny that there was bad or poorly designed or poorly performed science on meditation that went before. However, a sheer weight of the best of science is plainly correlating that it is a statistical truth now and quite fair rule of thumb that meditating has compelling benefits for everyone that go with its practice. QED.

Q: there was an exodus of people that up and moved to North Carolina. True? What was that all about?

Yes, early on in the meditating community everyone entered shoulder to shoulder going into group meditation, regardless of station or socio-economic class. Yet in the TM movement there was also always an active grooming of access to the middle of things traded for money, which created an exceptionalism by wealth. The move of some to Boone NC was of that exclusivity. Folks who left and moved there were not particularly communitarian in Fairfield.

THE MEDITATOR CHURCHES IN FAIRFIELD, IOWA

Meditators in moving to Fairfield, Iowa have come from various cultural backgrounds.  Represented in the meditating community is a cross-section of many larger cultures. From early in the meditator migration meditators of background with different religions and religious denominations would visit and join with religious worship groups according to their own backgrounds. Some local accommodation of these outsiders was welcoming and some was not.

Coming with a flavored transcendentalism the individual meditator theology in religion often could be considered liberal by most religious traditions. Lutheran meditators found the more liberal or progressive Lutherans in town, Catholic meditators founded their own liberal Catholic group, Protestant meditators visited mainstreet churches. Quaker meditators met as Quakers.  A new Jewish Synagogue was established by meditators. A Vedic temple with a priest was opened by meditators in town. On campus there are spaces for meditators in Islamic worship. There is a Sufi center in Fairfield,  a Bahai group meets in town, and a Mother Divine Temple on the town square. Mormon meditators helped build a new Mormon church. A manifest feature that can be found now in Fairfield, Iowa is an accommodation of cultural diversity.

Remarkable in this diversity, in visiting the various meditator churches and temples, for instance during the December holidays, the homilies that are given are notably transcendentalist, expressed from within their own traditions in universal ways.

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Comment:  I find it interesting that there are only 359,000 Quakers worldwide, with about 87,000 in the United States. And yet there are dozens of us in the movement and living here in Fairfield.

Comment:  There are a lot of Jewish people in the TM movement too I think? At least when I was teaching, it seemed a lot of my colleagues were Jewish by ethnicity if not practice.

Fairfield, Iowa's Meditating Quakers:

Friends Journal Article:   https://sites.google.com/view/fairfieldiowasquietquakers/home

Publications, the Fairfield Meditating Caucus..

New Age Town Keeps Calm, Picks Bernie as Iowa Loses Its Mind

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-takes-the-iowa-caucus-in-a-different-realm-transcendental-meditation-town-fairfield

The Iowa Town Where Marianne Williamson Is Already President

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/01/06/marianne-williamson-fairfield-iowa-093590

Fairfield, the enlightenment capital of southeast Iowa, is backing Sen. ... this unlikely mecca for practitioners of Transcendental Meditation is ...

The transcendental meditationists who turned an Iowa farm town into a Bernie base

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-transcendental-meditationists-who-turned-an-iowa-farm-town-into-a-bernie-base/2016/01/29/b4de383c-c5e1-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html

Ethnomusicology of Communal Groups, & TM

Of shared core values,

“..the songs that were created within these communal groups often reinforce the core values of these groups.  Gathering those songs used in their meetings or in the work of the groups can become a good access point into those formative values that hold a group together.”

- In our own communal TM songwriting and with performance at Fairfield, Iowa meditating community meetings, meetings early on gathered in Barhydt Chapel on campus and then later on held in the Domes, there were standout moments of self-made entertainment,

..like a vaudville moment  of Mario Orsatti coming out on stage to the podium, suit coat jacket lapels turned up in the look of General George Patton from the Patton movie, and delivering that whole opening monologue scene, ala the meditating TM movement.  Then marching about the stage along with others joining him while singing the revolutionary TM song, “Victory Before War!”.

'Victory Before War,,'

‘A 21 gun salute for watering the root, and we’ll have victory before war!’

The Dome, then being full in those days, was highly amused..

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/communal-studies-forum/0v4KieN9iug

Examples of some TM communal songs,  .. The Birthday Song, MSAE Anthem, Veda Lila, Victory Before War..  Song text:

https://superradiance.wordpress.com/

A Vedic Opera,

The Maharishi Veda Lila..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPFQmrMgEzg

Radio interviews/programs with song and music in the TM community:

The Unified Field Band

http://www.khoe.org/mp3s/13purusha-unified-field-band.mp3

Mother Divine:

http://www.khoe.org/mp3s/14mother-divine-show.mp3

Also groups of songs used in the MSAE for teaching. 

A Communal Ontology, - The Veda Lila- text, 

One unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion

in waves of creation flowing, an ocean of knowingness, ocean of consciousness.

One unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion, in waves of the veda flowing, ocean of knowingness, ocean of consciousness.

(key change)

One unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion, fully awake within itself, consciousness fully knows itself, consciousness, knows itself

When consciousness knows itself it becomes both knower and known

When the knower knows the known the dynamics are called the process of knowing

Knower knowing and known

Knower knowing and known

In the language of the Veda these three are known as Rishi, Devata, and Chhandas.

Rishi is the knower

Devata the knowing

Chhandas is the known together they are flowing

In one unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion

the samhita of the veda is flowing as knower knowing and known

knower knowing and known

(key change and a capella)

The samhita, of rishi, devata and chhandas

put together they are three in one reality

In one unbounded ocean of consciousness

One appears as three while remaining unity

One appears as three while remaining unity

(original lyrics had them ordered as knower, known, and knowing for the rhyme, but they changed it to knower knowing and known for the order of the process)

Early MIU-Santa Barbara -Photos

https://lindberg-work.com/eras/1970-1973/1973-11-&12-miu-santa-barbara.html