May The Force (Of His Lies) Be With You

"A meditating community had sprung up in Fairfield, Iowa within and on the borders of Maharishi International University (photo above). The town became home to a thousand meditators, teachers and TM “governors,” many of whom had a hard time fitting into normal jobs and living situations in the world. We were told to meditate and “fly” together daily. That was the new strategy to create world peace as well as success in our lives.

Maharishi began mens’ and women’s monastic groups (the Purusha and Mother Divine programs) and encouraged people to join them as “the most rapid lifestyle for unfolding enlightenment.”

People gave up dreams of love and a family to follow their guru’s advice, believing they were serving their enlightenment and the highest social good.

My best friend, intensely in love with her husband, was divorced by him when the monastic programs started. He became a celibate, while my friend tried to live as a nun with her broken heart. Within months she developed cancer, dying a couple years later. She forewent Western treatment to pursue an alternative healing system: Ayurveda, India’s ancient “world medicine” which then was being revived by Maharishi. Her physician was Deepak Chopra (photo above), at the time TM’s poster boy and its leading Ayurvedic physician. My friend Sharon withered away and died, but Ayurveda grew in popularity.

-- Bronte Baxter , nailing those who did him wrong on the inside, for Rick Ross's Cult News