It's a Good Time to Try Meditation

Transcendental Meditation's (TM) promoters have published a full-page ad in The New York Times urging people to contribute to its effort to bring about world peace through group meditation activities. The ad urges "the world's wealthiest" to create a $1 billion endowment fund to "permanently engage 40,000 young men from the traditional Vedic Families in India . . . in the programs of enlivening the unifying, nourishing power of Nature's Intelligence, in order to create and maintain coherence in world consciousness and eliminate the basis of all negativities." TM advocates claim that Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field, enables "as few as the square root of one percent of the population of the society . . . to create an immediate change towards harmony and positivity in the whole society." This results in a decrease in negative trends throughout society such as crime, accidents, sickness, unemployment and economic hardship, and an increase in positive social, economic and political trends.

www.worldpeaceendowment.org

Stephanie Oakes is a fitness correspondent for Discovery Health Channel, a contributing editor for USA Weekend Magazine and the LA Times, and appears on NBC's 'Today in New York'. She can be reached at soakes@beststuff.com.