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Transcendental Meditation in America - How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa (Paperback)
Loot Price: R400
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Transcendental Meditation in America - How a New Age Movement Remade a Small Town in Iowa (Paperback)
Series: Iowa and the Midwest Experience
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List price R516
Loot Price R400
Discovery Miles 4 000
You Save R116 (22%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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The Indian spiritual entrepreneur Maharishi Mahesh Yogi took the
West by storm in the 1960s and '70s, charming Baby Boomers fed up
with war and social upheaval with his message of meditation and
peace. Heeding his call, two thousand followers moved to tiny
Fairfield, Iowa, to set up their own university on the campus of a
failed denominational college. Soon, they started a school for
prekindergarten through high school, allowing followers to immerse
themselves in Transcendental Meditation from toddlerhood through
PhDs. Although Fairfield's longtime residents were relieved to see
that their new neighbours were clean-cut and respectably dressed -
not the wild-haired, drug-using hippies they had feared - the
newcomers nevertheless quickly began to remake the town. Stores
selling exotic goods popped up, TM followers built odd-looking
homes that modelled the guru's rules for peace-inspiring
architecture, and the new university knocked down a historic
chapel, even as it erected massive golden-domed buildings for
meditators. Some newcomers got elected - and others were defeated -
when they ran for local and statewide offices. At times, thousands
from across the globe visited the small town. Yet Transcendental
Meditation did not always achieve its aims of personal and social
tranquility. Suicides and a murder unsettled the meditating
community over the years, and some followers were fleeced by con
men from their own ranks. Some battled a local farmer over land use
and one another over doctrine. Notably, the world has not gotten
more peaceful. Today the guru is dead. His followers are greying,
and few of their children are moving into leadership roles. The
movement seems rudderless, its financial muscle withering, despite
the efforts of high-profile supporters such as filmmaker David
Lynch and media magnate Oprah Winfrey. Can TM reinvent itself? And
what will be the future of Fairfield itself? By looking closely at
the transformation of this small Iowa town, author Joseph Weber
assesses the movement's surprisingly potent effect on Western
culture, sketches out its peculiar past, and explores its possible
future.
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