That's a good summary. But if the scholars didn't know about TM and Fairfield, I'd be interested in knowing what were the Utopian/spiritual/intentional/communal groups that they did discuss, especially those currently in existence. Where are these groups located? Who are they?
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote: > > I wrote this piece below and have been e-mailing individually to a number of > scholarly folks who I met at an academic meeting studying Utopian and > communal groups that I attended recently out in upstate New York. I came > away with about 50 business cards from scholars who I met and talked with at > the conference. I wrote this to be able to send to them something > descriptive about (meditating) Fairfield, Iowa as a 'communal' group. Of > course what I set out to write became longer than I intended. Here is the > unabridged version with the links. I hope you'll like the Shaker comparison > and I think you'll appreciate the links. > Best Regards from Iowa, > <paste>: > > Communal (Meditating) Fairfield, Iowa > > On returning home from the annual meeting I find myself wanting to catch up > by sharing some links on 'communal' Fairfield, Iowa with you that might > better give insight in to a scale and circumstance of the communal society I > come from and have lived in for 40 years. Starting from the outside looking > in on meditating Fairfield it can seem like looking at a monolith. Evidently > it is easy to make assumptions about Fairfield and its meditators as it is > also tough to discern what is going on inside the meditating community. But > it need not be difficult at all once there are handles on it. The Fairfield > meditating community has matured in time and is quite developed with many > communal features to find and look at. I see Fairfield, Iowa in fact can > provide a large and living laboratory for communal community scholars to look > at. > > Beginning with Tim Miller's Communal Societies Vol. 30 No.1, 2010 paper in > mind I'll give you some things further below to look at for yourselves, > > "A Matter of Definition: Just What Is an Intentional Community?" > > -A sense of purpose and distinctiveness, with deliberate intent to be a > community > -Some kind of shared living space > -Some shared resources > -Critical mass > > For communal studies scholars looking in I believe one of the best ways to > understand the scale of the Fairfield Meditating community is to relate to it > in a form like the old Shaker villages as organizational structure back while > the Shakers were up and running. In the middle of TM is the equivalent of a > Shaker 'Ministry Family' of upper administration and then elements of > communal families of meditators that are in concentric circles around the > middle including meditators who live well outside the middle in town but come > inside to meditate also as members. The upper level is a more exclusive > level (only for sake of an analogy though, they do not use that term > 'ministry' to describe themselves) which currently now tends to live more > exclusively out in an adjacent new town area called Maharishi Vedic City to > the northwest of Fairfield proper. The university community lives more on > their campus in Fairfield. The larger meditating community lives through out > Fairfield and the County area either disperse singly or in meditator > households in neighborhoods. Maharishi Vedic City and the university > community each function with obvious communal aspect with people living > together, working for their community together, housing close together, > educating their kids together, socializing together, sharing resources etc. > The larger surrounding meditating community also functions that way. The > common thing to these Shaker-like 'families' of meditators in the Fairfield > area like the Shakers is that they moved to Fairfield as meditators to be > practicing meditators in something larger. > > In starting, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a proponent of Transcendental > Meditation for 60 years in the West and there has been a meditating community > in Fairfield, Iowa for about 40 years. > > The Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement purchased a bankrupt college > campus in Fairfield, Iowa and moved a university there in 1974. The > university was teaching a wide liberal arts curricula where the students and > faculty were also practicing meditators. That functioned as a unit in > Fairfield for about a half decade when at a large gathering of meditators > meeting with Maharishi it was suggested that folks as meditators move to the > Fairfield community to be able to meditate regularly in large group > meditations. That was the start of the Fairfield meditating community where > meditators moved to Fairfield, Iowa generally. Through the later 1970's, > 1980's, 1990's and even up to present time thousands of meditators have lived > in Fairfield. > > Like happened with the Shakers there are now lots of projects that go along > with meditating that start to be defining otherwise but still the formative > communal reason here is more essentially about the spiritual practice of > meditating. Hopefully this is useful as a way of looking at it. I am > providing here below some source links to these elements that I think are > good ways of accessing what is going on inside of a communal meditating > Fairfield. > > The Group Meditation: > Large daily group meditations are held in community facilities the meditating > community built in the early 1980's intended to house large group > meditations. This source link gives an overview to this aspect of the > community: > http://invincibleamerica.org/tallies/ > > Notice clear down at the bottom of this page are daily tallies that in this > record go back to 2006. The point is that in the daily ebb and flow of > meditating in Fairfield is this particular communal aspect of meditation > which happens everyday twice a day and has for a long time. > > The 'Golden Domes': > Back in the 1980's the meditating community built two large wooden dome > structures to house the community meditation. There is a site on Wikipedia > about these buildings. This Wiki 'Golden Domes' site is very well sourced. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Domes > > The meditating university community as 'Consciousness-based Education': > The university in Fairfield functions as its own communal group which is also > part of the larger meditating community in Fairfield. University faculty, > staff, and students housed close together on campus, take their meals > together, meditate together, work together, their kids go to the meditating > primary and secondary community school together, and sustaining resources are > shared from the community: http://www.mum.edu > > Likewise the meditating community's elementary and secondary school > function as another communal group or 'family' with similar communal features > as the university. http://www.maharishischooliowa.org/ > > > The Larger Meditating Fairfield Meditator Community: > Most meditators who have come to live in the area live in Fairfield proper or > out in the county area living outside of both the university campus and the > Maharishi Vedic City area . The general Jefferson County Iowa population is > about 15,000. The Fairfield population is about 10,000. In the Jefferson > County/Fairfield area there are about 3,000 adult age meditators living > still. The university campus houses many hundred people. The recent census > found about 250 people living in Maharishi Vedic City and an approximate > additional 1,000 pundits on temporary visas living to the north of Maharish > Vedic City in a compound that has recently been built. When Transcendental > Meditation was culturally popular previously around the time that the Beatles > were followers of Maharishi, Transcendental Meditation (TM) often drew > heavily from college and university communities. As a result the immigration > of TM meditators to Fairfield has brought both an educated and cosmopolitan > group together in a small midwest town. This aspect combined with its > Utopian values in the larger community of meditators living outside of campus > and outside of Vedic City deserves a look as its own distinctive communal > society. The greater or larger Fairfield meditator meditating community > often gets more defined locally by its communal arts, civic activities and > businesses alongside the indigenous Fairfield and Jefferson County Iowa > population. This becomes its own large area in communal Fairfield studies > that has not been written about so much other than feature articles appearing > in newspapers and magazines and now more recently in an Oprah film production > in a form of overview journalism. > > The Maharishi Vedic City Communal Grouping: > Maharishi Vedic City functions effectively as a theocratic municipality in > the vein of Holly Folk's paper on the subject about theocratic municipality > in Communal Societies V 31.2, 2011. > Two sources of information on the internet that are authored by people in the > community of Maharishi Vedic City are: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Vedic_City,_Iowa and their own > website: http://www.vediccity.net/ > > In conclusion generally I have found Fairfield, Iowa to be an extremely vital > and fun communal place to live as one of the larger and older Utopian places > currently operating in the U.S. I see now that it is old enough and mature > enough to deserve some study by scholars so I wanted to share these link with > you to help you become introduced. These then are the three or four communal > groupings within the meditating Fairfield community that you can look at > easily from outside. I hope you find their links and descriptions both > useful and interesting to the studies of communal societies. > > And, of course there is Fairfield itself: > http://cityoffairfieldiowa.com/ > > > With Kind Regards from Fairfield, > > > > *** > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" wrote: > > > > A couple months ago I attended an academic conference with about a hundred > > scholars who study our kind of group. They were generally unaware of > > Fairfield. In conversing with these scholars over several days time it was > > as if 'TM' had dropped off the planet. These were tenured professors, > > department chairs, directors of collections who teach at real universities > > from all over the country. Basically zip understanding of TM let alone > > Fairfield. TM seemingly disappeared from culture from the 1980's and on > > and suffers still from that amnesia of inertia. It got to the point even > > in Fairfield where the Dome numbers had dropped in the y-2000's to just a > > couple hundred people meditating together. Nearly died out except for the > > resuscitation of the urgency of the invincible America meditation program > > (2006) and the last ditch efforts of some few people (Bob Wynne) in Vedic > > City to actually bring pundits to Fairfield > > http://www.vediccity.net/welcome.html > > It is an amazing thing going on in Fairfield. It is real interesting to > > be in the middle of communicating that to people outside in the world. > > -Buck in the Dome > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" wrote: > > > > > > It is interesting, that most people out in the world, even educated > > > people, have no idea what is going on here let alone the gravity of it. > > > We should all be unperturbed by their general old-age ignorance of it > > > though and rigorously just attend to our meditations. Great is our > > > method and science of peace here. The New Jerusalem is coming, > > > -Buck > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Share Long <sharelong60@> wrote: > > > > > > > > Buck, forget emailing. Have him visit FF for Dec 7 Art Walk. As > > > > George somebody, former Redskins coach said, the future is now. > > > > > > > > > > > > Your brave enthusiasm and still makes me smile just about every day (-: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ________________________________ > > > > From: Buck > > > > To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com > > > > Sent: Saturday, December 1, 2012 11:51 PM > > > > Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Reducing Tension in the Middle East > > > > > > > > > > > >  > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "emptybill" <emptybill@> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > Buckyball > > > > > > > > > > > > "A perennial philosophy of all major cultural traditions that there > > > > > > exists a transcendental field at the most fundamental level of > > > > > > natural > > > > > > law ..." > > > > > > > > > > > > If this is true then it is not "transcendental" but rather a > > > > > > supporting > > > > > > ground. > > > > > > In other words, it is prakriti/pradhâna/avyakta (an unmanifest). > > > > > > It is nature, but not transcendent. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Bill, Yep I know what you mean, that's my experience too. As I was > > > > > editing that piece I chose to stick with the western language and > > > > > stay away from the Vedic so as not to confuse the ignorant lurker > > > > > here. Going with the 'Transcendental' field was good enough for > > > > > the release posted here. Best Regards, -Buck > > > > > > > > > > > > > I went to a lecture at the U. of Ia. in Iowa City the other nite given > > > > by a visiting classicist professor and went out to dinner with him > > > > after. In discussing Fairfield he broke from what we were saying at a > > > > point and declared he could not understand what Utopia could possibly > > > > be. That he lives in the past and present but could not understand > > > > what I was saying about a future Utopia this way. It was not the time > > > > to say anything more but we are e-mailing. It is a challenging thing > > > > to communicate. > > > > -Buck > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > A perennial philosophy of all major cultural traditions that there > > > > > > exists a transcendental field at the most fundamental level of > > > > > > natural > > > > > > law, which can be directly accessed as the silent transcendental > > > > > > level > > > > > > of the human mind. Hundreds of studies have shown that experience > > > > > > of > > > > > > transcendental consciousness breaks the chain of conditioned > > > > > > reflexes > > > > > > coming on from past behavior, as seen in reduced addictive > > > > > > behaviors of > > > > > > all kinds, decreased prison recidivism, and reduced behavioral > > > > > > problems > > > > > > in inner-city children. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Now there is hope because a proven technology of consciousness > > > > > > > > to > > > > > > create peace is available. This novel approach establishes a filter > > > > > > of > > > > > > coherence and order in collective consciousness in the present, > > > > > > which is > > > > > > capable of transforming the flow of negativity from the past into a > > > > > > more > > > > > > harmonious future. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Meditation is certainly the answer, > > > > > > > > -Buck in the Dome > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
