From Amazon.com Editorial Reviews Book Description This penetrating literary-journalistic memoir depicts the clash between promise and reality within the movement that virtually defined alternative spirituality in America: Transcendental Meditation and its iconic guru, the Maharishi.
Like hundreds of thousands of young people, Geoff Gilpin entered the Transcendental Meditation movement in the early seventies, when its guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, was fresh in the public mind as a spiritual guide photographed with the Beatles and the man who made "meditation" a household word. The movement's Iowa campus was a hub of natural foods, all-you-need-is-love optimism, and the pursuit of bliss. Gilpin left after five years, settling into a successful career in the software business. Wistful over the past and concerned by the increasingly harsh tone of announcements from the group, Gilpin decided to return twenty years later to learn what had become of the spiritual community of his youth. His move back to Fairfield, Iowa, proved both revealing and unsettling. He rediscovered what had attracted his generation to Eastern spirituality-and what his cohorts had lost in following the usual path to careerism. But he also witnessed the disturbing changes in a spiritual organization that-while growing wealthy and even powerful-had seemingly drifted from its early ideals, sometimes in favor of grandiose ventures. Its inner culture, Gilpin observed, had divided into haves and have-nots, in ways both subtle and obvious. The Maharishi-his age estimated from the late eighties to early nineties and now living in Holland-had hit upon plans that involved third-world dictators, claims of levitation, and a range of moneymaking enterprises. The Maharishi Effect is one man's bittersweet chronicle of innocence found and lost in the movement that, more than any other, defined spirituality for a generation. About the Author Geoff Gilpin lived inside the Maharishi's movement for five years in the 1970s. Gilpin is a computer programmer and technical writer. This is his first work of creative nonfiction. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
