I wrote on this two or three years back and debated with some guy from Europe about it. I was working full-time in the Movement then and never heard a word about such a group. The (American) Movement was churning out lots of literature discussing the changes in the world, but the principal cause being given for it at the time was the Festivals of Music for World Peace (Gandharva Veda). A videotape from the era about the GV tour says in its Mike Tompkins voiceover that it is the specific cause of "peace breaking out all over."
A few years back, on the Maharishi Channel, a commercial starting playing that talked about the 1988-1990 pandit group and its role in creating peace. The tone of the assertion that the group existed was quite matter-of-fact. >From what I can tell, it appears that old man Zimmerman was supporting a group and then got pissed off about something or other and withdrew support. For some reason, the group was not discussed openly at the time, and publications didn't acknowledge that it existed. Some people in the US and elsewhere knew about it and others did not, even people like me who were very well-informed. I started investigating my archives when I saw this commercial, because that's not what I remember having heard at the time. A source for official historical milestones in the Movement at the time was the little Age of Enlightenment calendar books that were published each year till about '92. In their summaries of the events of each year, they say nothing about such a group other than (1987) "Maharishi begins training Vedic Scientists to create and maintain world peace at the World Capital of the Age of Enlightenment, in Maharishi Nagar, India." Then, they go on to talk about Gandharva Veda. In February 1987, a brochure, "Maharishi's Program to Create World Peace," gave a little clue that a group was forming. Quoting Neil Paterson, "We have been undertaking to establish this group...at Maharishi Nagar.... Already, there are over 2,000 students, faculty, and staff in the school, and programs are underway to recruit more students to increase the size of the school to 10,000 very soon." Another book of the time, Maharishi's Programs to Create Heaven on Earth, also has a yearly summary. For *1991*, it says that "...a permanent group of 7000 YF is established at Maharishi Vedic Vigyan Vidya Peeth, in India"! Zimmerman's money would have been gone by this point, so I don't know what was up with the alleged "permanent" group, other than that it must not have been parrticularly permanent by 1992. To this maddening chronology, I'll add one more note. Dick Swinehart, Purusha member, wrote on 12 January 1992, "Then about Christmas, Maharishi got the news from Dr. Mahapatra that they had just surpassed 7000 flying together in Maharishi Nagar!" Also, I have videotapes of all the 12 January celebrations of those years, and one or more Guru Purnimahs, and none of those mentions a large group of pandits in India during 1988- 1990. If you're saying to yourself, "At_man, you idiot, EVERYONE knew about this group back then. WTF is wrong with you?" I'll take this to an unimpeachable authority. FFL's redoubtable LB Shriver was co-author of a major article in The Fairfield Source in February 1990, "Freedom, Democracy, and Unity: The Global Consciousness of 1989." In it, he and Roger Pelizzari did a month-by-month analysis of world events in 1989 and related them to things going on in the Movement. The closest mention of a pandit group is the sentence referring to activities in January and February, "Maharishi also said that he had begun using Vedic Technologies called Maharishi Yagyas to enliven the qualities of wisdom, progress, and wealth in the entire world in one stroke." The article, while not mentioning GV, quotes Maharishi's description of the October 1-15 Taste of HoE Assembly, with 4000 CPs, "Maharishi commented that the coherence-creating effect of this gathering transformed the world, as can be seen in the recent meteoric rise of freedom in many nations." Wouldn't this article have mentioned a big group in India if it was widely known about? Like Schrodinger's half-dead, half-alive cat, the big pandit group was both there and not there during each of the years from 1987 to 1992, depending upon whether its (revisionist) wave function was collapsed or not, and was both the cause and not the cause of erupting whirled peas. I hope that answered your question. --- In [email protected], "Rick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On the new Peace Government website, permanentpeace.org, I read the > following: > > "For three years, from 1988 to 1990, at a location just outside New > Delhi, in India, a single philanthropist supported a group of 8,000 > experts in the Transcendental Meditation technique and the advanced > TM-Sidhi program, including Yogic Flying). Over those three years, > every major conflict in the world peacefully resolved. First, a war of > seven years between Iraq and Iran that had claimed millions of lives > finally came to an end. Then, after five years, the Soviet Union's > brutal invasion of Afghanistan was called to a halt. Most encouraging, > in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union dissolved, and forty > years of Cold War simply melted away." > > Was this a group of 8000 Sidhas (as opposed to a mixture of Sidhas and > regular TM meditators)? And was the existence of this group widely > known in the Movement? I read a mention of it a few years ago, I > think in Enlightenment Magazine, but it doesn't seem to have been > loudly trumpeted among the Movement. Perhaps because, the end of the > Cold War notwithstanding, it doesn't seem that it produced much in the > way of world peace. > > Wars ending, in itself, doesn't really provide evidence of increased > world peace; all wars do come to an end eventually anyway. It's HOW > the wars end. If a war stops because one side has been defeated or > because of a mere cessation of fighting without a decrease in > hostility between the countries, this can hardly be seen as evidence > of increased world peace. And what about other factors that one would > expect to show a change in a positive direction during the existence > of a group of 8000? There's no mention of these. I looked > at the US crime rate stats and there was no change in those years. > Perhaps that's why the existence of this group has not been paraded by > the TMO. I sure don't think anybody felt the collective consciousness > of the world strongly and suddenly change back then. >
