Hansen: TM flyers meditate for peace, prosperity varUsername
= "[EMAIL PROTECTED]";document.write("By MARC HANSEN");By MARC HANSEN
REGISTER COLUMNIST
July 28, 2007
I spoke with my financial adviser the other day. He was preparing for a
news conference in New York, where he would tell the world to prepare for the
next leg of the bull market.
As he spoke, the market was in the process of tumbling 312 points, one of the
biggest single-day losses of the year. My adviser wasn't alarmed or deterred.
My adviser is seldom alarmed or deterred.
There will be bumps and air pockets along the way, he said. There always are.
Anyone with enough discipline to sit tight during the inevitable turbulence
will be handsomely rewarded.
My adviser said the same thing last year at Dow 12,000. Unfortunately, I wasn't
paying much attention.
Why would I? The guy isn't really a certified financial adviser. He's John
Hagelin, an internationally known quantum physicist from Fairfield who believes
Transcendental Meditation is the answer.
And what's the question? Doesn't matter.
Get enough "yogic flyers" in the same room, Hagelin says, and bullets stop
flying. Hurricanes fizzle out. The unemployed find work. George Bush and even
Kim Jong Il over in North Korea start acting in a semi-rational manner.
Optimism reigns and people feel so good about the future, the stock market
jumps for joy.
All these happy trends, known as "the Maharishi effect" in TM circles, started
a year ago when more than 1,000 advanced meditators from around the world
gathered in Fairfield to stop the bloodshed on the Israeli-Lebanon border.
The next thing you know, the president had discovered diplomacy, and a
cease-fire was in the works.
Hagelin isn't gloating when he says it's no coincidence. OK, maybe it's
possible to detect some gloating.
"We're going to rub it in a little bit," he said. "We made predictions that
were not widely embraced. People raised their eyebrows, with respect to the
markets in particular."
But he was right.
He said the market would soar. It did - 3,000 points since the first
"Invincible America Assembly" a year ago.
As you might expect, there are critics and naysayers who believe Hagelin has
gone off the deep end.
They don't buy his cause-and-effect scenario. And they can't understand how
such a respected scientist, a brilliant man with one degree from Dartmouth and
two from Harvard, could go down this dark road.
Hagelin is the director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public
Policy at Maharishi School of Management in Fairfield. He's the president of
the Global Union of Scientists for Peace.
He has all the credentials, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. Is
it possible luck played a role here?
"It's possible," Hagelin said, but not probable. He did the math.
"Could the dual movement co-variation be a statistical coincidence? Yes. But
the likelihood is less than 1.4 percent."
Friday, in an office building a block from the New York Stock Exchange, Hagelin
told me he would talk about the Maharishi effect and unveil his new predictions.
Despite further losses Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average will climb to
15,000 by the end of the year and move to 17,000 in the next 12 months.
Not that Hagelin is overly concerned with the stock market. He believes the
rising prices are simply a reflection of the good vibes unleashed by the
"coherence creating" meditators.
"Most important, for me," he said, "there will be continued progress toward
peace. We will improve our relationship with formerly hostile nations."
To make that happen, Hagelin will tell you, the world needs more Invincible
Assemblies. While his research shows that 1,800 flyers can change the world,
you really need 2,500 to guarantee invincibility. Like most things, it has to
do with the square root of 1 percent of the population of the United States.
I told Hagelin the meditators could do a better job with Iraq. The situation
still doesn't look so good.
Iraq's a tough one, he acknowledged. Seething ethnic tensions are always hard
to overcome.
Hagelin has been talking to Iraqi officials about sending meditators to Iraq.
He'd also like to introduce an existing school of 500 Iraqi students to the
study and practice of meditation.
He remains optimistic about Iraq. Not because our strategy is working, but
because we Americans are beginning to see the light.
"An awakening," he called it.
A related prediction: Within a year, the United States will decide to pull the
troops.
Who knows if there's really a connection between good news and meditation, but
with Hagelin's last set of predictions panning out, now isn't the best time to
question his sanity.
Columnist Marc Hansen can be reached at (515) 284-8534 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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