How transcendental meditation could be the solution to our economic woes
Sunday April 05 2009
On Friday afternoon in New York, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and various other luminaries addressed, among other issues, the recession in Ireland at a transcendental meditation press conference beamed out across the internet to millions of people.
To Ringo's left and McCartney's right, world-renowned quantum physicist and director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University Dr John Hagelin took up the question.
"The Sunday Independent wants to know how would TM help Ireland in the recession?" asked John, who ran for the US presidency in 2000.
"First of all, there would be an immediate development of consciousness. TM increases creativity and so more stability comes in the country. Better solutions, the creative solutions, would come.
"It creates calm and stability. The markets are fuelled by instability and fear in collective consciousness. The boom and bust is what brings this instability. Get enough people in a group effect and you get calm." (Let's see how calm we are on Tuesday after Mr Lenihan's Budget is announced.)
So there I was, sitting in a house in Monkstown on Friday evening. TM guru Noel O'Neill was fiddling with the computer when suddenly Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in Manhattan pop up on the screen above the fireplace in Longford Terrace.
The two former Beatles were on a platform in New York launching a global initiative to teach one million children the transcendental meditation technique. Along with organiser David Lynch and other luminaries who talked of children in the middle of a global epidemic of stress-related disease, Paul and Ringo outlined the idea for the "Change Begins Within" project.
"To give children life-long tools to overcome stress and violence and promote peace and success in their lives," said McCartney ahead of the David Lynch Foundation benefit gig at Radio City Music Hall.
McCartney said he had visited Maharishi in 1968, at a time when The Beatles "were looking for something to stabilise us''.
"It is a life-long gift. It is a great thing that you can call on at any time," he said.
To his right, Ringo, a little the worse for jet-lag perhaps, was remembering the band's magical mystery tour to India.
"We went over the Ganges on this bridge and there was these people sitting on it," he said. "I was thinking that they had lost a lot of fingers and noses because they had leprosy. I knew we were in India. It was not like Denmark or France," Ringo mused as Paul looked increasingly baffled.
"I haven't got a lot left to say after that, Ringo pretty much covered it all," Paul laughed.
"Negativity is like darkness," film director David Lynch said from the platform. "It goes away when you turn on this light of peace and unity through TM. Bliss is our nature."
In November 2007 David Lynch gave a talk about all of this at Trinity College. In the front row you had Lainey Keogh, Alison Doody and behind them Harry Crosbie and wife Rita and the aforementioned Noel O'Neill, who told me afterwards: "Anyone who listened to him was inspired by his vision for a better society."
www.davidlynchfoundation.org
- Barry Egan
