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FAIRFIELD, Iowa-Sen. Barack Obama drew his heartiest welcome of a two-day swing through Iowa in the state's capital of inner peace.To the frustration of the cameramen in the Fairfield town square, Obama delivered his remarks facing east, with the setting sun behind him blotting out their shots. But here, there’s a power even higher than the television networks: Obama had positioned himself in alignment with the rotation of the earth, in accordance with the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose followers moved en masse to this small Iowa city more than 30 years ago.The Maharishi’s transcendental meditators, along with vacationing pilgrims from the East Coast, turned out in large numbers in the town’s traditional green square to hear the Illinois senator deliver his stump speech on the night of July 3-more people, Fairfield’s sheriff said, than had come out to greet a sitting president.“I saw him and I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is somebody who could lead us into a new era,’” said Nancy Watkins, an international student adviser at the Maharishi University of Management.The meditators cheered Obama heartily not at his occasional gestures toward political red meat, but at the lines that sometimes leave other audiences in silence.They were responding to the senator’s call for national renewal that, though perhaps more Christian than New Age in concept, fit comfortably into a town square hemmed by shops with names like “Revelations” and the “Healthy Inspiration.”“Somehow we have lost the capacity to recognize ourselves in each other,” Obama said, to an intently nodding crowd of at least 1,000. “You know, people talk a lot about the federal deficit, but one of the things that I always talk about is … an empathy deficit,” he continued, to applause.Obama’s message is received warmly in Iowa, and nowhere more than in Fairfield, a city with a population of about 10,000 that was transformed when the Maharishi chose to place his university on the campus of a failing private college.The Maharishi, a native of India now reportedly aged about 90, was a celebrity at the time. He had played the guru to stars, including the Beatles.But while his star power has waned, his following has endured, as has his college town. Now, it’s a thriving scene of art galleries, Asian restaurants, and natural healing salons, site of the best organic pizza in Eastern Iowa. It has even sprouted a suburb-the first new city incorporated in Iowa in decades-called Maharishi Vedic City, in which all buildings face East.After Sept. 11, the Maharishi was briefly back in the news when he introduced an antidote to terrorism called “Invincible Defense Technology,” and reliant on the meditation technique known as “Yogic Flying.” To read more go to:
PS:A blind trying to guide the blind.....!!!!!A deceived trying to guide the equally deceived...!
As in the days of Noah....
