Stress and the Maharishi
It’s a stressful world, and everyone needs a way to keep his head from exploding. I saw a head explode once and it isn’t a pretty sight. Walls were spattered with shards of suppressed rage, sinewy strips of free-floating anxiety and small, hairy chunks of an inability to cope. It took weeks to clean up.
Some method of reducing tension is obviously necessary if we are to survive in today’s tense urban environment. There are hundreds of techniques, from squeezing rubber balls to screaming in the cemetery where your mother is buried.
Someone in our neighborhood, for instance, beats tom-toms occasionally to, one presumes, put him or her (or them) into a state of restful meditation.
Others down the block gather to chant in an effort to attain nirvana. The chant assumes a humming quality and on certain quiet nights sounds like a horde of wasps descending on Sweet Jesus Mountain.
But if it helps ease stress, I say go for it. A Hum and Tom-Tom Band might even be in order.
There are dangers to stress-reduction, of course. A friend tried yoga once to quiet his Furies and became entangled in a position from which he was unable to free himself. His wife was out of town and he was near starvation by the time someone found and untangled him.
My point, if indeed I have one, is that there’s no safe, sure-fire way of reducing stress and finding perfect peace. Unless, of course, you live in a City of Immortals.
It’s this way. There’s a company called the Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp. that is promoting the creation of 50 stress-free communities based on the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru of transcendental meditation.
Company headquarters are in Malibu, but you probably already suspected that.
The idea is to build tracts in accordance with natural laws, to the extent that houses will be placed on sites that utilize cosmic energy and are at peace with those spiritual cross-currents that enhance the beneficial purpose of each room.
You’ll walk into a dining room of such a home, for instance, and enjoy a healthy appetite. In the den, your most complex thoughts will snap into focus. In the bedroom, you’ll feel either sleepy or sexually stimulated. I personally feel stimulated in the kitchen, but our house wasn’t built under the Maharishi’s Vedic guidance.
Parks, vegetable gardens, nontoxic building materials and a kind of holistic conditioning are expected to create a collective happiness in each City of Immortals not unlike that enjoyed in the old days by Ozzie and Harriet Nelson on Sycamore Street.
Picture the Nelsons, the Cleavers, kindly Dr. Kildare, Henry Aldrich, Aunt Bee, little Opie and the gang from “Father Knows Best” living in the same glorious neighborhood and you’ll have some idea of what the corporation hopes to achieve in its heavenly communities.
Transcendental meditation, or TM, for those ignorant of psychic self-improvement, taps one’s universal energy to create a state of “restful alertness” that clears the mind, improves health and frees you from tension, anxiety and stress.
Kinda makes you wanna sing and dance.
I stopped by the office of the Heaven on Earth Co. the other day and talked with men in suits and ties who somehow seemed more . . . well . . . serene than most people. One was Curtis McDonald, a vice president of the company.
This all began, I was told, two years ago at a gathering in India where the Maharishi declared that the problem of war was over and mankind ought to concentrate on quality of life.
The concept somehow evolved into real estate speculation that shaped the notion of sweet-peace cities, a dozen of which are in various stage of development in the United States and Canada.
The difference between them and any other high-priced communities, McDonald says, is the removal of stress through many means, including programs of purification involving diet, exercise, meditation and, of course, the Gandharva-Ved music concerts with which we are all so familiar.
When I suggested that stress might be a little difficult to leave behind in this era of people with Uzis who do not abide by the principles of spiritual fulfillment, he assured me that, in that case, security systems would be incorporated into each of the housing developments.
Where good vibes fail, hire guards.
This all sounds pretty good to me and I plan on moving into a City of Immortals myself. The possible intrusion of criminal mischief doesn’t worry me at all. I am confident that Sheriff Andy of Mayberry, and his sidekick Barney, will be around to keep me safe and serene.