Gentle reader do you remember the International Meditation Society organizations? Maharishi set them up in many countries to teach TM, promote the knowledge, and have an organization the teachers could belong to. Its sister organization was the Students International Meditation Society which operated on college campuses and other education venues. The IMS or SIMS organizations were well thought out, and semi-autonomous with TM teachers holding the ultimate power on a national level. Of course, Maharishi and his various “offices” held it together on the international level, and Maharishi demanded ultimate control. However, it was not a corporate or governmental structure, and certainly not profit-oriented in the ultimate sense of having shareholders.
Those were the early days, and it went very well, with an ever-expanding number of meditators, and a friendly honest welcome attitude. Over the decades the TM movement evolved into a closely held corporate and non-profit leviathan, with a non-transparent ownership structure. The current “TM movement” or “Global Country of World Peace” looks like a several-headed dragon that has taken over the whole TM scene, and keeps everything to itself, for itself, without involving the thousands of TM teachers worldwide in the decision-making process. So different from the IMS-SIMS days!
Here in the western world, there were IMS-type organizations that existed in the purest sense as spiritual organizations for the benefit of society. Later on, more and more organizations were added to the mix, like Maharishi International University, Maharishi European Research University, and other educational-oriented institutions. Then later came the profit-oriented organizations like Sidha Corporation (remember that?) which tried to enter the silk textile market in the United States. Like that there were a host of companies that had their mandate for profit creation. Presumably, this was for the whole TM movement, and to support the efforts of the TM teachers, but looking back at it we can’t be sure where the profit went if any.
The number of profit-oriented companies grew in the 1980s when Maharishi Ayurveda landed on the TM movement’s doorstep as something we must promote, and promote it we did. Then later Maharishi Sthapatya Veda construction companies and many other profit-oriented businesses sprung up. We have no idea how these companies we structured, who the ultimate owners were, and where did the profits flow to. How did they all fit together in the big matrix of the TM movement? Well, you might say “mind your own business”, but all of these businesses were in our midst to support or at least help the movement somehow by promoting Vedic technologies at least. That is what we thought. Maybe Maharishi was just handing out franchises to businessmen to do whatever they want, but I doubt it.
Then there were massive agricultural projects in several countries under the title Maharishi Vedic Agriculture. Some say there were millions of acres of land managed under those agricultural projects. What ever happened to those projects? Who took out the profits? Where there any profits at all? We do not know.
Maybe Maharishi expected some of the profits to be plowed back into the essential central core idea: teaching Transcendental Meditation. Well, at least that is what we thought.
The people in the TM movement were witnesses to these efforts, but nowhere do we see a consolidated report about the success or failure of these projects. Nowhere do we see the profit or loss statements. The complicated often hidden – through offshore companies – ownership structure had become a real rat nest. We suspected a lot of profits went to India. Maharishi was building up his network of private educational institutions. There were profit-oriented businesses in India besides Maharishi Ayurveda. Who inherited those assets? How much of the original plan (we believed) to support TM teaching was realized over the decades via the established businesses? The tangled spaghetti of for-profit and, and non-profit organizations around the world are hard to put together. Perhaps even Tony Nader doesn’t know what went on over the years.
We will attempt to collect and organize all the data we can find from public sources. We also ask our kind readers to provide – that is leak – any information which can help our effort. You can check the “your leaks” page for the kinds of information we are interested in. We hereby state that we would also like to see documents related to the massive projects like the aforementioned agro projects and anything big, and perhaps something to do with the Central Bank of GCWP. How about Vedaland? Does anyone know Debbie Henning and where she disappeared to? We would appreciate even a list of projects or companies, even if you don’t have direct information. Just a list would be a big help.
It is our opinion that massive amounts of money flowed through the Western TM movement, and some of it was redirected elsewhere. We do not know where. We would like to find out.
The leads you provide will help our effort to untangle the spaghetti and find out where the sauce disappeared to.