{"id":254,"date":"2006-04-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-07T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto.html"},"modified":"2006-04-07T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-07T12:00:00","slug":"toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto.html","title":{"rendered":"Toto, Meet TM. TM, Meet Toto"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div>\n<p>The Beatles are all now either dead, knighted or Ringo, but the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group\u2019s onetime spiritual guru and the inventor of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alltm.org\/Transcendental_Meditation.html\" target=\"_new\">Transcendental Meditation<\/a>, is still making news. The Maharishi\u2019s followers recently broke ground on a $14 million <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ljworld.com\/news\/2006\/apr\/04\/world_capital_peace_arrives_north_kansas\/?state_regional\" target=\"_new\">World Peace Capital<\/a>, a campus of a dozen buildings now rising on 480 acres in extremely rural <a href=\"http:\/\/skyways.lib.ks.us\/counties\/SM\/\" target=\"_new\">Smith County, Kansas<\/a>. Your next question, kids, (after \u201cWho\u2019s The Beatles?\u201d) is \u201cWhy Kansas?\u201d Smith County, it turns out, is the geographic center of the United States, the perfect place to anchor a chain of Transcendental Meditation centers spreading across the country\u2019s midsection. To local officials, such reasoning is beside the point. As Smith Center Mayor Randy Archer points out, \u201cWith a population of 1,800 and the oldest population in Kansas, we don\u2019t have much going for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The choice of Kansas does not seem akilter, either, to anyone who has followed the TM movement over the decades. True, TM began as a hot jetsetter spirituality\u2014think Kabbalah, with OM\u2014and some Hollywood types, like director <a href=\"http:\/\/desmoinesregister.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20060323\/NEWS08\/603230363\/1010\" target=\"_new\">David Lynch<\/a>, still swear by it. But Maharishi\u2019s chief stateside organization, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uspeacegovernment.org\/\" target=\"_new\">U.S. Peace Government<\/a>, has long been based in Iowa, and Americans in the heartland have taken to it as a nondenominational way to find peace, reduce stress\u2014and prevent crime: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kansascity.com\/mld\/kansascity\/news\/local\/14242191.htm\" target=\"_new\">Last week<\/a>, a St. Louis, Mo., Judge and TM practitioner ordered a woman convicted of fraud to attend 180 hours of community service and learn TM.<\/p>\n<p>Emboldened, perhaps, by his recent roll, the Maharishi may be trying to settle an old score with the Fab Four. Last month former, disciple <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtontimes.com\/world\/20060305-110344-1852r.htm\" target=\"_new\">Deepak Chopra floated a story<\/a> that the band\u2019s break with their guru came not because the Maharishi was hitting on women in their entourage at his Indian ashram, but because the yogi himself objected to said entourage\u2019s intake of pot and LSD at the ashram.<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;padding-bottom:0.25em\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Beatles are all now either dead, knighted or Ringo, but the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group\u2019s onetime spiritual guru and the inventor of Transcendental Meditation, is still making news. The Maharishi\u2019s followers recently broke ground on a $14 million World Peace Capital, a campus of a dozen buildings now rising on 480 acres in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Toto, Meet TM. 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The Maharishi\u2019s followers recently broke ground on a $14 million World Peace Capital, a campus of a dozen buildings now rising on 480 acres in&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-07T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"burb\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Toto, Meet TM. TM, Meet Toto","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Toto, Meet TM. TM, Meet Toto","og_description":"The Beatles are all now either dead, knighted or Ringo, but the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the group\u2019s onetime spiritual guru and the inventor of Transcendental Meditation, is still making news. The Maharishi\u2019s followers recently broke ground on a $14 million World Peace Capital, a campus of a dozen buildings now rising on 480 acres in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2006-04-07T12:00:00+00:00","author":"burb","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/04\/toto-meet-tm-tm-meet-toto.html","name":"Toto, Meet TM. 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