Seer of Flying

What is a maharishi to do when sales start to grow sluggish? One answer: announce a shiny new product. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder and guru of Transcendental Meditation (TIME cover, Oct. 13, 1975), has done just that. TM monthly enrollment slid from its 1975 peak of 40,000 trainees a month to a low of 4,000 this year, partly because the Maharishi invited several thousand of his teachers to TM headquarters in Switzerland to acquaint them with the organization's new wares. The teachers have now brought those wares to the American market: lessons that will lead trainees to the Siddhis, or supernatural powers. These include the ability to walk through walls, feel infinite compassion, become invisible. But the most controversial of the Siddhis is levitation--the ability to hover in midair and fly around the room, as one TM teacher puts it, "like Peter Pan."

So far the new courses, which can cost up to $5,000, have produced more levity than levitation--so much so, in fact, that the Maharishi's movement could be laughed out of existence. But the 450 "executive governors" who teach the Siddhis remain undaunted and seem grimly determined to spread the new (and expensive) gospel. As Baltimore Lawyer and TM Teacher David Sykes, 28, explains it, levitation comes in three stages--hopping, or lifting off the ground a foot or two; then floating or hovering; and last, "actual mastery of the sky, flying at will." Adds Rashi Glazer, 27, a New Yorker who has started the new course but is not yet airborne: "Once you have experienced the absolute--even for a few minutes--flying is not a very big deal. I guess I will eventually walk through a wall, but the technique I want most is omniscience and knowledge of other planets."

What reporters want most is a clear view of a soaring meditator. Indeed, the press does have a picture--from a TM brochure--but some cynics think the levitator may in fact have been bouncing, not flying. For a while, TM's executive governors offered to arrange live demonstrations for the cynics if ten observers would pay a total of $ 1,000 for the privilege. When those conditions were accepted in at least two cities, Toronto and Montreal, headquarters sent word that demonstrations are forbidden because they are undignified. Says John Konhaus, who represents the Maharishi's team of governors in the U.S.: "No one wants to become a circus performer. Our people are at a delicate stage of growing. We aren't out to teach flying. We are teaching full development of consciousness, and flying is a byproduct. It is like enjoying a toy."

The Siddhis are taught in two stages.

Phase I--ranging from four weeks for advanced meditators to eight weeks for beginners--costs $245 a week, including room and board. Phase II, which took its first American trainees last month, consists of four two-week packages and costs $3,000. TM has revealed few details about the flying lessons, but it does offer a suggestion or two: it may be less distracting to fly with someone of your own sex, and it is best to fly only over a mattress because landings are usually bumpy.

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