The Washington Post
by Steve Twomey
August 18, 1989
The audience was hushed and meditating. The contestants were hushed and
meditating. This yogic flying business requires silence. Crowded into the Omni
Shoreham Hotel yesterday, disciples of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi were just seconds
away from the opening bell of the fourth annual International Yogic Flying
Competition, in which 13 young men would soar under their own power toward the
heavens, or at least toward the ceiling of the Ambassador Room. No tricks: no
wires, no ropes, no drugs, no propellers or jet packs, merely the power of the
human mind breaking the bounds of gravity. Or so it would seem from the
competition's recent publicity photo, in which four young men levitate serenely
above the lawn at the Capitol. Hold on . . . . Quiet . . . .
And there goes Ron Pero of upstate New York, headed up. Wait. He's back already. Short flight: one second, tops. Wait. He's up again. Now down. And up. All the others are doing it too, bouncing like dropped marbles. To the uninitiated, it looked less like flying and more like 13 men in the lotus position painfully hopping across 67 foam pads. "That's a very good point," said Pero, 34, who has been bouncing on his haunches for 10 years now. Turns out they don't have flying figured out yet. Only hopping, which, to outsiders, they seemed to manage by pushing off their folded legs, with an assist from the pads.
But that mattered not at all to the 1,200 of the maharishi's followers who have gathered at the Omni this week to mark the 30th anniversary of the first international convention of his Transcendental Meditation movement. Hopping is merely the first stage, said Bevan Morris, president and chairman of the board of trustees of Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. In time, hopping will be followed by yogic floating, in which practitioners will hover in one place for extended periods. Finally, when mind techniques get really good, floating will give way to full yogic flight, forward and backward. Contestant Ken Allen, for one, said he has been feeling greater physical lightness lately, indicating he might be moving out of Stage 1 after nine years of yogic hopping.
This isn't just joy hopping/floating/flying. Studies have shown, said TM officials, that Transcendental Meditation and especially a program called TM-Sidhi, of which yogic flying is a key part, can decrease all bad things in the world and increase all good things when done by enough people gathered in one place. At a news conference before the competition, in fact, officials called upon President Bush to assemble 7,000 people in one place to practice TM-Sidhi. If he did, Morris said, "the hostages in Lebanon would be freed immediately and all remaining tensions in the world would fade away." The key, Morris said, is that the mind techniques involved in yogic flying produce "maximum coherence of brain waves." Klaus Peters, 32, of West Germany, said the sensation is "bliss, happiness . . . . It feels like being more alive, more broad in awareness."
When a group does it, good sensations flow outward to the world, reducing war, poverty and hunger and increasing creativity, intelligence and all the good economic indicators, said its proponents. Gatherings have, in recent years, produced an immediate lessening of violence in Lebanon and, from October 1981 to October 1983, a drop in the crime rate of the District, said Susan L. Dillbeck, graduate dean at MIU. The improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations? Yogic flying had a lot to do with it. The end of the Iran-Iraq war? Flying. While there are 80,000 flying practitioners worldwide, most of them have to work and can't take time off to assemble in one spot for long periods to keep good vibes coming. "We are striving to make the groups permanent," Morris said.
Meanwhile, the flying
competition yesterday was merely hopping competition. For the record, Peters won
the 25-yard hurdles (hopping fastest down the length of a row of pads, across
which had been placed rolls of pillows); Mat Boutrin, of Martinique, won the
high jump (jumping 63.5 centimeters, a little more than two feet, from the lotus
position onto a pile of pads); Allen won the long jump (jumping 187 centimeters,
or just over two yards, in a single hop), and Peters won the 50-yard dash
(hopping 25 yards down and back on the pads). "On the outward level," Morris
said, "it's nothing dramatic at this point." Real flying, he said, "will come."
