World Peace News: Top Stories

Earth's future peacemakers just need a little TM
by Lily Koppel

The New York Times Translate This Article
14 November 2005

On 14 November 2005 The New York Times reported: Filmmaker David Lynch is raising money to make the Transcendental Meditation Programme available to students from first grade through college. New York Times reporter Lily Koppel said that Lynch wants to make the simple mental technique 'a standard in every student's curriculum'. It is a joy for Global Good News service to feature this news, which indicates the success of the life-supporting programmes Maharishi has designed to bring fulfilment to the field of world peace.

Although often described as 'notoriously reclusive', Lynch has stepped into the public spotlight by founding the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and has embarked on a speaking tour to universities on the East and West Coasts. His goal is clear: 'I really think it will change the world,' Lynch was quoted as saying.

The article said that the Lynch Foundation currently has assets of about $410,000. To date seven schools have each been awarded $25,000 in seed money to begin programmes using the TM Technique. Two of the charter schools discussed their programmes with the New York Times reporter.

Dr George H. Rutherford, principal of the Ideal Academy Public Charter School, an elementary and middle school in Washington, DC, said of Lynch, 'He is going to revolutionize education in America.'

Dr Rutherford said that while other foundations tend to focus on providing learning tools (such as computers) to students, the Transcendental Meditation Programme helps develop the students themselves. 'TM helps to reduce the stress that creates problems,' he was quoted as saying.

Researchers at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, will measure the effects of the meditation programme on students.

A second school to receive a $25,000 grant from the Lynch Foundation was the Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse of Detroit, a public charter school, which previously received TM financing from the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund and the General Motors Foundation.

According to the article, Nataki seventh- and eighth-grade students who worked as a non-meditating control group in a 2002 study, tracking the 'social-emotional competencies' of the meditating students, now want to experience what their peers had.

In addition, Koppel reported, the Lynch Foundation is partnering with other philanthropists to grant another $25,000 each to the University of Michigan, Yale, Emerson College and other colleges to help teach students TM. The foundation is also partnering to support an American University study on TM and college students.
Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based—Total Knowledge based—programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.

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