Obama Honors Transcendental Meditation, Comes Across As Spiritual Leader For New Age

To the frustration of the cameramen in the Fairfield town square, Obama delivered his remarks facing east, with the setting sun behind him blotting out their shots. But here, there’s a power even higher than the television networks: Obama had positioned himself in alignment with the rotation of the earth, in accordance with the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose followers moved en masse to this small Iowa city more than 30 years ago. The Maharishi’s transcendental meditators, along with vacationing pilgrims from the East Coast, turned out in large numbers in the town’s traditional green square to hear the Illinois senator deliver his stump speech on the night of July 3 — more people, Fairfield’s sheriff said, than had come out to greet a sitting president. “I saw him and I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is somebody who could lead us into a new era,’” said Nancy Watkins, an international student adviser at the Maharishi University of Management.