'Meditation will save SA'

2007-03-29 21:45

Cape Town - No devotee of yogic flying has ever moved beyond the first stage: hopping energetically up and down on their bottoms with their legs crossed.

But, one Cape Town man believes that even hopping, if enough people do it at the same time, could generate enough positive spiritual energy to wipe out South Africa's crime problem.

Nigel Kahn and his wife, Dorry, went to the gates of parliament on Thursday to raise the flag of the Global Country of World Peace, an initiative of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of transcendental meditation.

It was a brief ceremony: Kahn held up the flag, bearing a sun-like shape, long enough for Dorianne to take a photograph.

But he believes it was an important step towards creating a positive influence on governments worldwide.

One group needed

Speaking after the ceremony, he said each country in the world needed only a group representing the square root of one percent of its population to come together and practise transcendental meditation and its advanced techniques, including yogic flying.

"We're bringing the support of natural law, this unseen quality, which actually is governing the universe... a unified field of all the laws of nature, one underlying field of intelligence and energy," he said.

If South Africa had a group of 700 people doing this, it could become invincible against problems like crime, health issues and poverty.

Transcendental meditation also could reduce stress, which could lead to a rise in economic creativity.

Kahn said that, internationally, the success of groups like this already had been proved.

He said a study done in Washington in 1993 proved a 23% reduction of crime when a meditation and yogic flying group had been there for 1½ months.

50 000 SA meditators

He said a US group of nearly 2 000 members that had been in existance since July had had a "huge effect" on US foreign policy, which had become more conciliatory towards nations such as North Korea, Syria and Iran.

About 50 000 South Africans practised transcendental meditation and 15 000 yogic flying.

However, Kahn said, no practitioner of yogic flying world-wide had yet moved beyond the first level in which one hops up and down.

He suggested that when the collective consciousness of the world was "maybe purer... then we can see maybe more things, like the body will stay up in the air".

- SAPA