MEDITATION NATION THE BIG THE BIG IDEA DONOVAN HAS CHOSEN SCOTLAND

Sunday Herald, The, Feb 24, 2008 by PAUL DALGARNO

WE are all disconnected from our bodies, says Cork-born Angela Landers, from a chair in a tranquil room in Glasgow. "But if we settle our minds then our bodies will naturally follow." Landers teaches transcendental meditation (TM) here at the west of Scotland headquarters along with the odd bit of yogic flying. Both techniques will be on the curriculum at the proposed Invincible Donovan University in Edinburgh, which wants to propel Scotland and its people towards the beating heart of world meditation.

The plans are nothing if not ambitious: in addition to the standard university subjects, up to 1000 students will strive for "total knowledge" a state of enlightenment so powerful that they will ultimately create world peace. The idea is to make Scotland, in particular, safer through a twice-daily diet of meditation and organic food. Behind it all is Scottish singersongwriter Donovan of Hurdy Gurdy Man fame who has been recast as Dr Donovan Leitch (an honorary title awarded by the University of Hertfordshire in 2003 for his outstanding contribution to music). He has high hopes. "It will be like when John Knox banged his fist on the Bible and said every village in Scotland will have a school, " he says. "It will bring a similar change, minus the religious connection." Earlier this month, Donovan confirmed the probable site as being the Waterfront development in Edinburgh. Bankrolling the GBP5million institution in part is American filmmaker David Lynch, who is also listed as a doctor. The Twin Peaks director fronts the David Lynch Foundation, which funds the teaching of "consciousness-based education" in schools throughout the world. A long-term practitioner of TM, Lynch has in the past credited the technique with freeing him from the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit Of Negativity which sounds like a costume students of the proposed university might wear on Fresher's night.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about TM, " says Landers. "It's not hypnosis or a trance and there's no manipulation of the mind. Basically, you just sit in a chair comfortably for 20 minutes a day.

It doesn't involve concentration it's just an effortless mental technique." She admits that the word "transcendental" can be confusing. "It just means to go beyond, " she says. "What you're doing is allowing that very busy clattering chattermind to settle down in order to experience the part of you that never changes." Landers came to TM after graduating as a nurse because she was looking "for a system that could deal with all aspects of life". In 2005, she gained a degree in consciousness-based healthcare at the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, of which Donovan's Edinburgh university will initially be an outpost. "The experience of studying there was a huge leap forward for me, " she says. "At the end of the course I felt more confident, more creative, more employable; whereas at the end of my previous degree I just felt shattered."

Meditation is the foundation, she says, for more than 40 "life aspects" of TM, designed to get one living in tune with natural law. Agriculture, mathematics and astrology feature heavily. The exact positioning of property is another important aspect, and the room we are in right now is no exception. "This house really mirrors the cosmic body so that you're not disconnected from your environment, " she says. "The room is east-facing, to get the sunrise, because it offers the most nourishing rays of the sun. While you're cooking, the sun should be in the kitchen so that you are always in tune with the laws of nature." On the wall behind Landers is a photograph of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who popularised TM in the 1950s and 1960s, essentially repackaging prehistoric Hindu teachings for a Western consumerist market. Landers still talks about him in the present tense. His death earlier this month came just three weeks after his decision to retire, and the announcement that his life's work was complete.

He wasn't kidding. In the 50 years since he first travelled to America, he transformed TM from an unheard-of Eastern spiritual practice to a multimillion pound business empire with global headquarters in the Netherlands. At GBP1280 per individual for the initial seven-step course, the so-called "householder tradition" of meditation has always enjoyed a certain advantage: there is no need to renounce the world and live in seclusion, nor any conflict with a materialistic lifestyle.

Whether the Maharishi or his technique would have enjoyed the same fame without the endorsement of The Beatles who first attended a retreat with the Maharishi in north Wales in 1967 and then submitted themselves, to varying degrees, at his ashram in India the following year is a moot point.

In the US alone, more than dollars-22 million of government money has been pumped into quantifying the effects of TM in the last two decades, with consistently positive results: serenity and creative output go up; blood pressure and stress levels go down. Millions more cash has poured, unsolicited, into Lynch's TM foundation since it was established in 2005.