From incarceration to meditation in Missouri

[Farrokh Anklesaria] was a direct student of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and he’d been sent around the world by him to bring meditation to convicts.

He’d been to Switzerland, Senegal, Kenya, Brazil and Sri Lanka. And by a mixture of circumstances — and perhaps karma — he had landed in Missouri.

Anklesaria, a native of Mumbai who chose meditation over his family’s legacy in law, hadn’t had much luck in other parts of the country. He had heard that [David] Mason was a proponent of alternative sentencing, and he wanted his help to start a meditation program for criminal offenders in Missouri.

“I thought he was crazy at first,” recalled Mason, a circuit judge in St. Louis.

That was 14 years ago. With the backing of Mason and other judges ranging from the circuit court to the federal bench and the Missouri Supreme Court, Anklesaria has become the region’s guru for training parolees in meditation.

His nonprofit Enlightened Sentencing Project provides 20 weeks of instruction in Transcendental Stress Management for parolees who have committed a gamut of crimes, including drunken driving, assault and theft. [...more...]

See Also

• Behind the TM Facade
• How Transcendental Mediation really works; a critical opinion
• Who Took the “T” Out Of “TM”?
• “Transcendental Meditation was ruled a religion by the United States District Court, District of New Jersey, Docket No. 76-341 (H.C.M.) Civil Action, in the case of Alan B. Malnak. et al., Plaintiffs, v. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, et al., Defendants, in a summary judgment issued October 19, 1977, followed by an order and judgment, filed December 12, 1977.”
- Is TM a religion?

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