This news release was posted on TM's newsgroup, alt.meditation.transcendental. It provides interesting insights into "which way the wind is blowing" for this pseudoscientific, pseudopolitical movement headed by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

MEDITATION SAVES PERUVIAN CITY FROM DROUGHT

26 February 1997

Establishing the Natural Law Party in Peru is well on its way. As one of its first activities the Natural Law Party aims at demonstrating the effect of "A Group for a Government".

In the city of Puno, more than 150 students and teachers from three schools learned the Transcendental Meditation technique and they practise it collectively in three different groups. The teachers immediately noticed that the students with low academic performance practising TM started to overtake the others who were previously considered the best students but did not learn TM. This project was so successful that the principal, also a meditator, decided that in the new academic year all students will learn TM.

The city of Puno as a whole has also greatly benefited from the increased coherence created by the meditating school children. Mr. Javier Ortiz, the founder of the Natural Law Party in Peru, explained: "Meteorologists predicted that Puno would be suffering from drought caused by the weather phenomenon El Niño which was expected to bring heavy rains to some areas and drought to others. It was feared that the drought would bring loss of lives, cattle, crops, and further impoverish the region. Experts say that this year's bad weather caused by El Niño in the whole country is the worst for 50 years. However, they are amazed at how Puno is the only place to be spared from the predicted adverse weather. It started to rain during the first TM introductory lecture, and it then rained again during the TM instructions and group meditations."

Before starting the project, Mr. Ortiz announced to the press and the government that the destructive effects of the weather can be avoided through coherence-creating groups -- but he was heard only in Puno. He says, "It is very vital for the nation to implement this Natural Law-based technology on a wider scale." In Puno the drought never came and the people are saying that "it is like a miracle."