Natural wonder

Dissatisfaction with mainstream politics is on the rise, but Senate candidate Dale Friedgen's Natural Law Party remains plagued by questions of credibility.

by Chris Kanaracus

IN THE MIDDLESEX County town of Maynard, just around the corner from the single-story police station, there's an auto-parts store with a hidden purpose. You can find all the usual stuff here: mufflers, transmission fluid, and wiper blades that offer the best protection yet from rain and sleet. But browse further and you'll discover the store's other function: it's the default campaign office for Dale Friedgen of Worcester, who's mounting a quixotic third-party challenge against Edward M. Kennedy, the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of Massachusetts politics.

Near a shelf scattered with FRAM oil filters in the store's back room, Friedgen talks with me under the watchful eyes of his campaign manager, Brian Brogan, a powerfully built, clean-cut former Marine. While Friedgen talks, Brogan jots down notes, checks email on an exotic-looking cell phone, and with a series of nervous asides, does what he can to keep the conversation "on message."

Friedgen, the 51-year-old owner of the auto-parts shop, is technically running as an unenrolled candidate. But his animating affiliation is with the Natural Law Party, which was formed in 1992 by practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, also known by its copyrighted trademark TM. Because Natural Law candidates didn't garner the required three percent of the overall vote in previous elections, the party was unable to gain major-party status on the Massachusetts ballot this November.

Since being formed in 1955 by the Maharishi Mahesh, the TM movement has gained a worldwide following (it claims five million members, including two million in the US). The discipline, based on a fundamental form of Hinduism, involves relaxation techniques centered around deep-breathing routines and chanting a series of mantras. Most practitioners spend about an hour a day meditating.

Devotees have claimed much greater benefits than mere relaxation, however. During TM's peak of popularity in the '70s, advertisements promised that it could enable practitioners to fly, walk through walls, and even become invisible.

The Natural Law party's platform is a grab bag. Like Libertarians, the Natural Law folks would do away with "meddlesome" foreign policies and push for smaller government. Along with Republicans, they oppose further gun-control regulations and support lower

taxes. More liberal planks include a pledge to avoid legislation related to moral issues, such as abortion or gay marriage, and increased emphasis on education. Reverting to holistic form, Natural Law candidates also see a cover-up when it comes to genetically engineered foods.

"They're not proven to be safe," Friedgen says. "These days, you may get a tomato with genes from a fish in it. We're tampering with millions of years of evolution, and we don't know what the effects are going to be."

In a similar vein, Friedgen and fellow party members favor a more preventive approach when it comes to problems such as crime and disease. Fair enough. But it's precisely the Natural Law Party's kind of preventive solutions that raise eyebrows. Boosters claim that hundreds of studies have backed the ability of TM to cure a range of social and personal ills. Dig deep into the party's extensive materials, and you'll find suggestions that TM programs be placed in schools, prisons, and even the military, and that a 7000-member permanent mediation group be established to create "coherence throughout society."

Perhaps because of this, Friedgen denies any official ties to the TM movement, ample evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. "There is no link," says Friedgen, his voice even. "There is no connection. It's just one aspect of what we want to do." Pressed, Friedgen, his palms turned up as if in an appeal, concedes, "A lot of the people who started the party were meditators."

Adds Brogan, "The media tends to turn it into a hype type of thing. It's not about gurus. It's not our main focus."

These protestations are to be expected. As a fringe candidate, Friedgen clearly needs all the positive press he can get, and talk about meditation is sure to raise the skepticism of many voters. That said, it's hard to see how the Natural Law Party and TM aren't connected. After all, most members practice TM.

There are good reasons, though, to downplay the link. Federal courts have ruled TM is a religion, not a "scientific system" as followers maintain. Religious groups can't run as political parties. That aside, you have to think many mainstream voters would be quickly turned off by the first mention of meditation or the Maharishi.

There's another reason, too. TM's critics -- including many former practitioners -- are legion, and quite vocal.

WHILE THE NATURAL Law Party is young, it is ambitious. Currently, the party operates in more than 40 countries. In the US, TM emanates from Fairfield, Iowa, also the home of the Maharishi University of Management. It's an accredited institution, but it focuses primarily on TM.

Natural Law candidates have run for office, with mixed results, in every state and in scores of countries around the world. While the party has created extensive networks in countries as far-flung as New Zealand, Pakistan, and Australia, the crucial step of actually getting someone elected has yet to happen. And some past hopefuls have failed miserably. In California, Valerie Janlois, a 1992 candidate for Congress, received just 33 votes.

In the US, the Maharishi remains best known for his involvement with the Beatles in the 1960s, when band members dabbled in TM and Far Eastern mystical and musical ideas. According to unverifiable Beatles lore, the friendship soured when the band learned that the Maharishi, in violation of his expressed vow of celibacy, conducted a series of sexual affairs with female followers. Long a sheltered figure, the Maharishi currently lives in seclusion at a massive, multi-million dollar compound in Amsterdam, and has been labeled by some as a fraudulent, exploitative guru.

But thanks to a well-scrubbed presidential candidate, and a timely shakeup earlier this year within Ross Perot's Reform Party, the Natural Law Party gained much-needed credibility and, perhaps, a large financial boost.

The candidate is Harvard-educated quantum physicist John Hagelin, who also ran for the top spot in 1996. Co-author of a landmark "superstring" theory (superstring research seeks to show all natural laws follow one simple system), Hagelin is the NLP's best bet so far for legitimacy. While he's also a practitioner of TM -- and actually left a prestigious research post to take a job at the Maharishi University of Management -- supporters hope that Hagelin's scientific pedigree will take some of the negative rub away from TM's poor reputation and lend more credence to the party.

Within the scientific community, Hagelin's reputation has stumbled. He's respected for his superstring work but has been criticized for what peers see as an attempt to tie it with TM teachings. In 1994, he was "honored" by the Cambridge-based science-humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which satirizes dubious scientific claims.

But in a bizarre twist, Hagelin's candidacy has gained backing from a new coalition of former Reform Party members, led by far-left activist Lenora Fulani and James Mangia. Many have labeled this reformist-Reform pairing as desperate, since the elements agree on some, but certainly not all, of the issues. The pair initially backed acidic conservative Pat Buchanan, but flipped to Hagelin when it appeared that Buchanan's viability as a candidate was waning.

Buchanan, however, still scored the Reform Party's nomination, and has consequently received $12.6 million in matching federal campaign funds. Hagelin's camp, which has filed an injunction, claims they should get the money. Hagelin's campaign could certainly use the bucks: according to Federal Election Commission figures through August 1, he's raised just $500,000 -- well below 1996's total of $4 million.

Although the chances are slim that Hagelin will win his suit, the Reform Party's involvement has injected something into his campaign that money can't always motivate: voters.

FRIEDGEN ISN'T the only third-party candidate scrambling for votes against Kennedy, a 38-year-incumbent who's recognized as one of the most effective members of the Senate. Also on the November ballot are ultra right-wing Constitution Party candidate Philip Lawler, and small-government advocate and Libertarian Carla Howell.

Howell has been particularly rabid, albeit a bit campy, in her efforts. Not a day goes by when her campaign doesn't fax a flurry of missives to reporters across the state. One recent entry screamed, "Ted Kennedy is the Bagman Behind the Big Dig Spending & Traffic Racket," and that Howell is, "the Eliott Ness needed to break up these Untouchables."

Howell still polls way behind Kennedy. An August poll by the Web site www.portraitofamerica.com gave her just six percent to Kennedy's 68. (Republican nominee Jack E. Robinson is in the dust as well, with 18 percent.) But Howell's game plan -- to tap disaffected and non-traditional voters -- has made some headway. She has raised more than $500,000, and last week she and Libertarian presidential hopeful Harry Browne soaked in the cheers of more than 60,000 pro-marijuana activists at Boston's annual Freedom Rally, held on the Common.

Yet even compared to Howell, Friedgen is but a blip on the political radar. And he almost didn't get this far. He filed the necessary 10,000 signatures for ballot status on August 29, the last day of eligibility. "We had about 20 minutes to go," he recalls with a smile. "It was a close one."

This isn't the first time Friedgen has run for office, but he's never aimed this high. He was trounced in 1998 when he ran against state representative Harold Naughton (D-Clinton). A 1996 congressional bid versus Republican Peter Blute and Democrat James McGovern produced similar results. In 1994, he was blown out by Blute.

Friedgen, naturally, puts a different spin on it. "[In 1994], I got one percent of the vote," he says. "In 1996, it was two percent. So we doubled our efforts. I was happy with it."

Friedgen, a father of three, was born in Iowa, but after his parents divorced, when he was 12, he moved with his mother to Worcester. He lived on Athenia Street in Quinsigamond Village and attended South High. Later, he moved to Sterling, and two years ago returned to Worcester, where he lives on Cobblestone Lane, off East Mountain Street. He's owned his auto-parts store in Maynard since 1982, when he purchased it from his brother.

His interest in TM began some time before that, while he was a student at UMass-Amherst. "My friend, who was running a tire company at the time, said he had started to do it. Personally, I thought he was crazy," Friedgen recalls. "Then one day I saw a television program, on which there where about 14 students sitting around a table. One by one, they described their experiences with TM. And they all had stories about drug and alcohol abuse, which they no longer did."

Ever since, Friedgen has been a believer. He's even taught TM courses at the Ayur-Veda Center in Lancaster, which celebrities like George Harrison and Elizabeth Taylor have been known to frequent.

When the Natural Law Party was formed in 1992, Friedgen saw his chance to bring his interest to a larger audience. "When I was younger, I had no interest in politics. And the first time I ran, I figured I'd probably be ridiculed or embarrassed. . . . All third parties get that," he says. "But now with the [Natural Law] party so strong, I feel it's a civic responsibility."

Of course, he's yet to actually win. His past opponents provide some inkling as to why. At least to date, Friedgen is one of the most apolitical would-be politicians you'll find. "I've never met the man," chuckles Harold Naughton. "All I can go on are a couple of press releases." Neither did Friedgen's campaign efforts make much of a dent, says Naughton. "He did have a bumper sticker, and at one point had a sign on his truck. He may have done some phone banking in [Friedgen's then-home town of Sterling]."

Both Naughton and Blute, though, have little negative to say about Friedgen. "He came off to me as not a bad guy," says Blute. "He wasn't an attack politician." No kidding. After one of the debates, says Blute, Friedgen gave him and his wife, Robi, a freshly baked pie.

"[Friedgen] played peacemaker during the debates," says Blute, now a talk-show host on Boston's WRKO (AM 680). "He would say the bitterness and hard words McGovern and I were firing at each other were part of the problem with politics. He seemed more bent on getting his whole philosophy out there."

THAT PHILOSOPHY, say TM critics, is something that should be viewed with no small measure of skepticism. To be sure, some TM claims cry out for ridicule: take the concept of "yogic flying." Some may remember this `phenomenon' from earlier years, when photos of people in apparent mid-levitation, about a foot off the ground, were widely circulated. They weren't actually levitating, of course, but bouncing on their butts from the lotus position. Unsurprisingly, former TMers say the practice has led to degenerative spinal conditions and arthritic knees. Still, some TMers insist yogic flying is legitimate. Two large domed buildings at Maharishi University are devoted to the practice.

In April 1999, Hagelin and others pressed US officials with what they called a fool-proof way to resolve the crisis in Bosnia-Herzogova: allow the Natural Law Party to send 7000 trained yogic flyers to the war zone, whereupon the healing energies created by their communal meditation would bring peace to the region. Predictably, the White House declined the offer.

Then there was NPL presidential hopeful John Hagelin's own 1994 "study" of crime in the Washington, DC, area. At a reported cost of $6 million, 4000 TM practitioners from 81 countries spent weeks in meditative flight. Upon completion of their activities, the group claimed that "brutal crimes" had dropped by up to 18 percent. The results, they said, were caused by the collective energy produced by the group's meditation, termed the "Maharishi effect." Officials rejected the claims.

Barry Markovsky, a professor of sociology at the University of Iowa, has extensively studied and criticized TM research methods, including those used in connection with the DC episode. "I'm not saying they're lying," Markovsky says. "But they haven't offered any conclusive proof for their claims."

But what about those scientific studies -- 600, according to boosters -- that prove it all? Nearly all were conducted by TM practitioners, and with doubtful integrity, says Markovsky, adding that he was turned down when he offered to fund a small study of the Maharishi effect.

That isn't to say that TM is completely without merit. Dr. Andrew Weil, a well-known proponent of alternative medicine, offered a balanced view of TM in a 1996 article. Weil cited several Harvard Medical School studies conducted in the '70s that found TM users enjoyed reduced blood pressure and lower lactate levels in their bloodstreams (lactate, a salt found in lactic acid, is thought to be a cause of anxiety) and were able to achieve a state of deep relaxation. But he added that all of these benefits are obtainable through other forms of meditation, which don't charge thousands of dollars for participation.

The most vocal TM critics contend there is a darker side to the seemingly peaceful quasi-religion. Some, like John Knapp, who runs the cult-watch Web site www.trancenet.org, are blunt, maintaining that the TM movement is a cult, and the Natural Law Party is a Trojan Horse for its true leader, the Maharishi.

Knapp, now working on a degree in social work at the State University of New York-Albany, spent 25 years in the TM movement, beginning when he was 18. The '70s found Knapp intensely involved. For a time, he says, he worked for no pay running a press in a TM printing house in upstate New York. In 1995, he dropped out when he met his former wife.

"I couldn't take the day-to-day lying any more," he says. "The point is, I don't hate [TM practitioners]. My feeling is that if they're straightforward about what's really going on, and people still want to do it, then all the power to them."

What's really going on, according to Knapp, would make prospective meditators run away screaming. Beyond a sore behind, he says, TM leaders charge exorbitant course fees -- up to $100,000 for a full course -- discourage the most devoted from contact with family members, and make it difficult to leave the movement. Knapp says he helped to propagate these practices when he was a member.

Knapp says he took to TM right away after trying it at the suggestion of a friend, but soon found himself obsessed -- a condition, he says, that was encouraged by his teachers. "Picture yourself in that phase just before you fall asleep, 24 hours a day. It's not a good way to go through the world."

But Knapp doesn't completely dismiss TM's benefits, nor does he completely condemn the movement. "There certainly was a matter of choice involved [with entering the TM movement]," he says. "I see meditation as a small miracle. But they've taken this tiny benefit and built it into a huge business." According to data on Knapp's site, the net worth of the Maharishi's organization is about $3 billion.

"Obviously, they're not going to run the country. But I'm worried about a big growth spurt [in the US]." Knapp says the TM movement also trades on its prestige in this country to make inroads into the Third World.

Friedgen dismisses the notion that TM is a cult with a wave of his hand. "People are always going to say something like that," he says.

Official response to naysayers such as Knapp has been to label them disgruntled former members with axes to grind. It's a title, though, that Knapp doesn't shy from. "l would say I'm disgruntled. A very high percentage of people do get something good out of it," he says. "But if you had a drug that caused harm in 20 percent of the people who took it, you pull it off the market."

Knapp says that since he started Trancenet, he has spoken with more than 3000 former TMers, and has helped many leave the fold. "I feel a need to [run the Web site]," he adds. "In a sense, I feel I'm atoning for my sins."

CRITICS SUCH AS KNAPP and Markovsky may take some solace in the Natural Law Party's current no-name status in Massachusetts. The organization's Web site lists just three state delegates.

Party chairman Rob Stowe admits that Natural Law has yet to gain much ground locally. "We've raised less than $10,000. We basically don't have any money," he says, with palpable chagrin. "Dale is not going to be able to do much advertising. We're hoping for some, but not much."

For initial financial support, Stowe says, the party has focused on previous NLP backers. But those numbers are few -- just 500 by Stowe's own estimate. And, he adds, fewer than 100 are the most active supporters. "We've just got to build a grassroots network with what we have right now."

Frankly, that's not very much. Which sparks the question, why take on Ted Kennedy? He might be a whipping boy for conservatives, but Kennedy has proven staying power. How about the NLP shooting for, say, town selectman? "It's a good question," says Stow. "From a strategic point of view, you get more press [with a Senate bid]."

Adds Friedgen, "Why Kennedy? Why not? Let's break the normal rules of politics." If anything, says Friedgen, he hopes to engage Teddy in some public dialogue.

That may be all that Friedgen will get. The closest any Natural Law candidate has come to victory was in 1996, when Annamae Forsberg received about 23 percent of the vote in her campaign against state Representative John Stefanini (D-Framingham).

Yet even if Friedgen had Forsberg's luck and an army of campaign soldiers, it's, uh, unlikely that he'll beat Kennedy in November. "That's what they said about Jesse Ventura," counters a confident Friedgen, in a now-familiar third-party invocation, referring to the Minnesota governor.

"There's a disgruntled mass of people out there that don't believe either of the two parties can solve their problems," he continues. "In the last presidential election, 125 million people didn't vote. Ventura was one candidate that tapped into that. We combine the best elements from all the parties."

A bold assertion. The only challenge that remains for Friedgen is to make sure voters actually get a chance to hear it -- a task that will certainly require some meditation.

Chris Kanaracus can be reached at ckanaracus[a]phx.com