Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development

History

Origins

Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp. was founded in Malibu, California in 1988 by its first president, money manager Monty Guild. It was initially financed by Guild, who donated his shares to Maharishi University of Management.

City of Immortals developments

MHOED announced in 1988 that it planned to build 50 low-density "Maharishi Cities of Immortals" across the U.S. and Canada. Each City of Immortals development would include a pond or lake, a Maharishi elementary school, a for-profit Maharishi Ayurvedic health clinic, a festival hall, and an organic vegetable garden.

MSV design principles say that, with proper placement and orientation, one naturally feels hungry in a dining room and sleepy in a bedroom. Guild planned a 29-city tour to recruit developers. plus 1% of the retail costs, plus a sales commission. In the San Francisco area, the representatives said that homes prices were expected to be between $300,000 and $1 million, depending on land costs. A developer attending a presentation said a home with the listed amenities would cost several times that amount.

The areas where developments might be built included Malibu, Houston, In 1989, it announced that it had signed contracts with developers for projects in eight of those cities, and was on the verge of signing contracts in seven more. A parcel near Austin, Texas was described as a 30-home prototype. Construction was begun at a site owned by MHOED on Mount Shefford near Bromont, Quebec in June 1991, and 30 of the 100 lots were reported to have sold. Prospective home owners supplied details about their occupation and precise birth location, date and time so that the MSV designers could properly customize the building for its intended resident.

Creating these cities globally was projected to cost $100 trillion. It was hoped that at least a hundred would be built around the world.

An architect, who was invited to one of the promotional lunches, questioned the need for low density suburban developments.

Maharishi Veda Land

Maharishi Veda Land International (MVLI) was a wholly owned subsidiary created to finance the construction of Maharishi Veda Land themes parks being promoted by magician Doug Henning. Various locations for the parks were proposed, and properties were acquired in Orlando and Niagara Falls. The parks were seen as complementing the Cities of Immortals, and they might have been co-located.

Other activities

In the 1990s MHOED began buying old hotels in U.S. city centers, purchasing over a dozen by 1994.

The Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp. Canada purchased the historic Fleck/Paterson House in 1992 in Ottawa for its Canadian headquarters and a subsidiary, Maharishi Vedic Education Development Institute. It spent a reported $3 million to purchase and restore the 15000 sqft house, which had fallen into ruin. The restoration was praised in the press and received the "adaptive use award of excellence" from the City of Ottawa. Four suites were available to the public as a bed and breakfast. It sold the house in 2002 to the Algerian Embassy for $2.9 million, a record price for a heritage home in Ottawa. Helen Foster, then the group's director, said they were planning to spend $6 million to build a 63000 sqft Maharishi Peace Palace to house the movement's operations.

Zambia and Mozambique

"Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Company" (Mahedco), a company based in the Netherlands headed by Jacques Uijen, approached Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda in 1990 with a proposal to solve the country's dire problems and to rid it of "evil and diseases". In the plan, 1,000 Zambians would receive training from the TM movement and oversee the creation of utopian farming communities that would be turned over to Mahedco. The agreement covered 18 million hectares (44 million acres), 23% of the country's land surface and half of its arable land. Kingsley Chinkuli, the Home Affairs minister, granted Mahedco "the right to select those Zambian families which will live on the land". News of the agreement came out a year later, just prior to an election, and became a significant campaign issue. The net worth of Mahedco was reported at the time to be $26,000.

After Kaunda lost his reelection bid, Mahedco sought a similar arrangement in neighboring Mozambique, where President Joaquim Chissano, his family and his cabinet were TM practitioners. It wanted the right to develop 20 million hectares of "unused land" by planting crops and to rebuild the country's infrastructure and health system. Chissano signed a 50-year contract which would give 40% of the profits to the Mozambique government. The government denied it when the negotiations became public in 1994.

A 2006 prospectus for the Raam currency/bearer bonds, issued by Stichting Maharishi Global Financing Research of MERU, Holland, lists Paul Gelderloos as the chief executive of Mahedco starting in 1990.

References

References

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42. (November 14, 2006). "Prospectus: Global Development Currency: RAAM". Stichting Maharishi Global Financing Research.