GETTING AN MBA THE MAHARISHI WAY
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the same guy you saw with the Beatles in the Sixties and on talk shows in the Seventies, is opening schools in all 50 states. They will offer MBAs, among other degrees. But His Holiness says you'll get a whole lot more than a business diploma at his Maharishi Vedic Universities. The Vedas are, of course, the oldest sacred books of Hinduism; Veda means ''knowledge.'' What the Maharishi seems to be offering is a form of knowledge-based management blessed with clarity arrived at through transcendental meditation. Avers Yogi: ''Vedic management organizes the intimate relationship between individual and cosmic intelligence and brings the support of all nature's laws'' -- something you don't get in the average finance course. Tuition for a 2 1/2-year MBA program will be some $10,000 a year, about half the fee of top private B-schools. Full accreditation nationwide may take up to two years. Some businesses already use transcendental meditation as a management tool. They include Telegroup, a fast-growing long-distance telephone company based in Fairfield, Iowa, which is also home to Maharishi International University, an accredited liberal arts institution. Telegroup Chairman Fred Gratzon, 46, started to meditate in 1968 as an undergraduate at Rutgers University. He says that 64 of his 67 employees practice TM. The corporate payoff, according to him: ''This is a very subtle place. There are never any tempers lost, never any anger expressed, and people never criticize each other. I think of TM as a great competitive advantage.'' |
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