Tm Practitioners Run With `Natural Law' Platform

"I looked in the future

and what I saw Was a world in harmony

with natural law." - The Beach Boys, "Summer in Paradise," 1992

Preventive medicine. Revitalized inner cities. Non-polluting energy sources and automobiles. Sustainable-yield forestry, fisheries and farming. Cooperation instead of competition with other political parties.

With its credo, "Bringing the light of science into politics," the Natural Law Party aims to erase misconceptions about its roots - Transcendental Meditation, the worldwide movement founded by guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Forget the flower-power, counterculture images from the '60s, when the Beatles visited India to study with the Maharishi. Although the Natural Law Party was founded by TM practitioners, its candidates talk in clear, rational, scientific terms when they address the nation's ills.

Washington is among 27 states in which the new party is fielding candidates in the fall elections. Presidential candidate John Hagelin, a Harvard-trained quantum physicist, and vice-presidential candidate Mike Tompkins will appear on the ballot in at least those 27 states, along with more than 75 congressional candidates.

In addition, three Natural Law candidates for the Washington Legislature qualified for the September primary, and another 27 regional candidates have launched write-in campaigns for state and national offices.

Already on the ballot are Anne Fleming of Kirkland, a

health-care worker and financial manager running in the 1st Congressional District; Rob Schoenfeld of Seattle, a commercial artist running in the 37th Legislative District; and Linda Watt of Olympia, pregnancy-services coordinator for Catholic Community Services running in the 22nd Legislative District.

Among the write-ins are Mark Strauch, an Edmonds-based film producer with an extensive background in urban planning and public policy, running in the 21st Legislative District; Anthony Warren, a Boeing research engineer with a doctorate in math, running in Seattle's 7th Congressional District; and Tom Somers, vice president for sports for the Seattle Goodwill Games, running in the 36th Legislative District, which includes Seattle's Magnolia area.

"All of us have these other lives that we live. We have every kind of skill imaginable. It's time to use those skills and our spiritual development together," said Washington state coordinator Gary Gill, a former Edmonds and Everett resident who now lives in Seattle.

Natural Law leaders talk a lot about science and scientifically proven solutions for society's modern problems. They use that same common-sense tone to explain the principles of TM and natural law.

"Natural law is the intelligence that nature uses to govern itself," said Gill, 39, who studied science at Seattle University and earned a master's degree in Switzerland. "What science does is tell you about different laws of nature, whether it's medicine, or urban planning, or earthquake preparedness. Natural law is already in place, working everywhere."

When TM practitioners meditate, they tap into that underlying flow, they say, adding that by sitting quietly with eyes closed for 15 to 20 minutes twice a day, they eliminate stress and rejuvenate their minds and bodies.

"Everything is connected on a quiet level in nature," Gill said. "When the human mind settles to its quietest state, it comes into harmony with that unified level of nature."

When individuals and their leaders are out of touch with natural law, party members say, then the result is what we have today: overflowing prisons, pollution, Los Angeles riots, child abuse and political strife.

Life has become very heady for Gill. On Friday, he entertained a Japanese delegation of Natural Law Party leaders.

The party got a break 10 days ago when the cable news station C-SPAN showed up unexpectedly at a Hagelin press conference for a live telecast. The public response was so favorable that C-SPAN scheduled a 45-minute viewer call-in show with the presidential candidate, broadcast live last week.

Hagelin touched on a wide range of serious platform issues, but he also talked about the concept of "brain mapping" political candidates by testing their EEG patterns. His brain already has been mapped, he said.

"Why measure orderliness, or the coherence of the brain? Because science correlates this . . . with intelligence, with creativity, with moral reasoning, with stability in the midst of crisis," Hagelin said.

Momentum is growing as people from across the political spectrum join forces, party leaders say. Among them are Jane Meade, a former state chairwoman for the Republican Party, who is running for Congress in Michigan as a Natural Law candidate, said National Life Party spokesman Steve Wolfe.

Kevin Connor, a national deputy for Jerry Brown, and Debra Olson, a national adviser on civil-rights issues for Ross Perot, both have joined the party's national leadership team, Wolfe said.

The Beach Boys, longtime TM practitioners who have performed at inaugural parties for Ronald Reagan and George Bush, declined an invitation to play at last month's Republican Convention.

"They called and asked if we wanted to go to Houston, and I said - like `Wayne's World' - `Not,' " said band member Mike Love in a telephone interview Monday from Boston.

In 1988, Love spent time with Bush on the campaign trail. But he lost enthusiasm for Bush's politics in the spring when the president dragged his heels about attending the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Love said.

"If you keep messing with natural law, you had might as well kiss your way of life, your society, your species goodbye," Love said.

When Love wrote the title song for the Beach Boys' ecology-minded new album, "Summer in Paradise," he included a reference to natural law. The party might be new, but the concepts it espouses are familiar to TM practitioners. The Beach Boys studied with the Maharishi in Paris in 1967, and Love graduated from a TM teaching program in 1971.

"We can create a whole new revolutionary wave for the world," Love said. "If you ask a Beach Boy about waves, he should know."

The Natural Law Party has organized in 35 nations since it was formed in March by an English physicist. Within six weeks of its creation, the party had 310 candidates for the British Parliament, making it the country's fourth-largest party. On behalf of the party, George Harrison performed his first full-length concert in England since the Beatles' 1969 performance on top of the Apple Records building in London.

No candidates won seats, but if Parliament seats were assigned on the basis of total votes cast for each party, then the Natural Law Party would have won three seats, Gill said.

The party organized in April in the United States, headquartered in Fairfield, Iowa. That's also the home of Maharishi International University, where presidential candidate Hagelin is a physics professor.

The party's national convention is scheduled for Sept. 26-27 in Fairfield.

The party has developed a platform that addresses all major issues, including promises of tax cuts. Lower taxes will be possible, the party says, because Natural Law policies will dramatically lower health care and prison costs.

The positions all nest within one another, referring back and forth with an internal logic. More greenbelts and parks in urban areas would help reduce urban stress, which in turn relates to crime and health.

TM stress-reduction techniques would be taught to students, prisoners and many other groups, creating a better-adjusted, more productive work force. Studies have shown that prisoners who are taught TM techniques are less likely to commit crimes after they are released, the party says. Drug and alcohol rehabilitation would be added to the mix, too.

Prevention and education would be the focus of health care, to change people's diet and lifestyles before they need medical fixes such as $50,000 coronary-bypass surgery, Gill said.

More than 500 scientific studies, beginning in 1969 at the University of California at Los Angeles, have been performed on TM practitioners, Gill said. Blue Cross of the Netherlands conducted a five-year study of 2,000 TM practitioners and found TM reduced health-care costs 50 percent overall and 70 percent in people over 40, he said.

In 1989, Harvard University researchers reported elderly people who were taught TM lived longer than their peers, had lower blood pressure and improved mental functioning.

Fleming, the Kirkland candidate for Congress, said she was a 24-year-old substitute teacher when she first tried TM to relieve a difficult health problem.

Her husband, Alan Negrin, who is in the insurance business, recently decided he, too, will run for office - as a write-in candidate for Washington State Insurance Commissioner.

Fleming said she agreed to run for District 1, which extends from north Bellevue to south Everett, because the two-party system isn't working.

"It's especially apparent when we come up on an election and we see all the negativity and hostility between the candidates that gets generated," she said. "The rivalry that the two-party system creates is destructive in itself, so I immediately saw the Natural Law Party as a new approach to try to bring politics up out of the mud."