Firm Sells Bits of Heaven on Earth at $500,000 a Bit

The ad might run: three-bedroom, three-bath home on golf course with equestrian center, nearby school, “bliss, perfect health, and the fulfillment of all your desires and aspirations.”

A bargain at $500,000.

The name that may or may not appear on the gate of this Utopia is the Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp.

Transcendental Meditation, founded about 30 years ago by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, is going into real estate. Over the next several years, a private profit-making company called Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp. hopes to go into partnership with developers to create 50 “ideal villages” across the United States.

‘Heavenly Environment’

“The Maharishi spent 30 years creating a heavenly environment on the inside and now he wants to create heaven on earth, on the outside,” said Monty Guild, 47, a Malibu investment manager who is chairman of the board of the Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp.

“We hope to have our first community in Los Angeles in less than two years, and in other places where the laws are less restrictive, in less than a year.”

Guild said the idea is to offer prospective buyers amenities beyond the usual golf courses and clubhouses, appealing instead to buyers who seek a pollution-free, noise-free environment in which to improve their health, lead successful lives and raise their children without fear of drugs or crime.

Those amenities will include health centers, schools, social centers and in-home computer technology--all of them oriented around the teachings of the Maharishi. But most residents of the villages are not expected to be active practitioners of TM.

“You can choose to do those things or not, just as you can live in a community with an equestrian center and choose to use it or not,” said Barry Scherr, 37, a member of the board of the Heaven on Earth Development Corp.

The package the corporation is selling offers more than just amenities for prospective buyers.

Goodies for Developers

In exchange for negotiable fees and percentages of sales, it offers lots of goodies to developers, Guild said. Among them: endorsements by (unnamed) celebrities, “contacts” with the 100 wealthiest individuals in each city where the development is planned, media presentations and information sent to every area real estate broker.

Over the next month, Guild and others are planning to pitch their concept to developers in 29 sessions throughout the country. He said they are approaching developers who already have building permits and financing, which could speed up the construction of “Maharishi Cities of Immortals,” as he also called them.

The first session was in Palo Alto last week. Guild said he has interest from developers in San Diego and Orange counties, but said no deals have yet been signed.

Most of the developers who attend either practice TM or have friends who do. At the session this weekend at a TM office in Pacific Palisades, developers and TM officials in elegant suits discussed marketing techniques over lunch on an incense-scented patio.

$500,000 and Up

The homes in these developments would be on lots larger than the average suburban home and would probably sell for between $500,000 and $800,000, he said. Guild said he expects to eventually appeal to homeowners at all economic levels, using profits from more expensive homes to subsidize poor people interested in such communities.

One such “ideal village” exists outside Austin, Tex. About 60 families now live in the small community, named Radiance, according to developer Walter Reifslager, a TM follower who was at the meeting this weekend. He called Radiance a “warm-up exercise” for others he is planning.

“I think it’s marketable,” said Tom Baker, 33, of Phoenix. “I’m not into all this myself, but I think if people look beyond what the public perceives as some sort of voodoo thing, they may really have something here.

“We are all looking for that secret to enjoying life a little more . . . and that’s what they’re talking about. I think it’s marketable as a new direction for kids and for people who are interested in their health.”

Hopes to Sell Shares

Guild said that technically there is no financial tie to TM or the Maharishi. He said he founded the Maharishi Heaven on Earth Development Corp., a Delaware corporation, with $100,000, and donated those shares to the Maharishi International University in Iowa. Eventually, he said, he hopes to sell public shares in the corporation.

Half of the profits will be turned over to an as-yet-unestablished international corporation to “rebuild villages in the developing world” along similar lines, Guild said.

Guild denied that a goal of the program is to increase the following of TM, which claims to have offered classes to 3 million people worldwide. Along the way, however, residents of such communities will have ample opportunity to learn about TM, he said.

Such communities will offer, for example, a Maharishi health center using a natural health-care system, called Ayurveda and newly revived by the Maharishi, that has recently attracted celebrity followers here. It costs up to $5,000 a year for some treatments.

Residents will still have to pay fees for such care, Guild said.

Will Offer Schools

The communities will also offer schools teaching the traditional curricula as seen through the Maharishi’s teachings, a method, Guild claimed, that transforms children who test only slightly higher than average in nationwide tests into students who will outperform 99% of all other students.

A “celebration hall” for exhibitions, concerts, birthdays, bar mitzvahs and other activities also would be provided, as would computers and other high-tech home equipment to bring the homeowner up to date on the stock markets, health and diet and Vedic studies.

“But I think it will work because people are at the end of their rope when it comes to finding good schools for their kids and good healthy living environments for their families.”