Party Asks Voters to Put Their Faith in Meditation : Politics: Skeptics scoff at Natural Law Party’s answer to nation’s ills, but backers say they have more to offer.

Are you fed up with Republicans? Disgusted with Democrats? Annoyed with Ross Perot? You could try meditating. Or you could join a party that advocates it.

Supporters of the Natural Law Party, which appears to have qualified this week for next year’s election ballot in California, insist that they are not just an ephemeral force, a here-today, gone-tomorrow target for David Letterman’s jokes. Their promotion of meditation as a means of lowering social stress--and thus curing the nation’s ills--draws the most media attention, but party leaders insist that they have much more to offer.

And the party, born amid the farm fields of Iowa in 1992, has already attracted a fair number of fans. More than 100,000 Californians--nearly a third of them in Los Angeles County--appear to have registered as members so far.

“In 1992, we were treated as a curiosity,” said John Hagelin, the party’s presidential candidate, who meditates to achieve “clarity of mind” twice a day. “This year, we are a political force. Anything is possible.”

Well, perhaps not “anything.”

“You get third parties when there’s a lot of discontent out there and neither of the two major parties can pose as the vehicle for taking care of that discontent,” said Gary Jacobson, a professor of political science at UC San Diego. “From time to time, they get on the ballot. But they rarely go anywhere.”

Still, minor parties--many of them unorthodox--are persistent visitors on the American political scene. The Prohibition Party ran temperance candidates off and on until 1962, and non-meat-eaters have qualified the American Vegetarian Party for the ballot three times. In New Jersey, the lineup of presidential contenders in 1980 included a candidate from the Down With Lawyers Party. He won 1,718 votes.

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Even when they fail, minor parties liven up the political landscape--and often contribute worthy perspectives. Natural Law Party officials, for instance, do not talk merely of yogic positions and meditative chants. Many of their viewpoints on everything from balancing the budget to crime prevention, environmental protection, health care and welfare reform are not far outside the mainstream.

Still, some skeptics find it hard to separate the party from its origins, which are rooted in the transcendental meditation movement spawned by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Known for his impish giggle, the bearded, Indian-born guru soared to prominence after the Beatles made a pilgrimage to his Himalayan retreat in 1968. The Fab Four ultimately rejected him, but 4.5 million other people around the world practice his meditation techniques today.

Now in his 70s and living in the Netherlands, the Maharishi claims group demonstrations of transcendental meditation--or TM--will lead to world peace and allow participants to levitate and fly. Although the guru has no formal affiliation with the Natural Law Party, its leaders admit that some voters view his teachings as nutty and reject the party as a result.

“Some people are very cynical about the meditation part of our platform and dismiss us right away,” said Margo Baum of Baldwin Hills, a party activist and TM devotee for 20 years. “But we have lots of other great ideas. It’s not like you have to meditate to belong.”

The Natural Law Party was launched in 1992 in Fairfield, Iowa, a farm town that is home to Maharishi University of Management--founded by the guru 25 years ago. There are now branches of the party in Britain, Belgium and 34 other countries.

The party was born, Hagelin said, out of frustrations with a U.S. government that “seemed unwilling to look deeply at new solutions to our problems.

“For years, the Republicans and Democrats have promised answers to urban crime, drug abuse, declining educational outcomes and the health care crisis, but they just haven’t delivered,” Hagelin said in an interview. “We are tired of waiting, and we think American voters are tired of waiting too.”

A Harvard-trained physicist, Hagelin, 41 and divorced, gave up a promising scientific career at Stanford University and moved in 1983 to the Maharishi’s university, which is accredited and offers traditional academic learning along with meditation. Burton Richter, director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, said Hagelin was “a competent, young theoretical physicist here and then just disappeared.”

Hagelin concedes that many of his scientific colleagues considered his departure from Stanford “a strange career move.” He left, he said, to “develop my interests in full human potential.”

One key to developing full human potential, Hagelin believes, is transcendental meditation. He first began meditating at 17, after a motorcycle accident left him laid up and in low spirits. The practice--two daily sessions of 20 minutes each--gives him “deep rest with profound rejuvenative benefits.” It also “dramatically increases the orderly functioning of the brain,” he said.

Leaders of the Natural Law Party say they have no plans to force-feed meditation on the populace, but they believe that the technique can be used to dissolve stress and lower the nation’s “social temperature,” thereby reducing crime, improving public health and stimulating the economy.

In the summer of 1993, several thousand meditators gathered in Washington to meditate collectively in five- to six-hour sessions. Participants say their efforts caused a 14% drop in violent crime. Police disputed that figure.

“Human consciousness is a field, like an electromagnetic field,” said Mike Tomkins, the party’s vice presidential candidate this year and in 1992. “When you create this field--as was done in Washington--it radiates outward, like a pebble causing ripples in a pond. It’s a very powerful technique.”

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Not all members of the Natural Law Party meditate. Atlanta attorney Pamela Perry said she has little interest in meditation and was instead attracted by the party’s strong environmental policies and refusal to accept campaign contributions from special interest groups.

Perry was among hundreds of volunteers and paid staff who took part in the drive to qualify the party for California’s 1996 ballot. She took two weeks’ vacation to join the effort, recruiting new registrants at malls, college campuses and beaches in Orange County earlier this month.

“My friends wonder why I put so much time into a presidential candidate who has no chance of winning, but the point is, you’ve got to start somewhere,” said Perry, who voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. “This party is in the birth stage. Just by getting our ideas out there, we’re gaining ground.”

The party is built on the twin principles of “preventive government” and “scientifically proven solutions to problems.” It endorses organic farming, renewable energy, steep defense cuts and an educational system featuring meditation and other programs that develop “the inner creative genius of the student.”

The party advocates a national flat tax of 19% beginning in 1997, dropping to 12% by the year 2000. They argue that because their overall program would reduce health care costs and other social problems, the government would not need as much revenue. On abortion, its official stance is no government interference--neither to ban it, nor pay for it. Party leaders support capital punishment for the most serious offenses, but believe that their anti-crime program would ultimately make the death penalty unnecessary.

Converts to the Natural Law Party include former Democrats and Republicans alike. Among them is Bill Duke, a prominent actor, producer and director of such films as “Sister Act 2” and “The Cemetery Club.”

Duke, who said he overcame drug and alcohol addictions after he took up meditation in 1972, believes that the party’s appeal is its approach to problems “from the inside out, rather than the outside in.

“The Democrats throw money at the problems, and the Republicans tend to ignore them,” Duke said. “The Natural Law Party goes beyond those approaches. It’s about true change.”

In 1992, with Hagelin as its candidate, the party was on the ballot in 32 states. Hagelin won 37,137 votes, trailing candidates of the Libertarian, Populist and U.S. Taxpayers parties, among others. This year, he plans to do better, aiming to raise $40 million to promote the party’s message through TV “infomercials.” Hagelin, who has raised about $250,000 so far, insists he is running to win.

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History shows the odds are against him, largely because most voters--no matter how disillusioned--ultimately decide a vote for a minor party candidate is a wasted vote. In 16 presidential elections between 1932 and 1992, only three minor party candidates won more than 3% of the vote--George C. Wallace in 1968, John B. Anderson in 1980 and Perot in 1992.

“It’s important to my psychology and the dynamics of the campaign to go for victory,” Hagelin said. “At the very least, we’ll broaden the dialogue and expose people to new ideas.”