Greetings from Utopia Park Surviving a Transcendent Childhood

Claire Hoffman, Andi Arndt

eAudio - 2016

In this engrossing, provocative, and intimate memoir, a young journalist reflects on her childhood in the heartland, growing up in an increasingly isolated meditation community in the 1980s and '90s—a fascinating, disturbing look at a fringe culture and its true believers.When Claire Hoffman's alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven—Iowa—to live in Maharishi's national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire's mother, Transcendental Meditation—the Maharishi's method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life—was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenm...ent just as their family fell apart.At first this secluded utopia offers warmth and support, and makes these outsiders feel calm, secure, and connected to the world. At the Maharishi School, Claire learns Maharishi's philosophy for... more