Iowa has traditionally courted a variety of religious sects looking to break away from American society and create their own paradise among the cornfields. In the eastern part of the state, you can find Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, and Pietists who all settled in the 19th century and enjoy thriving communities where they won’t be bothered by anyone but the occasional tourist.
Fairfield, where I covered a recent rally for Vermont’s independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, follows in that tradition, with a twist. Rather than hosting an obscure Christian sect, the town of roughly 10,000 is considered the international home for Transcendental Meditation and the Maharishi University of Management, named after Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Transcendental Meditation spread throughout the United States by Maharishi, meaning “great seer” in Hindi, in the 1960s. Maharishi, who died in 2008, promised his followers that they would achieve complete inner happiness and even the ability to levitate. Both the Beatles and the Beach Boys considered themselves followers of Maharishi at one point and consulted with the yogi, even bringing him on tour.
The Maharishi University of Management moved in 1974 from a small facility in Santa Barbara, Calif., after Parsons College in Fairfield closed and its campus went up for sale. Today, the university’s goals for its 1,200-plus students include solving “the age-old problem of crime and all behavior that brings unhappiness to our world family,” and “to achieve the spiritual goals of humanity in this generation.” Over a quarter of Fairfield’s residents are estimated to be practitioners of Transcendental Meditation.
Outside of the university, Fairfield’s amenities include the town-owned $6 million Fairfield Arts and Convention Center, where Sanders gave a populist and impassioned promise to “renew rural America,” as well as a relatively thriving software and financial sector that manages $85 billion in securities, according to the Fairfield Economic Development Association.
It’s no wonder that when Oprah visited Fairfield in 2012 to absorb the local culture for an episode of her television show, she proclaimed it “America’s most unusual town.” A 2011 Atlantic article noted the 400 new businesses created in the town, as the rest of the state was still struggling to recover from the Great Recession.
Who knew that for a taste of California, you only need to go to Iowa?
