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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced the Transcendental Meditation technique, in 2000 founded the Global Country of World Peace. He appointed neuroscientist Tony Nader Raja Raam (Vedic king) - the "First Sovereign Ruler of the Global Country of World Peace." Its government is devoted to achieving Maharishi's goals, including the teaching and practice of TM in public schools and global reconstruction of all public and private structures in accordance with Vedic principles. In many of his recent weekly press conferences, Maharishi has repeatedly expressed his opinion that democracy is an ineffective and weak form of government. The Global Country of World Peace is administered by 40 ministers appointed by Maharishi, all of whom are males.

In the late 1980s, when Nader was a Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, he came under criticism from his MIT advisor and his superiors at Harvard, where he was a research fellow, for using his positions at the institutions to misleadingly promote Maharishi herbal products. They censured him in writing and warned him not to claim to be doing MIT- and Harvard-sanctioned research on Maharishi's herbs. Despite their warning, the claims continued. Deepak Chopra, the most prominent promoter of Maharishi Ayur-Veda, at the time, defended Nader against what he said was "prejudice and bigotry." Nader's superiors "were threatened by his paying more attention to Ayur-Veda research than to projects that they were interested in," Chopra explained. "Dr. Nader was censured and asked to discontinue his Ayur-Veda work. This in no way reflects on the quality of the research. If anything, it reflects the prejudice and bigotry of so-called objective scientists, even in prestigious institutions." Nader also drew the ire of the organizers of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany, which was held at the University of Illinois at Chicago in June 1987. According to the organizers, Nader submitted a research abstract for a presentation that turned out to be nothing but "a bait and switch ploy and a publicity stunt" to promote Maharishi's herbal remedies. However, a decade later, Nader was honored by the TM movement for what Maharishi called one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. For Nader's "supreme scientific discovery that the human physiology is cosmic - the sun, moon, planets, and stars are the cosmic counterpart of the human physiology," Maharishi awarded Nader his weight in gold in a ceremony broadcast live over the Internet on February 6, 1998. "Professor Nader's discovery has made it possible for human beings to realise their cosmic potential, and has opened a new highway to perfection for human life," a TM press release announced. "Therefore his discovery is the supreme achievement in the history of science – more beneficial than any Nobel Prize winning research." Two years later, for this discovery of "the Constitution of the Universe," Nader received more gold in the form of a large gold diadem, when Maharishi crowned him, "His Majesty Vishwa Prashasak Raja Nader Ram, First Sovereign Ruler of the Global Country of World Peace."

Raam currency

Although recognized by no other nation in the world, Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace has issued its own currency called the "Raam." According to its web site, Raams are now in circulation side by side with Euros and U.S. dollars in numerous countries, including parts of Europe and the United States. One hundred thousand Euros worth of Raams have been offered for sale in the Netherlands . To support its currency, Maharishi Global Financing has been set up to raise a "supremely divine figure of 10 trillion dollars," through the sale of "World Peace Bonds," costing 50,000 Euros (about US$63,000 on July 24, 2006) per share.

According to the Maharishi Global Financing web site, the 10 trillion U.S. dollars are "needed immediately" to develop organic agriculture on 2 billon hectares of unused land in 100 countries, in order to "eliminate poverty in the world." The investment offer claims that the three-year bonds will yield 10 to 15 percent annual interest - far higher than bonds of any nation in the world - and that "insurance companies will be involved to maximize the safety of the project." In a letter to potential investors, President of Maharishi Global Financing Benjamin Feldman tells them to consider their bond purchase, "a risk-free investment."

However, a spokesperson for the securities regulation agency in the Netherlands, where Maharishi Global Financing is based, urges caution before anyone invests. "A ten to 15 percent interest rate is almost impossible to guarantee," said Werner van Bastelaar, spokesperson for the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). "The amount of $10 trillion looks impossible. All in all, any investor wanting to put their money in this should really question whether or not it is too good to be true." Although the AFM will monitor this bond sale, "there's not much that we can do." Securities with a minimum investment of 50,000 Euros are exempt from many of the provisions of Dutch law that were designed to protect widows and orphans, he said.

Efforts to obtain sovereignty

In 2002, the TM Organization had hoped to set up world headquarters for Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace on the tiny Pacific island of Rota. The 33-square-mile island, 47 miles north of Guam, is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a protectorate of the United States. The people of Rota were offered the construction of great gardens, a peace university, and as much as a billion dollars worth of investments, if they agreed to provide land for the world headquarters of Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace. While many citizens of Rota found the offer attractive, they objected to the hitch: The deal required Rota to grant Maharishi's Vedic king, Raja Nader Raam sovereignty over a 100-acre portion of the island, which would have required Rota to secede from the Commonwealth. Preferring to stay in the U.S.-affiliated Commonwealth, the islanders turned the offer down. A similar offer to buy sovereignty over a parcel of land was also turned down by the small Latin American country of Suriname. Other small, impovished nations have also been approached, but so far, the TM organization has not been able to purchase sovereignty for its country.

One such attempt in Costa Rica resulted in expulsion of the "prime minister" and other officials of Maharishi's Global Country of World Peace, after they pressured and paid members of a native Indian reservation for the right to appoint a king. On June 23, 2002, a ceremony was held on the Talamanca reservation, 140 miles (230 kms) south of the capital, San Jose, to appoint a TM-chosen Indian as the reservation's first king. The community balked and asked the Costa Rican government to step in. It did by ordering the TM representatives to leave the country. "It was obvious that they were promoting an independent state within Costa Rica, and we can't tolerate that," said the Central American nation's security minister Rogelio Ramos .