Ashley Deans

Education

Deans graduated with a B.Sc. and an ARCS from the Imperial College London in 1969 and has a Ph.D in Upper Atmospheric Physics from York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he was a National Research Council of Canada Graduate Fellow. He was awarded a Doctorate of World Peace from Maharishi European Research University (MERU) in 2005.

Career

Deans served as Headmaster of Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment (MSAE) in Fairfield, Iowa for 15 years. He later became its Executive Director and a member of the Board of Directors. Deans undertook a worldwide speaking tour to promote MSAE's style of "consciousness-based education" and the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique (TM) for schools. He gave presentations in six cities in Canada in 2006. Deans is a member of the advisory board for the David Lynch Foundation.

In 1976, while at the Centre for Research in Experimental Space Science, York University, in Ontario, Deans published a paper on aurora emissions (in Journal of Geophysical Research, 1976). Deans co-authored a paper on supersymmetry theory (in Physics Letters B, 1993) with John Hagelin at Maharishi University of Management in 1993. As the Associate Professor of Physics at Maharishi University of Management in 1996, he co-authored a paper on the Maharishi Effect that was published in Psychology, Crime, and Law.

Deans ran in the Trinity Spadina riding for the federal Natural Law Party of Canada in 1993, 1997, and 2000. His best result was in 1993, when he received 1% of the vote. He promised "heaven on earth" if elected. Deans was the founding president of the Natural Law Party of Ontario (NLP), which he said championed the Maharishi's policies. He was also deputy leader of the federal Natural Law Party of Canada, and was its leader in 2000. His party's platform included the formation of a group of 7,000 meditators practicing the TM-Sidhi program, also known as "Yogic Flying". The party criticized the south-facing doors of the parliament building, and the south-facing border crossings with the United States, both of which were said be inauspicious.

During the 2000 federal election campaign, Deans said "more than 600 scientific studies backed up our claims that meditation activities reduce crime, disease and stress while improving the economy in areas where it is practised". At an all-parties debate that year, he said of climate change: "All of the outside influences that are damaging Canada today are coming because of incoherence in our collective consciousness. As a physicist, I can speak of the Meisner Effect, where a magnetic field can penetrate a metal, unless the electrons in the metal are highly coherent. Then you have a superconductor and that repels the outside influence."

Books and Publications

Deans published the book: A Record of Excellence: The Remarkable Success of Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment in 2005. Deans has authored or co-authored several studies in the fields of physics and on the group effect of Transcendental Meditation. According to his bio, his research has been published in the Canadian Journal of Physics, Journal of Geophysical Research, Planetary and Space Science, Track and Field Journal, Medecin Du Quebec, Journal of Crime Psychology and Law, Physics Letters B and Physical Review Letters.

Other publications include: