AUSTIN, Texas -- In sports arenas and parks across America, people joined in meditation to create a 'critical mass of positive energy' and promote world peace, organizers of the World Peace Event said.
The hour-long silent meditation designed to spread a spirit of peace and healing across the planet drew nearly 30,000 people to gatherings early Wednesday in scattered U.S. cities.
'It was electrifying,' said writer John Price, founder of the Austin-based Quartus Foundation, a co-sponsor of the event.
Organizers predicted people in 50 cities and 44 countries would pray for peace and healing at noon Greenwich Mean Time (7 a.m. EST), which occurred before dawn in much of the United States.
About 7,000 people participated at the Kingdome in Seattle and more than 6,000 gathered at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver. Another 5,000 attended the event at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and 3,500 participated at two sites in Kansas City.
About 7,000 filled a Minneapolis auditorium and 900 gathered in Long Beach.
Banners with phrases such as 'Sow the Seeds of Peace and Justice,' 'Harmonize the Earth' and 'We All Need Mother Earth to Live' lined the walls of Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City.
The slogan for the rallies was 'Peace Begins With Me.'
'The event was nonpolitical and nonreligious,' said Johanna Harstad of St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb. 'Organizers had no preconceived notions of how peace will come about, but if you think of war, you will have war, and if you thinkof peace, peace will be possible.'
Robert Muller, a retired assistant secretary general of the United Nations, spoke at the Kansas City rally, saying the peace event was 'the realization of a dream.'
Since his days as a French resistance fighter in World War II, Muller has dreamed of a world without war, he said.
'You have to ask yourself each day, as I do, what more can you do to gain peace,' he said.
The Society of Prayer for World Peace from Japan presented flags from all nations and displayed them in the convention hall during the peace prayer at the Long Beach Convention Center.
Price said the peace vigil conducted before dawn at his home on a hill over Lake Travis near Austin was 'a very dynamic and dramatic hour, a thrilling experience. A global mind link is something we'd never heard of before.'
Price predicted 1987 will be the year when mankind's 'negative energy' will reach 'critical mass,' with disastrous consequences. As a solution, he proposed the worldwide gathering on Dec. 31, 1986, to 'reverse the polarity of the force field and achieve a critical mass of positive energy.'
