THEY looked like an ordinary bunch of suits. But when they talked about establishing a group of 7,000 experienced yogic flyers to advance the integration of Europe, you knew this was not a fringe meeting of the Progressive Democrats.
Eccentric as their ideas might seem, however, the Natural Law parties of the EU (plus Norway) picked a good day to launch their weekend Dublin summit.
As security restrictions surrounding the other summit produced massive traffic jams everywhere in the city yesterday, many people will have been making their first, crude attempts at self induced levitation.
AA Rondwatch reported no obvious successes. But in the traffic free environment of Temple Bar, Europe's natural lawyers explained cheerfully how yogic flying could bring world peace and prosperity as well as solving all of Ireland's problems except, possibly, the lack of a world class striker.
Mr Reinhard Borowitz, secretary general of the Maharishi European Council of Natural Law Parties, said the 7,000 Euroyogis would be "a task force to clean up the mental pollution that 465 million EU citizens produce every day".
The audience was on the edge of its seat, though at all times firmly attached to it.
Yogic flying will not necessarily get you out of a traffic jam - at least not physically. What it does promise is "bubbling bliss for the individual and coherence, positivity and harmony for the environment".
This is "the Maharishi effect" and where a sufficient number of experienced flyers - the square root of 1 per cent of the surrounding population, if you're taking notes - congregate, they can influence events around them.
This was proven in an experiment in Merseyside, the British NLP claims, where 200 volunteers flying in concert depressed the crime rate over a period of years up to 1993.
The Merseyside figures are indisputable, but it's debatable whether the local criminals spontaneously turned honest or, comparing themselves with the yogic flyers, decided they weren't such dysfunctional members of society after all.
Among the specific measures proposed by Irish NLP leader, Mr Thomas Mullins, was that public buildings be arranged in harmony with the universal environment. So the subject of building arrangements might well feature in the next general election campaign.
The NLP's best result here to date has been in a by election in Cork, where it picked up 0.51 per cent of the vote. Then again, Cork is a place where the concept of the natural law - as opposed to the law made in Dublin - still has a strong grip.
