THE former spiritual guru to the Beatles is behind ambitious plans to eradicate crime and poverty in the North-East.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who famously introduced the Fab Four to Eastern mysticism in 1967, broke his self-imposed 25-year silence with the world's media this week to launch a global project to set up "peace palaces" in 3,000 of the world's largest cities.

This, according to his supporters, would include three such palaces being built in Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland where yogic fliers could eradicate poverty, crime and conflict.

Yogic fliers - meditators who reach a higher level of consciousness while bouncing up and down cross-legged on a mattress - would radiate enough positive energy to solve the North-East's problems, they claim.

Devotees of transcendental meditation congregated in Esh Winning, County Durham, home of the North-East Maharishi Vedic Centre, on Wednesday, to listen to the spiritual sage explain how meditation could save the world.

The Maharishi's followers, who number about 600 in the North-East, hope to attract at least 100 devotees in each town to help build the centres of learning and meditation.

Paul Kember, director of the North-East Maharishi centre, said: "We are hoping to build these centres in 51 cities across the UK.

"The idea is to have at least 100 people using each one to increase the positive energy in each town. For somewhere like Middlesbrough, crime would become a thing of the past and everyone's life would become more orderly.

"The cost of this is being explored but we are contacting community and business leaders for their support."