Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi arrived in Hawaii in the spring of 1959 carrying nothing. The Honolulu Star Bulletin described him this way: "He has no money, he asks for nothing. His worldly possessions can be carried in one hand." That same man would go on to teach Transcendental Meditation to more than five million people, train more than 40,000 TM teachers, and build an organization whose U.S. assets alone were valued at about $300 million at the time of his death. How does a physics graduate from Allahabad University, who spent years performing clerical chores for a Himalayan monk, end up on the cover of Time magazine? How does he become spiritual advisor to the Beatles, found a political party active in forty-two countries, and die in a 1997-built wooden residence that was the largest nail-free wooden structure in the Netherlands? The story of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is a story about one man's conviction that a single meditation technique could change the trajectory of human history, and about all the complexity that conviction left in its wake.
Mahesh Prasad Varma earned his physics degree from Allahabad University in 1942, and the path from that achievement to the Himalayas was not immediate. Some accounts place him briefly at the Gun Carriage Factory in Jabalpur before the decisive turn: in 1941, he became administrative secretary to Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, who was known among devotees as Guru Dev, meaning "divine teacher". The swami set a demanding condition before accepting Mahesh as a pupil: the young man had to first complete his university degree and obtain permission from his own parents.
Brahmachari Mahesh, as he was then called, did not ease into the relationship. He later recalled that it took about two and a half years to genuinely attune himself to Brahmananda Saraswati's thinking and arrive at what he described as "a very genuine feeling of complete oneness." The process started humbly: he performed common chores. Trust came gradually. He was eventually elevated to personal secretary, trusted to handle the bulk of the swami's correspondence without direction and sent out to deliver public speeches on Vedic themes.
Brahmananda Saraswati died in 1953. Brahmachari Mahesh could not become the Shankaracharya's spiritual successor because he was not a Brahmin, a disqualification the tradition held firm. Yet the dying swami charged him with a specific mission: travel and teach meditation to ordinary people. Mahesh retreated to Uttarkashi in the Himalayas for two years of seclusion, and when he emerged in 1955, he carried that commission into public life.
In 1955, Brahmachari Mahesh began publicly teaching what he described as a traditional meditation technique inherited from his master, calling it Transcendental Deep Meditation. It was at this moment that Indian audiences began using the honorific "Maharishi," meaning "great sage," alongside the title Yogi. He spent two years touring India, speaking English in southern regions to avoid alienating audiences seeking linguistic self-determination and to reach, as he put it, the "learned classes." He renamed the movement the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in 1957, in Madras, at the close of the Seminar of Spiritual Luminaries.
The first global tour launched from Rangoon, Burma, moving through Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Hawaii. By 1959, the Maharishi was lecturing in Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York and London in a single year. While staying in Los Angeles at the home of author Helena Olson, he sketched out a three-year plan to propagate TM worldwide. His Los Angeles audiences were largely middle-class, though a few celebrities attended, including Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Doris Duke.
The expansion accelerated in 1961, when the Maharishi appeared on BBC television and delivered a lecture to 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall, organised by Leon MacLaren of the School of Economic Science. That April in Rishikesh, he held his first Transcendental Meditation Teacher Training Course, with sixty participants drawn from various countries. By 1971, he had completed thirteen world tours and visited fifty countries. He held a press conference with inventor Buckminster Fuller at the first International Symposium on his Science of Creative Intelligence at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Fuller, after two days with the Maharishi at that symposium, said: "You could not meet with Maharishi without recognizing instantly his integrity."
George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd urged their friends to attend a lecture the Maharishi gave at the Hilton on Park Lane in London in August 1967. The Beatles went. They traveled to Bangor, Wales, to study with him, then to Rishikesh in February 1968 to, in their own words, "devote themselves fully to his instruction." Ringo Starr and his wife Maureen left after 10 days. Harrison and Lennon, the most committed students, stayed 16 days longer. McCartney and Jane Asher remained five weeks.
The visit coincided with a thirty-participant teacher training course already underway at the ashram. Graduates of that course included Prudence Farrow and Mike Love. The stay ended badly after rumors circulated that the Maharishi had made sexual advances toward Mia Farrow. On the 15th of June 1968, in London, the Beatles formally announced their renunciation of the association as "a public mistake." Lennon wrote a song in response; he originally titled it "Maharishi," but changed it to "Sexy Sadie" at Harrison's request.
The rupture was not the final word. Harrison gave a benefit concert for the Maharishi-associated Natural Law Party in 1992 and later said of the Farrow episode: "Now, historically, there's the story that something went on that shouldn't have done - but nothing did." In 2007, Paul McCartney took his daughter Stella to visit the Maharishi in the Netherlands, renewing a friendship that had frayed four decades earlier. McCartney said after the Maharishi's death that he was "a great man who worked tirelessly for the people of the world and the cause of unity." The Maharishi, when asked whether he forgave the Beatles for the 1968 public renunciation, replied: "I could never be upset with angels."
The Beatles' defection had not, in any case, halted the movement's momentum. Following their 1967-1968 endorsement, the Maharishi appeared on American magazine covers including Life, Newsweek, and Time, and gave lectures to capacity crowds at the Felt Forum in New York City and Harvard's Sanders Hall.
By the mid-1970s, the Maharishi's U.S. operation ran 370 TM centers staffed by 6,000 teachers. His movement had also begun approaching the business community through an organisation called the American Foundation for SCI, aimed at eliminating stress for business professionals. Time magazine put him on its front cover in October 1975. That same year, his appearance on The Merv Griffin Show resulted in what was described as tens of thousands of new practitioners across the United States.
The organization accumulated real estate at scale during the 1980s, purchasing Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, Roydon Hall in Maidstone, Swythamley Park in the Peak District, and a Georgian rectory in Suffolk. In the United States, hotels and resorts were converted into TM training centers. Magician Doug Henning and the Maharishi planned a Vedic amusement park called Vedaland, buying large tracts near Orlando, Florida, and Niagara Falls, Ontario. The plan was never executed. A Vedic-style pyramid designed to be the world's tallest building was commissioned for Sao Paulo, Brazil. That too went unbuilt.
In January 1988, offices at the Maharishinagar complex in New Delhi were raided by Indian tax authorities, with the Maharishi and his organisation accused of falsifying expenses. The Maharishi, headquartered in Switzerland at the time, subsequently moved to the Netherlands. In 1990, he relocated to a former Franciscan monastery in Vlodrop, which became known as MERU, Holland, housing the Maharishi European Research University campus. From there, he communicated almost exclusively through video and a subscription satellite channel called Veda Vision, broadcasting in 22 languages to 144 countries.
In 2008, his organization placed the value of its U.S. assets at about $300 million. The real estate holdings alone had been valued in 2003 at between $3.6 and $5 billion. A Times report in 2008 noted his income at six million pounds annually. His biggest personal indulgence, by one observer's account in The Economist, was not the dozens of Rolls-Royces accumulated by contemporaries like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, but a helicopter.
A 1977 U.S. federal court ruling in New Jersey declared Transcendental Meditation to be a religion, halting its teaching in New Jersey public schools on grounds that adoption by public institutions violated the separation of church and state under the First Amendment. Critics charged that the Maharishi had presented TM as non-religious precisely to enable its entry into publicly-funded institutions. The initiation ceremony had since his time begun with a Hindu puja ritual, and his movement drew criticism from Hindu scholars for selling, in the words of one BBC obituary, "commercial mantras."
Sociologist William Sims Bainbridge characterized the Maharishi's teaching as "a highly simplified form of Hinduism, adapted for Westerners." Yet from the other direction, traditional Indian sages criticized him for making meditation available to everyone, and for abandoning suffering and concentration as traditional paths to enlightenment. A 1967 article in Time reported that the Maharishi "has been sharply criticised by other Indian sages" for a programme offering "spiritual peace without either penance or asceticism."
The TM-Sidhi programme, introduced in the late 1970s, included Yogic Flying, a practice the Maharishi claimed could generate a field of social coherence capable of reducing crime and ending conflict. A TM website attributed the fall of the Berlin Wall to the performance of yagyas by 7,000 pandits in India plus hundreds of Yogic Flyers in Germany. A 2014 meta-analysis of meditation research found insufficient evidence that mantra meditation programs had measurable effects on psychological stress outcomes. A separate 2014 meta-analysis by a researcher affiliated with the Maharishi University of Management concluded the opposite, finding TM more effective than most alternative treatments for anxiety.
Allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced during and after the Beatles' 1968 visit to Rishikesh. Mia Farrow later wrote in her autobiography that she panicked when she became aware of the Maharishi's arms going around her during meditation, but also noted: "at my level of consciousness, if Jesus Christ Himself had embraced me, I would have misinterpreted it." Judith Bourque, in her 2018 autobiographical book Robes of Silk, Feet of Clay, described what she said was a two-year relationship with the Maharishi, while also writing: "I didn't in any way feel invaded and I was never forced in any situation with him." George Harrison's view, stated publicly, was that nothing improper had occurred.
The Natural Law Party, which the Maharishi's adherents founded in 1992, was active in forty-two countries. Its U.S. presidential candidate, physicist John Hagelin, ran three times. Hagelin himself denied any formal connection between the Maharishi and the party, but critics saw it as the political arm of an international corporation. The Indian branch, the Ajeya Bharat Party, won one seat in a state assembly in 1998. The Maharishi shut down the political effort in 2004, saying: "I had to get into politics to know what is wrong there."
The Global Country of World Peace, which the Maharishi created in 2000, went further, appointing leaders crowned as rajas and maharajas, meanings "kings" and "great kings." Tony Nader, a physician and MIT-trained neuroscientist, was crowned as the first Maharaja and Sovereign Ruler. The organization made a concrete attempt at statehood in 2002, offering US$1.3 billion to the President of Suriname for a 200-year lease of 3,500 acres of land. That offer was declined. In a 2002 appearance on Larry King Live, his first mainstream media appearance in 25 years, the Maharishi stated: "I believe in God. And I believe in the custody of God vested in kings" and "I used to say 'damn the democracy' because it's not a stable government."
In his final years, the Maharishi communicated with his followers almost exclusively by closed-circuit television from two rooms in his nail-free wooden residence in Vlodrop, a structure he himself considered architecturally formative to his sense of mission. On the 12th of January 2008, his birthday, he declared: "Now today, I am closing my designed duty to Guru Dev." He died peacefully in his sleep on the 5th of February 2008. His cremation and funeral rites were conducted at his Allahabad ashram overlooking the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, with state honours, thirty-five rajas of the Global Country of World Peace in attendance, and David Lynch among the mourners.
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Common questions
Who was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and what did he teach?
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was an Indian guru born Mahesh Prasad Varma on the 12th of January 1911, who created the Transcendental Meditation technique. He taught that practicing TM twice daily would create inner peace, and that group meditation sessions could reduce violence and conflict in society. He trained more than 40,000 TM teachers and taught the technique to more than five million people before his death on the 5th of February 2008.
What was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's connection to the Beatles?
The Maharishi became spiritual advisor to the Beatles in 1967, after George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd brought the band to his lecture at the Hilton on Park Lane in London. The band traveled to Rishikesh, India, in February 1968, where Ringo Starr stayed 10 days, Harrison and Lennon 16 days after that, and McCartney five weeks. The visit ended with the band publicly renouncing the association in June 1968, though both Harrison and McCartney later reconciled with the Maharishi, with McCartney visiting him in the Netherlands in 2007.
Where did Maharishi Mahesh Yogi live and die?
From 1990 onward, the Maharishi lived at a former Franciscan monastery in Vlodrop, the Netherlands, known as MERU, Holland. He died there peacefully in his sleep of natural causes on the 5th of February 2008. His cremation and funeral rites were conducted at his Allahabad ashram in India, overlooking the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.
How did Maharishi Mahesh Yogi become interested in meditation?
In 1941, Mahesh Prasad Varma became administrative secretary and disciple of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math in the Indian Himalayas. He later recalled that his life truly began at the feet of his master, where he learned the secret of swift and deep meditation. After Brahmananda Saraswati died in 1953, the Maharishi spent two years in seclusion at Uttarkashi before beginning public teaching in 1955.
Was Transcendental Meditation ruled a religion in the United States?
Yes. A U.S. federal court in New Jersey ruled in 1977 that Transcendental Meditation was a religion, halting its teaching in public schools on grounds that it violated the constitutional separation of church and state. The ruling came after critics noted that TM initiation included a Hindu puja ritual and that the Maharishi had characterized his movement as non-religious in order to allow its adoption by publicly-funded institutions.
How large was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's organization at the time of his death?
At the time of his death in 2008, the Maharishi's organization placed the value of its U.S. assets at about $300 million. Global real estate holdings had been valued in 2003 at between $3.6 and $5 billion. The movement operated nearly 1,000 TM training centers worldwide and had founded thousands of teaching centers, hundreds of colleges, universities, and schools across multiple countries.
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- 208ThesisFundamentals of Maharishi Vedic ScienceJeams Lynwood King — Maharishi University of Management — 2007
- 211NewsMan Fails to Fly, Sues Camelot OwnerNancy K. Owens — 26 October 2005
- 212BookThe Spiritual Recovery Manual: Vedic Knowledge and Yogic Techniques to Accelerate RecoveryPatrick Gresham Williams — Incandescent Press — 2002
- 213NewsQueer as a three-raam billChristopher Helman — 8 July 2002
- 216Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Passes AwaySubhamoy Das — 7 February 2008
- 217NewsThe Maharishi's Hotel of Emptiness:Will the Beatles' former guru leave Hartford with a permanent blemish, or is there hope for the Clarion Hotel?Chris Harris — 13 November 2003
- 218NewsSites for 'Maharishi Effect' (Welcome to Parma) Spread Across U.S.Sean D. Hamill — 22 February 2008
- 219NewsThe 'Beatles' Yogi Became a Billionaire4 March 2008