Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The Maharishi, with his Transcendental Meditation technique, is probably the best known of the three gurus. While Vivekananda and Yogananda did the groundwork of philosophical thought, it was the Maharishi who packaged it for the West. His fame was catapulted courtesy of the Beatles, and when he died in February 2008, the Times of London reported on his death and traced the Beatles’ initial enchantment with him before their falling-out over his alleged inappropriate advances toward their friend Mia Farrow. (It was this that inspired John Lennon’s song “Sexy Sadie” about a charlatan who “made a fool of everyone.”) By the 1970s more than five million people were said to be practicing Transcendental Meditation, or TM, for twenty minutes every morning and evening. We have no data to tell us how many were practicing “yogic flying”—or bouncing in the air in the lotus position, also part of the Maharishi’s teaching.
By the 1980s he had established schools across the world, founded the Natural Law Party, and built a multimillion-dollar business empire that included a property dealership and a company that sold Ayurvedic medicine and cosmetics, all primarily financed by donations and the $2,500 per-person fee to learn TM. He moved his headquarters to a former Franciscan monastery in the southern Dutch village of Vlodrop, from which he controlled his Global Country of World Peace movement as a recluse living in a pavilion, communicating by video link.
In 2002 the Maharishi announced that with $1 billion he could train forty thousand expert mediators and combat terrorism and war. For this, and for his plan to raise $10 trillion with which to end poverty by sponsoring organic farming in poor countries, he was roundly ridiculed.
Of course, the Maharishi is not the only New Age Spiritualist who has announced a cure for terrorism through meditation. On her blog on terrorism, New Age spiritualist Marianne Williamson said,
With your thoughts, you can help build a system of spiritual quarantine for terrorists and would-be terrorists. You don’t have to know who they are. The Creator does. Just do this. For a minimum of five minutes every day, meditate in the following way: Pray that anyone even thinking of committing a terrorist act… be surrounded by a huge golden egg. The eggshell is made of the spiritual equivalent of titanium… impenetrable. Any malevolent, hateful or violent thought that emanates from the mind of the terrorist cannot get past the confines of the eggshell. Before the violent thought can turn into violent action, it is stopped by the force of this meditative field. Energetically, the terrorist is quarantined. On the inside of the egg, see a shower of golden light pouring from the eggshell into the heart and mind of the terrorist. Pray for your lost brother. See him or her healed by the force of divine Love, wrapped in the arms of angels, reminded of who he truly is. Five minutes. Every day. Tell everyone you know.7
That aside, Deepak Chopra was quick to rise to the Maharishi’s defense saying that he, Chopra, had once met Mia Farrow in an airport and she asked him to give the Maharishi her love. That supposedly puts to rest any accusation that he had made advances to her. The Maharishi made a great impact with his teaching. Businesses started to give their employees time off to do this training. One of those impacted by him was Deepak Chopra. Chopra’s tribute following the Maharishi’s death raises a lot of questions, and the response to it was not without variant claims on the part of some of the Maharishi’s followers. On one occasion, Chopra claims, the Maharishi was declared clinically dead after an apparent heart attack but was kept on life support due to the intervention of Chopra’s father and within thirty-six hours recovered sufficiently to be taken off life support. According to Chopra, the Maharishi exhibited at this time “both the all-too-human qualities found in every holy man and the other qualities one associates with the superhuman… It was easy to believe that other disciples in another time felt much the same in the presence of Jesus or Buddha.”8
Chopra recounts that during his recovery the Maharishi required a blood transfusion and that Chopra was found to be the only one compatible. However, the Maharishi refused to accept Chopra’s blood until Chopra assured him that his bad karma would not be transferred to the Maharishi in the blood transfusion because red blood cells contain no DNA and only hemoglobin would be transferred. Eventually the Maharishi accepted both Chopra’s reassurances and his blood.9
Please do not miss the subtlety here. The pupil is instructing the guru on the transmission of karma. That little excursion into the makeup of the blood is intended once again to show the knowledge Chopra had that allowed him to even teach the teacher. This is Chopra at his double-entendre best.