Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

What is the goal of Transcendental Meditation?

(excerpts from an interview with Maharishi)

Maharishi: “The goal of the Transcendental Meditation technique is the state of enlightenment. This means we experience that inner calmness, that quiet state of least excitation, even when we are dynamically busy.”

Is it necessary to dissolve stress to experience the state of enlightenment?

Maharishi: “Yes. And it brings very practical value to life. Even if we forget about ‘enlightenment’ for a moment — maybe that state seems to be inconceivable — still it is our daily experience that the whole value of life is very little if we are tired, if we are stressed.

“If we think of a morning when we have not rested well in the night, then we feel so groggy and everything just collapses into dullness and inertia. The world is the same as on the other days, but our appreciation of the world is so much less.

“And with the Transcendental Meditation technique we have a natural and effective means to dissolve even deeply rooted fatigue and stress. This is the way to unfold full value of life.

“Even in the first days of meditation we find that our eyes seem to be a little more open, our mind seems a bit more clear. Our feeling towards our friends seems to be more harmonious.

“And then, as the practice continues every day, a time will come when we will start living life free from all stresses. We cleanse the awareness of all stresses and strains, leaving the conscious mind completely free in its pure value.”

https://www.tm.org/enlightenment

Maharishi with the Beatles.

There is a documentary film on the activities of Maharishi/ Transcendental meditation organisation called ” David wants to Fly” released in 2010.

During 2007-2009 film maker David Lynch traveled  16 countries to speak about meditation, peace creativity and peace. He has published a documentary in 2016 under David Lynch Foundation.

How TM works is an intro video by a TM teacher in you tube. TM practiced 20 minutes twice a day sitting comfortably in a chair. It is simple, natural  and effortless as per the teacher. Surface of our mind is active. It has lot of waves. Deep within the mind is already calm. TM helps to effortlessly settle down to deeper levels or Transcend to deeper levels of the mind. Body gets rest and relaxation. Cortisol the enzyme which creates tesnsion levels go down by 20% during 20 minutes of TM. There is an increase in happiness hormones such as Seretonin.  TM uses a word or sound as Mantra. Apparently it has no meaning and it is positive. Apparently the Mantra is passed on through thousands of years. Apparently the meditation does not involve concentration or focusing or observation of the mind. There is lot of Marketing material in the video.
Beatles and Mahrishi.

Beatles group consisting of Paul Mccartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Star went to Rishikesh Ashram in 1968 and was with the  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi learning the Transcendental Meditation technique.

Stone meditation “caves” at the former International Academy of Meditation (pictured in 2006)

In February 1968, the English rock band the Beatles travelled to Rishikesh in northern India to take part in an advanced Transcendental Meditation (TM) training course at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The visit followed the group’s denunciation of drugs in favour of TM,^[1] and received widespread media attention. Led by George Harrison‘s commitment,^[2][3] the band’s interest in the Maharishi’s teachings changed Western attitudes about Indian spirituality and encouraged the study of Transcendental Meditation.^[4] The visit was also the most productive period for the band’s songwriting.

The Beatles had intended to join the Maharishi in India soon after attending his seminar in Bangor, in Wales, in late August 1967. Their attendance at the seminar was cut short by the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, after which they committed to making a television film, Magical Mystery Tour. Convinced of the merits of TM, Harrison and John Lennon became spokesmen for the Maharishi’s Spiritual Regeneration Movement, as he gained international prominence as the guru to the Beatles. The band members arrived in India in mid February 1968, along with their wives, girlfriends, assistants, and numerous reporters. They joined a group of 60 people who were training to be TM teachers; among the other celebrity meditators were musicians Donovan, Mike Love and Paul Horn, and actress Mia Farrow. While there, Lennon, Paul McCartney and Harrison wrote many songs, and Ringo Starr finished writing his first. Eighteen of those songs were recorded for The Beatles (“the White Album”), two songs appeared on the Abbey Road album, and others were used for various solo projects.

The retreat and the discipline required for meditation was met with varying degrees of commitment from the individual Beatles. Starr left on 1 March, after a ten-day stay; McCartney left later in March to attend to business concerns. Harrison and Lennon departed abruptly on 12 April following rumours of the Maharishi’s inappropriate behaviour towards Farrow and another of his female students. The divisive influence of the Beatles’ Greek friend Alexis Mardas, financial disagreements, and suspicions that their teacher was taking advantage of the band’s fame have also been cited by biographers and witnesses as reasons for the two Beatles’ dissatisfaction.

The band’s denunciation of the Maharishi proved detrimental to his reputation in the West, and their return from Rishikesh marked the start of a divisive atmosphere that anticipated the group’s break-up in 1970. Harrison later apologised for the way that he and Lennon had treated the Maharishi; like many of the other students at the ashram, he said that any allegations of the Maharishi’s inappropriate behaviour were unfounded. Harrison gave a benefit concert in 1992 for the Maharishi-associated Natural Law Party. In 2009, McCartney and Starr performed at a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation, which raises funds for the teaching of TM to at-risk students. As a result of continued interest in the Beatles’ 1968 retreat, the abandoned ashram was officially opened to the public in 2015 and has been renamed Beatles Ashram.

Beatles Ashram, also known as Chaurasi Kutia, is an ashram close to the north Indian city of Rishikesh in the state of Uttarakhand. It is located on the eastern bank of the Ganges river, opposite the Muni Ki Reti area of Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas. During the 1960s and 1970s, as the International Academy of Meditation, it was the training centre for students of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who devised the Transcendental Meditation technique. The ashram gained international attention between February and April 1968 when the English rock band the Beatles studied meditation there, along with celebrities such as Donovan, Mia Farrow and Mike Love. It was the setting for the band’s most productive period as songwriters, where they composed most of the songs for their self-titled double album, also known as the “White Album”.

The site was abandoned in the 1990s (when the govt refused to extend the lease to Maharishi for 20 years)  and reverted to the local forestry department in 2003, after which it became a popular visiting place for fans of the Beatles. Although derelict and overrun by jungle, the site was officially opened to the public in December 2015. It has since become known as Beatles Ashram and held an exhibition in February 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ arrival in Rishikesh.

In February 2018, the 50th anniversary of Lennon and Harrison’s arrival in Rishikesh was marked by the opening of a two-year exhibition titled The Beatles in India at the Beatles Story museum in Liverpool.^[66][67] A similar celebration took place at Chaurasi Kutia, now known as Beatles Ashram,^[58][66] further to the announcement of plans for a full renovation of the site and the founding of a museum dedicated to the Beatles and the Maharishi.^{[23][nb 5]} The exhibition in Liverpool featured memorabilia, photographs from the 1968 retreat by Paul Saltzman, a sitar courtesy of the Ravi Shankar Foundation, and video contributions from Pattie and Jenny Boyd.^[66] The 2018 International Yoga Festival, held in Rishikesh from 1 March, dedicated three days of its program to acknowledge the anniversary of the Beatles’ visit.^[50]

 

Early days of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

When he had stayd at Uttar Kashi (after the death of “Guru Dev”), he found an elederly sadhu with whom he “felt well”. They used to sit together practising their meditation some times. Some day Mr Mahesh faced a problem with his “staying in samadhi”:

A thought kept on coming into his mind “Rahmeshwaram”; it didn`t come all the time but repeatedly; just that thought “Rhameshwaram” (a famous Shiva temple in South India). After a while he asked that elderly sadhu about that “pheneomenon”. The elderly sadhu looked at him in a manner like “Oh, it seems that you aren’t yet a real yogi”.
Then the elderly sadhu said: “Go there an come back to get rid of that thought; but don`t forget that it’s ok down to Hardwar; beyond Hardwar it’s the world of MAYA, it’s MAYA”.

Mr Mahesh followed that advise and finally reached Rhameswaram. There he went for meditations into the temple for some weeks or even months. After that period of time he felt “Now it’s alright, it’s gone” and he started his way back to the valley of the Ganges.

Somewhere near Madras he has been approached by a man who has run a bookshop. That man had asked Mr Mahesh. “Do you talk?” Mr Mahesh replied or may be just expressed: “What you call talking talking, yes, what you call lecturing, no”.

Mr Mahesh has been quite sure that he had expressed that he hasn’t done a vouch of silence either but neither would he want to give lectures nor would he want to teach.

Yet that man came back and said to Mr Mahesh that he had announced lectures for him and that he would be in need of the headline for his lecture.

Mr Mahesh was surprised, “took it to be the will of God”, gave that man the requested themes and asked him for a copy so that he would know about what he would have to lecture.

The lecture was very successful and one lecture after the other got announced and just like that the whole “movement” would have come about, has said Mr Mahesh in the context of his TM teacher training courses.

Now what’s Interesting? A man doesn’t want to do something and another man creates a situation that the first man would have to do what he doesn’t want to do.

 

Thus I suppose that Mr Mahesh had said to that librarian “What you call talking, yes; what you call lecturing” ; after these words he shook his head instead of using the word “no”.

And it seems to me that thus he had caused that misunderstanding that he then has taken to be “the will of God”.

If Mr. Mahesh would have really followed the advise of that elderly sadhu,he would have had to take that “violation of his expresed will” as something like: “Oh, that must be due to MAYA, not the will of God and better I don’t take it to be caused by evil-mindedness but better I take it to be a phenomenon of misunderstanding, of illusion, of MAYA”.

Yet Mr Mahesh prefered to take it to be the will of God.

 

This shows in what sense it’s very true that Mr Mahesh “made fool out of all”. Whenever the work around lecturing and teaching had got to much for him, he left it to others with the lame excuse that “I had said that I don’t want to lecture, you want me to teach, it’s your karma not mine”.

 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (born Mahesh Prasad Varma, 12 January 1918^[6] – 5 February 2008) was an Indian guru, known for developing the Transcendental Meditation technique and for being the leader and guru of a worldwide organization that has been characterized in multiple ways including as a new religious movement and as non-religious.^[7][8][9] He became known as Maharishi(meaning “great seer”)^[1][10] and Yogi as an adult.^[11][12]

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became a disciple and assistant of SwamiBrahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya (spiritual leader) of Jyotirmath in the Indian Himalayas. The Maharishi credits Brahmananda Saraswati with inspiring his teachings. In 1955, the Maharishi began to introduce his Transcendental Deep Meditation (later renamed Transcendental Meditation) to India and the world. His first global tour began in 1958.^[13] His devotees referred to him as His Holiness,^[14] and because he often laughed in TV interviews he was sometimes referred to as the “giggling guru”.^[15][16][17]

The Maharishi is reported to have trained more than 40,000 TM teachers, taught the Transcendental Meditation technique to “more than five million people” and founded thousands of teaching centres and hundreds of colleges, universities and schools,^[18][19][20] while TM websites report tens of thousands learned the TM-Sidhi programme. His initiatives include schools and universities with campuses in several countries including India, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.^[21] The Maharishi, his family and close associates created charitable organisations and for-profit businesses including health clinics, mail-order health supplements and organic farms. The reported value of the Maharishi’s organization has ranged from the millions to billions of U.S. dollars and in 2008, the organization placed the value of their United States assets at about $300 million.^[18]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Maharishi achieved fame as the guru to the Beatles, the Beach Boys and other celebrities. In the late 1970s, he started the TM-Sidhi programme that claimed to offer practitioners the ability to levitateand to create world peace.^[22] The Maharishi’s Natural Law Party was founded in 1992, and ran campaigns in dozens of countries. He moved to near Vlodrop, the Netherlands, in the same year.^[23] In 2000, he created the Global Country of World Peace, a non-profit organization, and appointed its leaders. In 2008, the Maharishi announced his retirement from all administrative activities and went into silence until his death three weeks later.^[24]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi

In 1966, the Maharishi founded the Students’ International Meditation Society (“SIMS”), which The Los Angeles Times later characterised as a “phenomenal success”.^[17][98] In the 1970s, SIMS centres were established at “over one thousand campuses”,^[99] including Harvard University, Yale University, and UCLA.^[12]

In 1967, the Maharishi gave a lecture at Caxton Hall in London which was attended by Pattie Boyd, George Harrison‘s wife,^[69]as well as Leon MacLaren, the founder and leader of the School of Economic Science (SES).^[11]:22 He also lectured at UCLA, Harvard, Yale and Berkeley.^[100] That year, an article in Time magazine reported that the Maharishi “has been sharply criticised by other Indian sages, who complain that his programme for spiritual peace without either penance or asceticism contravenes every traditional Hindu belief”.^[101] Religion and culture scholar Sean McCloud also reported that traditional Indian sages and gurus were critical of the Maharishi, for teaching a simple technique and making it available to everyone, and for abandoning traditional concepts of suffering and concentration as paths to enlightenment.^[102] At the end of 1968, the Maharishi said that after ten years of teaching and world tours, he would return to India.^[103]

He and the Beatles met in London in August 1967 and the band members went to study with the Maharishi in Bangor, Wales, before travelling to Rishikesh, India,^[32] in February 1968 to “devote themselves fully to his instruction”.^[107] Ringo Starr and his wife Maureen left after ten days,^{[107][108][109]} Paul McCartney and Jane Asher left after five weeks;^{[110][111][112]} the group’s most dedicated students, George Harrison and John Lennon, departed with their wives sixteen days later.^[110] During their stay, the Beatles heard that the Maharishi had allegedly made sexual advances towards Mia Farrow.^[113] On June 15, 1968, in London, the Beatles formally renounced their association with the Maharishi as a “public mistake”. “Sexy Sadie” is the name of a song by the Beatles, written by Lennon in India and credited to Lennon–McCartney.^{[107][114][115]} Lennon originally wanted to title the song “Maharishi”,^[116] but changed the title at Harrison’s request. Harrison commented years later, “Now, historically, there’s the story that something went on that shouldn’t have done – but nothing did.” In 1992, Harrison gave a benefit concert for the Maharishi-associated Natural Law Party, and later apologised for the way the Maharishi had been treated by saying, “We were very young” and “It’s probably in the history books that Maharishi ‘tried to attack Mia Farrow’ – but it’s bullshit, total bullshit.” Cynthia Lennon wrote in 2006 that she “hated leaving on a note of discord and mistrust, when we had enjoyed so much kindness from the Maharishi”. Asked if he forgave the Beatles, the Maharishi replied, “I could never be upset with angels.” McCartney took his daughter, Stella, to visit the Maharishi in the Netherlands in 2007, which renewed their friendship.[46][188]^{[clarification needed][117]} The New York Times and The Independent reported that the influence of the Maharishi, and the journey to Rishikesh to meditate, weaned the Beatles from LSD and inspired them to write many new songs.^[69][107] In 2009, McCartney commented that Transcendental Meditation was a gift the Beatles had received from the Maharishi at a time when they were looking for something to stabilise them.^[118] The Beatles’ visit to the Maharishi’s ashram coincided with a thirty-participant Transcendental Meditation teacher training course that was ongoing when they arrived. Graduates of the course included Prudence Farrow and Mike Love.^{[119][120][121]}

Although the Rishakesh ashram had thrived in its early days it was eventually abandoned in 2001. By 2016, some of it had been reclaimed with building repairs, cleared paths, a small photo museum, murals, a cafe and charges for visitors although the site remains essentially a ruin.^[122]

Further growth of the TM movement (1968–1990)[edit]

The Maharishi’s headquarters in Seelisberg, Switzerland

In 1968, the Maharishi announced that he would stop his public activities and instead begin the training of TM teachers at his new global headquarters in Seelisberg, Switzerland.^[98] In 1969, he inaugurated a course in his Science of Creative Intelligence at Stanford University, which was then offered at 25 other American universities.^[32]

In 1970, the Maharishi held a TM teacher training course at a Victorian hotel in Poland Springs, Maine, with 1,200 participants. Later that year, he held a similar four-week course with 1500 participants at Humboldt State College in Arcata, California.^[123] In 1970, after having trouble with Indian tax authorities, he moved his headquarters to Italy, returning to India in the late 1970s.^[124][125] That same year, the City of Hope Foundation in Los Angeles gave the Maharishi their “Man of Hope” award.^[126]

By 1971, the Maharishi had completed 13 world tours, visited 50 countries, and held a press conference with American inventor Buckminster Fuller at his first International Symposium on SCI at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Massachusetts.^{[32][127][128][129]} From 1970 to 1973, about 10,000 people attended the Maharishi sponsored symposia on his modern interpretation of Vedanta philosophy called Science of Creative Intelligence. During these conferences, held at universities, the Maharishi spoke with “leading thinkers” of the day such as Hans Selye, Marshall McLuhan, and Jonas Salk.^[12]

The Maharishi announced his World Plan in 1972, the goal of which was to establish 3,600 TM centres around the world.^[32][36] That year, a TM training course was given by the Maharishi at Queen’s University and was attended by 1,000 young people from the USA and Canada. At the start of the course, the Maharishi encouraged the attendees to improve their appearance by getting haircuts and wearing ties.^[130] He also persuaded the U.S. Army to offer courses in TM to its soldiers^[32]and made videotaped recordings of what was thought to be the West’s first comprehensive recitation of the Rig Veda.^[131]

In March 1973, the Maharishi addressed the legislature of the state of Illinois. That same year, the legislature passed a resolution in support of the use of Maharishi’s Science of Creative Intelligence in Illinois public schools.^{[32][132][133]} Later that year he organized a world conference of mayors in Switzerland.^[32] In that same year, he also addressed 3000 educators at an American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) conference on quality of life and higher education.^[10]

In 1974, the Maharishi International University was founded. In October 1975, the Maharishi was pictured on the front cover of Time magazine. He made his last visit to the Spiritual Regeneration Movement centre in Los Angeles in 1975, according to film director David Lynch, who met him for the first time there.^[134]

In 1975, the Maharishi embarked on a five-continent trip to inaugurate what he called “the Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment”. The Maharishi said the purpose of the inaugural tour was to “go around the country and give a gentle whisper to the population”.^[135][136] He visited Ottawa during this tour and had a private meeting with Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau, during which he spoke about the principles of TM and “the possibility of structuring an ideal society”.^{[137][138][139]}That same year, the Pittsburgh Press reported that “The Maharishi has been criticised by other Eastern yogis for simplifying their ancient art.”^[140] The Maharishi appeared as a guest on The Merv Griffin Show in 1975 and again in 1977, and this resulted in “tens of thousands of new practitioners” around the USA.^{[17][141][142][143]}

The Maharishi during a 1979 visit to Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa

In the mid 1970s, the Maharishi’s U.S. movement was operating 370 TM centres manned by 6,000 TM teachers.^[15] At that time, the Maharishi also began approaching the business community via an organisation called the American Foundation for SCI (AFSCI), whose objective was to eliminate stress for business professionals. His TM movement came to be increasingly structured along the lines of a multinational corporation.^[98]

The teaching of TM and the Science of Creative Intelligence in a New Jersey public school was stopped when a US court, in 1977, declared the movement to be religious, and ruled adoption of TM by public organisations in breach of the separation of church and state (First Amendment).^[144]

During the 1980s, the organisation continued to expand and his meditation technique continued to attract celebrities^[15] despite its “outlandish claims” and accusations of fraud from disaffected former disciples.^[98] The TM organization made a number of property investments, buying a former Rothschild mansion in England, Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, Roydon Hall in Maidstone, Swythamley Park in the Peak District, and a Georgian rectory in Suffolk.^[98] In the United States, resorts and hotels, many in city centres, were purchased to be used as TM training centres. Doug Henning and the Maharishi planned a magical Vedic amusement park, Vedaland, and bought large tracts of land near Orlando, Florida, and Niagara Falls, Ontario, to host the park. The theme park was supposed to be a gateway into understanding the mysteries of the universe. According to the Maharishi’s official Vedic city website, “Entering Veda Land through a secret cave on a windswept plateau high in the Himalayas the adventure starts as one travels through a waterfall that leads to a forest where an ancient Vedic civilization awaits to reveal the deepest secrets of the universe (sic)”.^[145] These plans were never executed and, for Niagara Falls, Veda Land turned out to be just another theme park proposal that never materialized, joining an eclectic list that includes the Worlds of Jules Verne, the Ancient Chinese City and even Canada’s Wonderland when it was first being planned.^[146] The Maharishi commissioned plans from a prominent architect for the world’s tallest building, a Vedic-style pyramid to be built in São Paulo, Brazil, and to be filled with Yogic Flyers and other TM endeavours.^[147] The Maharishi founded Maharishi Ved Vigyan Vishwa Vidyapeetham, a self-described educational institution located in Uttar Pradesh, India, in 1982. The institution reports that it has trained 50,000 pundits in traditional Vedic recitation.^[148][149] In 1983, the Maharishi invited government leaders to interact with his organization called “World Government”.^[36]

In January 1988, offices at the Maharishinagar complex in New Delhi were raided by Indian tax authorities and the Maharishi and his organisation were accused of falsifying expenses.^[150] Reports on the value of stocks, fixed-deposit notes, cash and jewels confiscated, vary from source to source.^{[151][152][153][154]} The Maharishi, who was “headquartered in Switzerland” at the time, reportedly moved to the Netherlands “after the Indian government accused him of tax fraud”.^[155]) Following an earthquake in Armenia, the Maharishi trained Russian TM teachers and set up a Maharishi Ayurveda training centre in the Urals region.^[156] Beginning in 1989, the Maharishi’s movement began incorporating the term “Maharishi” into the names of their new and existing entities, concepts and programmes.^[157]

Years in Vlodrop (1991–2008)[edit]

The Maharishi’s headquarters in MERU, The Netherlands

In 1990, the Maharishi relocated his headquarters from Seelisberg, Switzerland, to a former Franciscan monastery in Vlodrop, the Netherlands, which became known as MERU, Holland, on account of the Maharishi European Research University (MERU) campus there.^[158][159] During his time in Vlodrop, he communicated to the public mainly via video and the internet. He also created a subscription-based, satellite TV channel, called Veda Vision, which broadcast content in 22 languages and 144 countries.^[98]

In 1991, the Maharishi called Washington D.C. a “pool of mud” after a decade of attempts to lower the rate of crime in the city, which had the second-largest TM community in the US. He told his followers to leave and save themselves from its “criminal atmosphere”.^[160] The Maharishi is believed to have made his final public appearance in 1991, in Maastricht, the Netherlands.^[161] Deepak Chopra, described as “one of the Maharishi’s top assistants before he launched his own career”,^[17] wrote that the Maharishi collapsed in 1991 with kidney and pancreas failure, that the illness was kept secret by the Maharishi’s family and that he tended to Maharishi during a year-long recovery. According to Chopra, the Maharishi accused him, in July 1993, of trying to compete for the position of guru and asked him to stop travelling and writing books, which led to Chopra’s decision to leave the movement in January 1994.^[162]

As part of a world plan for peace, the Maharishi inaugurated the Natural Law Party (NLP) and calling it a “natural government”.^[125] His adherents founded the NLP in 1992.^[163] It was active in forty-two countries.^[164] John Hagelin, the NLP’s three-time candidate for U.S. president, denied any formal connection between the Maharishi and the party.^[165]According to spokesman Bob Roth, “The Maharishi has said the party has to grow to encompass everyone”.^[164] Critics charged that the party was an effort to recruit people for Transcendental Meditation,^[166] and that it resembled “the political arm of an international corporation” more than a “home-grown political creation”.^[167] The Indian arm of the NLP, the Ajeya Bharat Party, achieved electoral success, winning one seat in a state assembly in 1998.^[168] The Maharishi shut down the political effort in 2004, saying, “I had to get into politics to know what is wrong there.”^[169]

In 1992, the Maharishi began to send groups of Yogic Flyers to countries like India, Brazil, China and America in an effort to promote world peace through “coherent world consciousness”.^[125] In 1993 and 2003, he decided to raise the fees for learning the TM technique.^[170][171][1

In 1997 the Maharishi’s organization built the largest wooden structure in the Netherlands without using any nails.^{[98][161][173][174]} The building was the Maharishi’s residence for the last two decades of his life. In later years, the Maharishi rarely left his two-room quarters in order to preserve his health and energy.^[175] He used videoconferencing to communicate with the world and with his advisors.^[175][176] Built to Maharishi Sthapatya Veda architectural standards, the structure, according to the Maharishi, is said to have helped him infuse “the light of Total Knowledge” into “the destiny of the human race”.^[177][178]

In 2000, the Maharishi founded the Global Country of World Peace (GCWP) “to create global world peace by unifying all nations in happiness, prosperity, invincibility and perfect health, while supporting the rich diversity of our world family”.^[1][179]The Maharishi crowned Tony Nader, a physician and MIT-trained neuroscientist,^[41] as the king or Maharaja of the GCWP in 2000.^[180] The GCWP unsuccessfully attempted to establish a sovereign micronation when it offered US$1.3 billion to the President of Suriname for a 200-year lease of 3,500 acres (14 km²) of land and in 2002, attempted to choose a king for the Talamanca, a “remote Indian reservation” in Costa Rica.^[181][182]

In 2001, followers of the Maharishi founded Maharishi Vedic City a few miles north of Fairfield, Iowa, in the United States. This new city requires that the construction of its homes and buildings be done according to the Maharishi Sthapatya Veda principles of “harmony with nature”.^[183]

The Maharishi in 2007

In a 2002 appearance on the CNN show, Larry King Live, the first time in twenty-five years that the Maharishi had appeared in the mainstream media, he said “Transcendental Meditation is something that can be defined as a means to do what one wants to do in a better way, a right way, for maximum results”.^[97] It was occasioned by the reissue of the Maharishi’s book The Science of Being and Art of Living.^[184] That same year, the Maharishi Global Financing Research Foundationissued the “Raam” as a currency “dedicated to financing peace promoting projects”.^[98]

In 2003, David Lynch began a fundraising project to raise US$1 billion “on behalf of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi” to build a meditation centre large enough to hold 8,000 skilled practitioners.^[185]

The Maharishi ordered a suspension of TM training in Britain in 2005 due to his opposition to prime minister Tony Blair‘s decision to support the Iraq War.^[186] The Maharishi said that he did not want to waste the “beautiful nectar” of TM on a “scorpion nation”.^[186][187] He lifted the ban after Blair’s resignation in 2007.^[188] During this period, skeptics were critical of some of the Maharishi’s programmes, such as a $10 trillion plan to end poverty through organic farming in poor countries and a $1 billion plan to use meditation groups to end conflict.^[158

projects”.^[98]

In 2003, David Lynch began a fundraising project to raise US$1 billion “on behalf of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi” to build a meditation centre large enough to hold 8,000 skilled practitioners.^[185]

The Maharishi ordered a suspension of TM training in Britain in 2005 due to his opposition to prime minister Tony Blair‘s decision to support the Iraq War.^[186] The Maharishi said that he did not want to waste the “beautiful nectar” of TM on a “scorpion nation”.^[186][187] He lifted the ban after Blair’s resignation in 2007.^[188] During this period, skeptics were critical of some of the Maharishi’s programmes, such as a $10 trillion plan to end poverty through organic farming in poor countries and a $1 billion plan to use meditation groups to end conflict.^[158]

The funeral, with state honours,^[197] was carried by Sadhana TV station and was presided over by one of the claimants to the seat of Shankaracharya of the North, Swami Vasudevananda Saraswati Maharaj.^[198] Indian officials who attended the funeral included central minister Subodh Kant Sahay; Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Ashok Singhal; and former Uttar Pradesh assembly speaker and state BJP leader Keshri Nath Tripathi, as well as top local officials.^[199] Also in attendance were thirty-five rajas of the Global Country of World Peace, one-time disciple Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, and David Lynch.^[200] A troop of uniformed policemen lowered their arms in salute.^[200] The funeral received its status as a state funeral because the Maharishi was a recognised master in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta founded by Shankara.^[199]

The Maharishi is survived by a brother and “a number of nephews”.^[201] One nephew, Girish Chandra Varma,^[202] is chairman of the Maharishi Vidya Mandir Schools Group^[203][204] and a “senior functionary of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement in India.”^[201] Other nephews include Prakash Shrivastav,^[205] president of Maharishi Vidya Mandir Schools^[206] and Anand Shrivastava,^[207] chairman of the Maharishi Group.^[208]

In its obituary, BBC News reported that the Maharishi’s master had bequeathed him “the task of keeping the tradition of Transcendental Meditation alive” and that “the Maharishi’s commercial mantras drew criticism from stricter Hindus, but his promises of better health, stress relief and spiritual enlightenment drew devotees from all over the world”.^[38] Paul McCartneycommented saying that “Whilst I am deeply saddened by his passing, my memories of him will only be joyful ones. He was a great man who worked tirelessly for the people of the world and the cause of unity.”^[209]

Legacy[edit]

The Maharishi left a legacy that includes the revival of India’s ancient spiritual tradition of meditation, which he made available to everyone.^[210] He is considered responsible for the popularisation of meditation in the west,^[211][212] something he accomplished by teaching Transcendental Meditation worldwide through a highly effective organization of his own development.^[210] The Maharishi is also credited with “the proposal of the existence of a unique or fourth state of consciousness with a basis in physiology” and the application of scientific studies to research on the physiological effects of Transcendental Meditation and the development of higher states of consciousness, areas previously relegated to mysticism.^{[213][214][215][216]} Partly because of this, Newsweek credited him with helping to launch “a legitimate new field of neuroscience”.^[217][218] According to the Times of India his “unique and enduring contribution to humankind was his deep understanding of – and mechanics of experiencing – pure consciousness”.^[213] A memorial building, the Maharishi Smarak, was inaugurated at Allahabad in February 2013

 

Death[edit]

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, concerned about his health,^[189] became increasingly secluded in two rooms of his residence.^[158]During this period he rarely had in-person meetings and instead communicated with his followers almost exclusively by closed-circuit television.^[190]

On 12 January 2008, his ninetieth birthday, the Maharishi declared: “It has been my pleasure at the feet of Guru Dev (Brahmananda Saraswati), to take the light of Guru Dev and pass it on in my environment. Now today, I am closing my designed duty to Guru Dev. And I can only say, ‘Live long the world in peace, happiness, prosperity, and freedom from suffering.'”^{[191][192][193]}

A week before his death, the Maharishi said that he was “stepping down as leader of the TM movement” and “retreating into silence” and that he planned to spend his remaining time studying “the ancient Indian texts”.^[97][104] The Maharishi died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes on 5 February 2008 at his residence in Vlodrop, Netherlands.^[194] The cremation and funeral rites were conducted at the Maharishi’s Allahabad ashram in India, overlooking the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.^[195][196

Philosophy and teaching

The Maharishi had come out to teach with the “avowed intention” to change “the course of human history”.^[103] When he first began teaching he had three main aims: to revive the spiritual tradition in India, to show that meditation was for everyone and not just for recluses, and to show that Vedanta is compatible with science.^[218] The Maharishi had a message of happiness, writing in 1967 that “being happy is of the utmost importance. Success in anything is through happiness. Under all circumstances be happy. Just think of any negativity that comes at you as a raindrop falling into the ocean of your bliss”.^[97] His philosophy featured the concept that “within everyone is an unlimited reservoir of energy, intelligence, and happiness”.^[19] He emphasised the naturalness of his meditation technique as a simple way of developing this potential.^[221]

Beginning in 1962, the Maharishi began to recommend the daily practice of yoga exercises or asanas to further accelerate growth.^[222]

He also taught that practising Transcendental Meditation twice a day would create inner peace and that “mass meditation sessions” could create outer peace by reducing violence and war.^[97] According to a TM website, the performance of yagyas by 7,000 pandits in India, plus hundreds of Yogic Flyers in Germany, brought “coherence and unity in the collective consciousness of Germany” and caused the fall of the Berlin Wall.^{[223][224][225]} One religion scholar, Michael York, considers the Maharishi to have been the most articulate spokesman for the spiritual argument that a critical mass of people becoming enlightened through the practice of “meditation and yogic discipline” will trigger the New Age movement’s hoped-for period of postmillennial “peace, harmony, and collective consciousness”.^[226] Religious studies scholar Carl Olson writes that the TM technique was based on “a neo-Vedanta metaphysical philosophy in which an unchanging reality is opposed to an ever-changing phenomenal world” and that the Maharishi says it is not necessary to renounce worldly activities to gain enlightenment, unlike other ascetic traditions.^[221]

According to author Jack Forem, the Maharishi stated that the experience of transcendence, which resulted in a naturally increasing refinement of mind and body, enabled people to naturally behave in more correct ways. Thus, behavioral guidelines did not need to be issued, and were best left to the teachings of various religions: “It is much easier to raise a man’s consciousness than to get him to act righteously” the Maharishi said.^[227]

Some religious studies scholars have further said that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is one of a number of Indian gurus who brought neo-Hindu adaptations of Vedantic Hinduism to the west.^{[228][229][230]} Author Meera Nanda calls neo-Hinduism “the brand of Hinduism that is taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Deepak Chopra, and their clones”.^[231] J. R. Coplin, a sociologist and MIU graduate, says that the Maharishi saw his own purpose as “the ‘revival’ of the knowledge of an integrated life based upon Vedic principles and Vedantist reality”.^[43]

Author Barry Miles writes that, in spite of the media’s scepticism for the Maharishi’s spiritual message, they seized upon him because young people seemed to listen to his pro-establishment, anti-drug message with one TM participant saying the Maharishi “signaled the beginning of the post-acid generation”.^[103][111]

Transcendental Meditation[edit]

Main article: Transcendental Meditation

During a CNN interview in 2002, the Maharishi said “Transcendental meditation is something that can be defined as a means to do what one wants to do in a better way, a right way, for maximum results”.^[97] His movement offered in-residence style TM advanced courses.^[232] By the time of his death, there were nearly 1,000 TM training centres around the world.^[98]

The Maharishi is credited as having contributed to the western world a meditation technique that is both simple and systematic as well as introducing the scientific study of meditation.^[233]

In the mid 1970s, the Maharishi began the TM-Sidhi programme, which included Yogic Flying, as an additional option for those who had been practising the Transcendental Meditation technique for some time. According to Coplin, this new aspect of knowledge emphasised not only the individual, but also the collective benefits created by group practice of this advanced programme.^[234] This new programme gave rise to a new principle called the Maharishi Effect, which is said to “create coherence in the collective consciousness” and to suppress crime, violence, and accidents.^[235]

Maharishi Vedic Science[edit]

Entrance to the Maharishi University of Management and Maharishi Vedic University campus in Vlodrop, the Netherlands

Maharishi Vedic Science (MVS) is based on the Maharishi’s interpretation of the ancient Vedic texts based on his master, Brahmananda Saraswati‘s teachings.^[236]MVS aims to put forward traditional Vedic literature in the light of Western traditions of knowledge and understanding.^[237] According to Roy Ascott, MVS also explains the potential for every human being to experience the infinite nature of transcendental consciousness, also defined as Being or Self, while engaged in normal activities of daily life.^[238] Once this state is fully established an individual is no longer influenced by outer aspects of existence and perceives pure consciousness in everything.^[238]MVS includes two aspects, the practical aspect of the Transcendental Meditation technique and the TM-Sidhi programme, as well as the theoretical aspect of how MVS is applied to day to day living.^[239] These applications include programmes in: Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health (MVAH);^[240][241] Maharishi Sthapatya Veda, a mathematical system for the design and construction of buildings;^[242][243] Maharishi Gandharva Veda,^[244][245] a form of classical Indian music; Maharishi Jyotish (also known as Maharishi Vedic Astrology),^[245][246] a system claiming the evaluation of life tendencies of an individual; Maharishi Vedic Agriculture, a trademarked process for producing fresh, organic food; and Consciousness-Based Education.^[247][248] According to educator James Grant, a former Maharishi University of Management Associate Professor of Education and the former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Maharishi brought out a “full revival of the Vedic tradition of knowledge from India” and demonstrated its relevance in many areas including education, business, medicine and government.^[249]

Publications

The Maharishi wrote more than twenty books on the Transcendental Meditation technique and Maharishi Vedic Science.^[250]

The Beacon Light of the Himalayas[edit]

In 1955, the organisers of the Great Spiritual Development Conference of Kerala published The Beacon Light of the Himalayas, a transcribed 170-page “souvenir” of the conference. Authors Chryssides, Humes and Forsthoefel, Miller, and Russel cite this as the Maharishi’s first published book on Transcendental Meditation, although Transcendental Meditation is not mentioned in the text of the book.^{[251][252][253][254][255]} The book is dedicated to Maharshi Bala Brahmachari Mahesh Yogi Rajaram by his devotees of Kerala and contains photographs, letters and lectures by numerous authors which appear in various languages such as English, Hindi and Sanskrit.^[251

Science of Being and Art of Living[edit]

In 1963, the Maharishi audiotaped the text of the book Science of Being and Art of Living, which was later transcribed and published in fifteen languages.^{[97][256][257]} K.T. Weidmann describes the book as the Maharishi’s fundamental philosophical treatise, one in which its author provides an illustration of the ancient Vedic traditions of India in terms that can be easily interpreted and understood by the scientific thinking of the western world.^[10] In the Science of Being, the Maharishi illustrates the concepts of relative existence as the experience of everyday reality through one’s senses, and absolute reality as the origin of being, and the source of all creative intelligence.^[258] The Maharishi describes this absolute reality, or Being, as unchanging, omnipresent, and eternal. He also identifies it with bliss consciousness. The two aspects of reality, the relative and the absolute, are like an ocean with many waves.^[259] The waves represent the relative, and the ocean beneath is the foundation of everything, or Being. Establishing oneself in the field of Being, or unchanging reality, ensures stability.^[259]

In his Science of Being the Maharishi introduced an additional concept: that of fulfillment viewed as something to be obtained not through exertion or self effort, but through the progressive settling of the mind during the practice of TM.^[258][260] This was the first full systematic description of the principles underlying the Maharishi’s teachings.^[261

Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary: 1967[edit]

In his 1967 publication, Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, the Maharishi describes the Bhagavad Gita as “the Scripture of Yoga”. He says that “its purpose is to explain in theory and practice all that is needed to raise the consciousness of man to the highest possible level.”^[262] According to Peter Russell, the Bhagavad-Gita deals with the concept of loss of knowledge and subsequent revival, and this is brought out by the Maharishi himself in the introduction.^[263]In the Preface, the Maharishi writes: “The purpose of this commentary is to restore the fundamental truths of the Bhagavad-Gita and thus restore the significance of its teaching. If this teaching is followed, effectiveness in life will be achieved, men will be fulfilled on all levels and the historical need of the age will be fulfilled also.”^[264]

A second concept, that of freedom, presented as the antithesis of fear, is also prevalent in the book, according to Jack Forem.^[265] Forem states that in his interpretation of the Gita, the Maharishi expressed several times that as man gains greater awareness through the practice of Transcendental Meditation, he gradually establishes a level of contentment which remain increasingly grounded within him and in which the mind does not waver and is not affected by either attachment or fear.^[266]

Characterizations[edit]

The Maharishi was reported to be a vegetarian,^[32] an entrepreneur, a monk and “a spiritual man who sought a world stage from which to espouse the joys of inner happiness”.^[18] He was described as an abstemious man with tremendous energy who took a weekly day of silence while sleeping only two hours per night.^[32] He did not present himself as a guru or claim his teachings as his own. Instead he taught “in the name of his guru Brahmananda Saraswati”^[26] and paid tribute to him by placing a picture of Saraswati behind him when he spoke.^[32] He was on a mission to bring the ancient techniques of TM to the world.^[68] Scientist and futurist Buckminster Fuller spent two days with the Maharishi at a symposium at the University of Massachusetts in 1971 and said, “You could not meet with Maharishi without recognizing instantly his integrity.”^[267] Authors Douglas E. Cowan and David G. Bromley write that the Maharishi did not claim any “special divine revelation nor supernatural personal qualities”.^[268] Still others said he helped to “inspire the anti-materialism of the late 60s” and received good publicity because he “opposed drugs”.^[19][269] According to author Chryssides, “The Maharishi tended to emphasize the positive aspects of humanity, focusing on the good that exists in everyone.”^[270]

According to The Times the Maharishi attracted scepticism because of his involvement with wealthy celebrities, his business acumen, and his love of luxury, including touring in a Rolls-Royce.^[98] A reporter for The Economist calls this a “misconception” saying: “He did not use his money for sinister ends. He neither drank, nor smoked, nor took drugs. … He did not accumulate scores of Rolls-Royces, like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; his biggest self-indulgence was a helicopter. “^[271][272]When some observers questioned how his organisation’s money was being used, the Maharishi said, “It goes to support the centres, it does not go on me. I have nothing.”^[273]

He was often referred to as the “Giggling Guru” because of his habit of laughing during television interviews.^[274][186]Diminutive at a little over five feet tall, the Maharishi often wore a traditional cotton or silk, white dhoti while carrying or wearing flowers.^[1] He often sat cross-legged on a deerskin and had a “grayish-white beard, mustache and long, dark, stringy hair”.^[1][275] Barry Miles described the Maharishi as having “liquid eyes, twinkling but inscrutable with the wisdom from the East”.^[276] Miles said the Maharishi in his seventies looked much younger than his age.^[277] He had a high pitched voice and in the words of Merv Griffin, “a long flowing beard and a distinctive, high pitched laugh that I loved to provoke”.^[143][277]

Biographer Paul Mason’s web site says that Swami Swaroopananda, one of three claimants to the title Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, is “an outspoken critic” of the Maharishi. According to Swaroopananda, the Maharishi “was responsible for the controversy over Shankaracharyas” because he gave Shankaracharya Swami Shantanand encouragement and assistance in fighting the court case which challenged Shantanand’s inheritance of the title.^[278] In a review of the documentary film David Wants to Fly, Variety magazine reported Swaroopananda’s assertion that “as a member of the trader class” the Maharishi “has no right to give mantras or teach meditation”.^[35] According to religious scholar Cynthia Humes, enlightened individuals of any caste may “teach brahmavidya”^[279] and author Patricia Drake writes that “when Guru Dev was about to die he charged Maharishi with teaching laymen … to meditate”.^[280] Mason says Shantanand “publicly commended the practice of the Maharishi’s meditation”^[281] and sociologist J.R. Coplin says that Shantanand’s successor, Swami Vishnudevanand, also “speaks highly of the Maharishi”.^[28][282]

Popular culture[edit]

The British satirical magazine Private Eye ridiculed him as “Veririchi Lotsamoney Yogi Bear”.^[69] The Maharishi was also parodied by comedians Bill Dana and Joey Forman in the 1968 comedy album The Mashuganishi Yogi,^[283] by comedian Mike Myers in the film The Love Guru,^[284] and in the BBC sketch show Goodness Gracious Me.^[285] He was portrayed by actor Gerry Bednob in the 2007 film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. He was also the subject of The Beatles‘ song Sexy Sadie.^[286] In an episode of the popular BBC Radio 4 fictional comedy show Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge a comment is made about Yogi when Partridge is interviewing a spiritual man comparing him to Buddha, Dalai Lama, Uri Gellerand “that man The Beatles went to see…”

Other initiatives, projects and programmes[edit]

Main article: Transcendental Meditation movement

Maharishi International University (renamed Maharishi University of Management (MUM) in 1995), the first university the Maharishi founded, began classes in Santa Barbara, California, in 1973. In 1974 the university moved to Fairfield, Iowa, where it remains today. The university houses a library of the Maharishi’s taped lectures and writings, including the thirty-three-lesson Science of Creative Intelligence course, originally a series of lectures given by the Maharishi in Fiuggi, Italy, in 1972. Described in the MUM university catalogue as combining modern science and Vedic science,^[287] the course also defines certain higher states of consciousness, and gives guidance on how to attain these states.^[288] Though the university claims to grant PhDs, including in neuroscience and psychology, the university is not accredited by either the America Psychological Association (APA)^[289] or the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.^[290]

MCEE School Campus at Bhopal, India

The Maharishi Vidya Mandir Schools (MVMS), an educational system established in sixteen Indian states and affiliated with the New Delhi Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), was founded in 1995 by the Maharishi.^[291] It has 148 branches in 118 cities with 90,000 to 100,000 students and 5,500 teaching and support staff.^[292]

In 1998, Maharishi Open University was founded by the Maharishi. It was accessible via a network of eight satellites broadcasting to every country in the world, and via the Internet.^[293][294]

The Maharishi also introduced theories of management, defence, and government^[288] programmes designed to alleviate poverty, and introduced a new economic development currency called the Raam.^[295] In 2000, the Maharishi began building administrative and teaching centres called “Peace Palaces” around the world, and by 2008 at least eight had been constructed in the US alone.^[296] The Maharishi Institute, an African university that is part of a group of schools around the world that are named after him, was founded in 2007 and uses his Transcendental Meditation technique in their teaching.^[297][298]

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in his farewell message on 11 January 2008, announced the establishment of the Brahmananda Saraswati Trust (BST), named in honour of his teacher, to support large groups totalling more than 30,000 peace-creating Vedic Pandits in perpetuity across India.^[299] The Patron of the Brahmanand Saraswati Trust is the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math.^[191]

Organizations and businesses[edit]

The Maharishi is credited with heading charitable organisations, for-profit businesses, and real estate investments whose total value has been estimated at various times, to range from US$2 to US$5 billion. The real estate alone was valued in 2003 at between $3.6 and $5 billion.^[300] Holdings in the United States, estimated at $250 million in 2008, include dozens of hotels, commercial buildings and undeveloped land.^[296] The Maharishi “amassed a personal fortune that his spokesman told one reporter may exceed $1 billion”.^[301] According to a 2008 article in The Times, the Maharishi “was reported to have an income of six million pounds”.^[98] The Maharishi’s movement is said to be funded through donations, course fees for Transcendental Meditation and various real estate transactions.^[302]

In his biography of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, The Story of the Maharishi (published 1976), William Jefferson suggests that the financial aspect of the TM organisation was one of the greatest controversies it faced. Questions were raised about the Maharishi’s mission, comments from leaders of the movement at that time, and fees and charges the TM organisation levied on followers. Jefferson says that the concerns with money came from journalists more than those who have learned to meditate.^[303]

Published works[edit]

• Beacon Light of the Himalayas, Azad Printers, 1955
• Meditation : easy system propounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi., International Meditation Centre, 1962
• Science of Being and Art of Living – Transcendental Meditation, Allied Publishers, 1963 ISBN 0-452-28266-7
• Love and God, Spiritual Regeneration Movement, 1965
• Yoga asanas, Spiritual Regeneration Movement, 1965
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita – A New Translation and Commentary, Chapters 1–6, Arkana 1990 ISBN 0-14-019247-6
• Meditations of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Bantam books, 1968
• Alliance for knowledge, Maharishi International University, 1974
• Creating an ideal society: a global undertaking, International Association for the Advancement of the Science of Creative Intelligence, 1976
• Results of scientific research on the Transcendental Meditation program, MERU Press, 1976
• Enlightenment to every individual, invincibility to every nation, Age of Enlightenment, 1978 ISBN 99911-608-9-2
• Freedom behind bars: enlightenment to every individual and invincibility to every nation, International Association for the Advancement of the Science of Creative Intelligence, 1978
• Dawn of the age of enlightenment, MVU Press, 1986 ISBN 978-90-71750-02-1
• Life supported by natural law : discovery of the Unified Field of all the laws of nature and the Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field, Age of Enlightenment Press, 1986 ISBN 978-0-89186-051-8
• Thirty years around the world: dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, Maharishi Vedic University, 1986 ISBN 978-90-71750-01-4
• Maharishi’s Programme to create world peace: global inauguration, Age of Enlightenment Press, 1987 ISBN 978-0-89186-052-5
• Maharishi’s master plan to create heaven on earth, Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1991 ISBN 978-90-71750-11-3
• A Proven program for our criminal justice system: Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation and Corrections, Maharishi International University, 1993
• Vedic knowledge for everyone: Maharishi Vedic University, an introduction, Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1994 ISBN 90-71750-17-5
• Maharishi’s Absolute Theory of Government – Automation in Administration, Maharishi Prakshan, 1995 ISBN 81-7523-002-9
• Maharishi University of Management – Wholeness on the Move, Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1995 ISBN 81-7523-001-0
• Constitution of India Fulfilled through Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation, Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1996 ISBN 81-7523-004-5
• Inaugurating Maharishi Vedic University, Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1996 ISBN 978-81-7523-006-4
• Maharishi’s Absolute Theory of Defence – Sovereignty in Invincibility, Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1996 ISBN 81-7523-000-2
• Celebrating Perfection in Education – Dawn of Total Knowledge, Maharishi Vedic University Press, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-013-4
• Maharishi Forum of Natural Law and National Law for Doctors – Perfect Health for Everyone, Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-003-7
• Maharishi Speaks to Educators – Mastery Over Natural Law, Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-008-8
• Maharishi Speaks to Students – Mastery Over Natural Law, Age of Enlightenment Publications, 1997 ISBN 81-7523-012-6
• Celebrating Perfection in Administration, Maharishi Vedic University, 1998 ISBN 81-7523-015-0
• Ideal India – The Lighthouse of Peace on Earth, Maharishi University of Management, 2001 ISBN 90-806005-1-2
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on Bhagavad-Gita – Chapter 7, 2009, Maharishi Foundation International-Maharishi Vedic University, The Netherlands

Discography

• The master speaks, World Pacific Records, 1967

 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi- Obituary

Malise Ruthven

The Guardian, Wed 6 Feb 2008

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, often known simply as “Maharishi” or “The Maharishi,” achieved world renown as the Indian guru who inspired the Beatles and was said to have persuaded them to give up drugs. He has died has died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, and is believed to have been around 90.In the summer of 1967, the year of Flower Power and Sergeant Pepper, he made headlines when the four Beatles, with their wives and girlfriends, as well as Mick Jagger, Jane Asher and Marianne Faithful, followed the whiskered Swami from London to Bangor in Wales to sit very publicly at his feet imbibing his message of universal love and peace. The Beatles announced that they had decided to abandon LSD: “We think we’re finding new ways of getting there.”

Though disillusionment soon set in for everyone except George Harrison – John Lennon’s song Sexy Sadie (“You made a fool of everyone”) is said to refer to Maharishi – the guru’s reputation continued to thrive. A gifted publicist, as well as a charismatic religious teacher of a more traditional kind, he carefully directed his teachings to suit changing fashions in the West. As the era of flower power and psychotropic revelation faded into the hard-nosed commercialism of the Reagan-Thatcher years, Maharishi’s message became more focused.

While he never abandoned his claim to be transforming humanity’s consciousness in the direction of universal harmony and peace (he was happy to claim credit for ending the cold war), he built a highly successful empire out of selling the spiritual techniques practised by yogis and brahmins for millennia to companies as aids to stress management.

With executives who learned to meditate, improving their performance and productivity, large corporations such as IBM and Toyota had no more qualms about sending staff on transcental meditation courses than they had about the development of other personal skills.

Known from his early days in India as the “giggling guru” because of his sparkling eyes and bubbling witticisms, Mahesh succeeded in making TM his personal trademark, netting for his organisation assets that came to be measured in billions.

As is often the case with those who have entered the religious life in India, details about Maharishi’s early life are sketchy. Various dates have been given for his birth (1911, 1917 and 1918), in the central Indian city of Jabalpur, in Madhya Pradesh, though the celebration of his 80th birthday in 1998 made 1918 official for his followers. He was born Mahesh Prasad Varma. His father was a member of the kshatriya, or warrior caste, and worked as a mid-level official in the department of forestry.

After completing his secondary education, Maharishi attended Allahabad University, where he read mathematics and physics. It was here that he began to practise yoga with Swami Brahmananda Saraswati Maharaj (known by his more familiar name of Shri Guru Deva).

In April1941, while Maharishi was still at university, Guru Deva became the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, one of the four main leaders of the Hindu community. Maharishi wanted to abandon his studies to become the new Shankaracharya’s disciple, but Guru Deva demanded that he graduate first. After leaving university, Maharishi spent more than a decade with Guru Deva at his retreat at Uttar Kashi in the Himalayas.

A follower of Sankara, India’s most famous religious teacher, Guru Deva belonged to the Advaita Vedanta tradition of philosophy which teaches that spiritual ignorance or illusion is caused by the superimposition of a false self onto the true self, considered to be ontologically identical with the absolute (brahman). Liberation (moksa) achieved through meditation enables one to distinguish between pure being and worldly phenomena. While true liberation may only be achieved by adepts who follow their masters in a rigorous programme of ascetic disciplines and spiritual techniques, Maharishi realised that some of these techniques could be used to beneficial effect outside the confines of the Advaita Vedanta tradition.

Two years after the death of Guru Deva in 1955, he travelled south to Kerala, where he began to broadcast his message. On January 1 1958, at a conference in Madras, he announced the formation of a world-wide Spiritual Regeneration Movement aimed at the spiritual revival of humanity by spreading the teachings of Transcendental Meditation. Shortly afterwards, Maharishi left India for a round-the-world tour that took him to Burma, Malaya, Hong Kong and Honolulu. He spent most of 1959 in the US, where he worked on a three-year plan to introduce Transcendental Meditation to all the countries of the world. Further world tours followed in 1961 and 1962.

In 1963, he finished his first major book, the Science of Being and Art of Living. He completed his English translation and commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita in 1965.

Although Maharishi’s grandiose claims to be saving the world through Transcendental Meditation and other spiritual techniques such as levitation or “flying” attracted ridicule as well as curiosity, he was shrewdly aware that publicity, however negative, could be used to gain converts and to broaden his base of recruitment. While several scientific papers have been published demonstrating that meditation can relieve stress, and hence improve the quality of an individual’s life, his claims that collective meditation by followers or sidhas can create a “spiritual force field” capable of bringing about such effects as a reduction in crime or a rise in the stock market have been treated much more sceptically.

In 1972, he announced his world plan for reorganising society in such a way as to solve the basic problems of humankind. An umbrella organisation, the World Plan Executive Council, was formed to co-ordinate the various activities of his increasingly complex empire. One of the organisations spawned by his teachings, the Natural Law Party, regularly contests elections in several countries, including Britain. In 1971, he opened the Maharishi International University in Los Angeles; it moved to Fairfield, Iowa, in 1974, where there are now some 300 businesses owned by his disciples, bringing new activity to an economically depressed region. His first European “university” opened in Switzerland in 1975.

While rooted in the discourse of Sankara and his disciples, Maharishi took issue with interpretations of Hinduism that stress renunciation and asceticism over the call to this-worldly action. Far from leading to worldly renunciation, the call to Transcendental Meditation he saw was central to the message of the Bhavagad-Gita represented a “dynamic philosophy” intended to “inspire a disheartened man and strengthen a normal mind … he who practises Transcendental Meditation and becomes acquainted with the inner divine consciousness truly enjoys the greatest fruits of action in the world.”

· Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Indian guru, born around 1918; died February 5 2008

Current status of Maharishi estate.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Rs 60,000 crore fortune faces battle between two groups of followers

Just four years after his death, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Rs 60,000 crore fortune is at the centre of an ugly battle between two groups of followers

Maharishi died in February 2008, leaving behind more than 12,000 acres of land across India.  all vested with the Spiritual Regeneration Movement (SRM) Foundation, set up by the guru in 1959. The guru established several societies with the SRM Foundation and Maharishi Global University based in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh at the top of the list. The other four educational institutions are Maharishi Shiksha Sansthan, Maharishi Ved Vigyan Vidyapeeth, Maharishi Gandharva Ved Vidyapeeth and Mahila Dhyan Vidyapeeth that run 148 schools in 16 states across India.

The maharishi’s global headquarters in Vlodrop, Netherlands.

Maharishi Nagar Colony in Sector 39 of Noida, which the guru’s followers built in the late 1970s, is in a state of neglect.The colony, spread over more than 900 acres, currently houses four buildings, each with more than 800 rooms. Most rooms lie in total neglect. A helipad once used by the guru is now dedicated to grazing cattle. Local real estate agents peg the worth of the land at Rs 15,000 crore. “The global university no longer operates from here.500-odd devotees of the guru stay in the colony, doing odd jobs to run the ashram.A mere four years after his death, the Maharishi’s legacy in India is in tatters.

Maharishi Vedic City: Inside the compound with Rekha Basu

Des Moines Register/March 22, 2014

By Rekha Basu 

The first time most of us learned hundreds of Hindu Indian priests have been living in Iowa for seven years to advance world peace was after up to 80 of them shook, vandalized and threw rocks at a sheriff’s truck. The media called the March 11 incident a riot. The sheriff calls it a “flash mob.” Some might call it the meaning of irony.

The American devotees of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Fairfield, who brought the priests here for stints of two to three years, call the incident an unprecedented blip. A letter writer to this newspaper called them “uncivilized Third World miscreants,” and some people who have parted ways with the meditators associated with the Maharishi University of Management call the Indian priests victims of human trafficking.

Whatever you call what happened, it was an unfortunate introduction to the community of 350 Indian “pandits” and their purpose here.

Curious about what could have provoked purveyors of peace to such disruptive measures, I spent a couple of days last week in Fairfield and nearby Maharishi Vedic City, the municipality where the pandits live — in a large, fenced-in compound out of view. I toured it, talked to leaders of the program, members of the Fairfield community and local, state and federal officials.

Meditation has been practiced by Indian ascetics for centuries, but about 50 years ago, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi coined and popularized transcendental meditation with the help of pop culture icons like the Beatles. In Fairfield, followers created the Maharishi University of Management in 1973 to infuse TM principles into a “consciousness-based education.” The degrees may be in business management, computer science or other areas, but everyone including students, faculty and staff, meditates.

Detractors may dismiss the TM movement as ineffectual or cultish, but my own view as a non-meditator is that if it gives people a way to feel centered without therapy or substances, it can’t hurt. And I’d rather everyone be taught peace and respect for the environment than war and plunder. But Maharishi went further, with the premise that peace could be achieved if the square root of 1 percent of a population practices advanced meditation techniques. So began the Global Country of World Peace, a nonprofit with chapters around the world, and its Pandit Project in Iowa.

“Maharishi saw that America plays a leading part in the fate of people around the world, so we should bring large groups of pandits to America to make sure America stays on the track of world peace,” said Bill Goldstein, dean of Global Country and the legal counsel for the Fairfield university. He launched the program with donated funds — he didn’t reveal the budget — hoping to bring in as many as 1,200 priests for 30-month stays.

The priests are drawn from Maharishi schools and advanced training facilities around India. Some started training as young as age 5. They are here on R-1 visas, issued to religious people. But their ranks have thinned in recent years because of financial limitations, according to Goldstein.

A disaffected former Fairfield TM-er, Gina Catena, who now lives in California, suggests the pandits are being used primarily as a fundraising tool, under threats of global calamity and warfare. In her “TM-Free Blog,” she wrote, “This dream is an eternal carrot-on-a-stick, never to be achieved. After all, the Movement would lose credibility with its followers if 2,000 pandits meditate twice daily, and the world inevitably continues with political travails, natural disasters, environmental carcinogens and economic vicissitudes.”

That part is between the program and its donors. The part that should concern the rest of us is how the pandits live. There is an obvious disconnect between the reverence in which holy men bringing world peace ought to be held, and the way they are actually managed, housed, paid and confined. They live in barracks-style trailers of two, eight and 10-bedrooms apiece, two or more to a room, inside a guarded, fenced-in compound they are supposed to only leave escorted.

They get room and meals plus a mere $200 a month, $150 of which is deposited in Indian bank accounts for their families. Administrators say that was decided by program heads in India. Minimum-wage laws do not apply to people “who serve pursuant to their religious obligations” and are not considered employees, said Iowa Labor Commissioner Michael Mauro, citing the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Immigration law also doesn’t address wages for R-1 visa holders.

The priests have placed makeshift barriers from the cold or sun over their shadeless windows. They have a recreation space, prayer centers and a courtyard where they play cricket. They have no access to the Internet or cellphone communications (they buy prepaid calling cards to phone home) and their TV viewing choices are limited to Indian news programs via satellite in a common area.

They eat Indian vegetarian meals (prepared by eight cooks brought over from India) that are served in a central dining area. Their chapati bread is prepared in mass by a machine that cost $50,000 to import from India. They play cricket in the compound courtyard and decorate their homes with religious Hindu shrines. They celebrate only Indian holidays, including one last week called Holi.

An Indian elder, Bhupendra Dave — called “Uncle-ji,” by the pandits — also trained as a pandit. He handles much of their management and speaks their languages. Goldstein and John Revolinski, the program administrator, say the restrictions are to keep the men pure and prevent outside influences from seeping in.

“They’ve chosen the cloistered lifestyle. The inner freedom they get from the experience is more significant,” said Goldstein.

But if they’ve chosen it, why does it have to be enforced on them? And how realistic or healthy is it to transplant a population from one country to another, yet insulate them from all its influences? A former security guard at the pandit compound, who asked not to be named, put it this way, “Bringing people from a Third World country and isolating them — that’s not the American way.”

Calling them “really sweet guys,” he said, “These are regular human beings told they’re a god on Earth, and they have to control their passions, ego and temperament.” Though the pandits were not supposed to have contact with guards, he said, some would try to pay him to get them alcohol and tobacco. He suggests the real reason they are segregated from the outside is that people “would find out they’re just regular people.”

“It’s not quite fair for us to judge and project our values on the lifestyles they should have,” said Goldstein. “The facility is self sufficient.” But if they were truly contented, why would more than 160 of them, by Goldstein’s admission, have left and gone AWOL? And why would one of them tell a newspaper reporter he thought they should get more money?

Goldstein’s response: “Some individuals out there may be filling them with these ideas, ‘Come here and we can make you rich,’ by paying them under the table.”

But how would such people communicate with the pandits, who can’t receive calls or emails or visitors? “Maybe they go for a walk,” he said, then suggested maybe there is no prior communication, but such people find the pandits when they flee into Chicago instead of catching their return flights to India. “Increasingly, we’re seeing them coming back, so maybe this is coming to an end,” Goldstein said. “Every week or two, a bunch come back.” He said they are then sent back to India.

That still doesn’t explain the apparent disaffection. Goldstein said this didn’t used to happen in the first six years. He pointed out that half of those who have come once opt to return for a new two- to three-year term. “In the past, some would just walk off campus,” he said. “Now they are saying they need to go home because, ‘My mommy had a heart attack.’ ”

Goldstein tells immigration officials when the men go missing that they are not authorized to work other jobs. But Shawn Neudauer of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in this region, said if the men are breaking the terms of their visas, that’s an issue for the State Department, which issues those. Generally, only if foreign nationals who are here legally commit serious crimes are they are subject to detention and deportation proceedings.

Why aren’t the pandits allowed out, I asked Goldstein. “They’re not coming here to be tourists, to see New York or socialize,” was his reply. If they need something, “they tell us and we will take care of it. We have a medical facility.”

“It is a form of confinement,” he acknowledged when pressed. “It is a form of taking away their freedom, and you balance that. Maybe in America, that’s the pre-eminent issue. For the pandits, my experience is that’s not so important. They want to be with their brothers.”

That seems ironic in light of what led to the recent uprising. The program’s administrators were returning one of the men, who was popular with his peers, to India without telling them. Instead, the sheriff was asked to be there in case of a disturbance. That conveys a dismaying level of distrust.

The man was being sent back for what Goldstein called “administrative improprieties,” but he wouldn’t elaborate. John Revolinski, the administrator of the Pandit Program, says information is disbursed to pandits “purely on a need to know basis,” but both he and Goldstein have conceded they would do things differently in the future. He said the departing pandit was returned to campus and a group meeting was held, after which the man and six others were voluntarily sent back to India. More will be leaving in the coming days.

No one was charged in the incident because Jefferson County Sheriff Greg Morton said his car camera wasn’t on and he couldn’t identify the offenders. Though nothing like this has happened before, Morton said he gets calls from local farmers about pandits leaving the compound and “trying to get into people’s houses.”

“I’ve had some (farmers) tell me they’ll take care of business. I’m just afraid somebody’s going to get hurt because of misinterpretation.”

What happened March 11 has generated talk and speculation around town — and calls for greater transparency. Freddy Fonseca, a Fairfield resident and meditator, likes the Pandit Program, and believes no one is getting rich off the donations. But he decries the secrecy surrounding how people’s donated money is spent, or “why someone is being sent back or why they can’t come and go freely.”

A university professor in Fairfield, who asked not to be named, called for an independent review, saying, “It’s easy for administrators to become invested in their projects and lose sight of issues which may be obvious to outsiders.”

Fairfield Mayor Ed Malloy, a donor to the Pandit Project, says he understands the need to keep pandits away from outside influences. As for pay, he said the university has a similar model for its staff, who get room, board, benefits and a stipend, but forgo more money for the larger cause. But he too wants more transparency.

The administrators allowed me to interview four mostly older pandits they selected, none of whom were involved in the uprising. All, speaking in Hindi, said they are happy to contribute to world peace, content with the living conditions, and had agreed to the wages beforehand.

It’s not the purpose of this column to question the Maharishi philosophy. The university and meditator community have done wonderful things to revitalize the community and spearhead sustainable development. To call what I saw “human trafficking” would probably also overstate the case; it doesn’t appear pandits were duped or coerced to come. But while they are presented as enlightened holy men, they are micromanaged in a compound that looks and feels unacceptably like a detention center.

I’m unswayed by arguments that their housing in India is modest. They should be housed according to American standards. Also disturbing are the paternalistic attitudes that leave them beholden to the sponsor, who holds their passports as if they’re children rather than adults. Once here, it’s natural for them to want to explore, so they should be given guidance on how to stay safe. And if they look around and figure out they’re underpaid and kept in inferior housing, well — that’s the risk the program has to take.

Bottom line: If the program continues, it needs revamping, and much greater external oversight.

Ivanka Trump’s Gurus Say Their Techniques Can End War and Make You Fly

Celebs from Katy Perry to Ivanka say Transcendental Meditation helps them focus. The movement’s chief promises more: quasi-magical powers and the ability to steer world events.

The Daily Beast/October 13, 2018

By Justin Rohrlich

When the David Lynch Foundation held a gala for Transcendental Meditation at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., last year, it drew a star-studded crowd. Comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Margaret Cho were there. So was the singer Kesha, as well as White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who had recently published a self-help book that included a section extolling TM’s benefits.

It was a pleasant, 77-degree June evening in the District. The guests wore cocktail attire, and the event was set up almost like a Hollywood premiere, with pre-show celebrity interviews on a red carpet. That’s where Kesha asked for a hug from Seinfeld, who brusquely refused her request while cameras were rolling (she later got one from Bob Dylan). Seinfeld laughed with Jay Leno for the cameras; Hugh Jackman, who co-hosted the event with Katie Couric, posed with real estate developer Jeffrey Abramson and his wife Rona. Jay Leno, Ben Folds, singer Angelique Kidjo, classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, and Seinfeld, Cho, and Kesha performed for the assembled luminaries.

The event was yet another sign that TM, with its lengthy (and growing) client roster of the rich and famous, had cemented a place among America’s cultural elites. Although independent estimates vary, TM officials claim that roughly 10 million people have learned the technique, which is meant to control anxiety, reduce stress, and increase their overall well-being.

“Transcendental meditation is a practice I picked up several years ago and I couldn’t do half of what I do in a day without it,” Ivanka Trump wrote in her book. “Twenty minutes is ideal for calming the mind, eliminating distractions, and boosting my productivity.”

The fundraiser promised to provide TM instruction so that underprivileged kids, military veterans, and trauma survivors could avail themselves of its benefits.

“We’ll be offering this to anyone and everyone who thinks they need some help,” longtime TM organization leader and David Lynch Foundation CEO Bob Roth told the Washington Post at the time.

Ten days or so after the Kennedy Center gala, Roth headed off to another, less-publicized TM event, which took place in a conference room at the Fairmont Hotel in Kiev, Ukraine: a “global peace summit” led by one-time presidential candidate John Hagelin, a Harvard-educated quantum physicist who serves as president of the Maharishi University of Management, TM’s fully accredited university in Fairfield, Iowa.

Hagelin’s speech focused not on TM’s benefit to the individual but on the spillover effect that TMers’ meditation supposedly has on others. Hagelin claimed the combined brain activity produced during regular group practice of TM radiates out to people who are not meditating or even aware that others are; these invisible waves bring instant peace and harmony to society at large. This, he explained, is the “Maharishi Effect.”

According to Hagelin, all it takes to achieve the Maharishi Effect and its commensurate reductions in everything from homicides to car accidents is for a group of people equivalent to one percent of the population of a city, state, or country to practice the basic TM technique at once.

Materials from the Kiev summit claim that “a day-by-day study of a two-month assembly in Israel in 1983 showed that, on days when the number of participants was high, war deaths in neighboring Lebanon dropped by 76%… In addition, crime, traffic accidents, fires, and other indicators of social stress in Israel (combined into a Composite Index) all correlated strongly with changes in TM group size.”

When retired German Air Force Colonel and TM’s “Global Country of World Peace Deputy Defense Minister” Gunter Chassé got up to speak in Kiev, he issued a call for specially trained TM units within the world’s armed forces.

“With such an alternative complementary force, every military will be able to achieve a strategic advantage by preventing the outbreak of hostilities and achieving victory before war,” Chassé claimed.

When you sit to do TM, “you’re not praying for peace,” Bob Roth told The Daily Beast. “You’re not even thinking about peace. You’re just settling down to your inner silence, but it radiates out because we’re all connected.”

The Maharishi Effect is applicable to just about anything one can dream up, as the Kiev conferees made clear. John Fagan, a Cornell-educated molecular biologist who staunchly advocates against genetically engineered crops and serves as the dean of Maharishi University’s College of Sustainability, gave a presentation in which he claimed that “[T]he rapid reversal of the U.S. food system from broad acceptance to widespread rejection of GMO foods correlates with a sharp increase in coherence in U.S. collective consciousness, when a large permanent group of TM practitioners was assembled in Iowa, USA.”

Those higher-level meditators—known as practitioners of the “TM-Sidhis”—have even more incredible abilities. They include the practice of “yogic flying,” during which meditators attempt to levitate while sitting in the lotus position.

Says Maharishi University’s Brain Research Institute, “[O]ver the last 25 years, the practice of Yogic Flying has been scientifically documented to enhance the quality of life for the individual and society.”

“What happens with yogic flying is, the mind basically tells the body, ‘I want you to fly.’ It’s training the mind to do mind over matter, because anything a human wants is through desire,” Asher Fergusson, Maharishi University’s 2008 valedictorian, told The Daily Beast.

“You may have people looking at people doing yogic flying and say, ‘That’s strange,’” Roth added. “I happen to think seeing people playing football, or boxing and beating each other up, is strange.”

It couldn’t be more different from the TM introduced to most casual meditators. But it shows there are essentially two TM movements: a “retail” version for the general public with an anodyne message about ridding yourself of stress, and another, more spiritually oriented movement for a small but devoted cadre of true believers—a virtually unknown “secret society” of sorts—that promises to unlock supernatural abilities and provide all manner of magical outcomes, some of which can allegedly be attained by paying teams of Indian monks thousands of dollars to chant for you half a world away.

TM is also a behemoth of a business. When the founder of TM died, he left an estate valued at $3 billion. TM has its own set of scientists, viewed with skepticism by the mainstream scientific community; its own universities and lavish properties around the world; and dubious claims to world government.

It all may seem to defy logic, science, or both. But as Roth said, “Consciousness, at the deepest level, can influence other people. And that’s not some kind of magical woo-woo stuff, that’s from the concept of underlying interconnected consciousness.”

TM as we know it was founded in 1955 by the Maharishi (meaning “great seer”) Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma. Later the guru to the Beatles—Maharishi was the subject of their bitter song “Sexy Sadie” after the supposedly celibate monk allegedly tried to seduce a member of their entourage—TM was originally part of the 1960s spiritual counterculture.

It was the Beatles who are said to have first sparked a collective interest in TM among the general public. (Legendary record producer Rick Rubin has said he got into TM because he “wanted to learn anything the Beatles were involved in.”) In 1975, Maharishi appeared on the highly rated Merv Griffin Show with Clint Eastwood. Eastwood had recently gotten into TM, and Griffin, who was a tennis partner of his, asked him about it. Intrigued, Griffin invited Maharishi to be a guest on his program. Many longtime TM insiders point to this as a tipping point for TM’s wider popularity among the celebrity set.

But as the New Age got going in the late 1970s, TM lost some of its luster, with the Maharishi promising ever more outlandish benefits—the flying, for instance—as alternative spiritual paths opened up for Americans. Finally, as meditation began gaining mainstream acceptance in the 1990s and 2000s, TM rebranded itself again, from spiritual technique to gain enlightenment to a secular relaxation technique. That is how it is often understood today.

On the surface, TM is not unlike other forms of meditation. Practitioners are taught to repeat a “secret” mantra, normally a few syllables, for 20 minutes twice a day, in order to feel less stressed and more focused. Jerry Seinfeld has pointed to TM as a catalyst for creativity. Russell Simmons has compared the effects of TM to magic.

“Transcendental Meditation has been one of the main tools for me to stay focused both at home and on the road,” Katy Perry, a TM devotee who learned the technique from Roth in 2011, told The Daily Beast. “It’s been my greatest joy to share my practice with my touring crew as well, and a highlight of my day to join them in a group meditation before every show.”

Twin Peaks director David Lynch claims he hasn’t missed a single session in more than four decades. In 2002, he took an “enlightenment course” with Maharishi in the Netherlands, for which he reportedly paid $1 million. Lynch came back to the U.S. with a new focus on spreading the word about TM, and established his foundation with Roth a few years later.

Roth got into TM while he was a student at Berkeley and became a TM “initiator” (initiators are now known simply as “teachers”) after studying with the Maharishi in Spain for six months. Today, Roth is perhaps the best-known public facing TM representative in the world; he’s the one who introduced it to Seinfeld, Tom Hanks, Sting, Oprah, Perry—and Ivanka and Jared. He also has, famously, given TM seminars to Google and Apple employees, spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival, hosted a show about TM on SiriusXM Radio, and wrote a best-selling book on TM, Strength in Stillness, which was published this year.

Roth lives in New York but travels constantly. When he’s in town, Roth works out of the David Lynch Foundation’s midtown offices near the United Nations. The Foundation, which was established in 2005 “to ensure that any child in America who wants to learn and practice the Transcendental Meditation program can do so,” also has offices in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and on the campus of the Maharishi University of Management.

The New York space is, unsurprisingly, spare and zen-like, which Roth said was only partly intentional.

“Someone said, ‘I like your decision not to have art on the walls.’ I said, ‘We ran out of money,’” Roth laughed.

Roth is surprisingly accessible, extremely accommodating, and checks in often to ask how things are going. Although his hair is gray, he appears 10 years younger than his actual age of 67. Roth is slim, polished and extremely well put-together; he looks like he could have been an ad agency creative director in another life. He makes mention of the fact that he’s Jewish more than once over the course of multiple conversations.

Normally, Roth evangelizes only about the workaday benefits of TM, which are not unlike those of other forms of meditation: stress reduction, emotional wellness, and the like. But in a series of exclusive interviews with The Daily Beast, Roth doubled down on TM’s most extraordinary claims—including the Maharishi Effect.

According to Roth, the purported effect occurs because of a shift in the quantum mechanical properties that make up the invisible fabric of our interconnected consciousness. Like “lighting the filament within a bulb [which] then spreads and lights up the room,” TM’s personal benefit subsequently radiates out to others “because we are all connected,” Roth explained. “It doesn’t spread magically, none of this is magic. It may be laws of nature that we don’t fully understand, but the effect would be there.”

In addition to the reported successes discussed in Kiev, TM claims that a two-year assembly of yogic flyers practicing the advanced Sidhis “created a history-transforming wave of peace around the world,” during which time the Cold War ended, as did the war between Iran and Iraq. Increased business activity and positive stock market swings have been attributed to the Maharishi Effect, as have rises in employment and entrepreneurship.

The organization also takes credit for ending Mozambique’s civil war in the early 1990s, having set up an “international peacekeeping group” of advanced yogic flyers in India. Knock-on effects in Mozambique created by the group practicing roughly 4,000 miles away included a 12.4 percent economic growth rate, inflation that fell from 70 percent to 2 percent, and a zeroing out of the national debt, they said.

The “deeper levels of reality present a very different picture in which things are much more profoundly correlated with each other, and the sort of correlations that exist at the quantum level don’t depend on distance,” chief TM scientist Hagelin told The Daily Beast. “Once a correlation is established, the influence of any correlation that might exist between two people doesn’t depend upon whether the person gets on a plane and wakes up in Hong Kong, if there’s a correlation, if there’s a bond, that bond is really independent of distance.”

Roth, for his part, admitted that the Maharishi Effect sounds pretty outrageous by current scientific standards. Then again, he argued, so did lots of things in their day.

“Is that any more unrealistic than if you had said 200 years ago, ‘I’m going to describe this little 2-inch-by-4 inch-by-1/2-inch device that you can hold in your hand and you can talk on that to somebody 2,000 miles away?’ They’d think that you were crazy,” he continued. “That’s the electromagnetic field, which no one saw 200 or 300 years ago. Didn’t mean it didn’t exist, it just meant that people hadn’t seen it, they hadn’t identified it, they hadn’t located it.”

Said Hagelin: “The paradigm in which at least some of us are living, which is the quantum mechanical paradigm, quantum field theory, unified field theory, things like this make sense.”

Hagelin says that while he welcomes “lively debate,” the reality of the effect is something that has been, I would say sincerely, incontrovertibly shown;” Roth cites “hundreds” of scientific studies as proof of TM’s efficacy.

“You’ve got the yoga sutras of Patanjali, you’ve got the texts of Ayurveda that go back thousands of years, you have the texts of Vedic architecture, these go back thousands of years,” Roth said. “All Maharishi has done is bring it out today, give voice to it today. It’s not his meditations, it’s him giving these ideas voice today. Like, Einstein brings out the theory of relativity. It’s not Einstein’s relativity, it’s his giving voice to it.”

However, many in the broader scientific community take a slightly more skeptical point of view.

David Vago, a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist who studies the effects of meditation, pointed out that all of the Maharishi Effect studies are basically correlation without causation.  “As much as I’d like to believe that crime rates will reduce in a causal response to group meditation increases, I have a hard time buying this kind of correlational research,” Vago told The Daily Beast.

Clinicaltrials.gov, which tracks accredited clinical research studies, found 910 studies of mindfulness currently underway, but only 14 studies of TM—half of which began before 2002. While TM officials often note that the National Institute of Health has funded research in TM to the tune of $24 million, that funding ended in 2010.

In 2014, an independent meta-analysis of meditation research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association for Internal Medicine found “insufficient evidence that mantra meditation programs [such as TM] had an effect on any of the psychological stress and well-being outcomes we examined.” An earlier review of TM data by the NIH also found insufficient evidence that TM lowered blood pressure as claimed.

Other assertions have been fact-checked to TM’s detriment. The organization’s American home base of Fairfield, Iowa has a population of roughly 10,000 residents. In 1993, reporter Scott Shane inquired about the crime rate in the area, figuring that crime must be virtually non-existent what with all the advanced meditating going there on all the time. “Crime here is about the same as any small town in rural America,” Fairfield police chief Randy Cooksey told Shane. In fact, Cooksey said, “I’d say there’s been a steady increase. I think, based on my statistics in Fairfield, I can show they have no impact on crime here.”

In 1994, Hagelin was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Prize, a satirical honor that recognizes the silliest scientific studies of the year, for his D.C. experiment using yogic flyers to lower the crime rate. Other “winners” included W. Brian Sweeney and three of his colleagues, who took the Ig Nobel for Biology for their study, “The Constipated Serviceman: Prevalence Among Deployed US Troops.”

Dennis Roark, the former chairman of the physics department at Maharishi University has described TM’s research as “crackpot science.” Roark said he resigned his position after being told to link TM’s effects to legitimate physics—a notion he described as “preposterous.”

“Although there is substantial work in the physics of quantum mechanics giving to consciousness an essential role, even a causal role, there is no evidence or argument that could connect some sort of universal consciousness to be subjectively experienced with a unified field of all physics,” Roark wrote. “In fact, the existing scientific work suggests just the opposite.”

“The style of research they use is what I call ‘painting the bullseye around the arrow,’” says ex-TMer Patrick Ryan, who attended Maharishi International University, the progenitor to MUM, against his Navy master chief father’s advice, and spent 10 years in the movement as a “spiritual warrior” before quitting in the 1980s. “If a bunch of TM meditators get together and the stock market goes up, TM made it happen. If there’s another course and crime rates go down, or if accidents go down, TM created that. Find a positive thing that’s happened and take credit for it.”

The TM organization has issued forceful rebuttals of its own to various studies debunking the science, and dismisses outright the idea that mindfulness is as effective as TM.

To the naysayers, Roth fires back: “Who are they? Who are these people? What are their scientific credentials? I’m also saying, I don’t want to stand on this alone. If a person is not convinced by the research, then help us raise the money to do a bigger study.”

It costs $960 to take an introductory TM course, if you’re paying full price. Payment is due when you arrive for your first class; the cost can be spread out over four months. Students learn the technique over the course of four days, beginning with a one-on-one session that typically lasts 1-2 hours, followed by three group sessions which are 60-90 minutes in length.

Roth says the price is set at that level because TM has an organization to run and maintain, and that TM teachers need to get paid. Students can also come back for lifetime follow-ups and refresher courses at no additional cost, he said. Roth would like to continue bringing TM to any inner-city school that will have him, veterans’ organizations, homeless shelters, war-torn areas and so forth, all of which costs money.

Besides, said Roth, it’s cheaper than therapy.

“I had this one psychiatrist friend who was a meditator; he said $960 is a lot,” Roth recalled. “I said, ‘How much do you charge a client?’ He said, ‘Well, I charge $520 for 50 minutes.’ If he does 10 hours, that’s $5,200. And we do far more than that.”

However, TM is a proprietary technique that can eventually cost a considerable amount of money and people have to pay and pay to reach more and more advanced levels on the supposed road to enlightenment, argues Aryeh Siegel, a former TM instructor and author of Transcendental Deception: Behind the TM Curtain. Siegel, who worked at TM’s California headquarters in the mid-1970s and spent months with Maharishi, says some people get trapped in a never-ending cycle of chasing a goal that’s always just slightly out of reach.

“They’re looking for that 5 percent of people who will always believe they are this close to enlightenment, and they’ll pay for that one more class, one more advanced course,” Siegel told The Daily Beast.

“It has been reported that for $1 million, you can become a TM ‘raja’ with spiritual dominion over a country and designation as a representative of Divine Intelligence.”
According to Siegel, new meditators are encouraged to come back for “checking” following their initial TM instruction. These are essentially sales opportunities in disguise. Invitations to weekend TM courses featuring more frequent and longer meditation periods follow. The ones who respond are sold residential courses and advanced TM techniques, followed by teacher training which can cost as much as $20,000. TM’s nonprofit status adds another financial dimension to things.

“Donations are strongly encouraged all the time,” Siegel said.

Devoted TMers can get caught up in a spiritual “keeping-up-with-the-Joneses,” and taking more courses, adding more advanced spiritual titles, and wearing special “Jyotish gems” serves to elevate one’s status within the organization, explained Gina Catena, a former TMer who grew up in a high-ranking TM family, married within the movement (twice), and finally left in 1988.

“It is our present karmic situation that will determine our preferences and choices,” Fairfield jeweler Planetary Gems tells prospective customers. Stones are “set on the appropriate day,” and a Vedic ceremony is performed “prior setting the stone for additional appeasing of that particular planet.”

It costs $4,000 to learn the TM-Sidhis—the advanced TM program featuring yogic flying—over the course of four months, which includes two weeks in-residence, according to Roth. This cost, he said, can be brought down with scholarships “so anyone who wants to learn can do so.”

Tuition at Maharishi University does not include the TM-Sidhis, a course that is worth four academic credits and is “taught by the Maharishi Foundation in coordination with MUM through a contractual agreement.”

“The David Lynch Foundation has announced a scholarship to reduce the cost of the course from $2,500 to $1,250 for Maharishi University of Management students,” the current student bulletin says. “An additional scholarship of $750, reducing the tuition to $500, is also available to students who meet specific criteria specified by the Maharishi Foundation. There is an additional cost of $950 for the final two weeks in residence.”

But GoFundMe campaigns for people seeking funds to take an advanced TM course appear to indicate the available financial aid packages may not always go far enough.

In one, four MUM students fell about $1,500 short of their goal for Sidhis course tuition; they said the David Lynch Foundation was providing scholarships of $750 per student who committed to a year’s worth of advanced practice.

Another GoFundMe campaigner was looking for $2,700 to cover the airfare to New Zealand, where two recent MUM graduates wanted to participate in TM’s six-month “Mother Divine” program, where members stay celibate for the duration and meditate for many hours at a time.

One TM teacher-to-be sought $27,000 to bring TM to Afghanistan: $12,000 to get certified through the TM Teacher’s Course (already subsidized to a certain extent, it would appear), then $15,000 to get there and start teaching. Before going, the fundraiser told potential donors, “we would like to employ a year’s worth of peace-creating yagyas to soften the atmosphere so that it will be easier to bring TM.”

Mike Doughney practiced TM for about a decade before becoming disenchanted with much of what he was seeing.

“If it was just mindfulness and meditation, where you go in and get instructed and go home, that would be one thing,” Doughney, a contributor to the TM-Free blog, told The Daily Beast. “This actually sets up a devotional thing, [where] over time they want a number of people to give up all their time and money and sustain their operations.”

“I easily laid down close to $100,000 back in the day,” former TM practitioner John Knapp told The Daily Beast, “but it was always very incremental. You don’t even notice it as you’re going.” (Knapp formally left the organization in 2010.)

From there, prices can get even higher. It has been reported that for $1 million, you can become a TM “raja” (literally, “king”) with spiritual dominion over a country and designation as a representative of Divine Intelligence.

Tony Nader became a raja in 2000 and took the name “Maharaja Adhiraj Rajaraam.”

The $1 million price to become a raja was revealed by filmmaker David Sieveking in his 2010 documentary on TM, David Wants to Fly. Other ex-TMers who speak about the million-dollar price tag tend to refer to the film as the source of their information; Catena has “a distinct memory of my mother’s excited conversation about what was then nicknamed ‘The Millionaire’s Course,’ or the ‘Enlightenment Course.’ She phoned me excited for the guarantee to finally reach full enlightenment. She said that Maharishi claimed with a certain number of fully enlightened people, then we would finally achieve world peace.”

But Roth said rajas are in fact “administrators,” not kings, and that “Maharishi used the word to honor the ancient tradition of people looking out for the welfare of others.” He also denied that it costs a million dollars to become one, the idea of which, Roth conceded, sounds “like, bizarroville.”

“Once a year, max, in a ceremonial situation like a college president wears a cap and gown, they wear this garb which is sort of acknowledging ancient times, way, way, way back when,” Roth explained.

He said he likens it “to being on the board of trustees of a university. You either apply or are recommended. But there is no rigid financial requirement other than the ability to cover your own costs. How much you give or spend is a personal consideration.”

“Some people donated money because they’re very wealthy and some of that money went to bringing TM to school programs around the world,” Roth said. “Rajas are often people who are retired, who want to contribute, make a difference on a larger level. They could have retired to Florida or the Hamptons, but they’re taking their retirement and looking at the world today and saying, ‘Well, I’m not going to just turn this over to Congress or a corrupt government in some country’—they’re contributing their share.”

The relentless focus on money is one of the main reasons Southern California meditation teacher Lorin Roche left TM in 1975.

“The whole focus of TM in the United States became to get all the teachers and all the half-million or more people who had learned TM, to go take expensive advanced courses and learn to levitate,” Roche wrote on his personal blog. “Soon there were tens of thousands of Siddhas trying, but failing, to levitate, all across the United States and around the world.”

Roche “benefited from TM tremendously, but it was a different organization when I was there,” he told The Daily Beast. “Once it became worth a billion dollars, it just changed.”

One billion may be a low estimate. According to The Economist, the Maharishi’s land holdings alone were worth $3 billion in 1998. A 2012 investigation by India Today estimated Maharishi’s real estate assets at the time of his death 10 years later to be worth Rs 60,000 crore—roughly $9 billion.

Although private donations have dwindled in recent years, from $31.6 million in 2008 to $1.5 million in 2015, there still seems to be plenty of money around, and there are dozens of separate but related TM organizations across the globe. The Daily Beast’s detailed review of TM-related financial documentation revealed a byzantine tangle of non- and for-profit corporations, global land holdings, and hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe more—flowing each year through the various entities that make up TM.

One of the most expensive programs in all of TM, according to their most recent tax filings, is the so-called “pandit program,” which gathers hundreds of young Indian men in trailer homes on a special campus in Iowa to chant yagyas—Hindu rites—nonstop for two years at a stretch in an effort to bring about peace on earth.

The program began in 2007, and reactions among locals were mixed. Residents reported being approached by pandits on rural roads, asking for money and begging not to be sent back to the compound. In 2014, a mini-riot by some 60 pandits resulted in a sheriff’s deputy allegedly being attacked by members of the group.

Bob Roth said the domestic pandit program has now been all but shut down, maintaining that they have “like, four” pandits left in Iowa. According to its most recent tax filings, the TM affiliate which fundraises for pandit expenses reported spending $2,164,960 on pandit support in Iowa in 2016. However, the cost of fully implementing the pandit program’s Global Peace Initiative, according to the organization, is $45.5 million a year.

If you want a team of pandits to chant for you personally, the costs of which vary “depending on the size of the desired effect and the magnitude of the problem being averted or defused—for example a natural disaster, violent outbreak, or severe economic downturn,” that’s also available.

For a minimum donation of $1,500, you can get wedding anniversary prayers from a team of pandits. For $1,000, the pandits will chant for your newborn child. And for $1,250, the pandits will recite the necessary prayers to “resolve the pressing problems confronting the United States, including joblessness and economic recession, and government gridlock, obstructionism, and extreme partisan infighting.”

“For $1,250, the pandits will recite the necessary prayers to ‘resolve the pressing problems confronting the United States, including joblessness and economic recession, and government gridlock, obstructionism, and extreme partisan infighting.’”
Most people who simply do the meditation part of TM “aren’t going to be interested” in paying for this, said Mike Doughney, “but if you get to a point in your life where things aren’t so great, they can offer these services to you as if you were going to an astrologer, hand them thousands of dollars, and they say. ‘You’ll feel better afterwards.’ TM units and affiliates offer products and services in an astonishing array of offerings.

There are treatments which filter light through precious gems which claim the “Information carried by the light shining through the orderly structure of gemstones awakens the body’s own internal self-repair mechanisms.” The cost for a Maharishi Light Technology With GemsSM (nearly everything TM offers, including TM itself, is trademarked in some way) at The Raj, a TM-affiliated hotel in Fairfield, IA: $120 for a “regular beamer session;” $250 for an “amplified” one; The Raj recommends guests undergo three treatments during a one-week stay.

If you’ve got $1,900, you can get 30 weeks of organic vegetables delivered from Fairfield, where they have undergone the “ancient practice of sounds administered live by Vedic Pandits trained in India to nourish the plants during the 8-stages of their growth from seed to seed.”

“I noticed right away that my awareness felt clearer during meals, rather than the feeling that energy was being taken away by the digestive process,” one satisfied customer is quoted as saying on the Maharishi World Peace Vedic Organics website. “Most importantly, after the first week, areas of chronic irritation in my colon felt eased.”

There are TM-based architectural services, which provide “fortune-creating” homes; so-called “Maharishi Vedic Vibration Technology” which is billed as a method “for enlivening the body’s inner intelligence;” even a TM currency called the Raam. TM has its own television network, radio station, economic and industrial policy which promises “maximum creativity and productivity without hard work.”

It may seem like TM has a solution ready for all of life’s ills, but TM can’t solve everything, said Dr. Scott Terry, an Iowa psychotherapist and Maharishi University graduate who runs the suicide prevention group Fairfield Cares.

“Just because you’re meditating doesn’t mean the issue goes away,” Terry told The Daily Beast. “It means the secondary stressors will dissolve a bit, but [if you’re bipolar] you’re still going to be bipolar.”

Last year’s Kiev summit was “so fantastic,” said John Hagelin, he’d like to do it again next spring—at UN headquarters in New York, where they can “showcase all these solutions to a decision-making body that could, in principle, act on that on a global level.”

“People have varying degrees of openness to what consciousness can accomplish,” said Hagelin. “But if you think about it, consciousness accomplishes everything. Thinking people, if they stop for a moment, will be open, or can be persuaded, that there’s something very important that we’re potentially overlooking here.”

Roth plans to continue what he’s been doing, which is to spread the TM gospel far and wide. He’s excited about the new work he’s doing with professional sports teams and Olympic athletes, but says he doesn’t have an advertising budget beyond some small expenditures on Google. He probably doesn’t need one. Much as Clint Eastwood turned Merv Griffin on to TM, word-of-mouth has always been TM’s best marketing plan, anyway. And practitioners, famous and not, continue to rave about the benefits of TM: stress reduction, increased creativity, and overall relaxation in life.

On a more existential level, Roth believes it would be nothing short of foolhardy if society didn’t give the Maharishi Effect a chance.

“What are we going to do in the Middle East? It’s getting worse and worse and worse,” he said. “In Afghanistan we’ve tried nation-building, we’ve tried bombing, we’ve tried economic embargoes. Nothing is working. So this is being offered as something completely out-of-the-box, just like meditation for the individual was 50 years ago.”

Roth continued: “We want to establish universities, to bring it to schools, to establish groups almost like it’s their profession. Like the UN has peacekeeping forces that go in with their tanks and weapons and keep the peace, we would like to have a profession of professional peace creators. They can be students, they can be homeless, they can be anybody who gets trained in these techniques and they do them, quietly, in a group.”

One former TM instructor who asked to remain anonymous doesn’t see anyone taking Roth & Co. up on the offer. In fact, he doesn’t even see TM existing for much longer in its present form. One big hurdle, the former instructor said, is the lack of an appropriately Maharishi-like leader capable of truly assuming the lead role.

“With Maharishi dead, and Google able to clue people into the other side of the TM movement, I believe the movement is in a death spiral,” they said. “It will die with the aging baby boomers that made up the bulk of the movement.”

A 2015 New York Times article suggested that current TM leader Tony Nader “lacks the cult-like devotion associated with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.”

To that end, Mike Doughney doesn’t think TM can last in its current form, nor does Gina Catena, who says the organization is “slowly dying.”

Or, maybe not.

Says Aryeh Siegel, “These people are insane, but at the same time, they’re raising hundreds of millions of dollars on this stuff. So maybe the rest of us are insane.”

https://tmfree.blogspot.com/

Regardless of what TM teachers are trained to say, there is some belief inherent to the process, as there is when anyone buys a product that they think will help them somehow. When a TM teacher says that what they’re offering is the product of an “oral tradition” from “ancient meditation texts” that goes back “thousands of years,” it follows that anyone who accepts those claims as legitimate believes that they’re coming in contact with something that’s much bigger than themselves, not some trivial thing invented recently by an opportunistic businessman. All of those somewhat inflated, self-aggrandizing characterizations, in and of themselves, lie in the realm of philosophy and belief, of a “worldview” in which a particular method of meditation is a precious and unique facet of “ancient” “tradition,” with all the weight those words convey. Once the words “world peace” are associated with TM, as they are in the name of David Lynch’s organization, it’s clear it’s not just a worldview, but it can be an all-encompassing, global cause, a “World Plan,” as it was once called, to bring about transformative change to the rest of the planet, by way of an “effortless” mental technique. The barrier to entry to join this cause is quite low, all one needs to do is pay a fee and go through the process, what used to be called an “initiation,” to learn the technique.

Never mind, of course, that if that dead man were alive today, he might object to what his onetime ashram secretary has gone on to do. Devotion to Brahmananda Saraswati, who they call “Guru Dev,” is expressed all throughout the TM subculture with the phrase, “Jai Guru Dev.” While that phrase can be translated as “Hail Great Teacher,” it’s generally understood to refer to that particular individual.

While longtime meditators express devotion to Maharishi, the focus on “Guru Dev” as an almost mythical, distant figure draws attention away from someone who, at the time, was a living individual; “Guru Dev” becomes a personification of the effort to transform the planet through the application of everything Maharishi devised and promulgated long after Saraswati’s death. This is now exemplified by the fact that the global nonprofit that is the umbrella for the “TM movement,” that was once called by the impersonal name “World Plan Executive Council,” is now the “Brahmananda Saraswati Foundation.”

Thus it all comes full circle. To create devotees to a worldwide organization, an expression of devotion to, if not worship of, a dead man, who becomes the personification of that organization, is demonstrated every time an individual is instructed in the practice of Transcendental Meditation. The fact that this devotional ritual exists, much less its actual content, is never disclosed with any detail to prospective meditators before instruction; it’s held as a mystery and sprung on people in private, when they’re less willing to back out, after they’ve already brought fruit, flowers, handkerchief and a substantial sum of money. All of this is held forth as some kind of “scientifically validated” system, but there is nothing that can be “scientifically validated” about a devotional ritual that serves to perpetuate yet another patriarchal, dogmatic, authoritarian organization.

The result is compelling  evidence that deception is not an occasional aberration within the TMO, but one of its standard modes of operation.  Siegel documents how the TMO has:

(1)  Hidden the religious (Hindu) nature of the technique, the mantras and the TM philosophy.
(2)  Perpetrated biased research.
(3)  Posted websites claiming to be “independent.”
(4)  Misquoted people and organizations.

Friday, May 04, 2018

National Institutes of Health Researches TM – Poorly

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “…is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives….”(1)

The David Lynch Foundation, a proponent of TM, states,

“…The National Institutes of Health have granted more than $26 million over the past 18 years to study the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program on cardiovascular disease….”(2)

The TM movement likes to point out that there are over 600 published research projects showing the benefits of TM.  However, critics have pointed out that most TM research is of poor quality.  Inadequate controls, small samples, cherry picking of results, biased design, self-reporting, conflict of interest – the flaws are astonishing.(3)  Whether these flaws are due to poor researcher skills, researcher prejudice in favor of TM, or some other reasons, I don’t know.

The NIH doesn’t want researchers with conflicts of interest doing their research.  This led me to ask, who exactly is doing the NIH-funded TM research?  Are there any conflicts of interest?

I have researched the names of most of the researchers studying TM with NIH money.  I’ve discovered that for virtually every study, many of the researchers are affiliated with TM.(4)  They are  Maharishi University of Management (MUM) professors, MUM researchers, MUM graduates, TM teachers.  People with these credentials have gone through months or years of TM indoctrination consisting of one-sided education and meditation retreats, which put people into suggestible states.  Further, many of these researchers work for TM for very little pay, as volunteers, or on work-exchange.  I consider these credentials indicative of bias towards TM.  In fact, I feel it would be appropriate to say that some people with such a background could be considered to have a “missionary” approach towards TM.

A few years ago, I attempted to contact NIH to alert them to the bias of many of their researcher. Unfortunately, what I learned is that the only “conflict of interest” they acknowledge is financial.  They do not consider belief/missionary zeal/faith to be conflicts of interest.  But that still leaves the question of if the NIH considers TM teachers, MUM professors, MUM researchers, etc., to lack financial conflict of interest.  After all, if an MUM professor publishes “positive” results, then more people might learn TM, and then more people might attend MUM, and then the professor might get a raise, or tenure.  Alas, the NIH website stated that concerns about conflicts of interest would only be considered before research has begun.  Also, they stated that the only strategy the NIH employs on conflicts of interest is to ask the researchers what steps they propose to take in order to eliminate the bias.

So, if you ever read that NIH research on TM has proven that TM is a unique, marvelous, beneficial technique for the human race, please consider the points above.  The research is probably seriously biased.

————————————————————————————————————————-
(1) nih.gov

(2) davidlynchfoundation.org:  “…The David Lynch Foundation helps to prevent and eradicate the all-pervasive epidemic of trauma and toxic stress among at-risk populations through promoting widespread implementation of the evidence-based Transcendental Meditation (TM) program in order to improve their health, cognitive capabilities and performance in life….”

(3) TMFree.blogspot.com:  How to Design a Positive Study: Meditation for Childhood ADHD, Abstracts of Independent Research on Transcendental Meditation, Problems with TM Research by Barry Markovsky, Evaluating Heterodox Theories, including “Maharishi Effect” (Markovsky and Fales)

(4) I have highlighted in red those researchers for whom I found TM affiliations.  (Note: Variations in footnote style is due to copying directly from research papers).

1. Stress Reduction Programs in Patients with Elevated Blood Pressure: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. 
Maxwell V. Rainforth, PhD, Robert H. Schneider, MD, Sanford I. Nidich, EdD, Carolyn Gaylord-King, PhD, John W. Salerno, PhD, and James W. Anderson, MD

2. Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Health Promotion with the Transcendental Meditation Program and Maharishi Consciousness-Based Health Care. 
Robert H. Schneider, MD, Kenneth G. Walton, PhD, John W. Salerno, PhD, and Sanford I. Nidich, EdD.
Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa.

3. Effects of a Randomized Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation on Components of the Metabolic Syndrome in Subjects With Coronary Heart Disease.
Maura Paul-Labrador, MPH; Donna Polk, MD, MPH; James H. Dwyer, PhD; Ivan Velasquez, MD; Maxwell Rainforth, PhD, Robert Schneider, MD, and C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD

4. Long-Term Effects of Stress Reduction on Mortality in Persons ≥55 Years of Age With Systemic Hypertension. 
Robert H. Schneider*, MD, Charles N. Alexander, PhD*, Frank Staggers, MD*,  Maxwell Rainforth, PhD*, John W. Salerno, PhD*, Arthur Hartz, MD, Stephen Arndt, PhD, Vernon A. Barnes, PhD+, and Sanford I. Nidich, EdD*
*From the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa; the West Oakland Health Center, Oakland, California; the Departments of Family Medicine and Psychiatry, University of Iowa College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa; and the Georgia Prevention Institute, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia. +Vernon A. Barnes, PhD from Maharishi University of Management

5. Reduced Blood Pressure and Use of Hypertensive Medication (American Journal of Hypertension, January 2005).
Robert H. Schneider#, Charles N. Alexander#, Frank Staggers, David W. Orme-Johnson#, Maxwell Rainforth#, John W. Salerno#, William Sheppard, Amparo Castillo-Richmond”, Vernon A. Barnes”, and Sanford I. Nidich#
# From the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management (RHS, CHN, DWO-J, MR, JWS, SIN)
“ Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa graduates (VAB, AC-R)

6. Effectiveness of Transcendental Meditation on Functional Capacity and Quality of Life of African Americans with Congestive Heart Failure: A Randomized Control Study. 
Ravishankar Jayadevappa, PhD, Jerry C. Johnson, MD, Bernard S. Bloom, PhD, Sanford Nidich, EdD, Shashank Desai, MD, Sumedha Chhatre, PhD, Donna B. Raziano, MD, and Robert H. Schneider, MD
From the Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (RJ, JCJ, BSB, SD, SC); Elder Health Pennsylvania (DBR), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa (SN, RS).

7. Effects of a Randomized Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation on Components of the Metabolic Syndrome in Subjects With Coronary Heart Disease.
Maura Paul-Labrador, MPH; Donna Polk, MD, MPH; James H. Dwyer, PhD; Ivan Velasquez, MD; Sanford Nidich, PhD., Maxwell Rainforth, PhD; Robert Schneider, MD;  C. Noel Barry

8. Neuroimaging of meditation’s effect on brain reactivity to pain. 
David W. Orme-Johnson(a), Robert H. Schneider(a), Young D. Son(b), Sanford Nidich(a), and Zang- Hee Cho(b)
a Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa, USA
b Departments of Radiological Sciences & Psychiatry and Human Behavior, MED SCI I, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, California, USA

9. Effects of Stress Reduction on Carotid Atherosclerosis in Hypertensive African Americans. 
Amparo Castillo-Richmond, MD; Robert H. Schneider, MD; Charles N. Alexander, PhD†; Robert Cook, MD; Hector Myers, PhD; Sanford Nidich, PhD; Chinelo Haney, MBA; Maxwell Rainforth, PhD; John Salerno, PhD
From the Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention (A.C.-R., R.H.S., C.N.A., S.N., M.R., J.S.), Maharishi University of Management, College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, Fairfield, Iowa; the Department of Radiology (R.C.) and Biobehavioral Research Center (H.M., C.H.  [C.H. is a TM teacher]), Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, Calif; and the Department of Psychology (H.M.), University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.
†Deceased.
Correspondence to Amparo Castillo-Richmond, MD, Center for Natural Medicine and Prevention, Maharishi University of Management, College of Maharishi Vedic Medicine, 1000 North 4th St, FB 1134, Fairfield, IA 52557. E-mail amparo@mum.edu

Posted by Laurie at 5/04/2018 07:40:00 PM6 Comments 

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Labels: Alternative Medicine, by Laurie, David Lynch Foundation, Doubtful Research, indoctrination, Maharishi Universities, National Institutes of Health, pseudo-science, science

Monday, April 23, 2018

“they need to… take out the guru crap”

This was meant to be a followup comment, but the comment it was supposed to follow up on was deleted by its contributor while I was writing. Oh well. So I made a full post out of it instead…

“they need to… take out the guru crap”

A perennial suggestion I’ve heard, in some form, for literally decades. This will never happen, for at least two reasons.

The first of which is what could be called  a term borrowed from the context in which psychedelic drugs were used: “set and setting.” The experience of meditation, I think, really does completely depend on the setup, or what they used to call with respect to TM, “initiation.”

The “guru” (technically, he’s a “yogi”) is a central part of the setup, he’s an authority figure. So is the real “guru” whose picture is central to the instruction/ritual (puja). The prospective meditator is flooded with an overload of information, much of it metaphorical, bullshit, or both. At instruction, there’s also a lot of probably unexpected sensory input, right down to the use of candles and incense. It’s supposed to be special, and the fact that most people paid a lot of money for it, relative to an app, book or tape, magnifies its importance.

Photo: BBC – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on ‘Meeting Point’, BBC1, Sunday 5th July 1964

All of this is by design, and as much as the organization denies that belief and ideology are part of the process, they are always present, in some form, from the beginning. The basic “bubble diagram” of the introductory lecture is both a metaphor that I think (from personal experience)  sets up an expectation of what the subjective experience of meditation will be like, and at the same time it’s an ideological, if not subtly religious, statement about the nature of the mind.

Second, the long-term goal is to put some people on, and keep them on, something of an escalator of involvement with the TM organization. If you find endless droning Maharishi tapes are what drives you away, be glad! They don’t want you around either. But if you’re part of that subset of people who like it, think what he’s saying is somehow important, feel pangs of devotion and love in the direction of the old man that are then redirected toward the organization… well, then, they really want you to stick around. They want you to meditate no matter what – that’s why the so-called “checking procedure” is a flowchart with no way out (in which the meditator gives up meditating). And over the very long-term, they want enough people to contribute their labor and wealth to sustain and grow the organization, for reasons and purposes that are completely opaque to most beginning meditators.

The teaching/learning of TM is just a tiny bit of what the organization is ultimately about. It’s intended to be, for some, a recruitment process. All of that is best avoided, whether one goes through with TM initiation/instruction, or not.

Posted by Mike Doughney at 4/23/2018 02:16:00 AM Add Your Comment  

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Maharishi University of Management

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Maharishi University of Management

Former names	Maharishi International University
Type	Private, not-for-profit
Established	1971
Endowment	$9.0 million[1]
President	John Hagelin[2]
Academic staff	67 full-time, 31 part-time[3]
Students	1210[4]
Undergraduates	256 full-time 26 part-time[4]
Postgraduates	498 full-time 430 part-time[4]
Location	Fairfield , Iowa , United States
Campus	Rural, 370 acres (1.5 km2)
Colors	Green and gold
Affiliations	Transcendental Meditation movement[5]
Website	mum.edu

Maharishi University of Management (MUM), formerly Maharishi International University, is a private university in Fairfield, Iowa. It was founded in 1973 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and features a “consciousness-based education” system that includes the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique. Its founding principles include the development of the full potential of the individual, fulfilling economic aspirations while maximizing proper use of the environment and bringing spiritual fulfillment and happiness to humanity.^[6]

The university is regionally accredited through the doctoral level by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC)^[7] and offers degree programs in art, business, education, communications, mathematical science, literature, physiology & health, Vedic Science and sustainable living.

The original campus was located in Goleta, California, and in 1974 moved to the current 370-acre campus in Fairfield, Iowa. During the 1990s many older buildings were demolished and replaced using green technology and the principles of ancient Vedic architecture.^[6] The university features an academic “block system” (only one subject for four weeks) and a diverse, multinational student body. It is said to offer an organic, vegetarian food program.

Maharishi Institute of Vedic and Management Sciences, Bhopal was established in 1995 and managed by Maharshi Shiksha Sansthan (MSS). MIVMS is a unit of Maharshi Shiksha Sansthan

On demand of graduating students of MVMs, MIMs and other institutions who want to continue their higher education in Maharishi Education System, now it has been decided to join hands with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic Vishwavidyalaya (M.P.) and Maharishi University of Management and Technology (CG.). Both founded by Maharishi Ji to provide the opportunity to a large number of students and their family members to undertake higher education in Vedic and Management Sciences.

Jesse, Editor at CollegeTimes

Updated Jun 13, 2018

Maharishi University of Management (MUM) was formerly known as Maharishi International University, and is located in Fairfield, Iowa. Despite claiming to be a “university” their institution lacks a large variety of colleges and departments, let alone things like a research library and laboratories, which are typically expected at a campus that uses such a term.

Instead, MUM focuses largely on their Business MBA program, with smaller and recent forays into programs like Computer Science, Art, Writing, and a few other degrees they appear to have invented (which are not recognized by any other universities in the United States), such as Maharishi Vedic Science which promises to “holistically develop mind, body, and consciousness” and “immerse [you] in ancient Vedic knowledge”.

The “school” was originally founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a so-called guru from India who also founded Transcendental Meditation (TM), a new age religion inspired largely by Hinduism. Both the religion and the school have often been referred to as a “cult” by former students and members, many of who have accused the school of a bizarre and even dangerous environment that focuses more on indoctrination than academic studies.

(In 2004, a MUM student infamously walked out of a class on “enlightenment” and proceeded to violently murder a fellow student with a knife, a story which quickly made international headlines. In 2014, MUM students formed a “flash mob” and rioted against local Fairfield police, who were asked to the campus to forcefully remove a TM member. The school has also been accused of human trafficking young men from India, some 100+ of whom have been reported missing after arriving in the United States.)

cult: a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Yogi enjoyed a popularity among many celebrities including The Beatles, although John Lennon later referred to him as a “f*cking idiot” as many figures began disavowing the TM religion altogether; the guru was also repeatedly accused of rape and/or attempted rape, including a claim by Hollywood actress Mia Farrow (at one point, several TM followers attacked one of the alleged rape victims with acid on behalf of Yogi).

In later years, other American celebrities have associated with the TM religion and MUM, including Oprah, Jim Carrey, Katy Perry, and beyond. Most recently, Hollywood producer David Lynch has become intimately involved with the campus, and is largely credited with launching their new Filmmaking program, which is officially named after him.

As the Editor at CollegeTimes, one of the largest college databases on the web, I’ve personally been stalked, harassed, and sued, multiple times by MUM for my association with the website. The reason that MUM gives for this is they are upset that our database criticizes them for being a “management university” that distributes MBA degrees, yet lacks the common AACSB accreditation that’s expected at high caliber business schools around the world.

(This aggression towards me dramatically escalated after David Lynch became involved with MUM, and after John Hagelin became the new President of the MUM campus in Fairfield, in 2016 — Lynch himself has a history of suing and threatening newspapers/websites on behalf of TM.)

It is my belief, however, that the underlying reason why MUM continues to threaten and sue me is because they wish to be rid of the dozens of disturbing and negative reviews of their institution that appear on CollegeTimes, which allege things such as horrible quality, recruitment fraud, and even that MUM now functions largely as a “student visa mill” for Indian nationals who are looking to enter the United States under dubious reasons [while then turning around and using those students as unpaid workers].

Other student blogs further allege extreme bigotry toward non-TM students, aggressive bullying and censorship against anyone who criticizes their community, and flat out lying in regard to their scholarships, career placement, and other marketing/recruiting claims.

It is perhaps most revealing how fanatically the paid staff from MUM monitor every related question that appears on Quora and other sites.

At the same time, there is a sizeable number of former students with nothing but extremely positive comments about MUM; the question, perhaps, is whether they legitimately believe these things and have truly benefited from the school (spiritually, academically, career-wise, etc), or if they simply feel obliged for whatever reason to say these things.

Ultimately you should decide for yourself what to believe, and which college or university matches your goals the best. However, it is always a good idea to consider things like accreditation and reputation when choosing an institution of higher learning to ensure a higher rate of success.