Author: Mike Corder
Publication: SFGate.com
Date: February 5, 2008
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/flat/archive/2008/02/05/news/archive/2008/02/05/international/i152501S66.html?tsp=1
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles
who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died Tuesday at his
home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said. He was thought to be
91 years old.
"He died peacefully at about 7 p.m.,"
said Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation movement that
Maharishi founded. He said his death appeared to be due to "natural causes,
his age."
Once dismissed as hippie mysticism, the Hindu
practice of mind control known as transcendental meditation gradually gained
medical respectability.
He began teaching TM in 1955 and brought the
technique to the United States in 1959. But the movement really took off after
the Beatles attended one of his lectures in 1967.
Maharishi retreated last month into silence
at his home on the grounds of a former Franciscan monastery, saying he wanted
to dedicate his remaining days to studying the ancient Indian texts that underpin
his movement.
"He had been saying he had done what
he set out to do," Roth said late Tuesday.
With the help of celebrity endorsements, Maharishi
- a Hindi-language title for Great Seer - parlayed his interpretations of
ancient scripture into a multi-million-dollar global empire. His roster of
famous meditators ran from Mike Love of the Beach Boys to Clint Eastwood and
Deepak Chopra, a new age preacher.
After 50 years of teaching, Maharishi turned
to larger themes, with grand designs to harness the power of group meditation
to create world peace and to mobilize his devotees to banish poverty from
the earth.
His rise to fame came with his association
with the Beatles, who first attended one of his lectures in August 1967 in
Wales as they looked for a way of attaining higher consciousness in the aftermath
of that year's Summer of Love.
The Beatles were so charmed by the self-effacing
guru that they agreed to stay with at his India compound, starting in February
1968, an astonishing choice for what was then the world's most celebrated
music group.
But once there, Maharishi had a falling out
with the rock stars after rumors emerged that he was making inappropriate
advances on attendee Mia Farrow. John Lennon was so angry he wrote a bitter
satire, "Sexy Sadie," in which he vowed that Maharishi would "get
yours yet."
Maharishi insisted he had done nothing wrong
and years later McCartney agreed with him. Deepak Chopra, a disciple of Maharishi's
and a friend of George Harrison's, has disputed the Farrow story, saying instead
that Maharishi had become unhappy with the Beatles because they were using
drugs.
Director David Lynch, creator of dark and
violent films, lectured at college campuses about the "ocean of tranquility"
he found in more than 30 years of practicing TM.
In a telephone interview with The Associated
Press, Lynch said it has aided him "in every aspect of life."
He said he believed Maharishi has laid the
groundwork for world peace, even if that was not immediately apparent from
world affairs.
"The world appears in bad shape on the
surface, but I compare it to a tree: there are yellow sickly leaves dropping
off but Maharishi has brought nourishment to the roots. Hang on for a little
while longer, it's coming."
His followers say that some 5 million people
devoted 20 minutes every morning and evening reciting a simple sound, or mantra,
and delving into their consciousness.
"Don't fight darkness. Bring the light,
and darkness will disappear," Maharishi said in a 2006 interview, repeating
one of his own mantras.
Donations and the $2,500 fee to learn TM financed
the construction of Peace Palaces, or meditation centers, in dozens of cities
around the world. It paid for hundreds of new schools in India.
In 1974, Maharishi founded a university in
Fairfield, Iowa, that taught meditation alongside the arts and sciences to
700 students and served organic vegetarian food in its cafeterias.
In 2001, his followers founded Maharishi Vedic
City, a town of about 200 people a few miles north of Fairfield. The city
requires the construction of buildings according to design principles set
by Maharishi for harmony with nature.
Ed Malloy, a TM practitioner and mayor of
Fairfield, said Maharishi's followers in Iowa were spending Tuesday evening
meditating and holding a "celebration of gratitude for everything he's
given."
Supporters pointed to hundreds of scientific
studies showing that meditation reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, improves
concentration and raises results for students and businessmen.
Skeptics ridiculed his plan to raise $10 trillion
to end poverty by sponsoring organic farming in the world's poorest countries.
They scoffed at his notion that meditation groups, acting like psychic shock
troops, can end conflict.
"To resolve problems through negotiation
is a very childish approach," he said.
In 1986, two groups founded by his organization
were sued in the U.S. by former disciples who accused it of fraud, negligence
and intentionally inflicting emotional damage. A jury, however, refused to
award punitive damages.
Over the years, Maharishi also was accused
of fraud by former pupils who claim he failed to teach them to fly. "Yogic
flying," showcased as the ultimate level of transcendence, was never
witnessed as anything more than TM followers sitting in the cross-legged lotus
position and bouncing across spongy mats.
Maharishi was born Mahesh Srivastava in central
India, reportedly on Jan. 12, 1917 - though he refused to confirm the date
or discuss his early life.
He studied physics at Allahabad University
before becoming secretary to a well known Hindu holy man. After the death
of his teacher, Maharishi brought his message to the West in a language that
mixed the occult and science that became the buzz of college campuses.
Maharishi's trademark flowing beard and long,
graying hair appeared on the cover of the leading news magazines of the day.
But aides say Maharishi became disillusioned that TM had become identified
with the counterculture.
In 1990 he moved onto the wooded grounds of
a monastery in Vlodrop, about 125 miles southeast of Amsterdam.
Concerned about his fragile health, he secluded
himself in two rooms of the wooden pavilion he built on the compound, speaking
only by video to aides around the world and even to his closest advisers in
the same building.
John Hagelin, a theoretical physicist who
ran for the U.S. presidency three times on the Maharishi-backed Natural Law
Party, said that from the Dutch location Maharishi had daylong access to followers
in India, Europe and the Americas.
"He runs several shifts of us into the
ground," said Hagelin, Maharishi's closest aid, speaking in Vlodrop about
his then-89-year-old mentor. "He is a fountainhead of innovation and
new ideas - far too many than you can ever follow up."
-Amsterdam-based Associated Press writer Arthur
Max and New York-based Associated Press writer Hillel Italie contributed to
this report.
