Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was the creator of Transcendental Meditation and leader of the worldwide organization that has been characterized in multiple ways, including as a new religious movement and as non-religious. He became known as Maharishi and Yogi as an adult.
After earning a degree in physics at Allahabad University in 1942, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became an assistant and disciple of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of the Jyotir Math in the Indian Himalayas. The Maharishi credits Brahmananda Saraswati with inspiring his teachings. In 1955, the Maharishi began to introduce his Transcendental Deep Meditation to India and the world. His first global tour began in 1958. His devotees referred to him as His Holiness, and because he laughed frequently in early TV interviews, he was sometimes referred to as the "giggling guru."
The Maharishi 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, while TM websites report that tens of thousands have 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. The Maharishi, his family and close associates created charitable organisations and for-profit businesses, including alternative medicine health clinics, mail-order ayurveda health supplement stores, and organic farms. The reported value of the Maharishi's organization has ranged from the millions to billions of U.S. dollars; in 2008, the organization placed the value of their United States assets at about $300 million.
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, which includes techniques such as Yogic flying. 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. In 2000, he created the Global Country of World Peace, a non-profit world government 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.
Life
Birth
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi belonged to the Kayastha caste, a caste of scribes in India. The birth name and the birth dates of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi are not known with certainty, in part because of the tradition of ascetics and monks to relinquish family connections. Many accounts say he was born Mahesh Prasad Varma into a Kayastha family living in the Central Provinces of British India. A different name appears in the Allahabad University list of distinguished alumni, where he is listed as M.C. Srivastava, and an obituary says his name was "Mahesh Srivastava".Various accounts give the year of his birth as 1911, 1917 or 1918. Authors Paul Mason and William Jefferson say that he was born 12 January 1917 in Rajim, Central Provinces, British India. The place of birth given in his passport is "Pounalulla", India, and his birth date 12 January 1918. Mahesh "most likely" came from an upper-caste family of the high-status Kayastha caste, whose traditional profession is writing.
Early life
Mahesh studied physics at Allahabad University and earned a degree in 1942. While a few sources say that he worked at the Gun Carriage Factory in Jabalpur for some time, most report that in 1941 he became an administrative secretary to the Shankaracharya of the Jyotir Math, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati and took a new name, Bal Brahmachari Mahesh. Coplin refers to bala brahmachari as both a title and a name and considers that it "identified him as a fully dedicated student of spiritual knowledge and life-long celibate ascetic." Brahmananda insisted that before accepting Mahesh as a pupil he must first complete his university degree and get permission from his parents. The Maharishi recalls how it took about two and a half years to attune himself to the thinking of Brahmananda Saraswati and to gain "a very genuine feeling of complete oneness". At first Brahmachari Mahesh performed common chores but gained trust and became Guru Dev's "personal secretary" and "favored pupil". He was trusted to take care of the bulk of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati's correspondence without direction and was also sent out to give public speeches on Vedic themes. The Maharishi said his life truly began in 1940, at the feet of his master, when he learned the secret of swift and deep meditation.Brahmachari Mahesh remained with Swami Brahmananda Saraswati until the latter died in 1953, when he moved to Uttarkashi in Uttarakhand in the Himalayas, where he undertook a reclusive life for two years. Although Brahmachari Mahesh was a close disciple, he could not be the Shankaracharya's spiritual successor, because he was not a Brahmin. The Shankaracharya, at the end of his life, charged him with the responsibility of travelling and teaching meditation to the masses, while he named Swami Shantananda Saraswati as his successor.
Tour in India (1955–1957)
In 1955, Brahmachari Mahesh left Uttarkashi and began publicly teaching what he stated was a traditional meditation technique learned from his master Brahmananda Saraswati, and that he called Transcendental Deep Meditation. Later the technique was renamed Transcendental Meditation. It was also then that he was first publicly known with the name "Maharishi", an honorific title meaning "great sage", after the title was given to him according to some sources from "Indian Pundits"; according to another source the honorific was given along with Yogi by followers in India. Later in the west, the title was retained as a name.He travelled around India for two years interacting with his "Hindu audiences" in an "Indian context". At that time, he called his movement the Spiritual Development Movement, but renamed it the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in 1957, in Madras, on the concluding day of the Seminar of Spiritual Luminaries. According to Coplin, in his visits to southern India, the Maharishi spoke English rather than the Hindi spoken in his home area to avoid provoking resistance among those seeking linguistic self-determination, and to appeal to the "learned classes".
World tours (1958–1968)
According to William Jefferson, in 1958, the Maharishi went to Madras to address a large crowd of people who had gathered to celebrate the memory of Guru Dev. It was there that he spontaneously announced that he planned to spread the teaching of TM throughout the world. Hundreds of people immediately asked to learn TM. In 1959, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi began his first world tour, writing: "I had one thing in mind, that I know something which is useful to every man".The Maharishi's 1986 book, Thirty Years Around the World, gives a detailed account of his world tours, as do two biographies, The Story of the Maharishi, by William Jefferson, and The Maharishi by Paul Mason. The first world tour began in Rangoon, Burma, and included the countries of Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and Hawaii. He arrived in Hawaii in the spring of 1959, and the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported: "He has no money, he asks for nothing. His worldly possessions can be carried in one hand. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is on a world odyssey. He carries a message that he says will rid the world of all unhappiness and discontent." In 1959, the Maharishi lectured and taught the Transcendental Meditation technique in Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York and London. While in Los Angeles, the Maharishi stayed at the home of author Helena Olson, and during this period he developed a three-year plan to propagate Transcendental Meditation to the whole world. Though most of his audience consisted of average middle class individuals, he also attracted a few celebrities, such as Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Nancy Cooke de Herrera and Doris Duke.
File:MichaelCooper1967BenMerk.jpg|upright=1.35|thumb|Left to right: Michael Cooper, Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Shepard Sherbell, and Brian Jones; sitting: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
When the Maharishi came to the U.S. in 1959, his Spiritual Regeneration Movement was called Transcendental Meditation. That same year, he began the International Meditation Society and other organizations to propagate his teachings, establishing centres in San Francisco and London. For years, the sole teacher of Transcendental Meditation in America was a San Diego woman named Beulah Smith.
In 1960, the Maharishi traveled to many cities in India, France, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa.
While in Manchester, England, the Maharishi gave a television interview and was featured in many English newspapers, such as the Birmingham Post, the Oxford Mail and the Cambridge Daily News. This was also the year in which the Maharishi trained Henry Nyburg to be the first Transcendental Meditation teacher in Europe.
In 1961, the Maharishi visited the United States, Austria, Sweden, France, Italy, Greece, India, Kenya, England, and Canada. While in England, he appeared on BBC television and gave a lecture to 5,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall in London, organised by Leon MacLaren of the School of Economic Science. In April 1961, the Maharishi conducted his first Transcendental Meditation Teacher Training Course in Rishikesh, India, with sixty participants from various countries. Teachers continued to be trained as time progressed. During the course, the Maharishi began to introduce additional knowledge regarding the development of human potential and began writing his translation and commentary on the first six chapters of the ancient Vedic text, the Bhagavad Gita.
His 1962 world tour included visits to Europe, India, Australia and New Zealand. In Britain, he founded a branch of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. The year concluded in California, where the Maharishi began dictating his book The Science of Being and Art of Living. In Rishikesh, India, beginning on 20 April 1962, a forty-day course was held for "sadhus, sanyasis, and brahmacharis" to introduce TM to "religious preachers and spiritual masters in India".
The Maharishi toured cities in Europe, Asia, North America and India in 1963, and also addressed ministers of the Indian Parliament. According to his memoirs, twenty-one members of parliament then issued a public statement endorsing the Maharishi's goals and meditation technique. His Canadian tour was also well covered by the press.
The Maharishi's fifth world tour, in 1964, consisted of visits to many cities in North America, Europe and India. During his visit to England, he appeared with the Abbot of Downside, Abbot Butler, on a BBC television show called The Viewpoint. In October of that year, in California, the Maharishi began teaching the first Advanced Technique of Transcendental Meditation to some experienced meditators. While travelling in America, the Maharishi met with Robert Maynard Hutchins, the head of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and U Thant, the Secretary General of the United Nations. During this same year, the Maharishi finished his book The Science of Being and Art of Living, which sold more than a million copies and was published in fifteen languages.
The Maharishi's activities in 1966 included a course in India and a one-month tour in South America. He established Transcendental Meditation centers in Port of Spain, Trinidad; Caracas, Venezuela; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Porto Alegre, Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Santiago, Chile; Lima, Peru; and Bogota, Colombia.
In addition, in 1966 the Maharishi founded the Students' International Meditation Society, which The Los Angeles Times later characterised as a "phenomenal success". In the 1970s, SIMS centres were established at "over one thousand campuses", including Harvard University, Yale University, and UCLA.
In 1967, the Maharishi gave a lecture at Caxton Hall in London, which was attended by Leon MacLaren, the founder and leader of the School of Economic Science. He also lectured at UCLA, Harvard, Yale and Berkeley. 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". 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. At the end of 1968, the Maharishi said that after ten years of teaching and world tours, he would return to India.