My simple cotton saris weren’t expensive, but I took pride in how I wrapped them. Since I possessed zero self-esteem, at least I could be proud of something. Western women draped saris abominably—ankles showing, messy pleats, uneven hemline, draped too loose, clunky shoes, pallu (loose end) hanging too long. No Indian would be caught dead like that.
Once word got around that Maharishi told me to wear saris, a fashion trend developed. So I taught the Staff women proper sari-wrapping etiquette.
As I embarked on my stringent meditation program, I often heard Maharishi’s laughter drifting down from his meeting room—right above my room. I wondered, Should I have continued working rather than enter the rounding program? Did I make a mistake? What will happen after the course? Will Maharishi still let me join International Staff?
One night in the lecture hall, Maharishi said, “This time is precious. No socializing. Focus only on one thing—experience of transcendent. Set up a section in dining room for silence.” He told us our lifespan is measured in breaths. The contract for this body is limited to a specific number. If we breathe less, we live longer. “Don’t waste energy. Be in silence as much as possible.”
I went overboard, as per my typical trying-to-prove-I-mattered compulsions. Whenever I committed to something, I leapt before I looked—with both feet. So for four months I uttered no sound. I emerged from my room only for dinner and Maharishi’s lectures. A badge pinned to my sari blouse announced, “IN SILENCE.”
I ate lunch on my balcony—a little yogurt and fruit. From that vantage, a distant picturesque Mediterranean cove gleamed deep blue-green, sharply contrasting with the translucent sand and whitewashed houses. Sunlight danced like sparkling crystals on the water.
I loved meditation so much! I was on a perpetual high, in perfect equilibrium of mind and body (samadhi), deep, quiet, fathomless, at peace in the wholeness of being—more profound than ever imagined. Absorbed in silence, I abandoned all traces of the outer world, which blurred into faded obscurity. Nothing in that world was real. Like a cardboard cartoon cutout, it was empty, devoid of meaning. Maharishi was my world now. No longer did earthly pursuits hold any allure. Even if I wanted to go back (which I emphatically didn’t), I couldn’t. There was nothing to return to. That world was dead.
Every day, as Maharishi headed toward the Mercedes to be chauffeured to Teacher Training Courses held at nearby hotels, I offered him a rose. Sometimes he gave me one. One day no car waited. Never fazed by anything, he said, “Fine, we’ll walk there.” So Maharishi, Gregory Ivanov, Keith Wallace, and I started walking toward his destination in Cala Millor—fifteen miles away.
Maharishi’s skin-boy Gregory, said, “I better go find the car.” He handed Maharishi’s deerskin to Keith, a UCLA- and Harvard-trained neurophysiologist who conducted research on TM published in Science, American Journal of Physiology, and Scientific American.
After five minutes, Maharishi said to Keith, “Better go check on the car.” So, with Maharishi’s deerskin draped over my arm and my “IN SILENCE” badge pinned to my blouse, I strolled with him into the darkness. The only sound was our sandals crunching the gravel path.
Ten minutes later, Gregory and Keith picked us up. Off we drove to Hotel Karina, where several hundred students meditated ten to twelve hours per day for nine months.
In the lecture hall, Maharishi asked, “How many woke up early this morning?” Then, “How many looked out the window?” He chuckled and went on with his lecture. It turned out at breakfast several students had related seeing a disk-shaped UFO from their balconies, hovering over the ocean near a cliff. This UFO appeared to be sucking water out of the ocean and dumping it back again. When asked about it, Maharishi said, “It was a cosmic vacuum cleaner,” and then dropped the subject.
Imagine thousands of people from every background and country meditating all day for months—a recipe for disaster. Maharishi assigned freak-out cases to two physicians, from the US and Germany, but the need became overwhelming. So he posted trusted disciples Carl Webb, Leonard Campbell, and Jim McFadden on psych-ward duty. Christening themselves the “Lunch-Wing Squad,” they took turns dealing with meditation casualties, whom they dubbed “Lunch-Wings.”
Ludwig was a small, intelligent, cultured German doctor who spoke perfect English. But when Carl and Leonard entered his room, the face of a demon glowered back at them. Ludwig sat shirtless with muscles so taut it appeared he could rip someone’s head off. He hissed like a snake with eyeballs rolling around in his head. He was stabbing the air at lightning speed, right, left, right, left, while pointing index fingers like darts.
Ludwig’s girlfriend Irma was sitting on the bed. Suddenly Ludwig jumped up, grabbed her head, and tried to crack it like an egg. Leonard and Carl tackled him and wrestled him away from her. Ludwig and Irma then sat on separate beds, and both began hissing, stabbing the air, and darting their index fingers.
Leonard didn’t believe in demons and hadn’t gotten the memo yet on The Exorcist. He was way out of his depth. So he ran to Maharishi’s room and cried, “Ludwig seems possessed. I don’t know what to do.”
Maharishi told him, “Get Big Nurse.” Leonard fetched Liz Collins, a British nurse of great height and girth.
Thundering like an elephant, Big Nurse barged into Ludwig’s room clutching a large glass of water. Thrusting the glass at Ludwig, she bellowed, “Here, drink this.” He shook his head and hissed. She repeated more forcefully. He continued hissing.
Then she grabbed Ludwig’s neck and forced water down his throat. He had no choice. Either he would drink or drown. Big Nurse emptied the entire glass of water while he choked and coughed. When it was over, he lay back on his bed, entirely calm. Strangely, his girlfriend Irma stopped hissing also and settled down.
Fernando, an Initiator from Sacramento, was married with a young child. He moved his mistress Sophia into his home with his wife and child, and treated Sophia like a slave. But she was weak and allowed it. Sophia started seeing other men, which made Fernando insanely jealous. She told him to leave her alone, but he followed her to Mallorca.
While Sophia was attending Maharishi’s lecture, Fernando broke into her room in Hotel Karina. Using a scissors, he cut out the crotches from all her underwear. He burned the crotches of the remainder of her clothing with a candle. Soon her room was on fire. The hotel personnel used fire extinguishers to quell the blaze. The hotel was evacuated and fire department summoned.
Later Carl and Leonard discovered, in the hotel basement, an altar with Guru Dev’s picture garlanded with a string of crotches. Other crotches were strewn about the altar.
When Tod spoke, what came out was gibberish. When the Lunch-Wing Squad ordered him to return home, he struck a bargain. Tod would demonstrate his special superpowers for nine minutes to the entire assembly. Leonard promised to inform people, with no guarantee of attendance.
Tod claimed he could see in all directions at once and walk in every direction at once without ever tiring, using alleged wisdom from ancient Rome that he professed to have “cognized.” The Lunch-Wing Squaders gathered for the demonstration.
The handsome, black, athletic, muscular Tod undressed and stood in the buff. He began looking forward, back, right, left, up, down, between his legs to the back, and every other direction and angle. Repeating this procedure more and more quickly, he whipped his body around so fast he could indeed see every direction. Tod’s second demonstration was a kind of goosestep where he walked forward, back, side to side, so fast it appeared he was walking in all directions at once.
The Lunch-Wing Squad put him on a plane back to the USA and celebrated his departure.
Edwin’s obsessive habit was “sewing” his head. Holding an imaginary needle and thread in his right hand, he pushed the needle through the bottom of his chin and pulled it out through various points on top of his head. He repeated the same motion with his left hand. This compulsive behavior continued incessantly.
Edwin was predisposed to wandering abou
t the hotel buck naked. His Taoist revelation led him to rip a lamp off the wall in the hallway. He bent the brass arms of the candelabra until the “yin” and “yang” lights merged into oneness. As they merged, Edwin was electrocuted and fell backward against the door of an unsuspecting female meditator who screamed as his naked body flung backward into her room.
The Lunch-Wingers somehow managed to put Edwin on a plane. As the plane took off, they breathed a sigh of relief. However, unknown to them, Edwin wasn’t on that plane. When the passenger next to him complained he was compulsively sewing his head, he was expelled and handed off to the Policia Municipal.
Edwin spoke no Spanish, so no one could figure out who he was. He was carted off to a psychiatric hospital and locked up for months, until someone finally deciphered his identity and contacted his parents, who came to collect him.
Marvin was a black guy who did pujas naked in the hotel hallway. He wandered about, yelling about being enlightened and God’s messenger. Maharishi told the Lunch-Wing Squad to keep him calm until they could get him on a plane. Then he would be someone else’s problem. At the airport the Lunch-Wingers warned him to keep his clothes on and make no loud speeches on the plane. They waited half an hour. When the plane didn’t return, “Success,” they thought. But over the Atlantic Ocean, Marvin charged the cockpit, screaming about his girlfriend and Maharishi. He was restrained. The Lunch-Wingers figured if they could get these maniacs to shut up for most of the flight’s duration, the plane would arrive in New York and not return to Europe.
Joshua Kramer, highly paranoid draft dodger extraordinaire, on the FBI Wanted List, trembled at every border crossing. He was the most unlikely candidate to smuggle a suitcase from Spain to Switzerland with thousands of course participants’ currency and checks to be deposited into the Swiss bank account. Naturally, he was Maharishi’s man for the job. Joshua’s jittery demeanor resulted in a complete strip search at a Spanish airport. His suitcase was confiscated and he went to jail.
Maharishi sent his trusted Brahmachari Devendra and international accountant Mary Connelly to negotiate Joshua’s release. Days later, two skin-boys were dispatched to Madrid with a plain brown envelope in a briefcase. A limousine with Spanish flags on the bumper greeted them at the airport and whisked them downtown to a palatial government building.
The skin-boys entered a massive corral where Spanish horses had been trained long ago. They were served tea and cakes at a ginormous wooden table occupied by Devendra, Mary, and none other than General Francisco Franco, the Spanish military dictator, with his minions. All were bedizened in formal uniforms with gold and red sashes, gold medals, epaulets dripping with gold bullion fringe, and spun gold thickly embroidered on collars, lapels, and cuffs. After some small talk, Franco asked if they brought the “documents.” The skin-boys didn’t know what was inside the brown envelope until Franco’s lackeys counted out the dough—$50,000 cash.
Joshua was returned to Mallorca, safe and sound, the following day.
After Joshua’s bloody debacle, Maharishi assigned his trusted, dedicated skin-boy Gregory to smuggle course fees out of Spain. The first time Gregory withdrew cash from the bank at Palma de Mallorca, the stacks of pesetas wouldn’t fit into a suitcase. They were delivered in a cafeteria cart. Within ten minutes everyone in Mallorca knew about it. So Gregory skulked to the far end of the island, sailed to Formentera, then flew from Ibiza to Geneva.
On subsequent trips, Gregory would fly to France or Italy before proceeding to Switzerland. He smuggled at least $500,000 per trip. When Gregory traveled, his only diversion was visiting museums. Unbelievably, since he always took the cash-stuffed suitcase with him, he would often check it at the entrance to the Louvre with a hatcheck woman! Of course, she was unaware of its contents. After a while, with help from Maharishi’s influential devotees, a limousine would meet Gregory at the airport in Geneva and bypass customs.
Meanwhile, I was unaware of all these dramas. Deep meditation in silence had made me mellow to the point of stoned, barely functional, advancing toward cataleptic. I floated around the hotel in a bubble of blissful nothingness, nothing to think, nothing to do. Blithe and content, I wafted through my days like a helium balloon drifting happily in the breeze.
But now it was time to come out.
At lunch I came across Reginald, Maharishi’s graphic artist.
“Hey, Susan. You’re not wearing your badge. Are you out of silence?” Reginald asked in his British accent.
“Yep,” I mumbled. It was difficult making my vocal chords vibrate.
“Well, what did you experience? It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? A couple of months?”
“Four,” I whispered, barely audible.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“Four. Four months.”
“Four months? Egads, time does fly, doesn’t it?”
“Yep.”
“Well how’s your painting of the trees coming along? Have you been working on it?”
“Yeah,” I rasped.
“I’d like to see it. Susan, you can speak now, you know. You’re allowed to make whole sentences. Time to be congenial.”
“Nothing …” I cleared my throat. “Nothing to say.”
It was difficult to complete a sentence, let alone make small talk. Four months of silence taught me what comes out of our mouths is mostly trite drivel. We talk just to hear ourselves talk, or feed our egos. I concluded it’s better to keep quiet unless there’s something to say.
During silence I’d completed the painting of the rooftop and trees in Rishikesh. When I showed it to Reginald, he recognized all the people and said, “This is great, Susan. You must show it to Maharishi.”
I had a crush on Reginald, but kept it secret. I felt such scandalous feelings were sinful when Maharishi advised us to be celibate. He’d said: “What is brahmacharya? If you keep on collecting and investing wealth, it gets collected. If you keep on spending it, money gets spent and never comes back. Then when hard times come, nothing is there. When you waste energy, nothing is left. Thinking is not powerful and practical. Your life is not brilliant. Your face becomes dull. Conserve energy and become powerful.50
Maharishi contended only a powerful nervous system and brain could stabilize unbounded consciousness. Celibacy maintains upward flow of life energy, channeling it into “the most delicate, useful, and precious product of life—ojas.”51 This divine radiance emanates from our skin, making our body lustrous and vibrant.
Ojas gets produced this way: Food becomes blood, which becomes marrow, which becomes semen (or rajas—female fluid), which becomes ojas.52 This sweet oily substance appears on our face during long meditation. I experienced it firsthand. Bathing before meditation, not after, was recommended due to ojas production on the skin.
A self-admitted sex addict, Donald Backster’s sex drive interfered with his spiritual practice. In May 1975 he wrote the word “celibacy” on his application form for an advanced technique. He was nervous how Maharishi would respond, since “celibacy” wasn’t a TM advanced technique.
When Maharishi read the form, he said to Donald, “Good. How long have you abstained?”
Donald replied, “Two years, but I need help.”
Maharishi nodded, closed his eyes, and went deep into meditation. He surfaced about ten seconds later, and said, “It is good.” Then he looked at Donald intensely. A hard bolt of energy hit Donald between his eyes. Stunned by the impact, a second bolt hit him again.
Donald noticed his seminal fluid rising upward. A sharp pain like an icepick pushed into his second chakra. It was painful and lasted about five seconds. The rising fluid transmuted into a dense vapor, which rose slowly and pleasurably up his spinal column through the central subtle energy conduit—sushumna nadi.
When the vapor reached his heart chakra, it paused and radiated from his chest in all directions with great splendor. The upward flow of dense vapor continued until it reached his forehead, where again it radiated brilliantly.
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This was Donald’s initiation into celibacy, by Maharishi’s mere glance. The direction of Donald’s energy changed permanently from flowing downward and outward into flowing upward.
I cruised along, delighting in meditation and lectures with Maharishi. However, alas, my money ran out and entry badge expired. No one knew I was supposed to be on International Staff, so I was summarily banished from the lecture hall. After I found a bill shoved under my door, I panicked. In Maharishi’s whirlwind, no procedure existed for getting a Staff badge. So I avoided both lecture hall and housing office.
I waited in the hallway outside Maharishi’s room for weeks. His guards didn’t know me. I used to be important—five months ago. Now I was nobody.
PART III
OPEN-EGO SURGERY
No action can be performed successfully without a clear result in view.
The secret of success is conviction and persistence.
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Associated Newspapers/REX/Shutterstock
9
FROM BLISS TO BLITZKRIEG
1972
The influence of karma is unfathomable.
The man in Cosmic Consciousness automatically finds that without him striking a matchstick, all karma is burnt in the fire of knowledge.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
It was February 1972 in Mallorca. I’d spent weeks of frustration trying to get into Maharishi’s room, ignored by everyone. In the hotel lobby, as he headed toward his car, I held up my painting of trees in Rishikesh. He stopped and said, “Good, good. Who is there?” I named the people. In several cases he said, “Should be a better likeness.” Maharishi was never done. He could always find something else to gripe about.
Maharishi & Me Page 9