Maharishi had purchased three gigantic Heidelberg offset printing presses that churned out Movement literature day and night (also handy when skin-boys needed to print license plates for the Mercedes!). Now I would be creating educational materials for Maharishi’s publicity machine.
High school curriculum was an unmistakable step down the prestige ladder from my previous position. Important people work on publications for adults, not high school, I thought. It was May 1974, and I had to face the awful truth—I was no longer a key cog in Maharishi’s wheel. I was locked out of the coterie of Finance Office elitism, and wasn’t even working in Housing.
Soon everyone moved to Prätschli Hotel in Arosa, a few meters from the Aroser Weisshorn ski slopes. I awoke to melodies of Swiss alphorns and tinkling cowbells, tastes of Swiss pastries, fondue, and Toblerone marzipan, and views of velvet green mountainsides dotted with delicate wildflowers, mountains jutting in all directions, bright blue sky, fresh air, bleached clouds, and perfectly manicured alpine chalets lined with flower boxes. Heavenly!
Not long after our arrival, Maharishi called our high school curriculum group to the lecture hall. He informed us in a harsh tone, like a principal scolding delinquent students: “Now you will move to a hotel on the other side of Arosa. You must remain in your hotel at all times. You are not allowed to enter the Prätschli unless I invite you.”
Our little band of artists and writers skulked away in shame. Deported to a remote ghetto, utterly demoralized and defeated, we wondered what transgression deserved such censure. Of course, the answer was “absolutely none.” There was rarely known rhyme or reason for Maharishi’s praise or penalty.
After my castigation via verbal lashing in Interlaken, I assumed this was my extended jail sentence. But for others in our group, I saw no need for their exile, unless they were just collateral damage—in the path of bullets aimed in my direction.
On August 10, 1974, I was surprised to get a phone call. “Maharishi wants to see you immediately at Hotel Prätschli. Bring your Holy Tradition painting and all the pictures of Gods and masters you’ve collected.”
I was embarrassed about how little of the painting I’d completed since Maharishi’s last viewing, one year previously. “Too bad it’s not finished, hmm?” he said, clearly disappointed. I wonder when he imagines I had time to work on it, 2:00 to 6:00 a.m.?
Maharishi’s crew videotaped what there was of my pieced-together painting. He drummed with his palm on his coffee table while composing catchy tunes in Hindi to nursery-rhyme tempos. Two American women played guitars and sang these songs. Someone showered rose petals over a large cutout photo of the King of Nepal mounted on a board. It all came together in a video, to be hand-delivered by TM Teachers to the King of Nepal for the Hindu holiday Diwali. This three-ring circus continued all day and into the night.
“Today is Krishna’s birthday,” Maharishi then exclaimed. He examined every picture of Lord Krishna I’d brought. With his felt-tipped pen, he placed check marks or numbers on them, and wrote little captions below them. Late that night, as Maharishi was leaving the lecture hall, he said to me, “I want the pictures of Lord Krishna put onto a video tape. Come again tomorrow 10:00.”
After Maharishi left, I entreated the video department head, “Maharishi spent two hours going over these pictures of Lord Krishna. He said to put them onto a video tape.”
“I won’t do anything unless Maharishi tells me to do it directly,” he retorted.
That was the last I ever heard of the Krishna pictures.
I rode back to my hotel, body buzzing with energy, ecstatically happy and vibrantly alive. It was never about the actions of the day, or their results. This and every other encounter with Maharishi were about the transmission of bliss consciousness—grace bestowed whether he commended, condemned, or otherwise.
In August 1974 Maharishi was about to fly from Arosa to a course in Avoriaz, France. I was in his meeting room when his pilot Andrew Monroe warned, “We can’t fly today. The forecast is dense fog all day.”
“We will fly. Get your helicopter ready, hmm?” Maharishi insisted.
“But Maharishi, there’s zero visibility. Helicopters are not like planes. I need to be able to see. It’s against regulations to fly in the fog.”
“We will fly. Go now and get ready.”
“Okay,” Andrew said. You just didn’t argue with Maharishi.
About two hundred devotees gathered on the foggy mountaintop, waiting to send off Maharishi. He boarded the helicopter. By spinning his index finger in a circle, he motioned to Andrew to start the rotors. The crowd whispered, laughed, then gasped as the rotors spun, whipping into frenzy.
“The helicopter can’t go! It’s too foggy!” I yelled.
Andrew shook his head, indicating it was too dangerous. Maharishi then giggled. He lifted his hand, palm up, gesturing to Andrew to take off. The helicopter rose about fifty feet. But Andrew brought the helicopter right back down.
Maharishi spun his finger again to indicate to keep the motor running. Then he started to shake with laughter. The helicopter’s rotors continued. The wind-beaten crowd moved back but continued watching intently. What will happen next?
Within five minutes the fog began lifting dramatically.
Andrew and Maharishi laughed, and the helicopter took off. By the time they reached cruising altitude, the fog cleared entirely. As the sun shone, the crowd cheered and clapped.
In November 1974, with the first sign of snow, Maharishi returned to Hotel Hertenstein on Lake Lucerne. Vedic Studies course participants stayed in his hotel. The only Staff assigned to his hotel were his dearest disciples, such as Jemima Pitman, and our high school curriculum group—rendering our formerly exiled group suddenly his most favored group (for no apparent reason). The remaining Staff shuffled off to Vitznau.
When Maharishi emerged from silence at midnight January 8, 1975, as he did every year, a handful of us close disciples met him. That year, his first words were memorable: “I see the dawn of Sat Yuga.”
Baffled by his statement, I asked, “Maharishi, how can Sat Yuga come in the middle of Kali Yuga?”
Maharishi answered, “Sat is dawning, even in the midst of Kali.”
The scriptures of India count immense cycles of creation, measured by lifespans of various deities. The shortest cycles (millions rather than trillions of years) are called Yugas: Sat Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga. Sat Yuga is the golden age—when peace, prosperity, and enlightenment abound. Kali Yuga is the age of darkest ignorance.
Though I never understood how Maharishi could declare Sat Yuga in the midst of Kali Yuga, he was one of many prophets who envisioned a coming New Age, Golden Age, or Age of Aquarius—including Satya Sai Baba, Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and countless others. Sri Yukteswar’s book, The Holy Science, made convincing arguments indicative of a planetary rise in consciousness.
On January 12, 1975, the International Staff, “108,” and special guests celebrated Maharishi’s birthday on the flagship Gotthard, the largest steamship on the lake. On that moonless night, flowers, flags, lights, banners, and scientific displays adorned the ship. Swiss alphorns were blown. Nobel laureate in physics, Dr. Brian Josephson, was an honored guest. However, few passengers realized the ship never sailed. It just sat at the dock, fogged in, with its engine running.
On this historic occasion (“historic” from the TM Movement’s viewpoint, that is), Maharishi announced the dawning of a new age for humanity, based upon scientific verification of the benefits of TM: “When the number of people in the city practicing Transcendental Meditation reached 1 percent, the crime rate went down. If 1 percent of the people could change the tendencies of the people, then it’s possible now to create a new world, free from problems, and eliminate suffering from society.”54
Maharishi envisioned the elimination of darkness with the first ray of the rising sun, evidenced by hundreds of research studies on TM. These studies proved that TM enriches all areas of life
. On the basis of this success, Maharishi declared: “Science has guided us to the dawn of a new age.”55 “Through the window of science we see the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment.”56
This memorable occasion was immortalized in an eighty-page twelve-by-fifteen-inch coffee-table book printed on thick ivory paper with gobs of gold ink. Oh, how Maharishi loved gold ink!
On a glass-top boat ride that spring, Maharishi proposed a pamphlet based on his “Vacuum State Chart,” equating consciousness with ten qualities of the vacuum state of physics: perfect orderliness, unmanifest nature, non-change, source of all change, unboundedness, home of all knowledge, home of all the laws of nature, field of all possibilities, self-perpetuating, and infinite correlation.
This pamphlet would quote world religious scriptures, TM experiences, government constitutions, world literature, great artists, scientists, and philosophers. I was inspired by this notion and decided to research it. Off I went to Zurich’s public library to find quotations corresponding to these ten qualities.
A physics major at Allahabad University, Maharishi loved proving his theories and practices scientifically. To this end, he founded Maharishi European Research University (MERU) in Weggis, Switzerland in 1975 and invited scientists to draw analogies between ancient Vedic wisdom and modern science. I enjoyed these intellectual diversions. I could listen for hours to the most tedious research, which I somehow found highly entertaining.
Did I say I was a nerd? Uh … I would say so.
David Orme-Johnson, Larry Domash, and John Farrow (Mia Farrow’s brother) amassed scientific studies validating TM’s efficacy. Reginald assigned me to design a 128-page book with the rousing title: Scientific Research on the Transcendental Meditation Programme. After five dull months of slaving (with other artists I’d recruited) at the incredibly tedious task of layout and paste-up before the advent of computers, I finally sent word to Maharishi it was completed.
Maharishi replied, via his skin-boy, “Susan should give it to Reginald.”
This made me incredibly furious. Maharishi wouldn’t let me present my hard-earned work directly to him. Instead Reginald would get both the glory and the darshan. I made up my mind: I’ll never do another job for Reginald. Never again!
In May 1975 Maharishi sent International Staff to Hotel Annapurna in Courchevel, French Alps, where he began an experimental program. A six-month advanced course for Initiators claimed to teach siddhis (“perfections”)—supernormal powers expounded in Yoga Sutras, an ancient scripture written by the sage Patanjali.
Maharishi said everyone must take this “TM-Sidhi Course.” If we couldn’t afford it, we should go home and raise money. The Staff rapidly dwindled to practically zero. Old-timers like Jerry and Debby Jarvis attended the course. But we Staff were left out. Maharishi was busy in top-secret meetings or flying off to Biarritz, Zinal, and other locations where the new course was held.
Rumors spread and multiplied. “Today Maharishi taught them to disappear, and Jerry Jarvis became invisible.” “They’re learning how to manifest things.” “Maharishi taught them supernormal strength.” “They learned ESP.” “Tonight they all levitated.”
Determined to work directly with Maharishi and avoid Reginald like the plague, I hung around Maharishi closely. Whatever he was interested in, I became interested in. Whatever he worked on, I worked on.
Maharishi’s focus was his six-month course, renamed Age of Enlightenment Governor Training Course—AEGTC. He assigned me to make charts of the course schedule (though I hadn’t taken the course) and graphics showing scientific findings of the course’s extraordinary effects.
I edited and designed a pamphlet validating TM’s effect on large populations—“The Maharishi Effect.” It showed how practicing TM in groups reduces crime and violence.
I designed, illustrated, and printed a children’s book slathered in gold ink within an impossible three-day deadline. It even included music notation of a song composed by Maharishi. His only comment: “Why aren’t the illustrations in color?”
Really? In three days?
I designed a currency note called a “Maha” (a new monetary system conceived by Maharishi, which later morphed into the “Raam” currency now used by the Movement), and happily engaged in dozens of other graphic design projects.
In November 1975, Maharishi was about to take a trip to the USA for two weeks, to visit the new Maharishi International University (MIU) campus in Fairfield, Iowa and a facility in the Catskills. Though disenchanted with the States, I wanted to travel with Maharishi for a brief visit to see my parents. For five years I hadn’t set foot in America.
I was incredibly nervous about asking Maharishi’s permission. I thought for sure I would hear, “Go to the States and initiate the people.” It seemed particularly risky to ask at that time, when he was sending Staff home right and left. As I considered broaching the subject with Maharishi, I became increasingly anxious.
August 26, 1967, Bangor, North Wales: Sitar concert by George Harrison: counterclockwise: Maharishi, John Lennon, Paolo Ammassari, Ringo Star, Jenny Boyd, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd. © Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
Serenade at the Beatles' quarters in Rishikesh: l. to r.: Back row: Sarah Sadowski, Jenny Boyd, Donovan, Windy Winkler, Joe Lysowski. Front row: Edna Linnell, Rosalyn Bonas, John Lennon, Sundar Singh, Mike Dolan. © BeatlesPhotos.de.
August 26, 1967, Bangor, North Wales: George Harrison practicing sitar. He'd been studying with famed sitar player Ravi Shankar. © Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
Donovan and Paul sing in “Silence Zone” at Maharishi’s ashram, Rishikesh. Terry Gustafson (Jojo in Beatles’ “Get Back”) in background. © Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
February 1968, Teacher Training Course, Rishikesh, India: front row: l. to r.: Ringo Starr, Maureen Starkey, Jane Asher, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Cynthia Lennon, John Lennon.
© Paul Saltzman / (Contact Press Images)
Beatles Ringo, John, and Paul sing on steps of their quarters in Rishikesh, photographed through chain link fence. © Paul Saltzman / (Contact Press Images)
Mia Farrow holding puppy Arjuna.
© Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
Eating lunch in Rishikesh: l. to r.: Rosalyn Bonas (see page 177), and Mia Farrow.
Photograph © SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved.
Sing-along on Ganges bank: front row: l. to r.: Mia Farrow, Pattie Boyd, Jenny Boyd, Donovan, George Harrison. Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
February 10, 1968: Mia wearing silver crown, holding puppy Arjuna: l. to r.: Walter Koch, Maharishi, Mia Farrow, Gerd Hegendörfer.
© Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
Beatles John and Paul compose most of the White Album in India.
© Paul Saltzman / (Contact Press Images)
Sing-along on Ganges bank below ashram: l. to r.: Richard Blakely, Mia Farrow, Terry Gustafson (Jojo in the Beatles’ “Get Back”) Donovan, George Harrison, Mike Love, Maharishi, John Lennon, Cynthia Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher. Front of Donovan: Pattie Boyd. © Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
Maharishi, The Beatles and wives, and Mia Farrow on cover of Saturday Evening Post, May 4, 1968. Photograph © SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved.
Socialite Nancy Cooke in a sari, and Beach Boy Mike Love in his designer outfit, meditating on the bluff overlooking Ganges River in Rishikesh. Marvin Lichtner / Photograph © SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved.
Celebrities in Rishikesh, February 1968: front to back around circle: Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, George Harrison, John Lennon, Cynthia Lennon, Maureen Starkey, Ringo Starr, Mike Love, Maharishi. Photograph © SEPS licensed by Curtis Licensing Indianapolis, IN. All rights reserved.
February 1968: l. to r.: George Harrison, Cynthia Lennon, Maureen Starkey. © Paul Saltzman / (Contact Press Images)
February 25, 1968: George Harrison buried in garlands on his birthday: l. t
o r.: Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Mal Evans (Beatles road manager).
© Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
1968, Rishikesh: Mike Love, Pattie Boyd, and John Lennon outside the Beatles' quarters. © BeatlesPhotos.de
George plays organ on rooftop. (See page 167.)
© Colin Harrison-Avico Ltd.
1969, Rishikesh: l. to r.: Maharishi holding pink flowers, Tat Wale Baba with umbrella and staff, brahamacharya holding Tat's hair to prevent dragging on ground. Brahmachari Dherendra behind Tat. Brahmachari Shankar Lal with white hair and beard: direct disciple of Guru Dev.
www.gutenberg.org / Tat Wale Baba-Rishi of the Himalayas by Vincent J. Daczynski.
Copyrighted: Free Use
April 13, 1968, Rishikesh: Holy men visit the ashram. Satchadananda in saffron robes holding staff, left of Maharishi. Tat Wale Baba with long dreadlocks, right of Maharishi. Westerners include: l. to r.: Gerd Hergendörfer bearded, Charles F. Lutes below Satchadananda, and Jerry Jarvis below Maharishi. On this occasion, Satchadananda said, “The Almighty created only bliss; man created everything else.” Photo courtesy of Paul Mason
1970, Rishikesh: Maharishi and Devendra in back seat of India-built Ambassador taxi. Maharishi's cook Hari Har Khan on right holding car door. Photo courtesy of Jared Stoltz
Maharishi & Me Page 14