Maharishi & Me
Page 15
1970, Rishikesh: Prudence Farrow and Jerry Jarvis on my TM Teacher Training course.
Photo courtesy of Jared Stoltz
1970, Rishikesh: Maharishi walking on the ashram path. Behind Maharishi: l. to r.: Turkish guy: possibly Kyani, Judith Bourque in purple, Brahmachari Satyanand in white robes, Dick Britton-Foster behind him, Mrs. Paul Levine, Nini White, Maharishi, Jane Hopson, Carole Hamby, German in blue: possibly Elsie, Helga Fiernow, Jerry Jarvis, Turkish TM leader: Madame Kaivani.
Photo courtesy of Jared Stoltz
1969, Pahalgam, Kashmir: Maharishi (l. on couch) debates spiritual master Rajneesh (r. on couch). (See page 206.) Photo courtesy of Jared Stoltz
Maharishi performs puja ceremony in India.
Photo courtesy of Fred den Ouden
March 6, 1970, Rishikesh: Maha Shivaratri (Great Night of Lord Shiva) puja ceremony: l. to r.: Maharishi, Brahmachari Devendra, Brahmachari Satyanand. Photo courtesy of Fred den Ouden
A Vision of Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness, and Unity Consciousness
On a Moonlit Night with Maharishi (painted by Susan Shumsky)
As we sat on Maharishi's terrace that moonlit night of 16 April, 1970, he gave us a vision of the three higher states of consciousness.
“Look, you have behind you all the higher states of consciousness in one glance.
“The two trees seen distinct from the clear blue of the sky present creation appreciated as separate from the self in Cosmic Consciousness. When the light comes from this side and illumines the tree, it pictures God Consciousness, in which creation is viewed in the celestial light with the blue of the unbounded self. The vision of a tree almost one with the blue presents the state of unified consciousness, in which everything is cognized in terms of the self.
“From left to right the sequence shows the development of consciousness. Cosmic Consciousness establishes the infinite splendor of the self as separate from the finite values of the world whilst yet engaging it in the mastery over the entire creation. God Consciousness experiences the world in the celestial value along with the infinite value of the self—the self enjoys the resplendent glories of the celestial light. When this state of God Consciousness is a living reality of day-to-day life, the cognition rises naturally to the infinite value. The infinite self finds everything in terms of himself.
“This is how the finite values of Cosmic Consciousness find fulfillment in the infinite value of the self in Unity, the state of Supreme Knowledge. Through this sequence of the evolution of consciousness, Transcendental Meditation brings fulfillment to the infinite possibility of everyone's life.”
The trees of the Academy stand to illustrate Maharishi's words.
My original painting of Adi Shankaracharya and four main disciples: Padmapadacharya, Hastamalakacharya, Trothakacharya, and Sureshwaracharya. Section of Holy Tradition painting I worked on with Maharishi. (See page 124.)
Original painting I made of Guru Dev.
1970, Rishikesh: Maharishi on Ganges riverbank. Photo courtesy of Colin Harrison
1970, Rishikesh, India: Maharishi (rear, slightly right, seated on a chair) personally directs workers in construction at the ashram. (See page 43.)
Photo courtesy of Jared Stoltz
1970, Rishikesh, India: Maharishi (third from left) seated in the ashram garden with Sama Veda pundits, who chant ancient Vedic scriptures in an oral tradition.
Photo courtesy of Jared Stoltz
June 1970, Livigno, Italy: r. I am wearing a ring gifted by The Doors’ lead guitarist Robbie Krieger; l. my Dutch friend “Lars.” (See page 62.)
June 1970, Livigno, Italy: l.: Mr. Roy, a banker who sold gemstones on the side, r.: Maharishi. Photo courtesy of Jared Stoltz
April 1976, Opera House, Lucerne, Switzerland: Spring Festival of the Age of Enlightenment, attended by participants of six-month TM-Sidhi Course and Teacher Training Course.
Marcus Brierley / Alamy Stock Photo
Maharishi in lecture hall, Sönnenberg, seated below Holy Tradition, painted by Frances Knight. (See page 81.)
Régis BOSSU / Sygma / Getty Images
TM Movement headquarters in 1970s: Hotel Sönnenberg, Seelisberg, Switzerland. (See page 96.) Ringier AG
Maharishi often said, “Water the root to enjoy the fruit.” Watering the root means meditating. Enjoying the fruit means a successful, happy life.
Maharishi made this drawing during our conversation on my birthday in 1976. (Read what he said on pages 139–141.)
For the Holy Tradition painting design, Maharishi first drew circles to represent the masters in a vertical straight line. Then he changed his mind. He placed the masters along a meandering stream. (See page 82 and pencil sketch on page 83.)
Maharishi’s design for a poster he asked me to create. It depicts the Supreme Council of the World Government of the Age of Enlightenment with sixteen Ministries. (See pages 99–101.)
Maharishi often stated, “Government is the innocent mirror of the nation.” He believed government perfectly reflects the collective consciousness of any population.
Maharishi made loads of notes like this during our Finance Office marathon while my parents visited Seelisberg. (See page 99–101.)
Andras Nevai
Photos of me: 1988: In front of my home in Fairfield, Iowa.
1984: Wearing sari.
1983: Wearing “Sidha Dress.”
1996: On book tour pumping fuel at truck stop.
1997: Promoting book at International New Age Trade Show.
PART IV
MAHARISHI’S SPELL
People are influenced by what we are, what we radiate. This has greater appeal than what we say.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
Photo courtesy of Paul Mason
13
EYE OF THE HURRICANE
The ideal relationship, in my mind, was that one has to be for him and that’s all. It’s the delicate, tender, inner thread of life that breathes wisdom into the life of a disciple.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
The life of a spiritual master is not about the events. It’s about his effect upon hearts of those he touched. Maharishi not only affected me profoundly. His influence was felt worldwide. He transformed a generation and lifted the consciousness of a planet through his simple meditation practice.
How can I make such claims? Because, before Maharishi left his native India in 1959 and stepped onto America’s shores, “meditation” was a virtually unknown concept. By the time Maharishi died in 2008, his brand name “Transcendental Meditation” was as generic as Kleenex.
In India, the key to making a spiritual master is discipleship with his guru. Just as disciples sought Jesus as their mentor, likewise Indian chela seek and find their guru.
On January 12, 1918, Mahesh Chandra Srivastava (a.k.a. Mahesh Prasad Varma) was born in a mud house in Panduka village in Raipur, Madhya Pradesh (now known as Chhattisgarh), central India. His father, Shri Ram Prasad Srivastava, was a revenue inspector in civil service. Mahesh’s siblings consisted of an elder brother and two sisters. His family name identified his caste as kayastha (scribe): public record keepers, accountants, writers, and administrators.
Sometimes Maharishi would describe how he met his guru, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, whom he reverentially called “Guru Dev”:
In his youth, Mahesh often visited holy men. During summer vacation, his uncle Dr. Varma told him about a saint in a remote area, unwelcoming to visitors, and difficult to approach. Mahesh and his friends conspired to slip in quietly around midnight.
The teenagers located the small house in the forest at about 11:00 p.m. An attendant on the ground floor asked impatiently, “How you are here? Who told you? You are not expected to come.”
The youngsters replied, “Maybe we lost our way, and we are here. Tell us about the saint. We want to hear.”
The attendant retorted, “Don’t talk. Just sit quiet here.”57
The attendant then disappeared upstairs. After half an
hour, he returned and said, “Follow me very quietly.” He led them upstairs to a small terrace. In the dark they could barely make out someone reclining on a chair. They silently took a place on the floor next to other men. No one made a sound.58
After twenty minutes, suddenly the headlights of a distant car lit up the porch for a moment. Mahesh caught a glimpse of the glowing face of a great saint. He described: “Then I saw Guru Dev and I thought, ‘Here is the sun.’ This was the flashing moment of light, which decided my destiny.”59
Mahesh later spoke with Guru Dev and asked to serve him. He was instructed to first finish his studies. After graduating in physics from Allahabad University in 1942, he joined his guru’s monastery. By that time Guru Dev had been elected Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math. His winter residence was Allahabad, where Mahesh attended college.
In the tradition of the Swami Order established by Adi Shankara (509-477 BC), four Shankaracharya carry on as custodians of Hinduism in four monasteries: North, South, East, and West. Guru Dev served as Shankaracharya of the North, in Jyotir Math, Himalayas, from 1941 to 1953.
Maharishi always described his guru with deep emotion, boundless love, and tenderness: “Everything regarding him was great, simple, innocent, complete. He was that perfect divine personality.”60 “His voice, the sight of him, even from a distance, inspired the people. His words had a soothing influence to the heart, mind, and soul. Even atheists became believers in God. We used to say, ‘rocks are melting.’ His divine presence had an overpowering spiritual influence.”61
After one week in the ashram, Bal Brahmachari (“celibate since birth”) Mahesh wasn’t satisfied to bow at his guru’s feet twice daily with other disciples. He realized the way to get close to Guru Dev was through work. When he noticed his guru’s door open, he asked a brahmacharya, considered a great favorite, whether he could help. Disciples found Mahesh a willing volunteer and readily parted with chores like cleaning the floor.
When a pundit (Hindu priest) in charge of Guru Dev’s correspondence returned home, Mahesh began reading mail to Guru Dev. One letter from an organization requested a blessing for a yagna (religious ceremony). Mahesh considered this important. He repeatedly asked Guru Dev for a reply, but was repeatedly ignored. Finally Mahesh asked whether he should write a draft. Guru Dev asked, “What you will write?”62
While Guru Dev rested after lunch, Mahesh took a bold step: “I’ll write a few lines myself.” He imagined, “Now supposing if I was a Shankaracharya, what I’ll say in that letter?” That evening, in one breath, Mahesh read to Guru Dev the brief draft he’d written. Later Maharishi often recalled to us students: “And it sounded so apt, so appropriate.”63
Guru Dev’s response was, “Will these people get it if you write? Then send it.”
Whenever Maharishi described this incident to us, he noted, with a sense of triumph: “Then I quickly wrote, and put a seal of Shankaracharya, and did the whole paraphernalia—and sent it.”64
Maharishi described, “From the beginning, the whole purpose was just breathe his breath. Tune myself to Guru Dev. Fortunately, it struck me the only way to do this was to adjust my feelings to his feelings. Whichever way he sees, I want to see the same. Whichever way he thinks, I want to think the same.”65
Mahesh would start an activity and then closely watch which way Guru Dev wanted him to go. If any time he felt Guru Dev wanted him to change directions, he would turn. He described, “Very precious activities I sometimes had to completely abandon. There were quite a few periods of test, but somehow I came through every one of them.”66
Nancy Cooke, a TM Initiator from the early 1960s, said, “Apparently, from stories we heard, he had been a stern master to Maharishi, breaking his disciple’s pride through countless tests, but at the same time earning his devotion.”67
After about two and a half years, Mahesh began to think, “Now the attunement is fairly well. I am making less mistakes now. All that period of adjustment and readjustment, this was the impulse of my life. On this I was living, moving, breathing eating, and talking.”68
After several years, Mahesh felt an “experience of complete oneness with Guru Dev, not in this isolated single body. And what I did from my side was, just on that first glimpse of the flashing light on him, the life was surrendered.”69
Mahesh’s lower caste birth prevented initiation into the Swami Order (a.k.a. Shankaracharya Order) of saffron-robed monks. Thus he wore white robes, indicating his lesser status. Even now he remains a thorn in the side of major religious leaders who give no credence to TM, since he wasn’t Brahmin (priestly) caste, and therefore traditionally ineligible to dispense mantras and teach meditation.
In addition, Maharishi’s notoriety caused political rifts, due to legal disputes concerning the viable successor to Guru Dev’s office as Shankaracharya. Maharishi’s greatest detractors harshly accused him of several crimes—even poisoning Guru Dev.
On May 20, 1953, Guru Dev was in ill health in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). His doctors visited, issuing a good prognosis. He lay down, relaxed. Ten minutes later he said, “Help me get up.” Seated in lotus posture and entering samadhi, he got up—up to God. He relinquished his mortal coil.
Singh Deo, Maharaja of Kanchi, was present when Guru Dev passed. He said that during his last minutes of life, Guru Dev pointed to Mahesh and called him near. As Mahesh bowed, Guru Dev placed his palms facing his own neck and ears and passed his hands upward near his own head, then above his head, making an arc toward Mahesh’s head, and passed his palms down the sides of Mahesh’s head. Singh Deo felt with this gesture Guru Dev transferred his power to Mahesh.
In India, great saints aren’t cremated. Their bodies are believed sacred. Guru Dev’s body, in seated position, was paraded amid throngs to a jam-packed railway station, to sounds of music, bells, conch shells, and hymns. The body was taken to Kedar Ghat in Benares (now Varanasi) and placed in an elaborately decorated stone box with his accouterments: kamandalu pot and dandi staff. The box was lowered into the Ganges.
In a dramatic act, Mahesh dove into the Ganges and held onto the container until it rested in the riverbed. When I visited the Shankaracharya ashram in Jyotir Math in 2011, the attendants told me Mahesh had remained underwater for twenty minutes. When he surfaced, he bowed in reverence.
After Guru Dev’s death, Mahesh meditated in silence in a tiny cave below the ancient temple Gyan Mandir in Uttar Kashi for about a year. There his inner Voice repeatedly said, Go to Rameshwaram (in the southern tip of India).
Mahesh confided his wishes to an elderly sannyasi (renunciate) who advised him not to leave, because, beyond the Ganges, it is “mud.” Six months later, when Mahesh still wished to go, the sannyasi suggested he go to rid himself of the desire.
In summer 1954, Mahesh accompanied an ailing elderly woman from Calcutta, said to be his aunt, to a medical facility in Madanapalle near Bangalore. Since no lodging existed in that town, he spent his days caring for her, and nights sleeping on a storage room floor off the kitchen in a small coffee house.
Bank manager T. Rama Rao, of State Bank of Mysore, visited the coffee house nightly with office colleagues. Their conversations continued on the steps of a nearby temple. The group noticed Mahesh on the steps, beaming. Impressed with his teachings, Rama Rao and coffee house proprietors Krishna and Narayana Iyer titled him “Maharishi” and declared him a great yogi. The title stuck, though no sanctioned religious body conferred it.
Within a few days, despite the best treatment at the hospital, the woman passed over. Maharishi traveled to the southern tip of India, to the holy sites Kanya Kumari and Rameshwaram.70
After three weeks in South India, the thought came to Maharishi, “It is not necessary for man to suffer. The Vedas say, ‘All this is bliss. I am bliss, infinite, unbounded, eternal, non-changing.’ But where is the reality of this in the day-to-day life of the people?” A deep feeling arose in Maharishi’s mind that something should be done so people wouldn’t suffer.71
In
Trivandrum, Kerala (now Thiruvananthapuram), Maharishi stayed in a small room. As he walked to the temple daily, a man living nearby asked him daily whether he lectured. Maharishi kept saying “No.” After several days, finally Maharishi said, “I don’t lecture, but if there are people to hear me I could give them some message.”
A few hours later, that man stunned Maharishi by knocking on his door, saying, “Seven lectures have been prepared for you. Now I have to give them seven titles. And this will be a one-week program.” Maharishi dictated seven topics.
The audience doubled every day he lectured at the library. The message was always the same: Life in its essential nature is bliss. Everyone can experience unbounded bliss consciousness and integrate it into daily life through his effortless “Deep Meditation” technique (later renamed “Transcendental Meditation”).
Maharishi taught in Kerala for six months, then traveled two years throughout India, holding Spiritual Development Camps. In December 1957 in Madras (now Chennai), a three-day Seminar of Spiritual Luminaries celebrated the 89th birthday of Guru Dev, where ten thousand people gathered in a field.
At the microphone, Maharishi reviewed two years teaching this simple method, producing positive results: “In this small area of the world where the cultures are different, it has produced this effect, so why can’t we spiritually regenerate the whole world through this technique?”
The crowd responded by clapping two to three minutes. When the clapping subsided, Maharishi said, “When this is the response from Mother Nature to the thought of spiritually regenerating the world through this practice, we’ll inaugurate a world movement; we’ll inaugurate the Spiritual Regeneration Movement here tomorrow evening.”