Another set of clapping continued five minutes. Maharishi described, “There was such a joyous feeling in the whole atmosphere. The feeling suddenly rose, as if every heart was just enlivened with the thought. It was a natural consequence from the response of the people.”72
Maharishi’s goal was to teach Deep Meditation everywhere and solve everyday worries and miseries. Meditation was not just for reclusive monks. Householders could enjoy both material comforts and spiritual glory. He declared Deep Meditation “the simplest and fastest method of fulfillment in life.”73 His revolutionary message: to attain higher consciousness, it wasn’t necessary to give up anything or accept any religious pathway or dogma. Just meditate twice a day.
On April 27, 1958, Maharishi wrapped into a carpet-roll his passport, silk dhotis, cashmere blanket, shawl, silk sheets, pillow, deerskin, picture of Guru Dev, brass puja vessels, alarm clock, fountain pen, and metal toiletry box. With no money and no timetable, he flew from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar).
He said, “It never came to my mind where I will stay and to whom I will talk and what will happen when I arrive there. I just started out.”74
Then on to Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Hawaii, where 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.”75
In 1959, Maharishi continued teaching in Honolulu, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and London. On May 8 in Los Angeles, he moved into the home of Helena and Roland Olson, and daughters Theresa and Tina. The Olsons confided in me that Maharishi’s presence was both a blessing and disruption. He took over the house, even appropriating the teenage Tina’s forbidden, off-limits bedroom, leaving her in tears. He made constant demands, racked up outrageous phone and electric bills, entertained crowds nearly twenty-four hours a day, and generally wore down everyone to a pulp.
This set the standard for everywhere else he traveled.
Wherever Maharishi placed himself, there coexisted both the eye of the hurricane, in its center of deep silence, and also the rage of a surrounding tempest. Everyone nearby got stretched to his/her limit, making herculean efforts to fulfill impossible demands. No one could keep up with his extreme pace. He generally kept two or three secretaries busy at once. They seldom slept.
In 1959, Maharishi developed a three-year plan: 25,000 Deep Meditation centers manned by 25,000 meditation guides by the end of 1962. Then two more three-year plans to spiritually regenerate the entire world. After that, he planned to retire to the Himalayas.
In 1960 Maharishi held his first Teacher Training Course in Rishikesh, India under primitive conditions and suffocating 115-degree heat. Out of sixty-five attendees, he only allowed eleven to become Initiators. One was Beulah Smith of San Diego, California. It would be five years before Maharishi trained more. So Charlie Lutes, head of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement (SRM), kept Beulah busy.
From these humble beginnings, with a preposterous vision no one believed he would accomplish, the ever-enthusiastic, tireless Maharishi set out to change the world.
14
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
You swing with the wind and that’s all you have to do. I blow the wind. Sometimes very fresh wind in the morning, sometimes a little warmer in the evening, maybe cold wind in the night. You go through the different values of knowledge and experience. The result will be, you will come out weatherproof. No weather will be able to upset you.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
A typical day in the life of Maharishi—and us on International Staff:
He rose between 5:00 and 8:00 a.m., bathed, donned a clean white silk dhoti, and drank fresh-squeezed orange juice from a sterling silver cup. Then he met with devotees or talked on the phone with people from all over the world.
For hours, days, even weeks, people waiting to see Maharishi sat on the floor in the hallway near piles of stinky shoes belonging to those inside his room, while skin-boys ordered them to leave repeatedly. This test of determination quickly culled anyone bent on wasting his time.
With millions of meditators and thousands of TM centers, private meetings kept him busy. Then he would or would not meet those assembled in the lecture hall. Even if four thousand were gathered, or reporters were present, they might wait one hour or six hours.
When and if Maharishi arrived, he fully embodied his slogan, “Life is not a struggle; life is bliss.” He frequently cracked jokes and laughed at himself. His joy was contagious. Much of the time, those in near vicinity were in stiches. He was bliss in the flesh.
The press dubbed him “the giggling guru.” His robust laugh was described as “an irresistible invitation to join him in a huge joke—even if one was not at all sure what the joke was, whether it springs from his understanding of some sublime, specific truths or from his recognition of the idiocy of mankind in general.”76 Maharishi was the happiest person I ever encountered.
Maharishi loved ceremonies, celebrations, and pageantry, so excuses for special events were always being trumped up. At one point we started ringing little bells because he preferred bells to applause. He also favored alpenhorns and conch shells.
He never watched television or movies and was ignorant about pop culture. During music, dance, and magic performances, and most speeches, he closed his eyes and meditated.
1970, Rishikesh, India: Maharishi meditating on TM Teacher Training Course.
When Maharishi got down to work, he made notes on pads of paper with felt-tip pens, always handy on his coffee table. I collected over a hundred of these notes. A few are in this book in the photo insert.
Whatever task at hand, he glorified it the most vital responsibility in the cosmos, fraught with paramount significance, which must be completed this instant. By accomplishing it, we would save the planet and prevent unspeakable horrors.
In his presence, everything assumed a spellbinding golden glow. His unfathomable essence created an unparalleled corona of urgent immediacy. Fully absorbed in each moment, Maharishi’s unwavering focus was 100 percent. Charismatic to the point of hypnotic, he exuded a spiritually charged magnetism—entrancing and inebriating. With his mere glance, I became the only person in the universe, and now the only time ever existing. The closer my proximity, the deeper I sank into timeless, spaceless infinitude.
There was the silence, his delicious, sweet serenity, physical and visceral, the unearthly quietude of the infinite—solid, dense, compact, and deep.
There was the sound, a heavenly vibrational resonance—distinct and recognizable. Was it the hum of creation, the primordial OM, pranava, or nada? When I asked him about it, Maharishi waved me off and said, “It’s not important.”
There was the look, whether infinite love, approval, anger, or disdain—vastly penetrating. The added bonus to every look was the attendant energy transmission, shakti-sanchara, transferred with a word, touch, or merely a glance. His piercing eyes of unimaginable intensity evoked an arcane priest, older than eternity. Other times, toying with a flower while shaking with easy laughter, his twinkling eyes beguiled us like an adorable child.
The Look.
There were the words. Maharishi’s expressions wove tapestries of rich context, revelatory meaning, and hidden metaphor, while shattering all preconceptions and delusions. Though I observed him for years, I could never fathom the subtle nuances of his personal interactions and their enduring effects.
There was the grace. As I engaged in some mission assigned by Maharishi, whether nearby or continents away, a strange supernatural phenomenon occurred. Spiritual impulses would sweep over me like caresses of divine love, ecstatic blessings in waves of bliss. Was this tender, gentle sweetness the “love” extolled by the Apostle Paul?
Such energy flowing from a spiritual master might be expected. But strangely, in Maharishi’s immediate proximity,
I received one added dividend. What became acutely obvious was the utter futility and insanity of this world. Not by anything he said or did, but simply by his presence, it became clear nothing is real, all is transient and intangible, this entire world is an illusion, a mere puppet show.
Maharishi worked on projects as a group and expected all to participate. He often spent two hours rewriting one sentence or paragraph. Such undertakings grinded on and on and on and on and on, with no break, increasing in intensity, until everyone was worn out, hungry, dehydrated, bored, and ready to jump out of our skin. This stretched us to our limit.
Under pressure to complete next-to-impossible deadlines, we toiled overnight. But when we reported to Maharishi, he often ignored us or waved us off until “later”—which never came. Thus our egos derived no gratification from accomplishments, and we developed nonattachment.
Invariably Maharishi requested the one thing that we forgot to do or that wasn’t completed on time. He chastised us for whatever didn’t reach his insufferable standard of impossible perfection. Our egos were prevented from indulging in “being right,” since he often made us wrong.
In Rishikesh in 1969, boilers were acquired to heat the students’ rooms. A British course attendee Tony Parker was assigned to draw up a plan. Pipes would carry boiling water into the rooms for steam heat, while laborers would feed coal into the stoves all night.
During construction, Maharishi watched the daily progress. Invariably he suggested the pipes were not the right height or placement, or some other madness. After holes had been punched through the walls, Maharishi stumbled around on the rocks behind the puris to inspect the pipes running along the ground.
Wherever pipes were placed, Maharishi said, “No, no, better to bring the pipe like this and across the wall like this.”
After several senseless revisions by Maharishi, it was Tony’s last straw. He trotted up the path to the smoker’s dining room in a daze, grabbed the first guy he saw, and demanded, “Give me a fag, mate! He’s making me crazy! Give me a fag!”
Maharishi’s behavior seemed the height of perfectionism, breadth of control, or depth of insanity. He would reprimand us for things unknown to us, not our responsibility, or the very thing he instructed us to do. In this way he burned off our karmic seeds.
Occasionally he spoke in riddles or spewed incomprehensible gobbledygook. He would then ask a question about what he’d just said. We gaped at him with puzzled, blank expressions. He stared back with wild eyes slightly crossed, as though he’d gone mad. Thus we became confounded and more malleable to his guidance.
Maharishi pressed our buttons to the max. He deliberately tossed and stirred us into antagonistic brews and emotional boiling pots. With acutely heightened feelings, we would react to rebuffs with abnormal sensitivity. This nurtured emotional flexibility.
Craving the incredible love energy of Maharishi’s darshan, timid devotees would suddenly shape-shift into shoving, scratching, cutthroat demons/demonesses, warring to get into his room. The brashest often received the most attention, by making the most noise.
Competition was extreme. Unless we captured Maharishi’s attention, during the next personnel cut we would be expelled. Only the tough survived. I was one of a handful of sticky, immovable Staff that glued myself to him and remained year after year.
Maharishi fabricated and manipulated a rigid pyramid of hierarchy and status. Those on top received his lion’s share of attention. Who ate in which dining room, who sat where in the hall, who got into his boat on the lake, who roomed in what building on what floor—all became nonstop button-pushing emotional boomerangs.
Maharishi’s primary curricula seemed to include lessons in letting go, lessons in futility, in one-pointed resolve, and in egolessness.
To pulverize our egos and purify our minds, first he made us feel special, privy to his elite, clandestine exclusive conclave. If we bought the illusion, our ego would blow out of proportion. Then later we would become outcasts, banished from his secret inner circle, feeling small and ridiculous.
With a glance, gesture, or word, Maharishi alternately praised and demeaned us, while simultaneously swaying fellow disciples’ opinions toward us. Ego balm rarely got dished out without ego blast in same measure. He would laud me for being “very creative,” then dream up some excuse to humiliate me.
In the crystalline mirror that was Maharishi, we plainly saw our strengths and weaknesses. Like deep psychotherapy, our worst traits surfaced, then like psychosurgery, festering boils got removed. This painful process helped us develop compassion, nonjudgment, and humility.
Sufi master Radha Mohan Lal said, “Saints are very cruel. It is because they want only the good of the disciple. That nothing should remain, no impurity, no obstacle; no defects to hinder them.”77
Rhoda Orme-Johnson, wife of David Orme-Johnson (head of TM scientific research), while caring for her husband and kids, was reluctantly dragged into working for Maharishi. He put her in charge of housing. She found it unnatural and sometimes became severe and short with students. Maharishi sent her a message, “Don’t be so mean.”
Rhoda thankfully realized Maharishi was showing her to herself. It wasn’t pleasant, but necessary. She recognized he was incinerating a rock in her heart. She said, “Today we might call it tough love. It was love and it was sometimes painful.”78
Dr. Byron Rigby, Australian psychiatrist, on the MERU and MUM (formerly known as MIU) faculty for thirty-eight years, and leader of TM in Australia, said being around Maharishi was like “open-ego surgery.”79
The great female “hugging saint” Ammachi said, “When the pus in a wound is squeezed out, it will cause pain; but will a good doctor refrain from doing this just because it hurts? Likewise, when your vasanas are being removed, you will feel pain. It is for your own good.”80
Maharishi did whatever it took to cure our false egotism and awaken our true self. He followed no rules or polite social conventions. His erratic conduct seemed hot and cold, irrational, amoral, absurd, and agonizing. He might reward bad behavior or punish good behavior. Such Indian guru tactics are widely misunderstood.
One guru tradition is “burning off karma.” The Sanskrit word karma means “action.” Whatever we experience this lifetime is the consequence of past thoughts, words, and deeds—from this life and previous lives. Such consequences, both individual and collective, are inescapable.
However, some spiritual masters can, by a word, glance, touch, or intention, soften the intensity of karmic consequences. For example, a guru might harshly insult a disciple, thereby preventing a much worse, possibly physical blow, had the guru done nothing.
Or gurus might “take on” a portion of a disciple’s karma, which causes the guru to become weak or ill. Christianity appropriated this uniquely Indian belief. Jesus is known as a sacrificial lamb for his disciples’ sins, indeed for the entire world. He’s a jagadguru (world guru), who “takes-on” karma for the masses.
Westerners generally can’t handle guru methods. Maharishi’s followers came and didn’t stay long. In India, masters who employ guru devices get praised. But in the USA they get sued and slandered, as Maharishi did—repeatedly.
Yukteswar said to his disciple Paramahansa Yogananda, “You will go to foreign lands, where blunt assaults on the ego are not appreciated. A teacher could not spread India’s message in the West without an ample fund of accommodative patience and forbearance.”81
While Maharishi was performing his prestidigitations, our emotional pendulums swung between extreme heaven and hell. We barely hung on to brutal, maddening seesaws of radical polarities, from supremely sublime to radically ridiculous.
Though Westerners judge gurus’ actions as abuse, sadism, mental illness, or downright stupidity, there is method to the apparent madness: The guru’s senseless machinations literally drive us out of our minds so God can enter. This may sound insane, but it works. The world is so bound in ignorance that only extreme measures can wake us up.
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sp; Radha Mohan Lal said, “The shishya [disciple] is constantly kept between the opposite ups and downs; it creates the friction necessary to cause suffering which will defeat the mind. The greatest obstacle on the Spiritual Path is to make people understand that they have to give up everything. What is dearest to us must go.”82
At the same time, no love can compare with a spiritual master’s oceanic love. An ideal guru/disciple relationship is built on this immutable foundation. We on Staff loved and trusted Maharishi. While undergoing harsh ego blasts to burn off karmic seeds (sanskaras) and negative tendencies (vasanas), we could handle the burn because of this divine love.
Like moths to a flame, we felt compelled to return again and again to that brightest of lights—the inferno that would ultimately mean certain demise. In our ego’s death-throes, we clung to that fire, knowing full well it would burn us to ashes.
Maharishi said the path was easy. Yes, it was easy for those who stayed home, meditated twenty minutes twice a day, and never got involved with Maharishi. But the search for my Holy Grail seemed to have its share of pitfalls, more like caverns.
By the time the curtain fell on Maharishi’s masterful sleight-of-hand show for any given day, everyone had missed afternoon meditation. It was already 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. Dinner was cold in the kitchen, and Susan the Singer (chief chef) was tearing her hair out.
Maharishi would say, “Go and rest” (his favorite expression), or “Go and eat,” or “Go and meditate,” and then, “Come back at 9:00” (or whenever). Then Maharishi adjourned to his private quarters.
Maharishi & Me Page 16