Maharishi & Me

by Susan Shumsky

  He took his second shower of the day, dressed in a fresh dhoti, and ate dinner prepared by his Brahmin cook. His diet consisted of North Indian vegetarian food served on a stainless steel thali (tray with little bowls). His favorite bread was puri, his oil was ghee, and his drink was water. No onions, garlic, meat, eggs, chocolate, caffeine, liquor, cigarettes, or drugs were present in his diet.

  Before Maharishi ate, his cook poured water over his hands from a stainless steel pitcher and handed him a cloth napkin. Maharishi sprinkled Ganges water over his food with a spoon and silently repeated mantras. He ate with his right hand, without utensils. Afterward, the pitcher appeared again so he could wash his hands. He often ate just once a day.

  Once Maharishi returned to the meeting room (if he showed up at all), he rarely stopped until well after midnight. We would troop to his private chambers late at night. If we were lucky, or if we could make up some good excuse, we would get in the door.

  In Maharishi’s bedroom or meeting room, there was his bed or couch, coffee table, night table, lamps, dresser, and altar with Guru Dev’s picture. We would sit on the floor.

  At some point he would lie down and nod off repeatedly. Each time he woke, he would say, “Go and rest.” But no one budged. He rarely dismissed us until 4:00 a.m., when he said, with finality, “Now go and rest.” At last he slept on white silk sheets under an undyed cashmere blanket. He slept in the silk dhoti he was already wearing.

  In 1973 at Hotel Fira in La Antilla, Spain, Maharishi just finished his evening lecture. Crowds of devotees crushed, vying for attention. Throngs made a double-row corridor for him to pass through. Palms together, poised to say Jai Guru Dev as he strolled by, their gaze trained intently on him. All were hungry for a glance or word.

  Arosa, Switzerland: Maharishi walking through the inescapable, ubiquitous corridor of devotees. The tall man to the left, behind Maharishi, is Bobby Roth, CEO of David Lynch Foundation (see page 220 for info). Keystone Pictures USA/ZUMAPRESS

  I stood in line with the ravenous pack. I had all the moves down, jockeying for position to catch his eye. I had years of practice. As he entered the elevator, maybe he would say, “Come, come,” and I would ride with him. Or as he exited the elevator, I would talk to him on the way to his next meeting or car.

  Sometimes he smiled, handed me a flower, and blessed me with waves of divine grace. Afterward I felt woozy, drunk, staggering from the wine of supernal love. Occasionally his glance was a scornful dagger, stabbing my heart with consuming shame. Other times he ignored me, looking past my shoulder. Then I became a nonentity, without purpose or meaning. Nowhere. Nothing.

  Sometimes I thought, If I give him this flower, he’ll smile at me. Better ask my question now. I may not get another chance. Then, with his glance, my burning question would vanish and mind go blank.

  That night I had no agenda. I was just waiting in line about fifty feet from the elevator. Jams of people blocked the elevator door. The moment he stepped past the threshold, people competed for attention.

  Maharishi spoke to certain people in line. These words hit like arrows to bull’s-eyes. So precise was his expression, suitable to each need. How does he know what to say? I wondered. Does God whisper in his ear?

  One woman waited, holding a flower. Maharishi, whom she’d never met, took the flower and said, “Go home and take care of your mother. She needs you now.”

  Maharishi stopped before a balding middle-aged man with glasses. The man was holding back tears. Maharishi gazed at him with gentle, loving eyes and said, “How you are? Hmm? Come tomorrow at 10:00 and we’ll see.”

  As Maharishi walked by a well-known devotee named Jim, he frowned and said, “Your face does not look like the face of a meditator.” Jim’s eyes widened in alarm, then lowered in shame.

  As Maharishi continued down the line, he asked several people, “You are doing well?”

  Strolling through the dense passageway of devotees, Maharishi spotted me from a distance. Something like a tunnel formed, as though we stepped beyond this earthly realm into an extra dimensional hallway.

  As he drew near, he handed me a flower and hurled a rapturous bolt with inscrutable, abysmal eyes. He then declared, with gravity, “Don’t look to anyone. When you don’t look to anyone, then everyone will look to you.”

  It was an ecstatic blow that left me reeling. A moment later, as I regained presence of mind, I glanced at the flower in my hand. Then I looked around, stunned no one noticed what he’d said. This underscored my belief the message was for me, and me alone. But what was its meaning?

  15

  THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST

  1975 TO 1976

  Who is believing in me, I can trust. And more one is loving me, how much more bliss I can give him. You are all different flowers. And in my hand you are all together a bunch of flowers.

  —MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI

  In November 1975, I wanted to ask Maharishi whether I could travel with him to the USA. Though Staff vacations weren’t forbidden, no one ever took them. We ran the risk of never getting invited back. Anything less than 100 percent focus was viewed as meaningless diversion.

  I was particularly apprehensive because Maharishi had already sent nearly all the Staff away. One night I summoned enough nerve to approach him. Steadying myself with a deep breath, I said, “Maharishi, I want to go to the States for a couple weeks while you’re there. I want to initiate my parents into TM.”

  I could hardly believe my ears when he answered, “Very, very good. Fly with me and visit States. Then come back to Hertenstein.”

  He invited me to travel with him, and to return! I smiled and glowed with joy.

  During my brief family visit, I convinced my parents to learn TM. But when I started the ceremony, my father cut me off and became hostile. My sister reacted similarly but more subtly. She sneered and rolled her eyes. Mother was more tolerant. She even practiced TM several times. She’d seen Maharishi interviewed by Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson. So, to her mind, it must be acceptable.

  Most touching was initiating my paternal aunt with severe dementia. I did the ceremony in the nursing home and repeated the mantra for about half an hour. She tried to repeat it, unsuccessfully. But when I hugged her goodbye, I received the most powerful waves of celestial bliss ever.

  Back to Switzerland in December 1976—back to the bubble of Maharishi’s enchanted chimera, back to more emotional roller-coasters. More hocus and more pocus. More Sturm und Drang in the Guru Reality Show. As I endeavored to get closer to him, to my mind, department heads were getting all his attention—not me.

  Autumn and winter consisted of a blur of dreamlike glass-top boat rides—almost daily. Happily, I was always assigned to Maharishi’s boat. We then took silence with him the first eight days of 1976 in Hertenstein, on water’s edge of a lake of dreams—a sphere of heaven on earth saturated with his glowing aura. Much of that time I spent compiling quotations I’d gathered at Zentralbibliothek Zürich for the Vacuum State book.

  With a handful of other fortunate souls, I met Maharishi as he emerged from silence, midnight January 8. He declared, “Now we will inaugurate the World Government for the Age of Enlightenment to perpetuate the Age of Enlightenment for all mankind.”

  I showed Maharishi my project about the vacuum state of modern physics illuminated by world scriptures, constitutions, literature, arts, and sciences. He seemed astonished. “You did this by yourself?” I nodded. He smiled and darted a profoundly intense glance of divine grace my way. “Good. Very, very good. Later I will see.”

  Maharishi assigned me to make an elaborate chart to display the World Government’s structure. Arthur Wellington, a tall, skinny British designer with a small frame, close-set turquoise-blue eyes, and chock of wavy auburn hair, worked with me day and night on it.

  Halfway through Maharishi’s birthday celebration and World Government inauguration on January 12, 1976, we finally finished the chart and caught up with the steamship. Since I was carrying the cha
rt, I got into the meeting hall. Arthur didn’t. Guards blocked him. The little guilt monster in my brain reared its ugly head. The hurt on Arthur’s face, furrowed brow, and teary eyes, haunts me still. After all, he’d done most of the work.

  On the birthday of International Staff members, we would perform private puja with Maharishi. This was my chance to speak with him.

  After my birthday puja in 1976, I said to Maharishi, “I want so much to be close to you. But it’s difficult with so many people trying to get your attention.”

  “What goes on around me is not important,” he answered. “People think that a man who is always hanging around me is so special. But I may all the time be trying to get rid of him.” He giggled.

  Maharishi picked up a blue felt-tipped pen. In the center of a piece of paper, he drew a big dot like a bull’s-eye, with concentric circles around it. Then he scribbled around the circles. “The external things are not important,” he said. “The inner feeling is what’s important. I love a man by how simple and natural he is on the inside.”

  He drew an arrow pointing to the dot in the center.

  “Sometimes it’s so difficult,” I said. “Are you testing me?”

  “It’s not testing,” he replied. “It’s a man’s karma. The master is purifying a man.”

  “But there’s so much competition around you,” I looked at Maharishi with an expression that undoubtedly conveyed my anguish.

  “Competition is all right, but it doesn’t work on this level.” With his pen Maharishi pointed to the scribbles to the right of the concentric circles and drew a tiny oval with a tail.

  He continued, “I don’t think about what people say about a man or anything. I don’t work on that level. It is a man’s inner focus of attention. The level of feeling for the master. The inner feeling is what it important, adjusting one’s thoughts and feelings to the master. What I love is the quality of sattwa inside a man, the quality of simplicity.”

  “I want to be near you, to have a job that brings me closer.” My words got stuck in my throat.

  Beneath the concentric circles, Maharishi drew a rectangle with curved edges and little circles and dots inside it. He pointed to the rectangle with his pen. “We have a world plan. That’s what we want. If everyone does some little thing, then we will accomplish it.”

  “I want a job with more responsibility,” I entreated.

  “High school isn’t responsible?” He drew lines from the bull’s-eye down to a spot near the box, where he drew a star. “Anything you want to do. High school curriculum, accounts, initiating in the field, anything. If you get bored, then tell me, and you can do another thing. High school curriculum is good. You are good at that.”

  I was so sick of my second-class status. My Pollyanna-eyed notion was I should have great authority. I didn’t grasp the obvious—young women had no chance for advancement in Maharishi’s male-dominated organization.

  Maharishi drew another dot on the right side of the page, surrounded it with a spiral, and drew a check mark. He pointed to it and said, “Distance doesn’t matter. It’s my feeling for a man.”

  “You’ve been angry with me sometimes,” I said.

  “I may be angry on a man because I love him … Or because he is horrible!” Maharishi chuckled. He drew a slanted line on the right side of the page, scribbled many lines over it, in a violent motion, and circled it with an elongated oval.

  He continued, “I may be very angry because I love him and I want to teach him something.” Below the elongated oval, he drew a circle with tails and surrounded it with sunrays.

  “It would get complicated if I have to make my own decisions,” I said.

  “Then don’t make decisions. Just simple, natural,” Maharishi replied.

  “Maybe I analyze too much,” I said.

  “And this is the analysis,” Maharishi said. He looked at me and drew my eyes to his marking pen, which was pointing at the dot in the center of the big circle. “Everything easy, simple, natural.”

  My immature mind viewed the page, but with scant comprehension of his meaning. Mostly I felt agony that his favored disciples were always in his room, while I slaved away at some menial task, feeling utterly worthless.

  As if he could read my mind, he drew an oval on the left of the page with dots in it and said, “I know what happens around me. I see everyone’s heart. There’s nothing I don’t notice … Now, Susan, go and rest.”

  “Jai Guru Dev,” I said. Awkwardly, I rose and left the room in a daze. That night I longed for sleep’s blessed oblivion. It didn’t come. Instead there was the torment of fearing I would never return to his inner circle of magical grace.

  Maharishi had said, “In the relationship of the disciple and the master, it’s very natural, very simple, very thorough, very perfect. There is no ‘if,’ no ‘but.’ Nothing. Innocence, naturalness, complete freedom. Anything you can ask and receive an answer. If there is a doubt, then ask again, ask again, ask again. No maneuvering, no fear. The disciple never feels, ‘Oh, if I say this …’ Such complications never exist. He says what he feels. It is the most innocent, spontaneous relationship on earth.”83,84

  I longed for that ideal relationship. But so timid, insecure, and self-doubting, I rarely could speak openly. Ah, if I only knew then what I know now. There’s such wisdom in the expression, “Youth is wasted on the young”! Painful regret yearns for a do-over.

  The most luxurious, picturesque hotel on Lake Lucerne was the grandiose Park Hotel Vitznau. From February to April 1976, women were staying there. Maharishi was in Weggis, seven kilometers away.

  “Work with Clarissa. Write high school,” Maharishi told me. But my mind rebelled. I’m not qualified to write the curriculum, I thought. I know nothing about educating kids. Clarissa Aldridge tried to convince me to write, but inadequacy prevailed (perhaps my mother incinerating the only copy of my best-written story and calling it “filth” had something to do with it).

  Instead I traveled to Weggis daily and hung around Maharishi. Whatever projects were on his mind, I depicted on a large newsprint pad. This was Reginald’s job, but he was rounding. I lugged my father’s heavy, beat-up metal toolbox, stuffed with art supplies, to every meeting.

  One night, as I reluctantly headed toward the last car to Vitznau, I came across Reginald. “I see you’re busy with Maharishi these days,” he said. “You’re doing charts for him. That used to be my job.” I actually detected hints of insecurity—something I would never expect from him.

  “It’s still your job,” I said. “You’re just rounding now, temporarily.”

  Every day I rode from Vitznau to Weggis in a Mercedes with Maharishi’s current favored disciple Mindy Leibowitz and her minions of guardettes and slavettes. I mentally named them “Mindy and the Mindettes.” One day Mindy expressed how exhausted she was.

  “Why should you be exhausted? All you do is sit with Maharishi and take dictation all day writing the World Government book” was my snotty retort. “I work really hard making charts.”

  “Take dictation!” Mindy exclaimed, clearly affronted.

  Beverly Stein, one of Mindy’s ladies-in-waiting, jumped in, “How could you say such a thing, Susan? We use every bit of our creativity and intelligence all day.”

  Mindy and her entourage of prima donnas—so affected, strutting in their jewels, makeup, and gold-embroidered saris (gifts from Maharishi). Feasting in their elite dining room with linen tablecloths, gold plated flatware, gilded porcelain, crystal goblets, on gourmet meals au gratin, al dente, à la mode, à la bullshit.

  I detested their disdainful, ugly power plays, intrigues, and subtle cruelties—tossing crumbs from their lofty pedestal, striking artificial poses with limp wrists. Such pretentious little snobs. They made life hell for every female not in their inner circle.

  Okay. I might as well admit it. I was insanely jealous of Mindy.

  Why does he give her so much power? I wondered. Doesn’t he see through these affectations? Years later I
realized there was something special about Mindy—her quality of unwavering attention, her intensely focused mind.

  One night Maharishi said, “Susan, on Thursday at 6:00, you will present your Vacuum State book to Purusha. Come then.” Purusha group comprised a few dozen celibate men in Weggis on an advanced course.

  My “book” consisted of longhand notes on messy, taped-together paper scraps. When I told Patsy Lindberg, the Staff typist, we needed to work day and night to finish by the deadline, she replied, “No, Susan. I don’t work at night. Only ten to five.”

  When I protested, she insisted, “Susan, those are my hours.” Typical, I thought. These useless people aren’t devoted to Maharishi. It will never get done on time.

  I worked furiously to complete the impossible task. But even with my heroic effort, it wasn’t done. Predictably, Patsy was way behind. Maharishi happened to be in Vitznau that afternoon. He spotted me and said, “Come with me to Weggis when I leave at 3:00 and present your book to Purusha at 6:00.”

  At 3:00 p.m. the driver phoned my room. “Maharishi’s looking for you to come with him in the car to Weggis.”

  I answered, “I’m not quite done. Tell him I’ll come soon. I’ll call for a car.”

  Instead of riding with Maharishi, I persisted in finishing my typed draft—three hours late. Half an hour later, the driver conveyed Patsy and me to Weggis, where Maharishi was working on some project or other. No discussion of my book. After a couple of hours, still nothing.

  Finally I said, “I brought the Vacuum State book, Maharishi.”

  Maharishi glared at me. “The meeting is already over. Purusha was here at 6:00 and they discussed the project without you. Why you didn’t come with me in the car, hmm?”

  “It wasn’t typed in time,” I said.

  “Why you didn’t bring it anyway? It didn’t have to be typed,” Maharishi snapped. “Now go and rest.”