Donovan took a more sensible approach: “I wasn’t really looking for any answer to a problem. Other people used to ask him for secrets like ‘Can men really fly?’ I asked him if I could have some more mango juice. Meditation doesn’t mean you are going to get rid of all your pain so that you’ll only feel joy all the time. It’s just a way back to God.”125
March 1968: Maharishi with celebrity guests at the ashram: l. to r.: Pattie Boyd, John Lennon, Mike Love, Maharishi, George Harrison, Mia Farrow, John Farrow, Donovan, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher, Cynthia Lennon. Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Mia Farrow left India on March 7 to make a film, Secret Ceremony, in England with Elizabeth Taylor. She abandoned sister Prudence with no money or return plane ticket. Maharishi was stuck with Prudence’s travel and health-care tab. After the course he personally escorted her to Italy, where she flew to England and the USA.126,127
March 17 was Pattie Boyd’s twenty-fourth and Paul Horn’s thirty-eighth birthday. Paul presented Pattie a stringed instrument, dilruba, with bird’s head engraved at the neck. John drew a picture of the Beatles and wives meditating and wrote “Happy Birthday Pattie love from John and Cyn.” Cynthia gave her a handmade painting.128 Paul Horn received a kurta (shirt) from Paul McCartney and Jane Asher with the word “Paul” hand-painted on the front and “Jai Guru Dev” on the back. The evening ended with a magician’s performance and fireworks display.
On March 18 Donovan flew back to England. John Lennon gave him a picture he drew of a girl with long dark hair making a secretive hand gesture. Later Donovan recognized the image as Yoko Ono. On March 21 at Royal Albert Hall in London, a reporter found Mia Farrow sitting in Donovan’s dressing room at his concert. Apparently their friendship continued after they met in India.
While in Rishikesh, John and Cynthia’s son Julian stayed with Cynthia’s mother in England. For Julian’s fifth birthday, Maharishi gifted the couple many tailor-made Indian clothes and hand-painted jungle animals and hunter figures. While leaving Maharishi’s quarters, John held Cynthia’s hand and said, “Oh, Cyn, won’t it be wonderful to be together with Julian again? Everything will be fantastic again, won’t it?”129
Such bursts of affection were rare. Two weeks into their stay, John moved into separate quarters, where he reveled in secret telegrams and letters from Yoko Ono.130 “She would write things like, ‘I am a cloud. Watch for me in the sky.’ I would get so excited about her letters,” said John.131 Though Cynthia hoped for a second honeymoon, John ignored Cynthia virtually the entire time.
John had wanted to bring both Yoko and Cynthia to India but couldn’t figure out how. John and Yoko were both married to people other than each other, and were both parents. Were they our ideal free-love-generation role models? Maybe not so much.
Kumbh Mela is a religious festival held every twelve years where thousands of holy ascetics and millions of pilgrims bathe in the Ganges at auspicious astrological times. George Harrison wanted to attend the fair in nearby Haridwar. Maharishi insisted the Beatles ride in on elephants. George argued, “Being a Beatle is already seeing life from the back of an elephant. We want to mix with the crowds. Maybe I’ll find Babaji sitting under a tree.”132
In the end, The Beatles never made it. Neither did Maharishi.
17
AND THEY WRITE A LOT OF MUSIC
FEBRUARY TO APRIL 1968
Come on.
It’s such a joy.
Take it easy. Take it as it comes.
Enjoy!
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
In the ashram, the musicians made music—noisy music. Students who came for deep meditation became resentful. Initially, the afternoon songwriting activities were clandestine, inside the musicians’ rooms.
“I wrote quite a few songs in Rishikesh and John came up with some creative stuff,” Paul McCartney said. “George told me off because I was trying to think of the next album. He said, ‘We’re not fucking here to do the next album, we’re here to meditate!’ It was like, ‘Ohh, excuse me for breathing!’”133
Ironically, soon afterward George began singing and guitar playing for elderly female course participants and those on meditation meltdown. He played organ or guitar on the lecture hall roof in a daily mini-rock-festival for twenty-somethings. They envisioned a TM hippie revolution, without course fee, puja ceremony, or drug ban. The group pleaded their case to Maharishi, who responded with his usual evasive giggles. Eventually more musicians led jam sessions in the dining room.
George converted a hut overlooking the Ganges into a music room, lined with carpets, cushions, and Indian musical instruments. He extended an open invitation for anyone to listen or learn to play. The hut became Donovan’s crash pad. Pattie Boyd played the dilrubha. George gave Donovan a tambura. Maharishi hired a sitar teacher to instruct Donovan and George, who believed Indian ragas attuned listeners to natural rhythms and altered consciousness.
Just before his trip to Rishikesh, Donovan, who had a crush on Jenny Boyd, released “Jennifer Juniper.” He also composed a ditty about TM, “Happiness Runs.” For Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” a song about Maharishi, George wrote the third verse about past ages of unenlightened souls.
Donovan suggested since the Beatles were so famous, they didn’t need a photo on their next album. It could be plain white and nameless. He taught John and Paul clawhammer guitar, an old-time banjo finger-picking style—used on the Beatles’ White Album.
Paul Horn playing clarinet.
© Paul Slaughter/mptvimages.com
In December 1967 Donovan had released a boxed set album, A Gift from a Flower to a Garden, with Maharishi’s photo on the back cover. Paul Horn recorded a flute solo album in the Taj Mahal and later toured with Donovan. In 1968 the Beach Boys recorded their album Friends, influenced by Maharishi. “Transcendental Meditation” was one of the tracks.
Out of forty Beatles songs written in India, one was about Mia’s sister, Prudence Farrow. She said, “Being on the course was a dream come true—more important to me than anything in the world.”134 “I would always rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so I could meditate. John, George and Paul would want to sit around jamming and having a good time.”135
Prudence told Maharishi about her susceptibility to drug flashbacks. He reassured her meditation would dissolve stones in her heart and fears would disappear. He placed her in a discussion group with John and George. “We talked about the things we were all going through,” Prudence said. “We were questioning reality, asking questions about who we were and what was going on.”136
In the discussion group, George said this generation was heralding a new time, the beginning of an even more powerful wave to follow. He felt he needed to be part of it, and his music would awaken people’s consciousness.
When Maharishi asked Prudence which Beatle she liked most, she said George had most in common with her. Maharishi replied that was because he was most Indian.
John said Prudence went slightly “barmy” locked in her room for three weeks, “trying to reach God quicker than anybody else.”137 John and George were bidden to nudge Prudence out of her room. “All the people around her were very worried, because she was going insane,” John reported. “So we sang to her.”138
Prudence remembered them bursting into her room, singing “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band,” and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” She was grateful and thought they were sweet, but she just wanted them to disappear. She detested the celebrity circus and asked Maharishi to move her from the noisy Beatles’ building. But the ashram was full.
One afternoon Prudence waited at Maharishi’s doorstep, distraught, pacing back and forth. When she finally got in, she declared, “I am doomed. I lost my soul.” She’d suffered a terrifying LSD flashback of merging with the devil. But she regained composure quickly when she noticed Maharishi restraining himself from bursting into laughter.
In early March, Prudence sat in meditation without moving
for five days, without food, sleep, or water. On the fifth day she returned to a hellish LSD flashback and screamed, “Get Maharishi! I need him. Only he can help!” John fetched Maharishi and Prudence cried, “I am in hell again! It has come back! Please help me!” Maharishi calmed her down.
One night in late March, George Harrison and another student, Richard Blakely, chatted with Prudence in the garden. Her withdrawn demeanor prompted Richard to ask, “Prudence, are you okay?” Staring down at her white-knuckled clenched fists, she expressed she was afraid, but there were no words to say of what.
They offered to take her to Maharishi or get help. She refused. They asked if she wanted to be left alone. She answered, “Then I would be alone with all my fright.” George gently touched her knee. She jumped in fear and began sobbing. George put his arm around her and led her back to her room.139
That night Prudence started screaming and throwing things around her room. She woke up everyone within earshot. She was led to Maharishi’s bungalow and he tried to comfort her. Finally the doctor injected her with a sedative.
Maybe “something good was happening … hmm?”
Maharishi escorted Prudence to newly built quarters, a cell blocked by bamboo bars (the previous occupant relocated to an unused laundry cubbyhole, accessed by jumping over a wall). A course attendee trained to handle mental illness volunteered to stay next-door. Students took shifts outside Prudence’s door. Two nurses from Delhi took turns sleeping inside her room.
At this point Prudence didn’t recognize her own brother John, who was on the course. Screams ripped through the night air. When she tried to escape, she was cornered by guards and dragged back, moaning.
Students asked Maharishi what happened to Prudence. He said her nervous system was damaged by drugs, she hit an “iceberg” during long meditations, and it was good it happened here, because healing would be speedy. Soon afterward, Maharishi told students to get massages as often as once a day and never meditate more than thirty minutes without breaking for asanas and pranayama.
The staff and nurses ushered Prudence, who resembled a sleepwalking zombie, to Maharishi’s bungalow daily, where he directed her to do asanas in the corner of his room. If her mind wandered, he tapped on his coffee table with a pen to get her attention and said, “Continue, continue.”
Maharishi asked Prudence to sit facing him while a British naturopath sat behind her. As she meditated, Maharishi blasted her with tidal waves of energy. She felt as though an interior bodily lining was ripped out through her back. She sensed coolness, then burning. Then she lost consciousness.
Within three weeks of daily massages and daily visits with Maharishi, Prudence returned from the abyss of madness. She became responsive and happy. Maharishi said the stones in her heart had been healed and she would never have flashbacks again. It was true. Prudence returned to India for the course I attended in 1970, plus many others.
Just before leaving Rishikesh, George Harrison sent Prudence a message that John had written a song for her—“Dear Prudence.”
It seemed Prudence wasn’t the only “barmy” course participant. John wrote “I’m So Tired” three weeks after arriving. The song described his insomnia and avalanches of thoughts continually cycling through his mind, driving him bonkers.140 He wrote hundreds of songs in Rishikesh about how he was feeling. He described:
“Although it was very beautiful and I was meditating about eight hours a day, I was writing the most miserable songs on earth. In ‘Yer Blues’ when I wrote, ‘I’m so lonely I want to die,’ I’m not kidding. That’s how I felt. Up there trying to reach God and feeling suicidal,” said John.141 “I couldn’t sleep and I was hallucinating like crazy.”142
Perhaps “something good was happening, hmm?”
“We got our mantra, we sat in the mountains eating lousy vegetarian food and writing all these songs,” John said.143 “I was going humity-humity in my head and the songs were coming out. For creating it was great. It was just pouring out!”144 “I did write some of my best songs while I was there. It was a nice scene. Nice and secure and everyone was always smiling.”145
One of Maharishi’s lectures about the unity of nature and mankind touched John and Paul deeply, inspiring “Mother Nature’s Son” by Paul, and “Child of Nature” by John, which mentioned Rishikesh in the lyrics.
Among other songs written in Rishikesh, the lyrics of “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” consisted of Maharishi’s favorite expressions and portrayed meditation experiences. John said the “monkey” was Yoko Ono. “Revolution” originated from Maharishi’s philosophy that the only way to attain world peace is for individuals to achieve peace through meditation—not political revolutions. “Julia” was written for John’s mother and also for Yoko, whose name means “ocean child.”
Six feet tall, with crew cut hair and dressed in white, Richard A. Cooke III (Rik) was the textbook Ivy League American jock. On a jungle safari, Rik and his mom Nancy Cooke rode one of eight elephants that drove tigers into a kill zone. Observing from a small machan (high platform in a tree), Nancy spotted the tiger and Rik shot it in the head.
John, Paul, George, and Jane Asher happened to be in Maharishi’s bungalow when the hunters described their tiger kill, while Maharishi glared silently at Nancy. Rik said it was the only time he ever saw him angry. What’s bizarre was Nancy and Rik expected the vegetarian Hindu yogi would react differently.
Maharishi asked, “You had the desire, Rik, and now you no longer have the desire?”
Rik answered with regret, “I don’t think I’ll ever kill an animal again.” He then asked Maharishi, “Am I just a part, an agent of change? Am I just part of this bigger dance?”146
John Lennon piped in. “Don’t you call that slightly life-destructive?”
Nancy said, in defense, “Well, John, it was either the tiger or us. The tiger was right where we were.”147
Maharishi said coldly, “Life destruction is life destruction. End of story!”148
John’s answer to Nancy’s paltry excuse was the song “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” which John described as “written about a guy in Maharishi’s meditation camp who took a short break to shoot a few poor tigers, and then came back to commune with God.”149
Terry Gustafson, originally from Tucson, AZ, was a Ranger in Sequoia National Park. A bitter divorce and tough years drove him to LSD, which he took weekly for six months—enough to realize drugs weren’t the answer. In January 1967, he learned TM from Jerry Jarvis in Berkeley, and at the end of 1967, he quit his Park Service career and flew to Rishikesh.
Terry came across John Lennon outside the lecture hall one night. Terry was dressed in short hair and khakis. John wore a flowing paisley cape, Indian shirt, red sash, white bell-bottom pants, and green Egyptian slippers with curled-up toes. His hair was dyed five different colors. Strobe lights built into his eyeglasses flashed on and off.
“Look at you!” “Look at me!” John exclaimed. “One of us don’t belong ‘ere. Get back to the forest! Get back to Tucson Arizona! Get back where you belong!” After that, John often told Terry to “Get back!” when their paths crossed. This was how the song “Get Back” was conceived.
Paul McCartney wrote “Cosmically Conscious” because Maharishi talked endlessly about Cosmic Consciousness, and also often said, “It’s such a joy.” When Paul heard loud crowing in the early morning, he wrote “Blackbird.” Paul wrote “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” after he saw two monkeys copulating. It occurred to Paul that people’s sexuality should be natural, simple, and free as animals.
Paul composed “Rocky Raccoon” while playing acoustic guitar with John and Donovan on their puri roof in Rishikesh. One day at breakfast, Beach Boy Mike Love helped Paul with “Back in the USSR,” with its Beach Boys sound. Mike suggested the mention of girls from Moscow, Ukraine, and Georgia.
Paul said about “Fool on the Hill,” “I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors ca
lled him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn’t taken too seriously.”150 “The Long and Winding Road” was about the path to spiritual enlightenment.
In “My Sweet Lord,” George Harrison sang words from the puja ceremony chanted during every TM initiation. Here’s the translation of the Sanskrit words, which Maharishi borrowed from the ancient Guru Gita (Song of the Guru): “The guru is Brahma, Vishnu, and the great Lord Shiva. The guru is the eternal Brahman, the transcendental absolute. I bow to the supreme guru, adorned with glory.”
George’s song “Dehra Dun” was a commentary on students running off to shop for meat and eggs in Dehra Dun, twenty-eight miles away—far from the spiritual riches of Rishikesh. George’s “Long, Long, Long” was about tears shed in losing and finding God. His “Sour Milk Sea,” written in ten minutes one evening, promoted the simple process of TM as the way to overcome dissatisfaction and limitation.
Flutist Paul Horn said, “Look how prolific [the Beatles] were in such a relatively short time. They were in the Himalayas away from the pressures and the telephone. When you get too involved with life, it suppresses your creativity. When you’re able to be quiet, it starts coming up.”151
Beatles fans, music critics, and audiophiles laud The Beatles (a.k.a the “White Album”), consisting mostly of songs written in Rishikesh, as a masterpiece. Thanks to Maharishi’s influence on the band.
18
DROPPING THE BEATLES BOMB
MARCH TO APRIL 1968
The knowledge from an enlightened person breaks on the hard rocks of ignorance.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
Maharishi offered The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps Ltd., exclusive rights to produce a movie about TM and Guru Dev, with John Farrow as director and music by the Beatles, Mike Love, and Donovan. It would star Maharishi, the Beatles, and Mia Farrow.
Maharishi & Me Page 20