At the end of the course, Maharishi recalled Guru Dev in an emotional, nostalgic, dreamy voice. That got us into a receptive mood. He moved on to the responsibility of Citizens and Governors as guardians of the Age of Enlightenment. That made us feel guilty. He then conveyed Mother Divine had told him there was too much crime, war, and pollution. Maharishi’s “World Plan” wasn’t working fast enough, and Mother Divine’s patience was running out. She was going to destroy the entire earth. That made us terrified.
Maharishi said, “I begged and pleaded with her, ‘Mother Divine, please, just give me one more chance,’ until she finally agreed, ‘All right, just one last opportunity to save the world from complete annihilation.’ How fortunate it is she has given us this one chance, hmm?”197
Maharishi then declared a state of world emergency—a perilous juncture. We must immediately create a critical mass of two thousand who practice TM-Sidhi Program together permanently to counteract the stress of two billion people. He saddled us with the added burden that each of us was responsible for one hundred thousand people.
His tirade concluded with announcing the first “Creating Coherence Course” at MIU in Fairfield, Iowa beginning in one week. We must pack our bags and relocate our families immediately, as time has run out. He promised us “wealth and wisdom squared” in Fairfield.198
As master manipulator of fear-for-motivation, a guilt-inducing, coercive Jewish mother par excellence, Maharishi persuaded about a thousand of us to move to Fairfield in September, to ostensibly prevent certain global annihilation.
Maharishi was not the only seer predicting earth changes and global disasters. Others with similar visions included Yogi Bhajan, Vishnudevananda from Sivananda’s ashram, Hilda Charlton, Edgar Cayce, Elizabeth Claire Prophet, Gordon Michael Scallion, Yogananda’s book of predictions, Hopi Indians, Mayan predictions, and Lori Toye.
Maharishi had asked Keith Wallace, president of MIU in Santa Barbara, to locate a new campus for the college. In August 1974, Keith found Parsons College in Iowa, a “party school” that lost accreditation and went bankrupt. On the market for over a year, it was fourteen million dollars in debt and a bargain at three million. I was in the meeting room to hear Maharishi’s reaction to Iowa: “Can’t we do better than this?”
Rolling hills and fields of corn, soybeans, hogs, and cattle surrounded the Jefferson County seat, Fairfield, in southeast Iowa, a one-stoplight town of six square miles near the Missouri border. A white gazebo in the town square was circled by farmhouses, Victorian homes shaded by indigenous oaks, and trains whistling through but never stopping. Fairfield was the poster child for Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.”
The town’s claim to fame was the first Carnegie Library outside Pennsylvania or Scotland, and a prototype for twenty-seven hundred others, plus some defunct factories, including Louden Machinery, which manufactured farm equipment and ammunition.
Making immediate enemies of all Fairfield native sons, the “ru” invasion began. Coined by locals, our derogatory nickname was “ru” for “guru,” or “tater” for “meditator.” The ever-optimistic Maharishi named us sidhas, but we weren’t even distant cousins thereof. Siddha means “perfected being”—in command of all laws of nature. Did the missing “d” from Maharishi’s version of siddha characterize our level of consciousness—“designated deficient”?
Twice daily I walked from my miniscule dorm room in a hexagon-shaped “pod” to the college fieldhouse where we frog-hopped to enlightenment on foam rubber. Men on one side, women on the other, separated by what I guess was a celibacy curtain.
Every male meditator in Fairfield was recruited to erect the foundation for a geodesic dome, which would become a “flying hall.” Within a few months, a giant concrete slab was poured and the skeleton structure for a giant dome raised: a dome built on guilt, fear, and manipulation—but with best intentions.
In December 1979, Maharishi arrived to inaugurate the dome. His worker-bee army managed to finish before the bitter freeze. The dome was about two hundred feet in diameter and thirty-five feet high. The roof was sprayed with polyurethane foam coated with miles of yellow ochre paint, later replaced by metallic gold developed exclusively for MIU.
Massive plastic sheets covered twenty-five thousand square feet of cement. Truckloads of foam mattresses blanketed the plastic. Legions of female meditators sewed giant fireproof coverings. The interior recalled the Sönnenberg, with a painting of Guru Dev, gold drapery, red carpeting, and world flags.
In this “Golden Dome for the Age of Enlightenment,” men practiced the TM-Sidhi Program together. Women, second-class citizens, were relegated to the drafty fieldhouse.
The snow didn’t thaw all winter. To protect myself from minus 20 degree temperatures with wind chills of minus 50, I wore a parka with a hood resembling a periscope. After the thaw, the campus became mud hell where our boots sank six inches into sludge.
Morning and evening TM-Sidhi Program took about five hours per day. During the three remaining hours, we thousand sidhas were free to figure how to survive in this God-forsaken poverty-stricken hellhole of baking steambath summers and frozen Arctic winters.
I was incredibly lucky to have my jewelry design business and could work with clients through the mail. However, as fast as I raked in money, I spent it on the TM dome entry badge, TM advanced techniques, TM courses, TM products, and spiritual tchotchkes.
In March 1980 an announcement was made at the fieldhouse. Those who wanted to be “single” (Maharishi’s euphemism for “celibacy”) could take a special course in the Catskills—men in Livingston Manor and women in South Fallsburg. A handful of people, including Robert Schumacher and his entire oil-brokerage firm, jumped at the chance.
So did I.
If I could operate my business from Nowheresville-Hellsville, Iowa, then I could certainly do it from the Catskills—two hours from New York City.
I’m gonna leap before I look.
The TM nunnery was paradise. No men. My personal dictionary-in-my-head defined the word “men” as “source of great pain.” In the quiet, hilly forests of upstate New York, I could relax completely, free from pretenses and hierarchies. Unlike Switzerland, all traces of highfalutin Mindy and smug Mindettes were visibly absent. Only loving, unassuming women dwelt in the gentle South Fallsburg atmosphere.
My jewelry design business made me independent, while enjoying companionship of lovely women. I felt nurtured, loved, and cared for. Something was uniquely special about energies of my own sex. I could sense a tangible feminine power. Softness and sweetness filled the air.
In South Fallsburg, during our menstrual period we stayed in bed, ingesting only fruit, water, and tea for three solid days. We weren’t allowed anywhere near men, especially not Maharishi. The phrase “I’m resting” took on a unique connotation—a monthly mandatory three-day vacation.
I followed the “resting” program religiously. Now that I knew how women were “supposed to” behave during our period, I came to some revelations about how Maharishi treated me in Austria (assigning me to ride with a bitch in heat bleeding on me). Apparently every twenty-eight days women became contagious to men and had to be quarantined because we might infect some man with female menstrualpathic disease.
In 1983 Swami Muktananda (Siddha Yoga founder), bought our TM nunnery, augmenting his “Syda Yoga Foundation” real estate holdings in South Fallsburg. In autumn 1976 Muktananda and his retinue visited Maharishi in Seelisberg. He gabbed nonstop and his followers chanted nonstop. Maharishi spent the entire time in meditation. We gasped as Muktananda suddenly jumped onto Maharishi’s couch and engulfed the tiny yogi in a bear hug. The Attack of the Killer Swami! When asked how Maharishi felt about the hug, he answered, ever a diplomat, “I just stayed on my self.”
Muktananda hugging Maharishi.
When Muktananda visited Melbourne, Australia, Maharishi requested a group of sidhas pay their respects and express his regards. In a private meeting, Muktananda said, “Maharishi ha
s given you a technique to cleanse and purify not just yourselves; it is a technique to cleanse the whole world. Maharishi’s path is unique. You only need to do what he has asked. It is glorious but not easy to be self-sufficient. Devotion must be in the heart rather than sitting at the foot of the Master, because Maharishi is here for the whole world.”199
Osho was an entirely different story. In 1969 in Pahalgam, Kashmir in the Himalayas, Maharishi met with Bhagavan Shree Rajneesh (a.k.a. Osho) to debate merits of their respective systems. Maharishi warned his students Rajneesh was a college professor with a keen mind, so be careful how you respond.
The two gurus sat on a couch on the lawn surrounded by their students. Maharishi described TM as a technique that takes the mind from the surface to subtler levels into the state of transcendental pure consciousness, the absolute, which is everywhere present and the basis of everything.
Rajneesh disagreed. “There is no validity to this whatsoever. How can you have a technique to go somewhere that is everywhere? If it’s already everywhere, where is there to go? Why would you need a technique to go there?”
The two gurus got into a heated debate. They denigrated each other’s methods, cringed, and made faces at each other. Students got restless and felt the need to defend their respective gurus. Not realizing it was just a game, they became agitated, stood up, and started arguing.
Then the two gurus stood up, hugged each other, and walked off arm in arm.
In summer 1980, Maharishi suddenly sent word to South Fallsburg and Livingston Manor. All Governors of the Age of Enlightenment should form “Vedic Atoms,” which will travel to TM Centers and purchase large buildings for “Capitals of the Age of Enlightenment.” In August my Vedic Atom of five women was dispatched to Wellesley, Massachusetts—one of the rare TM Centers that already owned a building.
Our group was first to locate a suitable new property. However, financing became impossible because the current TM Center was encumbered with liens. A shady character, disguised as a benefactor, managed to finagle his way into TM teachers’ graces, get his name on the title, then mortgage the TM Center to the hilt. He used his ill-gotten gains to finance his own enterprises. Though I was enraged, my Vedic Atom partners and local TM teachers couldn’t see it—or didn’t want to.
I confronted the malefactor and pointed at paperwork clearly showing his private properties using the TM Center as collateral. His lame excuse was his actions were, in some warped way, of benefit to TM. When I reported this travesty to national and international TM officials, even phoning Maharishi’s private line in Switzerland, I was stunned that no one was interested. Nothing ever got done without Maharishi’s specific instructions. So nothing got done.
Meanwhile our dreams of a Capital for Wellesley flushed down the toilet. And sadly, within one week of my appalling discovery, our Vedic Atom suddenly received free plane tickets to Delhi, India, with three days’ notice to pack for a colossal World Conference on Vedic Science. This turn of events was lucky for the conman, but not so lucky for Wellesley. Without me to follow up, who knows what happened to Wellesley TM Center.
Maharishi arrived at Palam Airport, New Delhi, on November 5, 1980. His Staff from Switzerland and sidhas from far and wide trailed behind. My arrival was November 11. Newspaper magnate Ramnath Goenka, patriarch of The Indian Express empire, hosted 3470 people in his gargantuan building, covering a city block on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg.
I traveled in a motorized rickshaw from my guesthouse to the conference daily. Thousands of meditators rushed up the stairs to a giant air-conditioned lecture hall, carpeted wall-to-wall in foam mattresses covered with white cotton sheets, where we sat cross-legged before Maharishi.
Goenka remarked, “I see these 3000 people flying in the air every morning and evening right here in this building. I don’t require any proof, nor do I have any doubt that I too will be able to fly in a month or so.”200
German WYMS guards strictly enforced the pecking order. International Staff sat in front. Then came Executive Governors, Governors, and Citizens. Maharishi’s rigid hierarchy was firmly fixed. My Vedic Atom sat back in some corner beyond the edge of nowhere.
Maharishi began his Vedic Science Course with a story: “One king was so affluent that he was famous for fulfilling anyone’s desire. A dwarf asked, ‘I want some space. Just give me three steps.’ A wise man warned the king, ‘Be careful. What you see is not reality. What you don’t see is reality.’ The dwarf suddenly grew into a giant. He put one foot on the earth, one on heaven. There was no space for the third foot. He put the third foot on the heart. So the dwarf got the full range of satisfaction.
“The three steps represent the three levels of knowledge. The knower, the known, and knowledge merge into one wholeness in Unity Consciousness. Vedanta establishes the self as an all-time reality.”201
Maharishi spent three months delving into all areas of Veda through the entire gamut of knowledge and experience of unmanifest and manifest creation—how the uncreated creates creation, how from nothing comes something, and then everything. He equated the Veda to the superparticle, the basic unit in supergravity theory. Maharishi was fascinated by quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, geometric dynamics, and gauge theory. He relished unearthing modern physics from the ancient Vedas.
After investigating the makeshift outdoor “kitchen” at the Express building, replete with untold vermin and grubby teenage boys, I opted to pass up that fine culinary opportunity. Instead I lunched at my guesthouse or hotels Oberoi or Ashoka on the way to the conference. However, I ingested dinner daily at the Express feeding trough, served on stainless steel thalis—trays divided into sections for rice, dal, veggies, and chapattis.
I practiced the afternoon TM-Sidhi Program with thousands of women in a giant foam-carpeted room at the Express, one floor above the men’s flying room.
At one point I created an enormous poster, representing all branches of Vedic literature, organized systematically, as explained by Maharishi on the course. I brought it near the stage, in front of the meeting hall of four thousand people, and tried to show it to him.
Maharishi totally ignored me.
21
RIDING THE INDIAN EXPRESS
1981
Knowledge is always drawn. It is never given. The master-disciple relationship is always one way. The ocean is always there.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
When I tried to show Maharishi my Vedic Science poster, he snubbed me. When the lecture ended, I neared the stage and tried getting his attention by placing the poster in his direct line of vision and talking to him. He still ignored me. In fact, he ignored me so vehemently that several people approached me afterward.
A whole cheerleading section started up. Even Reginald joined in. However, by that time I was so humiliated that I sank into nothingness. I tried to become invisible.
Despite this slight, when I noticed several course participants reading poems to Maharishi, I decided to queue up to read my children’s book to him. Intimidated and terrified, I neared the microphone. My heart beat faster and face turned red. Adrenaline shot through my veins. My limbs trembled. I can’t do this. I’ve got to go back to my seat. No. I must do this. The paper I was holding started shaking.
Finally it was my turn. I cleared my throat, but no sound emerged. Then a teeny voice, barely audible, squeaked out. “Maharishi, I have a poem to read.”
Maharishi said, “Poem? What it is?”
With voice shaking, legs unsteady, knees visibly knocking together, and bladder barely keeping control, I said, timidly, “It’s called I Can Do Anything.”
“Read,” Maharishi said.
“Now my name is Sidelle and I tell you it’s true; I can do anything that I’d like to do. I can play with the earth, water, space, or the air; Just as if they were toys from my own toy chest there. I can juggle a car and a bus and a horse; Just as strong as an elephant; that’s me, of course.”
Maharishi giggled. Thousands of pe
ople laughed.
I continued, “I can be just as fat or as thin as I please—Grow the size of a mountain or turtle with ease. If you want, I can turn myself into a bird; Or a fish or rhinoceros, just say the word.”
More laughter.
Trembling uncontrollably, knees colliding, I continued until I read all fifty-four couplets of the poem. At the end Maharishi laughed. “Good. Very, very good, hmm?” he said.
Sweating, shoulders hunched, staring at the ground, averting the gaze of thousands of eyes, I wobbled back to my seat, shaking like a bowl of Jell-O. I sat down, stunned by my extreme physical reaction. Never had public speaking so physically shaken me. I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, vomit, or pee myself.
After previous encounters with Maharishi that ended badly, it was a huge gamble to expose myself to him and four thousand others who knew me. After this episode, my stage fright significantly lessened. Perhaps this incident proved a blessing.
I became increasingly depressed about my crappy seat in the lecture hall. I still wasn’t over the fact that Maharishi ignored my poster. Restless, ever seeking more, I was determined to change my lot.
Spiritual masters never project. They only reflect. In every situation Maharishi’s mirror reflected how much I was capable of receiving. Like a game of hide and seek, my true nature of infinite love hid behind a mask of rejection and inadequacy—all my childhood baggage. If I could overcome these limitations, I would be an ocean of love.
Maharishi often said the master-disciple relationship is one way. The guru’s love for the disciple is already unlimited and therefore never increases. Over time the disciple increasingly opens to the guru: “Water in a lake will not flow out, but if a pipe is brought up to the level of the water, it will naturally flow. This is how wisdom flows from master to disciple.”202
Maharishi & Me Page 24