Maharishi was like a deep well, available to draw from. When I opened my heart and attuned my mind to him, I received the blessings. If I withdrew and sabotaged myself, I got nothing. How can I draw the water if I don’t let down the bucket? I must surrender. No other way. I can’t go on like this. I’m dying of the pain of separation.
I don’t know what came over me, but the day after Christmas in 1980, I proclaimed to my Vedic Atom partners at lunch, “From tomorrow my karma is going to improve. You’ll see. My karma will change dramatically, as of tomorrow.”
The next day I woke up determined to speak to Maharishi. Tonight I’ll go to his suite and speak with him privately. I must tell him my inner feelings. Must have everything clear in my mind. I’ll write a list of questions.
That day I approached Wolfgang Keller, a German artist who’d served on Staff in Semmering, Austria. He seemed to be in charge of making charts.
“I want to make charts. I’d like to help you.”
“Good, Susan. Here’s the layout of a chart about how Vedic Science relates to quantum physics, Schrödinger wave mechanics, and Heisenberg matrix mechanics. You can start on that.”
Not more than fifteen minutes later, someone caught the corner of my eye. It was Amber O’Connell, a TM-Sidhi Administrator I’d known from the “108,” now one of Maharishi’s favorites. She seemed to be wandering around the lecture hall, lost.
A powerful thought suddenly overtook my mind: Amber is looking for me to give me a message from Maharishi. She’s going to call me to the back of the hall and give me a message. I stared intently at her. I’m over here, Amber. Sure enough, Amber spotted me and headed straight toward me.
“Susan, I need to speak to you in the back of the hall.”
“Sure, Amber.”
I trotted behind her. I knew something was going to happen. I knew my karma was going to change. I knew she was looking for me. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew.
“Susan, I mentioned your name to Maharishi today. I suggested you as one of the artists to make textile designs for ladies’ dresses that Sidha Corporation will manufacture. A room is being built now in the back of the lecture hall for three lady artists to work on this project.”
I smiled at Amber. “Thank you.”
Meanwhile, inside, my heart burst with joy.
Maharishi was looking for ways to support TM teachers financially. That was his expressed motive for founding Sidha Corporation International—a private corporation that would hire sidhas (though there’s no evidence anyone ever got paid). One harebrained scheme was Sidha Corporation’s designer dress line. Silk fabrics would be designed by us amateur volunteers in India and printed in Italy. Then dresses would be designed by unpaid, inept, but sincere devotees, then manufactured and sold as “designer dresses.”
What?
Delighted to be doing artwork for Maharishi again, I diligently designed lovely fabrics with floral motifs. Reginald supervised, along with Sidha Corporation board members Helene and Luther Koffman and Marlene Cummings. Unwittingly and regrettably, at one meeting I criticized one of Reginald’s designs.
Open mouth. Insert foot. Choke.
Our textile design group continued designing fabrics for two months. Then Marlene phoned me at my guesthouse. It was the first day of my menses, so of course, all good little South-Fallsburgians “rested.”
“Where are you, Susan? Maharishi asked about you,” she said. “We want to go over some designs.”
“I’m resting. It’s my first day,” I answered.
“Well you better come here the day after tomorrow. You’ve got to be here.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Just take it from me, you better show up.”
The next day I stayed in my room. I couldn’t go to the Indian Express. I was “resting.” The day after that I didn’t go either. All ladies must rest the first three days of our period.
I got a call at my hotel. It was Marlene. “Maharishi wants to see all the fabric design group today at 4:00.”
“I’m resting. Please tell Maharishi I’m resting. He’ll understand. Be sure to use the name ‘Susan the Artist.’ Would you? Though he sometimes calls me Susan Shumsky, usually he calls me ‘Susan the Artist.’”
“Okay, we’ll tell him,” Marlene promised.
I was in agony. Oh, God. Four years have gone by. My only chance to meet Maharishi privately, now thwarted by my #@%*&! period.
The following day, I showed up at the meeting hall to work on designs. A big stir was in the air. Maharishi sat on stage, directing a chaotic scene. People stood in line, waiting to talk to him privately. Others rushed to and fro.
“Susan,” Helene said. “We’ve been looking for you. Maharishi was calling for you last night. Why didn’t you come?”
“I was resting,” I said. Didn’t Marlene tell him I was resting? I thought.
“Maharishi says you must go back to the States, back to your Vedic Atom. He says you must leave tonight with the rest of the course participants.”
I was utterly aghast. “Leave tonight?” My infernal period. Argghhh!
“Yes, tonight,” Helene said.
“My Vedic Atom? But my Vedic Atom doesn’t exist. They all resigned,” I informed her. “Did Maharishi say anything about the fabric designs?”
“He liked yours very much. He said all ladies should wear roses.”
“Did you tell him who designed the fabric?”
“Reginald told him.”
“Did Reginald call me ‘Susan the Artist’?”
“No. I don’t think Maharishi realized who you were. He confused you with Susan Ballantine who runs the kitchen,” Helene said.
Susan the Singer, I thought. Helene continued, “Once we explained that you’re not the Susan who runs the kitchen, he didn’t remember you, and said you should be sent home. You’ve got to leave tonight. Do you want me to ask Maharishi if you can go back to South Fallsburg, since your Vedic Atom no longer exists?”
But he knows me. And Marlene promised she would say Susan the Artist!
“Thank you, Helene. I would love that,” I said. “I could work on fabrics there.”
“Good idea. Wait here. I’ll ask.”
My fate was being sealed. Helene and Reginald approached Maharishi. Then Helene headed toward me. “Maharishi says you can go to South Fallsburg and work on fabrics and also design Sidha dresses.”
Flabbergasted by the sudden expulsion from my presupposed glorious reinstatement to International Staff, that night of March 8, 1981, I found myself abruptly thrust onto a jet headed toward the USA. Why should this surprise me? I know the competition around Maharishi and what it takes to stay.
I surmised it was Reginald’s doing, because I lambasted his horrid design, or didn’t participate in the compulsory bootlicking, or threatened his position years ago. Tears welled up in my eyes. My heart was shattered.
Futile regrets beg some questions: Why didn’t I just get in line and ask Maharishi whether I could stay on Staff? He was right there, a few feet away, taking questions from everyone. And why did I blame Reginald?
I suppose answers could be found in my paralyzing, helpless powerlessness provoked by Maharishi rejecting my poster. And despair from past perceived slights from Reginald. Ah, the foolishness of youth and wisdom of old age.
Oh well. It’s not important, Susan. Who cares that for four long years you put all heart and hopes into returning to Maharishi, only to be sent packing PDQ? Don’t worry. You’re never really alone. You’ve got a big pile of regrets to keep you company.
Back in South Fallsburg, I started designing dresses according to Maharishi’s long list of edicts, which included no low necklines, no short sleeves, loose fit, no figure flattering, no dark colors, no red or black, gold lamé is good. The fabric design motif should match jeweled buttons, parasol or handbag. Translation: make beautiful young women look like great-grandbags-in-a-bonnet.
I studied Vogue and Bazaar and came up with an entire collec
tion, in line with current trends. In 1981, ethnic prints, mandarin collars, brocade jackets, and cuts from India, China, and Arabia were stylish. That seemed great for what I envisioned.
It took several months to design eleven day-dresses, four two-piece knit suits, one knit dress, four two-piece suits, two cocktail dresses, nine evening gowns, two two-piece evening gowns, one elegant evening cape, and a gorgeous wedding gown. Many of the designs used elaborate oriental or floral prints.
In high school I’d studied fashion design, and at age seventeen won a contest. In the Miss Universe pageant, Miss Colorado USA wore a gold and silver lamé dress I designed to represent coins from the Denver Mint. An article in The Denver Post showed me wearing it. Plus during my hippie years, I designed and sewed flower child costumes. So I knew a bit about clothing design.
I sent my designs to Maharishi via Reginald in Switzerland.
That was the last I ever saw or heard of them.
In October 1981 I was assigned to run the showroom in New York City for the “Sidha Dresses” line of clothing. Two meditators I knew were professional models. One was a Revlon “Charlie Girl” who still called herself Charlie ten years later. The Sidha Corporation board bullied the other model, Sheryl Lund, a tall brunette, into organizing the Sidha Dress fashion show at the Pierre Hotel.
Although Sheryl arranged the show, she was not entitled to any privileges. Sidha Corporation officials Marlene and Helene stayed at the five-star Pierre on Central Park. However, Sheryl flopped on a meditator’s couch. None of her expenses were paid.
The hotel ballroom rental cost thousands of dollars. But Sidha Corporation wouldn’t spend a few hundred dollars to hire models. Sheryl was forced to recruit random women who happened to show up at the TM center.
Sheryl received strict orders. “Models” just walk down the runway, turn around, and walk back. No hands on hips, dancing, or “provocative, enticing” movements. Most so-called “models” never showed up for rehearsals. Others flaked out at the last minute.
The fashion show ended up a sad, miserable joke. The editor of Vogue magazine attended. So did other top industry professionals whom Sheryl had invited. It was a humiliating nightmare for Sheryl, obliged to explain why her models looked like Amy Farrah Fowler had time-traveled back to the 1980s to model Ugly Betty Couture—and why the designs looked like a teen crafts project glued together at summer camp.
I modeled at the show. I was tall and thin, not that it mattered. I still looked like a homeless vagrant, conscripted at the last minute while aimlessly wandering down Seventh Avenue. Unprofessional, unrehearsed, unstyled, and unkempt, I felt like a hippie ashram fugitive. The press described the fine, high-quality, attractively designed fabrics, but the dresses as matronly, poorly conceived, and decidedly unstylish.
After this bloodbath, I was assigned to live in New York City (sleeping on someone’s couch, without pay) and babysit the astronomically high-rent Sidha Dress showroom in the Halston building. I “modeled” dresses there—a loose term, since 1) I never wore makeup, 2) My hair was frizzy and feral, and 3) No buyers ever came. Gee whiz. Imagine that!
Though the fabrics, printed in Italy, were gorgeous, we tried to pass off as “designer dresses” pleated or A-line skirts with hemlines below the knee, baggy, blousy button-up bodices with covered buttons, gathered shoulders, long sleeves, big cuffs, and a big bow at the neckline and/or ruffles down the front. To fit me, these so-called “couture creations” would require significant alterations. Since no alterations were made, they just hung like potato sacks.
The only redeeming feature were gorgeous cashmere-silk blend scarves that could be draped over the dresses to hide their hideousness. These deadly dull dress silhouettes made any woman, no matter how beautiful, look like a constipated Victorian spinster who just swallowed a turd.
I believe one of Maharishi’s favorite games was what I dubbed “lessons in futility.” He would conceive an utterly meaningless project (such as amateurs designing absurdly styled dresses). It would, of course, be doomed to failure. Devotees would toil day and night for months, only to be censured for its flaws and requested to rework it over and over, ad nauseam. The project would never get finished, or would fail, or be abandoned.
Which reminds me of Tibetan yogi and poet UJetsun Milarepa (1052–1135 AD), disciple of Marpa Lotsawa, of the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. Marpa repeatedly chastised and insulted his disciple Milarepa while breaking every promise to instruct him into the secret teachings. Marpa asked Milarepa to construct several large towers, only to tear them all down and return all the earth, stones, and boulders to their original positions.
It mattered not to Maharishi whether a project was preposterous or whether it had merit. Before its completion he would often end it abruptly. Any attachments and expectations we clung to regarding anticipated outcomes would be squashed. We would thereby learn nothing in this world is real, nothing lasts, all is ephemeral, and all is but dust.
When the young Mahesh was in Guru Dev’s ashram, he was sent to travel throughout India to visit various holy men. Guru Dev gave Mahesh important notes in envelopes to carry and deliver to them. One day Mahesh dropped one of the notes and happened to read it by accident. The note read, “Please send this man back to me.”
Maharishi’s “lessons in futility” resemble Tibetan Buddhist monks’ sand mandalas, or alfombras (sawdust street carpets) of Guatemala during Easter week. Magnificent, intricate, painstaking designs take days to create—only to be ceremoniously dismantled. Such rituals are known to symbolize life’s transitory nature.
Maharishi taught us to let go of anticipation. As stated in the Bhagavad Gita, “You have control over action alone, never over its fruits. Live not for the fruits of actions, nor attach yourself to inaction.”203 For there is only one lasting thing: the unchanging, unmanifest reality beyond relative existence—absolute pure consciousness.
Needless to say, none of my beautiful dress designs was used. Knowing Maharishi’s so-called fashion sense, I believe he wanted all “ladies” (females were never “women”) to either dress in saris or like British royalty—only radically less stylish. He preferred ladylike attire. I imagine Queen Elizabeth II was his primary fashion icon.
Only Maharishi would waste hundreds of thousands on such idiotic, hopeless schemes, just to teach us how meaningless this material world is.
22
GURU TRICKS AND CELEBRITY TREATS
Thin wires allow electricity to pass through, but if we want more electricity, we have to make the wire thicker. Every contact of activity around the master is adding one more wire for more power, more love, more intelligence, more being to flow.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
The actions of spiritual masters arise from cosmic perspective rather than individual ego. Their motive is freeing people from the stranglehold of illusion. They don’t follow social conventions. Some pass their tests. Others fail. Celebrities are not exempt from such tests.
In December 1969, eight months after John Lennon left India in a tizzy, a handful of students met Maharishi in his simple brick, concrete, and stone bungalow in Rishikesh—far from the “villa” or “air-conditioned mansion” described by the media, or “million-dollar” “very rich-looking” house professed by John Lennon, though he’d visited the modest quarters numerous times (see page 55 for a photo).
A USA map was propped against the wall. Maharishi was discussing a place to hold a Teacher Training Course for at least a thousand students, since the ashram was too small.
Suddenly Kathleen Chambers, serving as Maharishi’s secretary, burst into the room and announced there was an important telegram. Maharishi asked, “Yes, who it is from?”
Kathleen said, “It’s from John Lennon. He’s in New Delhi, and he’s asking if he can come and see you.”
Maharishi looked at her with a blank expression. His response was “Who?”
Kathleen replied, “John Lennon, Maharishi, who was one of the Beatles who were here.�
��
Again Maharishi asked, “Who?”
Kathleen replied, “Maharishi, it’s John Lennon from the Beatles. He flew into Delhi, by himself, and he very much wants to come and see you.”
Maharishi turned from her, and declared, with disgust:
“I do not know a John Lennon.”
On February 15, 2006 and again right after Maharishi’s death on February 6, 2008, Deepak Chopra reported to the press:
“The Beatles, along with their entourage, were doing drugs, taking LSD, at Maharishi’s ashram, and he lost his temper with them. He asked them to leave, and they did in a huff.”204 Deepak said Maharishi never encountered anything like that before, and he strongly opposed it.205
Deepak explained that in September 1991, George Harrison asked him to arrange a private meeting with Maharishi in Vlodrop, Netherlands. Deepak was in attendance. As the meeting began, George presented Maharishi with a rose, followed by a long silence.
Then Maharishi asked, “How have you been?”
George replied, “Some good things [have happened], some bad things.” He added, “You must know about John being assassinated.”
Maharishi replied, “I was very sorry to hear about it.”
After some time, George said, “I came to apologize.”
“For what?” Maharishi asked.
“You know for what,” replied George.
“Tell Deepak the real story,” Maharishi said.
George replied, “I don’t know about it 100 percent, but here’s what I know transpired.” George told Deepak that Maharishi asked the Beatles to leave Rishikesh because they were using drugs during the meditation course. But Maharishi refused to come out publicly to humiliate the band members.
The topic turned to the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, when it was reported there was no crime in the USA during that hour. Maharishi said, “When I heard this, I knew the Beatles were angels on earth. They created such beautiful music for the world. It doesn’t matter what John said or did, I could never be upset with angels.”
Maharishi & Me Page 25