Maharishi & Me

by Susan Shumsky

  On hearing that, George broke down and wept. There was another long silence.

  Then George told Maharishi, “I love you” and Maharishi responded, “I love you too.” Later George phoned Deepak and told him, “A huge karmic baggage has been lifted from me, because I didn’t want to lie.”206

  In 1968, when John and George returned early from Rishikesh, Paul asked what happened. John said Maharishi made a pass at the blonde American who looked like Mia Farrow. Paul asked, “Yes? What’s wrong with that?”

  Feeling duped, used, and angry as hell, John answered, “Well, you know, he’s just a bloody old letch just like everybody else. What the fuck, we can’t go following that!”

  Paul said, “But he never said he was a god. In fact very much the opposite, he said, ‘Don’t treat me like a god, I’m just a meditation teacher.’”

  Paul, who believed this was just John’s excuse to leave the ashram, commented: “It’s really funny, John’s reaction to this sexual thing. It seemed a little prudish to me. It became public that we didn’t like Maharishi but I never felt that way.”207

  Upon their return to London, the Beatles observed a policy of silence about what happened in India. They decided if they told the story, it would reflect poorly on them.208 This seemed to lend credence to Deepak’s claim. If his report was true, the Beatles wouldn’t want to reveal that Maharishi asked them to leave.

  Within a week after returning from Rishikesh to Kenwood, John resumed his daily long-standing addiction to alcohol, speed, barbiturates, and psychedelics, which he mixed with a mortar and pestle in his sunroom.

  By May 1968, Yoko Ono had replaced Alexis as John’s constant appendage. That month John and Yoko recorded “The Maharishi Song,” which viciously attacked the guru for being silly and evasive, fabricating stories, misbehaving sexually, living high on the hog, and acting unholy. In a Rolling Stone interview, John referred to Maharishi as “a fucking idiot” due to the guru’s remarks about Brian Epstein’s death.209

  When reporters asked Maharishi about the Beatles’ allegations, he replied, “I think I would love them, whatever they say. When asked “Why do you think they made such a statement?” Maharishi replied, “I am unaware completely, why. I only extend my love to them.”210

  When John and Yoko moved into Ringo’s old flat on Montegu Square in July 1968, they began taking heroin, “as a celebration of ourselves as artists,” according to Yoko. The drug stupor continued through most of 1969.211

  John and Yoko graced their album cover Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins (released November 11, 1968) wearing only a smile, an amulet, a foreskin, some nipples, and lots of black fluffy pubic hair. A decade later John admitted “Norwegian Wood” “was about an affair I was having. I didn’t want my wife, Cyn, to know. I’d always had some kind of affairs going.”212

  By the time the Two Virgins album dropped, John had calmed down about India. He told Rolling Stone, “I had some great experiences, meditating eight hours a day—some amazing things, some amazing trips—it was great. And I still meditate off and on. George is doing it regularly. I believe implicitly in the whole bit. It’s just that it’s difficult to continue it. I lost the rosy glasses.”213

  In 1978 John characterized meditation as a way to slip out of the “straitjacket of the mind.”214 Maybe he should have sloughed off that straitjacket a decade earlier. His denouncement of Maharishi seemed like “pot, kettle, black” to me. Three months before John’s death, he finally conceded, “At first I was bitter about Maharishi being human. Well, I’m not bitter anymore. [He’s] human and I’m only thinking what a dummy I was, you know. Although I meditate and I cry.”215

  In 1978 Cynthia Lennon wrote, “ I believe that Maharishi is a very wise and beautiful being. No matter what anyone says, he has always worked for the betterment of mankind. And if one man can even partially succeed in a single lifetime, then he is worthy of praise, not degradation or insult.”216

  George Harrison never really believed Alexis. He accused the Greek of slandering Maharishi to cajole John away from him. In 1970 George said, “It’s probably in the history books that Maharishi ‘tried to attack Mia Farrow’—but it’s total bullshit. There were a lot of flakes there; the whole place was full of flaky people. Some of them were us.”217

  In 1992 George held a concert in London with Ringo and Eric Clapton to benefit Maharishi’s ill-fated “Natural Law” political party (another quixotic Maharishi scheme). Then George phoned Paul from LA, giggling: “Maharishi would like you, me and Ringo to stand as Members of Parliament for Liverpool. We’ll win!”

  Paul’s response: “A week before the election! You’ve gotta be kidding!”218

  In 1999, the Boston Globe reported Paul still practiced TM daily. During a four-hour visit in Vlodrop, Holland, his daughter Stella video-recorded Maharishi saying: “Enjoy!” which Paul declared “the same message from 30 years ago that he wrote in my book. And you know what? That is actually awfully good advice.”219 “Now I say to my own kids, ‘Go and get a mantra, because then if you ever want to meditate, you’ll know how to do it.’”220

  On April 4, 2009, Paul, Ringo, Mike Love, Paul Horn, and Donovan performed at the “Change Begins Within” benefit for the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. Advocated by many celebrities, it offers TM to veterans, abused women, HIV victims, PTSD victims, prisoners, the homeless, schoolchildren, and more. Paul said, “In moments of madness, [TM] has helped me find moments of serenity.” “I would like to think that it would help provide them a quiet haven in a not-so-quiet world.”221

  “Change Begins Within” benefit: l. to r.: Paul McCartney, David Lynch, Ringo Starr. Gregorio Binuya/ABACAUSA.COM/Newscom

  In 1992, George said, “I still practice Transcendental Meditation and I think it’s great. Maharishi only ever did good for us, and although I have not been with him physically, I never left him.”222 George bequeathed a large scholarship fund for Maharishi University.223

  Prudence, Mia, and John Farrow were among seven children of film star Maureen O’Sullivan (“Jane” in Tarzan movies) and Academy Award–winning screenwriter-director John Farrow. An undisciplined, defiant teenager, Prudence suffered reckless, self-destructive years of decadence and near insanity, induced by alcoholism and drug abuse.

  Prudence learned TM in 1966, believing it would answer all her problems. A psychiatrist warned if she didn’t stop this damaging meditation practice, more dangerous than LSD, she’d become a zombie. She voluntarily entered a mental institution, but continued meditating and declined medication. Mia extricated her from the institution.

  January 23, 1968, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Maharishi meets Mia Farrow at Sheraton Hotel the day before they leave for India. Associated Press

  After Mia married Frank Sinatra in 1966, Prudence felt Mia’s fame usurped Prudence’s identity and stole her life. Rude people would remark, “Why aren’t you successful like Mia?”224

  Prudence applied for TM Teacher Training in January 1967, but was too young. When older sister Mia wanted to study in Rishikesh (she knew the Beatles would be there in 1968), Maharishi invited her, though she hadn’t learned TM. This fueled Prudence’s jealousy.

  Prudence met Maharishi in Boston to be evaluated for course acceptance. She found the emanation of peace surrounding him greater than any other spiritual teacher she’d met. After she poured out her heart to him, Maharishi extended his arm, made a fist, and declared, “You are mine!”225

  Prudence felt overshadowed by her sister’s fame, so Mia was a touchy subject. To get under Prudence’s skin, Maharishi asked her in Rishikesh, “Do you know your sister is a great person?”

  Startled, Prudence replied, “No, I don’t think she’s a great person.”

  Maharishi laughed and asked, “Doesn’t she want to do good?”

  “Yes,” Prudence said.

  Maharishi said, “Tell me all about what good she wants to do.”

  “What kind of guru are you?” Pr
udence yelled. “Why don’t you just go to Hollywood, where you can meet lots of stars and ask them these questions yourself?”

  Maharishi replied, “Now go and rest.”226

  Prudence had presence of mind to understand Maharishi’s method. His praise of Mia unmasked Prudence’s repressed negative feelings about living in the shadow of her sister’s fame. Prudence realized the “potency and danger” of those emotions: “Lacking confidence in myself had exacerbated the situation, increasing repressed feelings of anger and inadequacy.”227

  Prudence’s happy ending was she overcame self-destructive tendencies and became a successful author, Sanskrit scholar, and meditation and yoga teacher.

  Her brother John Farrow’s story was less fortunate. A Yale neurobiologist, he taught TM, spoke at Maharishi’s science symposiums, and helped create the MIU catalog. But in 2013 in Maryland, he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for child abuse and molestation.

  Arriving at London’s Heathrow Airport from Rishikesh on March 8, 1968, Mia Farrow wore a flowing caftan crafted by the ashram tailor out of embroidered cashmere shawls, and carried what she identified to a reporter as “a secret box given to me in India.” When asked “by whom?” she answered, “If I said, it would no longer be a secret box.”

  Regarding her stay at the ashram, she reported, “It’s been the most rewarding experience of my life.” She explained, meditation “helps your general well-being because you go right to the source of thought, the source of creativity, the source of happiness.” When asked by a reporter if she was “absolutely happy in your own mind that you’re not being conned,” she nodded and replied, “Yes.”228

  March 8, 1968: Mia Farrow arrives at Heathrow Airport from India. Anthony Wallace/Daily Mail/REX/Shutterstock.

  Mia’s memoir, published thirty years later, reported that after she and Maharishi meditated in his cave on her birthday in 1968, they stood up, facing each other. “I was blinking at his beard when suddenly I became aware of two surprisingly male, hairy arms going around me.” Mia panicked and bolted up the stairs, apologizing. She sprinted to Prudence, who explained, “It’s an honor to be touched by a holy man after meditation, a tradition.” But Mia dashed out the ashram gates, fearful when Maharishi’s brahmacharyas followed her (she returned a few hours later but left the following day for Goa). In the 1970s Mia told former skin-boy Ned Wynn (son of actor Keenan Wynn and grandson of comedian Ed Wynn) it was clear Maharishi wanted her to lie down with him and have sex.

  Mia’s story changed from hair-stroking (1968) to hairy arms (1997). In her memoir she admitted, “At my level of consciousness, if Jesus Christ Himself had embraced me, I would have misinterpreted it.”229

  Prudence returned to Rishikesh to attend my Teacher Training Course in 1970. She was excited to tell Maharishi that her sister Mia had given birth on February 26. With detachment, Maharishi answered, “Send a telegram.”

  Then Prudence said, “She had twins.”

  Maharishi replied in a cold, humorless manner, “Send two telegrams.”

  Superstar Donovan Leitch first met Maharishi in Los Angeles onstage after a lecture in 1967. The guru invited him to visit him where he was staying in Beverly Hills. Donovan expressed being dumbstruck by him but irritated at Maharishi’s aides hovering and fawning over their guru.

  Donovan described his Initiation: “I’d had a little joint just before I got out of the limo, so I was feeling kind of mellow. All along one wall of this not great large house were seven hairy guys, like a rock band. I didn’t recognize them. Anyway, in I went.

  “It was dark. It was moody, and there was Maharishi. And Maharishi looked at me in the half-light. And he gave me the mantra. And he said, ‘Do this, relax, repeat it silently, inside.’ And then suddenly, something extraordinary happened. Which is what I wanted. I started falling down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. And as I fell, I felt relief, relief, relief, relax, relax. After a time, which I couldn’t measure, I heard him say, ‘Now open your eyes.’

  “And then an aide came in and said, Maharishi, it’s time for the next initiation. And Maharishi said, ‘And who is that?’ And the aide said, ‘They are called the Grateful Dead.’ And I laughed, and Maharishi laughed, and he said, ‘They should not call themselves the Grateful Dead. They should call themselves The Grateful Living.’”230

  In autumn 1967, Mike Love first heard about TM and attended Jerry Jarvis’s lecture at the Santa Monica Convention Center. Mike tried to learn TM, but the SIMS center in Westwood sent him away because it was for students only.

  The Beach Boys appeared at a UNICEF Variety Gala in Paris on December 15, 1967. On their way to Paris, the Beach Boys stayed at the London Hilton, where John Lennon and George Harrison surprised Al Jardine by knocking on his door for the sole purpose of introducing them to TM. At the UNICEF rehearsal, attended by Maharishi, John, and George, the Beach Boys first met Maharishi, who was scheduled to appear but was cut from the lineup.

  December 15, 1967, Paris: Maharishi with John and George, watch the UNICEF Gala rehearsal. Charlie Lutes, president of SRM, smiling in background. © KEYSTONE Pictures USA

  Dennis Wilson described, “All of a sudden, I felt this weirdness, this presence this guy had. Like out of left field. First thing he ever said to me was ‘Live your life to the fullest.’”231 Dennis arranged a private lecture with Maharishi at Hotel de Crillon for the Beach Boys and wives. That’s where, on December 16, 1967, Dennis Wilson, Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, and Mike Love learned TM. In 1968 Brian Wilson met Maharishi in the USA and also learned TM.

  Maharishi with the Beach Boys: l. to r.: Dennis Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love, Maharishi, Bruce Johnston, Brian Wilson. Mirrorpix/Newscom

  Mike described, “I wasn’t dreaming. But the state itself was deeper than the deepest sleep. It was neither dark nor light.” “I had found a place of infinite peace, of profound rest.” He expressed, “This is so easy that anyone could do it, and if everyone did it, it would be an entirely different world.”232

  In January 1968 Mike attended Maharishi’s lectures at the Plaza in New York and Harvard Law Forum in Cambridge, where Mia Farrow sat nearby. When Mike phoned Maharishi’s hotel, the guru unexpectedly answered the phone himself and invited the Beach Boys to Rishikesh.

  1970: Mike Love. © Ed Thrasher/mptvimages.com

  Comedian, TV star, and twice Golden Globe nominated actor Andy Kaufman learned TM in 1968, which helped him relax onstage. He said, “I knew I had the potential to entertain, but I was too shy. TM really brought the shyness out of me.”233

  An eccentric, politically incorrect comedian, Andy behaved unpredictably, leaving audiences and hosts bewildered. Andy’s “Foreign Man” act led sitcom Taxi producers to invent a harebrained auto mechanic, Latka Gravas, with high-pitched voice and unidentifiable accent: “Tenk you veddy much.”

  In July 1970 Andy attended Maharishi’s one-month course for twelve hundred meditators at Poland Spring Resort, Maine, where he plied Maharishi with questions about comedy. He took TM Teacher Training in Mallorca, February to June 1971. However, considered peculiar and unstable, he wasn’t made a TM teacher.

  Later Andy met Maharishi, convinced him of his sincerity, and was made an Initiator. He taught TM and volunteered at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, TM Center. Andy and Bob Zmuda, his comedy-writing partner, took the La Antilla course in 1973. Andy took advanced courses in Interlaken and Vittel, France, December 1973 to January 1974.

  1984: Andy Kaufman meditating at home. © Gunther/mptvimages.com

  At a course in Livingston Manor, New York, three hundred men gathered. A guy with crazy deer-in-headlights eyes, rumpled clothing, and black bushy hair explained in a bizarre foreign accent that he would lead the meeting. He acted out the Mighty Mouse theme song. Then beat savagely on a bongo with fierce facial expressions. Next he turned his back, combed his hair repeatedly, donned a leather jacket, turned around, sneered, and lip-synched “Love Me Tender.” The audience howled with laughter. The ent
ertainer was Andy Kaufman.

  Though Elvis Presley considered Andy his favorite impersonator, his unconventional personae didn’t live up to the extreme degree of constipation evidently required to qualify for TM advanced courses. Prune-faced TM-Sidhi Administrators invariably rejected Andy’s applications. But a phone call to higher-ups would always secure his acceptance.

  In 1983, that didn’t happen.

  Andy, suffering from chronic cough, had taken a turn for the worse. He’d been supporting the Movement financially, and sent another donation for $500 before applying for a course in December. But Andy’s wrestling-with-women antics weren’t a knockout with the new female TM-Sidhi Administrator. Apparently Andy was too hilarious to qualify for the course.

  Jerry Jarvis, who said Andy “had a more profound understanding of Maharishi’s teachings than many people I had ever come in contact with,” assured him the misunderstanding would clear up.234 But it didn’t. It never did. Andy was never accepted to another TM course.

  Bill Zehme, biographer, described: “He felt hurt, and the hurt touched his spirit, which had always been sustained by meditation. He felt betrayed inside his secret soul. ‘Who are they to tell me how to run my career?’ he said over and over. He was angry and then very sad, but he didn’t stop meditating.”235

  Soon Andy contracted a rare lung cancer, which he treated with both allopathic and natural medicine. His last resort was psychic surgery in the Philippines in March 1984. Tragically, he died two months later at age thirty-five. Andy’s life was depicted in the biopic Man on the Moon. To prepare for that part, Jim Carrey learned TM. He won a Golden Globe.