If a doctor performs an operation, the patient might curse the doctor. But the doctor does his job anyway. For his nature is to heal the patient. A guru is like a physician who cures his disciples of ignorance.
Ammachi said, “People who see the blacksmith pounding a hot piece of iron with his hammer may think that he is a cruel person. The iron piece may also think that there cannot be another brute as mean as him. But while dealing each blow, the blacksmith thinks only of the new form which will emerge. Children, the real Guru is also like this.”283
After five decades considering it, in my opinion the worst Maharishi could be accused of was smother-mothering his flock with best intentions to maintain “purity of the teaching.” As a Hindu guru, his job description was to lift people from suffering and raise their consciousness. That’s all I ever saw him do.
At the same time, Maharishi never claimed to be anything. People fabricated their own myths about his level of consciousness, infallibility, supernatural faculties, or intentions for good or evil. No wonder devotees became disenchanted when they expected him to match their private version of an extraordinary fairytale.
I was one of them.
How to recognize an enlightened master? The definitive authority is the ancient scripture, Bhagavad Gita. There the student Arjuna asks his guru Krishna (who is God incarnated):
“O, Krishna, what is the mark of a God-realized soul, stable of mind and established in samadhi? How does the man of stable mind speak, how does he sit, how does he walk?”284
In answering this question, Lord Krishna ignores outer signs, such as how we sit or walk, because nothing on the surface reveals our inner awareness:
“Arjuna, when one thoroughly abandons all cravings of the mind, and is satisfied in the self through the self, then he is called stable of mind,” Krishna says. “The sage, whose mind remains undisturbed in sorrows and pains and indifferent amidst pleasures, and who is free from passion, fear and anger, is called stable of mind. He who is unattached to everything, and meeting with good and evil, neither rejoices nor recoils, who neither likes nor dislikes, his realization is stable.”285
How can we judge anyone’s level of consciousness? Only the individual can measure him/herself against Krishna’s scale. A guru might have millions of followers, but not be “stable of mind.” Yet someone living an unassuming, conventional life might be fully realized.
We tend to judge others based on personal bias, filtered by clouded ego projections. With gurus, our projections are extreme—skewed by notions of how holy people are “supposed” to behave.
Paramahansa Yogananda said disciples “seek a guru made in their own image.” When people complained they didn’t understand his guru, Yogananda retorted, “Neither do you comprehend God! When a saint is clear to you, you will be one!”286
We fantasize enlightened people are omniscient, omnipotent, and possess no emotions or failings. They mustn’t have sex, make money, or make mistakes. They must be self-effacing, austere, chaste, pious (whatever that means), and, above all—poor.
What we don’t realize is enlightened beings are human beings. Absurd expectations of anyone, enlightened or otherwise, surely bring disillusionment. Lama Anagarika Govinda said, “Always remember, your guru will be in a mortal body and only be a certain percent divine; so forgive his weakness and keep your eye on the divine.”287
One of Maharishi’s devotees, Geoffrey Baker, said, “As soon as you begin to doubt him, everything starts to come apart. But it’s all in you. If you start to question it, to think, ‘Ah, he’s just an old man who doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ then that’s exactly what he will become. And all of this will come to naught.”288
Chögyan Trungpa Rimpoche (1939-1987), founder of Naropa Institute, was eleventh in the line of Trungpa tulkus, teachers of Kagyü lineage—one of four main Tibetan Buddhist schools. After his rigorous monastic education, he headed the Surmang monasteries in eastern Tibet. When Chinese Communists took control in 1959, at age twenty he escaped to India.
In Scotland in 1967, he founded the first Tibetan Buddhist practice center in the West. After a car accident left him partially paralyzed, he relinquished monastic vows and became a lay teacher. In 1970 he moved to the USA, wrote fourteen books, established hundreds of Shambhala Training centers, and made Buddhist wisdom understandable to Western minds.
Renouncing his monk robes, Chögyan Trungpa became a “disgrace to Tibet.” Notorious for sexual liaisons with students, he seduced a teenage virgin, Diana Judith Pybus (married name Mukpo), during their first private meeting. They married when she was sixteen and he was thirty-three. A smoker and rampant alcoholic, he died of liver disease.
Yet after his death, his body remained in samadhi five days and didn’t decay. His heart remained warm. Atmospheric phenomena indicating the “Rainbow Body” in Tibetan Buddhism appeared at his cremation, May 26, 1987. These included rainbows, circling eagles, and Ashe-shaped clouds (Tibetan letter representing primordial life essence).
Dalai Lama described Chögyan Trungpa: “Exceptional as one of the first Tibetan lamas to become fully assimilated into Western culture, he made a powerful contribution to revealing the Tibetan approach to inner peace in the West.”289
The purpose of Lord Krishna’s birth was to restore good in an evil world. He protected and gave victory to the virtuous, destroyed evil, and established dharma (righteousness). Krishna resorted to any means, including deception, trickery, and manipulation, to overcome the enemy. In the ancient Indian scripture Mahabharata, he said committing a “sin” for the purpose of dharma was not a sin at all.
Like Krishna, many revered spiritual masters have been known to act outrageously. I witnessed Maharishi make severely shocking statements deliberately—to shake us, burn off our karma, purify us, and quicken our evolution.
When Maharishi lectured at the Paris Hilton in December 1967, an attendee asked what his TM Movement intended to do about the problem of world hunger. Maharishi replied, “The hungry man who learns to meditate will soon become a happy hungry man.” Nearly the entire audience stood up, chanted, “Charlatan, charlatan, charlatan,” demanded their money back, or walked out.290 Yet Maharishi sat there in bliss, undisturbed, despite hurls of insults. Perhaps his hyper–politically incorrect statement was his way of separating wheat from chaff.
Albert Vogel, a journalist in Vietnam, traveled with his wife by motorcycle all the way to Rishikesh. An anti-war and anti-USA-involvement socialist, he told Maharishi the Vietnamese had the right to their own country without USA interference. At that time, 400,000 American troops were in Vietnam.
Maharishi said to Albert, “No, no, no, the US should win the war.”
Albert protested, “Maharishi, the young people of America don’t want to fight that war.”
Maharishi then said, “Yes, you are right. Young people of America should not have to fight that war. They are the flowers of the ages. They should go to Africa and get the Africans and make them go fight the war.”
Albert said, “But Maharishi, what are you saying? The Africans shouldn’t have to go fight the Vietnam War.”
Maharishi became even more inflammatory, “Yes, yes, you get them and you put them on boats and give them guns and make them fight. It will be good for them.”
Talk about politically incorrect—yikes!
Albert was shaken to his core. How could Maharishi make such flagrant remarks? Pale and stunned, Albert stumbled from Maharishi’s house looking as if a bus just sideswiped his motorcycle. A course participant tried to explain to Albert that Maharishi was just pressing his buttons and messing with his head. Albert stared back blankly, entirely clueless.
We could never entirely fathom why Maharishi said senseless, absurd things to people. I trust it was for their spiritual growth. As the Sufi master Radha Mohan Lal said, “Sometimes Saints have to do things people will misjudge, and which from the worldly point of view could be condemned. Because the world judges from appearances. A Saint is beyon
d good and evil.”291
One of my friends, Regina Hughes, was perhaps the only other woman besides me that Maharishi berated in front of others, though not in front of four hundred others as he did to me. But he treated her worse—accusing her of having “dry rot on the brain,” being “a demon,” “harboring spies,” “making her fame and fortune” by publishing a TM book, and many other choice phrases. It wasn’t all crime and punishment, however. He also gave her love and attention. However, decades later, she’s still traumatized by Maharishi’s harsh treatment.
My friend Brad Wagner was standing on line in La Antilla to give Maharishi a flower. As he took the flower from Brad, Maharishi frowned and said, “You are contacting spirits! My Initiators are not mediums for spirits.”
What’s Maharishi talking about? I thought. Brad isn’t a medium. I asked Brad, “Why did he say that to you?”
The flustered Brad, clearly disturbed, said, “I have no idea.” This statement haunted Brad for years. He could never ascertain the reason for such a ludicrous accusation.
A young American, Nathaniel, was taking Teacher Training with Maharishi in Rishikesh. He’d contracted hepatitis in India months earlier, which left him in a state of perpetual lethargy. Maharishi gave him small tasks to focus on, such as looking after a key. One day Maharishi yelled at him, “Look at how you look. It’s awful. I can’t bear to look at you. Go away. Get out of my sight.” Nathaniel, utterly shaken and deflated, fled to his room. There he had his first clear meditation in months. Maharishi’s shouting gave him the energy needed to cut through his fog.292
Another misconception about spiritual masters is that only “good” things happen to them. They could never break a leg, smash their car, get bronchitis, contract cancer, become paralyzed, get robbed or raped, or undergo anything unfortunate. People would ask, “Maharishi, if you’re enlightened, why do you get sick?”
From Socrates to Jesus, Ramakrishna Paramahansa to Ramana Maharishi, Ammachi, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, “bad” things happened to spiritual masters—and to everyone else. No one escapes karmic consequences. Yet we expect spiritual masters to be whatever ridiculous pipedream we’ve invented in our heads.
Why do we persist in magical thinking? Because we hold out hope that spiritual enlightenment means our own life will be problem-free in some fantastic Neverland. We want escape. We want this misery to stop. However, that’s just our projection of illusory, materialistic imagining.
What I recognized in Maharishi, and other spiritual masters I’ve been lucky to meet, was a holy vibration of serenity, grace, and blessedness, which inspired those with eyes to see. I believe he was a spiritual master—and a human being. Even though I felt his brilliance, I was just as disenchanted and resentful as other followers when my bliss bubble burst in Fairfield in the 1980s.
Mark Landau, former skin-boy, said, “It was like this divine air would come down from heaven and we would be breathing it. And I got addicted to that. Maharishi could be very harsh, believe me. So for a while I had trouble putting the paradox together. How could he be so awful and so wonderful at the same time? But he was.”293
Maharishi didn’t act as people’s fantasy of how true saintly beings “should” act. And I didn’t (and still don’t) act as people’s expectations of how true disciples or spiritual seekers “should” act.
Though I could easily join ranks with cynical detractors who believe, as one reporter said, “Lennon was right. The giggling guru was a shameless old fraud,” I won’t. There is too much contrary evidence. For God’s sake, Maharishi transformed the world by introducing and popularizing meditation into Western culture!
A hundred years from now, who will be remembered? The visionary who gave hope to humanity? Or scoffers who projected their own fears and hang-ups on him? Yet the stigma of those such as John Lennon and Alexis Mardas lives on. Maharishi often said, “The knowledge from an enlightened person breaks on the hard rocks of ignorance.” He also predicted, “I have no pockets, but when I’m gone, they’ll say it was all about the money.”
The Sufi master Radha Mohan Lal said that bad teachers try to mold their behavior to their followers’ expectations. If they seek name, fame, and money, they will “always be kind, benevolent, compassionate, uttering at all times wise, profound sentences.” But good teachers obey “a law of which the world knows nothing. As it is the nature of the fire to burn or consume, or the wind to blow, so it is with the Sat Guru; he just is.”294
Master Lal also said people can’t understand the motives or actions of good teachers and therefore condemn them: “Love does not conform to conventional ideas; Love can appear in the shape of great cruelty, great injustice, even calamity. In this respect the Sat Guru is similar to God. He cannot be judged or measured.”295
In 1989 in Fairfield, letting go of the TM Movement was a real struggle. Since I was psychically attached for over two decades, many convoluted emotions churned inside. My ego was tied to TM status symbols. By embracing Divine Revelation, not only did I lose respect from peers. I also lost layers of absolutes comprising sets and subsets of BS (belief systems). To break away required tremendous inner resolve and strength.
My main problem was healing my relationship with Maharishi. My personal involvement with him made letting go incredibly challenging.
Until one day in meditation …
Upstairs in the puja room in my house in Fairfield, amongst murthis, shaligrams, rudraksha beads, Shiva lingas, and paintings of deities, I sat below a framed, crinkled, yellowed drawing precious to me, scribbled by Maharishi with a blue felt-tip pen one day in Switzerland—a day when he wanted to remind me of what was important.
There in my little Hindu temple I had an unexpected revelation, profoundly moving and deeply transformational.
Maharishi suddenly appeared before my inner eye in blazing color. His radiant glowing face and blissful smile filled my visual field with delight, the familiar feeling that he bestowed upon his disciples with his glance—that sudden swell of energy, like a soft, gentle wave lapping onto white crystalline sands on a sun-laden beach.
That wave of grace flowed over me, filling my mind with crystal clarity and profound understanding, washing pure love around and through me, cleansing my soul. The joyous love vibration from his heart touched my heart with rapture.
I asked him, “Why? Why did I have to leave? Why couldn’t I stay with you?”
With great compassion and gentleness, the tender, loving, melodious voice of Maharishi said, “Come come, my dear child. I love you so much. Do not doubt it for an instant. Come to me now and do not fear. I am always with you. You are my little child, Susan the Artist. I will love you always.”
Tears came to my eyes.
His voice continued, “I always knew that you would not stay. That was never the plan for you. I trained you especially for this purpose, to take your own path and bring people to higher consciousness in your own way. I bless Divine Revelation and all those who come to it. You will bring many to God. That is your mission. Remember what I said to you so long ago? ‘Don’t look to anyone. When you don’t look to anyone, then everyone will look to you.’”
My heart was touched with deep emotion. I wept with immeasurable joy.
He handed me a glowing light sword and continued, “Now is time for you to stand and take this sword of truth. Cut through the ignorance around you. Walk into the light of divine love. You are a beloved child of God. Your direction is clear. I have been a lighthouse to guide you. Now is your time to become a beacon for others. Trust in God’s infinite love and live in the radiance of God’s eternal flame. I give you my love and my blessings. Live in peace and enjoy.”
I was profoundly moved. Absorbed in deep silence, I realized how Maharishi’s influence touched people everywhere. He did what he came to do—transformed this planet from ignorance to enlightenment. The most powerful people of his generation sat at his feet—people who significantly impacted moving our culture into higher consciousness.
In 1959, when Maharishi came to America, few people outside India ever heard of any spiritual practice. Now a significant number meditated. Eastern philosophy was commonplace. Millions touched by TM took little pieces of Maharishi and then went off, scurrying about the planet—all of them deeply transformed by simply closing their eyes and experiencing inner peace.
But it wasn’t the man. It wasn’t Maharishi. It was the power of the unseen hand of God, moving the trends of time in a new direction. A spiritual revival was dawning, and we were all part of it.
My journey brought me into close contact with this unparalleled spiritual master, who, through his personal and spiritual power, transformed individuals and changed the world. I walked with the most influential guru of the twentieth century. But now it was time to walk my own path. I realized when Maharishi said, “don’t look to anyone,” he was referring to everyone—including himself.
My fears and doubts ceased. I knew I had taken the correct fork in the road. Now all that was left was to fulfill my destiny.
Before long, all of us who participated in the spiritual revolution of the 1960s will be gone. But children and grandchildren of today and future generations will continue to carry that torch lit in the hearts of humanity by Maharishi. His influence will continue to reverberate from the timeless Ganges in Rishikesh to all the hearts he touched throughout the world.
EPILOGUE AND EPITAPH
We only leave this world with two things: the vibration we’ve achieved in our life and the love we’ve given to others. The two are really one and the same.
—MAHARISHI MAHESH YOGI
Until his death at age ninety, Maharishi lived in Vlodrop, Holland. Working day and night, he was still trying to establish world peace. “Maharishi Peace Palaces” were theoretically being built in one hundred US cities and three thousand cities worldwide. The plan was pundits would vibrate world peace by chanting the Vedas around the clock in these palaces.
Maharishi & Me Page 33