The Love You Make

by Peter Brown

  I had my doubts about the efficacy of the Beatles going off to India with the Maharishi in the middle of the formation of Apple, particularly because of certain incidents that led me to believe the Maharishi was using the Beatles’ name for his personal gain. One day I received a call from the lawyers for ABC Television in America. They said that the Maharishi had been negotiating with them for a TV special that he said would include an appearance by the Beatles. ABC’s lawyers were calling me to confirm the Beatles’ cooperation. I told them that the Beatles had no intention of appearing on the Maharishi’s show. But only a week later the lawyers were back on the phone; the Maharishi was insisting he could deliver them.

  I called the Maharishi in Malmö, Sweden, where he was lecturing at the moment, and explained the problem to him, but his answers were obscure and indefinite. I decided to fly to Malmö to insist he not represent the Beatles as being part of his projects. In Malmö the Maharishi greeted me warmly but only giggled and nodded and chattered on like a mouse on speed as I laid down the law. The following week in London I was again contacted by ABC’s lawyers, who said the Maharishi was still insisting the Beatles would appear on his TV show and was soliciting sponsors with this understanding. I went to Malmö again, this time with Paul and George in tow. We met with the Maharishi and tried to explain to him that he must not use their names to exploit his business affairs, and that they definitely would not appear on his TV special, but the Maharishi just nodded and giggled again. “He’s not a modern man,” George said forgivingly on the plane home. “He just doesn’t understand these things.”

  On February 16 the Beatles set out for Rishekesh. The traveling party consisted of John and Cynthia, George and Pattie, Paul, Jane Asher, Ringo and Maureen, Jenny Boyd, Donovan, and Mal Evans. They traveled first by jet to Delhi, then by taxi and jeep and eventually on the backs of donkeys. When the road became impossible for even the donkeys to navigate, they walked the last half mile, crossing a narrow rope bridge over a muddy chasm before they reached the gates of the ashram. Their luggage followed later on ox-drawn carts. For the first time in years, the Beatles were cut off from the world—and the press from the Beatles. The absence of news of what was happening in the ashram tantalized the public. The whole world seemed to know that the Beatles had gone off to India to discover the “truth,” and millions waited expectantly for them to come down from the mountain and spread the Word. Here, told for the first time, is what really happened in the ashram.

  The Beatles were joined at the ashram by Beach Boy Mike Love, jazz musician Paul Horn, American actress Mia Farrow, her sister Tia, and her brother John, plus some twenty other noncelebrated students, an assortment of discontented Americans from California, and some aging Swedish widows.

  The ashram turned out to be more like a hotel than the spartan guru’s camp the Beatles expected. The sleeping quarters were in a complex of picturesque stone bungalows with four or five bedrooms in each. The Beatles’ rooms had four-poster beds and solid English furniture. Each was equipped with a modern bath and toilet, and there was even an electric fire for cold nights. Meals were eaten communally at long, hand-carved tables under a vine-covered trellis next to the Ganges. Food was served to them by a large staff of servants and prepared in a completely modern kitchen by a trained chef. The Maharishi’s house, a short distance away from the rest of the compound, was a long, low, modern building with its own kitchen and staff. There was even a woman to give the girls a daily massage. The most eyebrow-raising of all the luxury accoutrements was the landing pad for the helicopter used to ferry the Maharishi in and out of the compound on his appointed rounds throughout India. This was the man whom George had excused to me as “not a modern man.”

  Once settled into the ashram they began to study in earnest. They woke at dawn each morning for an early breakfast, then went to long lectures, and spent the afternoons in meditation sessions. A friendly competition started among them to see who could meditate the longest, and there were heated debates at dinner every night about “who was getting it” and who was not. John seemed really into it, others thought he was faking it and that George was the most readily spiritual of the group. They dressed in traditional Indian clothing, and although they had shaved their moustaches shortly before the trip, they let their hair grow. It was the end of the rainy season when they arrived, but in a few weeks it turned warm and balmy, and they were able to bathe in the Ganges River, still clear and clean in the late winter. At night in their bungalows they could hear the river crashing rhythmically on the banks.

  Every evening after dinner, without the aid of drugs or alcohol, the boys would take their guitars out under the moonlight and sing and write songs. The quantity and quality of the songs composed in India was staggering, even to those who knew them. Thirty of the songs would comprise their next album. Everyone in the compound seemed touched by the muse. Donovan wrote his most beautiful song, “Jennifer Juniper,” for Pattie Harrison’s sister Jenny. The mood was loving and mellow, and perhaps the best celebration the Beatles had in years was George’s twenty-fourth birthday party, when the Maharishi presented him with a seven-pound cake and a fireworks display.

  When they’d first arrived at the ashram, Cynthia had been stung to learn that John had arranged for them to sleep in separate quarters. John explained that the distance would be good for meditating, and anyway they would see each other constantly in the small camp. Despite the unromantic arrangement, Cynthia relished being in Rishekesh. The Maharishi’s retreat was her one last hope for their marriage. Her life with John was in a shambles. He was little more than a frequent visitor to their home, and when he was there the house was filled with drug dealers and other smarmy “international leeches” as she called them.

  And recently Cynthia had become aware of the presence of a small Japanese woman named Yoko Ono in their lives. She seemed to be everywhere; waiting in front of the house for them, or sitting in the back of the car. Her little book of instructional poems was left on the night table on John’s side of the bed, like an omen. Although John swore to Cynthia over and over that he had no romantic interest in her, Cynthia was as relieved to get him away from Yoko Ono as she was from the drug dealers.

  Little did Cynthia realize that John had considered taking Yoko Ono with him to India instead of her, or even in addition to her, if he could have figured out how to pull it off. It would have been much more fun to go to Rishekesh with Yoko. He felt no guilt about Yoko, because he had not lied to Cynthia; it was an intellectual relationship, not a romantic one. Yoko’s galling wit and gentle craziness titillated him. She was smart and opinionated, a grateful distraction from Cynthia’s cloying kindness. Whenever John was about to tell Cynthia their marriage was over and he had to get away from her, she would look up to him with those sad, blue, believing eyes, and he didn’t have the heart. So off they went to Rishekesh together, while Yoko waited impatiently for John’s return.

  Rishekesh gave Cynthia a chance to regain a sense of herself, away from the pressures of Kenwood. She meditated and returned to the easel, where she spent hours drawing and painting. She watched from a distance as John became healthier and stronger without drugs.

  For one brief moment the Maharishi was even successful in raising some optimistically romantic sounds from John. Cynthia and John had told the Maharishi that Julian, who was staying with Lillian Powell and Mrs. Jarlett while they were gone, was celebrating his fifth birthday in a few weeks. The following week they were asked to the Maharishi’s house where they were presented with a made-to-order wardrobe for Julian befitting an Indian prince. The young couple was moved by the Maharishi’s thoughtfulness, and on the way back to the student compound they held hands while strolling along the Ganges. John was filled with warm, paternal feelings. “Oh Cyn,” he said, “won’t it be wonderful to be together with Julian again. Everything will be fantastic again, won’t it? I can’t wait, Cyn, can you?”

  But the momentary surge of warmth soon passed, and John began to drift furt
her away from her. Even in the small ashram he sometimes managed to avoid seeing her for days. He spent more and more time locked away in his room. Cynthia assumed he was meditating. He was not. He was writing long, rambling diatribes to a Japanese artist waiting for him in London. He got up early each morning and went to the mail drop to collect letters from Yoko, who wrote just as faithfully. “Look up at the sky,” she wrote him, “and when you see a cloud think of me.”

  “I got so excited about her letters,” John said. “There was nothin’ in them that wives or mothers-in-law could’ve understood, and from India I started thinkin’ of her as a woman, not just an intellectual woman.”

  On the tenth day Ringo and Maureen left for home. They told the reporters who greeted them in London they had to leave because Ringo’s delicate stomach couldn’t take the spicy food, but it was also because they hated the ashram. The clincher was Maureen’s aversion to flying insects. The banks of the Ganges are not a good place to visit if one is afraid of flying insects. Each night before Maureen went to sleep, she would make a hapless “Ritchie” kill every fly and insect in the room and dispose of the carcasses. Back in London Ringo told friends that the ten days he spent in the ashram weren’t as much fun as Butlin’s Holiday Camp.

  Paul and Jane stuck it out for six weeks. Paul simply wasn’t getting it. Or believing it either. The mock seriousness of the Maharishi and the tediousness of meditation were too much like school for him. Paul and Jane were much too sophisticated for this mystical gibberish. But when they were greeted by the press at Heathrow, they said none of this, only that they missed London and wanted to get home.

  John and George, however, remained true believers, despite the growing skepticism of their friends, Neil Aspinall among them. Neil was flying in and out of London to the ashram at regular intervals, keeping the Beatles informed on the progress of Apple. One of these trips concerned making a deal with the Maharishi for a film about him. Neil expected to have a hard time explaining the business arrangements to the spiritual man, only to find the Maharishi employed a full-time accountant. For a long while Neil and the guru haggled over an additional two and a half points. “Wait a minute,” Neil thought, “this guy knows more about making deals than I do. He’s really into scoring, the Maharishi.”

  The Maharishi’s most powerful critic turned out to be Magic Alex. Alex was summoned to Rishekesh by John, who missed his company. When Alex arrived at the ashram, he was appalled at what he found. “An ashram with four-poster beds?” he demanded incredulously. “Masseurs, and servants bringing water, houses with facilities, an accountant—I never saw a holy man with a bookkeeper!”

  According to Alex, the sweet old women at the ashram Cynthia liked so much for their warmth and openness were “mentally ill Swedish old ladies who had left their money to the Maharishi. There were also a couple of second-rate American actresses. Lots of people went to India,” he said, “to find things they couldn’t find at home, including a bunch of lost, pretty girls.” Alex was disgusted to observe the Maharishi herding them together for a group photograph, like a class picture, which he would use for publicity.

  It was also quite apparent that John was totally under the Maharishi’s control. John had been completely free of drugs and alcohol for over a month by the time Alex arrived, and he was the healthiest he had been in years, but Alex still felt the Maharishi was getting more than he was giving. Alex was at camp for only a week when he heard that the Maharishi expected the Beatles to tithe over 10 to 25 percent of their annual income to a Swiss account in his name. Alex reproved the Maharishi for this, accusing him of having too many mercenary motives to his association with the Beatles. Alex claims the Maharishi tried to placate him by offering to pay Alex to build a high-powered radio station on the grounds of the ashram so that he could broadcast his holy message to India’s masses.

  By the end of the tenth week, Alex was bent on undermining the Maharishi’s influence. He began by smuggling wine into the compound, having secured it on trips to the local village. The men would not drink, but the girls did. Late at night Alex would distribute the wine to the women while John and George were writing songs. During one of these late night, secret drinking sessions, a pretty blond nurse from California admitted that during a private consultation with the Maharishi she had been fed chicken for dinner.

  The Maharishi’s menu became a subject of great debate over the next week as word spread through the ashram that someone had accused him of smuggling chicken into the vegetarian community. Oddly, whether or not it was appropriate for Alex to be smuggling wine in was never questioned. In general nobody at the camp cared if the Maharishi had a little chicken on the side once in a while, but then, in the eleventh week, the story got worse. The same girl confided to Alex that not only had she been fed chicken during one of her private consultations but that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to her. The Maharishi began by asking to hold her hand so that his spiritual power would flow between them. It soon developed that he had a more complicated but very old-fashioned method for facilitating the flow. On five separate occasions, eager to please the great teacher, the girl lay back, closed her eyes, and thought of California while the little guru ministered to her flesh.

  When Alex transmitted this information to all the other women the following day, they were appropriately horrified. The thought that the Maharishi was not only a religious phoney but also one of such seedy proportions made some of them break down and weep. Cynthia, for one, didn’t believe a word of it. She had long ago become acquainted with Alex’s jealousy over anyone who had John’s attention, and she didn’t doubt that Alex would lie to destroy the Maharishi’s hold. As for the testimony of the American nurse, Cynthia claimed to have seen the girl in Alex’s room sitting at a candlelit table one night. While anyone else would have jumped to a sexual conclusion, Cynthia became convinced that Alex was using “black magic” to bewitch the girl.

  Alex decided to set a trap for the Maharishi. On the nurse’s next trip to the Maharishi’s house, it was arranged for several “witnesses” to hide in the bushes outside the Maharishi’s windows. When the Maharishi began to make advances, the girl was to scream, and everyone would come running to her aid. The Beatles and their wives, when told of this plan, strongly disapproved of Alex’s tactics and would have nothing to do with it, but the plan proceeded nevertheless.

  Late that night Alex and the nurse returned from the Maharishi’s house with another tale. The girl was again served chicken, after which the Maharishi made sexual advances, but for some reason the girl did not call out for help as planned. As the scene and the Maharishi began to unfold before Alex’s eyes, Alex made a loud noise outside the window to distract him. Afraid they would be discovered by an intruder, the Maharishi fixed his clothing and sent the girl away at once.

  John, George, and Alex sat up arguing about it all night. George didn’t believe a word of it, and he was furious with Alex. John had serious doubts. The Maharishi had indeed turned out to be as worldly and mercenary as the rest. John had expected a ticket to peace, but it turned out that the little LSD pills he nibbled on at home were more effective in the long run. The decision was made to leave early the next morning. Alex was afraid that the Maharishi might try to block their way by refusing to help them find transportation, and there was such urgency to their departure that Cynthia and Pattie were ordered to leave behind all their accumulated souvenirs. Shortly after breakfast, the Maharishi entered the compound and took his place, cross-legged, under a little grass canopy. Cynthia could see he was far from giggling. The three men went up to see him. John had been elected as spokesman, although he hated the task. “We’re leaving, Maharishi,” he said.

  The little man looked pained. “But why?” he asked.

  John didn’t have the courage to confront him. Evasively, he said, “You’re the cosmic one, you should know” The Maharishi looked as if he wanted to kill him. The guru said all he could to persuade them to stay without discussing the true reason
they were leaving. As far as his unnamed trespasses went, he said that the truth was like an iceberg with only ten percent showing. It was not enough. Alex was dispatched to the nearby town of Deradoon to fetch taxis.

  According to Alex, just as he had predicted the Maharishi had put the word out in the small adjacent town that the Beatles were not to be assisted in leaving. Alex was made to understand by the townspeople that the Maharishi would put some sort of jinx on them if they helped. Alex even offered to buy two taxis and finally managed to rent two old cars and their drivers. He had them driven to the ashram, where they loaded whatever luggage could fit in the trunks. They piled into the cars and drove off with the Maharishi watching sadly from the gates.

  The cars broke down every few kilometers, and John and Cynthia’s car got a flat. Everybody thought the Maharishi had put some sort of curse on them. There was no spare tire, and while Pattie and George went ahead for help, John and Cynthia and their driver sat alongside a deserted road in the baking heat for more than three hours before two Eastern-educated travelers recognized John and stopped to give them a lift.

  Exhausted and angry when they finally reached Delhi, they checked into the Hilton and were immediately recognized. It was only a matter of twenty minutes before foreign correspondents and reporters from every wire service were milling about the lobby of the hotel, trying to get a statement from the Beatles about why they were leaving the ashram. Wisely, it was agreed that while they were still in India they would say nothing of what had transpired. John and George told the press they had left because they had pressing business in London, and they did not wish to be in a film the Maharishi was planning to shoot.

  Back in London the Beatles decided to observe a code of silence about the incident. They decided that if the story were told in full, it would only reflect poorly on them. In later years bits and pieces of the story did get out but were greatly distorted. One widely circulated and believed story incorrectly names Mia Farrow as the Maharishi’s corespondent. Individually the Beatles had predictable reactions to the Maharishi incident. Ringo was benign, Paul was smug in an I-told-you-so sort of way, and George remained a stubborn believer and determined follower. To this day George is one of the many convinced that Alex was lying and trying to slander the Maharishi in order to get John away from him. John had the strongest reaction of all; he felt duped. He felt used, for the millionth time, and he was angry as hell. He took some of his anger out in a song about the Maharishi, but at the last minute he changed the title to “Sexy Sadie” to avoid a possible libel suit. The Maharishi was added to his long collection of disappointments, and John was once again open and gullible for the Next Big Thing to come.