Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (born Mahesh Prasad Varma) [1] is the creator of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and leader of the Transcendental Meditation Movement, based on the principles of Advaita Vedanta espoused by the Adi Shankara, and taught by his own master, Guru Dev Brahmananda Saraswati. Almost certainly the most prolific meditation guru in history, his meditation techniques have been taught to many thousands of people around the world.

Controversy surrounds the Maharishi, his technique (and variants thereof) and the money raised by the TM organisation in its various guises. Unsupported claims of personal wealth accruing to the Maharishi or his family are rarely corroborated.

Biographical overview

Early life

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was born on January 12th, 1917 to a devout Hindu family living in the small village of Chichli near Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, in the central region of India. His name at birth was Mahesh Prasad Varma. He earned the equivalent of a master's degree in physics at Allahabad University, graduating in 1940.

After completing his studies, he became a disciple and secretary to Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, from 1940 to 1953. Saraswati gave him the name Mahesh Yogi. He then practiced meditation in retreat for two years near Utter Kashi in the Himalayan foothills.

In 1955, he assumed the title "Maharishi" (Great Sage or Great Seer) and began publicly teaching a traditional meditation technique which he later renamed Transcendental Meditation. In 1957 he founded The Spiritual Regeneration Movement in India, the first of his many organizations that are now collectively known as the TM Movement, and began the first of many tours to teach Transcendental Meditation around the world.

The Transcendental Meditation Movement

The official US website for Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation program claims that Transcendental Meditation has been taught worldwide to over 5 million people. The number of TM teachers trained to teach meditation since the beginning of the movement is reported to be in the tens of thousands, of those, the number who continue to practice and teach meditation today may still be more than a thousand. Over its fifty-year history the TM Movement has gone through many phases of reorganization.

The TM Movement has consistently used modern technology to teach. Today it maintains a number of websites. Providing basic information for the general public is Maharishi Open University, which hosts the Maharishi's weekly webcast press-conferences that are also broadcast by satellite. Information is also available on "Consciousness Based Education" [2], the Maharishi University of Management and a K-12 school, Maharishi School for the Age of Enlightenment.

During the 1960s and early 1970s the TM Movement became seen as an attribute of the then counter-culture phenomenon, at which time also cultural celebrities flocked to the movement. Celebrity students at that time included The Beatles, the Beach Boys (singer Mike Love[3] in particular, who became a TM "Initiator" or teacher) and singer-songwriter Donovan who befriended Maharishi and put his picture on the back cover of his A Gift from a Flower to a Garden album. Comedian Andy Kaufman and magician Doug Henning were also Maharishi students, while Clint Eastwood and David Lynch are two notable directors who have practiced TM. Lynch is currently involved in an effort to raise $7 billion to teach TM to all students in the USA, via his David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.

With the exception of George Harrison, The Beatles abandoned the Maharishi following an alleged incident in which the avowedly celibate Maharishi made sexual gestures towards Mia Farrow. This disillusionment became the basis of the song "Sexy Sadie" from the White Album. However, according to several authors, Alexis Mardas deliberately engineered the Beatles' disillusionment (Miles, 1998; Spitz, 2006; Lennon, 1978; Mason, 2005), and Mia Farrow refers to the incident in more innocent terms in her autobiography. (Farrow, 1997). Nevertheless, in an account told many years before to her friend and fellow TMer, screen writer Ned Wynn, Farrow made it clear - in crude and certain terms - that she believed the professed celibate monk had clumsily tried to seduce her (Wynn, 1992).

Today

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Maharishi started issuing cautions, in weekly satellite press-conference and webcasts, about the prevailing directions of societal change in the world. The solutions to current world problems he proposes include creating large, permanent groups of TM-Sidhi practitioners performing their programs to create the so-called Maharishi Effect.

With reference to an on-going project to create a Maharishi Effect for the Netherlands, where he has lived since the early 1990s, he stated on June 21, 2006 that what "is unfolding right now is the 'supreme level of evolvement of life on earth'"[4].

Meditation Courses, Programs, Products, and Services

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his TM Movement sell meditation courses to the general public as well as other programs adopted from traditional Indian (Vedic) disciplines. These include performing religious ceremonies to propitiate and secure the favor of Hindu dieties and treatments and medicines based in Ayurvedic medicine.

Transcendental Meditation

Practicing Transcendental Meditation involves concentrating on repeating mentally one of a small set of mantras or sounds traditionally associated with Hindu dieties. This is done while sitting in a relaxed but upright posture with eyes closed. Average practitioners typically meditate twice a day for twenty minutes and report it creating a state where they are clearly aware of their mind as the context of their experience. This increased awareness is sometimes void of thought and these periods of simple awareness are called "Transcendental Consciousness". During meditation, practitioners usually experience significantly reduced autonomous body functions (pulse, breath rate, heart rate).

Books by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is credited as the author of at least 14 books,[5] of which the two most important to TM and TM-Sidhi Program practitioners are the Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation[6] and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: A New Translation and Commentary, Chapters 1-6.[7]

References

* The Religious Movements Homepage Project at The University of Virginia
* Deans, Ashley, PhD (2005) A Record of Excellence: The Remarkable Success of Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment
* Miles, Barry (1998) Paul McCartney : Many Years from Now, ISBN 0-7493-8658-4
* Spitz, Bob (2006) The Beatles -- The Biography, Aurum Press, ISBN 1-84513-160-6
* Lennon, Cynthia (1978) A Twist of Lennon, W. H. Allen, ISBN 0-352-30196-1
* Mason, Paul (2005), The Maharishi -- The Biography of the Man Who Gave Transcendental Meditation to the World, Chapter 12 (Online http://www.paulmason.info/themaharishi/mmytitle.htm)
* Farrow, Mia (1997) What Falls Away
* Wynn, Ned (1993), We Will Always Live in Beverly Hills; Random House Value Publishing, ISBN 0517108852