I think I leave a better world than what I found, and have done my duty to the world. Last incarnation? I don’t have to come back.

— Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 1967

The 1960s were a time when India’s major export was probably gurus. There was the charismatic Rajneesh-Osho, the much-revered Bhaktivedanta, but the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the man who started it all with his patented Transcendental Meditation (TM), was probably the best known and loved, even after his fifteen minutes of fame with the Beatles came to an end.

The Maharishi will be remembered for his Beatles connection, quite rightly, since it propelled him to fame. It was Patti Harrison, wife of George, who brought her husband and the Beatles in touch with the Maharishi, in a much-publicised 1967 meeting in Wales, cut short by the news of the death of Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager. However, the Beatles and sundry others followed him back to Rishikesh, where all was fine until charges of sexual impropriety with Mia Farrow, never satisfactorily explained, brought it all to an end. John Lennon finally excoriated the Maharishi in his song Sexy Sadie. With the Beatles gone (though George and Paul continued to meet him over time), the Maharishi found himself in the cold.

But by then TM was a household word, and the Maharishi spun it into a multi-billion-dollar empire. He set up a number of organisations for the study of TM, institutions of vedic learning. He claimed to teach his disciples to levitate. He developed a habit of naming years for one activity or the other. His foray into British politics with the Natural Law Party only served to underline the amazing quality of his disciples, who numbered scientists and other highly educated people. This should not be surprising, for this disciple of Swami Bhramananda wrote a well-received translation and commentary of the Gita, exploring and popularising ayurveda (Deepak Chopra was his disciple) and continued his studies and expositions at his Vedic University in Holland, and other parts of the world, gradually retiring into seclusion by January 2008.

... contd.