'The Beatles’ spiritual teacher'- this is how a recording of the Maharishi’s lectures was sold in the 1960s, as his name became as big as the band itself, following their association with him. The spiritual boom in the West during the 1950s and 1960s can be credited largely to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who popularised the concept of transcendental meditation through the Spiritual Regeneration Movement. The key factor in his brand of spiritualism was to distinguish this form of meditative practice from the rituals of Hinduism and other religions. He inherited this technique from the Hindu guru Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, which involves chanting a special Sanskrit mantra (phrase or word) mentally, twice a day. The repeated chanting of the mantra is supposed to bring down the pace of one’s mental activity and consequently, the individual is supposed to attain a higher realm of consciousness. The aim of the ritual is to attain inner peace and a serene physical state. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s style of spiritualism gained significant international traction after the Beatles, a world-renowned band, paid him a visit at his ashram in Rishikesh in February 1968.
The early life of Maharishi Yogi is not well-known, except that he was born in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh in 1917 and completed his education from the University of Allahabad. He proceeded to receive his teachings from Swami Brahmananda Saraswati in the Himalayas for 13 years. After the passing of his guru, Maharishi Yogi decided to take his teachings across the world, and his first world tour began from the United States in 1959. His brand of spiritualism skyrocketed in its popularity after the Beatles came to be associated with him. In August 1967, the Beatles first attended Maharishi’s lecture in London and quickly proceeded to Bangor, Wales, for a ten-day conference that he was holding, completely taken in by his spiritual style. Many have written that the Maharishi’s spiritualism appealed to the world-famous band because of the particular juncture of their lives, where they crossed paths with the yogi. The Beatles, exhausted with all their fame and money and a life immersed in drugs, were seeking ways to achieve peace and happiness beyond their material achievements, and the Maharishi’s teachings offered them a path towards such spiritual bliss. They even followed the yogi to his ashram in Rishikesh in 1968, after their participation in his conference at Wales was cut short due to the death of their manager Brian Epstein from drug overdose.
However, the band left the Rishikesh ashram following allegations of sexual misconduct against the yogi towards a female devotee. There were many versions to this allegation- while one version was that he had made inappropriate gestures towards actress Mia Farrow and Jennifer Boyd, sister of Patti Boyd, another version said that Beatles members Harrison and Lennon had looked through his villa’s window one night and seen him hugging a female teacher. There have also been counter claims in later years that the allegations of sexual misconduct against the guru were false as the “fact” was that the Beatles were thrown out of the ashram for using drugs. Even after all the colourful media narratives, members of the band continued to maintain that the time they spent invested in the transcendental meditation practice was one of the most creatively productive periods of their lives. The yogi passed away in 2008 but his ashram is still a popular tourist attraction in Rishikesh, while a university named the “Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic Vishwavidyalaya” continues to run successfully in Madhya Pradesh. As recent as January this year, his followers have been making headlines for their claims that transcendental meditation is a “scientifically proven” technology to end war and attain world peace. Tony Nader, Chairman of the Global Union of Scientists for Peace and Maharishi Yogi’s successor for transcendental meditation organizations, claims that if 10,000 practitioners meditate together, their “consciousness field” will bring global conflict to a grinding halt.
As the allegations against the yogi have slipped deeper into obscurity with time, his popularity, on the other hand has become timeless. Life coaches and spiritual guides like Shashi Dubey still endorse the yogi and his meditation methods, elevating him to the status of divinity. Their image of the spiritual guru comes to life when they describe their meeting with the yogi- imbued with “the beautiful fragrance of lotus and sandalwood that naturally emanated from his body- a sign of a very highly evolved soul.”
