Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - My Great Good Fortune
I didn't expect to say more than what is just below this. But James Wolcott's two references - 1, 2 - brought up some memories.
First, about the good fortune: I learned TM when it cost $35.00 for students. I got to spend time with Charlie Lutes (great pictures here), one of MMY's first US allies, and one of the most delightful teachers I have ever known. I attended the first conference on Creative Intelligence where I had the extraordinary experience of witnessing Bucky Fuller and Maharishi (whose degree was in physics) engage in lengthy, vibrant conversations about the nature of the universe, and where, as a volunteer, I sat in after-hour staff meetings with Maharishi - saw his unassuming humanity, kindness, simplicity up close and for real. I became a teacher of TM when Maharishi was doing the training, which meant I learned from him daily for more than six months.
Toward the end of that course, my sister and I received word that our seventeen-year-old brother, Clayton, had died in a car accident. Because we were in a period of deep meditation at the time, Maharishi wanted to see us before we hurled ourselves into the emergency activity of flying home. We sat on either side of him as he talked a bit about heading back into activity and made arrangements for us to complete our training (the part where he personally gives you the mantras) later that summer at a different location. My sister had the presence of mind to ask, "What can we say to our mother to comfort her?" Maharishi answered, "When a mother loses a child, rather than think about the future she won't have with the child, the true feeling - the one to concentrate on - is gratitude for the years she had with that child... because if the mother has done everything she can to love the child and feed and clothe the child... (and here he paused for emphasis) and educate the child, then she has done all she was meant to do for the length of time she was given, and wasn't that a wonderful thing to have?"
And then he handed each of us a flower to take to her.
We were both struck, my sister and I, how the point about education was so perfectly apt for our mother. And the way he had emphasized it, as if he knew her. He had turned to his left and looked directly into my eyes as he said that. No, my sister said, "He turned to the right and looked directly into my eyes as he said that."
I still have days when I wish I could know Clayton as a grown man. But those days of grief right after our return to the U.S. were positively loaded with support and meaning and mystical power and, yes, gratitude.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was listening to To The Best of Our Knowledge on NPR. The author of a new book on the Beatles was talking about their time with Maharishi, including the part about the groupie-charlatan from London who blew into Rishikesh and convinced John and George that Maharishi was having an affair with one of the women at the ashram. The interviewer asked if the allegation was true. The author replied, "Someone told me...and I know for a fact...it was."
I laughed out loud at this absurdity. (Being the peaceful meditator I am, I also shouted, "Do some decent research, asshole!)
"I remember taking George Harrison to meet (Maharishi) in 1993. George had gone to apologize for the bad behaviour of the Beatles back in 1969. Back then, the Beatles, especially John Lennon, had insinuated that the Maharishi was having an affair with Mia Farrow."
According to those who were at the retreat with them, George and John were asked to leave the ashram due to drug use.
"When George apologised, the Maharishi said there was nothing to be sorry about. He said the Beatles were angels on Earth with their music and he could never be angry with them. George wept." - Deepak Chopra, in the Times of India
(Chopra also has this fine essay in the Times on Maharishi the man.)
There were other ridiculous things in the radio interview as well. I felt so fortunate for those experiences I'd had that allowed me to recognize so clearly the true from the untrue.
Then, a few weeks later, another episode of the same radio show..and more Maharishi. This time it was long time meditator Geoff Gilpin, whose book The Maharishi Effect explores the changes - some wonderful, some downright odd and disappointing - he observed in the TM movement over the years.
Which reminded me of something Maharishi once said about the nature of Truth - that it is something that must be lovingly tended like a garden or it slips away. Sages appear. They share Truth. Then, over time - via structures and/or due to the consciousness of individuals and the times - it becomes distorted, corrupted, even lost. Until it comes again.
And so it goes.
And sometimes ... sometimes ...you get really, really lucky.
The essential truth that Maharishi taught was not one you get from someone else, but the One you tap and nurture within.
