Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement who taught The Beatles to meditate, made mantra a household word in the 1970s and built a multimillion-dollar empire on a promise of inner harmony and world peace, died on Tuesday in Vlodrop, The Netherlands.
He was believed to be 91.
Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation organisation, said the Maharishi died peacefully of natural causes at his private residence in Vlodrop, the Dutch village about 120 miles south of Amsterdam where he moved his headquarters in 1990.
The diminutive Indian philosopher, who brought his brand of eastern mysticism to the West in the late 1950s, had attained a cult-like following by the end of the 1960s, when his message of peace resonated with a counter-culture in bloom. His most famous followers were The Beatles, who spent a month at his India ashram in 1968 and wrote some of their more popular songs there.
By the mid-1970s, TM had an estimated 600,000 practitioners, including actresses Shirley MacLaine and Mia Farrow, and pop music star Donovan. TM how-to books rose on best-seller lists.
Before long, the Maharishi had established a political party, a gold-domed university in Fairfield, Iowa, and a network of several hundred TM centres around the US.
"Transcendental Meditation is the McDonald's of the meditation business," best-selling author Adam Smith once wrote of the movement, which claims more than five million practitioners in 130 countries today.
The guru's message was simple: a person could reduce stress and attain happiness by meditating 20 minutes twice a day on a secret Sanskrit word, or "mantra".
If sufficient numbers of meditators achieved inner peace, he said, they could radiate bliss to the world, which would reduce crime and end wars. "Life is not a struggle, not a tension . . . Life is bliss. It is eternal wisdom, eternal existence," the Maharishi said.
Beginning in the 1970s, a number of scientific studies were conducted that showed beneficial physiological effects, including reducing hypertension.
In later years, the Maharishi claimed advanced TM practitioners could fly through the air like Peter Pan - a feat that would require not only dedication but at least $275 a week for a four- to eight-week course. Such claims brought a wave of sceptical news stories that portrayed the Indian mystic as the PT Barnum of the New Age.
The influential guru was born Mahesh Prasad Varma, the son of a local tax official in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. According to his official biography, he studied physics at Allahabad university and earned a degree in 1942. While in college, he became a student of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, a major Hindu leader who was called Guru Dev, or "divine teacher". After graduating, Mahesh trained under Brahmananda until the guru died in 1953.
Following Guru Dev's death, Mahesh retreated into the Himalayas for a two-year period of meditation. When he emerged in 1955, he devoted himself to popularising his master's form of meditation, which was derived from Advaita Vedanta, a branch of Hindu philosophy. He called his version of it the spiritual development movement and later the spiritual regeneration movement.
By 1959, he had embarked on a world tour to spread his method of attaining higher consciousness. After establishing a base in London, he moved on to the US, where his first stop was San Francisco. He lectured there for two months before heading to Los Angeles, New York and other places in Europe.
In 1963, he wrote his first major book, The Science of Being and Art of Living, a comprehensive introduction to his thought. In 1965, he completed a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, one of the principal Vedic texts.
His movement began to gain momentum in 1965, when the Student International Meditation Society was founded and gained thousands of members within a few years.
In 1967, George Harrison took fellow Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney to hear the Maharishi lecture in London. Soon the fourth band member, Ringo Starr, joined them in a seminar for British initiates who, for a $35 fee, received their own mantra. Today, the basic course costs $2,500.
In 1968, The Beatles travelled to the Maharishi's ashram at Rishikesh in the Himalayas for more intensive study. There they joined other wisdom-seeking celebrities, including Farrow, Donovan and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. Out of the experience came Beatles' songs such as Across the Universe.
Although TM officials discount reports that the legendary foursome became disenchanted with the Maharishi during their visit, Beatles chroniclers have said that the group was dismayed by the guru's mega- lomania and doubted his claims of celibacy.
The Maharishi continued to attract followers eager to learn his meditation technique, such as magician Doug Henning, who died in 2000. Another prominent supporter is filmmaker David Lynch, who has been raising money to help the Maharishi build "peace palaces" around the world.
Among the earliest sceptics was the writer Kurt Vonnegut, who met the Maharishi in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1968. He described a beneficial effect on his TM-practising wife and daughter, but in the end took a dim view of the movement. TM, he wrote, was "a very good religion for people who, in troubled times, don't want any trouble".
Later, critics labelled TM a "cult" and likened its meditation techniques to hypnotism. In 1986, a former TM follower sued the Maharishi university for $9 million, charging fraud, neglect and emotional damage. A jury awarded him $138,000. Networks of dis- affected TM practitioners began to appear, offering similar stories. Among those who broke away was later best-selling author and lecturer on natural healing, Deepak Chopra.
However, some former followers continued to admire the Maharishi. He will be succeeded by Maharaja Nader Raam, a Lebanese doctor who studied with the Maharishi for 25 years. His body will be returned to India after a ceremony in Vlodrop on Thursday, Roth said.