Rev. Danny Fisher

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of the Transcendental Meditation (T.M.) technique and spiritual guru to such celebrities as actress/activist Mia Farrow and Oscar-nominated film director David Lynch, has died in Vlodrop, The Netherlands. He was thought to have been 91 years old.

Reflecting on his life’s work, the Associated Press writes:

Once dismissed as hippie mysticism, the Hindu practice of mind control known as transcendental meditation gradually gained medical respectability.

He began teaching T.M. in 1955 and brought the technique to the United States in 1959. But the movement really took off after the Beatles attended one of his lectures in 1967.

The Maharishi’s interactions with other celebrities, counterculture icons, and New Age teachers (including the Rolling Stones, Clint Eastwood, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Donovan, Andy Kaufman, and Deepak Chopra) did much to transform his work into a multi-million dollar enterprise: in addition to teaching T.M. programs, he went on world tours, wrote books, and founded schools and universities (including one in the U.S.). The ubiquity of T.M. in turn did much to increase the awareness and practice of meditation and other Indian spiritual practices in the United States. (So much so that Time Magazine put the Maharishi on the cover of their October 13th, 1975, issue on meditation.)

That meditation instruction, yoga classes, and writings about “Eastern philosophy” are so widely available in my lifetime probably has at least a little something to do with the Maharishi.

Asato Ma Sat Gamaya
Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya
Mrityor Ma Amritam Gamaya
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti