The Beatles meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Kensington

Why the Beatles took one look at this man and said ‘Yes’

This weekend the Beatles became members of the International Meditation Society at Bangor in circumstances that included the sudden death of Brian Epstein their manager, a tragic occurrence which overshadowed the announcement that the four young men had now given up drugs for meditation. Their mentor was a bearded, flower-bedecked Indian holy man called Maharishi Mahesh Yogi which strictly translated means Great Teacher, Master of The Path. During recent years Mahashi, as he is called for short, has been travelling the world making converts for his form of simple meditation, which involves two half-hour sessions daily of contemplation according to his rules. With followers in 25 countries he has now announced his permanent retirement to India. One of his followers is a successful young restaurateur, Nick Clarke, who runs those okay eating-places, Nick’s Diner and The Place Opposite. Ebullient, striking and frank — he outlines his experiences in meditation.

“I have been meditating 15 or 16 months through Kemys Bennett, who works here with me doing the actual cooking. I saw that Kem, who I don’t believe is naturally a calm, balanced person, had something which kept him sane. He had something which made sense, and I envied it. He’s very guarded, and I had to ask him: “What have you got?” And he only then talked to me about meditation.

I think that all through history there has been a godhunger; spiritual yearnings that we all know about. Mahashi says that easily, joyfully and happily we can reunite with that every single day of our lives. Meditation is simply a technique to carry the mind to this pool of peace. To do so you use a word called a mantrum which they give to you and you keep to yourself. They give it to you when you are initiated, as the Beatles and Mick Jagger have been in the last few days.

Somebody talks in what I presume is Hindustani. You stand there feeling slightly square and uncomprehending, then they give you a word. It’s not, but it might be “Boing.” You say Boing, boing, boing out loud at first then you repeat it silently in your head and this is the vehicle that carries your mind to this deepness inside yourself. I believe that the word involved is irrelevant, it’s just a sound really. It fixes the attention so that the external distracting images like “What am I going to do next Tuesday?” disappear. The mantrum allows the mind to return to where it is clearly and easily happiest.

You do that for half an hour and then, bang, you open your eyes and get straight back into your ordinary life. This is terribly important. Mahashi doesn’t believe you should withdraw from the world. You are more effective, you are more in the world not less. At first it worked out enormously badly, really quite enormously badly. It was very hit and miss. Very gradually I got to a state where I couldn’t conceive of getting through a day without meditation.

I am conscious of a greater serenity, peace and gentleness inside myself. There was a tremendous violence inside me which I don’t feel so much. I think that meditation hits at what is in a person’s nature. It is all things to all people, it hits wherever the hang up is.

I am an extremely animal personality, I love drink, food and women, and at the same time I have strongly developed perceptions, that is why I have never been up till now a very happy man. I can drug myself with an animal existence but have always felt there must be a spiritual meaning in what one does. In 1956 when, you remember, people’s emotions were very heightened because of Hungarv and Suez, I bumped into Billy Grahamites and they started preaching Christianity such as I have never heard.

I was a member of a group for a while, but it was judgment, judgment, judgment. It was wrong to be drunk, wrong to make love to a girl. It was all sin, judgment, guilt. I thought this is just not me. baby. So I turned my back on all things spiritual for nearly five years and lived desperately for kicks.

Then a friend, a doctor, who runs a thing about losing weight, said I was too fat. He ran a Thursday night session with enormously fat people talking about their compulsion to eat. It was based on Freudian analysis and I tumbled that he had nothing to offer.

Okay, he explains that one is lonely and afraid but he cannot offer you anything to make you feel happy, well, contented and peaceful. So it was a kind of so-what situation, because you still felt lonely. The next stage was seeing Kem so calm about the place and I knew I wanted to be the same.

Flower Power and drugs are various extreme attitudes expressing the same thing. You get immature drug taking, but as a social phenomenon the thing that really matters is that the bulk of the young are drug-inclined for the much more mature reason that they don’t find the world acceptable.

Organised religion, and I mean all religion, not just Christianity which is the okay religion in this country, is something the young don’t want any more. They are just as disillusioned with politics. Meditation is a technique enabling us to communicate directly with God, you don’t even need the word God, it is just Being… Absoluteness.

That is why the Beatles took one look at this, and said ‘Yes’.’

From The Evening Standard – August 31, 1967

THE YOGI: A REPORT FROM THE FOOTHILLS OF THE HIMALAYAS (And a PS from the foothills of Snowdonia)

INDIAN holy men and laymen are, to say the least, surprised at the instant fervour with which the Beatles succumbed to the message of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His appeal in India is to the middle-aged, including a relatively high proportion of politicians, cables Inside Page’s man in New Delhi, K. K. Katyal. Young Indians are not attracted by the philosophy of transcendental meditation.

MEANWHILE, far from the Himalayas in the foothills of Snowdonia, Mirror writer William Marshall had an audience of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Normal Training College, Bangor, North Wales.
He obtained this definition of transcendental meditation: “It is the transference of attention from the gross state of thought to the subtle state of thought until the source of thought is reached and the mind transcends the source,” said Mahesh.

Q. — How long had you had contact with the Beatles before they succumbed to your teachings or personality?

A. — When I finished my lecture in the Hilton I was told the Beatles were in the hall and they wanted to meet me. I said to call them in. Then they talked to me on the stage for about one and a half hours. This was the first time.

Q. — They went for your philosophy quickly?

A. — Immediately after having heard the first lecture. This shows the sharpness of their intellect.

Q. — It has been mentioned that you might become a Beatles manager. Is this true ?
A. — I? I have the whole world to take care of.

Q. — Your followers are supposed to give a week’s wages but. as a holy man, surely such material wealth is not necessary to you ?

A. — They don’t give it to me. They give it to their centres and the centres spend all that in advertising and building academies. Of course, all my travelling expenses and all that are borne with these donations.

Q. — You talk about your master. If I said, “Take me to your leader” where would we go?

A. — You would come to my academy of meditation on the banks of the Ganges in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Q. — Has flower any power ?

A. — Flowers have the power of amusement and radiating good to the surroundings. Flower is the joy of nature and symbolises my message.

Q. — You give your followers a secret word upon which to meditate. Would you give me one ?

A. — Not now. Not right now.

Mahesh spent 13 years at Kidarnath, in the Himalayas, learning yoga techniques. His guru, or teacher was His Holiness Brahamanand, who presided over Kidarnath, one of the four most holy places in India. Mahesh, as senior of two disciples, expected to become his guru’s successor as head of the shrine. But Brahamanand named the junior disciple.

After his guru’s death, Mahesh sought to establish his claim in the courts. He tailed, and started his own Spiritual Regeneration Movement in 1958, with headquarters at Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganges.
There, at a cost of nearly £1.000.000, an academy of meditation has been established for the benefit of overseas aspirants like the Beatles.

The earliest known authentic book on yoga, written by Patanjali in 2000 BC, advocates an eight-fold approach: Moral virtue, social virtue, physical discipline, breath control, withdrawal from worldly engagements, concentration, meditation and rapture (communion with God).

Mahesh specialises in meditation only, and this has earned him the sharp criticism of other Indian yogis, reports Katyal. So, too. have his methods. High-pressure publicity. Image building and luxury hotels are not connected in the average Indian’s mind with the self-controlling disciplines of yoga.

From The Daily Mirror – August 31, 1967

MR YOGI’S FAREWELL IS JUST OUT OF THIS WORLD

THE departure of His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi from London’s Heathrow Airport yesterday was, appropriately, slightly out of this world.

For a start, the Indian mystic who taught the Beatles the art of transcendental meditation had clearly not meditated on the advisability of buying a ticket in advance. He bought one and got his luggage weighed… just five minutes before his Amsterdam flight was due to leave. Then he couldn’t find his passport. A situation he resolved after a short meditative session.

A BEA girl led the way to the plane. But she turned in mid-trot… to find His Holiness distributing flowers.
She said: “Please could you hurry?” And hardly pausing to reflect on the handicap of having short legs, he replied: “But I’m running already.”

His Holiness gave a running Press conference. Said he was pleased with the Beatles and was sure they would spread his message of love. The plane finally left twenty minutes late. And what the other passengers thought about that is nobody’s business.

From The Daily Mirror – September 2, 1967