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It's especially significant when viewed alongside the stressed and fractious world that was evolving at the time. People seem to forget that he first brought his technique for inner peace and silence to the west during the most intense part of the Cold War. He ran his first international meditation teacher training courses alongside the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. This period was probably the greatest nuclear flashpoint that the world has ever seen. And while historians bicker over the way in which the situation defused itself, questions will always remain over how and why the world was not plunged into nuclear war at that time.
Countering the world’s hot spots with consciousness-raising courses and projects became the Maharishi’s hallmark social campaign. Over and over again he gathered large groups of meditators together, sometimes in close proximity to a conflict, sometimes at a distance. From the Vietnam War to the Iraq conflict and many in between. Nobody had ever seriously suggested before that you could avert wars and calamity by throwing a quantum amount of silence and inner awareness at a given situation rather than guns and tanks.
It was a unique strategy that was way ahead of its time. Of course it had its many critics. Bitter debate still rages amongst social scientists and the Maharishi’s scientists over the controls used and the outcomes obtained from these campaigns. When he came out with a formulae for world peace based on the square root of one percent of a large population practising TM and an advanced program called the Siddhis, the sceptics wet themselves. Of course the debate still rages.
On an individual level though, the sceptics have had to eat humble pie. The Maharishi took meditation out of the realm of voodoo and planted it firmly into the field of modern science and medical therapy. In the early 1970s when he first suggested that meditators should be hooked up to machines to measure heart rate, skin response and EEG pattens, most professionals scoffed at the suggestion that closing one’s eyes and going within could change basic physiological parameters. When Keith Wallace published his landmark piece of research in 1972, which showed that people practicing TM reduced their oxygen consumption by more than twice that of deep sleep, the relaxation genie quietly slipped out of the bottle.
By 1977 over a hundred separate pieces of physiological and psychological research had been conducted, published and peer-reviewed on the positive effects of meditation and health professionals around the world started to see a genuine alternative to tranquilisers for an increasingly stressed world. As the research continued conditions like asthma, anxiety and blood pressure all improved with meditation and as well as social factors like an ability to get on with people and a decrease in drug abuse.
As a commentator on the Maharishi’s passing I have to disclose that I have been a TM teacher, taught personally by the Maharishi. But I’m also somewhat of a disgraced one and was unofficially excommunicated by the movement officials for venturing into forbidden territory. I was barely tolerated as the boy-editor of a magazine that poked fun at the nation’s politicians in the 1980s but when I ventured into the murky world of sex industry lobbyist in the 90s I really forfeited my mantras and Rudruksha beads. But I’ve never been one to throw the baby out with the holy bath water. The TM officials became more like an irritating mother in law who changed your lifestyle with your bride but never really destroyed the relationship. I wouldn’t go out in public with the family anymore but I’d still enjoy the relationship.
From this perspective I understand some of the cynicism with which the media have reported the TM movement. And it is no surprise that the mainstream media have largely reported on the Maharishi’s passing with a focus on celebrity and money. But then why wouldn’t they? That’s how they sell papers most days of the week. While the tabloids focus on the Beatles and the Beach Boys as people who helped make the Maharishi famous they fail to mention that the Maharishi’s schools created as many celebrities as they attracted.
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Image: Author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus Johnny Gray (right) doing yogic flying at the Maharishi's school in Switzerland.
Deepak Chopra was a good example. His new age medical philosophies were developed during his time around the Maharishi and his Ayurvedic doctor, Triguna in the 1980s. John Gray was another. The now famous author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and other relationship books was the Maharishi’s celibate secretary for many years and constantly at his side during the time I spent as the Maharishi’s florist in the early 1970s.
In those early days it was easy to see how Maharishi lived his personal life. It was clear from meeting times and anecdotal evidence from people like Gray that he only slept two hours a night and was active for the other 22 hours in the day. It was obvious that apart from a toothbrush and his own personal seat, he didn’t have and neither did he covet, other possessions as the media have tried to assume.
No doubt his passing will fuel debate on cult-busting websites and more people will come forward with stories about this and that expectation that was not fulfilled by the Maharishi’s teaching. Journalists will see the many millions of dollars taken in through course fees and donations as evidence of a luxury lifestyle and just another Indian rope trick. Parts of the New Age press will say he presided over a form of Tupperware transcendence and sold out nirvana as a headache cure. The scientific media will say that his claims for a quantum state of consciousness and its ability to end wars was unproven.
But to my mind this just proves how broad his brush was. If some of his claims and practises were a little hard to grasp for some people, for many more he taught the real value of inner silence. Not only did he bring meditation to the west but more importantly, he left a road map to higher consciousness that was easy to follow and written in the language of the day.
Robbie Swan was a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in the 1970s and editor of the political humour and satire magazine, Matilda (http://www.bodypolitics.com.au/). He is currently a Canberra-based writer and lobbyist. Image used at top of article from Spiritual Regeneration Movement.