Thursday, February 7, 2008

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Dies.

I was driving around town yesterday morning-paying bills-when I heard on the radio that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had died in Holland at the age of 91.
He was the founder of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. He was made famous in the late 1960's when the Beatles and a crowd of other celebrities became his pupils.
I studied TM myself in the mid 70's. I drifted away from the movement when I realized that the TM technique was essentially no different then the meditation techniques taught in several disciplines and there was no need to pay to learn to meditate.The technique is pretty much the same as the one described in the Bhagavad Gita and The Cloud of the Unknowing.
On the plus side, I'd say that he was very influential in making meditation more commonplace in the West. But, on the negative side, he amassed a vast fortune and most of what he taught should have been given away for free.

2 comments:

Dom Cimafranca said...

Did he take it with him? ;-)

Ommmmmm....

Robert Simms said...

From what I've read, it seems he left this guy in charge.