Origin Story
The Beatles, $300 million and how TM became a phenomenon.
1918
Mahesh Prasad Varma is born into a scholar caste.
1940
Varma obtains a degree in physics at Allahabad University before becoming a disciple and administrative secretary to Swami Brahmananda Saraswati (affectionately known as Guru Dev), the leader of the Jyotir Math monastery. Varma changes his name to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. After 13 years of spiritual study and two years in isolation, the Maharishi decided to spread his newfound enlightenment to as many people as possible.
1955
The Maharishi emerges from a cave in India’s Valley of the Saints to began teaching what he would later call TM, believing that meditation belonged to the masses.
1959
The Maharishi makes his first U.S. appearance, part of a global tour that had already taken him to Asia, Africa and Europe.
1967
The Maharishi begins charging tuition fees, a sliding scale equivalent to one week’s wages. According to Gary Lachman, author of Turn O Your Mind, the Beatles “hesitated only slightly” when asked to donate such an enormous sum for a weekend initiation in the summer of 1967.
1968
Life magazine declares “the Year of the Guru” and the lineups outside TM centres around the world manifest in frenzied abundance.
1970s
The Maharishi appears twice on The Merv Gri in Show and starts oering more advanced techniques, which promise superhuman powers and the ability to levitate, also known as “yogic flying.”
1980s
People begin dropping out en masse. Even Deepak Chopra, who leaves the TM movement in 1993, says he started getting uncomfortable with “the cultish atmosphere” around the Maharishi. The latter stops making public appearances and isolates himself in the Netherlands compound.
2008 to 2011
The Maharishi dies, leaving behind an estimated $300 million (U.S.) in his U.S. estate alone. Thanks to Hollywood endorsements, U.S. enrolment triples. A spike of new converts from Wall Street accounts for more than half of the David Lynch Foundation’s enrolment in the last three years.