The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came into my life at a traumatic time. It was the
late 1960s. I was married to John Lennon, one of the so-called Fab Four. The
Beatles were at the height of their fame, but my relationship with John was
becoming fraught and distant. Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll had taken their
toll on the Beatles. They were exhausted. Too many people wanted too much –
all the time. Then Brian Epstein, the band’s manager, suddenly died.
We all needed some peace and space and found it at the Maharishi’s ashram in
India. I did not know it at the time, but this would be a defining moment of
the 1960s, the moment when flower power went mainstream. The pictures of the
Beatles, the fashion leaders of the time, sitting crosslegged with the
Maharishi, were to spark a huge interest in eastern mysticism and meditation.
I was in London last week when I heard the Maharishi had died. I was surprised
at how shocked I felt. He was part of my life for just a few short months in
the late 1960s, but his influence on me has lasted. It’s bizarre: I was
never a follower, yet I have a beautiful photograph of the Maharishi holding
a rose that I have kept with me ever since.
It was Patti Boyd who introduced us to the Maharishi. George Harrison and
Patti had become interested in Indian spiritual beliefs and went to a
lecture in London, held by the spiritual regeneration movement. Later that
year – 1967 – its leader, the Maharishi, came over from India to hold a
conference in Bangor, north Wales. John went to hear him speak in London
beforehand, with George, Patti, Paul McCartney, Jane Asher and Ringo Starr.
“It’s fantastic stuff, Cyn, the meditation’s so simple and it’s
life-chang-ing,” John told me. Like the others he had been bowled over by
the Maharishi’s charisma and promises of nirvana. So off we went to the
Bangor conference. George, Patti, her sister Jenny and Paul were all going.
Ringo decided at the last minute that he would come too, and so did Mick
Jagger and Marianne Faithfull.
The Beatles had overdosed on everything that fame could bring. The Maharishi
was antidrugs and had explained that through meditation you could reach a
natural high as powerful as any drugs could induce. John loved this idea and
was already talking about enlightenment, cosmic awareness and doing without
drugs. So I was all for the Maharishi’s message: perhaps this was the change
of direction John had been looking for.
We were staying in dormitories at a large training college, along with a
couple of hundred other followers. Our room was basic, with bunk beds and
simple chests of drawers. Mick and Marianne sauntered in looking bewildered.
“Hey John, what’s hap-pening? Where do we go from here?”
“Back to school,” John laughed. The introductory seminar was an incongruous
mix of the Maharishi’s regular devotees joined by the psyche-delically clad
pop star elite, all sitting crosslegged on the bare wooden floor. That
afternoon the Beatles held a press conference renouncing the use of drugs,
in keeping with the Maharishi’s teachings. Only a month earlier they, along
with other pop stars, had taken a full-page ad in The Times stating that the
law on mari-juana was unworkable and immoral. Now all that was turned on its
head.
The press were wildly excited. But the story had barely hit the news-stands
when it was overtaken. As we were heading back to our room, a reporter told
us that Brian Epstein, who had steered the Beatles for the past six years,
had been found dead.
The disbelief and horror were overwhelming. Brian had been the Beatles’
mentor, their guide and best friend. The details were sketchy but it was a
suspected overdose. This was horrific. And help came in the shape of the
Maharishi. We were called into his quarters and walked in, heads bowed. He
sat yoga-style in the centre and asked us to sit down on the floor and
talked to us for the next few minutes about life’s journey, reincarnation,
release from pain and this life being a stepping stone to the next.
The Maharishi’s words helped us all to feel a little less bleak and as the
weeks passed after we returned to London, John and I were brought closer by
grief. John and George were also being drawn towards the Maharishi. It was
as though, with Brian gone, the four needed someone new to give them
direction and the Maharishi was in the right place at the right time.
John and George agreed to go to the ashram in Rishikesh, at the foot of the
Himalayas in India, to study meditation. Patti and I would go too. Paul,
Jane, Ringo and his wife Maureen were less convinced about the joys of
meditation but decided to join us. The trip was planned for February 1968.
John, always passionate about a new cause, was evangelical in his enthusiasm
for the Maharishi, talking about spreading the message to the world. I was a
little more sceptical, but I enjoyed the meditation so I was happy to go to
India. I hoped, too, that time out of the spotlight would be good for John
and me.
In fact the opportunity to be away from everything was heaven-sent. I can
still see us there, by the Ganges, living in little bungalows with no
heating and no luxuries. It was bliss. No one in India knew who the Beatles
were so they were not mobbed all the time.
A few days before we left, we had a meeting with the Maharishi’s assistant at
a house in London to finalise details of the trip. As we entered the main
room, I saw seated in a corner armchair, dressed in black, a small Japanese
woman. I guessed immediately that this was Yoko Ono, but what on earth was
she doing there?
Yoko introduced herself to the group, then sat silent, taking no part in the
proceedings. John chatted to the other Beatles and the Maharishi’s assistant
and appeared not to notice her. My mind was racing. What on earth was going
on?
At the end of the evening our driver was waiting outside for us. He opened the
car door and, to my astonishment, Yoko climbed in. John gave me a look that
intimated he didn’t know what the hell was going on, shrugging, palms
upturned, nonplussed. He leant and asked if we could give her a lift
somewhere. “Oh, yes please, 25 Hanover Gate,” Yoko replied. We climbed in
and not another word was said until we dropped her off, when she said,
“Goodbye. Thank you,” and got out.
On February 16 we flew out with George, Patti, Jenny and Alex Mardas, a young
Greek sound engineer we called Magic Alex. From Delhi we took a taxi for
eight hours to the Maharishi’s compound of low stone cottages containing
five rooms each. When we arrived dozens of people of all ages, creeds and
races were gathered to take the Maharishi’s path to enlightenment.
Among them were actress Mia Farrow, Mike Love of the Beach Boys and, later,
the singer Donovan with his friend, a burly bloke called Gypsy. Donovan was
having a romance with Jenny and wrote his hit song Jennifer Juniper for her
in India.
John and I had a room with a four-poster bed. Close by were the Maharishi’s
house, a swimming pool, a laundry, a post office and a lecture theatre where
we would gather for regular talks. I loved being in India, away from the
fans, hordes of people, deadlines, demands and flashing cameras. Just peace,
quiet and sweet mountain air filled with the scent of flowers. Best of all,
John and I could be together for much of the time.
Four days later Paul, Jane, Ringo and Maureen arrived. Ringo, wary of the
spicy Indian food that he was certain would be served in the communal dining
hall, had brought a crate of baked beans and another of eggs. In fact some
of the centre’s food was surprisingly ordinary: for breakfast, which was
taken at long trestle tables out in the open and often shared with brazen
monkeys, we had cornflakes.
In the first week we settled into a routine, meditating for several hours a
day and going to lectures, then spending the rest of the time on our own
pursuits. John had his guitar with him. I drew and wrote poetry.
The Maharishi had a laugh like a tinkling bell. He had an aura. I was as
cynical as anyone to begin with, but I suppose I’m a perpetual student. I
felt he was someone I could learn from. He’d call us for two chats a day to
talk about the spiritual life.
I didn’t follow the whole thing, just took what was necessary for me. I still
meditate occasionally. I have my mantra, a personal word that we were all
given, which was to be kept secret and to be repeated over and over. It
works: eventually your brain does go to a different level. It empties your
mind and gives you space to think.
But Ringo and Maureen weren’t happy: they missed their children, Ringo was
soon tired of eggs and beans and Maureen had a phobia about flies. After 10
days they went home. I was
not having the second honeymoon I had hoped for. John was increasingly cold
and aloof. He spoke to me very little and after a week or two he announced
that he wanted to move into a separate room to give himself more space.
What I didn’t know was that each morning he rushed down to the post office to
see if he had a letter from Yoko. She was writing to him almost daily. When
I learnt this later I felt very hurt. There was I, trying to give John the
space and understanding that he asked for, with no idea that Yoko was
drawing him away from me and further into her orbit.
Then something happened that shook all of us. A couple of weeks before we were
due to leave, Magic Alex accused the Maharishi of behaving improperly with
an American girl who was a fellow student. Without allowing the Maharishi an
opportunity to defend himself, John and George chose to believe Alex and
decided we must all leave.
I was upset. I was surprised that John and George had both chosen to believe
Alex. It was only when John and I talked later that he told me he had begun
to feel disenchanted with the Maharishi’s behaviour. He felt that, for a
spiritual man, the Maharishi had too much interest in public recognition,
celebrities and money.
I disagreed. But by dawn the next morning Alex had organised taxis from the
nearby village and we left on the journey back to Delhi. After eight weeks
the dream was over. I hated leaving on a note of discord and mistrust. But
John was running away and I had little choice but to run with him. My last
glimpse of the Maharishi was of him sitting quietly, as if he had been
betrayed. He was baffled that we were packing up and that hurt me.
The journey home was long and grim. I was close to tears and John was
paranoid, afraid that the Maharishi would take his revenge on us in some
way. Alex had discovered that if we hurried we could make the night flight
to London. I hated the rush, which seemed unnecessary, but with the others
setting the pace we hit the road and just made the flight.
Sad as I was at the way the Indian trip had ended, it was wonderful to hold
Julian again. We had brought him back six little Indian outfits and some
delicate hand-carved wooden soldiers, gifts from the Maharishi for his fifth
birthday a few days earlier. He looked adorable in his Indian clothes and
was thrilled to have mum and dad at home.
John continued to be distant towards me. Now we were away from the others and
the charms of India, I felt increasingly afraid and depressed. John and I
were back in the same bed, but the warmth and passion we had shared for so
long were absent. What I hadn’t allowed for was that John’s history, his
attitude to marriage and the family were very different from mine. He had
hardly ever seen his parents together: at five he had been abandoned by his
father and, effectively, his mother too.
Given how often and uncannily we repeat the patterns of our parents, I should,
perhaps, have been more prepared for John to leave his own marriage and
five-year-old son. But I was too young, too inexperienced and too
determinedly optimistic to take it seriously. I had thought our magical
interlude with the Maharishi would be the making of our marriage – but in
reality it just presaged the end.
- The Maharishi was the most famous of the spiritual gurus of the 1960s and
attracted a glittering cluster of celebrity followers, including the
Beatles, Mia Farrow and Clint Eastwood. Argument still rages over whether
the Maharishi, who died last week aged 91, was a sage or a charlatan but his
message of peace and love, wrapped around transcendental meditation, became
a key element of the hippie “brand”. The Beatles – other than George
Harrison – eventually fell out with him, claiming he was too interested in
money. The Maharishi’s defenders said he objected to the Beatles taking
drugs at his ashram
