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Obits

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These are the lead sentences from the subject's obits and death announcements, published in major newspapers or websites from around the world:

  • AFP
    • "The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a one-time spiritual advisor to the Beatles, has died in his Dutch home, his Transcendental Meditation movement announced Wednesday" Sydney Morning Herald part 2 [1]
  • Associated Press
    • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to Transcendental Meditation, died Tuesday at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said. "USA Today [2]
    • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to Transcendental Meditation, died Tuesday at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said." CBS News [3]
    • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to Transcendental Meditation, has died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said Tuesday. " MNSBC News [4]
    • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles whose beaming, bearded face became an icon of 1960s hippie mysticism, has died at his Dutch home" Fox News[5]
  • Bloomberg
    • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian founder of Transcendental Meditation whose teachings captured world attention after he became spiritual guru to the Beatles, has died in the Netherlands" Bloomberg [6](website)
  • Reuters
    • "The guru to the Beatles who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, died at his Dutch home overnight, aides said on Wednesday." Rueters [7]
    • "The guru to the Beatles who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, has died at his Dutch home at the age of 91. " The Daily Telegraph [8]
    • "Followers gathered at the Dutch home of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on Thursday to remember the late guru to the Beatles who brought transcendental meditation to the West." [9]
  • UPI
    • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose meditation techniques to increase spirituality once attracted the Beatles, died Tuesday night at his home in the Netherlands." UPI [10] (website)
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was best known as the Beatles' spiritual adviser." The Independent [11]
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement, who taught the Beatles to meditate, made "mantra" a household word in the 1970s and built a multimillion-dollar empire on a promise of inner harmony and world peace, died Tuesday in Vlodrop, the Netherlands." LA Times [12]
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to Transcendental Meditation and yogic flying and became a counterculture icon, has died at his Dutch retreat." Times Online [13]
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru who introduced the Beatles to Transcendental Meditation, has died at his home in Vlodrop, in the Netherlands" The Guardian [14]
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru who founded the technique of Transcendental Meditation and was best known as a spiritual advisor to the Beatles during a brief period in the 1960s, died at his home in the Netherlands on Tuesday." Entertainment Weekly[15]
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died on Tuesday, probably aged 91, had a profound influence on the Beatles' late career and repackaged ancient Hindu methods of Transcendental Meditation; TM, as it was known, was aimed at enabling western disciples to achieve a blissful oneness with the infinite in the still depths of the self - at the cost of minimum inconvenience. " Telegraph [16]
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West and gained fame in the 1960s as the spiritual guru to the Beatles, died Tuesday at his home and headquarters in Vlodrop, the Netherlands. He is believed to have been in his 90s." New York Times [17]
  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced transcendentalist meditation to the West, died Tuesday at his headquarters in the Netherlands" NPR [18]
  • "The guru to the Beatles who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, has died at his Dutch home." Sydney Morning Herald[19]
  • "The Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who is credited with introducing the Beatles and other stars to ancient Hindu meditation methods, has died." ... "He introduced his Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique to the West in 1959, gaining world fame when he introduced it to the Beatles in 1968."BBC News [20] (website)
  • "The Maharishi was one among the foremost of the Indian gurus who spread Indian spirituality in the West. He was the founder of 'Transcendental Meditation"One India [21] (website)


This does not appear to be a printed newspaper or reputable website. Moved here pending more information.

  • "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, most known as the guru The Beatles in the late 1960's, has died today at age 91. Maharishi taught the Beatles Transcendental Meditation but fell out of favor with the band when they grew skeptical of his teachings. He had retired from his duties as leader of the religious movement he founded just last month. The Cleveland Leader [22]

Capsule bios

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  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: Immensely rich Indian Yoga expert. Transcendental Meditation movement in 1959. Founded the Maharishi University of Management.
  • Philosophers and religious leaders--edited by Christian D. Von Dehsen, Scott L. Harri, 1999, The Orynx Press [24]
  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Founder and guru of the Transcendental Meditation Movement. Thanks to successful marketing, and his espousal by the Beatles and other celebrities since the 1960s, the Maharishi is probably the best known Indian yog in the West. Born Mahesh Prasad Varma, his guru was the Sankarcrya, Brahmnanda Sarasvat; in the mid 1950s, under the title Maharishi (mahri), he began to teach a traditional form of meditation, later called Transcendental Meditation. Initially intended to bring about a Hindu spiritual reformation, it was later expanded into a global and technologically sophisticated enterprise with thousands of teachers and millions of practitioners. Throughout his career, a number of controversial allegations were made about the Maharishi's personal life. In his latter years, he lived in the Netherlands.
  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
  • original name Mahesh Prasad Varma
  • born 1917?, Jabalpur, India
  • died Feb. 5, 2008, Vlodrop, Neth.
  • Hindu religious leader who introduced the practice of transcendental meditation (TM) to the West. Little is known of the Maharishi’s early life. He studied physics at the University of Allahābād and worked for a time in factories. He later left for the Himalayas, where for 13 years he studied under Guru Dev, the founder of TM. When Guru Dev died in 1952, the Maharishi organized a movement to spread the teachings of TM throughout the world; his first world tour took place in 1959 and brought him to the United States. TM is a type of meditation, practiced twice a day, in which the subject mentally recites a special mantra (sacred sound or phrase). Concentration on the repeated utterances decreases mental activity, and as a result the subject is expected to reach a higher state of consciousness. The movement grew slowly until the late 1960s, when the Beatles, an English rock-music group, and numerous other celebrities began to join his following. Since then, many have left the movement, but TM remains a popular form of relaxation, especially in the United States. The principles of transcendental meditation are discussed in the Maharishi’s books The Science of Being and Art of Living (1963) and Meditations of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1968).
    • Encyclopædia Britannica [25]

Other printed biographies

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  • Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
  • Also known as: Maharishi Mahesh, Mahesh Yogi, Maharishi, Mahad Prasad Varma
  • Born: October 18, c. 1911 in Uttar Pradesh, India
  • Died: in February 5, 2008 Vlodrop, Netherlands
  • Nationality: Indian
  • Occupation: guru
  • The Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (born ca. 1911) came to the West as a missionary of traditional Indian thought in popular form and founded the Transcendental Meditation Movement, which reached its height of popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. [..]
    • Source Citation: "Maharishi Mahesh Yogi." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/History/

Apearance, speech, personal habits, etc

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  • liquid eyes, twinkling but inscrutable with the wisdom from the East
    • Miles, Barry (1998). Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now. Macmillan. p. 401. ISBN 9780805052497.
  • Maharishi's trademark flowing beard and long, graying hair appeared on the cover of the leading news magazines of the day.
  • Forty years ago tomorrow, on August 24, 1967, I was sent in my Biba flower-power mini-culottes and Indian beads to the Hilton Hotel, to hear someone called the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. "A little man," said my story, "with long hair, grey beard and beatific smile." He sat in white robes, cross-legged on a deerskin, fondling a red rose.
  • And in the press, in the 1960s and '70s, he was often dismissed as a hippie mystic, the Giggling Guru, recognizable in the familiar image of him laughing, sitting cross-legged in a lotus position on a deerskin, wearing a white silk dhoti with a garland of flowers around his neck beneath an oily, scraggly beard.
  • A bald head replaced his long hair, although his profuse beard remained.
  • It was in 1967 that the Beatles boarded the "Mystical Express" at Paddington station and headed off to Bangor, north Wales, for a meeting with a diminutive, giggling Indian guru with a shaggy white beard. The spectacle of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dispensing flowers to the "Fab Four" became one of the defining images of the 1960s.
  • Then, just as I was expecting him to make his entrance, a giant screen flickered to life and I was greeted not by a real live guru but by a sort of hologram with a cotton-wool beard and a shiny, teak- brown pate.
  • Dressed in white, the elderly man on the screen has lost all but a fringe of the long hair that once flowed over his shoulders. His full beard and moustache are still bushy, but have turned silvery.
  • Wearing white flowers, a loose-fitting white robe and a long white beard, the maharishi looked quite healthy for his age, which is . . . well, a bit hard to pin down.
  • His beard is now as long and white as that of Santa Claus, but below his bald pate his forehead remains unwrinkled. "He's really short, eh?" said [meditator Joanne] Hollander. "His body looks like the body of an 8-year-old boy."
  • Mahesh, now an octogenarian with a flowing white beard, leads a reclusive life in the Netherlands, where he communicates with his network of supporters, institutions and companies around the world by cell-phone and e-mail.
  • At the monastery, where about 280 followers silently meditate while children play noisily outside, portraits of the Maharishi with his trademark long, graying hair and beard stare benignly from walls in rooms all around the complex.
  • That's easy to do, as the master's portrait is on the wall above Prof Mehta's head: he's a little balder than when he captivated the Beatles in 1967, the beard is a little fuller and more snowy, the eyes considerably more dreamy, but otherwise he appears little changed.
  • I glance at the picture of the founder of TM, His Holiness, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that adorns one of the handout sheets. It claims, among other "scientifically validated benefits," that TM reverses biological aging. This is certainly not evident from the photo, in which Maharishi sports a long, white beard and looks quite old and grizzled, as befitting a yogi. (Although, as my friend Ann points out, the man might be as old as Methuselah, in which case his appearance is comparatively youthful).
  • This is the same Indian maharishi of flowing robes and beard who burst on the world's consciousness in the 1960s, when the Beatles sat at his feet.
  • The Maharishi turned out to be a tiny, brown-skinned man with a squeaky, sing-song voice, who wore flowing white cotton robes that further dwarfed his small frame. His dramatic gray and black mane of hair flowed into a long beard with a white fringe below his bottom lip, which made him look like a beatific nanny goat.
    • Brown and Gaines ISBN 007008159
  • Paul McCartney: ... So we knew all about him: he was the giggly little guy, going around the globe...
  • The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a small, brown-skinned man...
  • ...[MMY], who had shoulder-length hair, a graying beard, and wore a string of beads over his long white dhoti.
  • the holy one came onto the stage dressed in Indian robes that contrasted sharply with the dark business suits of his British disciples. Seating himself on a deerskin... Talking in a high-pitched voice, interspersed with odd -little giggles, ... His complexion was dusky, his nose broad, his hair long, greasy, and unkempt, his beard a cotton boll stuck on his chin.
  • The bearded, giggly presence of the Maharishi became familiar on talk shows...
  • With long robes, a white beard, and a jolly snmile, the Mahrishi seemd almost to be the parody of an Eastern holy man...
    • Allit p. 140
  • Adorned in flowing white robes and garlands of flowers...
  • The tiny, white-bearded, beflowered Maharishi giggled constantly during two appearances on the Merv Griffin show.
  • He was an extraordinary sight to behold: an elfin, bronze-skinned holy man draped in an immaculate white dhoti,... A picture of commitment, he sat cross-legged on a deerskin mat strewn with flowers and, between arpeggios of an irrepressible giggle, offered to clarify anyone's experiences.
  • ...Maharishi's deerskin was put on a stage, and he sat on that. [..] He is a darling man--small, golden-brown, a giggler with a gray beard and broad shoulders and a thick chest. You might guess from his muscular arms and thick wrists that he had done hard labor during most of his fifty-six years.
  • Maharishi, by contrast, surrounded himself with honorific rituals. The most well-known, in addition to being the most popular, was to give Maharishi a flower at every conceivable opportunity. People would stand in long lines, open palms pressed together, a flower held between the palms. Maharishi would walk along and receive the tribute by gathering armfuls of flowers--whether he wanted to or not. By the time I had known him, he had become a captive to his own ritual.
  • In his rubber-thonged sandals, the white-robed Maharishi stood barely 5 fee tall. A resplendent beard cascaded from his chin and his dark eyes flashed hypnotically...
    • The Good-Time Guru, Newsweek, May 15, 1972 p.14
  • Framed in a flat-screen monitor, he appeared more than ever a mystical creature, his thin face sketched with a white beard. He was dressed in his customary white silk dhoti, a fresh necklace of yellow petals around his neck.
    • Koppel 2006 "Outer Peace", NYT


  • The tall portal dwarfed his small image, but riding above immaculate white robes, his knowing smile seemed a vision. Cradling a bouquet of roses in his robed arms, walking with a leonine gaite, revealing a sandaled toe at the apex of each step, ... His head held high, there was confidence, warmth and grandeur in his demeanor. A mane of long, casually groomed sabled hair crowned his visage and blended in to a full beard. His dark, liquid eye were luminescent with love and joy; his look held a sense of profound responsibility. [..] Slipping off his thonged sandals, he sat on the draped couch and tucked his feet under his white robes. [..] In a carefully enunciated, high-pitched, melodic voice... p.81
  • While watching us, his large, smooth hands playe with the flowers, plucked petals and dropping them back into his lap. p.82
  • Maharishi leaned forward so quickly that he seemed to hop on his deerskin. p.85
  • His bed was pushed against a wall and draped with a sheet and his deerskin. p.88
  • After Maharishi was introduced and had taken a seat, Steve Allen looked at the floor under his chair and asked, "Wehere are your feet?" Maharishi had tucked them under his robe. [..] My friends and family, who had not met him, came away with the impression of a man with a strange, high giggle, and what seemed to be long, dirty, stringy hair...he definitely needed grooming for future T.V. exposure. A friend, U.S. (Uell) Anderson, who was well known for his spiritual books such as Three Magic Word, commented. "I like your holy man. He's a clever little guy, but he looks like a cardboard cutout from central casting." p.137
  • After the "Steve Allen Show", my mother had commented, "Sweetheart, if this teacher of yours brings happiness and spiritual inspiration, but i don't care if he looks like Rasputin. Sorry about the comparison, but he does look unusual to me with that hair and beard,, and his high laugh is different. He doesn't come across very well on television." p.145
  • Running upstairs, I gathered up his laundry. As he had only two sets of linen sheets with him to use as robes, I needed to wash and iron every day. he wrapped one around his waist and threw the other over his shoulder. p.149
  • "Yes, he does [wash his hair] every morning; that's why I get cross with people who talk about his dirty hair." "Then why is it so stringy-looking?" Laying down the sponge, I got to my feet. "Maharishi has absolutely no personal vanity. He rarely uses a comb; he just towels it and kind of pats it into place" p.150
  • He was clad only in his thin silk robes. p.192
  • Just before going on stage, Helen [Olson] took Maharish aside. "Maharishi, we want you to be presented at your glorious best. May I comb your hair on the sides just a bit?" Maharishi laughed and gave her permission. [..] [Johnny Carson] watched with arched eyebrows as maharishi ucked his feet into the lotus position,... p. 297
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