Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (born Mahesh Prasad Varma in 1911) is the creator of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and leader of the Transcendental Meditation Movement.

Biographical overview

Early life

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is believed to have been born near Jabalpur, India in 1917, and to be a graduate of the Allahabad University (physics).

After completing his studies Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became a disciple and secretary to Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, a phase that lasted thirteen years, until his Guru abandoned his mortal coil in 1953. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is then believed to have retreated to the Himalayan foothills.

Two years later, in 1955, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi came out and took up teaching a meditation technique later renamed Transcendental Meditation. In 1957 he founded The Spiritual Regeneration Movement, the first of several organizations now collectively known as the TM Movement, and began the first of many tours to teach the Transcendental Meditation around the world.

The Transcendental Meditation Movement

The official US website for Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation program claims that Transcendental Meditation has been taught worldwide to over 5 million people. The number of TM teachers appears to be in the tens of thousands. Over it's fifty year history the TM Movement have gone through various phases of reorganization.

The TM Movement has consistently used modern technology to teach. Today there exists an array of websites, of which the of greatest interest to the general public might be Maharishi Open University, which hosts Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's weekly webcasted press-conferences that are also broadcasted by satellite. More recent activities include Consciousness Based Education the Maharishi University of Management and the award winning K-12 school, [http://www.maharishischooliowa.org/ Maharishi School for the Age of Enlightenment.

During the 1960s and early 70s the TM Movement became seen as an attribute of the then counter-culture phenomenon, at which time also cultural celebrities flocked to the movement. Celebrity students at that time included the Beach Boys (singer Mike Love in particular, who went on to become a TM teacher) and singer-songwriter Donovan who befriended Maharishi and put his picture on the back cover of his A Gift from a Flower to a Garden album. Comedian Andy Kaufman and magician Doug Henning were also Maharishi students, while Clint Eastwood and David Lynch are two notable directors who practiced TM.

Today

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Mahesh Yogi started issuing cautions, in weekly satellite press-conference and webcasts, about the prevailing directions of societal change in the world. The solutions to current world problems he proposes include creating large, permanent groups of TM-Sidhi practitioners performing their programs to create the Maharishi Effect.

With reference to an on-going project to create a Maharishi Effect for the Netherlands, where Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has lived since the early 1990s, he stated on June 21, 2006 that what "is unfolding right now is the 'supreme level of evolvement of life on earth'"^*.

Meditation Programs

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his TM Movement offers courses to the general public in meditation and other Vedic disciplines. In the West, these courses are usually fee-based.

Transcendental Meditation

Transcendental Meditation is a mantra-based meditation performed while comfortably seated. Meditation sessions are performed twice a day and typically last for twenty minutes, during which practitioners regularly experience significantly reduced autonomous body functions (pulse, breath rate, heart rate). This radically decreased metabolism is claimed to be the result of the practicioners Transcendental Consciousness, which is a state where the mind is void of thoughts.

Books by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is credited as the author of at least 14 books,of which the two most important to TM and TM-Sidhi Program practitioners are the Science of Being and Art of Living: Transcendental Meditation^*

References

External links

= Official TM sites

= Miscellaneous external links

Indian religious figures 1917 births Living people New Age New religious movements Gurus Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Maharishi Mahesh Yogi מהרישי מהש יוגי Maharishi Mahesh Yogi マハリシ・マヘッシ・ヨギ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Махариши Махеш Йоги महर्षि महेश योगी Maháraši Maheš Jogi Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi