By Sharon Begley
Source: Newsweek
What the Hindu teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi gave the Beatles is the stuff of pop-music legend. During their otherwise disastrous stay in his ashram overlooking the Ganges River in northern India in the spring of 1968, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison experienced a creative surge unlike any they ever had before.
As biographer Bob Spitz recounted in his 2005 book “The Beatles,” the three retreated from the meditation sessions they had signed on for and instead spent their time writing dozens of songs. (Ringo Starr left after a week, saying he couldn’t stomach the spicy Indian food.) Many of those songs made it onto the White Album.
The other legacy the Maharishi, who died on Tuesday, gave the West is more controversial. In 1971 he founded Maharishi International University, in Iowa (now called Maharishi University of Management), which has become the center for studies of Transcendental Meditation (TM).
Almost immediately—research papers on the benefits of TM appeared as early as 1974—scientists there began researching how TM affects everything from job satisfaction to blood pressure to anxiety.
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