On behalf of the Hindu American community of USA, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, America, has extended its deepest condolences to the large ?family of devotees? of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and described his death as a great loss to the human race. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a spiritual leader, who introduced the West to ?Transcendental Meditation?, had passed away on February 5 at Vlodrop, a southern Dutch village at the age of 91.
?Maharishi'swork is complete,? his Movement said in a statement. ?He has done what he set out to do in 1957 – to lay the foundation for a peaceful world, now Maharishi is being welcomed with open arms into heaven.? Earlier, on January 11, the Maharishi had announced that his public work had finished and that he would use his remaining time to complete a long-running series of published commentaries on the Vedas.
Maharishi was also famous as the guru to the Beatles, the Indian spiritualist Deepak Chopra, and several other high-profile people. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is believed to have been born on January 12, 1917. He was born Mahesh Prasad Varma in Central India, the third of four children. After graduating with a degree in physics at Allahabad University in 1942, he left for the foothills of the Himalayas to begin a 13-year spiritual apprenticeship with his guru Swami Brahmanand Saraswati. When his mentor passed away in the early 1950s, the Maharishi dedicated his life to spreading the teachings of his guru. He started teaching meditation techniques around the world in 1959, starting in the United States.
The Maharishi originated the Transcendental Meditation (TM, a trademark,) movement in 1957 and brought it to the United States in 1959. He set out on his international mission to achieve this vision in 1959, beginning in Los Angeles, where he established his movement with an initial following of 25 devotees. From this small beginning the Maharishi over his lifetime developed a global organisation with nearly 1,000 TM centres, property assets valued in 1998 at $3.5 billion and an estimated four million disciples. Maharishi'sTM centres expanded all over the world to England, France, Russia, Germany, South America, USA, etc. They were all held happily together by a single and everlasting thread, i.e. meditation.
TM consists of closing one'seyes twice a day for 20 minutes while silently repeating a mantra to gain deep relaxation, eliminate stress, promote good health and attain clear thinking and inner fulfillment. Over the years since TM became popular, many scientists have found physical and mental benefits from mediation in general and transcendental meditation in particular, especially in reducing stress-related ailments. Since the technique'sinception in 1955, it has been used to train more than 40,000 teachers, taught more than 5 million people, opened thousands of teaching centres and founded hundreds of schools, colleges and universities.
This organisation helps a person find a way for the answers that every person has been looking for since the beginning of the human civilisation?who am I, where I came from, where am I going, and so on. Maharshi lectured on the positive effects of meditation on body, mind and intellect. He gave a new face to Vedic literature. Maharishi explained the scientific nature of Vedic literature and demonstrated how through that science one could live a peaceful life, reach one'shighest potential and follow the path of self-fulfillment.
He was the only spiritual leader who held people together from all religions of the world under one banner: Transcendental Meditation. In the United States, his organisation is based in Fairfield, Iowa, where it operates a university, the Maharishi University of Management (MUM). In 2001, disciples of the movement incorporated their own town, Maharishi Vedic City, a few miles north of Fairfield.
(FOC)
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