Going of the guru

The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, leader of the Transcendental Meditation movement and spiritual icon of the last several decades, has died in the Netherlands.

Was he a cult leader? The Maharishi's army of consciousness-expanders regards him with the slavish devotion, and they impute powers to his teaching that bear no relation to reality. "Yogic flying," one of several cases in which TM supposedly lets practitioners suspend physical laws, closely resembles hopping around on a mat, not "flying" in any common use of the word. The much vaunted claim that TM caused violent crime to drop in the District of Columbia by 18% is total hooey.

Meditation does seem to yield real and impressive effects for many who practice it, but the Maharishi demanded dangerous levels credulity -- specifically, faith in his own status as the exclusive fount of spiritual knowledge. Nor was he entirely forthright with his followers (some of whom quit their jobs and moved to Iowa) about his intention of using TM to introduce them to an intense variety of Hinduism. He was, in short, a domineering religious megalomaniac who tricked good people into dropping everything and following him. If he wasn't a cult leader, he was certainly getting there. — Graeme Wood

First Ron Paul, now this

Beware the "stealth cult"

NYT obituary

Telegraph obituary