Meeting A Sage, How I Met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Meeting A Sage – How I Met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

By Rose Carol

“Why is a cow”? Was my father’s reply when my seven-year-old self-asked him “why are we here? what’s the purpose of life?” Irritated by his answer, he obviously didn’t know.  His Jewish tradition of answering a question with a question bothered me. I had also asked my mother back then, she would answer, “This is the mystery of life, no one knows. God is a mystery”.  Still not satisfied, I was left with big question marks that lingered in the back of my mind.  When I was growing up, as young as I can remember I was curious about why there was a world.  The very fact that there was existence, a world with all its creatures and humans running around doing wonderful and terrible things.  I wondered, why? how? Later, I realized that most of the people I knew didn’t even think about these existential questions or maybe they had as a kid but the environment did not support them with answers, so they forgot about a basic human inquiry, “Who am I?” This  ability to self reflective is what sets us apart from other mammals.

I grew up in Skokie, Illinois USA, a suburb of Chicago during the 1960’s and 70’s where numerous survivors of WW2  Nazi holocaust survivors  lived having immigrated from Poland and Germany after the war.  Some of my girlfriends’ parents had survived these death camps.  I had heard both direct and indirect stories of their torturous experiences there.  I can still recall them speaking in Yiddish and broken English,  their anxious eyes and weather beaten wrinkly skin even though they were still quite young. In addition, I was shown footage of films from Nazi concentration camps at Sabbath School at our synagogue, as well as hearing speakers there tell their gruesome stories.   By the time that I was eight years old, being a highly sensitive kid, it was if I had experienced the death camps.  My young nervous system was not able to hold and process this type of information and as a result I started to have panic attacks and terrible anxiety.  I was not able to get the invasive images out of my brain that would come at unexpected moments that I could not control.  Hearing about these first hand holocaust events ruined my sense of feeling safe in the world. It had blasted me out of my childhood innocence. From then on, I would carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, living in fight or flight and/or feeling that I must help the world become a better place to live so these horrors would stop.

At that young age, I was not able to articulate my experience of anxiety to any adults or friends around me and no one noticed.   I didn’t understand why I was feeling this way, I knew that something was wrong, but I didn’t have the understanding to communicate those feelings.  I wondered why other people didn’t feel the same as me or talk about it. Instead of thinking what’s wrong with the world, I began to believe that something was wrong with me.     Trauma does that, you become one with the overwhelming experience and then it goes into your unconscious mind and gets stored into the tissues of your body and nervous system  and you are left with PTSD symptoms.    It wasn’t until I was in graduate school at Pacifica Graduate Institute in the M.A. in Counseling Psychology program that I could see that my childhood experience had to do with intergenerational trauma.  I had so much exposure to stories and traumatized people around me that it had impacted me severely even though I had not directly experienced it myself.

By the time I was 12, the symptoms were not any better and I was contemplating suicide.  I wanted nothing to be part of such a violent world with terrible monsters in it.  At that time, I had kept a diary where I expressed my misery, ‘Today, I won’t kill myself because I don’t want mom to be sad on her birthday. I often found some reason, why the timing of killing myself would hurt someone too much.  I never did attempt fortunately.  Fortunately, someone started to notice that I wasn’t doing well.  It happened to be my aunt,  Doris Lee.

Aunt Doris was my grandfather’s sister who never had any children of her own and so had developed a close connection to myself and my own mother.   Doris was an independent woman for her time, a single career woman throughout the 1940’s, 50’s and 60s. Aunt Doris found every opportunity to help those in need including adopting a Chinese woman who escaped mainland China by swimming in shark infested waters to Taiwan during the 1970’s.  Aunt Doris taught her English and helped her with Latin so that she could pass her cosmeticians license and open her business in China Town, Chicago.

I would often take the train to her tiny studio apartment on Michigan Ave in Chicago not too far from the famous Water Tower.  She would take me to the Art Institute and sometimes we would go out to eat in a restaurant together along with her boyfriend, Sylvan.  She took interest in me, asked me questions, and expressed her concern about my shyness and lack of self-confidence.  She tried to imbibe words of wisdom into my heart so I could overcome the Great Depression of my life.

Doris had also met the founder of Transcendental Meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi when he came to Chicago in 1972. She had learned TM and she said it greatly reduced her headaches and stress level.  So, she thought that perhaps it would help me.   While away at summer camp, I received a letter from her that I still have this day, it reads;

Bonita Dearest,

Now that you are entering your teens you have a whole new experience ahead of you and I hope you enjoy every minute of it, starting with your birthday.  I left a birthday present with your mother for you, that was in case I didn’t see you and I do hope you like it.  Learning Transcendental Meditation will help you meet your teens in a more relaxed and realistic way.  As soon as you go to the first lecture, let me know and I will send a check for the course and that will be part of your birthday present.  In my opinion, it’s the most wonderful gift anyone can give you, as it will help you all of your life just as it did George Harrison!

 Happy Birthday,

 Love, Doris

While I didn’t believe that TM would help me, with her encouragement, I attended a free introductory lecture in downtown Evanston with my mother and one of my girlfriends.  Snickering with my friend at the back of the classroom, I somehow was still able to observe the two TM teachers giving the lecture.  I recall them talking about the scientific research on it and was impressed even at that age.  I observed genuine happiness and wisdom which was comforting to me.  Somewhere in the depth of my darkness I could see they were trustworthy.

A few months later, I went back for my personal meditation instruction. I was anxious that I would not be able to do it correctly. They assured me that if I can think a thought, then I would be able to do it.  From the very first meditation, I felt as if a bubble burst. It was the tight bubble of protection that had limited me in many ways to enjoy my life and I didn’t know how to get out of it. Somehow, the meditation was able to burst it effortlessly and painlessly.    When I walked out of the TM center, onto to Davis Street and Chicago Avenue, I felt relaxed, and my vision was clearer. Like a pin piercing the darkness, a dark cloud had floated away.  I felt lighter and even a tinge of fleeting happiness for a moment as I waited for my father to pick me up.   I believe that this meditation practice saved me from further years of suffering.

A year later my entire family learned as well as fellow students from school once I got into high school. They all learned at the Evanston TM center.  They could see the positive changes in me and wanted a little of the bliss they saw in me for themselves.  Three to four of us would go to a friends’ house after school and meditate instead of smoking weed, this back  in the old days when weed was illegal.  Our unhealthy coping habits diminished significantly and for me completely.

On a family trip to the Smoky Mountains one summer in 1978, I ventured off by myself on a trail deep into the forest. Having grown up near the congested city of Chicago, I had never been in mountains or so many miles of forest.  I found a small peaceful stream just off the trail with several flat boulders with water gently trickling all around them. I found my spot and sat on one of the rocks to do my meditation. Deep in the silence and solitude of the forest, I began to feel expanded into infinity.  The ripples of the stream were as if gently laughing with joy, and I felt a deep interconnection with everything, witnessing the Earth spinning and the planets rotating in perfection. It was an intense bliss and yet I was still in my body sitting on the rock. I was everywhere at once.  I witnessed myself meditating and continued to experience unboundedness in my awareness. It was at that moment that I became aware of my life purpose. My purpose, why I am here? was answered.  And that purpose was to give other people the natural experience of who they truly are and that is beyond the superficialities of life to the most inward, most silent level of their entire being.  To offer a different reality, one that was much more to life than what appeared on the surface level of life.  After my meditation and realization, I ran back all the way down the trail as the sun was setting and I knew my family would be worried but I felt exuberant, I had found my deep purpoase and the experience of the Divine reality was very clear.  Of course, the experience didn’t last very long, nothing like family dynamics to test your resiliency. But I would always remember it as an important pivotal experience which determined my future as an adult.

Meeting a Sage: Many years later, an opportunity came in the summer of 1991, I was invited to meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to the Beatles and founder of Transcendental Meditation at his university in Vlodrop Holland.  I had attended TM teacher training already and had successfully taught many individuals how to transcend and experience pure Being.  I was living in Seattle at the time with my then husband, Martin and we were running an Ayurveda Health Center offering panchakarma treatments. A course on Ayurveda had been announced that would be held in Iowa. We decided that Martin would attend and I would run the clinic.

Martin called me from Iowa. He said that the location was changed from Iowa to Holland, and did I want to go too? Absolutely yes!   Maharishi  announced that he would be teaching  the course in Holland, so it was a very different scenario that I wanted with all of my heart and soul.  I had never met Maharishi in person and it was a long time desire to thank him in person for the gifts that TM had brought my family and I.

My excitement was reminiscent of the scene from the movie Willi Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Charlie, an underprivileged boy is floating on air as he opens a chocolate bar to reveal the Golden Ticket that would give him a once in a lifetime experience to the secret factory.  My golden ticket, on the other hand, was to be with Maharishi, my beloved spiritual teacher since I was 13 years old.  His Transcendental Meditation unexpectedly brought me greater stability and moments of real peace and most likely prevented me from committing suicide as a young teen. And now, fifteen years later, my desire materialized to meet my inspiration in person.  Maharishi had always been a little of a mystery to me.  I wanted to see if he was the real thing, a real seer, a wise living sage in a culture where there were no sages.  I believed that real sages were vitally missing from a suffering society in a misdirected world.  I would only know if I could look into his eyes.  Then I would know the truth about this man.  He was a man after all, not a God.

On a hot June day, I arrived in Holland, and took a taxi cab to Maharishi’s place, a gigantic old monastery on the border of Vlodrop and Germany. The cab dropped me off with my suitcases. My heart started to beat quickly. I had no idea what to expect.  I left my luggage at the bottom of the stairs walked up to a humongous dome shaped Cathedral door with iron slabs and a heavy iron doorknocker.

I tried to open the door. The door was locked. I lifted the doorknocker and knocked timidly a few times and then waited. I waited for what felt like an eternity. No answer. I knocked again, this time a little harder, perhaps no one heard me the first time. I waited. And in that waiting time my lack of self-confidence revealed itself to me. Maybe I wasn’t ready to meet Maharishi just at that moment.  I was relieved when no one answered.

These were the days before cell phones so I couldn’t call anyone to let them know I was here. All kinds of anxious thoughts went through my head, I thought, “would Maharishi open the door”? I hoped he would not.   “Would a staff person open the door and then I would be immediately escorted to the classroom with Maharishi without a moment to tidy up after my fight from Seattle? I hoped not.  What if I was actually in the wrong place, how would I get out of there?”

I then knocked a 3rd time – with more force and greater confidence, yes, it was the magic 3rd knock. I waited and waited when suddenly, a man, who was about 30 years of age, with unruly brown curly hair cracked open the door slightly just wide enough to stick his head out frowned at me and said something in German. He reminded me of the man in the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and her entourage are at the door to the Wizard’s house and a man with a green hat sticks out his head out of a small window in the door and tries to shoe them away.  Staring at him with great curiosity, and a falling heart fell I gulped in English not knowing if he would understand “I am here for the Ayurveda Course?”.

He replied in broken English, without a trace of friendliness and said, “I’ll check”.   He closed the door quickly not letting me respond.  I was left standing in the hot sun, thirsty, and needing a bathroom.  Fortunately, I was not alone on the doorstep, another TM teacher was also there late for the course.

It seemed like we had waited an hour on that June day on the doorsteps.  In that hour, my anxiety turned into irritation.  And THAT was the beginning of letting go of how things I thought ought to go.   My expectations as a young woman would dissolve. This would not be an easy process.  A necessary experience for growing in maturity but challenging non the less.

The man with the German accent finally came back and let me into the corridor and said a van was coming to pick me up because the women course participants were staying in another city, nearby, in Valkenberg.  He said Maharishi asked him to ask me if it was okay that I was not going to be staying with my then husband who had arrived a few days earlier and was already participating on the course. I said, “Okay”. I was unsure if I had a choice in the matter and was too overwhelmed to insist, not wanting to make a fuss being the people pleaser I was at that time in my life. The other eight women on the course did not come with their spouses if they had one.  There hadn’t been more than 18 on this small course.  I then waited what seemed like several hours for the van to come, but at least I was let into the corridor and able to use a bathroom, get water and sit down in the cool interior of the monastery which I noticed needed vacuuming and the garbage can needed emptying.

     The Zen of Waiting: It’s not like you plan to go to a meeting with Maharishi at 2:00 pm and then the meeting starts at 2:15 or 2:30. It’s more like you plan to go to a meeting at 2:00pm and then you wait until about 6:00 pm and then the meeting ends at midnight or 2:00 am.  It was totally unpredictable in a cosmically orderly fashion.  It’s embracing the opposites. Maharishi said,  “enlightenment is the co-existence of opposites”.   As a now Jungian based therapist, there’s a similar expression to Carl Jung’s inquiry,” how can you tolerate the tension of the opposites”?   The unbounded and the point value.   Infinity and the boundaries both together at the same time. Not one or the other.  No black and white thinking but everything in gray between. Hate and love, pleasure and pain, beauty and ugliness, it’s both.

Everything was nonlinear in my experience with being with Maharishi and one of the main things was waiting. Waiting to get into the meeting hall had become a challenging spiritual practice.  Anyone who has ever been with Maharishi understands the waiting period before you get to be in a meeting with him. I had to wait about a week before I got to see him for the very first time.  My first few experiences of waiting was agony. Pure agony for an impatient person like me.    There were no distractions, no screen time of course – that didn’t exist, no snacks, not much socializing, one was stuck with one’s own thoughts, stuck with oneself for hours or what seemed like days at a time.  I did have a journal though that I could write in. Some of us would go out for short walks but we had to be nearby in case he was ready to see us and it would be rude to enter the meeting late.  Sometimes we would wait and wait, and then we were told the meeting is canceled because Maharishi has an ER meeting with the prime minister from some other country.  For anyone who has never had an Indian guru back a few decades ago this would just sound very rude or crazy. But the waiting had a powerful purpose at least at that time in my life.  It was a type of inner work.  A mental purification happens when you wait without distractions.  Now days we entertain ourselves on the cell phone if we must wait in line or wait at the post office etc.  But I believe waiting without distractions is truly an advanced technique for self-growth.  We are all missing out on this now a days.  While I waited, thoughts and uncomfortable feelings had time to process and transition.  Waiting turned into being. Being aware, being present to the moment, and I stopped anticipating when the meeting would start.  I was forced to go beyond all logic, impatience and reasoning and become one with whatever I was going through internally.  It’s like an advanced technique of evolution to wait in the hallways to meet a sage.   Ultimately, one has to face one’s own self which was really the point Maharishi was trying to teach us anyways.  He never wanted it to be about him, it was all for us.  I realized the genius of this engineering.

Finally, the big day came.   I got to be in the meeting hall with Maharishi.  In the week that went by ‘without’ seeing him, I had gotten over jet lag, adjusted to my routine with the other course members, and I was no longer feeling upset that I was missing out when my husband with meeting with him everyday. Impatient, but not angry at least.  And now that I was all rested and somewhat happy, the universe thought I was now ready to meet my teacher.  I had let go just enough.  And there he was, after watching thousands of hours of video recordings on TM teacher training 8 years previously, I now was able to see Maharishi in the living flesh.

Maharishi was a lot shorter than I anticipated, he was about the same height as me, 5 feet 1 inch.  A bushy white mustache and beard, balding head with long white hair, glowing brown eyes, his distinct voice, a warm large smile.  He was sitting not too far me in a small class room, on a small white sofa surrounded by vases of fresh flowers. He was wearing a silk kurta.  He looked at me, I felt welcomed.  I was overjoyed, nervous, and grateful for this amazing life opportunity.  My heart was glad, very glad.  At some point in the meeting, there was an opportunity to go up and give him a flower, a common tradition in India to offer flowers to a guru.  I got into line with my fellow students.  Finally, it was my turn to give him a flower, would he accept my flower?   At that moment, I looked into his eyes, questioning life, “is he the real thing?”  There’s skeptic in me, even after all those years, I wanted to know, and I would know if I could meet him.  And, yes, I discovered, in that moment, that he’s the real thing! I had come eye to eye with a very wise man, a sage.  It was confirmed, in my lifetime, I would be in the presence of a wise man, a sage.  I whispered , ‘Thank you” He received my flower nodding yes, yes…

When I looked into his eyes, I could see infinity.  I felt great empathy and compassion emanating strongly from him.  I felt that he could really see into my soul, like he knew who I was to the core.  Despite all the hype that surrounded him, I could see that he was an uncomplicated person and just as curious to meet me, as I was curious to meet him.   His presence was very palpable, like being in envelope of soft peacefulness.  And then the moment passed as another student took their turn to give him a flower.    Of course, the mental purification would then begin as my inner critic was having a banquet.

Our Ayurveda classes with Maharishi were perhaps 8 to 10 hours at a time. And he was having meetings before and after our classes with people from all over the world.   It was like being on an international flight, being served little drinks and snacks as we were listening to his lectures.  He never seemed tired, groggy, or even cranky. If I worked that many hours, I would be falling apart.  Maharishi never carried a notebook, yet he could remember people’s names from 30 years ago or he would talk about minute details about finances or other things, and his sense of humor really astounded me.  He went deep into the knowledge of the Vedas, knowledge about the process of creation and how matter arises from a universal field of intelligence.  How amazing was it for me to be in person with someone who had answers to my childhood existential questions.

The way Maharishi taught Ayurveda is different than how it is currently taught today in the west. He had experts from India sitting beside him including Dr. Tri Guna-ji who was one of the world’s experts in Ayurvedic pulse diagnosis and other vaidyas.  Also, his scientists including neuroscientist, Dr. Tony Nader, and others surrounded him. He would have a Sanskrit pandit, chant various aspects of the Vedas. They would chant one sentence from the Charaka Samhita for example, which is one of the main textbooks of Ayurveda.  Maharishi would then pull apart every syllable and word and translate it into English for us so that we could understand the depth and meaning.  The knowledge of Ayurveda was very vertical and deep going to its very roots of the living vedas via Sanskrit sounds. He would then spend perhaps several hours on the meaning of each word and sentence.  It was intense.  It was very detailed.  And sometimes, I wanted him to get to the next sentence because I was still impatient.  But it gave me a deep understanding of the living Veda, Ayurveda. He had instructed us to learn Sanskrit as well.  And so in our free time there, we learned the alphabet and Devanagari script. He emphasized the importance of learning Sanskrit as a technique to improve brain function.

             Another precious memory is of Maharishi meditating with our class.  The silence was very deep, and the level of transcending was profound as it could possibly get.  As if the whole room was breathing in synchrony, it was the breath of Brahmin Consciousness and just that one meditation was life changing for me, on an internal level of fulfillment though I could not give that experience any more words. Perhaps this phrase from the Upanishads could describe it;

That is full, this is full,

From that fullness comes this fullness,

If you take away this fullness from that fullness,

Only fullness remains

Towards the end of our course, we had been there almost three months; Maharishi had discussed a few Ayurveda projects to work on with him.  In my mind, I thought, once I leave here that’s it, no more contact. He’s a busy man with a lot of secretaries answering the phone for him and he’s impossible to get a hold of.  Feeling already defeated by that reality, I found myself impulsively raising my hand, and said, loudly, “Maharishi, how shall we get in touch with you about these projects”?  I think he must have been sensing my doubts and irritation, he hesitated for a moment, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “I’ll give you my phone number and then you can call me anytime you want and get through right away”.  Everyone in the room’s jaw dropped including the people closest to him, because we have all had the experience of never having any direct contact with him to clarify about projects.  He was like that untouchable unseen Wizard of Oz to the general public and now, I had unlimited access to him, the Great Oz which was really just a man behind a big curtain. In this case, a wise man, a sage. That evening, Dr. Nader gave us the secret number and a way to get through by writing as well. If you wanted to call him, you would announce your name and say, this is an urgent message for Maharishi, and you would supposedly get through.  If you wanted to write a letter you would put the letter in a manila envelope and in red pen writing put on it VERY URGENT with a line under it.   Since Maharishi passed, I don’t think this is harmful to let everyone know about this old secret.

When we got back home to Seattle, Martin and I did actually get through to him via the phone a few times, while we worked on a real estate project with him to obtain a building for us to use to teach.  This was the day of real telephones and very expensive to call Europe from USA. It was extremely demanding and nerve wracking because he would ask you to do the math with him on the phone, Maharishi would ask, “How many courses could you teach to pay the mortgage on a new office?” He heard us scramble to get the calculator. Then he would say, “figure it out and call me right back”.  Then we would call back and the secretary would answer, we would say this is a very urgent call from the Bretts. They would say, “call back in three hours, Maharishi is in a meeting.”  We would call back in three hours and the secretary sometimes would put us through or say call back after a meeting.

One of our projects was to find and purchase a large commercial property for a Maharishi Ayurveda University.  We would call Maharishi and show describe the building to him.  At some point, after about one year of looking at many properties we found two buildings that were purchased by the TM organization in the Seattle area.  I was about 9 months pregnant at the time with my daughter Anna. Soon after one of the purchases, I went to see the property, but I had not taken the new key. I was to meet Martin there, but he was delayed. I was waiting outside when I had the thought, why don’t I try my house key and see if it opens it.  I thought this was an odd thought, of course it wouldn’t open it why even try.  Yet, I continued to fit the house key into the new office door.

It opened!  I gasped, OPEN SESAME!  how could that be? I couldn’t believe it.  I locked and opened it several more times to make sure that the door lock wasn’t broken.  It was in fact, the same make of the key to our condo!  I was caring the key in my pocket to the new place the entire time, it had been there all along.  It was analogous to what Maharishi was teaching me along, that the key to happiness is inside of you, not out there.  That happiness is there, you just need to put your attention to the joy that is already there somewhere hidden.   Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, she was wearing the ruby red slippers the  entire journey and Glenda reminded her that all she had to do was click her heels and affirm that she was home.   This inner silent being is here all the time, we just have learn to turn our attention to it. Just as this key was in my pocket the whole time, I just needed to get over my doubts and try it open the door against all odds because only 0.00139% of homes are “keyed alike.”

About Rose Carol

Rose is the founder of Ayurveda Amritanam Learning Center offering professional training and health education classes as well as a licensed psychotherapist that offers Integrative Counseling. She may be reached at 847 636 2744 www.ayurvedahealthcoach.com