Glorifying “Rascal Number One”
Maharishi actually taught yoga lessons claiming that the students would be able to levitate. The price was $5,000, but not one person levitated.
Radhanatha Swami writes on page 118 of The Journey Home: “Every evening at Sankaracarya Nagar, I spent time with an Australian sadhu named Bevin, a leader of the ashram and one of Maharishi’s closest disciples. Together we met in his hut where we listened to reel-to-reel tapes of the Maharishi and discussed his teachings. I remember the Maharishi saying in his high pitched and often giggling voice, ‘Here we make no empty promises of Heaven after death, but the positive experience of ‘Heavenly Bliss’ during lifetime. Come, whoever desires it.’”
And …
“Meditating in that sanctified forest and sleeping on mountain tops were priceless gifts. On three occasions Maharishi Mahesh Yogi appeared in my dreams. He sat cross-legged holding a flower, his long graying hair and beard merging with his flowing white robes. Soft light emitted from his rounded face. Although a physically small man, his presence was immense. His soft but penetrating gaze seemed to be calling me into a realm of timeless peace. He did not speak but simply smiled upon me, closed his eyes then disappeared.”
Enough already—so give us a break, American Swami. You have written that this self-appointed “maha-rishi” makes no promises of “Heaven after death”—so what good is he? Of what value is a so-called guru who does not take the disciple to the personal and eternal transcendental realm from where he never returns to this world of birth and death? Is that deliverance of the disciple by the genuine guru not the teaching of Bhagavad-gita? But when this so-called “Maharishi” presented his hatchet job version of the Gita, he stopped at the 6th chapter, long before Lord Krishna explained to Arjuna in verse 8,21:
avyakto 'kṣara ity uktastam āhuḥ paramāṁ gatim
yaṁ prāpya na nivartantetad dhāma paramaṁ mama
“That supreme abode is called unmanifested and infallible, and it is the supreme destination. When one goes there, he never comes back. That is My supreme abode.”
Yet in The Journey Home Radhanatha glorifies a very wealthy man who simply entertains his pathetic followers with some imaginary sense gratification—which he calls “heaven”—and then sends them to hell in the next life. For the genuine devotee, this opportunist who became a billionaire by giving the same bija mantra to his “disciples” is more of a HaHa-Rishi than a Maharishi.
What, then, does Shrila Prabhupada say about this mantra salesman? Have a read of this interview from 30 December 1968 …
Journalist: ... I think that an awful lot of our readers, and an awful lot of people in the United States are terribly confused with the many people who claim to be avatāras and who come from India to this country, one after the other, after the other, and they say...
Prabhupāda: I can declare they are all nonsense.
Journalist: That's what ... I wanted to ... If you could elaborate on that a little more.
Prabhupāda: And I can say furthermore they’re all rascals.
Journalist: The Maharishi for example...
Prabhupāda: He was rascal number one. I say publicly.
Journalist: Could you explain that, give me a little background on that and why, because our readers are...
Prabhupāda: I do not know, but from his behavior I can understand he's a rascal number one. I do not like to know about him, but what he did ... But the wonderful thing is that people in western countries, they’re supposed to be so advanced. How they are befooled by these rascals?
Journalist: Well, I think that people believe what they want to believe. They’re looking for something, and he comes along ...
Prabhupāda: Yes. But they want something very cheap. That is their fault.
Journalist: Yes.
Prabhupāda: Now for our disciples, we don’t give anything cheap. Our first condition is character, moral character. You see? So unless one is accepting moral character, we don’t initiate, don’t allow him in this institution. And this Maharishi was, “Oh, you do whatever you like. You simply pay me thirty-five dollars and I'll give you some mantra.” You see? So people wanted to be cheated, and so many cheaters come. They do not wish to undergo some disciplinary action, you see? Anything. They have got money. They think that “I shall pay,” and immediately he’ll get the money.
Journalist: Instant heaven.
Read the full article here: https://prabhupadabooks.com/conversations/1968/dec/press_interview/los_angeles/december/30/1968