Beatle Chum Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Dies At 91
The term 'fifth Beatle' gets thrown around a lot – some say it was George Martin, some say it was Stuart Sutcliffe, some say it was Brian Epstein – but what about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi?
After all, it was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who introduced The Beatles to Transcendental Meditation and is therefore responsible for that rubbish George Harrison song on Sgt Pepper that everyone skips. Is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi the fifth Beatle, or even the sixth Beatle, or the 18th Beatle?
No. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is none of these things. Because he's just died.
Everyone's dying at the moment, noticed that? Heath Ledger and Jeremy Beadle are both dead, that rapper bloke died because he couldn't stop drinking cough medicine and now 91-year-old Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has died, too. And his death has hit us the hardest, because nobody expects 91-year-old men to die. It's just not on. Yahoo reports:
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died Tuesday at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said. He was thought to be 91 years old. "He died peacefully at about 7 p.m.," said Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation movement that Maharishi founded. He said his death appeared to be due to "natural causes, his age."
Despite having followers such as David Lynch, Donovan and Mike Love from The Beach Boys, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi never stopped being a controversial figure. After an alleged incident with Mia Farrow at his Indian retreat, John Lennon felt obliged to write the stinging Sexy Sadie ("You made a fool of everyone") about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, while others have noted the hypocrisies of a man who preached the evils of materialism and earnt himself millions of dollars in the process.
The death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was anticipated, even by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself – in 1990 he moved into a Dutch monastery and only spoke to people through video, even those in the same building as him. And it's reported that in January Maharishi Mahesh Yogi fell silent and was never to speak again.
But for all his eccentricities and accusations of fraud, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has left a lasting imprint on the world – if The Beatles hadn't gone to stay at his Indian retreat in 1968, Donovan would have never taught them how to fingerpick their guitars and nobody would have written Dear Prudence. That's important stuff.
Plus he had a cool MySpace page, too. Well, cool if you like crayon drawings of Bodhisattvas. Which we're not sure that we do, to be honest.
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No, no, no I was the fifth Beatle