Bring Your Girls!
Yesterday
A strange thing happened in America in the 60s (many for that matter, but one in particular).
Whereas Christianity held hegemony over Western religion for hundreds of years, a new path of spirituality opened up based upon Eastern “religions.”
I use the term “religion” with care because if you consider Buddhism a religion and Pentecostal Christianity is also a “religion,” someone needs to help me define the word.
I joined fellow travelers on the Eastern path around 1969.
Jack Kerouac introduced America to Buddhism in Dharma Bums, and Alan Watts, a Buddhist prodigy from England, taught us about Zen.
The primary influencers of my generation, The Beatles, followed suit.
By 1967, the Beatles had conquered the material world.
Having experimented with LSD, and after the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, they were untethered.
Based on Ravi Shankar’s relationship with George Harrison, they decided to explore the Eastern path by practicing a form of meditation called Transcendental Meditation (TM) with a monk in India known as the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
The Beatles visited the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh, India, in February–April 1968.[1]
The ashram was located on the banks of the Ganges River, in the Himalayan foothills.
It was later known as Chaurasi Kutia (meaning “84 huts”).
The site was abandoned for years but is now open to visitors and is sometimes called the “Beatles Ashram.”
The Beatles’ relationship with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ended abruptly in April 1968, and the reasons remain somewhat disputed.
Dear Prudence
At first, the experience at Rishikesh was productive and peaceful — they wrote dozens of songs there (many later appeared on the White Album).
But tensions developed.
Actress Mia Farrow[2], who was also at the ashram, reportedly told the group that the Maharishi had made inappropriate advances toward her sister, Prudence Farrow.
John (although never known to be a paragon of moral virtue) became especially upset.
Imagine!
John confronted the Maharishi, who denied wrongdoing.
Wouldn’t you have liked to have been a fly on the wall for that one?
Soon after, John and George (of all candidates!) decided to leave.
Ringo, who complained about the food, and Paul followed shortly thereafter.
On the way out, John began writing a song originally titled “Maharishi”, later renamed Sexy Sadie.
Some of the original lyrics were blunt:
Maharishi, what have you done?
You made a fool of everyone…
George later softened the tone and urged caution in judging the situation.
Years later, Paul said he never personally believed the accusations.
George maintained respect for meditation and continued spiritual exploration.
Mia Farrow later clarified that she, herself, was not assaulted.
If Prudence made any allegation of impropriety by anyone, it is lost in the tomes of Beatlemania.
No concrete evidence ever substantiated the allegations.
John later expressed some regret about how harshly he reacted.
Despite the fallout, the Rishikesh period remains one of the most creatively fertile chapters in Beatles history.
As I see it, history has judged the Maharishi not guilty for lack of credible evidence, if nothing else.
I, Me, Mine
I started practicing TM in 1973.
It all seemed very legit to me.
It was like a group of stoners who traded in pot and psychedelic drugs for meditation.
The local chapter was humble.
I never saw any inappropriate behavior.
In my younger, single days, I thought of it as a great place to go if you didn’t want to get laid (just kidding!).
At one point, I taught a course there in The Science of Creative Intelligence.
I never met the Maharishi personally, but I was in a couple of degrees of separation from him.
He had a degree in physics and appeared to be a legit Hindu monk.
When TM became popular in America, Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard, put practitioners through extensive testing and found that the practice offered a number of health benefits.
He described them in his book, The Relaxation Response.
Although the TM organization amassed considerable wealth charging modest fees for meditation training and courses, the Maharishi lived a modest life, one would expect of a spiritual teacher.
He lived in relative seclusion until he died in 2008.
I guess I drank the Kool-Aid because, except for a three-year hiatus, I have been practicing meditation ever since.
The original protocol was twenty minutes of sitting and repeating a personalized mantra twice a day.
I now practice two to three hours a day.
Undoing 45 years as a litigation attorney requires extra work.
*
Chopra and Epstein
Like me, Deepak Chopra joined the TM movement and learned meditation practice from the Maharishi.
Unlike me, Deepak saw it as much a business opportunity as a spiritual experience.
In the 90s, Deepak dropped out of TM and started a competing business called “The Chopra Center.”
The Chopra Center co-opted many of TM's methods and protocols.
In 2017, I had a girlfriend who thought Deepak was the second coming.
She spent tons of money on his retreats and courses.
She talked me into signing up for one of his retreats for around $2,000.
It turned out that I had a trial and couldn’t make it, but The Chopra Center gave me a credit.
I used it to take his course on becoming an official Chopra-certified meditation instructor.
The course was a rigorous deep dive into Hinduism.
I did not have time in my life then to complete the course, but I completed enough of it to recognize that Deepak had simply stolen the TM system, embellished it, and taken it from the Holiday Inn to the Four Seasons.
Many of us old-timers were put off by the fact that if the Maharishi lived like Jimmy Carter, Deepak lived more like Donald Trump.
Deepak had diamonds on the frames of his glasses.
The Maharishi was quiet and reserved.
Deepak appeared on Oprah.
Deepak turned what was once an organization focused on spreading the word about a spiritual practice into a $20 million-a-year business.
Along the way, Deepak met Jeffrey Epstein, befriended him, and wrote the now infamous email that included:
Come to Israel with us. Relax and have fun with interesting people. If you want, use a fake name. Bring your girls. Anything we share is between us. I share nothing with anyone but trust you.
“Bring your girls?”
What happens here stays here?
If you were not doing anything immoral or illegal, why would you say that?
Deepak’s name appears 3,500 times in the infamous Epstein files.
The sound you hear is that of karmic chickens coming home to roost.
I also hear the sounds of a fat lady beginning to sing.[3]
*
At this point, we do not know the extent of Deepa’s involvement, but 3,500 emails could certainly arouse suspicion. He should not get a pass on this.
We must stop the sexual exploitation of children! That includes those who don’t actively participate but know it is going on and turn a blind eye!
[1] Astute observers will also recognize Mia Farrow and Donovan, a musician of some renown at the time. I don’t recognize George or Ringo.
[2] Star of many movies, including Rosemary’s Baby, and later married to Woody Allen.
[3] On the day I post this, the New York Post published an article about one of Epstein’s prison guards having received substantial sums of money just before his “suicide.” The plot thickens!