Why I'm Grateful to Sexy Sadie

"It's not a religion ," said Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. "Unlike other meditation techniques, it won't make you withdraw from life. This will only make you more successful. Just 20 minutes twice a day and, in 5-8 years, you'll be enlightened."

Maharishi lied. The Beatles, his most famous students, would eventually call him "Sexy Sadie," lamenting that "You made a fool of everyone."

But Maharishi, who taught Transcendental Meditation, still helped millions of people like me. Yesterday, in Holland, he died. www.selfgrowth.com

As a new meditator, I first met the silk-clad guru at a month-long retreat at Poland Springs, Maine in 1969. I fell for him. Hard. Even though I later came to view TM as a cult and quit teaching, here's the truth. Never have I loved anyone else as much.

Those who promise to deliver God always have a special appeal. Although I teach aura reading now, www.selfgrowth.com back in the day I didn't. What was an aura ? I had no clue.

Nonetheless, I was impressed when a friend told me that she saw auras regularly, but had never seen one like his: 10 feet all around, pure shimmering gold, the color of Divine connection.

Falling hard, I went on to become an "initiator" and, later, a "Governor of the Age of Enlightenment ." I taught new meditators and helped old ones. Spending some seven hours a day on TM eventually became my routine, and I moved to DC expressly so I could do the advanced flying technique with a large group of Sidhas (meditators who had achieved special spiritual powers).

None of this seemed odd to me at the time. I knew we weren't mainstream. We were "The Movement" that would bring peace to the world.

Only later did I learn that all cults consider themselves "The Movement" that will bring peace to the world.

During those innocent years when I was a true believer, promoting TM with all my heart, I even did media interviews. That included a big radio show where stage fright gripped me mid-sentence. Time froze, along with my open mouth.

I can still remember the horrified interviewer peering in. Only this wasn't like Lord Krishna's mother who, according to legend, looked into her son's mouth and saw the universe. This open mouth of mine represented dead air time, 15 long seconds of horror before anyone in the studio managed to talk.

PLAYING THE FOOL

All of Maharishi's teachers played the fool, one way or another. In Springfield, Illinois, after the Fundamentalist owners of a restaurant found out I was eating there – me, the dangerous Chairman of the local TM Center – they physically threw me out.

My chiropractor, also a Fundamentalist, would throw in religious instruction for free as he crunched my bones. I still can remember his avid concern. "How do you know that the Devil isn't tricking you?"

But I didn't feel tricked. I felt bliss.

For 17 years, I taught part-time in New York, Miami, L.A., Illinois, going full-time whenever I could manage it. Despite being the graduate of a rather prestigious university, I was often poor, like most of my oh-so-professional (and vegetarian) colleagues. In Miami, at my poorest, I lived on cornmeal and tomato paste for three weeks. Yet when triumphs came, they tasted sweeter than the juicy oranges I couldn't afford to buy.

In Miami, I scored the first program teaching a TM-based course in a public high school. In Illinois, I may have been tossed out of that silly restaurant but I succeeded in starting TM's first federally funded program for a government agency. Thank you, Illinois EPA!

For a year, in Massachusetts, I wrote the first (and only) syndicated column in TM history, attempting to be the Dear Abby of higher states of consciousness.

Every six months, I would return to study with the smiling man in the white dhoti. He'd been informed of my various precedents, just as the national office kept careful statistics of all the new members brought in by me and my colleagues. In group meetings, I'd ask my guru questions or read devotional poetry. Outside Maharishi's door, I would wait for hours at a time, unsuccessfully seeking a personal audience.

Only once did Maharishi call me by name. "Karen." It wasn't my name.

MAHARISHI'S LEGACY

TM is still taught, though its popularity peaked in the 70's. In the TM-based university in Fairfield, Iowa, most of the "lifers" have long since left. A friend who teaches seminars told me that she gave a workshop in Fairfield last year for many of these lifers before they left town. Even before their guru's death , they finally had the sense to move on.

"I've never seen more depressed people in my life," Donna told me.

And why not? They'd been promised the moon, yet received only a few dazzling rays of sunshine. Seemingly, they had squandered years in pursuit of enlightenment , a permanent state of bliss vividly described by their guru but never received. Personally, out of hundreds of "meditators" I've known, only one has achieved that kind of enlightenment . Alas, it isn't me.

Yet I don't regret a day – or a decade – that I spent doing TM and teaching for Maharishi. We did help people to open up spiritually. The basic technique, I believe, is sound. Only it's so powerful that it's much better to do that technique once a week for the famous 20 minutes. Anything more will make most meditators hopelessly spaced out.

Some ex-TM teachers have become teachers on their own: John Gray, Barbara DeAngelis, Harold Bloomfield, my late friend Peter McWilliams. Deepak Chopra hasn't done badly. In my smaller way, I've been part of this strange grouping, teaching anything but TM – in my case, aura reading, face reading, and skills for empaths. www.selfgrowth.com

We rebel teachers do not speak his name. But Maharishi was no Voldemort. He was one of the great world gurus who came to America from the East. Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of Kriya Yoga , was the first, pure until the end. He's long gone, as are the more scandal-ridden Swami Satchidananda, founder of Yogaville, and Yogi Bhajan, the white-turbaned Sikh who taught Kundalini Yoga and sold breakfast cereal.

So many great teachers, so many millions of followers, so many flaws – yet the knowledge they gave us was priceless. Now is no longer the age of gurus. These Maharishis have led us to an age of self-authority, where each of us finds our own way spiritually.

And here we can find a parallel to another little thing that happened the day that Maharishi died. With John McCain's strong showing on Super Tuesday, did you hear the death knell for Fundamentalist rule of the Republican party?

For decades, politicians have tried to guru America, as have our more overt religious leaders. Maybe our country as a whole has begun to graduate. Leaving a cult like TM – or the more mainstream cult known as "Fundamentalist Christianity " – could that be the real start of a life?