Instant Hagiography

File under: The Siddhi of PR

You might think there are TM™ plants working at the Associated Press after reading this bit of hagiography. But fear not, kind readers. We are here to parse this starchy whitewash attempting to pass for international reporting:

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — It was 1967 and the Indian meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, dressed in white with long flowing black hair and a gray beard, beamed as he stood surrounded by four smiling young Beatles at the peak of their popularity.

Right before they saw another side to the man that would cause them to flee.

George Harrison, clutching a sitar, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were on their way to a retreat in Wales led by the Maharishi, and the Hindu holy man was on his way to worldwide fame.

Soon afterward, they would write the song Sexy Sadie to commemorate the Maharishi's putting the moves on Mia Farrow.

It has been more than 50 years since the Maharishi began teaching a technique known as Transcendental Meditation. He is now believed to be 91 and on Tuesday, a close adviser said he has retreated into near silence and turned over the day-to-day running of his global network to aides.

Successfully selling sand at the beach for more than 50 years!

"He is not as young as he once was," adviser John Hagelin, an American physicist, said by telephone from the Dutch village of Vlodrop where the TM movement is now headquartered. "I think he probably has a more limited reserve of physical energy to draw upon. He was working ... 20 hours a day for years."

Sounds pretty manic to us. It explains a lot. Delusion is quite the activity driver when it's coupled with grandiosity. Believe us, we know.

Good thing Hagelin has those physics degrees. No wonder he was able to ascertain that the 91-year-old guru "is not as young as he once was."

"Anger, stress, tension, depression, sorrow, hate, fear — these things start to retreat," said Lynch, a longtime practitioner. "And for a filmmaker, having this negativity lift away is money in the bank. When you're suffering you can't create."

Many famous artists maintain their creating to be entirely the product of their suffering.

The attention his famous followers focused on the Maharishi's movement turned it into a global phenomenon with outposts in some 130 countries. For the last 17 years, he has run it from a former Franciscan monastery in a secluded forest near Vlodrop, an eastern Dutch village near the German border. He often spent hours on end speaking by video links to followers around the globe.

Babbling. Another sign of mental illness.

The Maharishi told senior aides at a Jan. 8 meeting in the Netherlands of his plan to withdraw from administrative duties and spend his time absorbed in the ancient Indian texts that underpin his movement. The announcement caught many followers off guard.

They were too busy taking in the sights on the primrose path.

"He had been involved very dynamically administratively in his worldwide movement for over 50 years, so it's quite a significant change to see him dive back purely into knowledge and let other people take care of the administration," Hagelin said.

It's too bad you never got the loon in front of a psychiatrist.

There is no one designated successor but many people have been trained for years to carry on the Maharishi's various tasks, Hagelin said.

Uh-oh! We're getting a signal in our third eye! We're seeing a dramatic power struggle in the future.

The Maharishi — a Hindi-language title for Great Seer — now spends his days in silence contemplating and preparing a commentary on the Vedas, a vast Sanskrit canon compiled some 3,500 years ago, from which he evolves solutions for today's troubled world.

This is the Associated fucking Press, people!

"I think everybody's quietly feeling some sense of celebration that he's finally going to complete his commentary on the Vedas, which probably will have a longer-term impact," Hagelin said. "It's a vitally important body of literature."

It's 99% ancient myth, for Christ's sake! 91-years-old and the guy has still got a psychotic woodie for the Vedas.

We're sure the TM™ PR-machine is jumping for joy over this abortion of critical journalism. It has the sound of something written well before its publication, like maybe it was going into the obit and ended up a retirement announcement instead. Either way, it's distressing (maybe we need to hand over $5000 to buy our own sand at the beach) to see the hagiographic process in full gear – by an international news organization – well before the grandiose guru makes it to his own grave.