Susan Shumsky spent 20 years travelling the world with The Beatles’ spiritual guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who inspired many of the songs) and lived in the Indian Ashram where The Beatles wrote the White Album.
With The White Album’s 50thanniversary approaching, it’s also time to welcome Shumsky’s Maharishi & Me: Seeking Enlightenment with the Beatles’ Guru. The book not also reveals the unknown meanings and inspiration behind the album’s lyrics, but is bursting with new material on the scandals, rows and breakdowns that erupted during this dramatic episode.
Maharishi & Me is a strikingly candid memoir of a young girl’s journey to an Indian ashram, where she became part of the spiritual movement led by famous Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Shumsky exposes the fascinating, at times disturbing, truth behind the Transcendental Meditation movement–one of the most famous spiritual movements of the twentieth century–and its leader, spiritual guru to the stars, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Maharishi first set foot in America in 1959, kick starting the spiritual revolution that brought meditation to the West. By 1968, the world’s press were at the gates of his Indian ashram, hunting the ultimate scoop on the Beatles’ spiritual adventure there.
Shumsky reveals the inside truth behind the sex scandals, drug smuggling and mental breakdowns that were reported in one of the most dramatic episodes in the Beatles’ history.
From staying in spooky, abandoned Nazi hotels to dealing with fellow meditators’ suicidal episodes, rumors of the great “celibate” leader’s sex scandals, and accusations that Maharishi poisoned his own guru, Shumsky exposes the truth. She also offers a hard-hitting glimpse into the impact of the often bullying, intimidating and threatening behavior of the movement.
In a moving, highly insightful way, the book depicts how it feels to enter yourself into a master-disciple relationship–the ecstasy and the dangers–as well as what eventually made her decide to break away from this.