India: Merseysiders at the Ganges

To a wooded hillside overlooking the Ganges River came perhaps the strangest group of pilgrims since Chaucer’s in the Canterbury Tales. There, near the town of Rishikesh, 53 persons from ten nations gathered in a grove to pay their homage. Prosperous West German businessmen mingled with bearded Scandinavians. A 26-year-old Bengali interrupted his bicycle tour of the world to drop in. Mia Farrow, Frank Sinatra’s absentee wife, and her brother and sister put in appearances at one time or another. And over in Bungalow No. 6, topping off the list of those seeking wisdom and truth, were ensconced Britain’s Beatles, the Who’s Who of What’s Happening.

Holy Hilton. What’s Happening in Rishikesh is a bearded gnome named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (TIME, Oct. 20), the Hindu mystic and founder of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, who recently acquired a standing-room audience on a U.S. speaking tour. The Maharishi, 56, has attracted his guests by offering something like instant nirvana; by meditating for just an hour or so a day according to his methods, he says, anyone may transcend “the gross state of thought” to find deeper wisdom. What is more, the Maharishi offers to bring the blessings of wisdom to the faithful “without their having to renounce their way of life”—a comfortable tenet rarely offered by holy men or prophets.

Inside the Maharishi’s 15-acre ashram (academy), inner peace last week was overshadowed by outer turmoil. The Maharishi’s guards used barbed wire and billy clubs to fence off a horde of reporters and photographers trying to cover the retreat. After one photographer was whacked repeatedly by a gang of sentries when he wandered past the guard station, the Indian police arrived at Rishikesh to open an investigation. Because the Maharishi charges $800 for three months’ room and board, the police may also declare the ashram a hotel and force the Maharishi to register guests like a holy Conrad Hilton.

Despite such problems, a furious remodeling program has added manicured new gardens to the academy, as well as indoor plumbing for the six guest bungalows and electric light for all the buildings. An airstrip is being built nearby for the Maharishi’s new twin-engined Beechcraft Baron, the gift of the International Meditation Society, and a rough helipad has been cleared away on the hillside. Most of the improvements have been bankrolled by the initiation fee of the Maharishi’s move ment—a flat donation of the pilgrim’s salary for one week, which can add up to a tidy sum when the salaries are the Beatles’.

Private Sessions. That does not seem to bother the four Merseysiders and their ladies—the three Beatle wives, Paul McCartney’s girl friend and George Harrison’s sister-in-law—as they take private meditation sessions with His Holiness on his rooftop porch, or sit down to vegetarian meals in the communal dining room. Just how much longer they will stay to enjoy such back-water bliss is uncertain. Though the course lasts for three months and confers on those who complete it a sort of guru status of their own, the Beatles’ manager hinted last week that they will leave in three weeks. These days, even holy men have their dropouts.