Part 3

Still More Evidence

Professor Robert Gordon-McCutchan continues his recounting of Maharishi's nocturnal activities and discusses the ethics of that behaviour. He tells the story of a friend of his, the first Western (female) Brahmacharini.

Part 4

Conny Larsson

In this video we interview Conny Larsson from Sweden, former personal secretary and deerskin carrier for Maharishi. Conny relates his experiences, with a focus in this interview on his observations of how Maharishi interacted with the young women surrounding him.

Conny is joined by Judith Bourque, author of Robes of Silk and Feet of Clay, who we featured in Part One, and Robert Gordon-McCutchan, who also worked with Conny as a secretary and deerskin carrier for Maharishi, and was interviewed in Part Two and Three of this series.

Part 4 (Extended)

Conny Larsson (Extended Version)

A profound sharing of more revealing details of the experience of Maharishi’s personal masseur and night secretary Conny Larsson. This longer version is a more comprehensive account of his time with more panel questions and clarifications.

Part 5

Financial Misconduct?

This video is a presentation by David Laird on the publicly available finances of the TM movement in various countries around the world. David presents the facts he has been able to find, and leaves you to make up your own mind as to the conclusions to be drawn. David learned to meditate in 1971, worked on staff in Seelisberg for 4 months, then did TTC in 1974. He was briefly one of 4 regional coordinators for the UK organisation.

View transcript here

If anyone has any information that may assist David in his research into the finances of the movement, please contact him via our Whistleblower line above.

Part 6

Maharishi After Dark - The Many Loves of the Yogi

Susan is a former staff member at the TM headquarters in Seelisberg, Switzerland, and is a best selling author of 20 books. She also features in the movie The Beatles in India.

In this video Susan documents the sexual relationships Maharishi had with many women. She also discusses the complicated nature of these relationships, and the assignations that happened "after dark" - after 3am in most cases.

Susan is joined by a number of other speakers, in particular Conny Larsson, who was employed as Maharishi's masseur and personal secretary. He was unwittingly responsible for bringing many of the young women to Maharishi in the dead of night.

Part 7

Interview with a researcher into the origins of the TM Movement, who travelled to modern day India, and found TM being taught much the same as by Maharishi.

Coming Soon

Part 8

Dana Sawyer: CLOSING IN ON THE TRUTH

In this video we interview Dana Sawyer, professor emeritus of religious studies and world religions at the Maine College of Art & Design, and adjunct professor in Asian Religions at the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. He has intensively researched the Shankaracharya tradition and the Dandi Swami order which Maharishi purported to represent. He was for many years a teacher of Transcendental Meditation.

Professor Sawyer speaks fluent Hindi and has travelled extensively in India over many years. He is friends with literally hundreds of Dandi Swamis of the same ordained order of monks as Guru Dev, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the former Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math.

He and colleague Cynthia Humes were recently commissioned to write a history of the Transcendental Meditation movement for Cambridge University Press.

Dana Sawyer is the author of numerous published papers and books, including "Aldous Huxley: A Biography," which Laura Huxley described as, "Out of all the biographies written about Aldous, this is the only one he would have actually liked." Dana has lectured at the Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, Banaras Hindu University, the University of Riga, Latvia, the Huntington Library, and at colleges and conferences throughout the United States.

Part 9

Aryeh Siegel: INTEGRITY OF THE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION

In this video we interview Aryeh Siegel MSSA(MSW), a former teacher of Transcendental Meditation (TM) who left and is revealing its hidden Hindu truths. Siegel was introduced to TM in 1971 when he was a graduate student at Berkeley, and became a TM teacher 1975. He completed TM teacher training programmes in Livigno, Italy, and in Arosa, Switzerland.

In this talk he reviews the integrity of the scientific research on TM.

Part 10

Paul Mason: FROM LONDON TO RISHIKESH

In 1970, at 18, Paul hitchhiked from England to India and learned TM in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh.

A year later, going back to India, he traveled to Uttarkashi, the Valley of the Saints. In Joshimath, where the revered Swami Brahmananda Saraswati ('Guru Dev') had re-established a monastery, Paul discovered rare books about him. To translate them, he studied Hindi and Sanskrit. From Guru Dev's disciples and other sources, he obtained more biographical material and photographs of Guru Dev. The translations, published in a three-volume set, include the original Devanagari text. Paul's biography of Maharishi was published in 1996. New editions feature more information about Maharishi's life, his association with Guru Dev, his passing in 2008, and many more photographs. Paul is writing a fourth book about Guru Dev, an in-depth re-examination of his life and teachings.

Paul has written other books about his travels and research. He has created ebooks on various topics including the LA blues group, Canned Heat.

Many know of Paul through his FB groups 'Roots of TM' and 'Guru Dev - Swami Brahmananda Saraswati’.

In this talk he reviews the integrity of the Scientific Research on TM.

Part 11

A documentary on the dismantling of the New Zealand Movement as an example of the global trend.

Coming Soon

Part 15

The Subtler Forms of Coercive Control, Part I

Is the Transcendental Meditation movement founded by “His Holiness” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi a cult? There's been some debate about the use of the word cult. Some say it is overused and imprecise. An expression favoured these days is ''high control organization'' or ''high demand group''. A case can be made that many who have gone on further in the TM organisation, becoming teachers and leaders, have been subject to high control, albeit in a subtle form.

Some of the subtler elements of coercive control can be:

• an atmosphere where people are trained to gaslight themselves. For example, a situation may have been brought about where if the leadership behaves in puzzling ways, people will nonetheless speculate in their favour. “Oh, they must have done it for (this) reason.” The concept of “higher” states of consciousness and the assumption that some leaders have attained them, favours such an atmosphere.
• an atmosphere where once the neophyte has become absorbed into the “priesthood” it is gently implied that there is something wrong with them if they engage in critical thinking — discussion and debate on points of doctrine.
• an atmosphere where those raising even very standard questions about, for example, financial accountability, are disadvantaged. This will be the case, for example, if such questions are characterised as “drops of poison."

Few would argue that people learning the basic entry level of Transcendental Meditation are subjected to coercive control. However, they have put a foot on the first rung of the ladder, and moving them up the ladder is baked into the “TM” teaching process.

Part 16

Conversations in the Hive Part 16 - A Tale of Two Wills, Part I

Paul Mason tells the gripping tale of Guru Dev's two Wills. Shortly after Guru Dev's passing, a second Will, purporting to supersede the first, "miraculously" appeared on the scene. The new Will appointed as Shankaracharya not the man whom Guru Dev had long held in high regard, Swami Karpatri as expected, but a lesser known figure, Swami Shantanand. As fate would have it, Swami Shantanand turned out to be supportive of "His Holiness" Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.