‍Mia on her trip with the Beatles to see Maharishi

‍IT was meant to be a time of tranquil meditation, reflection, love and new songs when the Beatles made front page news by jetting off to stay with their spiritual guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his ashram retreat in India. The Press was full of it. Maharishi who?

‍As the Fleet Street pack packed their bags for the most wonderful trip in their coverage of hippiedom in February 1968, here at home we couldn’t read enough about the band’s spiritual quest locked away in the Himalayan foothills near Rishikesh overlooking the Ganges. 

‍But it all ended in tears, as these paradise dreams often do. 

‍And before long, the hacks dug out the real gossip. 

‍John Lennon, who took his wife Cynthia along for the three-month meditation treat, was popping off to the local Post Office every morning before she got up to check on his letters — from his mistress Yoko Ono. 

‍Ringo Starr, who took his first wife Maureen Starkey, was home sick for his local bangers and mash and hated the vegetarian food and flies.

‍And the Maharishi was reported to be getting randy with some lady guests including actress Mia Farrow. She claimed he groped her in his cave. 

‍Ringo left after less than six weeks, and John and George, with his first wife, Patti Boyd, left not long after. Paul followed with his girlfriend Jane Asher. But not before John penned the song ‘Sexy Sadie’ because of his disillusionment with the Maharishi’s sex antics.  

‍The song initially contained lyrics criticising the Maharishi directly, we later learned. But George convinced John to change the lyrics to avoid potential legal trouble.

‍The song has lyrics that fooled us all for many years after. The average Beatles fan assumed it was about a highly sophisticated, high-priced call girl, who captured the admiration of the singer. 

‍‘Sexy Sadie, what have you done
You made a fool of everyone.’

‍But John later admitted: “It was about the Maharishi, yes. But I copped out and I wouldn’t write ‘Maharishi, what have you done? You made a fool of everyone.’ But now the truth can be told.

‍At the time the Beatles were topping the charts again with their album ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and working on a new project ‘The White Album,’ called that because of its plain white sleeve.

‍The Fab Four arrived at the Ashram to join an enlightened class of 60, including Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Mia Farrow and Donovan to learn Transcendental Meditation. Donovan called the Maharishi the guide they had all been looking for. He was making a fortune from them, and the Press was sceptical. 

‍Private Eye nicknamed him: ‘Veririchi Lotsamoney Yogi Bear.

‍But my favourite story from the days of the Beatles Ashram came later in the memoirs of a heartbroken travelling hippie who later became a filmmaker. 

‍Canadian Paul Salzman, 23, had backpacked his way from Montreal to meet his girlfriend in India … but when he arrived, she had left him and moved on. He was heartbroken. What better way to get over his broken heart than meditate with the Maharishi, he had read so much about. So, he turned up one morning at the Maharishi’s sprawling, 18-acre ashram ringed by trees and heavily guarded.

‍Amazingly he persuaded a friendly guard to let him in, and he stepped into the woodland ‘full of monkeys and birdsong. As he came to a clearing he stumbled on the Beatles just by chance, sitting at a table and dressed in Indian robes laughing and joking with their wives and girlfriends and Mia Farrow, Donovan and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. He thought he would be whisked away but Paul McCartney pulled up a chair for him. Salzman would do what the world’s press had been unable to do. Chat, eat and drink with the most famous band in the world.

‍“I heard a scream in my head, Eeek! I thought I was dreaming!” he wrote years later. 

‍"Are you an American?" Lennon asked him.

‍"No, I am Canadian," Saltzman said.

‍"Ah, he's from the one of the colonies," Lennon quipped.

‍A roar of laughter rose from the table.

‍"So, are you still worshipping Her Royal Highness then?" Lennon joked.

‍Saltzman said that he didn't, "personally".

‍McCartney and Starr joined in.

‍"Well, you have the Queen on your money..."

‍Saltzman replied: "We have the Queen on our money but, hey, she lives with you!"

‍At the ashram, Ringo Starr gave his 16mm camera to Saltzman, along with 100ft of film, so he could shoot some footage of the band and keep it for himself, telling him: “It could be worth some money one day. 

‍The three minutes of footage which Saltzman shot and took home was later lost and never found again.

‍“I tried to get The Beatles interested in a project for 12 years, but they never responded, and I gave up," he says. “It just disappeared.”

‍The ashram, once a place of spiritual retreat, gradually fell into disrepair after the Beatles' departed. It eventually reopened to tourists years later. 

‍The Maharishi died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes on February 5, 2008, at his palatial home in Vlodrop, Netherlands.

‍            

‍MAN OF MYSTERY’S
MYSTERIOUS DREAM 

‍

‍A fascinating dream haunted journalist and legendary crime writer Edgar Wallace all his life. “I saw the world in a different way,” he said after his weird and macabre vision.  

‍Wallace who wrote for both the Daily Express and Daily Mail during his famed career told of the vivid and strange dream in an almost unheard of 1926 autobiography penned long before he wrote his classic Four Just Men. 

‍In ‘People (Edgar Wallace by himself)’ he pulled together personal writings, notes, letters, essays, and unpublished thoughts from his early life of poverty as an illegitimate London child, to being a newspaper man and war correspondent. 

‍There have been other biographies since but this one paints a vivid picture of his early life and the people in it at the time. Anecdotes tumble off his pen.

‍Reporting: At the Newcastle Assizes he told of a great, red-faced brute, with his elbow on the edge of the dock, his other hand resting lightly on his hip, listening with amusement to “the most horrible story of assault” on an unfortunate girl victim. She fainted twice as the sickening tale was told but he smiled as he was sentenced to seven years. A stout woman, her face wet with tears, turned to the dock and wailed:

‍"Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill!"

‍It was the prisoner's wife. The effect was electrical. His face went purple, his neck was swollen with fury, and, shaking his fist at his unfortunate wife, he hissed: "What do you mean by coming up here—and showing me up!"

‍On Lord Alfred Harmsworth:

‍“I’ll never forget the day I first met him at Carmelite House. The setting was unique: A beautiful, boudoir-like office on the first floor; a long, noble room, at which I gaped in awe. The panelled walls, the concealed lights, the Empire furniture, the statue of Napoleon and a portrait of Mrs. Alfred Harmsworth on an easel. Against this background, a youthful, plumpish, smooth-faced man with searching eyes and fair hair was brushed over his forehead, a glaring tie.

‍“He talked quickly, earnestly, convincingly. You felt that to argue was to invite the thunder-bolts of Jove. A ready laugh and a charm beyond description. He was an almost sacred personage. I did not know him in the days disease had gripped him and he was slipping to death. Then I believe he was very hard with his best friends, a tyrant who spared none.”

‍The dream: “It was a most striking parable. I dreamt I was walking on the parapet of heaven. It was rather like the parade of a small seaside town. There was a wall, a strip of pavement, and a road running parallel. Leaning over the wall and looking down into a void through mists I saw a dim pale green world turning, and several old saints. 

‍“Their robes were grimy and ragged, but generally they bore a happy but neglected appearance. With their elbows on the parapet, they gazed abstractedly at the world below, and they were smoking short clay pipes.

‍“An older saint came shuffling in his sandalled feet across the roadway; under one arm an immense mortar and in his hand, a large porcelain pestle. The saints scarcely noticed him until he sat down on the kerb, filled his pipe carefully and lit it. Depositing the mortar between his feet, he took from his robes a large blue diamond that sparkled dazzlingly.

‍“This he put at the bottom of his mortar and hammered at the diamond until it was crushed into small pieces. Hour after hour he ground away until all that was left of the gem was a mass of white powder. From time to time the saints on the parapet turned their heads and watched him.

‍“When he had finished, he laid down the pestle, and, picking up the mortar, deposited it upon the flat top of the parapet. Each of the old saints took a handful of the powder and threw it into space, and, leaning over, I saw the dust of it, like an iridescent cloud, sinking out of sight. 

‍“As I looked, the world came nearer, and I saw the dust settling on the face of it. And I saw human men searching, as distinctly as though I were standing by their side. One human found a speck, and his frenzied shouts brought hundreds and thousands of other humans to him, and they put the speck of dust in a large golden box, and they built a church around it.

‍In another part of the earth another speck was found, and those who discovered it erected a university, masses of red buildings and spires and temples, in honour of its discovery. 

‍Where a third speck was found by a searcher a hospital was erected, and a new science grew into being. And this thing went on day after day, year after year, it seemed, for time had no dimension, and as I looked, centuries passed in a flash. 

‍But every time a speck was discovered and a church or a synagogue was built about it, the old saints roared with laughter until the tears rolled down their lined faces.

‍"What is the joke?" I asked one of the saintly men, and as he dried his eyes he explained.

‍"You saw yon diamond old Harry was grinding? Well, that is THE TRUTH. You saw him grind it up into fine dust?"

‍"I saw that,” I replied, "but what is the joke?"

‍"The joke?"

‍He was convulsed with laughter and could not speak for a long time, and then he said: "This is the joke—every man on earth who finds a speck thinks he has the whole!"

‍“I have never told the story in print before. But that dream had a profound effect upon my philosophy, shifted all my angles, and, as I believe, brought me nearer to an understanding of the larger tolerance than most unlettered men have reached.”

‍***

‍DID YOU KNOW?  When Lord Northcliffe died on 14 August 1922, aged 57, he left three months' pay to each of his 6,000 employees. 

‍

‍TERRY MANNERS

‍

‍14 July 2025

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