orig. Mahad Prasad Varma
born 1911?, India
Indian religious leader, founder of
He took a degree in physics before going to the Himalayas to study the {{link=Advaita">Advaita school of Vedanta religious thought with the yogi Guru Dev for 13 years. He arrived in the U.S. in 1959, preaching the virtues of TM; in the 1960s the Beatles were perhaps his most celebrated followers. The Maharishi (the title means "Great Sage") returned to India in the late 1970s and moved to The Netherlands in 1990. His organization, which includes real estate holdings, schools, and clinics, was worth more than $3 billion in the late 1990s.