The Beatles with the Maharishi

London, Feb. 6: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru who introduced the Beatles to transcendental meditation when they stayed with him in 1968 at his Himalayan ashram in Rishikesh, died yesterday, aged approximately 91, at his sprawling estate in The Netherlands.

His friendship with the Beatles later turned sour but when John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr — and their women — came under his influence for several weeks in February, March and April of 1968, the gifted, rich but troubled young musicians enjoyed possibly the most creative period in their lives.

At Rishikesh, in a remote house overlooking a cliff, the Beatles wrote between 23 and 48 songs, 17 of which were included in their White Album, one of the group’s best known.

The compositions included Cry Baby Cry; Child of Nature; Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey; While My Guitar Gently Weeps; Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da; and Dear Prudence.

McCartney was there with his girlfriend at the time, actress Jane Asher; Lennon with Cynthia Powell, his first wife; Ringo Starr with Maureen Starkey, his first wife; and Harrison with his first wife, Pattie Boyd.

Another member of the group was Mia Farrow, the American actress who was nursing a broken heart after her marriage to the singing legend Frank Sinatra ended.

There were allegations the Maharishi had behaved improperly with Farrow but no charges of sexual molestation were formally pressed and later they were denied and withdrawn. The Maharishi gave up talking about the Beatles, who were responsible for his fame and fortune.

Others who met the Indian guru included Mick Jagger and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, who said today: “His passing is profoundly sad. But I, for one, am among the millions who are grateful for what he shared with us.”

The Maharishi stepped down last year as head of his organisation and said he would be “retiring into silence”.

A statement from the Global Country of World Peace movement, based in the small southern Dutch village of Vlodrop, where the Maharishi set up his headquarters in 1990, said: “His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi passed away peacefully. Maharishi’s work is complete. He has done what he set out to do in 1957 — to lay the foundation for a peaceful world.”

The Maharishi was born either Mahesh Prasad Varma or Mahesh Srivastava some time between 1911 and 1918 in Jabalpur. He studied physics at Allahabad University and then for 13 years adopted Swami Brahmananda Saraswati as his guru. In 1959, he first visited the US, where his movement has thousands of followers.