The West is unnecessarily making tremendous effort in analyzing the mind -- utterly
useless unless they accept a transcendental state. And that's why again and again they get
cheated by frauds. For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is cheating the whole of the
West by any stupid thing. First it was transcendental meditation, then people became fed
up with it because it was not meditation; it was mind repeating a mantra. You were not
going beyond the mind, so what is transcendental in it?
So his earnings became very low; he had to invent something new. So he has invented
spiritual yogic flying. First he started by spiritual levitation: you can meditate and
become so light that you will start rising upwards! -- and you can find idiots
everywhere... And people were paying four hundred dollars for learning spiritual
levitation. In the first place what are you going to do by... even if you levitate, what
purpose is going to be served by it? In the second place nobody was levitating; people
were hopping.
Trick photography was being used and spread. People were shown to have levitated, and
they had levitated with their mattress also -- that was strange. The mattress also has
become yogic, spiritual...!
He was continually asked, "Give a public demonstration of your levitation" -- and he
could not. A case was brought in the Supreme Court of America by seven of his own
disciples, who had been working hard on levitation and found that it was absolute
nonsense -- they were just hopping! So they had brought a case against him, demanding
ninety million dollars. He has been cheating the whole world, and he has accumulated
tremendous money.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dropped that idea because he could not give a public
demonstration. He came with a new idea, and this new idea is yogic flying -- even
greater. And what is the purpose of yogic flying? -- if one person can learn to fly, then
ninety-nine persons in the world will become meditative and silent and peaceful.
A big business, because it means for five billion people to become peaceful -- no war, no
conflict, just blissfulness -- millions of people will have to learn yogic flying. Again, he
was aware that he would be asked to give a public demonstration. He has given one
demonstration in Europe, and now another is planned in America soon. And what people
saw was, it was the same hopping, but now it is hopping not only in one place, you go on
hopping...
Every frog knows it! And it is so stupid that people are paying millions of dollars to learn
what the frogs know without any difficulty. They are giving public demonstrations and
they don't even see that they are being absolutely stupid. A few have become so expert
that now there are hurdle races; small hurdles are places and they hop over the hurdles.
They are great spiritual people.
But I don't see the connection. Even if they can hop, and go on crossing the hurdles, in
what way is this going to create peace in the world...? Nor can it create peace in the
person who is hopping. It will create more retardedness in him. The very idea that he has
accepted this stupid thing shows that he has no intelligence at all. And what peace, how
can peace be attained by these kinds of things?
He is now proposing to the world that if millions -- he has calculated exactly how many
millions of people are needed to learn hopping to prevent the third world war.
I don't believe that man is so stupid that he gets caught by such frauds. People are
learning. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has opened an academy in Switzerland where
thousands of people are learning hopping.
The West is being exploited by all kinds of frauds for the simple reason that the West has
not looked into the matter of meditation itself. So any idiot goes and says anything, and
gathers followers because they don't know what meditation is. Neither will chanting a
mantra nor hopping nor levitation...
These things have nothing to do with meditation. Meditation has only one meaning, and
that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle -
- the whole mystery of life.