Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the controversial Indian guru--briefly adopted by the Beatles--who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West, died Feb 6, 2008 in the Netherlands. He was in his 90s.
"The Maharishi was both an entrepreneur and a monk, a spiritual man who sought a world stage from which to espouse the joys of inner happiness. His critics called his organization a cult business enterprise. And in the press, in the 1960s and ’70s, he was often dismissed as a hippie mystic, the “Giggling Guru,” recognizable in the familiar image of him laughing, sitting cross-legged in a lotus position on a deerskin, wearing a white silk dhoti with a garland of flowers around his neck beneath an oily, scraggly beard."
Read the full obituary in the NYTimes.