Like many masters, Maharishi possesses a quick, warm sense of humor. His contagious giggle became a quasi-trademark later on.
“Maharishi has a hard, hearty cackle,” Life Magazine once wrote about him. “It's an irresistible invitation to join him in a huge joke—even if one is not at all sure what the joke is. Whatever the source of his mirth, whether it springs from his understanding of some sublime, specific truths or from his recognition of the idiocy of mankind in general, Maharishi laughs often.”
Maharishi once joked that “the highest state is laughter.”
His speech was mirthful and charming, provincial and thoroughly Indian, yet it carried the substance and acuity to capture the most skeptical of western minds.
Once, Maharishi initiated an American professor of philosophy who had written a book on existentialism. The man believed in nothing in life except change and death. Change and death, that was it. Suddenly, after meditating the first time, the professor told Maharishi he felt a great peace.
“What do I do now?” he asked Maharishi.
“Just laugh it off,” Maharishi said.
And he did. Maharishi said the man laughed for twenty minutes straight.
So it is. Some people begin to laugh. Others smile. Some just feel peace and relaxation. Maharishi once said he was expounding “a very serious philosophy in a very blissful way.” Another time he quipped that we all had “an infinite number of reasons to be happy and a serious responsibility not to be serious.”
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