Beatles guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dies

• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Indian guru to the Beatles and millions of meditators, has died at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, in the Netherlands. He was believed to be around 91 years old.
• Born between 1911 and 1919, the maharishi, whose real name was Mahesh Prasad Varma, was a physics graduate from Allahabad University before rejecting materiality and becoming a devotee of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati or "Guru Dev".
• In 1955 the maharishi began publicly teaching a traditional meditation technique which he later renamed Transcendental Meditation.
  Within three years, the maharishi had begun the first of a number of worldwide tours which lead to his fame and global recognition.
  It is estimated that there are some 5 million practitioners of Transcendental Meditation.
• The most celebrated and famous of the 1960s spiritual gurus, the Maharishi drew in many high profile celebrities to his Transcendental Meditation movement. These included the Beach Boys, singer-songwriter Donovan, Clint Eastwood and avant-garde film maker, David Lynch.
  But the most high profile followers were the Beatles, who spent time on a retreat in India in the late 1960s.