Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, he of Transendental meditation, and the Beatles, died the other day at 91. He tried to conquer the world through a shill political party and make his cult a world government, It almost succeeded in some places.
It was over a dozen years ago, I was up in Canada visiting friends, when I first heard of the Natural Law Party. It was lead by a guy named Neil Paterson, who made the remarkable claim that if the people of Canada brought his party to power, he would bring over Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who would bring spiritual and temporal peace to the Great White North through yogic flying. What was really strange was that Paterson was listed as the leader of a major party in the press, and was treated as the equal of the Prime Minister and the various opposition leaders (the Conservatives had split, leaving the Quebec seccessionists as official opposition, but that's another story). The people of Canada weren't fooled at all, and he got around 300 votes in his riding and his party got 37,085 votes, or a mere 0.29% nationwide.
Then they came down here. In 1996, their candidate was John Hagelin, who was allegedly a phyicist, and was a professor at Maharishi University in Iowa. He didn't do much better than Paterson did in Canada, although the party would run a candidate against a well-ensconsed incumbent congresscritter with no opposition to speak of and get five or six percent of the vote.
When last seen, Hagelin was trying to take over the Reform party, that was 2000 when Pat Buchanan was nominated. the NLP got 0.1% of the vote and the Majarishi disowned it.
His grand scheme to conquer the World had come to naught. The NLP had tried to become a world movement, setting up branches in dozens of countries, and getting up to ten percent of the vote in a couple of Austrailian ridings.
But I will always remember that day when a representative came to our school and tried to sell TM to us at really expensive prices. Some tell me the technique works, and they got it from eslewhere. It might, but a cult is a cult is a cult, and you don't have to be a nominal christian to have one. He might come back as something, but it won't be a majarishi.