Truth of The Linda Pearce Allegations

On-line dicussion in June 2007 between David Fiske, formerly head of TM Movement South Africa and Paul Mason, former TM Teacher

I was in India with Linda, an attractive young girl. When she married Peter Pearce I became godfather to their daughter.
I can't comment on the veracity of her assertions but find it hard to believe she would make them if they were untrue.
Poor girl seems to be a bit of victim as Peter was a pathological liar and con man.
We were for a brief period partners in an art business so I know his ins and outs.
I gathered from Peter that Linda was a few years ago dying of MS in an Indian village.
For myself who was around Maharishi since 1962 I found the stories of his behaviour startling as I never got a sense of him being sexual.
It is too bad it couldn't have been discussed as it would be interesting to have a frank talk of sex and spirituality.
It seems the three temptations money, sex and power follow many of us up the ladder.

David Fiske | Homepage | 06.14.07 - 7:44 pm | #

Thanks for the personal perspective David.
When the News of the World article first surfaced I disbelieved it from the start, it appeared to me to be a concoction devised for or by Peter Pearce.
Now you suggest that he was a liar and a con man.
Interestingly, the story has a resonance with The Beatles' Sexy Sadie episode in that the main accuser, Alexis Mardas, also appears to have been a con man. As you say, it would have been good to have had a frank discussion about the subject, preferably with Maharishi involved.

Paul Mason | Homepage | 06.15.07 - 12:00 pm | #

I did not mean to suggest that Peter Pearce invented Linda's story and that as he is untrustworthy it isn't true.
A charming chap but..! Linda might have been charmed by him but I think she told that story on her own. The South African Sunday Times carried a similar report in which Linda said that when she tried to decline Maharishi he told her not "to have sexual hang ups."

David Fiske | Homepage | 06.15.07 - 1:28 pm | #

David, do you have a copy of the South African Sunday Times article on Linda? I wonder if Conny's book [Conny Larsson] includes quotes from any of the ladies? Anyway, whatever one thinks about Maharishi, it would be informative to discover whether he had a sexual side that he screened off.
I guess it would be more odd to discover that he had no such proclivity!?

Paul Mason | Homepage | 06.17.07 - 7:36 am | #

Sorry Paul I don't.
It was sent to me after emigrating to Canada and I seem to have lost it.
At the time like you I dismissed it as it seemed so improbable to me.
However with so much directed at him it would seem now most improbable that he wasn't a man like anyone else and like many Indians who meet free moving western women untrained on how to deal with them.
One false step can lead to yet another and soon a taste gets developed.
Any person can feel lonely and all bodies need caresses.
Maybe he loved them as well. I am so glad I never felt he was my guru, never had any.
Yet he remains someone who profoundly influenced my life, mostly positively and for that he has my gratitude and very warm feelings of love. I don't think he attracted a lot of conmen.
I think he attracted a lot of young people who felt inspired to feel that working for him might well make a huge difference in the world.
I once complained bitterly, on my SCI course, that to the movement's discredit their good intentions were used as a trap.
As I had, I suppose, some status the poor lad taking the course face fell. Somewhere I have a nice slide of Linda and Maharishi walking along the path from his quarters to come to a meeting.
I now wonder how many of the young ladies I knew with him had encounters.
Merilyn Jest? She and I were close and for a while she was close to MMY.
I think things fell apart in her life. It causes great grief that all those hard efforts from so many people have ended up with a movement about as far removed from any positive influence as one could imagine.
If I were Maharishi I would feel despair.
He must self reflect like us all.
I wish, like a good friend, I could chew the cud with him as, late in life, he weighs up things..

David Fiske | Homepage | 06.17.07 - 8:27 am | #