Robert was a skin-boy, and close to Maharishi. The skin boys were those men who carried Maharishi’s dear skin to the lecture halls so that Maharishi could sit on it.
They were close to Maharishi and often were also “door watchers” who would sit in front of Maharishi’s door. They were also Maharishi’s secretaries, who did errands for Maharishi. They were in a position to see things and hear things other course participants would not know about. He was also a brahmachari or celibate, who also followed Maharishi’s example in this way.
Very recently a post appeared on the FaceBook group TM: NextGeneration with video testimony from Prof. Robert Gordon-McCutchan Ph.D. who was the first Western person designated a “brahmachari” by Maharishi and a “deerskin carrier” for Maharishi.
From the TM: NextGeneration Facebook group:
“With Professor Gordon, we’ll be continuing this month to hear testimony on Maharishi’s after-hours activities and the ramifications therefrom. We certainly never expected to get onto this subject, but it came up and we can’t in good conscience avoid it.”
“Rob received his B.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder, graduating as a Joint Honor Scholar with a degree in philosophy. He earned his M.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his Ph.D. from Princeton University where his general field was American religious history, and his specialty the American transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on “Emerson’s Philosophy of Spiritual Process.” He has spent most of his professional life in the groves of academe. His first faculty position was at the University of California, SB. He then joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico, Taos, and his final post was at the University of Oregon, from which he retired in 2014. At all three universities his students consistently rated him in the top 1% of professors. He has written seven books, won three book awards, and published numerous scholarly articles as well as more popular pieces for magazines and newspapers. He now lives in Palm Springs, California where his life is devoted primarily to spiritual practice.”
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As we can see Rob Gordon-McCutchan is an academic professional who is held to high standards, and as an expert in philosophy understands the issues surrounding ethics and morals. He completed TM teacher training in those early days of the TM Movement. His field of study has been spiritual matters and philosophy and is a published author in those fields. He was in Rishikesh in those days when Maharishi was “handling women” so to speak, during his deer-skin and brahmachari days.
Here is the video testimony taken a few weeks ago.
He has also written an article entitled “The Saga of Sexy Sadie”, which centers around Rishikesh and the Beatles musicians who left Maharishi after finding out that their spiritual master Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi made sexual advances towards women, Thereafter the Beatles composed a song “Sexy Sadie”, which many of you have probably heard in which the Beatles expressed through their music their feelings about the whole incident. The song went through revisions, which is explained by the article. Here Rob Gordon-McCutchan tells the story of that song and that sexual incident and other incidences where Maharishi tried to hit on women, and those successful romances that followed. This article by Rob has been submitted to a well-known international magazine for publication, so perhaps it will be published there or in a similar world-wide publication.
Prof Rob Gordon’s Sexy Sadie article