On May 30, 2009, at 6:43 PM, Marek Reavis wrote:
Like Judy pointed out, it's totally common for Indian devotees to extol assumed enlightened saints and gurus with over the top honorifics, and the idea that one of Maharishi's early followers gave him that designation out of their own reverence and pride.
While that is a possibility and worth investigating further, if you examine Sanskrit-Hindu literature, esp. in Vaishnavite groups like the Shankaracharya, you'll see it's typical to have a sannyasi name as the primary title, with additions to this name given by the guru (e.g. Yogananda's guru gave him the title "Paramahamsa" indicating that he believed him to belong to a certain class of yogins, a paramahamsa). You can see this trend going back as into the middle ages. A list of many other Hindu commercial gurus reveals this same pattern. While honorifics like 'His Holiness' may be added out of devotion to one's guru, in Mahesh's instance we definitely know this was not the case.
It's important to distinguish between honorifics, like 'His Holiness', and order or ordination names, titles indicating attainment and titles indicating a certain skill ("yogi").
In Mahesh's instance, he had the problem of being in the Shank. Order as an assistant and wanting to launch himself into the guru biz. What's a non-twice-born Hindu to do? After all he could not become a swami. You have someone confer a title on you or you make up one yourself. Usually the one conferring the title is the guru. And we do know SBS never conferred any titles on Mahesh.
I guess the important here is if someone was dishonest from the get go, what does that tell us?
