Did a google search on "Bourque Maharishi". Nada. The fullness of emptiness. The book appears to be on no ones radar. A big yawn for america and the world it may be.
But I did come across this article on yoga in america in the 20's. (interesting - though probably a wast of time -- to speculate on the evolution of a jiva in america -- reincarnating across various spiritual and counter culture movements -- ending up thus far in the TMO - and still moving on. Robert Love's 'The Great Oom' unearths the ashram the roared in the '20s Published: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 7:26 PM Updated: Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 7:31 PM Evelyn Theiss, The Plain Dealer Viking, 392 pp., $28 Most of us probably just assume that yoga came to American popular culture in the 1960s, trailing the Beatles and their guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But in 1997, writer Robert Love and his wife moved into a 1920s-era stone cottage in Nyack, N.Y. He found mystical-appearing symbols carved into the original facade and began to investigate the property's history. Turned out the cottage had been part of the first, and biggest, yoga ashram in the United States. It thrived in the 1920s and well into the 1930s. That mysterious compound was run by Pierre Bernard, who drew flocks of wealthy and prominent acolytes. Two Vanderbilt daughters were big funders, and other old-money types joined, too -- including Frances Payne Bolton, a Clevelander, yoga devotee and future congresswoman. Bernard was born Perry Baker in Leon, Iowa, in 1876. Before he was out of his teens, young Perry met Sylvais Hamati, a native of India, and become his protege. Hamati taught his student Sanskrit, hatha yoga and techniques for meditation. The Iowan rechristened himself Pierre Bernard and began cultivating the charisma that is de rigueur for a guru in need of women, men and money. He opened a Manhattan studio, attracting police interest in the goings-on -- women garbed in leotards and performing goodness-knows-what Tantric practices with men. When law-enforcement attention became too keen, Bernard moved his center to the country. An hour away, in more affordable Nyack, he soon put together enough property to create a private ashram, prosaically named the Clarkstown Country Club. It attracted WASPs, conductor Leopold Stokowski and even a former British spy. Actresses and Algonquin writers dropped by, too, including Robert Benchley and F. Scott Fitzgerald. By then, newspaper headline writers were calling Bernard "The Great Oom." Throughout the Roaring '20s, stories in magazines such as Town & Country enhanced the ashram's credibility. During a decade known for "anything goes," the ashram -- at least in its early years -- promoted yoga, movement, meditation and alternative therapies designed to heal body and mind. Author Love brings prodigious research and deft writing to "The Great Oom," opening a window on a long-ago world. Turns out the "New Age" isn't so new -- wealthy adventurers seeking exotic paths to meaning, gurus and yoga have long been with us. Fascinating that Bernard seemed, for a while, to be the man with the answers.
