The funeral ceremonies for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi took place
on Feb 11 2008. From the Timesonline website:
"Rose petals rained down from a helicopter on tens of
thousands of mourners at the lavish funeral today of
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the 91-year-old Indian guru who
inspired the Beatles and introduced transcendental
meditation to the West.
"The elderly mystic's embalmed body was laid on an enormous
pyre of sandalwood on a hilltop in the grounds of his
ashram, overlooking the "sangam" -- what is said to be
the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers with the
mythical river Saraswati.
"Preparations for the rites began early, as volunteers
plastered sticky cow dung -- sacred to Hindus -- on
the funeral platform, and decorated it with marigold flowers
and hundreds of yellow and saffron flags.
"Maharishi's body, which had lain in state, was daubed with
ghee, or clarified butter, and saffron vermilion.
His relatives lit the pyre, as mourners from the global
religious order he founded clashed cymbals, pounded drums
and chanted Vedic hymns."
This GCP data exploration was made in mid July 2008, (the
18th) several
months after the funeral. I did not have exact times, so
took the 24 hour UTC day. A striking U-shaped pattern shows
up early in the day, over a 4 or 5 hour period corresponding
to the morning and early afternoon hours in India. The two
graphs show the data in our usual analysis format. It is
noteworthy that the general trend of the data is the same
downward slope we have seen in several analyses of data
corresponding to big TM meditations, especially those with
large numbers of Siddhis gathered.
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