Born Mahesh Prasad Varma around 1917, he took a physics degree at Allahabad and then spent thirteen years as secretary to Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, until the latter's death in 1953. Everything he taught afterwards he attributed to Guru Dev, and the puja given at every initiation honours that lineage rather than Maharishi himself — a distinction the movement maintains carefully. He built a global teaching organisation, a university in Iowa, a construction system, a herbal product line and a political party, and died in the Netherlands in February 2008.