Dear Prudence: Won’t You Come Out to Play?

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For most people staying in their room on a Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique, residence course doesn’t inspire a song by The Beatles. At least it’s never worked for me.

But for Prudence Farrow Bruns, that’s all it took for John Lennon to pen the famous tune “Dear Prudence”. Prudence is also the daughter of Hollywood actress Maureen O'Sullivan and film director John Farrow as well as the sister of actress Mia Farrow.

The whole thing started in 1967 when Prudence learned the TM technique in Los Angeles and then moved to Boston and opened a yoga institute. Soon thereafter she and her sister attended one of Maharishi’s public lectures. Then, in January 1968, the two sisters hopped aboard a plane, with Maharishi himself, and flew from New York to India. Their final destination was an in-residence training course to be conducted by Maharishi at his ashram in the village of Rishikesh.

The following month The Beatles, Mike Love and others arrived in Rishikesh and also joined the course. The rest, as they say, is history.

Prudence describes it this way: “I would rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so I could meditate. John, George and Paul would all want to sit around jamming ”. Prudence’s long meditations in her cottage caught the attention of The Beatles and they wrote a song about it and John Lennon sang, ‘won’t you come out to play?’

Prudence’s dedication to meditation paid off and some months later she graduated the course as a teacher of the Transcendental Meditation technique. Meanwhile, the meditations of Paul McCartney and John Lennon sparked a huge wave of creativity. These two members of the Beatles are reported to have written more than 48 songs during their 8 week stay in India, many of which appeared on The Beatles’ ‘White Album’.

But that, my friend, was ‘all those years ago’. Since then, Prudence has taught the TM technique to hundreds of people and become a Sanskrit scholar with a Ph.D. from the University of California in Berkley. Over the decades she has also produced Broadway plays and several Hollywood movies such as Widows Peak.

Currently Prudence resides in Florida with her husband and fellow TM teacher, Albert. She also has three children and four grand-children who constantly ask her to, that’s right, “come out and play”. Well, I guess some things never change.

This TM blog article was written by Dr. Keith DeBoer http://AdventuresInTranscendentalMeditation.blogspot.com

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