'He died peacefully at about 7pm,' said Mr Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation movement that the Maharishi founded and which introduced the West to a Hindu practice of mind control, once dismissed as hippie mysticism but which gradually gained medical respectability.

Mr Roth said the cause of death was yet to be established, but it appeared to be 'natural causes, his age.'

The Maharishi was believed to be 91. -- AP