Shri Vethathiri Maharishi was born on 14 August 1911 in the village of Guduvancheri, south of Chennai, India, into an indigent weaver's Sengunthar Mudaliar family.[1] After spending several years in various minor employment, he established a textile concern that grew to employ over 2,000 workers on a profit-sharing basis. Maharishi regularly participated in intense meditation and introspection, which he claims brought him full enlightenment at the age of thirty-five. At the age of fifty, he clos