The rise of Western “pop culture” and “alternative lifestyles” in the 1960s, was a crucial social change that led many Western consumers to dabble with spiritual ideas and practices, especially meditation. Symbolising this development was the Beatles’ much-publicised trip to a meditation retreat in Rishikesh, India. The fact that the Beatles left the retreat in disappointment and acrimony not long after their arrival, serves to illustrate the other side of this social phenomenon; that the ancient tradition has been misused by entrepreneurs and cultic organisations who have exploited Westerners’ naiveté and ignorance of the historical, philosophical and cultural context from which meditation emerged.