The Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who passed away last week, was cremated on Monday in the northern Indian city of Allahabad, where thousands of followers attended.

The Maharishi died last week in his sleep at his home in Netherlands. He was 91 years old.

He presented Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique to the West in 1959, and in 1968 he became famous after presenting it to the Beatles.

The technique developed into a multimillion business.

His followers paid him tribute this weekend after he was placed in a meditation posture and dressed in white.

He was cremated on a pyre placed at a site venerated by the Hindus, the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers.

Almost 2,000 people from all over the world gathered the say goodbye to the guru, BBC news reports.

Filmmaker David Lynch was among them.

He said: "In life, he revolutionized the lives of millions of people. In his passing away he is bringing the West and East together as well."

Last month the Maharishi declared that he will retire and retreat at his home in Vlodrop. He said that he wanted to study the ancient Hindu Vedas texts.

According to his spokesman, he died in his sleep of "natural causes - his age."

He was born in the state of Madhya Pradesh and was a physicist before becoming devoted to the spiritual enlightenment.

During the 1940s and the 1950s he studied in the Himalayas under Guru Dev, and afterwards he began to extend the tradition of Transcendental Meditation in the world.

He studied physics at Allahabad University and earned a degree in 1942. While in college, he reportedly began to study with well known Hindu holy man Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, training under Brahmananda until the guru died in 1953, the Los Angeles Times reports.

In an interview he gave in 2006 he said: “Don't fight darkness. Bring the light, and darkness will disappear,” referring to the fact that a practitioner, by repeating in mind a Sanskrit mantra, he is allegedly able to reach deep relaxation which leads to happiness and creativity.

Decades later Maharishi said that he planed to use the power of group meditation in order to bring peace into the world and put an end to the poverty.