MALIBU MANSION - Hilltop estate of Guru Maharaj Ji Divine Light Mission overlooks Trancas Beach and Pacific Ocean. Nearest neighbour is about half a mile away.
Times photo by Dave Gailey

County To Rule Today

Maharaj Ji's Helicopter Plans Stir Furor

By BOB BAKER
Times staff writer

The question they're asking in Malibu these days is whether the leader of the Divine Light Mission should be allowed to descend from the skies directly to his palatial hilltop estate.

Guru Maharaj Ji, the 23 year old religious phenomenon who heads the Divine Light Mission, wants to build a helicopter landing pad at his home atop Anacapa View Drive.

Nearby residents - claiming that approval of the proposal would encourage dozens of other wealthy Malibu residents to follow suit, filling the skies with helicopters - have vowed to stop the guru.

County supervisors are expecting to settle the question today during a public hearing.

The private helicopter sought by Maharaj Ji would be only the second in the Malibu area. The first was granted by the county regional planning commission last November to the guru's helistop consultant, Loretta Foy, for her mountaintop home on Millpas Drive.

The gurus application seems to have heightened some of the lingering tension between Malibu's establishment and the handful of members of the guru's Divine Light Mission who lived near Maharaj Ji's isolated, walled estate.

The guru achieved instant fame in the United States in the early 1970s. Arriving here from India as the 14-year-old leader of a religious sect and teacher of meditation he

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