COMMMENTARY: A Beatle’s Surprising Spirituality

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Apart from sharing a Feb. 25 birthday with former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, singer, songwriter and former Beatle George Harrison never had much to do with politics. One of his few overtly political acts took place in 1992, when he came out in support of John Hagelin, […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Apart from sharing a Feb. 25 birthday with former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, singer, songwriter and former Beatle George Harrison never had much to do with politics.

One of his few overtly political acts took place in 1992, when he came out in support of John Hagelin, a practitioner of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation who was running for president with the Natural Law Party.


Harrison harbored no illusions about Hagelin getting elected to office _ just as he had not expected his 1971 Concert for Bangladesh to bring peace to a war-torn nation. His purpose was more modest: to “do his bit,” as he put it, because he believed spirituality needed to make a difference in the world. He never considered himself important to the peace process.

Still, Harrison created music that both entertained and inspired others to resist indifference. It was an achievement that did not come easily.

By age 23, as a member of the most successful pop group in entertainment history, Harrison had acquired more fame and money than could be imagined. Before one concert alone, in Adelaide, Australia, 300,000 people lined the road from airport to hotel to greet the Beatles. By that year, sales of Beatles merchandise and paraphernalia _ wigs, dolls, candy, shirts, belts, boots, pillowcases and anything else that could be manufactured _ had surpassed $1 billion in today’s money.

Harrison was, in his own words, “living at the top of the material mountain.” Then he looked over and saw the other side: spirituality, yoga, meditation and a vision of his immortal self imbued with such spiritual opulence that all his worldly achievements to that moment paled by comparison.

It was in 1966 that he first heard ragas played by Ravi Shankar. He traveled to India later that year to study sitar and yoga, and his involvement with meditation helped elevate the Beatles from bubble-gum music to deeper compositions and more complex musical arrangements.

Soon after the Beatles broke up in 1970, George’s single “My Sweet Lord” and his first solo album, “All Things Must Pass,” rose to the No. 1 spot on global music charts. By 1971, he had established himself as an artist in his own right with a spiritual sound and a message to offer the world.

The message he conveyed came from traditional Indic sources such as the Bhagavad-gita. Life, these wisdom texts say, is not an amalgam of material elements but a spark of divine energy, and to be human is to be awake to the divinity we share with all living beings.


Those who cultivate this vision, the texts say, honor others as eternal souls irrespective of ethnic, political or religious differences. By dint of their own experience, enlightened souls are sensitive to the suffering of others and actively work to alleviate that suffering with whatever innate abilities they have.

It was a message that was not always understood or appreciated. Despite the success of his Concert for Bangladesh _ the first charity rock concert in history _ some reviewers and fans took offense at Harrison’s exhortations from the stage to get more spiritual. By the time of his “Dark Horse” tour in 1974, his credibility had suffered. Where was Beatle George? It was rock and roll the fans wanted, not ragas and ranting. Their derision affected him deeply. It would be 20 years before he ventured again onstage before a large audience.

After “Dark Horse,” Harrison went into a depression that lasted several years. He finally emerged from his despair with the help of his wife, Olivia, and a return to healthier habits and daily yoga.

Reinvigorated, he again put his beliefs to work, contributing to hunger relief efforts and joining environmental causes. It was the effort that mattered to him, the engagement of belief in ways that would make a tangible change in the world. He was unabashed about using his fame as a tool for that change. “I can honestly say,” he once told reporters, “that being a Beatle was no hindrance to my career.”

Harrison died in 2001, but his message about avoiding indifference could not be more relevant than it is today. Judging by humanity’s track record in human rights, civil liberties and respect for life, the 21st century so far has been a miserable failure.

We’ve learned the hard way that we can’t count on government to make things better. It is up to individual men and women of inner vision like Harrison to move the peace agenda forward, by resisting indifference and remembering that to achieve even a tiny step toward a more spiritual civilization is to invent a new reason to hope.


(Joshua M. Greene teaches “Mysticism and the Spiritual Quest” at Hofstra University in New York. His recent book, “Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison,” is available in bookstores nationwide. For more information, visit http://www.herecomesthesunbook.com.)

KRE/PH END GREENE

Editors: To obtain a headshot of Joshua Greene and photos of George Harrison, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.

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