This
account
of three of The Beatles taking LSD with two of The Byrds in LA 50
years ago this week marks a significant moment in the mass cultural
breakthough of non-dual thought and practice in the West that
occurred two years later (48 years ago this week), when Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi gave a talk at the Hilton hotel on Park Lane in London.
That event, attended by all The Beatles, triggered an eruption of
this kind
of discussion on mainstream Saturday
night TV, that
brought concepts into public discourse of a kind that had previously
only been known among a small cognoscenti, but have been a part of our
world ever since (with occasional popular waves like the widespread
uptake of Mindfulness
today).
Perhaps
the chief event during the LA Acid drop was George Harrison hearing
Dave Crosby playing Indian raga style on the single guitar they had
between them (they were in the bathroom at the time, all of them,
hiding from the armed security guards hired to prevent fans overrunning the house they were staying in), and recognising an artistic fit for his growing spiritual
sensibility. Crosby and Roger McGuin in their previous incarnation as
the Jet Set had practiced at World Pacific studios where their
manager worked as an engineer, and where Ravi Shankar,
the great Indian maestro, recorded. Crosby's raga prompted an
enquiry from George that led to him investigating the source
material, buying a sitar on his return to England, and introducing
the sound (an elementary riff played as if on a guitar on the song
Norwegian Wood) on The Beatles next album (Revolver, released Aug
1966 – 49 years ago this week).
But
it also led to him meeting Ravi Shankar and travelling to India to
study with him. While in India, George, along with his then wife,
Pattie Boyd, were introduced to Indian spirituality by Shankar, who
considered the philosophy a vital underpinning to his musical
approach. They met teachers and practiced
physical yoga, partly because it was necessary for the posture required to play the sitar
effectively. But it was back in England that Pattie Boyd, who worked
as a model and had met George while playing a small part in The
Beatles first film, A Hard Day's Night
(release in July 1964 – 51 years ago last month), began to pursue a
dedicated practice in order to realise a deeper personal
understanding. At that time, London had many
centres that studied and practiced in the Indian traditions, but none
were as active in promoting the message as the Spiritual Regenaration
Movement founded in 1957 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Maharishi
was a disciple of Swami Brahmananda Saraswati the head of the Jyotir Math,
a monastery in northern India founded in the 8th
century by
Adi Shankara,
the great teacher who established Advaita as the principle school in the Vedanta tradition (as propounded in three key texts, the Upanishads, the Baghavad Gita and the Brahma
Sutras). According to Advaita (literally translatable as non-duality)
the idea that we exist as separated, competing individuals in a world
of material objects, is a delusion caused by ignorance of the reality, and creates suffering, the endless dissatisfaction of desire. From its perspective the world of
form arises from the formless ground of pure consciousness, and
everything that appears in the world has its root in consciousness.
Realising the reality – which eliminates the sense of isolation and
fear, ends yearning for the objects of the senses, and brings blissful fulfilment - is the goal of
human life, and turning inwards to recognise this truth is the end of a natural process that governs the cosmos (known as Karma).
Maharishi
thought that the post-2nd
World War world, dominated by the West, which was then locked into a
nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, had drifted so far from the
truth that it needed a rescue mission, and so he stripped out much of
the potentially alienating cultural accoutrements of Indian spiritual
practice, and presented a key component, meditation - and in
particular, mantra meditation (the repetition of a sacred sound in
order to lead the mind off of its deluded thoughts and allow its core
reality to emerge naturally) - as an accessible pursuit. He then began
a series of world tours in 1958 that by 1967 saw him established in
many countries, including Britain, and able to command respectably
sized audiences for his talks. His London supporters used to
advertise events in The Times newspaper, one of which caught the attention of Pattie Boyd one Sunday at home in Surrey. She subsequently attended a course at Caxton Hall over a weekend, received initiation and became a practitioner of what is termed Transcendental
Meditation.
That
was in February 1967, while her husband was away
touring with The Beatles. She then inspired George enough for him to recruit the rest of the band into attending the famous
meeting some months later in August of that year. The Beatles were such a huge global cultural phenomenon that every action they took was recorded by the
international media. The event at the Hilton, and what followed (The
Beatles flew to India to study at Maharishi's ashram, along with a
retinue that included the Hollywood star Mia Farrow,
and influential folk-rock musician Donovan)
represented a moment when ideas about spirituality, consciousness,
the non-dual nature of the universe and our purpose in life - held as
revealed truth in all cultures throughout history, yet long dormant
in the West, where spiritual traditions had lost sight of their
own essential message - forcibly reasserted itself as a field of
cultural enquiry. It is remarkable to see the form it took in 1960s British society, and allows us to look more objectively at current circumstances, and how similar debates
are structured around these issues today.
pic from here
pic from here
