The Inner Light — George Harrison’s Timeless Tao Wisdom
When a Beatle met the Tao, magic happened
Kissing Maharishi’s Feet
Okay, I’ll admit it. I was a Beatles junkie when they first broke onto the scene. Their first hits were catchy, upbeat tunes that got stuck playing over and over in your head. Granted, one of their first hits, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” seems a bit shallow by today’s standards, but this all changed when they flew off to India in 1968 and kissed the feet of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Perhaps due to first having their minds blown by LSD in 1965, only to have their minds expanded even further by the smell of Maharishi’s feet, their music changed dramatically. The “White Album” and its predecessor, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” were a fundamental departure from their previous music and are considered their most influential albums.
The Beatles Break Up, a Spiritual Awakening, and LSD in a Motorcycle Battery
The Beatles disbanded in 1970. Coincidentally, my first spiritual awakening happened shortly after that. I left home for college. Shortly after arriving on campus, my life changed completely. It was as if a being from another dimension, one that was totally obsessed with spirituality, had walked into my body and consciousness. I spent most of my time in college in worlds of energy.
I don’t recall much about the courses I took. But somehow did well in them. What I do remember is having each day packed with meditating, stopping my thoughts to the point of jumping into different realities, frequent travels out of my body. It wasn’t uncommon to pass out while sitting and entering fantastic energetic worlds.
Later in my first year, my roommate began selling motorcycle batteries full of liquid LSD, which he exported to Europe. Liquid LSD was also known as "blotter acid." Blotter acid is LSD in liquid form, dropped onto a piece of blotter paper. It was an easy way to dispense LSD. Suck on a piece of blotter paper and buckle up for a 12-hour roller coaster ride.
I would dip a toothpick into a motorcycle battery full of liquid LSD and place the end of the wet toothpick in my mouth. For the next 12 hours, I was transported to energetic worlds even more intense than those I had been experiencing. But that is another story.
The Inner Light
In 1968, George Harrison wrote “The Inner Light.” As the story goes, he wrote it during his trip to study Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi. Harrison had a friend, John Mascaró, a professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University. Harrison loved discussing the Bhagavad Gita and its teachings with Mascaró. Mascaró also introduced Harrison to the Tao Te Ching and gave Harrison a passage from it. This passage inspired him to write the Beatles’ song.
One day, Stickman came up to me holding a single record by the Beatles with the song “Lady Madonna” on the label (this was before the days of CDs). He said, “Listen to the song on the B side. I think you will like it. It’s a song by Harrison.”
In the days of vinyl, some records were called “singles” or “45s.” They were called 45s as they played at a speed of 45 revolutions per minute on a turntable record player. They typically had one song on each side of the record. Harrison’s new song was on the B side.
I slapped the 45 adapter onto the center of the player. The disks of the 45s had larger center holes than the long-playing albums and required an adapter. I popped on the record and carefully set the needle to the beginning.
Adjusting the volume, I lay in my dorm bed and closed my eyes. I can’t say I liked the melody at first, but the lyrics soon transported me to a beautiful, energetic world that had by now become familiar.
The Tao Te Ching was one of my go-to books when I wanted a little inspiration. As the lyrics unfolded, I soon recognized the correlation between Harrison’s words and the words of the Tao Te Ching.
From “The Inner Light:”
“Without going out of my door
I can know all things on earth
Without looking out of my window
I can know the ways of heaven”
“The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows”
From “The Tao Te Ching:”
“Without going outside, you may know the whole world.
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven.
The farther you go, the less you know.
Thus the sage knows without traveling;
He sees without looking; He works without doing.”
Harrison’s lyrics beautifully capture the Taoist concept of we wei, means non-action or effortless action: “The sage knows without traveling; He sees without looking; He works without doing.”
We are so conditioned to look outside of ourselves for answers when there is already infinite wisdom within. If only we took the time to quiet our monkey minds, we would find it. The mind always tries to solve problems. What happens when we silence the problem-solver? More often than not, we find that the answer has always been there. And many times, we find that there was no problem in the first place.
The Tao teaches us that the deeper we go within, the deeper we know the world. The way out is in. You don’t need to climb the tallest mountain or cross the seven seas to find enlightenment.
It’s right here, inside of you.
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