Something Forever

- Chapter 2 Part 1/5 -

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Home in God


If you, dear reader, are willing to enter with me further and further into this little story of an endless journey into ourself's, i say. but please be at your own risk, as I did express earlier. As you probably found easily when reading the first chapter, the narrator of our little odyssey is a child of the summer of love himself, thus a child whose faith found its fulfillment in the music of the Beatles.
Only my chronic ataraxia I owe the courage and strength to continue and to write, because Sir George is for sure something forever.!

When reading about the book "Conversations with God" by Neale Donald Walsch, which I found in a very interesting catalog in amrita.de , I could not help thinking about my own experience with the subject, and because the answers I received on my questions, requests and ideas then. In fact, I could not help thinking that, what I found in the catalog, I had to understand as a result of the spiritual revolution, that materialized and commercialized world of new age business that has reached its climax, reaching everyone, and took its beginning 65/66, thereby grass and LSD promoting the leap towards self-discovery self-awareness and making it possible.




("Beatles "A Day In The Life" at YouTube)





Towards an expanded, brightned and more spiritual awareness


(Thereform the grass blooms as greenish, as Spain's blossoms do flourish)



The key player in counterculture



The summer of love, of course, was not an invention of the Beatles, but with their new cross-border albums Rubber Soul and Revolver and earlier tracks like "The Word", "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Rain" & "Love You To" determined they certainly took part in preparing this summer of love. The sudden flowering of the counterculture and the Beatles' interest in far eastern culture, evolved from the minor issue of the year to a mass phenomenon in the whole western world, without doubt partially caused by the Beatles, and in any case it reflected their far-reaching spiritual interests at that time very exactly. Psychedelic songs like "Love You To" and "A Day In The Life" advanced the expansion of consciousness from the margins to the center of public perception. The psychedelic aesthetic was implemented nowhere more alive and vivid than by the Beatles and their music at that time.

The psychedelic music of the Beatles represents an attitude far beyond ordinary reality. It is a magical vision full of boundless love and beauty, in which all opposites are brought in line peacefully. Whether such an attitude is a mistake to end, or a walk on the nails of Dharma into everybody's own Nirvana, who knows, at least George Harrison and John Lennon had understood the right connection between the "universal love" and the great beyond of oriental philosophy. In "Day Tripper" it is said:

    "Life is very short and there's no time
for fussing and fighting, my friend"


The enthusiasm for the idea of "universal love" and its identity as full-time trippers and dedicated travelers is most impressive and significantly in the chorus of "A Day In The Life".

Although the Beatles did not invent the counterculture, they almost certainly were the first rock & pop band granting LSD - probably the most important shrine of the movement - granted a central role in their art, and thus drove forth the psychedelic music in many parts. The implied associated aesthetics they adapted While artists like Klaus Voorman and other designers who had already begun to visualize their experiences with LSD, to develop, but the Beatles were the first band to celebrate the new colorful psychedelic achievements in the studio, bringing in Indian resonant tones and scales, inventing backwards played tapes and other gimmicks. There is no doubt, the Beatles helped to change the world during the psychedelic era. Because they were open to new, elitist thoughts, they were able to benefit from these trends and concepts themselves, and then to immediately incorporate them into their music and all their musical creating.

That Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to grass in August 1964, was the first important step in this process, and when her next project was due, the movie and the album Help, they already were experienced potheads and only rolled In the grass. The great influence of mind-expanding drugs only found its way into their music after Lennon and Harrison had acquainted the effects of LSD in the spring of 1965. Their " dental experience "!



Tripping the life phantastic

We remember, way back in early 1965, John Lennon together with his wife Cynthia and George Harrison visited a mutual friend, a dentist. There they were offered LSD on this party, which they refused with thanks, to during the evening it was palmed off on them in tea without their knowledge. John feared a planned orgy and made off with Cynthia and George in his little Mini Cooper. After a trip to a nother club that seemed to burn inside, they drove at a snail's pace to Georges Country House, where the friendly trees in the driveway waved to them alluringly. Cynthia and John, however, had the trip tolerated not as well.

They did not know how happened to them, and they felt completely wrong, crazy, literally beside themselves in a completely different universe.

Despite this bewildering initiation into psychedelic, John Lennon took pleasure in this kind of adventure travel, and, within a year, John took LSD like others smoked a joint now and then.!




(Beatles "Day Tripper" at YouTube)




George Harrison recalls in an interview in The Rolling Stone, published in The Rolling Stone Rock'n Roll Reader:


"For me, since the first trip, the whole world opened up for me and was of greater importance. This knowledge I owed directly to LSD. It was as if there where you would have expected no door, suddenly a welcoming gate opened. A whole new world of consciousness opened up in the wonderful folds of gray flannel trousers, as Aldous Huxley once described it. Every grain of sand pulsated. Until my first LSD trip I had no idea of those worlds that we have hidden behind our everyday consciousness. But the pressure grew on us so much, and the man had already formulated it. There Must Be Some Way Out Of Here ...., for me, this way was the LSD definitely. When I took it the first time, it completely blew my brain empty. I was overwhelmed by an incredible sense of wellbeing, I could see God and know him in every blade of grass, it was really unique.! I felt like I had achieved in twelve hours, a fact of life of 100 years. This experience changed me a lot and there was no turning back. But not all experiences with it were always good, and there were finally a whole lot of real questions unanswered. In the parallel world we had The Beatles continue to play our role as the "fantastic four". But at least we had a wider perspective now, only this double life was not always easy. "

Q: "This was in some ways the time when the identity 'to be a Beatle' began to oppress you? "

George Harrison: "Yeah, absolutely. After the Acid experience I realized something. I mean, this stuff has a power that does bring you to humility. On the other hand, the ego simultaneously had to deal with all the people who thought you were a great thing, a role model. For me it was very difficult to get all this under one roof. If you took LSD, it is a great concern that even friends and people you are close to making this experience. It shows you the way forward and it shows you the way back, and time stands still. This is not a normal being high It's very overwhelming, it cuts directly through your physical body, consciousness, the ego. It overwhelms you with the insight that everything that you've been taught from childhood doesn't mean anything.! Well, and a hippie is someone who lives conciously or tries to live consciously. Being hip means to know what's coming and what's going on. But if you're really hip, you do not need any more LSD. Personally, as I see it the substance can make good, but you don't need it really. I needed it, though, when I first intentionally took a trip. And it was a really great thing, but the trip also showed me that LSD is not the answer to all our questions. It can help you to get from A to B, and you can maybe see C in the distance. But real knowledge, the true high only turns on when you take no more medicine. Other ways are leading to that, yoga, meditation, simply living and such. LSD has disappointed me in so far afterwards. In our physical world we live with dualities - Good & Evil, Black & White, No & Yes. Whatever it may be, there is an opposite of it. There is always the same and opposite, and therefore you can not say that LSD is good or bad, because it is good and bad, and it is both and yet neither at the same time, this is the answer to the problem!"

If you like to go more deep into the matter, you better read the Beatles Anthology, about 1965 and the "The Dental Expierence"






(Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" ati YouTube)





Thank God for the Beatles

What once was widespread by Dr. Timothy Leary at the University of Harvard for many lectures, namely that the : "vinyl recruiters creators have now taken over. They are the leaders now. I consider them the four evangelists in the psychedelic movement. The Beatles here incarnate themselves as bodi sattvas, world savers, thats what happened, yes, yes, yeah listen to Sgt. Pepper. "

Even without Internet, that message spread around the world of course, the Beatles are the druids of the modern age, the expected Bodisattvas. The neo-Pandavas, warriors and agents of the divine force, very well.!

But, the Beatles somehow smell very well of immortality, don't they?

John had already admitted to be more popular than Jesus, and most priests and pastors had to agree with him in this respect. Dr. Tim Leary Dr. Timothy Leary was excited, "they'd like to take us home with them."

A message with a new beat. Turn on, tune in and drop out.?

Drop out, wait a minute, first the Beatles drop out, then even ceasing drugs, and it can be heard everywhere, "the Beatles have reportedly given up drugs, witch gave them only partial and temporary fulfillment and the fab four actnaturly looking for complete spiritual fulfillment." Instantkarmally, they have again a new revelation for the fans and devoteesm even more colorful, more mystical, even more farout the journey towards the east.! Sir George humbly sits at the feet of the sitar master Ravi Shankar. All the Beatles are meditating with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Bangor and Rishikesh. Away with the drugs - forth with the mantras. And hundreds of millions of kids all over the world ask themselves suddenly:

What is meditation? What is Yoga ? What is Shanta & Samadi? And any way, what does reincarnation mean?
And where can I get a real guru at all? And where there are real mantras?
And may prayers really turn you on?

The Beatles, that much was clear, have committed themselves to the Yoga discipline. But don't think that this would be a simple exercise, like, swallow the pill and find God. No, it is about the ancient, mysterious process of spiritual quest - often being confusing, paradoxical and full of requirements about the truth.

Over the centuries, dozens of complex yoga traditions have developed by God-seekers, and our heavenly quartet has gone on the pilgrimage, with fasting, mantras and obedience to and reverence for a guru, wow, here we are making history.! Well isn't that far out, in 1966, at the peak of their fame and influence, they have dropped all this to sit at the feet of a small, bearded, dark-skinned man. Who should have been able to tell them one or other wonderful story of God.!

This is the unmistakable characteristic of a humble, turned-on angel, looking for the connection to his origin and his true home.!

Only George Harrison remained faithful to the rules of Hinduism. Starting in 1965, believe it or not, this religion had a strong influence on him, whereas his acquaintance with LSD certainly had played a large role here. LSD gave Sir George a whole new fresh emotional access and view to the "universal love". years later, he remembers and says:

"It was like a concentrate of the best feelings I've ever had in my life. I fell in love, but not in a person or thing, but in everything."

It is that experience which he immortalized in the song "Try Some, Buy Some" where it says, "Not a thing did i have, not a thing did I see / Till I called on your love and your love came to me".





("Try Some Buy Some" at YouTube)





This enthusiastic sentiment stampes almost everything Harrison made since 1965 in a fundamental serious way, and although between 1965 and 1973 not all of his lyrics have an transcendental impact, he speaks very often in clear, simple words about the spiritual interactions. E.g.

"My love belongs to who can see it / The Lord helps those that help themselves / And the law says whatever you do, is going to come right back on you."

With very few exceptions, the "YOU" in his lyrics adresses God and the listeners. A comprehensive, but very impressive view with very few conceptual cloudiness.

Sir George liked to tell all that Indian music seemed somehow familiar when he first heard it, and perhaps he was thinking of his own reincarnation, and that he knew the music from the past.

In fact, it was George Harrison, who caught the attention of Western mass culture on Hinduism and thus ushered in the so-called "spiritual renaissance" of the late sixties. While the other Beatles soon left their Hindu phase behind them, Sir George was loyal for life. Only Master Harrison acquired the unique "Krishna consciousness" in 1969 by constant meditation!

And yes, he was responsible for such a fundamental cultural renewal alone is his enduring legacy as a key player in the counterculture, although he certainly would have been uncomfortable with this title.




(Beatles "The Word" at YouTube)






harifan


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