- Chapter 4 Part 5 -
It was the year of the cock
At least according to Chinese believe, for the cock every day is as valuable as the last one, he uses it because he has realized that each of these days could be his last. And so he lives the true value of a day and likes to turn his back on rules and conventions for the price of a new knowledge for good. And what was also going on in 1969? Well, all the world were against Vietnam, the Americans sent the Apollo 12 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aladin should have landed on the moon? Willy Brandt becomes German chancellor, first TV broadcasting in color are possible, and then finally the first British edition of Monty Python's Flying Circus is released. Sure, there were a thousand great things I've forgotten here, but in my mind, these things have remained after almost 60 long years here in this physical world.
But one story I can't keep back, it's one of a moving day. Because George had found a new home for himself and his Pattie. Both moved from of Kinfauns, 16 Claremont Drive, Esher, to Friar Park in Henley on Thames. Curiously enough, all this also is happening in autumn of 1969, which almost seemed to burst because being full of all the events and new amazing impressions!
At this point I once again would like to let one of the good friends of the Beatles speak, because they have all contributed to the great history of the Beatles, their memories are valuable to me and are revealing a complete picture, and so I quote a small excerpt from Klaus Voormann's nice book, "Why don' you play Imagine on the white piano, John." I think I've addressed Klaus Voormann's role even before. Klaus knew the Beatles since 1960, when night after night they rocked the Reeperbahn neighbourhood in Hamburg. Later, he has played with Manfred Mann, designed the "Revolver" LP cover for the Beatles and maintained a lifelong friendship with George.
Lost in Friar Park
"The friendship with George was very intense. First, because our wives clearly got on well with each other, on the other hand there was a certain kinship between him and me. I had the feeling that he especially cared for me. He always wanted to know everything from me. He registered my shyness and was always trying to push me forward. He could look deep into my heart, and when he discovered something that made me trouble, he already was eliminating it. This close relationship began when Christine and I moved from Hampstead to Rainspark ....... It was the time when George was thinking more and more about life. We sat together several times a week and philosophized for hours. He was and still is known as the quiet Beatle, certainly also because of his devotion to Indian philosophy and meditation. Meditating Indians are often seen as self-quiescent people. That was my opinion, too, until I started working with Indian musicians. I couldn't believe my eyes and ears. They really rocked their socks hot.
George was full of excitement, emotion and power, and to work with him was so different than with John.
After the Beatles confessed to their separation, George immediately began implementing his third solo LP after "Wonderwall" and "Electronic Sound". When he asked me to play the bass, I was there at once. George has always attached great importance to good mood in the studio.
We already had recorded the first songs on "All Things Must Pass", when one morning he came excitedly into the studio. He was late because he had a date with a real estate broker. It was about a visit of an estate in Henley-on-Thames. George had first seen Friar Park and was completely stunned by the impressions. "You wouldn't believe. In the park there are caves and passages, we have lost several times, and suddenly we came to lakes. You can walk on these lakes, across the water like Jesus."
George was unstoppable. "And behind there is a kind of mountain range, where you can climb the Matterhorn." We looked worried at George and were thinking, the whole LSD trips now really maddened him. "Why do you look so funny at me? You don' believe me? I'll show you. We go there all together, then come and see for yourself. Here." He spread out photos before us photos. They showed a giant, big, dark castle-like estate. I felt shivering. I couldn't imagine at all how you could feel comfortable in such a large building. Then these vast gardens with greenhouses, tennis courts, ponds and lakes. Then there were three other cottages and and and .....
I became very dizzy at the thought that our little George with his sweet Patty should feel at home at this place. But George was talking and there was no holding him. I've never seen him so before, he was like enchanted. It was clear to George that he would buy Friar Park, although he still had no contract by the seller. But that was typical of him. He was persistent, and if he had an idea in his head, then he also managed to realise it. "You must all come. You will just fall in love with the place as me." He just had uttered the last syllables, then took his guitar and started playing us the next song. "And now don't cabbage here, we also want to bring something to tape. ".......
(Olivia Harrison interview in Friar Park at YouTube)
Not long after that, George could call the estate his own. Of course there was a housewarming party to which only the closest friends were invited, also his musical crew. We all walked back and forth through the house and the land and couldn't get enough of it. It was overwhelming. Eighty rooms, crammed with works of art, wood carvings, statues, furniture, you could not even handle all the many impressions.
I remember, strangely enough, exactly two friars full of holes. (That, of course, had a double meaning in English: Two holy friars.) There was a certain Sir Francis, who had come up with these exclusive and bizarr things. Sometime in the old days, the house had been converted into a convent, and the nuns had had nothing better to do than to paint over the little wieners of the small, chubby-cheeked cherubs, which mischievously smiled down the walls of the room to us, with gypsum. Of course, George took his special pleasure out of this. Wherever you went, everywhere you could feel the presence of the old lord of the castle. Some villagers even claimed that he would still haunt the premises and do mischief. So whoever wanted to be happy here, had to cope with the house spectre of Sir Francis.
"Well Klaus do you like it?"
With Friar Park, I never could make friends with really. As already mentioned, below Friar Park there is extending is a vast and ancient tunnel system. One day, George invited Christine and me and a few other buddies for inspection. Previously, some joints were passed around, order to be more receptive to the vibrations underground. Contrary to George, all of us were queasy. Before, George had placed some light into the shafts with a long extension cord, so we won't had to go back after ten meters. We were about eight, and so went underground, cackling and fooling about. We were wound up like a group of schoolchildren, which was not only due to the joints, but also due to the fact that we are didn't like the place. George walked ahead of us and played the tour guide. He told us gory stories from the past, of witches and murderous monks, and obviously had fun at our pale faces. We've been traveling for a while and none of us had any idea where we were, when George stopped and said:. "Well, now I am at a loss somehow. I thought that the output to the pond would come now, but now we are back in the vault where we already have been ten minutes ago, hmm." Only just he had finished the sentence, an eerie laughter echoed through the corridors. Our hair stood on end. George turned to us frightened. The women uttered shrill cries, and my stomach clenched together. After a eerie moment of silence, Mal Evans came around the corner – with a laughter bag in his hands. "May I introduce, His Royal Highness Sir Francis the laughter bag." Easier laughter began to spread, and soon George actually found the exit again.
We now preferred to return to the house above ground."
From:" Why don't you play Imagine on the white piano, John" by Klaus Voormann, published by Heyne publishers.
At this little anecdote is striking that the humor of George was very special, his enthusiasm knew no boundaries and nothing could damp his devotion to his friends. He had a big heart and was always open for a good joke.
George said:
"Life& Humor.... Well, I am two-faced. But really, things serious and comical are like night and day, black and white, ying and yang. In order to be comical, you have to be serious. You can't have one without the other. The world is a very serious and, at times, very sad place.....but at other times it is all such a joke. "
George Harrison's faith in the future was unshakable and not influenced by major worries, because he did regard everything as a kind of divine providence. In Hunter Davies authorized Beatles biography, the author mentions this in these words ...... "His interest in spiritual issues, for example, will be permanent. The cynics will certainly be proved wrong. His interest in Indian culture is not a passing phase ........"
George explains:
"To attain a god-like state, that is most important. But I still have to fill my job as a Beatle. We have to exercise this job because we can do something now. We are able to try different things and show it to he others . We can jump from one to another and try out new, what others may not be able to to or may not want .......... We will repeatedly walking in circles, making movies and trying new. Then after the movies we will try something new again. I do not know what. We did not know that we would make films when we started making records ...... so it probably always will be. Every time we try something new and come a bit farther. Then we will die and enter into a new life where we again try to improve constantly. Such is life. Such is death .... to come and go ... But in terms of this life, we haven't really done anything yet, somehow we are still at the beginning of the endless story. "
Warrior of Light
This leads me to the consideration which states ...... the wise man knows: the essentials, the highest fact, is a matter of action, is really fact. So he not only talks about God, but let him act by himself. As the soul is in the body and the body is the vessel of the soul, equally the space is in nature, and nature in the space. Of myself, I have nothing without soul. In nature nothing is without space. So soul and space are the divine substance.
George Harrison knew, as he repeatedly stated on many occasions ...... the matriculation examination of life is hardly passed, if you retreat in seclusion, behind monastery or Ashram walls, worse still, building barriers between yourself and the environment with others. Rather, it should and can be completed in the middle of the struggle for existence, when one opens his heart to the all-embracing love, that puts giving before taking and exercises in serenity.
On the subject serenity I already have said something, more important to me is, here at the end of the first volume of my trilogy, to point out that in every man's secret closet, where no one else has access, the wisdom is sleeping. Everyone must be its awakener himself, the awakened and the awakening. Because the beneficial effects of loving thought and helpful action do outreach further than can be described in a thousand words. Whoever practices charity t is a torch bearer, is a warrior of light who with his light brings countless other torches to enflame stormily, thus making the world brighter by giving her a friendly enlighted note ....... Yes, they say, travelling waves of every love action oscillate down to the shores of eternity, to Vaikuntha, and return back from there as a thousand-fold blessing to us, as a good karma ...... retribution causality positively rewarded ..... so if you want to live and die happily, oh friend, then give every day a good deed that you may encounter once again welcoming!
Dear readers, here at the end of my little remarks about the Beatles, George Harrison, spirituality, charity and the warrior of light, to finish I would like to give the, by me, revered Eugen Drewermann a chance to speak again, just because he, along with all masters, has touched my heart most at the last time, by his thoughts about the ratio of men to God, to spirituality, to one's neighbor, to love and to serve. He always flows everything in the enclosing ocean of charity love, in attention, devotion and sacrifice for the greater goal.
Discovery of Love
Every real love consists in the discovery that the other just embodies what one is missing in his own heart. In any real love, the other appears as a personificated incarnation of just that hollow place of longing and desire, which opens in our own heart, and this empty space itself seems like something ordered by God himself. In love, the other appears as living dream reality of lifelong search and journeying. In other words, love is made entirely in the sense that one would have to cut the other out of the own ribs literally when he didn't exist.
At the same time, love is a deep gratitude to the "fate" of God. Because the other, if one is moved by love for him, comes in your own life with the power of a fateful coincidence, he meets you like sent from God. You had not chosen him, but at this point of highest happiness you only can feel clearer, than ever in the whole life, a quiet leadership, a hidden provision that one cannot avoid, if you won't contravene yourself completely ....... Maybe love could ever be described as an experience that creates the feeling of together dipping irrevocably into a new form of existence, in which there is no feeling, no thought, no more desire that wouldn't arise from this comprehensive experience space of an essential unity and reciprocal dependence – a kind of new birth, similar to the fusion of two cells at the beginning of individual life.
In any case, love entails to to like and want the essence of the other as a whole, far more than already identified individually - the other may to some extent not be otherwise, than he is. In himself, he is a perfect work of art, where nothing needs to be added or taken away – this experience apparently causes again and again that everything in the soul of a lover spontaneously wants respond to the beauty of the self and the beloved in the way of poetry and literature, and it always makes from love a religious experience of absolute gratitude for the existence and the nature of the other. "(from Eugen Drewermann / Times of Love / Psychoanalysis and Moral Theology, vol 2, 26)
All you need is love
Even when I at heart join the ideas of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, I want to say, Eugen Drewermann opened my heart for the view and for the love of neighbour, in fact it is something like a revelation to me, because the theory of bhakti-vedanta develops to action in Eugene Drewermann. I even go so far as to say, Eugen Drewermann realises and practices what Srila Prabhupada tried to teach us .....
Because if people would live as he lead the way, we would act truthfully in the spirit of Christ, of Buddha and in the spirit of God – Krishna.
This in turn would give the world the critical effort it would need to fall back into balance, out of which she has come, daily further away. We would live an environmentally equitable life, would behave and live more faced towards God and nature, and would heal the world and its people from their delusion of self-forgetfulness and the exploitative power of thought, which means that we turn a paradise into a spiritual desert .
That is why I call to practice this effort in ourselves first before we think of an external effect. Great masters, great artists and people like you and me are called to transform the world for the better, by following the path of the wise and beginning to do good to themselves and others.
The fool is also given two eyes,(Bhartrihari Böthling 550)
which shiningly lead him to the holy life.
They teach him: not stray from the path of virtue
and train the thoughts by the Veda.
Is he ours or is he a stranger to us
would ask the mentally limited herd. Who looks further accepts as relationship all citizens of this fertile soil.
Charity precisely begins in love of neighbour, in our attitude towards others, in our willingness to reach out to others, listen to them, get involved with them and help them if necessary, as it is in our power. I mean, be an island for yourself first, then you are able to grant others protection on your island, to feed them with the knowledge that helped yourself to enlightenment, to then be who you wanted to be.!
Quite a few people complain and say the world fails to recognize me; But may he say that he knows himself? When you don't now yourself, by what can you see my misunderstanding? Who wants to be not mistaken, first has to recognize himself.(Friedrich Rückert / The Wisdom of the Brahmins)
The Mantra is your Yantra
I would like to recall at this point once again, that I owe all my thinking, acting, doing, and working to my spiritual master, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, who, with the torch of knowledge, opened my eyes to the wonderful world of gravity, in whose heart the divine spark shines. Anything that makes me now, I've been experienced through the great mercy and care of this wise scholarly yogi. Just as at one time master Yoda taught his students to trust the pure and good, to use the power of the noble spirit as sword, and to act with the sign of distinction against the dark side of power, it was Swami Bhaktivedanta who taught us the loving service of Lord Vishnu Hari Krishna. His students owe him alone their basic trust in God, the Lord of many names, names and religions.
That's why I give the old master a chance to speak himself again, who explained, in an interview with John Lennon and George Harrison in 1969, the importance of the ancient Vedic Maha Mantra for the then young people:
Srila Prabhupada: There is a version by Ramanujacarya. Ramanujacarya, he was a great acarya of this Vaisnava sampradaya. His spiritual master gave him mantra: "My dear boy, you chant this mantra silently. Nobody can hear. It is very..." So then he asked, "What is the effect of this mantra?" He said, "By chanting this mantra, by meditation, you'll get liberation."
So he immediately went out and in a public, big meeting he said that "You chant this mantra. You'll be all liberated." (laughter) So he came back to his spiritual master, and his spiritual master was very angry that "I told you that you should chant silently." He said, "Yes, I have committed offense. So whatever punishment you like, you can give me. But because you told me that this mantra will liberate, I have given it publicly. Let everyone hear and be liberated. Let me go to hell. I don't mind. I have disobeyed your order. Let me go to hell. I am prepared. But by this chanting mantra, if anyone is liberated, let it be publicly distributed." His spiritual master embraced him: "You are greater than me."
You see? So if a mantra has so power, why it should be secret? It should be distributed. People are suffering. So Caitanya Mahaprabhu said, "Chant this Hare Krsna mantra. Anyone who will hear... Even the birds and beasts will hear and they will be liberated." That's all.
Yoko Ono: If Hare Krsna is such a strong, powerful mantra, is there any reason to chant anything else? For instance, you talked about songs and many different mantras. Is there any point in chanting other songs or mantra?
Srila Prabhupada: No, no. These mantras are also... But Hare Krsna mantra is specially recommended for this age. And the Vedic mantras, they are also chanted, I told you, with musical, tampura, and they sit down and chant. Narada Muni, he's chanting always. So chanting through musical instruments, mantras, it is not new introduction. It is from time immemorial. And Hare Krsna mantra, especially in this age, that is recommended in many Vedic literature, Brahmanda Purana, Kali-santarana Upanisad, Agni Purana, like that.
And apart from the statement in the Vedic literature, Lord Caitanya Himself, He preached this mantra. Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna... And people, public, followed Him. Yes. [break] So anything... Just like a scientist. When he discovers something, it becomes a public property. People may take advantage of it. Similarly, if mantra has got potency, all people should take advantage of it. Why it should be secret?
[...] So our, this Vaisnava philosophy is to follow the great personality, just like Krsna or Caitanya Mahaprabhu or acaryas of His succession, to take shelter of authority and follow. That is recommended in Vedas, that you follow great authorities. That will take you to the ultimate goal.
This was an excerpt from the small but fine essay, "In search of Liberation," in which A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami enlightens the Beatles about the meaning of life. His original books on the subject of bhakti-yoga can be found at www.prabhupada-books.de.
May this sacred knowledge refresh all who are thirsting for a sip from the cup of sanatan-dharma-mandira!
(Beatles "Real Love" at YouTube)
By the queue of the brahmin
Only when I fall in prayer or meditation, mantra, fully absorbed in God – Krishna, so that He can work through me, the prayer reaches its magic and power. What is affirmed there, then becomes beneficial development and fulfillment. The divine guidance in life can't be explained scientifically likea natural event. But this isn't necessary, because who looks deeper, knows that this leadership is there and continually works and makes sure that, despite all the stupidities of the humans, development of life and soul leads upward, slowly but surely, leads skyward ..... towards the divine eternal consciousness.
The wisdom of the Brahmins tell us ...... God is not to be found but only to lose, because God is God inside us. Unfortunately we see too much, just to see the One. We are attached on too much to be attached on the One. We aspire to much, just to seek the One. And we imagine too much and therefore can't form the One in us. And remember, says the brahmin also .... you only have a certain good day's work, a measured amount of work and suffering, a certain cup full of tears. Is he drunk, you have found the real source of happiness in you, then you return to the one who dries all tears from your eyes.
In George we trust
This was what George Harrison wanted to say, to testify in his song ...." Isn't it a pity ", on which we want to dwell in the next chapter. By the queue of the brahmin ..... I promise you ...... the real draft, the big secret in life of Harigeorgeson is still ahead of us.
That's what the second volume of my trilogy "Something Forever - from Hippie to Happy 1970 to 1974," exciting years of development and self-organization ....... which still has in store plenty of surprises and unbelievable things from the life of George Harrison for his fans.
In this sense ... maybe ... soon in your theater ...
Yours sincerely
A. H. Manusya / aka Acchedya das
