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Donovan was there during The Beatles‘ trip to India. He and the Fab Four were having the sort of heady conversation people should have at a spiritual retreat. Donovan and the Fab Four had some very similar opinions.

Donovan and The Beatles discussed ‘the inner world’ in India

During a 2013 interview with Performing Songwriter, the “Sunshine Superman” singer explained how he became interested in meditation. “Reading Jack Kerouac and hearing the word ‘Zen’ and going on to Buddhism, then rediscovering the Eastern philosophies and the word’ meditation,’ I realized that there was an actual technique for finding the inner world that we’d lost in the West.”

The “Hurdy Gurdy Man” star felt that the world needed more spirituality. “The great teachers — Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Campbell — spoke of being able to enter the inner world, where all things come from and all things return,” he said. “Not a religion. The Beatles and I sat around talking about this.” Notably, references to spirituality can be found in some of Donovan’s most famous songs, such as “Atlantis,” “Season of the Witch,” and “Wear Your Love Like Heaven.”

In India, Donovan was thinking politics are useless

Donovan explained some of the other things he discussed with The Beatles. “Protest in the streets started to become ineffective,” he said. “I thought, ‘There is no way we’re going to change society by just changing the rider of the same wild horse.’

Donovan said something that sounded like some lyrics from The Beatles’ “Revolution.” “It’s all very well to want to change the world with a revolution, and many men and women have died for the cause,” he said. “But the armed struggle is wrong. It became clear to me and others that the true change of humanity’s madness, sickness, and suffering was going to be far deeper in the human psyche.”

1 of The Beatles rejected violence to activists’ faces

The book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono features an interview from 1980. In it, the “Imagine” singer stood by the lyrics of “Revolution.” He recalled speaking with the activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. They wanted John and Yoko to join them on a mission to exact political violence at the Republican National Convention. The couple were not pleased with this idea.

John felt that overthrowing the government would either lead to the installation of a left-wing despot or a right-wing despot. The “Nobody Told Me” singer dismissed both sides of that coin. He said that it wasn’t any good to tear down an existing system without a plan. He wasn’t interested in protesting unless he was handing out flowers. John emphasized that he believed in the message of “Give Peace a Chance.”

John’s most famous political song is “Imagine.” That track does ask listeners to yearn for a different political order. However, John doesn’t encourage violence with the song. On the contrary, he asks his listeners to think of a world where violence would be obsolete. While the track isn’t religious, it encourages a form of manifesting.

Donovan said he and The Beatles diagnosed the ills of the world. None of them were interested in solving those ills with violence.

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