A Former Apple Employee and Friend Said George Harrison Thought He Was Indian in a Past Life
A former Apple employee and friend claimed that George Harrison thought he was Indian in a past life. The former Beatle fell in love with the country’s culture in the mid-1960s. He loved that the old traditions remained and that spirituality ruled.
A former Apple employee said George Harrison believed he was Indian in a past life
In George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door, Graeme Thomson wrote that “physically, spiritually and emotionally,” George found very little of himself in his home city of Liverpool. After finding spirituality in the mid-1960s, George had little ties to much else. His real home wasn’t Liverpool, but anywhere he could connect with God.
Thomson wrote that George’s “eternal spirit, born and reborn over and over again, simply re-entered ‘a body’ at that particular place and that time.”
“It was quite clear to me that he believed that in a prior life he was Indian,” said Chris O’Dell, a former Apple employee who later became a close friend and lived at Friar Park with the Harrisons in the early 1970s.
George speaks of being far from home in his song “World of Stone,” singing of being “such a long, long way from home.”
George became Indian in every sense
Once George started his spiritual journey, he traveled to India as soon as possible to experience the culture firsthand. It was a life-changing experience.
George kept going to India. In 1976, he told India Today that he loved the country because the “ancient traditions remain.”
“It’s not mechanical and material like the West. The Gurus and masters are here and it’s possible to raise your God-consciousness,” George said. However, George said the tragedy was Indian youth.
“When you have such a fascinating culture yourself, why turn to the West? If the “love generation” was a Western fad, your Anglicization is a far more dangerous permanent sickness. Don’t re-discover Indian culture through the Beatles when it’s all around you. Somebody here was telling me that kids eat beef steak. If that’s westernization, I think I’ll stay here.”
In 1967, George told The International Times (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters) that he didn’t have to communicate with people in India. Everyone just understood each other on a cosmic level. There was also a humbleness there.
The Beatle preferred Indian music to any other form of music
George didn’t just love India as a country; he listened to Indian music more than any other form, even though he knew it didn’t fit in in the West.
According to Joshua M. Greene’s Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, music journalist, Ray Coleman asked George about his love of Indian music. “I don’t fancy myself as the next Ravi Shankar,” George said, “but I still prefer Indian music to any other form of music. It has taken over 100 percent in my musical life. . . . Just learning the sitar has inspired me.”
“You know how God is a, sort of, untouchable thing?” George asked. “Well, that’s how it is with Indian music. It’s a very spiritual thing, so subtle and related to philosophy and life. It’s not easy to understand the music at first, but it’s beautiful when you get it.”
Without Indian music, George wouldn’t have had his distinct slide guitar sound. Nor would he have been able to connect to God through notes as beautifully.
George said listening to Indian music for the first time felt like it was “calling him back to a place he already knew.” Maybe that’s because George had been Indian in his past life. Fortunately, George made it to India one last time before he went to the spiritual realm. He bathed in the Ganges River like so many before him.
