George Harrison Always Made Sure to Keep His Family’s Spiritual Aim True

George Harrison became spiritual after hitting a wall in the mid-1960s. Nothing impressed him, and he’d become disenchanted with fame. Taking LSD had opened a door to God-consciousness, but the Beatle didn’t know what to do next. Thankfully, he met his musical guru, Ravi Shankar, who taught him sitar and Hinduism.

George became more and more spiritual with every meditation and chanting session. Although, those weren’t the only techniques he used to remain close to God. Shankar taught him that “God is sound,” so every time he played a note, he communicated with his maker. George even got a direct experience with God through gardening.

As George traveled on his spiritual path, he ensured his family’s spiritual aim remained true. He didn’t want them to get lost along the way.

George Harrison became spiritual after hitting a wall

In the mid-1960s, George had become disenchanted with many things, including fame. Being a Beatle had essentially extinguished the light inside him. He was bored but had recently taken LSD with John Lennon too. The hallucinogen had opened a door to an unknown place.

In 1982, George told a leader in the Hare Krishna movement, Mukunda Goswami (per the Guardian), “It was like reaching the top of a wall and then looking over and seeing that there’s so much more on the other side. So I felt it was part of my duty to say, ‘Oh, OK, maybe you are thinking this is all you need – to be rich and famous – but actually it isn’t.'”

Thankfully, George met Ravi Shankar, who gave him religious texts and his first sitar lessons. The legendary sitar player was the first person that wowed him. According to Quartz India, George said, “Ravi was my link into the Vedic world. Ravi plugged me into the whole of reality.”

In 1967, George purchased an album of mantras by Swami A. C. Bhaktivedanta. He played it on the boat he and John sailed on through the Greek Islands. They chanted the mantras for hours until their jaws ached. Shortly after, George traveled to San Francisco’s capitol of love, Haight-Ashbury, hoping to find liked-minded spiritualists. He was dismayed by what he saw; hypocritical hippies who were bums.

However, San Francisco did have what George was looking for; he just didn’t know it. There was a Hare Krishna Temple in Haight-Ashbury. The temple housed devotees of Bhaktivedanta Swami, a.k.a. Prabhupada, whose album George and John had listened to in the Greek Islands.

Then, George heard Maharishi Mahesh Yogi speak. The Beatles then attended the guru’s retreat at his ashram in Rishikesh in 1968.

George learned that meditation beckoned God-consciousness just as much as chanting mantras. Later, a devotee named Shyamsundar, who was part of the Haight-Ashbury temple, crashed The Beatles’ Christmas party in 1969.

George became friendly with him, and later met the other members of the temple. The Beatle helped them form their temple in London. He also exposed their cause to the world by producing an album for them called The Radha Krishna Temple.

George became close friends with some of the movement’s famous gurus and made life-long friends with Shyamsundar and others.

George kept his family’s spiritual aim true

The former Beatle’s spirituality came between him and his first wife, Pattie Boyd, but that wasn’t the case in his second marriage to Olivia Arias. She was just as spiritual as her soon-to-be husband. When they started dating, George saw that she was reading many of the spiritual texts he’d already read.

In Martin Scorsese’s documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Olivia said, “He was approving of my journey. He, I think, considered himself a bit of an expert on spiritual matters. We had our differences. I might have done a different technique than he did. But we both had the same goal, and I think that was really the key to everything in our lives.”

Throughout the Harrisons’ 30 years together, “George was relentless at keeping our spiritual aim true,” Olivia wrote in her forward in the reissue of her husband’s 1980 memoir, I Me Mine. “We were only humans walking a long road towards our shared goal of enlightenment and I, for one, welcomed any reminders.

“In the course of a day I might have said, ‘Oh, your bit of the garden looks great,’ to which he would reply, ‘It’s not my garden, Liv.’ It was his way of reminding himself and me that we are pure Spirit…”

The former Beatle told his family to live in the here and now

George also made sure to tell his son, Dhani, about spirituality. He didn’t hold back from telling Dhani those things when he was a kid.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Olivia said she’s “constantly surprised” to hear Dhani talk about things she didn’t know George had told him.

“Whether it was something for history’s sake, or a mantra, or some lesson, I thought, he didn’t wait until (Dhani) was 30 or 40,” Olivia said. “That’s a real lesson, too. Why do we hold back? Why are we so constrained by time? George didn’t live like that. Maybe he was prescient. Maybe he knew.”

George didn’t hold back on anything. He said everything he wanted to say and lived in the here and now.

“One of his favorite things to say was, ‘Be here now,'” Olivia told the LA Times. “Sometimes he and Dhani would be talking and Dhani would ask, ‘Well what if this happens?’ or ‘What if that happens?’ George would say, ‘Be here now. Be here now.'”

George benefited by being spiritual, but his spirituality also helped his family. He guided them like a yogi, and he certainly had a yogi’s death.