George Harrison: Becoming The Beatles Was Our Destiny
George Harrison claimed The Beatles formed because it was their destiny. Everything had been pre-determined for them because of something they did in their past lives. The spiritual Beatle believed in reincarnation and karma.
The spiritualist believed in reincarnation
As someone who followed Hinduism dedicatedly (although his wife, Olivia, claims he never belonged to any spiritual organization), George believed in reincarnation and karma. In his memoir, I Me Mine, he explained, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” which is karma. You’ll be reincarnated if you do something in a past life that causes ripples. Then, your soul will be forced to walk the Earth over and over until you set things right.
In 1967, on The Frost Programme (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), he explained, “I believe in re-birth, and then you come back and go through more experience, and you die and you come back again and you keep coming back until you’ve got it straight. That’s how I see it.”
In his memoir, George explained you don’t want to create significant reactions, like being in The Beatles, because “everything comes bouncing back and ties you up forever, or for as long as it takes to untie it.”
However, he also said that he and his bandmates must have done something in their past lives to have been able to form the group in this lifetime.
George Harrison said becoming The Beatles was his and his bandmate’s destiny
In a video for Anthology 3, one of the albums in The Beatles Anthology, George tried to explain what it was like being with The Beatles. It was hard to imagine, let alone describe. He and his bandmates experienced something that has never happened to anyone else.
The only way George could explain it was through spirituality, which had been a driving force in his life since the mid-1960s. He claimed becoming The Beatles was their destiny, which had been pre-determined by something they’d done in their past lives.
George said, “‘What was it like to Beatle?’ You know, well, who knows? I mean, what’s it like not to be one, you know? We only know what we have done, and we are what we’ve done, and that was-seems to have been the destiny pre-determined for us, probably by something we did in the past.
“[Recites Bob Dylan’s ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’] ‘Look out kid, it’s something you did/ God knows when but you’re doing it again.’ It’s the law of karma, and we just did what we did. We did good, and we did bad, and we got gain, and we got loss. But it was all a sort of destiny, really. That’s all we know.”
George said being with The Beatles was like having a ‘previous incarnation’
During a 1987 interview with Entertainment Tonight, George said being with The Beatles was like having a “previous incarnation.”
“You talk about them as if they’re someone else,” Entertainment Tonight said. “They are,” George replied. “That was you,” the interviewer added. “Yeah, I suppose it was [laughs],” George said. “But it’s so long ago. You know, it’s like a previous incarnation.”
George felt that way because he saw Beatle George as someone else. According to Rolling Stone, George once said, “The Beatles exist apart from myself. I am not really Beatle George. Beatle George is like a suit or shirt that I once wore on occasion, and until the end of my life people may see that shirt and mistake it for me. I play a little guitar, write a few tunes, make a few movies, but none of that’s really me. The real me is something else.”
Whatever George and The Beatles did in their past lives, it must’ve been good. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have come back to give us great music. They returned and made things right, as George said.
