George Harrison Said the Press Tainted the Word ‘Guru’
George Harrison said the press tainted the word “guru.” They and their readers didn’t understand spirituality. However, it didn’t help that there were some posers in all religious communities.
George Harrison had many gurus in his life
A couple of things catapulted George into spirituality. First, he took LSD, which opened his mind to God-consciousness. Next, he heard Ravi Shankar’s music. Then, he met Shankar and started learning about Indian music and reading spiritual texts.
Once George started learning more, he didn’t look back. Shankar taught him that God is sound and that if he played the right notes, he’d connect with the almighty. He became George’s musical guru, but he was also instrumental in the Beatle’s spiritual journey.
Then, in the late 1960s, George found another guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who later became The Beatles’ spiritual adviser. The guru taught the band how to meditate and chant.
Next, and most importantly, George became a student of sorts of the Hare Krishna Movement’s guru, Bhaktivedanta Swami, a.k.a. Prabhupada. George helped Prabhupada in whichever way he could. He even published the guru’s book.
By 1970, George had learned the essentials of spirituality without having ever joined any religious organization. He knew his true self, how to play music to God, chant, meditate, and was as God-conscious as possible. George had a lot to be thankful for, and he paid homage to his gurus, some of which he only learned from through religious texts, in his song “My Sweet Lord.”
George Harrison said the press ruined the word ‘guru’
The former Beatle owed his entire spiritual journey to the gurus who helped him along the way. However, as usual, the press ruined it. During a 1986 interview on the Today Show, a reporter asked if spirituality still had the same form in his life as it did during the 1960s.
George replied it was “necessary and important” what happened in the world of spirituality in the 1960s. All you need is a good teacher.
“If you want to learn how to be a yogi or how to meditate or whatever, then you need an instructor,” George said. “Somebody who knows that, and, unfortunately the word ‘guru’ became a bit of a joke because with the way the press saw them as silly old fellows like Maharishi with his long hair and things like that.”
George said that the press also discredited gurus because there were tons of phonies out there. “There were a lot of bogeys,” George said. “As there are yogis, there’s also bogeys. Without mentioning names, there’s been quite an influx of them over the years into America.
“Somebody once said, ‘You have to be the wise ant that crawls through the grains of sand and finds the grains of sugar.’ And so, each person has to find for himself a way for inner realization. I still believe that the only reason we’re on this planet, it’s like going to school again, each soul is potentially divine, and the goal is to manifest that divinity. Everything else is secondary.”
The spiritual Beatle said people won’t be spiritual because they get hung up on words
Despite his many efforts to get youth interested in spirituality, George realized that people were too ignorant to be religious. In 1979, George told Rolling Stone, “It’s ignorance,” George said. “They say ignorance is bliss, but bliss is not ignorance…”
Besides fear of the unknown, George also said that people were always hung up by spiritual terms, not just “guru.”
During an interview with Barry Miles for International Times (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George said that eventually the meaning of the word “Krishna” would fade away.
George said it was because people “get hung up on the meaning of the word rather than the sound of the word.”
On The Frost Programme in 1967 (per George Harrison on George Harrison), George claimed that people also used the word “mystic” without truly knowing what it meant. “There’s nothing mystic about mystic, you know, it’s just a word that people have invented because they don’t understand it.”
Ultimately, George came to terms with the fact that many people wouldn’t understand spirituality. They twisted and warped words or made up terms that didn’t accurately reflect it. They even questioned whether his own faith was legitimate. George had nothing to prove.
