George Harrison Said Recording and Performing Didn’t Give Him a Buzzing Blissful Experience
George Harrison said he didn’t get a buzzing blissful experience while recording and performing. Spiritual matters gave him ultimate bliss.
George Harrison began his spiritual journey in the mid-1960s
In 1965, George started realizing something was missing from his otherwise fortunate life. He wanted answers to big questions, and his Catholic upbringing didn’t help him. George also wanted to meet someone who impressed him.
Thankfully, George met legendary sitarist Ravi Shankar and immediately began receiving sitar lessons from him. The legend taught the Beatle that “God is sound,” which intrigued the Beatle. George was hooked and felt he could’ve dropped everything in his life to learn more from his teacher.
George soon traveled to India and read many religious texts. When he arrived back in London, everything that The Beatles were doing hardly impressed George. He added images of revered gurus to the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as clues to his spirituality. He added religious themes to his songs.
Eventually, spirituality was more important to George than music.
George said he didn’t get a buzzing blissful experience from recording and performing
During a 1997 interview with VH1 (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George explained that fame isn’t everything.
“I think fame is a good thing in terms of giving you heightened experience, or at least more experience, but then it’s what you do with that, or what that uncovers,” George said. “I think for me, you know, as I say, I realized I just want more—this isn’t it. This isn’t it.
“Fame is not the goal, money—although money’s nice to have, it can buy you a bit of freedom, you can go to the Bahamas when you want—but it doesn’t … it’s not the answer. The answer is how to get peace of mind and how to be happy.
“That’s really what we’re supposed to be here for, and the difficult thing is that we all go through our lives and through our days, and we don’t experience bliss—and it’s a very subtle thing to experience that, and to know how to do that is not just something you stumble across. You’ve got to search for it.”
George also said he didn’t get a buzzing blissful experience recording and performing.
“Well, we had happiness at times but not the kind of bliss I mean, where like every atom of your body is just buzzing, you know,” he said. “Because, again, it’s beyond the mind. It’s when there’s no thought involved. It’s a pretty tricky thing to try get to that stage because it means controlling the mind and being able to transcend the relative states of consciousness: waking, sleeping, dreaming—which is all we really know.
“But there is another state that goes beyond all that, and it’s in that state—that’s where the bliss and the knowledge that’s available is.”
The former Beatle said he got a buzzing experience from God
George told Barry Miles (per George Harrison on George Harrison) that he got a buzzing experience from chanting, which connected him to God.
“These vibrations that you get through Yoga, Cosmic chants and things like that, I mean it’s such a buzz, it buzzes you out of everywhere,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with pills or anything like that. It’s just in your own head, the realisation, it’s such a buzz, it buzzes you tight into the astral plane…
“The buzz of all buzzes which is the thing that is God.”
George finally ascended to the astral plane after he died in 2001.
