George Harrison’s Wife, Olivia, Said He Had the Ability to See the ‘True Person Inside the Bodily Form’
George Harrison was a gifted people reader, but his abilities were more profound than that. His wife, Olivia, said he could “see” the “true person inside the bodily form.”
George had seen and done everything under the sun as a rock star. He’d come across every sort of person and knew how to deal with them. George could decipher a person’s true personality, even if that person didn’t know, just by looking at them. It was a gift.
George Harrison could see the ‘true person inside the bodily form’
In her forward in Harrison, George’s wife, Olivia, wrote about her husband’s personality.
She wrote, “The power of his convictions was as strong as a hundred men, all right… All senses were satisfied as incense blew in the morning breeze, mingling with the steam from hot cups of tea. If he stepped out the door for a breath of morning air, he always returned with a flower or leaf that would have gone unnoticed by everyone else, in the same way many among us would have gone unnoticed were it not for his ability to ‘see’ the true person inside the bodily form.
“He always went straight to the heart of a person, and that ability extended to any subject or matter or work before him. His ability to penetrate to the core gave him, as he put it, ‘a different slant, a different patter,’ than anyone I ever knew.”
It was as if George had X-ray-like vision and could scan a person for who they were, even if they didn’t know themselves.
Why was George Harrison so good at reading people?
Many people think George was the “quiet Beatle,” but he wasn’t. He was many things; serious, funny, loud, talkative, and everything else. However, many saw him as quiet because George was calculating; he thought before speaking. When he did speak, something clever, intelligent, or humorous always came out.
He was direct and made eye contact. All of this meant he was confident and had nothing to hide. George was authentic in everything he did. Being rock solid about his personality allowed him to look inside others. But where did all the confidence come from?
George’s personality stemmed from what his parents taught him during childhood. He was the youngest of four. His parents gave him unconditional love. Harold Harrison taught his children good work ethics and to be valuable members of society.
Meanwhile, even though the Harrisons didn’t have much money, Louise Harrison always “made sure we knew we weren’t peasants, that we came from educated stock and had great potential in life,” George’s sister, Louise, told Joshua M. Greene in Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison. “She taught us to think, to question things, to always be kind, never kowtow to big shots or lord over the lowly.
“We were never to cringe in fear but neither were we to become bullies toward anyone. And we took care of one another. If there was only one apple, we’d each get a quarter.”
Louise instilled a thirst for knowledge in George. Maybe that’s why she allowed him to get a guitar and encouraged him to practice so much. However, that thirst for knowledge never went away. Even when he had everything in the palm of his hand as a rock star, George still felt incomplete. He found some of the answers he sought during his life-long spiritual journey.
He believed one had to meditate to find their true self. “Because the thing is, your true self isn’t on this level; again, it’s on a subtler level,” George explained on The Frost Programme in 1967 (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters).
“So, whatever the true self is, the way to approach it is through that meditation or some form of yoga. We’re not saying that this meditation is the only answer; it’s obviously not. Yoga incorporates lots of different techniques, but the whole point is that each soul is potentially divine, and yoga is a technique of manifesting that, to arrive at that point that is divine.”
Being spiritual helped George lock into a person’s true self. He’d also been around many people since the start of his career and knew a thing or two about how they worked.
The former Beatle also had a ‘bulls*** meter’
In George Harrison: Behind the Locked Door, The Beatles’ first manager, Allan Williams, gave an account of George’s personality.
“Allan Williams, who booked The Beatles at his Liverpool club the Jacaranda and later took them to Hamburg, describes Harrison as ‘nice to get on with, but he wouldn’t suffer fools,'” Graeme Thomson wrote. “‘He always had a sharp tongue. Crikey, yeah! He didn’t put up with any bulls*******.'”
Thompson continued, “He was capable of a kind of blissful clarity of thought and perception often only accessible to a child, although through his life he frequently struggled to articulate it to his own satisfaction; he also had a similarly childlike knack for uncomfortably straight-talking.
“He seemed to have the truth gene implanted into his DNA long before his consciousness was expanded by drugs and spiritual awareness; fame and adulthood failed to politely polish his rough edges. There was not always a great deal of clear blue water between honesty and plain rudeness. ‘Oh yes, he was pretty blunt!’ says Bramwell [a school friend].”
Friend Jim Keltner said, “He had one of the greatest bulls*** meters of anybody I know. He could see right away something in you that if it wasn’t right, that was it. That always made me feel kinda good, like, you know, he didn’t see my bulls*** [Laughs].”
We’ll never completely know what was inside George that allowed him to see inside everyone else. However, it’s safe to say his thirst for the truth and answers had something to do with it.
