Beatles in India: The Retreat That Reverberates Across the Universe

 

Forty five years ago, the Beatles were settling into the ashram of their new guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in Rishikesh, India. The news coverage was nonstop and global, as it had been six months earlier when the lads first met Maharishi and became public advocates for his Transcendental Meditation technique.
It would have been easy at the time to dismiss the media frenzy as just another pop culture craze. But reporters knew this was different. Why would four young, bright, fun-loving youngsters, wealthy beyond imagining, able to go anywhere and do anything, choose to hunker down in an austere, vegetarian, non-air-conditioned compound in the Himalayan foothills and spend large chunks of time each day with their eyes closed? What is this meditation thing? What could a backward, impoverished country, only two decades removed from imperial rule, have to offer people who seemed to have everything a human being could want?
Questions like those turned what might have been a brief media burst into a watershed moment in cultural history. I opened American Veda, my book about the impact of Indian spirituality on the U.S., by calling the Beatles' expedition "the most momentous spiritual retreat since Jesus spent those forty days in the wilderness." Since publication, not one person has argued with that assertion. It was as though the earth tilted on its axis in February, 1968, making ancient Eastern teachings flow more easily and quickly to the West. The result would impact healthcare, psychology, neuroscience, and especially the way we understand and engage our spirituality.
In retrospect, the meeting of the Fab Four and the teacher who will probably always be known as "The Beatles' Guru" seems as karmically destined as that of Bill and Hillary or Lewis and Clark. ike many in the counterculture of which they had become de facto leaders, the band members had come to see that psychedelic drugs like LSD could open the door to higher consciousness but they did not let you stay there, and, in the bargain, came with serious risks. The search was on for safe, natural ways to expand the mind and attain inner peace and unified awareness. The East seemed to have answers, and all signs pointed to something called meditation. George Harrison, having spent time in India studying sitar with Ravi Shankar and reading spiritual literature, was among the ripest candidates.
For his part, Maharishi had been circling the globe for nearly a decade, slowly attracting students, mostly among respectable middle-aged people with a metaphysical bent. His laser-like focus on meditation, and his skill in presenting a systematic, universal practice that was suitable for both secular self-improvement and spiritual enlightenment, were ideally suited for the rational, pragmatic West. When, in 1965, college students began to take up TM, word spread quickly and meditation clubs popped up on campuses. By August of 1967, when Maharishi lectured at the London Hilton, it was only natural that Pattie Boyd Harrison would hear about it and lead her husband and his mates to the jam-packed hotel ballroom.
The Beatles took to meditation like they had taken to Chuck Berry and Little Richard. John and George were especially enthusiastic (hear David Frost's interview with them). Young people everywhere, always eager to emulate their musical heroes, flooded TM centers. The press coverage was remarkable for its shortage of cynicism. It featured parents and respected cultural leaders who were impressed by the life changes they observed in the meditating youth. As a result, scientists, prodded by Maharishi, who had majored in physics, started doing rigorous research on the effects of the practice.
Before long, physicians and therapists were recommending meditation to stressed-out grownups. To meet the burgeoning demand, Maharishi trained a cadre of teachers, essentially democratizing what had long been an esoteric practice available only to an elite few, much as Henry Ford had democratized automobiles. Now, hundreds of studies later, meditation and yoga are as mainstream as aerobics and vitamins.
Would this have happened if the Beatles had never gone to India? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly not as quickly. That's not just my assessment. Life magazine at the time dubbed 1968 "The Year of the Guru," and when Newsweek commemorated that seminal year four decades later, one article was titled "What the Beatles Gave Science." The author, Sharon Begley, chose the topic because the lads' trip to India "popularized the notion that the spiritual East has something to teach the rational West."
That's reason enough to remember that eventful journey. If you need another one, go listen to The White Album. Almost all the songs on that double record were written or conceived in the ashram on the Ganges.

Philip Goldberg

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com