"Keep Away From Those Nightclubs And Meditate" – George Harrison Talks
It's 40 years since the Beatles first headed off to Rishikesh, India, to study Transcendental Meditation with the late Maharishi Makesh Yogi. Not long before that trip, George Harrison held forth on drugs, spirituality, and Stockhausen in a long interview with International Times. Here's a sample of his conversation with IT's Miles. Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages
"I'm a person who's trying to live within divine law, to the best, and it's very hard because it's self-discipline, because the more you realize, the more you've got to get yourself straight, so it's hard, you know. I'm trying, and there are a lot of people who are trying, even people who are not conscious that they are doing it, but they are really... doing things for the good, or just to be happy or whatever. But then there's those other people, but you've got to have them to have this...
"I'm not a part of anything in particular, because it's not really 1967 and it's not half-past eight, though that's what people have said it is. So it's just a little bit of time out of the cycle. There's this Indian fellow who worked out a cycle like the idea of Stone Age, Bronze Age, only he did it on an Indian one. The cycle goes from nothing until now and 20th century and then on and right round the cycle until the people are really grooving and then it just sinks back into ignorance until it gets back into the beginning again. So the 20th century is a fraction of that cycle, and how many of those cycles has it done yet? It's done as many as you think and all these times its been through exactly the same things, and it'll be this again. Only be a few million million years and it'll be exactly the same thing going on, only with other people doing it... I am part of the cycle, rebirth death, rebirth, death, rebirth, death. Some of the readers will know exactly what I mean, the ones who believe in reincarnation. It's pointless me trying to explain things like rebirth and death because I've just accepted that, you know, I can leave it."
"Nobody can become a drug addict if they're hip. Because it's obvious that if you're hip, then you've got to make it. The buzz of all buzzes – which is the thing that is God – you've got to be straight to get it. I'm sorry to tell you... you can get it better or more if you're straight, because you can only get it to a degree. You know, even if you get it, you only get it however long your pill lasts. So the thing is, if you really want to get it permanently, you have got to do it, you know...Be healthy, don't eat meat, keep away from those nightclubs and meditate."
***
"Stockhausen and all the others, they're just trying to take you a bit further out or in, further in, to yourself. The way out is in. It's since the newspapers started the drug craze. That's it, you see, isn't that a bizarre scene? I mean, you're the only paper that can say this because you're the only honest paper, really, when you get down to it. What I mean is, that thing about the sales, that's all they're concerned with how many... all this bulls**t on the front page, how many papers we've sold today, and we're selling more than the Daily Express, hup yer. All their silly little games, all that crap. And another thing they always saying, "The Daily Mirror carried 13,000 inches of advertising"--and f**k all to read, just a lot of s**t.
"But this is the great thing. When you've got yourself to a point where you've realized certain things about life and the world and everything like that, then you know that none of that can affect you at all because you know it's the same thing now with those newspaper people--they were always writing all that, just making it up. The thing is we know what the scene is, and we know them, they're all those little fellows. They'd all really like to be happy and they try to be happy but they're in a nasty little organization and it's great, really. The whole thing of hate, anybody who hates, I feel sorry for them, you know, that they're in that position and the newspapers are like that. I feel we got away from the point, whatever it was. The point was, you can print your paper [International Times], [and] you know that they can't touch you because you know more than them and its obvious because they'd be the ones to puzzle about it. On our side of the fence there's no puzzling to it. We know what it is."
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