This is a throwback song Paul McCartney wrote in an ashram in Rishikesh, India in 1968. Interestingly, 5 of the performers where also there, including Ringo Starr (briefly), Donovan, Mike Love (of the Beach Boys), and flautist Paul Horn. Singing it together again over 40 years later.
The course was historical in that it brought huge attention to eastern thought and lead to millions learning to meditate. It also lead to a blossoming of music like the White Album, Paul’s Inside series, and Donovan’s Cosmic Wheels and Essence to Essence. One song was later broadcast Across the Universe.
On YouTube Update: unfortunately, the video was taken down.
Found it on Paul McCartney’s channel
Another related song from 1972 is Cosmic Consciousness by the Natural Tendency (Rick Stanley and Paul Fauerso). It’s an old favorite as it beautifully described the then experience.
Davidya
Last Updated on May 20, 2021 by Davidya
The Beatles and Rishikesh… strange bedfellows!
Agreed. And it didn’t sit well either. They ended up balking and leaving.
The ashram site was claimed by the government for a park and the jungle took over. But people kept coming in spite of it’s remoteness. The government has since turned the graffiti-covered ruins into an expensive tourist attraction.
All rather ironic considering the relative brevity of their stay in the life of the ashram and that it was nearly 50 years ago. Yet it’s now called the “Beatles Ashram”.
The east pah! Letting me down again and again.
But you cannot be let down unless your expectations are too high. Who has done that? 🙂
The trick is discrimination. Taking what is valuable and leaving the rest.
I took the words from the second song and talked about the qualities through the varieties of awakening
https://davidya.ca/2016/08/14/cosmic-consciousness/
Paul Mason’s book has a fabulous chapter in there about the Beatles in Rishikesh. His book on Maharishi.
Hi Carl
Yes, it was such a seminal event. They wrote something like 40 songs there. I’ve not seen Paul’s on the subject but have seen several books and interviews on the time.
It was not without controversy and spending hours in the huts meditating could really cut loose some deep dreck.
This brought up a fond memory I have of Paul Horn, who’s playing the flute on stage. He was one of the first people from North America to go to Rishikesh and learn from Maharishi how to teach meditation. He taught my meditation teacher how to meditate. When I met him several years later and told him, he laughed and said, “So that makes me your grandfather!”
Paul Horn went back to India in 1968 to produce a documentary about Maharishi and visited the Taj Mahal where he played the flute, which resulted in one of the iconic albums of that time, “INSIDE”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVBZcrB8MJE
Yes, apparently, he did the recording spontaneously, without permission, and they threw him out. But not before he’d recorded enough for the album. He went on to record a whole series of Inside albums. The last in the golden dome on Fairfield, IA. He was pretty frail by then but still skilled.
(laughs) Good story. Yes, he opened a TM center in Victoria, BC, Canada and at one point, they reached 4% meditating. Later in life, he married Ann Mortifee, a singer and actress I knew from Vancouver.
The original video was taken down but I found a replacement.