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selenakIt's the Rashomon mystery of Beatlelore - what exactly happened in India? Not least because people still come up with new versions, as evidenced by the recent publication of Christopher Isherwoods 60s diaries which contains yet another explanation of the Beatles & the Maharishi incident provided by none other than Mick Jagger (who might or might not have just messed with Isherwood's mind). More about this later. So, why exactly is the India question of such interest? Well, for starters because this was the big transition period from "shaken by Brian Epstein's death but still on excellent terms with each other" - as evidenced by the recording of Hey Bulldog which they did just before leaving for India, with everyone still in great spirits and having fun - to the tension, tension, TENSION filled atmosphere of the White Album recordings which started after their return from India. To quote Geoff Emerick's account of the Beatles back for the first day post-India in the Abbey Road studios:
Our first night back in the studio began, as usual, with small talk and catching up. “So how was India?” I asked.
“India was okay, I guess. . . apart from that nasty little Maharishi,” John replied, venomously. Harrison looked deflated, as if it were a conversation they’d had many times before. With a deep sigh, he tried to calm his agitated bandmate.
“Oh come on, he wasn’t that bad,” he interjected, earning a withering glance. Lennon’s bitterness and anger seemed almost palpable.
Ringo tried deflecting things with a little humor. “It reminded me of a Butlins holiday camp, only the bloody food wasn’t as good,” he said with a wink.
I glanced in Paul’s direction. He was staring straight ahead, expressionless and weary. He didn’t have much to say about India that day, or any other.
I sensed at that moment that something fundamental in them had changed (. . .) The rage that was bubbling inside John was the most obvious sign that something was seriously wrong. There was new tension between John and Paul (. . .) The undercurrents between the four Beatles were so complex at that point, it gave me a headache just thinking about it.
So, in true Agatha Christie mystery fashion, let's hear what the various witnesses have to say for themselves. The background: ever since being given a sitar on the set of Help!, George Harrison had developed an ever greater interest in Indian music, philosophy and history. He befriended Ravi Shankar, and indeed remained committed to Hinduism for the rest of his life. In the summer of 1967, his wife Pattie discovered the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi via a lecture on Transcendental Meditation. George becomes intrigued and takes the other three to another lecture in London. The Maharishi then departs for Wales; the Beatles, plus Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, are interested enough to visit him in Bangor. (Cynthia Lennon was also supposed to come along but literally missed the train since the police took her for a fan and wouldn't let her pass; the symbolism was obvious to her and every subsequent biographer.) Which is where they were when the news of Brian Epstein's death reached them, and this turned out to be crucial. George would have adapted the Maharishi as a guru in any case, but it was the shock of Brian's death that made John go from interested to adopting the Maharishi as his next idol and parent figure, to fully and completely believe the Maharishi would give him the answer to all the big questions. John being John, you can see the inevitable disaster looming right there. As for Paul and Ringo, they seem to have been game in the interest of group unity, plus Paul liked meditation after having been introduced to it and found it very useful; also, there was a sense that it was George's turn in the sun. This was the one period where he unquestioningly took the lead and the other three followed; the formerly (and future) Quiet Beatle happily gave interviews left, right and center about his beliefs and the Maharishi's philosophy. Some of the Beatles' wider circle were less than convinced; Barry Miles pointed out that the Maharishi had some ties to right-wing Indian politicians and was critisized by other Indian sages for making philosophy commercial for the West, leading to John's riposte: "So what if he's commercial? We're the most commercial group on the planet!" Paul's girlfriend Jane Asher also was on the sceptical side whereas Cynthia Lennon was very enthusiastic about the Maharishi because for starters, he forbade the use of LSD and John actually listened. (At that point, John's LSD use had increased to sometimes three times a week, and she hardly could talk to him anymore.) Studying together with the Maharishi in India sounded like an ideal way to repair her marriage. (What she didn't know whas that John had already become emotionally involved with Yoko though the relationship hadn't turned sexual yet; at one point he was considering taking her and Cynthia along to India, but even John realized this really wasn't a good idea, and Cynthia remained unaware of the impending marital implosion for a few more weeks.) In February 1968, the Beatles, their four significant others plus roadies Mal and Neil left for Rishikesh in India.
The Beatles were far from the only promiment westerners studying with the Maharishi, or even the only pop stars; there were also Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Donovan, plus Mia Farrow (just divorced from Frank Sinatra - "a year with Sinatra, no wonder she needed meditation" said Paul) and her sister Prudence. And filmmaker Paul Saltzman, fresh from a romantic break-up as well (if I were Cynthia and Jane, I would have felt someone walking over my grave at that point), whose photos of the occasion are well worth a watch. Meanwhile, have a collage:
The funny thing is, Saltzman describes a spiritual idyll. Everyone is still getting along just fine. Quoth Saltzman, about his first encounter with the Fab Four:
"May I join you?" I asked. "Sure, mate." said John, "Pull up a chair." Then Paul said, "Come and sit here." and pulled a chair over next to him. As soon as I sat down, to my surprise, I heard this voice in my head scream, "Eek! It's the Beatles!" Before I even had time to think, I was surprised by a second voice within me. This one was calm, deep and resonant: "Hey, Paul," it said, "They're just ordinary people like you. Everyone farts, and is afraid in the night." And from that moment on, I never thought of them as the Beatles again, but rather, as four individual human beings. At a pause in their conversation, John turned to me and said, "So, you're from the States, then?" "No, Canada," I answered. He playfully turned to the others, "Ah! He's from one of the Colonies, then." I said, "Yes," as we all laughed. "You're still worshipping Her Highness, then?" "Not personally," I quipped, as we all laughed again, "but we still have her on our money." "Lucky you," joked Ringo, and Paul joined in with another tease. I came back with, "Well, we may have her on our money, but she lives with you." As we continued to roll with the laughter, Cynthia good-humouredly interceded: "Leave the poor chap alone. After all, he's just arrived." "No problem," I responded, and John turned to the others with a final, "Ah! You see, mates, they still have a sense of humour in the Colonies!" and we all laughed again. After that, they just took me into their small family. Later, someone got up and said they were going to meditate. Within moments all were gone except Mal and me. I asked him if they were really as cool as they seemed. "Not always," he answered, "but pretty much."
He does notice some coolness from John towards Cynthia, though, as visible in one of his photos:
(At this point, he was getting daily letters from Yoko and was in the process of making up his mind about her which Cynthia still didn't know.) Other than that, everything seems to be dandy, except for Ringo's difficulty with the Indian food - Ringo had spent long periods in hospital with peritonitis as a child and found the food much too hot for his taste, so he had Mal smuggle baked beans into the camp - and Ringo's wife Maureen hating the flies. (Later, John told a great anecdote of Maureen giving the flies thunderous black looks and them dropping dead on command.) After ten days, Ringo and Maureen caved and returned to England, but Ringo hastened to assure the press upon arrival that the Maharishi was a fine fellow and everything was great. They celebrated George's 25th birthday; he basically was in heaven, still sounding entranced when describing Rishikesh decades later:
Rishikesh is an incredible place, situated where the Ganges flows out of the Himalayas into the plains between the mountains and Delhi. There is quite a hefty flow of water coming out of the Himalayas, and we had to cross the river by a big swing suspension bridge. Maharishi’s place was perched up on a hill overlooking the town and the river. It was comprised of Maharishi’s little bungalow and lots of little huts that he’d had built quickly for the Westerners coming out there, in a compound of about eight or ten acres. There was a kitchen with some outdoor seating and tables where we would all have our breakfast together. Nearby there was a large covered area with a platform where he'’ give the lectures.
The only cloud on George's horizon was that a certain workoholic in the group had brought his guitar along.
Paul: George actually once got quite annoyed and told me off because I was trying to think of the next album. He said, 'We're not fucking here to do the next album, we're here to meditate!' It was like, 'Ohh, excuse me for breathing!' You know. George was quite strict about that, George can still be a little that way, and it's like, 'Oh come on, George, you don't have a monopoly on thought in this area. I'm allowed to have my own views on the matter.'
In truth, though, Paul wasn't the only one secretly composing instead of simply meditating. It was an incredible fertile period for John as well; the material written in India went far beyond the White Album (in fact John wrote the first version of Jealous Guy there). One of the India-written songs was in fact caused by Mia Farrow's sister Prudence going overboard with the meditation. Said John in 1980:
No one was to know that sooner or later she was to go completely berserk under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around her were very worried about the girl because she was going insane. So we sang to her. (...) She went completely mental. If she’d been in the West they would have put her away. We got her out of the house. She’d been locked in for three weeks and wouldn’t come out, trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi’s camp: who was going to get cosmic first.
Paul Saltzman: At the ashram, Prudence immersed herself in meditation for such long hours that she didn't come out for her meals, having a tray set outside her door. After a while she stayed in her room around the clock. She was either blissed-out or, as one of the Beatles later voiced, flipping out. Either way, it became a cause of great concern and George, followed by John and Paul, tried to get her to come out. Prudence wouldn't even answer the door. Eventually, after three weeks of Prudence's staying in her room, John and Paul took their guitars and serenaded her through her locked door and drawn curtains, singing a little ditty John wrote for the occasion. It worked. The drapes moved slightly and Prudence looked out. After a moment, a slight smile animated her face and eventually she emerged.
Prudence Farrow remembering it somewhat less dramatically: "I would always rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so I could meditate. John, George and Paul would all want to sit around jamming and having a good time and I'd be flying into my room. They were all serious about what they were doing, but they just weren't as fanatical as me".
The song in question, Dear Prudence, very charming and btw an early example of the Beatles using the newest eight-track recording equipment when recording it in the summer of 1968: the basic track was finger picking guitar with both John and George playing lead, plus Paul playing drums as this was during Ringo's temporary walkout. Paul then recorded the bass track, handclapping and tambourine, piano and flügelhorn tracks. (Did I mention he had "let me play the lion, too?" syndrome?)
More 60s style minstrel idyll as described by Paul Saltzmann: Paul started strumming again and John joined in. Paul had a slip of paper sitting on the step beneath him and he started to sing the words that he had scribbled down. It was the refrain to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. They repeated it over and over again--working with it, playing with it--and when they paused for a moment Paul looked up at me with a twinkle in his eyes and said, "That's all there is so far. We don't have any of the words yet. John chuckled with pleasure at his new folk-guitar picking technique he said Donovan had been teaching him. Some time later Ringo mentioned dinner was ready but as John got up, Paul started to sing and play Ob-La-Di again. John couldn't resist and fell in with him, playing and singing very upbeat. Then Ringo joined in, finger-snapping the rhythms. By then the sun had dropped behind the hills. A gentle aroma of evening jasmine drifted over the grounds, a peacock shrilled off in the woods, and after a while we all headed off to eat.
Mike Love and Donovan equally have great music camp memories. The former, as an actual Beach Boy, came in handy when Paul was composing his Beach Boy parody Back in the USSR:
I was sitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar and he was playing 'Back in the USSR', and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia. He was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me but I gave him the idea for that little section ... I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on the Beach Boys.
All in all, the following songs were composed in India: "Back in the U.S.S.R.", "Blackbird", "Jealous Guy" (still called "Child of Nature" at that point), "Cry Baby Cry", "Dear Prudence", "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey", "I Will", "I'm So Tired", "Julia", "Junk", "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Mother Nature's Son", "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", "Polythene Pam", "Revolution", "Rocky Raccoon", "Across the Universe", "Sexy Sadie" (this one gets its own story later), "Something" (tsk, George, I thought you were there to meditate?), "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?", "Wild Honey Pie" and "Yer Blues". They did meditate as welll, though, even Mr. Workoholic:
One thing slightly impressed me was, being a good British person, whenever I went to a hot place I would get sunburned. Stay out in the sun too long, not realising, which the Brits never seem to do. Take me shirt off, get a nice lobster tan, and really be in pain the rest of the day and probably have to drink in the evening to try and anaesthetise it. Then fall asleep and just hope for the best.
But this time, I got sunburned in the morning and come lunchtime I was going, 'Oh, my God, it's going to be the burning lobster thing.' But I meditated for a couple of hours and low and behold, the lobster had gone. I often wondered whether it was just the fact that I'd calmed myself, whereas normally I'd go running around with a shirt on, irritating it, or I'd go to a dance and really rub it, whereas now I was just sitting very quietly with it for three hours. But it certainly didn't bother me.
The meditation sessions were increasingly long, they were as long as you could handle. It was a very sensible thing. He basically said, 'Your mind is confused with day-to-day stress so I want you to try and do twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening.' That's what they start you on. Twenty minutes in the morning is not going to hurt anyone. You sit still, I suppose you regulate your breathing and, if nothing else, you rest your muscles for twenty minutes. It's like a lie-in. That's pretty good. The meditation helps your productivity that day. And then twenty minutes in the evening; I used to liken it to sitting in front of a nice coal fire that's just sort of glowing. That sort of feeling, that very relaxed feeling, a twilight feeling which I quite like. Are you dreaming or are you awake? There's a nice little state that they recognise halfway between it.
So when exactly did the merry band of minstrels on holidays turn into the bickering breaking up Beatles? Not yet after Ringo's departure, which basically everyone handwaved and understood. On the other hand, Paul's departure (he and Jane managed a month before leaving) seems to have confirmed to George that Paul just didn't take his faith seriously and didn't get it, which left something of a grudge. Quoth George, decades later in Anthology:
Paul just came and went. I don’t think he got much out of the trip because there’s a bit of footage from Let It Be where he’s GRINNING, and saying to John, ‘Oh, and it was like being at school, you know: “Oh tell me, oh master”.’ Retrospectively, twenty years later, he may think back and the penny might have dropped as to what it was about, but I don’t think it did at the time.
As for John, John never liked being deserted (and when you left first instead of waiting till he did, you deserted; Lennonian fact). Moreover, John was still waiting for the Maharishi to give him The Answer To Life And Everything and getting increasingly impatient when it didn't come. And while he hadn't dared to bring Yoko along, he responded to Paul's departure by inviting Alexis Mardas, aka Magic Alex, to India, and that in turn triggered the last series of events that ended the Beatles/Maharishi saga with a bang. "Magic Alex" (thus nicknamed by John) had started out as a television repair man, had impressed John (and subsequently the other Beatles) as some sort of technological genius (George Martin said that it was because Alex has a subscription to Science Monthly and the Beatles did not) and has an unshakeable image as the smarmiest con man around the Beatles in biographies, though Peter Doggett tries something of an Alex defense in "You never give me your money" by stating Alex had never claimed to be a tech guru, that had been John's idea and it wasn't Alex' fault that John put people on pedestals and subsequently kicked them off same. Be that as it may, in 1968 Alex arrived in Rishikesh, and here's where the Rashomon effect truly kicks in.
Cynthia Lennon: Magic Alex accused the Maharishi of behaving improperly with a young American girl, who was a fellow student. Without allowing the Maharishi an opportunity to defend himself, John and George chose to believe Alex and decided we must all leave. I was upset. I had seen Alex with the girl, who was young and impressionable, and I wondered whether he - whom I had never once seen meditating - was being rather mischievious. I was surprised that John and George had both chosen to believe him. (...) By dawn the next morning Alex had organized taxis from the nearby village and we left on the journey back to Delhi and a lpane home. After eight weeks the dream was over. I hated leaving on a note of discord and distrust, when we had enjoyed so much kindness and goodwill from the Maharishi and his followers. I felt ashamed that we had turned our backs on him without giving him a chance. Once again John was running away, and I had little choice but to run with him.
John: There was a big hullabaloo about him trying to get off with Mia Farrow and a few other women, things like that. We’d stayed up all night discussing was it true or not true. And when George started thinking it might be true, I thought it must be true because if George is doubting him there must be something in it. So we went to see Maharishi. The whole gang of us the next day charged down to his hut; his very rich-looking bungalow in the mountains. As usual, when the dirty work came, I actually had to be leader. Whatever the scene was, when it came to the nitty-gritty, I had to do the speaking. I said, ‘We’re leaving.’ – ‘Why?’ – Well, if you’re so cosmic, you’ll know why.’ Because all his right-hand men were always intimating that he did miracles. And I was saying, ‘You know why.’ He said, ‘I don’t know why, you must tell me.’ And I just kept saying, ‘You ought to know.’ And he gave me a look like ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard’. He gave me such a look. And I knew then when he looked at me, because I’d called his bluff. I was a bit rough to him. I always expect too much – I’m always expecting my mother and I don’t get her, that’s what it is.
George: Someone started the nasty rumour about Maharishi, a rumour that swept the media for years. There were many stories about how Maharishi was not on the level or whatever, but that was just jealousy about Maharishi. We’d need analysts to get into it. I don’t know what goes through these people’s minds, but this whole piece of bullshit was invented. It’s probably even in the history books that Maharishi ‘tried to attack Mia Farrow’ – but it’s bullshit, total bullshit. Just go and ask Mia Farrow.
There were a lot of flakes there; the whole place was full of flaky people. Some of them were us.
The story stirred up a situation. John had wanted to leave anyway, so that forced him into the position of thinking: ‘OK, now we’ve got a good reason to get out of here.’ We went to Maharishi, and I said, ‘Look, I told you I was going. I’m going to the South of India.’ He couldn’t really accept that we were leaving, and he said, ‘What’s wrong?’ That’s when John said something like: ‘Well, you’re supposed to be the mystic, you should know.’
We drove for hours. John had a song he had started to write which he was singing: ‘Maharishi, what have you done?’ and I said, ‘You can’t say that, it’s ridiculous.’ I came up with the title of ‘Sexy Sadie’ and John changed ‘Maharishi’ to Sexy Sadie. John flew back to Yoko in England and I went to Madras and the South of India and spent another few weeks there.
Paul: I got back, fine, and wondered what was going to happen with the other guys. For a week or so there I didn't know if we'd ever see 'em again or if there ever would be any Beatles again. What happened amazed me. They all came storming back and they came round to Cavendish Avenue, it must have been for a recording session, we often used to meet there. It was a big scandal. Maharishi had tried to get off with one of the chicks. I said, 'Tell me what happened?' John said, 'Remember that blonde American girl with the short hair? Like a Mia Farrow look-alike. She was called Pat or something.' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Well, Maharishi made a pass at her.' So I said, 'Yes? What's wrong with that?' He said, 'Well, you know, he's just a bloody old letch just like everybody else. What the fuck, we can't go following that!'
They were scandalised. And I was quite shocked at them; I said, 'But he never said he was a god. In fact very much the opposite, he said, "Don't treat me like a god, I'm just a meditation teacher." There was no deal about you mustn't touch women, was there? There was no vow of chastity involved. So I didn't think it was enough cause to leave the whole meditation centre. It might have been enough cause to say, 'Hey, excuse me? Are you having it off with a girl? In which case, should we worry about this or is this perfectly normal?' And to tell the truth, I think they may have used it as an excuse to get out of there. And I just said, 'Oh yes, okay.' But in my mind it was like, well, he never pretended to be anything but a guy, he didn't take any vows of celibacy, and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing wrong with someone making a pass at someone. Perhaps they had been looking for something more than a guy and found he wasn't a god, whereas I'd been looking at a guy who was saying, 'I'm only giving you a system of meditation.'
John wrote 'Sexy Sadie' about it. Righteous indignation! I remember being quite shocked with that. It's really funny, John's reaction to this sexual thing. I mean, maybe say, 'Hey, we thought he was better than that,' but it seemed a little prudish to me, to do that. So I was quite glad I'd left the week before. I mean, even if they found him in bed, what is this? Anyway, it ended in disarray and that was the reason given. And it became public that we didn't like Maharishi but I never felt that way particularly and I know George is still involved with him.
Originally 'Sexy Sadie' was called 'Maharishi': 'Maharishi, what have you done?' etc. But George persuaded John to change the title and he made the suggestion of 'Sexy Sadie' to protect the innocent. I think George was right. It would have been too hard and it would have actually been, as it turned out, rather untrue, because it was Magic Alex who made the original accusation and I think that it was completely untrue.
John: I coped out and wouldn’t write: ‘Maharishi, what have you done, you’ve made a fool of everyone.’ That was written just as we were leaving, waiting for our bags to be packed in the taxi that never seemed to come. We thought: ‘They’re deliberately keeping the taxi back so as we can’t escape from this madman’s camp.’ And we had the mad Greek with us who was paranoid as hell. He kept saying, ‘It’s black magic, black magic. They’re gonna keep you here forever.’ I must have got away because I’m here.
Meanwhile, did anyone ask the Maharishi? Yes, they did. The Maharishi told Deepak Chopra he had lost his temper with the Beatles when he discovered their continued drug use. (The Beatles seem to have interpreted the Maharishi's anti-drug commandment meaning LSD but continued to smoke pot at leisure.) Which is plausible, except for the part that even with John Lennon's temper, it's not likely someone would trigger that much bile just by telling him to lay off the marijuana. And now there's yet another version, courtesy of Mick Jagger by way of Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood in his diaries from the 60s writes about meeting Mick in Australia during the filming of Ned Kelly. You could say he had a crush:
Mick seems almost entirely without vanity. (!) He hardly ever refers to his career or himself as a famous and successful person and you might be with him for hours and not know what it is he does. Also, he seems equally capable of group fun, clowning, entertaining, getting along with other people, and of entering into a serious one-to-one dialogue with anybody who wants to. He talked seriously but not at all pretentiously about Jung, and about India (he has a brother who has become a monk in the Himalayas), and about religion in general. He also seems tolerant and not bitchy. He told me with amusement that the real reason why the Beatles left the Maharishi was that he made a pass at one of them: “They’re simple north-country lads; they’re terribly uptight about all that.” Am still not sure if I believe this story.
Say what? Now, the boring and most likely explanation is that Mick was simply messing with Isherwood (and also flaunting his superior Southerner sophistication - the northerners/southerners thing about the Beatles and the Stones seems to be a constant thing, given he even uses it as a joke in his induction speech for the Beatles in the Rock'n Roll Hall Of Fame). But like I said, that's boring. If he didn't make it up to amuse himself, one is left to wonder about likely candidates. Not George, because George already regretted leaving the Maharishi by the time everyone got back into the studio to record and was rather firm on defending the Maharishi till his dying day. Ringo's "food and flies" explanation for leaving India was never doubted by anyone. Which leaves John and Paul. John was the one still angry at the Maharishi as late as 1980, but otoh given Brian the Maharishi would hardly have been the first male to make a pass at him, and in the 70s he was more inclined to boast of men being attracted to him than rage about it. (He didn't rage about it in the 60s, either; he raged as soon as someone insinuated he was attracted back, see the infamous beating-up-Bob-Wooler-at-Paul's-birthday-party incident.) But you know what was a tried and true method of making John angry? Someone picking Paul over him.Or someone making a pass he didn't dare to make himself if Yoko's remark to Philip Norman was correct. At any rate, John's way of being angry at the Maharishi en route back from India didn't just voice itself via writing Sexy Sadie but via telling Cynthia about all his infidelities since they had married (she asked him to stop, he said "But you've got to hear it, Cyn") on the plane, then sending her away with Julian to take another vacation, this time in Greece, and at last consumating his relationship with Yoko so Cynthia found the two of them when she returned. As proofs of one's heterosexuality go...
More seriously, I really do think Mick Jagger was just taking the piss, and John had been steeling himself to break up with Cynthia and get together with Yoko all through the time in India. Making the Maharishi the latest parent figure to disappoint him was a by product, and he probably latched on whatever Alex said because it was an excuse to throw a temper tantrum at someone other than himself. As for the Maharishi: here's what the Times of India has to say about his last encounter with a Beatle (in an article from February 6th 2006):
NEW DELHI: The souring of relations between the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has always been a mystery for the world.
There was a reconciliatory meeting between Maharishi and George Harrison, and TOI's Guest Editor on Monday Deepak Chopra was the only other person present there.
In September 1991, Harrison asked Chopra to set up a meeting with Maharishi, which he did. "We got on to a chartered plane, which had just dropped off Paul McCartney to Monte Carlo.
George wrote a note to Paul, saying, "Guess whom we're going to meet", and signed it 'Jai Gurudev'. Then we flew to Vlodrop, in the Netherlands, where Maharishi was staying."
It was an emotional meeting. As Chopra tells it, Harrison first presented Maharishi a rose. This was followed by a long silence.
Then Maharishi asked, "How have you been?" George replied, "Some good things (have happened), some bad things."
Then he added, "You must know about John being assassinated." Maharishi replied, "I was very sorry to hear about it."
After some time, Harrison spoke. "I came to apologise," he said. "For what?" asked Maharishi. "You know for what," replied Harrison.
"Tell Deepak the real story," said Maharishi. Harrison said, "I don't know about it 100%, but here's what I know transpired." And he narrated the incident about the Beatles being asked to leave.
Did Maharishi harbour any bitterness towards the Beatles?
Chopra smiled. "Part of the Beatles lore is that when they made their first appearance on American TV, on the Ed Sullivan show, there was no crime in the US for that one hour.
Maharishi told us, 'When I heard this, I knew the Beatles were angels on earth. It doesn't matter what John said or did, I could never be upset with angels'. On hearing that, George broke down and wept."
There was another long silence. Then Harrison told Maharishi, "I love you" and Maharishi responded, "I love you too."
The two left, and Harrison later phoned Chopra and told him, "A huge karmic baggage has been lifted from me, because I didn't want to lie."
Our first night back in the studio began, as usual, with small talk and catching up. “So how was India?” I asked.
“India was okay, I guess. . . apart from that nasty little Maharishi,” John replied, venomously. Harrison looked deflated, as if it were a conversation they’d had many times before. With a deep sigh, he tried to calm his agitated bandmate.
“Oh come on, he wasn’t that bad,” he interjected, earning a withering glance. Lennon’s bitterness and anger seemed almost palpable.
Ringo tried deflecting things with a little humor. “It reminded me of a Butlins holiday camp, only the bloody food wasn’t as good,” he said with a wink.
I glanced in Paul’s direction. He was staring straight ahead, expressionless and weary. He didn’t have much to say about India that day, or any other.
I sensed at that moment that something fundamental in them had changed (. . .) The rage that was bubbling inside John was the most obvious sign that something was seriously wrong. There was new tension between John and Paul (. . .) The undercurrents between the four Beatles were so complex at that point, it gave me a headache just thinking about it.
So, in true Agatha Christie mystery fashion, let's hear what the various witnesses have to say for themselves. The background: ever since being given a sitar on the set of Help!, George Harrison had developed an ever greater interest in Indian music, philosophy and history. He befriended Ravi Shankar, and indeed remained committed to Hinduism for the rest of his life. In the summer of 1967, his wife Pattie discovered the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi via a lecture on Transcendental Meditation. George becomes intrigued and takes the other three to another lecture in London. The Maharishi then departs for Wales; the Beatles, plus Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, are interested enough to visit him in Bangor. (Cynthia Lennon was also supposed to come along but literally missed the train since the police took her for a fan and wouldn't let her pass; the symbolism was obvious to her and every subsequent biographer.) Which is where they were when the news of Brian Epstein's death reached them, and this turned out to be crucial. George would have adapted the Maharishi as a guru in any case, but it was the shock of Brian's death that made John go from interested to adopting the Maharishi as his next idol and parent figure, to fully and completely believe the Maharishi would give him the answer to all the big questions. John being John, you can see the inevitable disaster looming right there. As for Paul and Ringo, they seem to have been game in the interest of group unity, plus Paul liked meditation after having been introduced to it and found it very useful; also, there was a sense that it was George's turn in the sun. This was the one period where he unquestioningly took the lead and the other three followed; the formerly (and future) Quiet Beatle happily gave interviews left, right and center about his beliefs and the Maharishi's philosophy. Some of the Beatles' wider circle were less than convinced; Barry Miles pointed out that the Maharishi had some ties to right-wing Indian politicians and was critisized by other Indian sages for making philosophy commercial for the West, leading to John's riposte: "So what if he's commercial? We're the most commercial group on the planet!" Paul's girlfriend Jane Asher also was on the sceptical side whereas Cynthia Lennon was very enthusiastic about the Maharishi because for starters, he forbade the use of LSD and John actually listened. (At that point, John's LSD use had increased to sometimes three times a week, and she hardly could talk to him anymore.) Studying together with the Maharishi in India sounded like an ideal way to repair her marriage. (What she didn't know whas that John had already become emotionally involved with Yoko though the relationship hadn't turned sexual yet; at one point he was considering taking her and Cynthia along to India, but even John realized this really wasn't a good idea, and Cynthia remained unaware of the impending marital implosion for a few more weeks.) In February 1968, the Beatles, their four significant others plus roadies Mal and Neil left for Rishikesh in India.
The Beatles were far from the only promiment westerners studying with the Maharishi, or even the only pop stars; there were also Mike Love of the Beach Boys, Donovan, plus Mia Farrow (just divorced from Frank Sinatra - "a year with Sinatra, no wonder she needed meditation" said Paul) and her sister Prudence. And filmmaker Paul Saltzman, fresh from a romantic break-up as well (if I were Cynthia and Jane, I would have felt someone walking over my grave at that point), whose photos of the occasion are well worth a watch. Meanwhile, have a collage:
The funny thing is, Saltzman describes a spiritual idyll. Everyone is still getting along just fine. Quoth Saltzman, about his first encounter with the Fab Four:
"May I join you?" I asked. "Sure, mate." said John, "Pull up a chair." Then Paul said, "Come and sit here." and pulled a chair over next to him. As soon as I sat down, to my surprise, I heard this voice in my head scream, "Eek! It's the Beatles!" Before I even had time to think, I was surprised by a second voice within me. This one was calm, deep and resonant: "Hey, Paul," it said, "They're just ordinary people like you. Everyone farts, and is afraid in the night." And from that moment on, I never thought of them as the Beatles again, but rather, as four individual human beings. At a pause in their conversation, John turned to me and said, "So, you're from the States, then?" "No, Canada," I answered. He playfully turned to the others, "Ah! He's from one of the Colonies, then." I said, "Yes," as we all laughed. "You're still worshipping Her Highness, then?" "Not personally," I quipped, as we all laughed again, "but we still have her on our money." "Lucky you," joked Ringo, and Paul joined in with another tease. I came back with, "Well, we may have her on our money, but she lives with you." As we continued to roll with the laughter, Cynthia good-humouredly interceded: "Leave the poor chap alone. After all, he's just arrived." "No problem," I responded, and John turned to the others with a final, "Ah! You see, mates, they still have a sense of humour in the Colonies!" and we all laughed again. After that, they just took me into their small family. Later, someone got up and said they were going to meditate. Within moments all were gone except Mal and me. I asked him if they were really as cool as they seemed. "Not always," he answered, "but pretty much."
He does notice some coolness from John towards Cynthia, though, as visible in one of his photos:
(At this point, he was getting daily letters from Yoko and was in the process of making up his mind about her which Cynthia still didn't know.) Other than that, everything seems to be dandy, except for Ringo's difficulty with the Indian food - Ringo had spent long periods in hospital with peritonitis as a child and found the food much too hot for his taste, so he had Mal smuggle baked beans into the camp - and Ringo's wife Maureen hating the flies. (Later, John told a great anecdote of Maureen giving the flies thunderous black looks and them dropping dead on command.) After ten days, Ringo and Maureen caved and returned to England, but Ringo hastened to assure the press upon arrival that the Maharishi was a fine fellow and everything was great. They celebrated George's 25th birthday; he basically was in heaven, still sounding entranced when describing Rishikesh decades later:
Rishikesh is an incredible place, situated where the Ganges flows out of the Himalayas into the plains between the mountains and Delhi. There is quite a hefty flow of water coming out of the Himalayas, and we had to cross the river by a big swing suspension bridge. Maharishi’s place was perched up on a hill overlooking the town and the river. It was comprised of Maharishi’s little bungalow and lots of little huts that he’d had built quickly for the Westerners coming out there, in a compound of about eight or ten acres. There was a kitchen with some outdoor seating and tables where we would all have our breakfast together. Nearby there was a large covered area with a platform where he'’ give the lectures.
The only cloud on George's horizon was that a certain workoholic in the group had brought his guitar along.
Paul: George actually once got quite annoyed and told me off because I was trying to think of the next album. He said, 'We're not fucking here to do the next album, we're here to meditate!' It was like, 'Ohh, excuse me for breathing!' You know. George was quite strict about that, George can still be a little that way, and it's like, 'Oh come on, George, you don't have a monopoly on thought in this area. I'm allowed to have my own views on the matter.'
In truth, though, Paul wasn't the only one secretly composing instead of simply meditating. It was an incredible fertile period for John as well; the material written in India went far beyond the White Album (in fact John wrote the first version of Jealous Guy there). One of the India-written songs was in fact caused by Mia Farrow's sister Prudence going overboard with the meditation. Said John in 1980:
No one was to know that sooner or later she was to go completely berserk under the care of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. All the people around her were very worried about the girl because she was going insane. So we sang to her. (...) She went completely mental. If she’d been in the West they would have put her away. We got her out of the house. She’d been locked in for three weeks and wouldn’t come out, trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi’s camp: who was going to get cosmic first.
Paul Saltzman: At the ashram, Prudence immersed herself in meditation for such long hours that she didn't come out for her meals, having a tray set outside her door. After a while she stayed in her room around the clock. She was either blissed-out or, as one of the Beatles later voiced, flipping out. Either way, it became a cause of great concern and George, followed by John and Paul, tried to get her to come out. Prudence wouldn't even answer the door. Eventually, after three weeks of Prudence's staying in her room, John and Paul took their guitars and serenaded her through her locked door and drawn curtains, singing a little ditty John wrote for the occasion. It worked. The drapes moved slightly and Prudence looked out. After a moment, a slight smile animated her face and eventually she emerged.
Prudence Farrow remembering it somewhat less dramatically: "I would always rush straight back to my room after lectures and meals so I could meditate. John, George and Paul would all want to sit around jamming and having a good time and I'd be flying into my room. They were all serious about what they were doing, but they just weren't as fanatical as me".
The song in question, Dear Prudence, very charming and btw an early example of the Beatles using the newest eight-track recording equipment when recording it in the summer of 1968: the basic track was finger picking guitar with both John and George playing lead, plus Paul playing drums as this was during Ringo's temporary walkout. Paul then recorded the bass track, handclapping and tambourine, piano and flügelhorn tracks. (Did I mention he had "let me play the lion, too?" syndrome?)
More 60s style minstrel idyll as described by Paul Saltzmann: Paul started strumming again and John joined in. Paul had a slip of paper sitting on the step beneath him and he started to sing the words that he had scribbled down. It was the refrain to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. They repeated it over and over again--working with it, playing with it--and when they paused for a moment Paul looked up at me with a twinkle in his eyes and said, "That's all there is so far. We don't have any of the words yet. John chuckled with pleasure at his new folk-guitar picking technique he said Donovan had been teaching him. Some time later Ringo mentioned dinner was ready but as John got up, Paul started to sing and play Ob-La-Di again. John couldn't resist and fell in with him, playing and singing very upbeat. Then Ringo joined in, finger-snapping the rhythms. By then the sun had dropped behind the hills. A gentle aroma of evening jasmine drifted over the grounds, a peacock shrilled off in the woods, and after a while we all headed off to eat.
Mike Love and Donovan equally have great music camp memories. The former, as an actual Beach Boy, came in handy when Paul was composing his Beach Boy parody Back in the USSR:
I was sitting at the breakfast table and McCartney came down with his acoustic guitar and he was playing 'Back in the USSR', and I told him that what you ought to do is talk about the girls all around Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia. He was plenty creative not to need any lyrical help from me but I gave him the idea for that little section ... I think it was light-hearted and humorous of them to do a take on the Beach Boys.
All in all, the following songs were composed in India: "Back in the U.S.S.R.", "Blackbird", "Jealous Guy" (still called "Child of Nature" at that point), "Cry Baby Cry", "Dear Prudence", "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey", "I Will", "I'm So Tired", "Julia", "Junk", "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Mother Nature's Son", "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", "Polythene Pam", "Revolution", "Rocky Raccoon", "Across the Universe", "Sexy Sadie" (this one gets its own story later), "Something" (tsk, George, I thought you were there to meditate?), "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?", "Wild Honey Pie" and "Yer Blues". They did meditate as welll, though, even Mr. Workoholic:
One thing slightly impressed me was, being a good British person, whenever I went to a hot place I would get sunburned. Stay out in the sun too long, not realising, which the Brits never seem to do. Take me shirt off, get a nice lobster tan, and really be in pain the rest of the day and probably have to drink in the evening to try and anaesthetise it. Then fall asleep and just hope for the best.
But this time, I got sunburned in the morning and come lunchtime I was going, 'Oh, my God, it's going to be the burning lobster thing.' But I meditated for a couple of hours and low and behold, the lobster had gone. I often wondered whether it was just the fact that I'd calmed myself, whereas normally I'd go running around with a shirt on, irritating it, or I'd go to a dance and really rub it, whereas now I was just sitting very quietly with it for three hours. But it certainly didn't bother me.
The meditation sessions were increasingly long, they were as long as you could handle. It was a very sensible thing. He basically said, 'Your mind is confused with day-to-day stress so I want you to try and do twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening.' That's what they start you on. Twenty minutes in the morning is not going to hurt anyone. You sit still, I suppose you regulate your breathing and, if nothing else, you rest your muscles for twenty minutes. It's like a lie-in. That's pretty good. The meditation helps your productivity that day. And then twenty minutes in the evening; I used to liken it to sitting in front of a nice coal fire that's just sort of glowing. That sort of feeling, that very relaxed feeling, a twilight feeling which I quite like. Are you dreaming or are you awake? There's a nice little state that they recognise halfway between it.
So when exactly did the merry band of minstrels on holidays turn into the bickering breaking up Beatles? Not yet after Ringo's departure, which basically everyone handwaved and understood. On the other hand, Paul's departure (he and Jane managed a month before leaving) seems to have confirmed to George that Paul just didn't take his faith seriously and didn't get it, which left something of a grudge. Quoth George, decades later in Anthology:
Paul just came and went. I don’t think he got much out of the trip because there’s a bit of footage from Let It Be where he’s GRINNING, and saying to John, ‘Oh, and it was like being at school, you know: “Oh tell me, oh master”.’ Retrospectively, twenty years later, he may think back and the penny might have dropped as to what it was about, but I don’t think it did at the time.
As for John, John never liked being deserted (and when you left first instead of waiting till he did, you deserted; Lennonian fact). Moreover, John was still waiting for the Maharishi to give him The Answer To Life And Everything and getting increasingly impatient when it didn't come. And while he hadn't dared to bring Yoko along, he responded to Paul's departure by inviting Alexis Mardas, aka Magic Alex, to India, and that in turn triggered the last series of events that ended the Beatles/Maharishi saga with a bang. "Magic Alex" (thus nicknamed by John) had started out as a television repair man, had impressed John (and subsequently the other Beatles) as some sort of technological genius (George Martin said that it was because Alex has a subscription to Science Monthly and the Beatles did not) and has an unshakeable image as the smarmiest con man around the Beatles in biographies, though Peter Doggett tries something of an Alex defense in "You never give me your money" by stating Alex had never claimed to be a tech guru, that had been John's idea and it wasn't Alex' fault that John put people on pedestals and subsequently kicked them off same. Be that as it may, in 1968 Alex arrived in Rishikesh, and here's where the Rashomon effect truly kicks in.
Cynthia Lennon: Magic Alex accused the Maharishi of behaving improperly with a young American girl, who was a fellow student. Without allowing the Maharishi an opportunity to defend himself, John and George chose to believe Alex and decided we must all leave. I was upset. I had seen Alex with the girl, who was young and impressionable, and I wondered whether he - whom I had never once seen meditating - was being rather mischievious. I was surprised that John and George had both chosen to believe him. (...) By dawn the next morning Alex had organized taxis from the nearby village and we left on the journey back to Delhi and a lpane home. After eight weeks the dream was over. I hated leaving on a note of discord and distrust, when we had enjoyed so much kindness and goodwill from the Maharishi and his followers. I felt ashamed that we had turned our backs on him without giving him a chance. Once again John was running away, and I had little choice but to run with him.
John: There was a big hullabaloo about him trying to get off with Mia Farrow and a few other women, things like that. We’d stayed up all night discussing was it true or not true. And when George started thinking it might be true, I thought it must be true because if George is doubting him there must be something in it. So we went to see Maharishi. The whole gang of us the next day charged down to his hut; his very rich-looking bungalow in the mountains. As usual, when the dirty work came, I actually had to be leader. Whatever the scene was, when it came to the nitty-gritty, I had to do the speaking. I said, ‘We’re leaving.’ – ‘Why?’ – Well, if you’re so cosmic, you’ll know why.’ Because all his right-hand men were always intimating that he did miracles. And I was saying, ‘You know why.’ He said, ‘I don’t know why, you must tell me.’ And I just kept saying, ‘You ought to know.’ And he gave me a look like ‘I’ll kill you, you bastard’. He gave me such a look. And I knew then when he looked at me, because I’d called his bluff. I was a bit rough to him. I always expect too much – I’m always expecting my mother and I don’t get her, that’s what it is.
George: Someone started the nasty rumour about Maharishi, a rumour that swept the media for years. There were many stories about how Maharishi was not on the level or whatever, but that was just jealousy about Maharishi. We’d need analysts to get into it. I don’t know what goes through these people’s minds, but this whole piece of bullshit was invented. It’s probably even in the history books that Maharishi ‘tried to attack Mia Farrow’ – but it’s bullshit, total bullshit. Just go and ask Mia Farrow.
There were a lot of flakes there; the whole place was full of flaky people. Some of them were us.
The story stirred up a situation. John had wanted to leave anyway, so that forced him into the position of thinking: ‘OK, now we’ve got a good reason to get out of here.’ We went to Maharishi, and I said, ‘Look, I told you I was going. I’m going to the South of India.’ He couldn’t really accept that we were leaving, and he said, ‘What’s wrong?’ That’s when John said something like: ‘Well, you’re supposed to be the mystic, you should know.’
We drove for hours. John had a song he had started to write which he was singing: ‘Maharishi, what have you done?’ and I said, ‘You can’t say that, it’s ridiculous.’ I came up with the title of ‘Sexy Sadie’ and John changed ‘Maharishi’ to Sexy Sadie. John flew back to Yoko in England and I went to Madras and the South of India and spent another few weeks there.
Paul: I got back, fine, and wondered what was going to happen with the other guys. For a week or so there I didn't know if we'd ever see 'em again or if there ever would be any Beatles again. What happened amazed me. They all came storming back and they came round to Cavendish Avenue, it must have been for a recording session, we often used to meet there. It was a big scandal. Maharishi had tried to get off with one of the chicks. I said, 'Tell me what happened?' John said, 'Remember that blonde American girl with the short hair? Like a Mia Farrow look-alike. She was called Pat or something.' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Well, Maharishi made a pass at her.' So I said, 'Yes? What's wrong with that?' He said, 'Well, you know, he's just a bloody old letch just like everybody else. What the fuck, we can't go following that!'
They were scandalised. And I was quite shocked at them; I said, 'But he never said he was a god. In fact very much the opposite, he said, "Don't treat me like a god, I'm just a meditation teacher." There was no deal about you mustn't touch women, was there? There was no vow of chastity involved. So I didn't think it was enough cause to leave the whole meditation centre. It might have been enough cause to say, 'Hey, excuse me? Are you having it off with a girl? In which case, should we worry about this or is this perfectly normal?' And to tell the truth, I think they may have used it as an excuse to get out of there. And I just said, 'Oh yes, okay.' But in my mind it was like, well, he never pretended to be anything but a guy, he didn't take any vows of celibacy, and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing wrong with someone making a pass at someone. Perhaps they had been looking for something more than a guy and found he wasn't a god, whereas I'd been looking at a guy who was saying, 'I'm only giving you a system of meditation.'
John wrote 'Sexy Sadie' about it. Righteous indignation! I remember being quite shocked with that. It's really funny, John's reaction to this sexual thing. I mean, maybe say, 'Hey, we thought he was better than that,' but it seemed a little prudish to me, to do that. So I was quite glad I'd left the week before. I mean, even if they found him in bed, what is this? Anyway, it ended in disarray and that was the reason given. And it became public that we didn't like Maharishi but I never felt that way particularly and I know George is still involved with him.
Originally 'Sexy Sadie' was called 'Maharishi': 'Maharishi, what have you done?' etc. But George persuaded John to change the title and he made the suggestion of 'Sexy Sadie' to protect the innocent. I think George was right. It would have been too hard and it would have actually been, as it turned out, rather untrue, because it was Magic Alex who made the original accusation and I think that it was completely untrue.
John: I coped out and wouldn’t write: ‘Maharishi, what have you done, you’ve made a fool of everyone.’ That was written just as we were leaving, waiting for our bags to be packed in the taxi that never seemed to come. We thought: ‘They’re deliberately keeping the taxi back so as we can’t escape from this madman’s camp.’ And we had the mad Greek with us who was paranoid as hell. He kept saying, ‘It’s black magic, black magic. They’re gonna keep you here forever.’ I must have got away because I’m here.
Meanwhile, did anyone ask the Maharishi? Yes, they did. The Maharishi told Deepak Chopra he had lost his temper with the Beatles when he discovered their continued drug use. (The Beatles seem to have interpreted the Maharishi's anti-drug commandment meaning LSD but continued to smoke pot at leisure.) Which is plausible, except for the part that even with John Lennon's temper, it's not likely someone would trigger that much bile just by telling him to lay off the marijuana. And now there's yet another version, courtesy of Mick Jagger by way of Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood in his diaries from the 60s writes about meeting Mick in Australia during the filming of Ned Kelly. You could say he had a crush:
Mick seems almost entirely without vanity. (!) He hardly ever refers to his career or himself as a famous and successful person and you might be with him for hours and not know what it is he does. Also, he seems equally capable of group fun, clowning, entertaining, getting along with other people, and of entering into a serious one-to-one dialogue with anybody who wants to. He talked seriously but not at all pretentiously about Jung, and about India (he has a brother who has become a monk in the Himalayas), and about religion in general. He also seems tolerant and not bitchy. He told me with amusement that the real reason why the Beatles left the Maharishi was that he made a pass at one of them: “They’re simple north-country lads; they’re terribly uptight about all that.” Am still not sure if I believe this story.
Say what? Now, the boring and most likely explanation is that Mick was simply messing with Isherwood (and also flaunting his superior Southerner sophistication - the northerners/southerners thing about the Beatles and the Stones seems to be a constant thing, given he even uses it as a joke in his induction speech for the Beatles in the Rock'n Roll Hall Of Fame). But like I said, that's boring. If he didn't make it up to amuse himself, one is left to wonder about likely candidates. Not George, because George already regretted leaving the Maharishi by the time everyone got back into the studio to record and was rather firm on defending the Maharishi till his dying day. Ringo's "food and flies" explanation for leaving India was never doubted by anyone. Which leaves John and Paul. John was the one still angry at the Maharishi as late as 1980, but otoh given Brian the Maharishi would hardly have been the first male to make a pass at him, and in the 70s he was more inclined to boast of men being attracted to him than rage about it. (He didn't rage about it in the 60s, either; he raged as soon as someone insinuated he was attracted back, see the infamous beating-up-Bob-Wooler-at-Paul's-birthday-party incident.) But you know what was a tried and true method of making John angry? Someone picking Paul over him.
More seriously, I really do think Mick Jagger was just taking the piss, and John had been steeling himself to break up with Cynthia and get together with Yoko all through the time in India. Making the Maharishi the latest parent figure to disappoint him was a by product, and he probably latched on whatever Alex said because it was an excuse to throw a temper tantrum at someone other than himself. As for the Maharishi: here's what the Times of India has to say about his last encounter with a Beatle (in an article from February 6th 2006):
NEW DELHI: The souring of relations between the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has always been a mystery for the world.
There was a reconciliatory meeting between Maharishi and George Harrison, and TOI's Guest Editor on Monday Deepak Chopra was the only other person present there.
In September 1991, Harrison asked Chopra to set up a meeting with Maharishi, which he did. "We got on to a chartered plane, which had just dropped off Paul McCartney to Monte Carlo.
George wrote a note to Paul, saying, "Guess whom we're going to meet", and signed it 'Jai Gurudev'. Then we flew to Vlodrop, in the Netherlands, where Maharishi was staying."
It was an emotional meeting. As Chopra tells it, Harrison first presented Maharishi a rose. This was followed by a long silence.
Then Maharishi asked, "How have you been?" George replied, "Some good things (have happened), some bad things."
Then he added, "You must know about John being assassinated." Maharishi replied, "I was very sorry to hear about it."
After some time, Harrison spoke. "I came to apologise," he said. "For what?" asked Maharishi. "You know for what," replied Harrison.
"Tell Deepak the real story," said Maharishi. Harrison said, "I don't know about it 100%, but here's what I know transpired." And he narrated the incident about the Beatles being asked to leave.
Did Maharishi harbour any bitterness towards the Beatles?
Chopra smiled. "Part of the Beatles lore is that when they made their first appearance on American TV, on the Ed Sullivan show, there was no crime in the US for that one hour.
Maharishi told us, 'When I heard this, I knew the Beatles were angels on earth. It doesn't matter what John said or did, I could never be upset with angels'. On hearing that, George broke down and wept."
There was another long silence. Then Harrison told Maharishi, "I love you" and Maharishi responded, "I love you too."
The two left, and Harrison later phoned Chopra and told him, "A huge karmic baggage has been lifted from me, because I didn't want to lie."
