Book Reviews
Reprinted
with permission from:
Nova Religio:
The Journal of Alternative and Emerging Religions
Editors: Rebecca Moore, Catherine Wessinger, Douglas E. Cowan
Copyright 2005 No part
of this may be reproduced without permission
Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison.
By Joshua M. Greene. John Wiley & Sons, January 2006. 293
pages. $25.95 hardcover. ISBN: 047169021X
No one epitomizes the 1960s, in both the popular culture and counterculture
spirituality aspects, quite like the Beatles. The Fab
Four were as wildly idolized on their concert tours as devas, and reportedly
parents brought sick and disabled children to them, as though their charisma
might include the healing power of some medieval saint.
Yet at the same time the Beatles were, individually, very young men who
had come a long way from their working-class Liverpool background.
Like many of their generation but even more so, they sensed themselves in
a very different world from their parents’; like many of their peers, they
tried everything, but still felt inner dislocation: doors in all directions,
but no place to call home. They were open to spiritual guidance,
and for the Beatles the door that initially appeared most inviting was the
one marked India.
This is the story of one of the Four, George Harrison (1943-2001), the
Beatle most of all identified with the quest. He regarded the Bhagavad-Gita
as his scripture and, after explorations of the Self-Realization Fellowship
of Paramahamsa Yogananda and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental
Meditation, maintained a vital though complex relationship with the Hare
Krishna movement to the end of his life.
Joshua Greene’s book is a highly readable and insightful presentation of
that singer and seeker. Though documented by endnotes, it is not an
academic book and its accounts of long-ago conversations and events no doubt
entailed some imaginative reconstruction. Nonetheless, as an
intuitive portrait of a life, of the times in which it was lived, and of
an interior journey, Here Comes the Sun is a rich reading adventure, one
that some will no doubt find nostalgic. Greene can be set
alongside the many other books on the Beatles, most all of which have their
uses and their errors, and appreciated as unique in its focus on one man’s
spiritual venture.
Along with his interest in the sitar music of Ravi Shankar, apparently
George’s first significant encounter with Eastern religion was, perhaps
surprisingly, at the Four’s August 1965 get-together with Elvis Presley.
The King’s hairdresser and confidante, Larry Geller, was also present.
As retailed in his fascinating though controversial book, “If I Can Dream”
(1989), Geller did much to mentor Elvis in the eclectic mysticism which,
unbeknownst to most fans, ruled the rock ‘n roller’s inner life. Greene
reports it was Geller and Elvis who on that summer day inspired George with
the notion that entertainment superstars could have such an other side to
their lives, and Geller invited him to look into SFR.. Later,
Greene takes us on the Beatle’s famous retreat, with Mia Farrow, at the
Maharishi’s center in Rishikesh, India, and offers his brief account of
their abrupt departure there from; much controversy over this incident still
rumbles through Beatles’ and TM historiography. Greene’s major
concern, however, is clearly with George Harrison’s longer-standing relation
to Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada and Krishna Consciousness, a topic given
extensive coverage.
For the student of new religious movements, undoubtedly the major significance
of the Beatles is the way in which they, by blending in Hindu spirituality
with their immense popularity, helped make “the East” a part of popular
religion. Popular culture can hold together many things old
and new, far and near, without rigorous consistency. Pagan holy
wells become the healing shrines of Christian saints; football games become
occasions for prayer and patriotism. What is important is that
it all needs to be sensed as coming out of the common, shared experience
of the same people, so there is an inner associational if not reasoned continuity
between one entity and another.
George Harrison, in his remarkable song “My Sweet Lord,” attempted such
a bridge by combining themes from the two-hundred-year-old gospel classic
“Oh, Happy Day” with the “Hare Krishna” mantram. The effort did
not succeed in making Krishna as acceptable as Jesus in American popular religion,
no doubt because the Hindu part of the equation had insufficient depth in
common experience. But he and the other Beatles were parts of a large,
more diffuse popular culture shift in the sixties, in which words like “karma”
and “guru,” and some ideas behind them, were widely enough prated of to enter
popular culture, if not religion. The story offered in Here Comes
the Sun gives one perspective, through the journey of one well-known individual,
on how this happened.
Robert Ellwood, University of Southern California
For more information about this book
please visit: http://www.herecomesthesunbook.com