In His Own Words: George Harrison on Spirituality

On Personal Spirituality

"I always felt at home with Krishna. You see it was already a part of me. I think it's something that's been with me from my previous birth.. I'd rather be one of the devotees of God than one of the straight, so-called sane or normal people who just don't understand that man is a spiritual being, that he has a soul."

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"Just certain things happened in my life which left me thinking 'What's it all about, Alfie?' and I remembered Jesus said somewhere 'Knock and the door shall be opened' and I said (knock, knock) 'Hellooo!' It's very difficult. From the Hindu point of view each soul is potentially divine, the goal is to manifest the divinity. The word yoga means union and the union is supposedly between the mind, the body, and the spirit, and yoga isn't lying on nails or standing on your head. I mean, there's various forms of yoga and they're all branches on one big tree. The Lord, or God, has got a million names, whatever you want to call him, it doesn't matter as long as you call him, Jesus is on the mainline, tell him what you want. Going back to self-realization, one guru said he found no separation between man and God, saving man's spiritual unadventurousness, and that's the catch, everybody's so unadventurous. We're all conditioned, our consciousness has been so polluted by the material energy it's hard to try and pull it all ways in order to really discover our true nature. Every one of us has within us a drop of that ocean and we have the same qualities as God, just like a drop of the ocean has the same qualities as the whole ocean. Everybody's looking for something and we are it. We don't have to look anywhere--it's right there within ourselves."

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"As they say 'to be in the world, but not of the world.' You can go to the Himalayas and miss it completely, and you can be stuck in the middle of New York and be very spiritual. I mean, I noticed in certain places, like New York, it brings out a certain thing in myself. If I go to some place like Switzerland, I find a lot of uptight people because they're living amongst so much beauty there's no urgency in trying to find the beauty within themselves. If you're stuck in New York you have to somehow look within yourself--otherwise you'd go crackers. So, in a way, it's good to be able to go in and out of both situations. Most people think when the world gets itself together we'll all be okay. I don't see that situation arriving. I think one by one, we all free ourselves from the chains we have chained ourselves to. But I don't think that suddenly some magic happens and the whole lot of us will all be liberated in one throw."

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"'I Me Mine' is the 'ego' problem. There are two 'I's': the little 'i' when people say 'I am this' and the big 'I'; i.e. OM, the complete whole, universal consciousness that is void of duality and ego. There is nothing that isn't part of the complete whole. When the little 'i' merges into the big 'I' then you are really smiling!

"So there is the little ego--the little 'i' which is like a drop of the ocean. Swami Vivekananda says "Each soul is potentially divine, the goal is to manifest that divinity'. We have to realise that we are potentially divine and then manifest that divinity-which is to get rid of that little 'i' by the drop becoming merged into the big 'I' (the ocean)."

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On Drugs & Spirituality



"The very first time we took LSD, John and I were together. And that experience and a lot of other things that happened after that, both on LSD and on the meditation trip to Rishikesh, we saw beyond each other's physical bodies, you know. That's there permanently, whether he's in a physical body or not. I mean this is the goal anyway: to realize the spiritual side. If you can't feel the spirit of some friend who's been close, then what chance have you got of feeling the spirit of Christ or Buddha or whoever else you may be interested in? 'If your memory serves you well, we're going to meet again.' I believe that."

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"Out of the LSD madness (and there were a few horrors) there came a few 'zaps'. It made me laugh. I'd never thought about, couldn't even say the word 'God'. It embarrassed me, but it was so strange, GOD, and it washed away all these fears and doubts and little things that hang you up."

--From "I Me Mine," Harrison's autobiography

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