The Beatles in India and the New Age

During the filming of their second movie, HELP!,
there was a scene in a restaurant in London.
The director Richard Lester kept those customers
who wanted to stick around to continue to sit
in the restaurant as background extras.

Among those customers/extra were a couple of
Indian musicians. George Harrison struck up a
conversation with them, and wound up
studying with one of the great contemporary
Indian sitar players -- Ravi Shankar.

This led not only to a great widening of the
musical sounds The Beatles produced, but to
a highly publicized trip they made to India
to meet and study Transcendal Meditation with
the Maharishi Mahesh Yoga.

Apparently none of them except George took
Hindu religion seriously for very long, but
it all did push my generation into what is
now called the New Age.

Of course, they did not create the New Age
by itself. There was already a growing but
little known movement in this direction.
The book YOGA, YOUTH AND REINCARNATION by
Jess Stearn was already a bestseller.

But I am sure that, for the kids my age,
this trip by the Beatles was a strong
influence on many of us to go in that
direction. Up until then, there was
very little interest in mysticism,
etc.

Oh, many of us enjoyed reading FATE magazine,
books by Frank Edwards and Charles Fort,
stuff like that, but not on the serious
level.

And of course, most of my generation still do
not much care for this. But those who were
inclined toward New Age and mysticism were
introduced to it early thanks to The Beatles.

Archeology Travel