Pattie Boyd: These are a few photographs I took in India. I didn't take many photos while we were there but I treasure the ones I did. It was the most enlightening time of my life.
Yearning for something spiritual in her life, Pattie Boyd was the first of the Beatles circle to discover the practice of Transcendental Meditation and the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, later introducing husband George Harrison - and by extension all the Beatles - to the concept. In her 2007 autobiography, Wonderful Today, Pattie recalls: George was away on tour yet again and I was sitting with my friend Marie-Lise at the kitchen table in Kinfauns. It was February 1967, and we had the Sunday papers spread out in front of us… Something was missing from our lives, we decided… we came upon an advert for transcendental-meditation classes in London. Perfect... In the course of a long weekend we were initiated and given our mantras… I loved meditating and I found the effects remarkable: I really did feel more alert and energetic. It did what it said on the Bottle - it was life-changing. I couldn’t wait to tell George.
That August, Pattie was joined by all four Beatles in attending a lecture by the Maharishi at London's Hilton Hotel. Maharishi was every bit as impressive as I thought he would be, Pattie remembers, and we were spellbound… he said we must go to Wales, where he was running a ten-day summer conference of the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in Bangor… By Sunday morning in Bangor, everyone had been initiated into transcendental meditation and believed we had found a new way of living. Then the telephone rang and the world turned upside-down. The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein had been found dead in his flat in Belgravia, London. As their time in Bangor was cut short by Brian’s death, the Maharishi would invite them all to spend two months at his ashram in India to study the practice further.
In February 1968, Pattie recalls, we set off for Rishikesh, a small town in the north of India in the foothills of the Himalayas. Short though it had been, the experience in Wales had filled us with excitement about where Maharishi and Indian spirituality might lead. George and I, my sister Jenny, John and Cynthia flew out to Delhi together, and Paul, Jane, Ringo, and Maureen arrived a few days later. The ashram was at the top of a hill overlooking the town and the river; the air was clear and clean and filled with the scent of flowers. It was about eight or ten acres, surrounded by a high perimeter fence and padlocked gates. Inside we were shown Maharishi’s little bungalow, the post office, a communal dining area, a lecture theatre, and a series of stone chalets, where we stayed; they had flat roofs on which we sunbathed… Initially George and I shared [a room]. It was sparsely furnished, with two skimpy beds, but we kept disturbing each other in our meditation so we ended up with a room each.
There were about 60 people at the ashram, including the Beatles’ longtime assistants Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall, ‘Magic Alex’ Mardas, Scottish singer Donovan, the Beach Boys’ Mike Love, and actress Mia Farrow, with her brother Johnny and sister Prudence. Every day was much the same, continues Pattie. We would wake in the morning, to the piercing sound of peacocks calling, and go to breakfast in an open dining area, covered with canvas held aloft on bamboo sticks. After breakfast we were given our itinerary for the day, which mostly amounted to meditating and attending lectures given by Maharishi… Sometimes Maharishi gave our group private lessons, just him and us, including Donovan, sitting out of doors. Afterward we would go to our rooms to meditate… The longest I managed was seven hours, from five in the afternoon to midnight… Every so often a tailor would appear and we would get him to make clothes for us. We all wore pajama trousers and big baggy shirts, and the boys grew beards.
Their time at the ashram was a particularly creative and fruitful period for the band. John, Paul and George wrote many songs during their stay, nineteen of which would be recorded for the White Album, and another two for Abbey Road. Ringo and Maureen would stay for only two weeks – Maureen had a phobia of flies. Paul and Jane left after a month, keen to get back to work in London. The two who were most engrossed in Maharishi’s teachings were John and George, notes Pattie. They would meditate for hours, and George was very focused. Lennon would become increasingly disenchanted with the Maharishi’s behaviour, however, and departed two weeks ahead of schedule.
During the final days of his stay in India, Lennon penned the song Sexy Sadie, a direct and explicit insult to the guru, making reference to the reasons behind his dissatisfaction: rumours that the Maharishi had behaved inappropriately to some of the female members of the entourage. Magic Alex claimed that Maharishi had tried something with a girl he had befriended, explains Pattie. I am not sure how true that was. I think Alex wanted to get John away from Rishikesh - he seemed convinced that Maharishi was evil. He kept saying, “It’s black magic.” And perhaps John had been waiting for an excuse to leave - he wanted to be with Yoko. Whatever the truth, they left. [George], Jenny, and I went south to Madras: George didn’t want to go straight from two months of meditation into the chaos that was waiting for him in England - the new business, finding a new manager, the fans, and the press. Instead we went to see Ravi Shankar and lost ourselves in his music.
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