The Gurus of Sgt Pepper

George Harrison of the Beatles was a devotee of Yogananda, and Yogananda’s image appears on the cover of the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [1]. Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya and Swami Sri Yukteswar, other gurus in Yogananda’s lineage, are also on the album cover. [2]

Harrison

Harrison liked to give away copies of his “Autobiography of a Yogi.” [3]

Harrison’s interest in India began during production of the Beatles’ second movie, Help! (1965), with its slapstick Hindu subplot. He was intrigued by the sitar used in an Indian restaurant scene filmed in London.

While beach scenes were being filmed in the Bahamas, the Beatles were approached by a man in orange robes who handed them a signed copy of his book on yoga.

It was Swami Vishnu-Devananda, the founder of Sivananda Yoga. Intrigued, Harrison began to study Hinduism. He then traveled to India to study the sitar with Ravi Shankar, who gave him a copy of Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. [4]

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What do George Harrison, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, Jon Anderson (of Yes), Kerry Livgren (of Kansas), and Madonna have in common?

They’ve all been convinced, at one time or another, that Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi was a record of real events, which could beneficially be taken seriously. [5]

Be that as it may, Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson once wrote a song—“Babaji,” from 1977’s Even in the Quietest Moments album—inspired by Yogananda’s teachings. In that case, the lyrics were motivated by the Himalayan guru upon whose behest kriya yoga was given to the world, through Yogananda for one. Hodgson further spent time at the northern California “Ananda” ashram of one of Yogananda’s direct disciples—J. Donald Walters, a.k.a. Kriyananda. His sister Caroline has resided in the same community. Indeed, Roger met his future wife, Karuna, when the latter was living in a teepee in that very ashram.

George Harrison, although not himself a disciple of Yogananda, was interviewed for SRF’s “Lake Shrine” video, quoting there from Sri Yukteswar’s (1977) book, The Holy Science. (Ravi Shankar was featured in the same film. Shankar introduced George to Yogananda’s writings in 1966.) At Harrison’s prompting, images of four of the SRF line of gurus—Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar and Yogananda—were included on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album cover collage. (Jesus was omitted so as to not further aggravate public religious feelings still raw from Lennon’s “the Beatles are more popular than Jesus Christ” observation.) References to Yogananda in Harrison’s solo work include the songs “Dear One,” “Life Itself” and “Fish on the Sand.” Harrison’s family further donated the U.S. proceeds from the re-release, in early 2002, of his “My Sweet Lord” single, to SRF.

Madonna—yes, that Madonna, again—has likewise spoken positively of Yogananda’s Autobiography. Pamela Anderson (2005) herself has swooned top-heavily over Paramahansa’s (1986) Divine Romance.And the brilliant comedian/actor Robin Williams—a friend of both George Harrison and Christopher Reeve, having roomed at Juilliard with the latter—actually subscribed to at least part of the SRF Lessons series. That, at least, according to a former-Deadhead monk whom I met during my own otherwise-unpleasant stay in the SRF ashrams, which will be detailed later on.

Gary “Dream Weaver” Wright—another friend of Harrison’s—has also been rumored to be an SRF member.

The King of Rock and Roll, too, found inspiration in the kriya yoga path:

Elvis loved material by guru Paramahansa Yogananda, the Hindu founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship (Cloud, 2000).

Following Yogananda’s passing, Presley—whom we may dub a hillolayavatar, or “incarnation of rock and roll”—actually made numerous phone calls and trips, over a twelve-year period, to see SRF’s Daya Mata. (Apparently she reminded him of his deceased mother, as did the Theosophical Society’s famously unkempt and grotesquely obese Madame Blavatsky.) Indeed, the Meditation Garden at Graceland—where Elvis came to be buried—is said to have been inspired by SRF’s Lake Shrine (Mason, 2003). Elvis actually “took this spiritual inquiry so seriously that he considered devoting the rest of his life to it by becoming a monk” (Hajdu, 2003). [6]

Related posts:

• In The Footsteps of Paramahansa Yogananda (Boston)

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