Richard Dawkins Reads “Love Letters” from “Fans” (NSFW)

Richard Dawkins — some know him as the Oxford evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist who coined the term “meme” in his influ­en­tial 1976 book, The Self­ish Gene; oth­ers con­sid­er him a lead­ing fig­ure in the New Athe­ism move­ment, a posi­tion he has assumed unapolo­get­i­cal­ly. In recent years, Dawkins has made his case against reli­gion though dif­fer­ent forms of media: books, doc­u­men­taries, col­lege lec­tures, and pub­lic debates. He can be aggres­sive and snide, to be sure. But he dish­es out far less than he receives in return. Just wit­ness him read­ing the “love let­ters” (as he euphemisti­cal­ly calls them) that he has received from the gen­er­al pub­lic. They are not safe for work. You can see him read­ing a pre­vi­ous batch of let­ters here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

Richard Dawkins’ Doc­u­men­tary The God Delu­sion Tack­les Faith & Reli­gious Vio­lence (2006)

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

How Did Everything Begin?: Animations on the Origins of the Universe Narrated by X‑Files Star Gillian Anderson

Back in Novem­ber, we brought you the BBC series of short ani­mat­ed videos, A His­to­ry of Ideas. Pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the UK’s Open Uni­ver­si­ty and nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er, these fun intro­duc­tions to such philoso­phers as Simone de Beau­voir and Edmund Burke, and such weighty philo­soph­i­cal top­ics as free will and the prob­lem of evil, make chal­leng­ing, abstract con­cepts acces­si­ble to non-philoso­phers. Now the series is back with a new chap­ter, “How Did Every­thing Begin?,” a sur­vey of sev­er­al the­o­ries of the ori­gins of the uni­verse, from Thomas Aquinas’ philo­soph­i­cal spec­u­la­tions, to Hin­du cos­mol­o­gy; and from the­olo­gian William Paley’s design argu­ment (below), and the the­o­ry of the Big Bang (above).

The two videos here present an inter­est­ing coun­ter­point between the ori­gin the­o­ries of astro­physics and the­ol­o­gy. Though cur­rent day intel­li­gent design pro­po­nents deny it, there is still much of William Paley’s argu­ment, at least in style, in their expla­na­tions of cre­ation. First pro­pound­ed in his 1802 work Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, the theologian’s famous watch­mak­er analogy—which he extend­ed to the design of the eye, and every­thing else—gave Charles Dar­win much to puz­zle over, though David Hume had sup­pos­ed­ly refut­ed Paley’s argu­ments 50 years ear­li­er. The Big Bang the­o­ry—a term cre­at­ed by its fore­most crit­ic Fred Hoyle as a pejorative—offers an entire­ly nat­u­ral­is­tic account of the universe’s ori­gins, one that pre­sup­pos­es no inher­ent pur­pose or design.

As with the pre­vi­ous videos, these are script­ed by for­mer Open Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor and host of the Phi­los­o­phy Bites pod­cast, Nigel War­bur­ton. This time around the videos are nar­rat­ed by Gillian Ander­son, whose voice you may not imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize. Rather than sound­ing like Dana Scul­ly, her famous X‑Files char­ac­ter, Ander­son speaks in a British accent, which she slips into eas­i­ly, hav­ing lived in the UK for much of her child­hood and now again as an adult. (You may have seen Ander­son in many of the Eng­lish peri­od dra­mas she has appeared in, or in British crime dra­ma The Fall or Michael Winterbottom’s uproar­i­ous adap­ta­tion of Tris­tram Shandy.)

These fas­ci­nat­ing spec­u­la­tive theories—whether sci­en­tif­ic or mythological—are sure to appeal to fans of the X‑Files, who can per­haps begin to believe again, or remain skep­ti­cal, thanks to news that Ander­son may reteam with Chris Carter and David Duchovny for a reboot of the clas­sic sci-fi series.

Watch the remain­ing videos in the series below:

Thomas Aquinas and the First Mover Argu­ment

Hin­du Cre­ation Sto­ries

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es (130 in Total)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Buddhism 101: A Short Introductory Lecture by Jorge Luis Borges

In 1977, eru­dite Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges deliv­ered a series of sev­en lec­tures in Buenos Aires on a vari­ety of top­ics, includ­ing Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy, night­mares, and the Kab­bal­ah. (The lec­ture series is col­lect­ed in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion enti­tled Sev­en Nights.) One of the lec­tures is sim­ply called “Bud­dhism,” and in it, Borges presents an overview of the ancient East­ern reli­gion. Borges had pre­vi­ous­ly made scat­tered ref­er­ence to Bud­dhist sub­jects in his writ­ing, though he cer­tain­ly nev­er devot­ed as much atten­tion to it as he did Catholi­cism or Judaism, a faith and her­itage he found end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and admirable.

His por­trait of Bud­dhism, though much less in depth, is no less sym­pa­thet­ic. The lec­ture is adapt­ed, it seems, from a short book writ­ten the pre­vi­ous year, Qué es el Bud­is­mo?, a “clear and con­cise expla­na­tion of the reli­gion, its val­ue sys­tems, and how some of its prin­ci­pal teach­ings share some sim­i­lar­i­ties with oth­er faiths.” So writes the blog Vague­ly Bor­ge­sian, who also com­ment that Borges’ book—and by exten­sion the lecture—“rarely goes beyond what one might find on say a Wikipedia arti­cle on Bud­dhism.” That may be so, but—as we can see in this Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Borges’ lec­ture—the author does sev­er­al times dur­ing his sum­ma­ry offer some dis­tinct­ly Bor­ge­sian com­men­tary of his own. Below are just a few excerpts:

Buddism’s Tol­er­ance:

[Buddhism’s] longevi­ty can be explained for his­tor­i­cal rea­sons, but such rea­sons are for­tu­itous or, rather, they are debat­able, fal­li­ble. I think there are two fun­da­men­tal caus­es. The first is Buddhism’s tol­er­ance. That strange tol­er­ance does not cor­re­spond, as is the case with oth­er reli­gions, to dis­tinct epochs: Bud­dism was always tol­er­ant.

It has nev­er had recourse to steel or fire, has nev­er thought that steel or fire were per­sua­sive…. A good Bud­dhist can be Luther­an, or Methodist, or Calvin­ist, or Sin­toist, or Taoist, or Catholic; he can be a pros­e­lyte to Islam or Judaism, with com­plete free­dom. But it is not per­mis­si­ble for a Chris­t­ian, a Jew or a Mus­lim to be a Bud­dhist.

On the His­tor­i­cal Exis­tence of the Bud­dha:

We may dis­be­lieve this leg­end. I have a Japan­ese friend, a Zen Bud­dhist, with whom I have had long and friend­ly argu­ments. I told him that I believed in the his­toric truth of Bud­dha. I believed and I believe that two thou­sand five hun­dred years ago there was a Nepalese prince called Sid­dhar­ta or Gau­ta­ma who became the Bud­dha, that is, the Awok­en, the Lucid One – as opposed to us who are asleep or who are dream­ing this long dream which is life. I remem­ber one of Joyce’s phras­es: “His­to­ry is a night­mare from which I want to awake.” Well then, Sid­dhar­ta, at thir­ty years of age, awoke and became Bud­dha. 

On Bud­dhism and Belief:

The oth­er reli­gions demand much more creduli­ty on our part. If we are Chris­tians we must believe that one of the three per­sons of the Divin­i­ty con­de­scend­ed to become a man and was cru­ci­fied in Judea. If we are Mus­lims we must believe that there is no oth­er god than God and that Moham­mad is his apos­tle. We can be good Bud­dhists and deny that Bud­dha exist­ed. Or, rather, we may think, we must think that our belief in his­to­ry isn’t impor­tant: what is impor­tant is to believe in the Doc­trine. Nev­er­the­less, the leg­end of Bud­dha is so beau­ti­ful that we can­not help but refer to it.

Borges has much more to say in the full lec­ture on Bud­dhist cos­mol­o­gy and his­to­ry. He con­cludes with the very respect­ful state­ment below:

What I have said today is frag­men­tary. It would have been absurd for me to have expound­ed on a doc­trine to which I have ded­i­cat­ed many years – and of which I have under­stood lit­tle, real­ly – with a wish to show a muse­um piece. Bud­dhism is not a muse­um piece for me: it is a path to sal­va­tion. Not for me, but for mil­lions of peo­ple. It is the most wide­ly held reli­gion in the world and I believe that I have treat­ed it with respect when explain­ing it tonight.

To learn more about Borges and Bud­dhism, see this arti­cle, and the watch the video above, a short intro­duc­tion to a lec­ture course giv­en by Borges’ friend Amelia Bar­ili at UC Berke­ley.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Jorge Luis Borges’ Favorite Short Sto­ries (Read 7 Free Online)

Borges Explains The Task of Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Is There an Afterlife? Christopher Hitchens Speculates in an Animated Video

Ten months before his death — a death he knew was com­ing — Christo­pher Hitchens debat­ed the ques­tion, “Is there an after­life?”.  Shar­ing the stage with Sam Har­ris, and Rab­bis David Wolpe and Bradley Shav­it Art­son at the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­si­ty in Los Ange­les, Hitchens lament­ed how “It’s con­sid­ered per­fect­ly nor­mal in this soci­ety to approach dying peo­ple who you don’t know, but who are unbe­liev­ers, and say, ‘Now are you gonna change your mind [about the exis­tence of God]?’ That is con­sid­ered almost a polite ques­tion.” “It’s a reli­gious fal­si­fi­ca­tion that peo­ple like myself scream for a priest at the end. Most of us go to our end with dig­ni­ty.”

After spend­ing years as an unapolo­getic athe­ist, Hitchens also was­n’t going to start believ­ing in an after­life  — or what he half jok­ing­ly called “The Nev­er End­ing Par­ty.” The video above takes some of Hitchens com­ments from the debate and turns them into a whim­si­cal ani­ma­tion. It’s clas­sic Hitchens. Equal parts emphat­ic and fun­ny.  Below, you can watch the orig­i­nal debate in its entire­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens, Who Mixed Drink­ing & Writ­ing, Names the “Best Scotch in the His­to­ry of the World”

Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Read­ing List for Eight-Year-Old Girl

Christo­pher Hitchens Revis­es the Ten Com­mand­ments

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Kurt Vonnegut Reveals “Why My Dog Is Not a Humanist” in His Humanist of the Year Award Speech (1992)

Note: Von­negut starts talk­ing at around the 3:40 mark.

This is human­ism, as explained by bio­chemist, sci­ence fic­tion author and for­mer pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Human­ist Asso­ci­a­tion Isaac Asi­mov:

Human­ists believe that human beings pro­duced the pro­gres­sive advance of human soci­ety and also the ills that plague it. They believe that if the ills are to be alle­vi­at­ed, it is human­i­ty that will have to do the job. They dis­be­lieve in the influ­ence of the super­nat­ur­al on either the good or the bad of soci­ety, on either its ills or the alle­vi­a­tion of those ills.

There’s a wide­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ed Kurt Von­negut quote that puts things even more suc­cinct­ly:

I am a human­ist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decent­ly with­out any expec­ta­tion of rewards or pun­ish­ment after I’m dead.

It’s a def­i­n­i­tion Von­negut, Asimov’s hon­orary suc­ces­sor as AHA pres­i­dent, a scientist’s son, and, famous­ly, a sur­vivor of the fire­bomb­ing of Dres­den, embod­ied, though sure­ly not the only one he coined.

In his 1992 accep­tance speech for the association’s Human­ist of the Year award, above, he recalls how a stu­dent pressed him for a def­i­n­i­tion. He chose to fob the kid off on bet­ter paid col­leagues at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, but pri­vate­ly came up with anoth­er take:

…a human­ist, per­haps, was some­body who was crazy about human beings, who, like Will Rogers, had nev­er met one he did­n’t like. That cer­tain­ly did not describe me. It did describe my dog, though.

As the title of Vonnegut’s speech implies (“Why My Dog is Not a Human­ist”), Sandy, his undis­crim­i­nat­ing Hun­gar­i­an sheep­dog, ulti­mate­ly fell short of sat­is­fy­ing the cri­te­ria that would have labelled him a human­ist. He lacked the capac­i­ty for ratio­nal thought of the high­est order, and more­over, he regard­ed all humans — not just Von­negut — as gods.

Ergo, your dog is prob­a­bly not a human­ist either.

Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, Von­negut ranged far and wide in his con­sid­er­a­tion of the mat­ter, touch­ing on a num­ber of top­ics that remain ger­mane, some 20 years after his remarks were made: race, exces­sive force, the treat­ment of prisoners…and Bill Cos­by.

For intro­duc­tion to human­ism, please see:  Stephen Fry Explains Human­ism in 4 Ani­mat­ed Videos: Hap­pi­ness, Truth and the Mean­ing of Life & Death

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Explains “How to Write With Style”

Kurt Von­negut: Where Do I Get My Ideas From? My Dis­gust with Civ­i­liza­tion

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, Hoosier and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Discover the Church of St. John Coltrane, Founded on the Divine Music of A Love Supreme

For some time now, peo­ple like poet Robert Graves and coun­ter­cul­tur­al guru Tim­o­thy Leary have assumed that ancient reli­gion and mys­ti­cism were the prod­ucts of mind-alter­ing drugs. But in the case of one mod­ern reli­gious experience—the inspi­ra­tion behind John Coltrane’s holy four-part suite, A Love Supreme—it was the dis­tinct absence of drugs that lit the flame. Like many recov­er­ing addicts, Coltrane found God in 1957, after hav­ing what he called in the album’s lin­er notes “a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing.” Sev­en years lat­er, he ded­i­cat­ed his mas­ter­piece, “a hum­ble, offer­ing,” to the deity he cred­it­ed with “a rich­er, fuller, more pro­duc­tive life.” No rote hym­nal, chant, or psalter, A Love Supreme offers itself up to the lis­ten­er as the prod­uct of intense­ly per­son­al devo­tion. And like the ecsta­t­ic rev­e­la­tions of many a saint, Coltrane’s work has inspired its own devo­tion­al cult—The Church of St. Coltrane.

Presided over by Bish­op Fran­zo King and his wife Rev­erend Moth­er Mari­na King, the Saint John Coltrane African Ortho­dox Church in San Fran­cis­co reminds peo­ple, says Bish­op King in the short doc­u­men­tary at the top of the post, “that God is nev­er with­out a wit­ness. St. John Coltrane is that wit­ness for this time and this age.” Dig. The vibe of the Coltrane con­gre­ga­tion is “a rap­tur­ous out-of-your-head-ness” writes Aeon mag­a­zine in their intro­duc­tion to anoth­er short film about the church. And just above, you can meet more of the worshippers—of the music, its cre­ator, and his god—in “The Sax­o­phone Saint,” yet anoth­er pro­file of St. Coltrane’s prodi­gious reli­gious influ­ence. The con­gre­ga­tion, NPR tells us, “mix­es African Ortho­dox litur­gy with Coltrane’s quotes” and of course music, and A Love Supreme is “the cor­ner­stone of the [Bish­op King’s] 200-mem­ber church.”

King cites the titles of the suite’s four movements—“Acknowledgement,” “Res­o­lu­tion,” “Pur­suance,” and “Psalm”—as the basis for his form of wor­ship: “It’s like say­ing, ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ It’s like say­ing Melody, har­mo­ny and rhythm.’ In oth­er words, you have to acknowl­edge and then you resolve and then you pur­sue, and the man­i­fes­ta­tion of it is a love supreme.” The Kings found­ed the church in 1969, but their intro­duc­tion to the pow­er of Coltrane came four years ear­li­er when they saw him per­form at the San Fran­cis­co Jazz Work­shop, an expe­ri­ence they describe on their web­site as a “sound bap­tism.” Since its incep­tion, they tell us, the church “has grown beyond the con­fines of San Fran­cis­co to include the whole globe. Every Sun­day, the con­gre­ga­tion includes mem­bers and vis­i­tors from through­out the world.”

That diverse assem­bly recent­ly filled the sanc­tu­ary of San Francisco’s Grace Cathe­dral for a ser­vice in cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme on Mon­day, Decem­ber 8th. Just above you can see Bish­op King open the ser­vice. His inspired deliv­ery should con­vince you, as it did New York Times reporter Samuel Freed­man, that “the Coltrane church is not a gim­mick or a forced alloy of night­club music and ethe­re­al faith. Its mes­sage of deliv­er­ance through divine sound is actu­al­ly quite con­sis­tent with Coltrane’s own expe­ri­ence and mes­sage.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Watch John Coltrane Turn His Hand­writ­ten Poem Into a Sub­lime Musi­cal Pas­sage on A Love Supreme

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Robert Sapolsky Explains the Biological Basis of Religiosity, and What It Shares in Common with OCD, Schizophrenia & Epilepsy

Since the 19th cen­tu­ry, thinkers like Lud­wig Feuer­bach, Friedrich Niet­zsche, and Sig­mund Freud have the­o­rized reli­gion as a strict­ly psy­cho­log­i­cal and anthro­po­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non born of the ten­den­cy of the human mind to project its con­tents out into the heav­ens. The Dar­win­ian rev­o­lu­tion pro­vid­ed anoth­er framework—one ground­ed in exper­i­men­tal science—to explain reli­gion. Social sci­en­tists like Pas­cal Boy­er have inte­grat­ed these par­a­digms in com­pre­hen­sive accounts of the ori­gins of reli­gious belief, and in the­o­ries like E.O. Wilson’s Socio­bi­ol­o­gy, evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy pro­vides an expla­na­tion for all social phe­nom­e­na, of which reli­gion is but one among many human adap­ta­tions. Advances in neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy have fur­thered sci­en­tists’ under­stand­ing of reli­gion as a prod­uct not only of human con­scious­ness, but also of the phys­i­cal struc­ture of the brain. In exper­i­ments like the “God hel­met,” for exam­ple, sci­en­tists can induce reli­gious expe­ri­ences by prod­ding cer­tain areas of sub­jects’ brains.

It is in this con­text of psy­chol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, and evo­lu­tion­ary and neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy that we need to sit­u­ate the lec­ture above from Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Robert Sapol­sky. Where many crit­ics of reli­gion explic­it­ly reject reli­gious author­i­ty and belief, Sapol­sky, though him­self “stri­dent­ly athe­is­tic,” has no such agen­da. As an arti­cle in the Col­orado Springs Inde­pen­dent puts it, “he’s no Christo­pher Hitchens.” Sapol­sky freely admits, as do many scientists—religious and non—that reli­gion has many ben­e­fits: “It makes you feel bet­ter. It tends to decrease anx­i­ety, and it gets you a com­mu­ni­ty.” How­ev­er, he claims, these pos­i­tives are the result of evo­lu­tion­ary adap­ta­tions, not proofs of any super­nat­ur­al realm. In fact, reli­gios­i­ty, Pro­fes­sor Sapol­sky argues above, is bio­log­i­cal­ly based and relat­ed to seem­ing­ly much less adap­tive traits like obses­sive com­pul­sive dis­or­der, schiz­o­phre­nia, and epilep­sy.

Part of a lec­ture course on “Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy” at Stan­ford, the reli­gion lec­ture is one Sapol­sky admits he is “most ner­vous for, sim­ply because this one peo­ple wind up hav­ing strong opin­ions about.” As he moves ahead, he presents his case (with occa­sion­al inter­rup­tions from his stu­dents) for reli­gios­i­ty as a result of nat­ur­al selec­tion, con­nect­ing belief to the selec­tion of genes for dis­eases like Tay-Sachs, the exis­tence of which can help to explain dispir­it­ing his­tor­i­cal cas­es like the Euro­pean Pogroms against the Jews in the Mid­dle Ages. Through­out his lec­ture, Sapol­sky makes con­nec­tions between reli­gios­i­ty and biol­o­gy, the­o­riz­ing, for exam­ple, that St. Paul had tem­po­ral-lobe epilep­sy.

At the end of his lec­ture, around the 1:19:30 mark, Sapol­sky issues a dis­claimer about what he’s “not say­ing”: “I’m not say­ing ‘you got­ta be crazy to be reli­gious.’ That would be non­sense. Nor am I say­ing, even, that most peo­ple who are, are psy­chi­atri­cal­ly sus­pect.” What he is say­ing, he con­tin­ues, is that “the same exact traits which in a sec­u­lar con­text are life-destroy­ing” and “sep­a­rate you from the com­mu­ni­ty” are, “at the core of what is pro­tect­ed, what is sanc­tioned, what is reward­ed, what is val­ued in reli­gious set­tings.” What fas­ci­nates Sapol­sky is the “under­ly­ing biol­o­gy” of these traits. Sapol­sky even con­fess­es that he “most regrets” his own break with the Ortho­dox reli­gion of his upbring­ing, but that his athe­ism is some­thing he “appears to be unable to change.” The ques­tions Sapol­sky asks broad­ly cov­er the phys­i­cal deter­min­ism of gain­ing faith, and of los­ing it, which he says, is “just as bio­log­i­cal.” What we are to make of all this is a ques­tion he leaves open.

You can watch Sapolsky’s full series of lec­tures on Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy here, and for a ful­ly anno­tat­ed sum­ma­ry of his reli­gios­i­ty lec­ture above, see this site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

Do Your­self a Favor and Watch Stress: Por­trait of a Killer (with Stan­ford Biol­o­gist Robert Sapol­sky)

Dopamine Jack­pot! Robert Sapol­sky on the Sci­ence of Plea­sure

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

George Harrison’s Mystical, Fisheye Self-Portraits Taken in India (1966)

Harrison Fisheye1

The Bea­t­les’ sojourn in India can seem like a bit of a stunt, as much a rock n’ roll cliché as Led Zeppelin’s trashed hotel rooms or Fleet­wood Mac’s coke binges. Eas­i­ly par­o­died in, for exam­ple, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Sto­ry, the band’s turn East­ward looks in hind­sight like fad­dish spir­i­tu­al tourism. That impres­sion may not be so far off. As one writer puts it:

By the late 1960s, The Bea­t­les had engi­neered anoth­er pop cul­ture rev­o­lu­tion (at least in Europe and North Amer­i­ca) by wear­ing Indi­an-style cloth­ing, spout­ing reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal apho­risms that seemed to bor­row from ‘East­ern’ thought, and lat­er even vis­it­ing India for a high­ly-pub­li­cized train­ing ses­sion to learn Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion with the fraud­u­lent ‘mys­tic’ Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi.

But while for John, Paul, and Ringo, “inter­est in Indian/Hindu cul­ture was rather fleet­ing and tem­po­ral […] for George, India com­plete­ly over­hauled and changed his life per­ma­nent­ly.” As Har­ri­son him­self would lat­er recount of his first jour­ney in 1966, “it was the first feel­ing I’d ever had of being lib­er­at­ed from being a Bea­t­le or a num­ber.” The rest of the band wouldn’t make the trip until two years lat­er.

Harrison Fisheye 2

Har­ri­son had prin­ci­pal­ly embarked to study sitar under Ravi Shankar and learn yoga, but this was also a peri­od of self-dis­cov­ery and escape from, as he says, the “mania.” Trav­el­ing, as he always did, with a cam­era, he doc­u­ment­ed his jour­ney. His pic­tures are far from ordi­nary tourist images.

While he describes in writ­ing the “mix­ture of unbe­liev­able things” he saw, he just as often turned the cam­era on him­self, his pho­to­graph­ic intro­spec­tion made even more pro­nounced by his use of a fish­eye lens.

Harrison Fisheye 3

Inter­est­ing­ly, in his rec­ol­lec­tion of the trip, Har­ri­son ref­er­ences the sur­re­al cult, sci-fi show The Pris­on­er as a prime illus­tra­tion of life as “a num­ber.” One of the show’s most mem­o­rable devices involves a huge, mys­te­ri­ous white bub­ble that cap­tures or kills any­one try­ing to escape the sin­is­ter orga­ni­za­tion that holds the main char­ac­ter cap­tive. In Harrison’s pho­tos, the bub­ble becomes a para­dox­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his way out of fame’s fish­bowl, of the prison of Beat­le­ma­nia and an iden­ti­ty that felt con­trived and alien­at­ing.

Harrison Fisheye 4

Behind his steady, seri­ous gaze open up vis­tas that presage the breadth and depth of his immer­sion in Indi­an spir­i­tu­al prac­tices. What­ev­er one thinks of his con­ver­sion, there’s no doubt it was sin­cere, and life­long. Not long after this first trip, at the age of 24, he wrote to his moth­er, “I want to be self-real­ized. I want to find God. I’m not inter­est­ed in mate­r­i­al things, this world, fame.” Har­ri­son expressed the very same mys­ti­cal aspi­ra­tions in his final, 1997 inter­view, still play­ing and singing with his men­tor Ravi Shankar.

Harrison Fisheye 5

via Shoot­ing Film/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ravi Shankar Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

Phil Spector’s Gen­tle Pro­duc­tion Notes to George Har­ri­son Dur­ing the Record­ing of All Things Must Pass

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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