Mia and Prudence Farrow both joined the Beatles in their trip to India to check out Eastern Religions. Francis Schaeffer noted, ” The younger people and the older ones tried drug taking but then turned to the eastern religions. Both drugs and the eastern religions seek truth inside one’s own head, a negation of reason. The central reason of the popularity of eastern religions in the west is a hope for a nonrational meaning to life and values. The reason the young people turn to eastern religion is simply the fact as we have said and that is that man having moved into the area of nonreason could put anything up there and the heart of the eastern religions  is a denial of reason just exactly as the idealistic drug taking was.”

John Lennon wanted to spend time with Prudence but she seemed to spend almost all of her time meditating. Three of the Beatles gave up on Eastern Religion but George Harrison and Prudence stuck with it. Today we breakdown the song DEAR PRUDENCE and we also will take a closer look at Eastern Religion.

1165) Dear Prudence The Beatles – Song Meaning

Exactly 46 years ago, The Beatles started recording what would become one of their most enduring songs. Find out who Prudence was in this “Today in History” installment.

Having developed interest in Indian faith and culture, all four *Beatles* members and their entourage consisting of their partners, assistants, and reporters traveled to Rishikesh, India in February 1968 to attend a Transcendental Meditation session under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Aside from meditating, the band was said to have also composed a number songs which were later on included in future albums and solo projects, among them was “Dear Prudence.”

“Dear Prudence” was about Prudence Farrow, the younger sister of Hollywood actress Mia. Apart from the Beatles, 60 more participants were reportedly at the camp, including Prudence. Lennon himself had related in an interview that Farrow became too engrossed, almost fanatic, with her meditation that she had decided to lock herself in her house for three weeks.

Dear Prudence is me. Written in India. A song about Mia Farrow’s sister, who seemed to go slightly barmy, meditating too long, and couldn’t come out of the little hut that we were livin’ in. They selected me and George to try and bring her out because she would trust us. If she’d been in the West, they would have put her away.

We got her out of the house. She’d been locked in for three weeks and wouldn’t come out, trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi’s camp: who was going to get cosmic first. What I didn’t know was I was already cosmic. [Laughs.] – John Lennon on “All We Are Saying” by David Sheff (via)

The younger Farrow was flattered by this, saying, “It was a beautiful thing to have done.” “Dear Prudence” was recorded (sans Ringo Starr, who had by then temporarily left following arguments and tensions within the band) during a three-day session at the Trident Studios in London beginning on August 28. Credited under Lennon-McCartney, the song was released in November the same year as part of the “White Album”.

The Beatles- Dear Prudence

All information in this article were sourced from Beatles Bible (1, 2) and Wikipedia (1, 2).

Like this article? Check out the Icons in Focus and Today in History series in the Lomography magazine!

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Ravi Zacharias’ Testimony

SONG OF THE DAY: THE BEATLES “DEAR PRUDENCE”

The perfect song for the summer solstice “Dear Prudence” appeared on the album The Beatles which is more commonly known as The White Album and was released in 1968. The song was primarily written by John Lennon about Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence who traveled to India withThe Beatles to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Rather than hang out with everyone after their lessons Prudence stayed inside to meditate. John wanted her to come out and play.

This song is one of my all-time favorite Beatles’ songs which means it is one of my all time favorite songs. I immediately think of summer when I hear this! The Jerry Garcia Band and Siouxsie and The Banshees both did nice covers of “Dear Prudence” but the original is perfection.

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Here is a good review of the episode 016 HSWTL The Age of Non-Reason of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?, December 23, 2007:

Together with the advent of the “drug Age” was the increased interest in the West in  the religious experience of Hinduism and Buddhism. Schaeffer tells us that: “This grasping for a nonrational meaning to life and values is the central reason that these Eastern religions are so popular in the West today.”  Drugs and Eastern religions came like a flood into the Western world.  They became the way that people chose to find meaning and values in life.  By themselves or together, drugs and Eastern religion became the way that people searched inside themselves for ultimate truth.

Along with drugs and Eastern religions there has been a remarkable increase “of the occult appearing as an upper-story hope.”  As modern man searches for answers it “many moderns would rather have demons than be left with the idea that everything in the universe is only one big machine.”  For many people having the “occult in the upper story of nonreason in the hope of having meaning” is better than leaving the upper story of nonreason empty. For them horror or the macabre are more acceptable than the idea that they are just a machine.

Francis Schaeffer in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? gives us some insight into a possible answer to that question:

The younger people and the older ones tried drug taking but then turned to the eastern religions. Both drugs and the eastern religions seek truth inside one’s own head, a negation of reason. The central reason of the popularity of eastern religions in the west is a hope for a nonrational meaning to life and values. The reason the young people turn to eastern religion is simply the fact as we have said and that is that man having moved into the area of nonreason could put anything up there and the heart of the eastern religions  is a denial of reason just exactly as the idealistic drug taking was. So the turning to the eastern religions today fits exactly into the modern existential  methodology, the existential thinking of modern man, of trying to find some optimistic hope in the area of nonreason when he has given up hope on a humanistic basis of finding any kind of unifying answer to life, any meaning to life in the answer of reason. 

An article called “Holy Wars” was based on Francis Schaeffer’s writings primarily and it noted:

Then came the Beatles. John Lennon had declared that his group was more popular than Jesus. But they weren’t willing to stop there. They sought to supplant the true God with everything false. After the rock icons returned from India they brought with them not only the music of the Hindu guru Ravi Shankar, but also his religion as taught by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. They were so impressed with that guru’s Transcendental Meditation woo woo that they just had to convert the whole Western World to it. The counterculturalists took it all in, hook line and sinker.

Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:

The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there. 

Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #96)

Now we should Now we should turn to one of the most spectacular of modern archaeological discoveries, Ebla. While digging on an extensive mound forty-four miles south of Aleppo in Syria in 1974/75, an Italian archaeological expedition came across another of the vast libraries to which we referred earlier. A small room within the palace suddenly yielded up a thousand tablets and fragments, while another not far away a further fourteen thousand. There lay row upon row, just where they had fallen from the burning wooden shelves when the palace was destroyed about 2250 B.C.

What secrets did these tablets reveal? Without wishing to seem unnecessarily repetitive, we can say immediately that Ebla represents yet another discovery from the ancient past which does not make it harder for us to believe the Bible, but quite the opposite. And remember, these tablets date from well before the time of Abraham. The implications of this discovery will not be exhausted by even the turn of this century. The translation and publication of such a vast number of tablets will take years and years. It is important to understand that the information we now have from Ebla does not bear directly upon the Bible. As far as has been discovered, there is no certain reference to individuals mentioned in the Bible, though many names are similar, for example, Ishmael, Israel, and so forth. Biblical place names like Megiddo, Hazor, Lachish are also referred to. What is clear, however, is that certain individuals outside the Bible who previously had been considered fictitious by the critical scholars, simply because of their antiquity, are now quite definitely historic characters.

For example, the Assyrian King Tudiya (approximately 2500 B.C.) had already been known from the Assyrian king list composed about 1000 B.C. His name appeared at the head of the list, but his reality was dismissed by many scholars as “free invention, or a corruption.”  In fact, he was very much a real king of Ebla. Thus, the genealogical tradition of the earlier parts of the Assyrian king list has been vindicated. It preserves faithfully, over a period of 1,500 years, the memory of real, early people who were Assyrian rulers. What we must learn from this is that when we find similar material in the Old Testament, such as the genealogical list in Genesis 7 or the patriarchal stories, we should be careful not to reject them out of hand, as the scholars have so often done. We must remember that these ancient cultures were just as capable of recording their histories as we are.

The most important aspect of the Ebla discoveries is undoubtedly their language. This has been found to be ancient West-Semitic language to which such languages as Hebrew, Canaanite, Ugaritic, Aramaic, and Moabite are related. Thus we have now, for the first time, the whole “tradition” of West-Semitic language stretching over 2,500 years–something which was previously true only of Egyptian and Akkadian, to which Babylonian and Assyrian belong.

Up until quite recently, therefore, this meant that scholars could argue that many words which appeared in the Hebrew Old Testament were what they called “late.” What they meant by this was that these words indicated a much later authorship than the time stated by the text itself. It would be as if one of us pretended to write a sixteenth-century  book using such modern words as AUTOMOBILE and COMPUTER. In the case of the Pentateuch, for example, this was one of the arguments which led some scholars to suggest that it was not Moses who wrote these books, as the Bible says, but anonymous scribes from approximately 1,000 years later. The discoveries at Ebla have shown that many of these words were not late, but very early. Here is yet another example of a claimed “scientific” approach that merely reflects the philosophical prejudices of the scholars involved.

The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)

 
Archaeology Confirms The Biblical Account

        Oftentimes people are not told about the archaeological discoveries that document the truths written in the Bible. We are told that science and the Bible disagree. But as is really the case: True science and the Bible do not contradict each other. We supply many short articles which show that archaeology confirms God’s Written Word, The Bible.

        The below articles are excerpted from various Archaeological trade journals and publications including Light on Archaeology magazine, and Associates for Biblical Research.

Archaeology: The study of human antiquities – usually as
discovered by excavation.  (Chambers English Dictionary)

Below we supply articles from the Associates for Biblical Research and Light on Archaeology to point the reader to the wealth of information that has literally been unearthed by the spades of patient, dedicated people which helps to confirm the historical accuracy of the Bible – God’s Word. Many sights exist in the lands mentioned in the Bible where artifacts of many kinds reveal the life and customs of the people who lived there many centuries earlier.

The Bible has been ridiculed and dismissed in recent times as inaccurate and unreliable. However, students of Biblical Archaeology have found that as the science of archaeology becomes more sophisticated, much more evidence is coming to light regularly that says just the opposite! Finds have been made that show us how historically accurate God’s Word really is.

For those of us who have been privileged to visit Israel – God’s Land, it is thrilling to look down and examine the shaft that Joab climbed up to take the city of Jebus (later Jerusalem) for King David.[2 Sam 5.7-9 : 1 Chron 11.5-7] It is exciting to wade through King Hezekiah’s tunnel, from the spring of Gihon to the pool of Siloam (Silwan). [2 Kings 20.20] It is fascinating to examine the actual scrolls found at Qumram by the Dead Sea and to walk around the Citadel of Jerusalem; the remains of Herod’s fortress palace where Christ was paraded, mocked and then condemned by Pilate.[ Luke 23.1-25] All of these places give us visible evidence of the accuracy of the Biblical record.

The following series of articles are only a small sample of the information available, but, hopefully, the object will be achieved to direct the reader to further studies of the deeper truths revealed in the Bible.

So with your Bible in hand, you are invited to examine the evidence to see whether the work of the archaeologist confirms or denies God’s Word.

NOTE:  We supply the below articles with the gracious permission of Bible Archeology.  They also provide a free magazine as well, the address for signing up for that is supplied at the end of this study.

TEL MARDIKH: Have you heard of the Empire of Ebla? It is not surprising if you have not – for modern history text books make no references to this kingdom, which existed from approximately 2,300 B.C. to 1,700 B.C.

In fact, only students of ancient Middle East history are likely to have come across the name of Ebla, and even then, only in passing – not realizing the extent and power of this empire which stretched around the shores of the eastern Mediterranean for nearly 600 years. Now the re-writing of our history books will again be necessary to fill the gaps in our knowledge of the past; for there has been a remarkable archaeological discovery in Syria between Aleppo and Damascus, on the site of Tel Mardikh.

On this site of a 4,000 year old fortification, perhaps the most remarkable ‘find’ of the century has been uncovered – 18,000 fired clay and rock tablets relating to the economy, administration and international dealings of this once great empire of Ebla.

Popular history of the third millennium B.C. is taught with little regard for the Biblical account of the customs, manners, social behavior and level of education of the people of this period.

Now for the first time it appears that there exists a record contemporary with the Biblical account of the times, and so different is the picture it reveals from that of accepted historical suppositions, that the linguist in charge of the tablets, Dr Pettinato, has claimed that this discovery calls for a fundamental revision of third millennium B.C. culture and history.

The tablets were discovered in some out-buildings of a palace situated within the vast fortifications around the top of the tel. Many of the buildings, due to their solid roofs of some two feet in thickness, are intact and free of debris. Most of the walls are plastered a gray-green color, with murals in good condition. The two rooms in which the tablets were discovered had been shelved with wood but, due to time and the weight of the tablets, this shelving had collapsed with some breakages; but the tablets, many containing 3,000 lines of cuneiform writing, are in readable condition.

The tablets tell of an ’empire’ and names many areas under the control of Ebla, such as Sinai, Assyria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Carchemish, Lachish, Gaza, Hazor and others. Bible students will readily recognize that many of these names appear in the Old Testament record and it is interesting to note that of the three languages of the tablets, an hitherto unknown tongue, closely resembling Hebrew is prevalent and many common names recorded by the people of Ebla are easily recognizable to Bible readers.

• AB-RA-MU – (ABRAM)
• E-SA-UM – (ESAU)
• IS-MA-EL – (ISHMAEL)
• IS-RA-EL – (ISRAEL)
• MI-KA-EL – (MICHAEL)
• MI-KA-YAH – (MICAIAH)
• YE-RU-SA-LU-UM – (JERUSALEM)

Further, many common Ebla words are the same as Hebrew, such as ‘and’ (WA), ‘perfect’ (TAMMIN), ‘fall’ (NAPAL) and ‘good’ (TOB).

But perhaps most interesting of all are the quite extensive descriptions of the Creation and of the Flood, so often derided by modern historians.

The tablets are being translated and published and their contents will be invaluable in enlarging our understanding of the world of 2,000 BC; for they reveal a sophisticated system of international and civil law, including treaties of trade between Ebla and her neighbors within the framework of political agreements. These have been likened to the present-day Treaty of Rome between the EC members.

In addition, long lists of zoological, geographic and mathematical material have been found and there are weather forecasts in some meteorological texts. Records were made of visiting Mesopotamian scribes and mathematicians.

Proverbs and literary works are also preserved, including a set of bilingual tablets for the purpose of teaching translation, besides thousands of matching words. There seems no doubt that the tablets of Tel Mardikh contain the worlds oldest vocabulary lists – a source of no little consternation to students of ancient languages; for it is widely held that Biblical Hebrew is an evolved language, used during the first millennium BC Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet however, had indicated that his language was ‘the language of Canaan’, [Isaiah 19v18] and the Tel Mardikh tablets now support the Biblical reference – Hebrew has now to be recognized as one of the world’s oldest languages (and perhaps the language spoken by Noah, Canaan being the grandson of Noah through Ham). [ Genesis 10v6]

Interesting for Bible students is the fact that the Bible records that Abram, together with his father Terah, left the city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia to go into Canaan. They traveled as far as Haran and dwelt there. [Genesis 11v31,32] Haran was some 300 miles north east from the site at Tell Mardikh and appears to be named after Haran, Abram’s brother. [ Genesis 11v27 ] On his journey to Canaan, Abram in all probability, passed through Tel Mardikh, the then centre of trade and commerce, and of course, the language of Abram would be that of Ebla and of Canaan.

The other two languages written in cuneiform and discovered at Tel Mardikh are Sumerian and Akkadian. It had previously been assumed that the earliest cuneiform languages, were these two languages, developed in east and south Mesopotamia and the possibility that Syrian and Canaanite communications existed in cuneiform had been ruled out (with the exception of Ugaritic texts). But the Tel Mardikh tablets now reveal Sumerian scripts pre-dating those found in eastern Mesopotamia – throwing accepted theories of language origins to the winds. The Akkadian scripts found at Tel Mardikh refer mainly to the later period of the history of Ebla. One of the deities worshipped at Mardikh was Marduk or the Merodak of the Bible. It appears to be basically the same name as Nimrod, the ‘mighty hunter before the Lord’ mentioned in Genesis 10v9 Nimrod, who founded the city of Babel, appears to have been deified and the cult continued long after Ebla had ceased. The main consonants of Nimrod are M R D, hence:

• N i M R o D
• M a R D ikh
• M e R o D ak

Tel Mardikh was then the place of worship for Mardikh.

The finds of Tel Mardikh and the Empire of Ebla, so far have only revealed confirmation of the scriptural narrative.

From Hinduism to Christianity

Article ID: DH121 | By: Dr. Mahendra P. Singhal

September 19, 2011

By Elvis Costello

My absolute favorite albums are Rubber Soul and Revolver. On both records you can hear references to other music — R&B, Dylan, psychedelia — but it’s not done in a way that is obvious or dates the records. When you picked up Revolver, you knew it was something different. Heck, they are wearing sunglasses indoors in the picture on the back of the cover and not even looking at the camera . . . and the music was so strange and yet so vivid. If I had to pick a favorite song from those albums, it would be “And Your Bird Can Sing” . . . no, “Girl” . . . no, “For No One” . . . and so on, and so on. . . .

Their breakup album, Let It Be, contains songs both gorgeous and jagged. I suppose ambition and human frailty creeps into every group, but they delivered some incredible performances. I remember going to Leicester Square and seeing the film of Let It Be in 1970. I left with a melancholy feeling.

The Beatles I’ve Got A Feeling

64

‘I’ve Got a Feeling’

K & K Ulf Kruger OHG/Redferns

Writers: McCartney-Lennon
Recorded: January 22-24, 27 and 28, February 5, 1969
Released: May 18, 1970
Not released as a single

“I’ve Got a Feeling” was Lennon and McCartney’s last great moment as a songwriting team, and the final major Beatles song that sounded like a true collaboration. Both contributed fragments that fit together perfectly: The song’s body (“I’ve got a feeling/A feeling deep inside”) is sung by McCartney, but Lennon takes over for the “Everybody had a hard year” section, which came out of a song he had written a few months earlier.

It had been a hard year for the Beatles; they were falling apart as a band and as a business concern. But during their rooftop performance of “I’ve Got a Feeling” — filmed for the Let It Be movie, just days after they had recorded the song — you can hear their excitement as they move into the future. Lennon and McCartney sing about their newfound relationships, as they entered the next phase of their lives with Yoko Ono and Linda Eastman. Yet you can also hear a trace of remorse, as if they already understood that from now on, these longtime friends and bandmates would be leading separate lives.

Appears On: Let It Be

The Beatles – Dear Prudence [New Stereo Mix Exp.] [HD]

63

‘Dear Prudence’

Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: August 28-30, 1968
Released: November 25, 1968
Not released as a single

When the Beatles arrived in India to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the actress Mia Farrow and her 20-year-old sister, Prudence, were already there. Prudence got so deeply into meditation that she refused to come out of her hut. “We saw her twice in the two weeks I was there,” Starr recalled. “Everyone would be banging on the door: ‘Are you still alive?'” As Lennon put it, Prudence “was trying to reach God quicker than anybody else. That was the competition in Maharishi’s camp: Who was going to get cosmic first?”

Lennon turned the incident into “Dear Prudence,” which he wrote in India on acoustic guitar, as a gentle invitation to “come out to play.” With its fingerpicking folk-guitar style — taught to Lennon by Donovan, who spent time with the Beatles in Rishikesh — and wistful nursery-rhyme lyrics, the song became one of the band’s most poignant evocations of childhood. It was recorded after Starr had stormed out of the studio and briefly quit the band, so McCartney plays drums on it, as well as bass, piano and flügelhorn.

Appears On: The Beatles

Who Is God? | Ravi Zacharias

What Is Hinduism?

Article ID: DH122 | By: Dean C. Halverson and Natun Bhattacharya

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The Beatles in India TG7 1967 3a parte

Need God? What If I Don’t? | Ravi Zacharias

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Bill Eppridge is the Photographer featured today

(c) 2014 Adrienne Aurichio

This piece by Adrienne Aurichio is part of a series of essays to mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first American television appearance on CBS’s “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It culminates with CBS News, 50 Years Later…The Beatles at The Ed Sullivan Theater: Presented by Motown The Musical, a live, interactive multimedia event at The Ed Sullivan Theater on Feb. 9. 

Bill Eppridge believed that a good photojournalist had a certain amount of luck when it came to being in the right place at the right time. He certainly was in the right place on the morning of February 7, 1964. Bill, just 26, was in the Life magazine office early that day when Director of Photography Dick Pollard needed someone to be at JFK Airport to photograph the arrival of a British rock group known as The Beatles.

Not only was Bill there when they stepped off the plane, but he also followed the group for the next six days.  Strangely, all 90 rolls of film, with more than 3000 images went missing for years. They resurfaced around the same time that The Beatles were breaking up and Life, the great weekly news magazine, was ending as well.  This is the backstory:I had known Bill for more than seven years before discovering that he had photographed The Beatles on that first visit to the United States in 1964. While researching photographs for a magazine project in 1993, I came across an old Beatles black-and-white print with Bill’s photo credit on the back – “Bill Eppridge/Life Magazine.” The print had come from the Time Life picture collection. I thought there might be more.

I phoned Bill to ask about the photograph. He was very nonchalant – it was no big deal. I, on the other hand, still remembered watching the Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday night in 1964 and hearing the screaming audience as the Beatles played “She Loves You.” The Beatles made an impression on me even though I was only nine.

• Complete coverage of The Beatles: 50 Years Later

Bill told me how he had turned in his film to the Time Life lab after spending those six days with The Beatles, traveling from New York to Washington, D.C., and back. He made pictures as they happened, never staging anything.

 Life only published four of his photographs. Soon after, Bill was assigned to the Chicago bureau. Constantly traveling, he never had time to see the contact sheets from those six days. A few months later, when he finally asked, the film could not be located. No one at the magazine or the photo lab seemed to know where it was.

• More on the Night That Changed America at CBS.com 

Seven or eight years later, the film finally turned up on his desk with an anonymous note. There was no explanation as to where it had been all those years.

By then The Beatles were no longer together as a group. Life ceased publication in December 1972,  a short time after the missing photographs mysteriously reappeared. Bill never solved the mystery. He added a note to his acknowledgements page of our new book published in February 2014 with the hope that someone might finally come forward and unravel the mystery. Anybody?

• More on the Beatles from CBS Local
• Win tickets to the live event at the Ed Sullivan Theater on Feb. 9

Adrienne Aurichio is co-editor of “The Beatles: Six Days That Changed the World” (Rizzoli),  which features the best of Bill Eppridge’s photographs from February 7 – 12, 1964.   In his acknowledgments, Mr. Eppridge wrote, “I owe so much to my wife and editor, Adrienne Aurichio, who spent weeks going through the three thousand images on ninety rolls of film to piece together my story.  I relied on her vision and experience as an editor to research and unravel the photographs, and then pull them together in chronological order.”  Mr. Eppridge died October 3, 2013.  A successful photojournalist his entire career, he is perhaps best known for his photograph of the dying Robert F. Kennedy, taken June 6, 1968.

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Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.”  (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? ) 

How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles

Francis Schaeffer

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Related posts:

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