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George Harrison – Awaiting On You All (Backing Track – Early Take)
George Harrison – ‘Awaiting On You All’ – Original Audio
Francis Schaeffer in his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? gives us some insight into a possible answer to that question WHY WAS DRUG-TAKING AND EASTERN RELIGIONS SO POPULAR IN THE 1960’s IN USA?
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.
George Harrison – Awaiting On You All – Lyrics
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FRIDAY, MAY 10, 2013
Awaiting on You All
On the way home from work one afternoon I listened to the George Harrison song Awaiting on You All that I had copied along with other songs by this artist from his album All Things Must Pass. Hearing this song after so many years (it was on a CD that I had lost and just found again) was an interesting experience, and as often happens when you unearth some part of your past and compare it with your present, I heard it almost with fresh ears. I am not the same person that I was then. I was in my twenties when I followed George Harrison both musically and spiritually. Though the Eastern religious views he espoused most of his public life were similar to mine at that age, it didn’t take long for me to outgrow them. ‘Outgrow’ is not exactly the right word, though. I didn’t really outgrow them. You could say I traded them in, new lamps for old. I never struck a better deal.
Still, listening to the song I was amazed just how spot on he was in much of what he was saying. I can still relate to almost all of it. I don’t think that either of us, George or I, was aware of the fuzzy thinking that made us combine devotion and belief in Krishna and Jesus without noticing the two aren’t the same. I’m not talking about doctrinal or religious differences. Hinduism and Christianity are distinct religions, granted, but anyone who believes in God knows, ‘God is God. There is no thing you can compare to God. God is God.’ We tend to believe that at best other religions are wrong in the details but right in the big picture. This may be true, but no one can say so without denying his faith community. In youth, I think we were bored with dogmatic strongholds, and wanted the freedom to meet God on our terms, not according to those of our ancestors. How little did we understand that ‘the ancestors in stone armor calling for loyalty untrue’ seeking ‘to make a zigzag of the arrow’s flight’ were doing no such thing.
No, they knew that the shortest path between two points is rarely a straight line, though arrows may fly to their mark, being projectiles aimed at a target. Unfortunately people are not projectiles, and our destination is not really a target, no matter how much we wish we could hit the bullseye. We are beings fashioned in the Divine image and likeness. We live in more than three, more even than four, dimensions, and the paths we tread cannot be traced, planned or prophesied by mortal logic or the magic of music. They are no more than mere beginnings, our thoughts and feelings, before we bump into the aweful reality which we glibly like to call ‘God.’ Meet Him on our terms? Hardly possible, unless He allows it, and only as a sign that He is there, hidden behind our wall, waiting for us to…
No, that is also just what we glibly like to think, as George Harrison sings in his song…
You don’t need no love in
You don’t need no bed pan
You don’t need a horoscope or a microscope
To see the mess that you’re in
If you open up your heart
You will know what I mean
We’ve been polluted so long
Now here’s a way for you to get clean
By chanting the names of the Lord, and you’ll be free
The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see…
You don’t need no passport
And you don’t need no visas
You don’t need to designate or to emigrate
Before you can see Jesus
If you open up your heart
You’ll see he’s right there
Always was and will be
He’ll relieve you of your cares
You don’t need no church house
And you don’t need no Temple
You don’t need no rosary beads or them books to read
To see that you have fallen
If you open up your heart
You will know what I mean
We’ve been kept down so long
Someone’s thinking that we’re all green
… The Lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see
By chanting the names of the Lord, and you’ll be free
I purposely left out the stanza about the pope owning controlling interest in General Motors and not being qualified to quote us anything but the Stock Exchange. This is childish talk and hatchets all the good things he has to say. This, I find, is true of youthful thinkers in every generation. It’s true of otherwise noble and idealistic youth today. It was true of me as a Vietnam War draft resister. We ‘let the cat out of the bag’ about ourselves when we pounce on anyone, especially an authority figure we don’t approve of, and show that, however pure we think our motives, however lofty our ideals, we’re still no better than the fallen heroes we no longer believe in. What George Harrison says in this song I still agree with. Where I have a problem, is what he proposes as a solution to the mess we find ourselves in. As much as I enjoyed chanting Hare Krishna, it didn’t save me, or the world, and it never will.
But the rest is, amazingly, true, as I have found out in the intervening years. The words about Jesus are almost straight out of the Bible. The words about churches and temples, the same. Somebody went to Sunday School as a child. Yes, you’re right. I did.
I know that for sure, and guess what? It stuck. What started out as an incomprehensible religious upbringing somehow became comprehensible when it finally collided with what I was made for.
Yes, my parachute failed to open, and the earth received my bruised and broken body. I was alive for just a moment, just long enough for me to realize I was about to die. Then His gentle hands slipped under my head and shoulders as He lifted me up from what should have been my grave. He had already been there, aeons before I came to birth or leapt to my unintended death. No, this did not literally happen. I’ve never used a parachute. But His hands are real.
Awaiting on You All, a great song,
but He is waiting only from our point of view.
On His side, we are either already with Him, or without Him.
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The Daily Hatch 
Comments
I feel very sorry for you that you can only hear this song through christian ears, for it is not intended to be heard in that way. George was championing all religions, and none. He was celebrating the goodness of life he found inside of himself. He did not intend anyone to cherry pick what words they wanted to hear or not hear. He saw catholicism for what it was, big business in the guise of a religion, and he said it because he meant it. It was not a childish hatchet job, but a true statement warning people away. Nor did he only mean christ when he used the word Lord. Krshna was a Lord, as was Buddha. He was combining eastern and western religions. To deny that is to demonize Mr. Harrison. I despise that you even try.
Meanwhile, chanting can be an uplifting process. It can help you advance your spirit, not by the names involved, but by the sounds you make with your mouth. It is the syllables, not the words that have value.
All this coming from an Atheist. I hope that blows your mind. Not a youth, but a person who was there in the 60s. I was one of those idealistic youths you talk about from the 60s, taking acid to further my spiritual search–one who found meaning in the mind and spirit that acid opened up for me. I found myself, and my self was not what I expected it to be.
I read a good article on The Layman’s Bible blog to this song and the blogger breaks down every word of the song and tells how to really find Jesus according to the the Bible, and it not how Harrison suggested. Here is the link for the article https://www.google.com/amp/s/laymansbible.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/awaiting-on-you-all/amp/
Let me give you a summary of the article.
Awaiting on You All (George Harrison)
George Harrison
You don’t need no love in,
You don’t need no bed pan.
You don’t need a horoscope or a microscope
To see the mess that you’re in.
If you open up your heart,
You’ll know what I mean.
We’ve been polluted so long,
Now here’s a way for you to get clean.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that things are messed up, both outside and in our lives. We don’t need to search the heavens to realize it, nor do we need to look closely at the ground to realize it. Between the Holy Spirit tugging at our hearts, the devil accusing us, and the news reports on the TV, we all know things are messed up outside and at home. And stuff being messed up isn’t anything new. George says, “We’ve been polluted so long,” but Paul comes right out and says that things on earth have been messed up since the beginning,
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned- for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is not law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come (Romans 5:12-14).
Ever since Adam disobeyed God, sin and death have been in the world, messing things up through a great number of ways. How are we ever to get clean after being polluted by death and sin for such a long time? Paul writes,
For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in the life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous (Romans 5:17-19).
Since we were hopelessly lost through the sin of Adam and all of our personal sins, we were separated from God and ultimately doomed. However, the Lord provided a way for us to be made clean through his son, Jesus Christ.
Alright, now we start to wander into heretical territory.
By chanting the names of the lord and you’ll be free,
The lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see.
Chanting the name of the lord and you’ll be free,
The lord is awaiting on you all to awaken and see.
The chorus is the only part of the song that isn’t entirely on par with Paul’s teachings. However, even while being off, George isn’t too far off of probably the most important message in all of Romans. Mr. Harrison says that to be cleaned of the filth of the world we should chant the names of the “lord.” Now for George this was part of his meditation, to literally chant the names of his god. However, for us, we have one God in three parts, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul tells us that through the name of Jesus we can find salvation from our sins,
…That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved (Romans 10:9-10).
You don’t need no church house,
And you don’t need no temple.
You don’t need to rosary beats or those books to read
To see that you have fallen.
If you open up your heart,
You will know what I mean.
We’ve been kept down so long,
Someone’s thinking that we’re all green.
It doesn’t take listening to a pastor to know that our world is in trouble. We can clearly see that what we have now doesn’t match up with our Almighty Creator. Paul reminds us of this when he writes,
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Romans 1:18-20).
Everyone knows in their heart that there is a God. People may doubt, and people may deny; but the truth is that at some point or another, all of us realize that existence isn’t without a creator.
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This last point reminds of a blog post that I did that might interest you since you claim to be an atheist and here is the link https://thedailyhatch.org/2014/06/04/csicop-experts-commented-15-years-ago-on-a-lie-detectors-ability-to-detect-ones-repressed-belief-in-god/
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This is a short summary of my blog post:
Nelson Price in THE EMMANUEL FACTOR (1987) tells the story about Brown Trucking Company in Georgia who used to give polygraph tests to their job applicants. However, in part of the test the operator asked, “Do you believe in God?” In every instance when a professing atheist answered “No,” the test showed the person to be lying. My pastor Adrian Rogers used to tell this same story to illustrate Romans 1:19 and it was his conclusion that “there is no such thing anywhere on earth as a true atheist. If a man says he doesn’t believe in God, then he is lying. God has put his moral consciousness into every man’s heart, and a man has to try to kick his conscience to death to say he doesn’t believe in God.”
It is true that polygraph tests for use in hiring were banned by Congress in 1988. Mr and Mrs Claude Brown on Aug 25, 1994 wrote me a letter confirming that over 15,000 applicants previous to 1988 had taken the polygraph test and EVERY TIME SOMEONE SAID THEY DID NOT BELIEVE IN GOD, THE MACHINE SAID THEY WERE LYING.
It had been difficult to catch up to the Browns. I had heard about them from Dr. Rogers’ sermon but I did not have enough information to locate them. Dr. Rogers referred me to Dr. Nelson Price and Dr. Price’s office told me that Claude Brown lived in Atlanta. After writing letters to all 9 of the entries for Claude Brown in the Atlanta telephone book, I finally got in touch with the Browns.
Adrian Rogers also pointed out that the Bible does not recognize the theoretical atheist. Psalms 14:1: The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” Dr Rogers notes, “The fool is treating God like he would treat food he did not desire in a cafeteria line. ‘No broccoli for me!’ ” In other words, the fool just doesn’t want God in his life and is a practical atheist, but not a theoretical atheist. Charles Ryrie in the The Ryrie Study Bible came to the same conclusion on this verse.
I am sorry you wasted your time writing such a long reply, because it did not impress me at all. I was brought up christian, but that totally does not agree with how I found this world.
George Harrison tried to expand how people could see the world/cosmos he saw, which was with a god-like being of some kind, but certainly not the christian vision of god. To see his music forced into a christian cage was not in agreement with his world, and it hurts me to see what you and others have done to it. George was a very spiritual person, but he was not christian!
I too am a very spiritual person, but there is no room for any kind of superbeing in my cosmos. There is only life…