Schaeffer indicates the reason eastern mysticism became so popular in the USA in the 1960’s:

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. 

I have dedicated several posts to this series on the Beatles and I don’t know when this series will end because Francis Schaeffer spent a lot of time listening to the Beatles and talking and writing about them and their impact on the culture of the 1960’s. In this series we have looked at several areas in life where the Beatles looked for meaning and hope but also we have examined some of the lives of those  writers, artists, poets, painters, scientists, athletes, models, actors,  religious leaders, musicians, comedians, and philosophers  that were put on the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. We have discovered that many of these individuals on the cover have even taken a Kierkegaardian leap into the area of nonreason in order to find meaning for their lives and that is the reason I have included the 27 minute  episode THE AGE OF NONREASON by Francis Schaeffer. In that video Schaeffer noted,  ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world.”

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

The Beatles:

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In the film series HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Francis Schaeffer shows the Beatles visiting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India.

THE SONG “THE WALRUS” DOES A GREAT JOB OF PRESENTING HINDUISM TO THE WORLD IN THE OPENING LINE “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”

The Beatles I’m The Walrus

On the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album we see these gentlemen below:

Sri Yukteswar Giri / Sri Paramahansa Yogananda / Sri Mahavatar Babaji

Although the Beatles wouldn’t meet the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi until two months after Pepper’s release, Harrison was already showing an interest in meditation and other aspects of Indian philosophy. Yogananda, who helped bring these practices to the West through his Self-Realization Fellowship, was a disciple of both Giri and Babaji.

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In the very fine article, “The Sgt. Pepper’s Album Cover: Faces in the Crowd,” by Lydia Hutchinson on  March 29, 2015, she made this observation concerning the picking of  SRI PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA to be on the cover:

George Harrison’s cover subject choices were mostly Indian holy men, including this yogi and guru who was instrumental in bringing meditation and yoga to the West. Friend and sitar teacher Ravi Shankar had given Harrison a copy of Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi in 1966, and its influence on the spiritually searching Beatle was profound.

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Paramahansa Yogananda (5 January 1893 – 7 March 1952) pictured below:

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 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.

Francis Schaeffer with Dr. C. Everett Koop in their book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? noted:

The New Mysticism
What about the spread of Eastern religions and techniques within the West – things like TM, Yoga, the cults? We have moved beyond the counterculture of the sixties, but where to? These elements from the East no longer influence just the beat generation and the dropouts. Now they are fashionable for the middle classes as well. They are everywhere.
What about those who take drugs as a means of “expanding their consciousness”? This, too, is in the same direction. Your mind is a hindrance to you: “Blow it”! As Timothy Leary put it in The Politics of Ecstasy (1968): “Our favorite concepts are standing in the way of a flood tide two billion years building up. The verbal dam is collapsing. Head for the hills or prepare your intellectual craft to flow with the current.” So we see again the rejection of the mind. The verbal dam, the concepts, the intellectual craft? These must be bypassed by the “new man.”
Wherever we look, this is what confronts us: irrational experience. We must be careful not to be bewildered by the surface differences between these movements. We are not saying they are all the same. Of course there are differences. The secular existentialists, for example, disagree with one another. Then, too, secular existentialists differ with religious existentialists; the former tend to be pessimistic, the latter optimistic. Some of the movements are serious and command our respect. Some are just bizarre. There are differences. Yet, all of them represent the new mysticism!
The problem with mysticism of this sort is, interestingly enough, the same problem we considered earlier in relation to all humanistic systems. Who is going to say what is right?
As soon as one removes the checking mechanism of the mind by which to measure things, everything can then be “right” and everything can also be “wrong.” Eventually, anything and everything can be allowed! Take a simple example from life: If you are asking for directions in a city, you first listen to the directions your guide is giving and then you set off. Let us say the directions are: “Take the first turn on the right, called Twenty-fourth Street; then the next turn of the left, called Kennedy Drive; and then keep going till you come to the park where you will see the concert hall just past a big lake on your right.” Armed with there directions, you go along – checking up on what you have been told: “Yes, there is Twenty-fourth Street. Yes, there is Kennedy Drive,” and so on.
In other words, you are not just told words; you are able to see if these words relate to the outside world, the world you have to operate in if you are going to get from A to B. This is where your mind is essential. You can check to see if the information you have been given is true or false.
Imagine, on the other hand, that someone said, in answer to your request for directions, “I don’t know where or what B is. It is impossible to talk about a `concert hall.’ What is a `concert hall’ anyway? We can only say of it that it is the `Unknowable.'” How completely ridiculous for you to be told, “Go any way – because this is the way”!
The trick in all these positions is to argue first of all that the End – Final Reality – cannot be spoken of (because it cannot be known by the mind) and yet to give the directions to find it. We should notice, however, that in this setting we can never ask questions ahead of time about the directions we receive. They are directions only for blindfolded experience, the blind “leap of faith.”
We cannot ask, “How will I know that it is truth or that it is the divine I am experiencing?” The answer is always, “There is no way you can be told, for it is an answer beyond language, beyond categories, but take this path [or that one, or another one] anyway.”
Thus, modern man is bombarded from all sides by devotees of this or that experience. The media only compound the problem. So does the commercialism of our highly technological societies. The danger of manipulation from these alone is overwhelming. In the absence of a clear standard, they are a force for the control of people’s minds and behavior that is beyond anything in history. In fact, there are no clear standards in Western society now; and where there is an appearance of standards, very often there is insufficient motivation to lean against the enormous pressures. And why? In part, at least, because there is an inadequate basis for knowledge and for morality.
When we add to this that modern man has become a “mystic,” we soon realize the seriousness of the situation. For in all these mystical solutions no one can finally say anything about right and wrong. The East has had this problem for thousands of years. In a pantheistic system, whatever pious statements may be made along the way, ultimately good and evil are equal in God, the impersonal God. So we hear Yun-Men, a Zen master, saying, “If you want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. Conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind.”
Society can have no stability on this Eastern world-view or its present Western counterpart. It just does not work. And so one finds a gravitation toward some form of authoritarian government, an individual tyrant or group of tyrants who takes the reins of power and rule. And the freedoms, the sorts of freedoms we have enjoyed in the West, are lost.
We are, then, brought back to our starting point. The inhumanities and the growing loss of freedoms in the West are the result of a world-view which as no place for “people.” Modern humanistic materialism is an impersonal system. The East is no different. Both begin and end with impersonality.

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.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #94)

We looked earlier at the city of Lachish. Let us return to the same period in Israel’s history when Lachich was besieged and captured by the Assyrian King Sennacherib. The king of Judah at the time was Hezekiah.

Perhaps you remember the story of how Jesus healed a blind man and told him to go and wash in the Pool of Siloam. It is the same place known by King Hezekiah, approximately 700 years earlier. One of the remarkable things about the flow of the Bible is that historical events separated by hundreds of years took place in the same geographic spots, and standing in these places today, we can feel that flow of history about us. The crucial archaeological discovery which relates the Pool of Siloam is the tunnel which lies behind it.

One day in 1880 a small Arab boy was playing with his friend and fell into the pool. When he clambered out, he found a small opening about two feet wide and five feet high. On examination, it turned out to be a tunnel reaching  back into the rock. But that was not all. On the side of the tunnel an inscribed stone (now kept in the museum in Istanbul) was discovered, which told how the tunnel had been built originally. The inscription in classical Hebrew reads as follows:

The boring through is completed. And this is the story of the boring: while yet they plied the pick, each toward his fellow, and while there were yet three cubits [4 14 feet] to be bored through, there was heard the voice of one calling to the other that there was a hole in the rock on the right hand and on the left hand. And on the day of the boring through the workers on the tunnel struck each to meet his fellow, pick upon pick. Then the water poured from the source to the Pool 1,200 cubits [about 600 yards] and a 100 cubits was the height of the rock above the heads of the workers in the tunnel. 

We know this as Hezekiah’s Tunnel. The Bible tells us how Hezekiah made provision for a better water supply to the city:Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah and all his might, and how he made the pool and the conduit and brought water into the city, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?(II Kings 20:20). We know here three things: the biblical account, the tunnel itself of which the Bible speaks, and the original stone with its inscription in classical Hebrew.

From the Assyrian side, there is additional confirmation of the incidents mentioned in the Bible. There is a clay prism in the British Museum called the Taylor Prism (British Museum, Ref. 91032). It is only fifteen inches high and was discovered in the Assyrian palace at Nineveh. This particular prism dates from about 691 B.C. and tells about Sennacherib’s exploits. A section from the prism reads, “As for Hezekiah,  the Jew, who did not submit to my yoke, forty-six of his strong walled cities, as well as small cities  in their neighborhood I have besieged and took…himself like a caged bird, I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city. Earthworks I threw up against him,” Thus, there is a three-way confirmation concerning Hezekiah’s tunnel from the Hebrew side and this amazing confirmation from the Assyrian side.

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

You want some evidence that indicates that the Bible is true? Here is a good place to start and that is taking a closer look at the archaeology of the Old Testament times. Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology., 

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Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology – #7 Hezekiah’s Tunnel

This post is a continuation of our Top Ten Biblical Discoveries in Archaeology series. To see the complete series please click here.
A Tough Time to be AliveOur #7 biblically significant discovery in archaeology takes us back again to the time of the #10 discovery. If you haven’t read about the Assyrian Lachish Reliefs please click here to become more familiar with the events of 8th century BC Judah.The year is 701BC. Sennacherib, the King of Assyria, has destroyed nearly every prominent town in the southern kingdom of Judah. Israel lies in ruins. Sennacherib thrusts the power of the Assyrian army toward the all-important city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem houses the God of the Jews. The defeat of Jerusalem would be a large strategic and symbolic victory.The Assyrians employ the military strategy of the siege. The army surrounds the fortified walls of a city, cut off all water and food to the city, and then they wait. The term, “siege” derives from sedere, Latin for “to sit”. Attacking armies would wait weeks, months or even years. Assyria had recently besieged nearby Samaria, destroying it after waiting 3 years. As the people in the city grew sick and weak the healthy army would then advance to destroy the city. There are usually only three outcomes of a siege: survive by finding a way to get food and water, surrender or die.Jerusalem faces certain ruin. Hezekiah, one of the few godly kings, encourages his people to trust in God. God will deliver them from Sennacherib. 2 Kings 18:7 tells us, “He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him.” In 2 Kings 18 we learn the Assyrian commander tells the people of Jerusalem, “Do not listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, ‘The Lord will deliver us.’ Has the god of any nation ever delivered his land from the hand of the kind of Assyria?” The Assyrians first try to convince the people of Jerusalem to overthrow Hezekiah.The head Assyrian commander tells the people of Jerusalem, “Has my master sent me to speak these words to your master and to you, and not to the men sitting on the wall, who are doomed to with you to eat their own dung and to drink their own urine?” (2 Kings 18:27) If the people of Jerusalem don’t overthrow Hezekiah they, their wives and children will be forced to desperate measures just to stay alive.
The people of Jerusalem had a secret. They had been involved in one of the greatest engineering feats of the ancient world. It’s amazing what humans can accomplish when their backs are against the wall. The inhabitants of Jerusalem, facing certain death, found a secret way to get a constant source of water into Jerusalem. The Bible, in three areas, briefly mentions our #7 discovery:

“And the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and all his might, and how he made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?” 2 Kings 20:20

“And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem, He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city: and they did help him. So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains, and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come, and find much water?” 2 Chronicles 32:2-4

“This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.” 2 Chronicles 32:30

Hezekiah trusted in the supernatural power of God to deliver him AND he also employed immense hard work and ingenuity to keep his people alive. The Bible tells us he hid the Jerusalem water supply from the Assyrians and brought it underground into Jerusalem. This is all we know from Scripture.

Discovery

In 1838 American biblical scholar Edward Robinson shook up the archaeological world by discovering Hezekiah’s Tunnel. The tunnel was far more spectacular than anyone could have imagined. Two other tunnels had been dug in Israel out of soft chalky rock. The tunnel in Hazor is 82 feet long. The tunnel in Megiddo is 262 feet long. Hezekiah’s tunnel, in comparison, was dug through solid bed rock. What is the length of his tunnel? 1,750 feet!

The tunnel provides a constant stream of water through the city of Jerusalem. The tunnel takes water from the Gihon Spring and empties out at a place called the Pool of Siloam. The tunnel, surprisingly, does not follow the most direct route from the spring to the pool. The tunnel travels in an s-shape. If the tunnel was straight it would have only needed to have been 1070 feet, or 40% shorter. While the tunnel is far underground (appx 131 feet underground), the slope of the tunnel is precise. The tunnel slopes at a steady 0.6% grade. Once inside the tunnel another surprise is apparent. The head room within the tunnel varies considerably. The tunnel is always about as wide as a man’s shoulders. At the beginning of the tunnel the head room is pretty tight causing people to have to walk through it a bit hunched over. The last 160 feet of the tunnel, however, the ceiling soars up to 17 feet tall.

Toward one end of the tunnel, amazingly, an ancient Hebrew inscription was found on the wall. The inscription commemorates the point when two teams, digging from each end, finally met in the middle. The inscription reads:

“[…when] (the tunnel) was driven through. And this was the way in which it was cut through: While […] (were) still […] axe(s), each man toward his fellow, and while there were still three cubits to be cut through, [there was heard] the voice of a man calling to his fellows, for there was an overlap in the rock on the right [and on the left]. And when the tunnel was driven through, the quarrymen hewed (the rock), each man toward his fellow, axe against axe; and the water flowed from the spring toward the reservoir for 1200 cubits, and the height of the rock above the head(s) of the quarrymen was 100 cubits.”

Scientists have used several techniques to confirm the 8th century date of the tunnel. Some, especially those who claim the Jewish people did not have a sovereign kingdom in Jerusalem, claim the tunnel must have been created substantially more recent than 2,700 years ago. Analysis of the ancient writing; Carbon 14 dating of the plant life disrupted by the tunnel; uranium-thorium dating of the stalactites and stalagmites that grew after completion of the tunnel have all supported a date of around 700BC, the date given in the Bible for these events.

Construction of the Tunnel

How was Hezekiah’s Tunnel constructed without modern day equipment? How could two teams 131 feet underground, without GPS, meet in the middle connecting the two tunnels? How were the workers and subsequent users of the tunnel able to breathe oxygen? Why was the tunnel S-shaped and not straight? How were the workers able to maintain a precise 0.6% grade slope underground for 1,750 feet? These questions, ultimately, remain a mystery.

Over the past 150 years many theories have been offered to explain all these questions. Room is not available in this post to go into all of the theories. The wonder of it all is that the tunnel stands today, undisputed, still carrying water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam.

Visiting the Tunnel Today

If you ever get the chance to visit Jerusalem I highly recommend you take the time, walk down the steep hill from the temple mount and walk through Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Most famous archaeological discoveries are only observable behind the glass of a museum. Hezekiah’s Tunnel is the equivalent of an amusement park. Many tours to Israel, unfortunately, do not include in the itinerary a walk through the tunnel. Others make the tunnel an optional part of the trip. Yes, if you are claustrophobic you might not like some of the portions of the tunnel. Yes, your feet may become numb as you walk through the cold spring water. Remember what was on the line for the people constructing the tunnel. Be successful or your friends, your parents, your kids, your wife may all be dead soon. Step into Hezekiah’s day and walk through the tunnel with the absolute awe of people who trusted in God and worked their heart out.

Significance

Hezekiah’s Tunnel brings to living color an amazing engineering feat at a desperate time in the history of Jerusalem. If the tunnel was 10 feet long and 5 feet underground it would still be a valuable discovery. The grandeur of Hezekiah’s Tunnel propels it to the front of the line. Few significant artifacts exist from the 8th century BC. The interaction we can have today with Hezekiah’s Tunnel is stunning.

What do you think? Join the conversation by posting a comment to this post. Do you consider Hezekiah’s Tunnel one of the Top Ten discoveries?

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How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

Francis Schaeffer pictured below:

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The Beatles are featured in this episode below and Schaeffer noted,  ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world.”

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

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Great Album

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The Beatles – Within You Without You

Published on Jul 9, 2012

The Beatles – Within You Without You
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – 1967

Lyrics:

We were talking, about the space between us all
And the people, who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse of truth, then it’s far too late, when they pass away

We were talking, about the love we could all share, when we find it
To try our best to hold it there, with our love
With our love, we could save the world, if they only knew

Try to realize it’s all within yourself no-one else can make you change
And to see you’re really only very small,
And life flows on within and without you

We were talking, about the love that’s gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul
Then you may find, peace of mind, is waiting there
And the time will come when you see we’re all one,
And life flows on within and without you.

Within You Without You

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Within You Without You”
Song by the Beatles from the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Released	1 June 1967
Recorded	15 and 22 March and 3 April 1967, EMI Studios, London
Genre	Indian classical raga rock
Length	5:05
Label	Parlophone
Writer	George Harrison
Producer	George Martin
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bandtrack listing
[show]13 tracks
Music sample “Within You Without You” MENU 0:00

“Within You Without You” is a song written by George Harrison, released on the Beatles‘ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Composition[edit]

The basic tracks for “Within You Without You” featured only Harrison and a group of uncredited Indian musicians based in London. Producer George Martin then arranged a string section, and Harrison and assistant Neil Aspinall overdubbed the tambura. According to Prema Music, dilruba player Amrit Gajjar played on the track.^[1] Hunter Davies wrote that Harrison “trained himself to write down his song in Indian script so that the Indian musicians can play them.”^[2] With “Within You Without You”, Harrison became the second Beatle to record a song credited to The Beatles but featuring no other members of the group (Paul McCartney had previously done so with “Yesterday“).

“Within You Without You” is the second of Harrison’s songs to be explicitly influenced by Indian classical music (the first being “Love You To“, released on Revolver the previous year). Harrison said “I was continually playing Indian [sitar exercises] called Sargam, which are the bases of the different Ragas. That’s why around this time I couldn’t help writing tunes like this which were based on unusual scales.”^[3] The song is Harrison’s only composition on Sgt. Pepper after “Only a Northern Song” was omitted from the album. Harrison wrote “Within You Without You” on a harmonium at the house of long-time Beatles’ associate Klaus Voormann (“We were talking about the space between us all, And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion— never glimpse the truth”).^[4]

“Within You Without You” was heavily influenced by George Harrison‘s interest in Indian music andVedanta philosophy.

Musical structure[edit]

The song is mostly in Mixolydian mode^[5][6] or rather Khamaj thaat, its equivalent in Indian music.^[3]

The song, in the tonic (I) key of C (sped up to C# on the finished recording), is structured around an exotic Mixolydian melody over a constant C-G ‘root-fifth’ drone that is neither obviously major nor minor.^[7] It opens with a very short alap played by the tambouras (0:00-0:04), then dilruba (from 0:04) while a swarmandal is gently stroked to announce the pentatonic portion of the scale.^[3][8] A tabla then begins (at 0:23) playing a 16-beat tintal in a Madhya laya (medium tempo) and the dilruba plaintively backs the opening line of the verse (Bandish) or gat: “We were talking about the space between us all.” ^[3][8] The opening words “We were talking” are sung to an E-F-G-B♭ melody tritone interval (E to B♭) that enhances the spiritual dissonance sought to be evoked.^[9] Soon an 11-piece string section plays a series of unusual slides to match the Indian music idiom where the melody is often “played legato rounded in microtones, rather than staccato as in Western music.”^[8] The instrumental after the second verse and chorus involves the tabla switching from the 16 beat tintal to a 10 beat jhaptal cycle.^[10] As a pointed counterpoint to the verse echoes of ancient Vedantic philosophy (“wall of illusion” “When you’ve seen beyond yourself, then you may find peace of mind is waiting there”) a sawal-jawab (musical dialogue) begins in 5/4 time between first the dilruba and Harrison’s sitar, then between the full Western string section and Harrison’s sitar, this tellingly resolving into a melody in unison and together stating the tihai that closes the middle segment.^[10] Gould describes Martin’s strings as here making “their way through the bustle and drone of the Indian instruments with the slightly shaky dignity of a procession of sahibs in sedan chairs.”^[11] After this, the drone is again prominent and the swarmandal plays an ascending scale, followed by a lone cello in descending scale that leads to the final verse in 16-beat tintal (“And the time will come when you see we’re all one, and life flows on within you and without you”) ending with the notes of the dilruba left hanging, until the tonal and spiritual tension is relieved by a muted use ofcanned laughter.^[10]

Pollack considers that there two likely interpretations of the use of canned laughter. The first is that the presumably xenophobic Victorian/Edwardian-era audience implicit in the Sgt. Pepper band and concert concept “is letting off a little tension of this perceived confrontation with pagan elements.” The second holds that the composer is engaging in “an endearingly sincere nanosecond of acknowledgement of the apparent existential absurdity of the son-of-a-Liverpudlian bus driver espousing such other-worldly beliefs and sentiments”.^[12] Two slightly different laugh tracks were used for the mono and stereo mixes. The laughter is slightly quieter than the instrumental track in the stereo version. However, it comes in more sudden and louder in the mono version.

Recording[edit]

Recording began on 15 March 1967 at Abbey Road studio 2 with Indian musicians from the Asian Music Circle, London,^[13] sitting on a carpet with lights low and incense burning.^[3] On 3 April 1967 George Martin’s score for eight violins and three cellos was added, attempting to imitate the slides and bends of the dilrubas.^[3] The recording released on the album was sped up enough to raise the key from C to C#; an instrumental version of the song at the original speed and in the original key (and without the laugh track) appears on the Anthology 2 album.

Love remix[edit]

The song was also included on the 2006 remix album Love. For this album, George Harrison’s vocal and sitar parts were mixed over McCartney’s bass and Ringo’s drum parts from “Tomorrow Never Knows,” although the opening lyric, “Turn off your mind … Relax and float downstream … It is not dying … it is not dying,” come from “Tomorrow Never Knows,” as does the set of reversed sound effects utilised in the mashup. During part of the second verse of the mashup version, the drums and bass of “Tomorrow Never Knows” are silenced, replaced by the tabla percussion parts of “Within You Without You.” Also, Harrison’s vocals are heard in the song’s intended key of C major. The blending of these two songs is considered the most effective form ofmashup on the album.^[14] All of the music for Love was remixed and remastered by The Beatles’ producer Sir George Martin and his son Giles. The Love remix is one of the songs in The Beatles: Rock Band.^[15] The original version has also been released as downloadable content along with the rest of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in November 2009.

Stephen Stills was so impressed with the lyrics that he had them carved on a stone monument in his yard.^[16] John Lennon declared “Within You Without You” “one of George’s best songs.”^[17]

Personnel[edit]

• George Harrison – lead vocal, acoustic guitar, tambura, sitar
• Neil Aspinall – tambura
• Erich Gruenberg, Alan Loveday, Julien Gaillard, Paul Scherman, Ralph Elman, David Wolfsthal, Jack Rothstein, Jack Greene – violin
• Reginald Kilbey, Allen Ford, Peter Halling – cello
• Unnamed Indian musicians – swarmandal, dilruba, tabla, tambura

Personnel per Ian MacDonald^[18]

Cover versions[edit]

Year	Artist	Release	Notes
1967	Peter Knight and his Orchestra	(single)	Orchestral version
1968	Soulful Strings	(single)	Instrumental version
1988	Sonic Youth	Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father	Originally released on a various artist’s tribute album; re-released in 2007 on the deluxe edition of Daydream Nation
1999	Angels of Venice	Angels of Venice	Instrumental version
2003	Big Head Todd and the Monsters	Songs from the Material World: A Tribute to George Harrison	Various artists tribute album
2004	Thievery Corporation	The Outernational Sound	Instrumental version
2007	Oasis	Sgt. Pepper’s 40th Anniversary Tribute	Originally aired for BBC Radio 2 on 2 June 2007
2007	Glenn Mercer	Wheels in Motion
2007	Les Fradkin	Guitar Revolution	Instrumental version
2007	Patti Smith	Twelve
2009	Cheap Trick	Sgt. Pepper Live
2009	Easy Star All-Stars	Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band	Featuring Matisyahu

In 1996, Dead Can Dance released Spiritchaser that includes “Indus”, a song with a melody very similar to “Within You Without You”. After the similarity was discovered, they obtained Harrison’s permission to use it and gave him partial songwriting credit after pressure from the record company.^[19]

 

100 Greatest Beatles Songs

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.

96

‘Within You Without You’

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Main Writer: Harrison
Recorded: March 15 and 22, April 3 and 4, 1967
Released: June 2, 1967
Not released as a single

Harrison had been obsessed with the sitar since he saw one on the set of Help! in 1965. But it wasn’t until he went to India in 1966 to study with sitar master Ravi Shankar that he became truly skilled at it. Harrison often practiced eight hours a day while in India. “George’s passion for the music amazed me,” Shankar said.

“Within You Without You” was the first fruit of Harrison’s studies. Augmenting his sitar with an 11-piece string section and Indian instrumentation, it was a magnetic sermon on spirituality. “It’s one of my favorite [songs] of his,” Lennon said. “His mind and music are clear. . . . He brought that sound together.”

Harrison’s devotion to the sound and spirit of India lingered, blooming over his solo masterwork, All Things Must Pass. “Till the day I die,” Harrison told Rolling Stone in 1968, “I believe [Indian music] is the greatest music ever on our level of existence.”

Appears On: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

 

95

‘Any Time at All’

Harry Hammond/V&A Images/Getty Images

Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: June 2, 1964
Released: July 20, 1964
Not released as a single

“Any Time at All” shows how much the Beatles learned from their hero Buddy Holly. The song has all the Holly trademarks — the jangling guitars, the openhearted generosity of the lyric, the urgent emotion in the voices. It’s a pledge of 24-hour devotion to a girl, with Lennon speaking his mind in a brash way (“Call me tonight, and I’ll come to you”) that would have made Holly proud — even though Lennon himself wasn’t thrilled with the results. (He dismissed the song as my “effort at [re]writing ‘It Won’t Be Long.'”)

If the Beatles play the song like they’re in a hurry, it’s because they were — this was recorded on the last day of the sessions for A Hard Day’s Night, before they departed for a monthlong tour. (Unfortunately, the morning after they cut “Any Time at All,” Ringo collapsed with tonsillitis and pharyngitis, so they went to Denmark with a replacement drummer.) “Any Time at All” reprises a George Martin trick from “A Hard Day’s Night” by using a piano solo echoed lightly note-for-note on guitar by Harrison. Never a hit, “Any Time” became a fan favorite.

Appears On: A Hard Day’s Night

94

‘You Won’t See Me’

Stephan C. Archetti/Keystone Features/Getty Images

Main Writer: McCartney
Recorded: November 11, 1965
Released: December 6, 1965
Not released as a single

On the night of November 11th, 1965, the Beatles were in a bind. The deadline for completing Rubber Soul was upon them, and they needed to record three songs that evening to wrap up the album. On top of that, McCartney was having problems with his girlfriend, Jane Asher: He was upset that the actress had moved to Bristol to join the Old Vic theater company. Out of McCartney’s anger came “You Won’t See Me,” which finds him spitting out, albeit in his nice-guy way, some of his most bitter lyrics: “Time after time, you refuse to even listen/I wouldn’t mind if I knew what I was missing,” he grouses. As cranky as the lyrics are, the music behind them is positively bouncy, buoyed by Starr’s inventive drumming and a melody and bass line that are an obvious homage to Four Tops singles such as “I Can’t Help Myself.” “To me, it was very Motown-flavored,” said McCartney later. “It’s got a James Jamerson feel.” The Beatles were in such a rush to get the song over with that they cut it in only two takes.

Appears On: Rubber Soul

 

93

‘Sexy Sadie’

Cummings Archives/Redferns

Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: July 19 and 24, August 13 and 21, 1968
Released: November 25, 1968
Not released as a single

Lennon left India abruptly after hearing stories about the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s sexual impropriety with female students. While he and Harrison were waiting for a ride out of Rishikesh, Lennon composed this biting denunciation of his guru. He later told Rolling Stone that when the Maharishi asked why the pair were leaving, he replied, “Well, if you’re so cosmic, you’ll know why.”

The initial version of “Maharishi,” as the song was originally called, was even nastier (“You little twat/Who the fuck do you think you are?”); at Harrison’s suggestion, Lennon changed the title to “Sexy Sadie.” The other Beatles were nowhere near as vehement about repudiating the Maharishi. “It’s really funny, John’s reaction to this sexual thing,” McCartney said. “It seemed a little prudish to me.” Harrison, who swore the gossip about the Maharishi’s sexual misconduct was not true, was even more sanguine: “There were a lot of flakes [in Rishikesh]. Some of them were us.”

Appears On: The Beatles

Related
• The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: The Beatles’ White Album
• Photos: The Beatles Romp Through London in 1968
• Lennon’s Music: A Range of Genius

92

‘Dig a Pony’

Michael Webb/Keystone/Getty Images

Main Writer: Lennon
Recorded: January 22, 24, 28 and 30, February 5, 1969
Released: May 18, 1970
Not released as a single

This witty jumble of words was recorded at the Beatles’ rooftop performance, with an assistant holding up Lennon’s lyrics for him as a cue. “I roll a stoney/Well, you can imitate everyone you know,” Lennon sings. It might simply be an agreeable bit of nonsense (in 1980, Lennon dismissed “Dig a Pony” as “another piece of garbage”), or it might be a dart hurled at the Beatles’ chief rivals in English rock & roll, the Rolling Stones. Lennon and McCartney wrote the Stones’ second single, 1964’s “I Wanna Be Your Man” (Lennon later wryly noted, “We weren’t going to give them anything great“), and Keith Richards had played with Lennon on the Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus in late 1968. But in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1970, Lennon’s resentment spilled out: “I would like to just list what we did and what the Stones did two months after on every fuckin’ album. Every fuckin’ thing we did, Mick does exactly the same. They are not in the same class, musicwise or powerwise — never were.”

Appears On: Let It Be

91

‘Every Little Thing’

Keystone/Getty Images

Main Writer: McCartney
Recorded: September 29 and 30, 1964
Released: June 14, 1965
Not released as a single

The fond but self-centered lyrics of “Every Little Thing” celebrate the affections of McCartney’s girlfriend, Jane Asher, alternating between vows of love and bragging about “the things she does.” McCartney wrote the song while staying with Asher and her family in London; he and Lennon added finishing touches on tour in Atlantic City. McCartney said later that he thought “Every Little Thing” was “very catchy” but not what he hoped it would be. “Like most of the stuff I did, it was my attempt at the next single,” McCartney said. “But it became an album filler.”

Recording involved nine takes over the course of two days, including one outtake that dissolved into laughter. The finished track — a heartfelt, midtempo song, with a gorgeous melodic leap in the chorus — pulls switcheroos on a couple of the usual early Beatles routines. The main writer isn’t the lead singer; Lennon’s voice dominates. And Starr reached beyond his drum kit to play the booming timpani that jumps out midchorus.

Appears On: Beatles for Sale

 

Richard Lindner was featured on the cover of 

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band so today’s featured artist is Richard Lindner:

Moon over Alabama 1963 Richard Lindner 1901-1978 Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Madrid

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THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2009

Found the Key

Well, I did a little looking around and found a site that identifiesall of the individuals in the Sgt. Pepper illustration. Here’s Richard Lindner between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Directly in front of him is George Bernard Shaw.Other visual artists included in the picture are: Simon Rodia creator of the Watt’s Towers (top row just to the left of Bob Dylan), Wallace Bergman (six heads to the left of Lindner), and Larry Bell (between and slightly above John and Ringo in uniform).

LABELS: ARTISTS

Richard Lindner (painter)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Lindner
Born	November 11, 1901 Hamburg, Germany
Died	April 16, 1978 (aged 76)
Nationality	American
Education	Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School), Kunstakademie.
Known for	Painting

Richard Lindner (November 11, 1901 – April 16, 1978) was a German-American painter.

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 Biography
• 2 Art
• 3 In Popular Culture
• 4 (selected) Bibliography
• 5 References

Biography[edit]

Boy with Machine (1954)

Richard Lindner’s headstone

Richard Lindner was born in Hamburg, Germany. His mother Mina Lindner was American and born in New York as daughter of German parents. In 1905 the family moved to Nuremberg, where Lindners mother was owner of a custom-fitting corset business and Richard Lindner grew up and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts and Crafts School since 1940 Academy of Fine Arts). From 1924 to 1927 he lived inMunich and studied there from 1925 at the Kunstakademie. In 1927 he moved to Berlin and stayed there until 1928, when he returned to Munich to become art director of a publishing firm. He remained there until 1933, when he was forced to flee to Paris, where he became politically engaged, sought contact with French artists and earned his living as a commercial artist. He was interned when the war broke out in 1939 and later served in the French Army.

In 1941 he went to the United States and worked in New York City as an illustrator of books and magazines, making contact with New York artists and German emigrants (Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Saul Steinberg). In 1948 he became an American citizen. From 1952 he taught at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1967 at Yale University School of Art and Architecture, New Haven. In 1957 Lindner got the William and Norma Copley Foundation-Award. In 1965 he became Guest Professor at the Akademie für Bildende Künste, Hamburg. His paintings at this time used the sexual symbolism of advertising and investigated definitions of gender roles in the media. Richard Lindner died in 1978. He was buried at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Art[edit]

“The artistic universe of Richard Lindner is unique: he is highly genuine, he is full of urban energy, and he is driven by weird eroticism…Richard Lindner started his career as an artist eventually at the age of 40 in New York. In this metropolitain jungle Lindner created his oeuvre: exciting and powerful images of robot like figures, amazons and heroines, harlequins of self-styled heroes – his artistic panorama of the unruly 60s and 70s of the 20th century” (sic) (Claus Clement quoted in: Richard Lindner – Paintings, Works on Paper, Graphic – Nuremberg 2001). One of Lindner’s paintings, “Boy With Machine,” 1954, appears on the cover-leaf of Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus, and thus the image has formed part of many readers’ introduction to Deleuze’s later and more accessible philosophy.

In Popular Culture[edit]

• Richard Linder appeared in the second row on The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.^[1]

Categories:

• 20th-century German painters
• Jewish painters
• 20th-century American painters
• 1901 births
• 1978 deaths
• Pop artists
• Academy of Fine Arts, Munich alumni
• Academy of Fine Arts, Nuremberg alumni
• German emigrants to the United States
• Burials at Westchester Hills Cemetery

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The best album ever?

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Who are They?

Image

1. Sri Yukteswar Gigi (guru)
2. Aleister Crowley (dabbler in sex, drugs and magic)
3. Mae West (actress)
4. Lenny Bruce (comic)
5. Karlheinz Stockhausen (composer)
6. W.C. Fields (comic)
7. Carl Gustav Jung (psychologist)
8. Edgar Allen Poe (writer)
9. Fred Astaire (actor)
10. Richard Merkin (artist)
11. The Varga Girl (by artist Alberto Vargas)
12. *Leo Gorcey (Painted out because he requested a fee)
13. Huntz Hall (actor one of the Bowery Boys)
14. Simon Rodia (creator of Watts Towers)
15. Bob Dylan (musician)
16. Aubrey Beardsley (illustrator)
17. Sir Robert Peel (politician)
18. Aldous Huxley (writer)
19. Dylan Thomas (poet)
20. Terry Southern (writer)
21. Dion (di Mucci)(singer)
22. Tony Curtiss (actor)
23. Wallace Berman (artist)
24. Tommy Handley (comic)
25. Marilyn Monroe (actress)
26. William Burroughs (writer)
27. Sri Mahavatara Babaji(guru)
28. Stan Laurel (comic)
29. Richard Lindner (artist)
30. Oliver Hardy (comic)
31. Karl Marx (philosopher/socialist)
32. H.G. Wells (writer)
33. Sri Paramahansa Yogananda (guru)
34. Anonymous (wax hairdresser’s dummy)
35. Stuart Sutcliffe (artist/former Beatle)
36. Anonymous (wax hairdresser’s dummy)
37. Max Miller (comic)
38. The Pretty Girl (by artist George Petty)
39. Marlon Brando (actor)
40. Tom Mix (actor)
41. Oscar Wilde (writer)
42. Tyrone Power (actor)
43. Larry Bell (artist)
44. Dr. David Livingston (missionary/explorer)
45. Johnny Weissmuller (swimmer/actor)
46. Stephen Crane (writer)
47. Issy Bonn (comic)
48. George Bernard Shaw (writer)
49. H.C. Westermann (sculptor)
50. Albert Stubbins (soccer player)
51. Sri lahiri Mahasaya (guru)
52. Lewis Carrol (writer)
53. T.E. Lawrence (soldier, aka Lawrence of Arabia)
54. Sonny Liston (boxer)
55. The Pretty Girl (by artist George Petty)
56. Wax model of George Harrison
57. Wax model of John Lennon
58. Shirley Temple (child actress)
59. Wax model of Ringo Starr
60. Wax model of Paul McCartney
61. Albert Einstein (physicist)
62. John Lennnon, holding a french horn
63. Ringo Starr, holding a trumpet
64. Paul McCartney, holding a cor anglais
65. George Harrison, holding a flute
66. Bobby Breen (singer)
67. Marlene Dietrich (actress)
68. Mohandas Ghandi (painted out at the request of EMI)
69. Legionaire from the order of the Buffalos
70. Diana Dors (actress)
71. Shirley Temple (child actress)
72. Cloth grandmother-figure by Jann Haworth
73. Cloth figure of Shirley Temple by Haworth
74. Mexican candlestick
75. Television set
76. Stone figure of girl
77. Stone figure
78. Statue from John Lennon’s house
79. Trophy
80. Four-armed Indian Doll
81. Drum skin, designed by Joe Ephgrave
82. Hookah (water tobacco-pipe)
83. Velvet snake
84. Japanese stone figure
85. Stone figure of Snow White
86. Garden gnome
87. Tuba

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Arty Farty Friday ~ Richard Lindner

“Who?” you say. So did I, at first.
(Left:”Hit”, by Richard Lindner. 1971) I settled on writing a few lines about Richard Lindner after considering first Egon Schiele (too porny and horny for a family blog), then Lucian Freud (nudes can get so boring), and finally found something of interest in Mr. Lindner’s artwork. Investigating examples via Google Image, the style seemed kind of familiar. It had a general “feel” of The Beatles about it – think of those Yellow Submarine images. Lindner’s style seems reminiscent of much from the early 70s, even though some of his work was painted well outside that time span – perhaps it provided the inspiration for later artists.My feeling of a link to the Beatles was triumhantly justified when I happened upon some websites showing the famous cover of their Sergeant Pepper album.Richard Lindner is one of the numerous faces featured there, the cover was said to be a kind of homage to people they admired…..Lindner’s face is behind George Harrison – not immediately behind, but the next one up, and below a female face.Back to the astrology of artist du jour: Richard Lindner. He was born in Hamburg, Germany on 11 November 1901. His family moved to Nuremburg , later Lindberg studied in Munich but at the rise of Hitler and the Nazis he escaped to Paris, then in 1941 traveled to New York, where he worked as illustrator for various glossy magazines. He became an American citizen in 1948. He later taught at the Pratt Institute and Yale University.His natal chart is set for 12 noon as no time of birth is available.It’s another of those distinctive-looking charts, with all personal planets clustered within just 3 zodiac signs: Scorpio, Sagittarius and Capricorn. Two outer planets Pluto and Neptune lie roughly opposite. Some astrologers class this type of configuration as a fan or bucket pattern, the “odd” planets form the handle. In this case, because the handle planets are outer, slow-movers which relate to whole age groups, I’m not so sure this applies.What we can say about his personal planets is that though they are clustered close together, they still present a fairly well-balanced picture, element-wise and mode-wise. In a nutshell Lindner’s Sun, and Moon (whatever time of birth) in Scorpio indicate an intense character, one with the ability to see through pretense and get to the core of things. A spot of Sagittarian exaggeration from Mars seeps into all of his art – it’s his trademark in fact, along with the bright garish colors, as can be seen below. Venus Jupiter and Saturn all in Capricorn reflect a basically practical, rather than whimsical nature – and perhaps the strange flatness of his paintings comes from the Capricorn and Saturn in his nature, both link to limitation and structure. He lets himself go on color and content but limits himself in depth and perspective.In this quote his art is described as “erotically drawn” (Scorpio) “highly defined”, “mechanistic”(Capricorn/Saturn):

His work has been described by art critics as “mechanistic cubism.” Infused with personal imagination, his style has overtones of the “Cabaret-Berlin” culture of the 30’s, with flat areas of often garish colors, separated by highly defined edges. His subjects, too, seem to come from that era. His women, archetypal in this respect, are often corseted, erotically drawn in a garish and generic, rather than individuated way. Streetwalkers, continental circus women, and men in uniforms populate the Lindner landscape

Richard Lindner died in 1978.

ROCK, ROCK.

PORTRAIT NUMBER 2

5TH AVENUE

THE MEETING

TELEPHONE

MAN WALKING ROOSTER BY A CRESTED MOON

POSTED BY TWILIGHT AT FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2009

LABELS: ART, ASTROLOGY, BEATLES, RICHARD LIDNER, SERGEANT PEPPER

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