George Harrison Believed in ‘Self-Realization,’ Not Religion

George Harrison believed in “self-realization,” not religion. Contrary to popular belief, George never truly belonged to any religious organization. He preferred to take aspects of all spirituality to help him connect with his true self.

George Harrison | Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

George Harrison found self-realization early on in his spiritual journey

In the mid-1960s, George took LSD, which he said opened his mind to God-consciousness. He learned more about what that meant when he met his spiritual and musical guru, Ravi Shankar. Suddenly, spiritualism was more interesting to George than being a Beatle.

In Raja-Yoga by Swami Vivekananda, Geoge read, “All people possess innate and eternal perfection… You are that which you seek. There is nothing to do but realize it.” Eventually, George did. He also discovered his spiritual journey wasn’t about any one religion.

His parents raised him as a Catholic. However, as he learned more about Hinduism and the Hare Krishna movement, he realized he could never truly join them either. It was all about finding your true self and having self-realization.

During a 1967 interview on The Frost Programme (per George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters), George explained that you could see your true self by doing yoga and meditating.

“Because the thing is, your true self isn’t on this level; again, it’s on a subtler level,” George said. “So, whatever the true self is, the way to approach it is through that meditation or some form of yoga.

“Yoga incorporates lots of different techniques, but the whole point is that each soul is potentially divine, and yoga is a technique of manifesting that, to arrive at that point that is divine.”

That year, George told Melody Maker (per George Harrison on George Harrison), “You can only do it if you believe in it. Everybody is potentially divine. It’s just a matter of self-realisation before it will all happen. The hippies are a good idea—love, flowers and that is great—but when you see the other half of it, it’s like anything.”

George believed in self-realization, not religion

The spiritual Beatle preferred self-realization. He didn’t like when people used the word religion instead. They were two different things in his mind.

During another interview with Melody Maker (per George Harrison on George Harrison) in 1967, he said, “I don’t like to use the word ‘religious’ but when you get into whatever that is, that scene, when you go through yoga and meditation it’s just … self-realization… Yes, that’s the whole thing why people have missed God. They haven’t been able to see God because he is hidden in themselves.