Lessons from a Rock and Roll Spiritual Seeker
John
Lennon may have had more in common with the great thinkers of any age
than with other songwriters who were his contemporaries. Certainly he
was first in a cadre of rock stars who used their celebrity as a force
for good, paving the way for Bono and Bob Geldof by decades.
He
found his way out of a turbulent life and troubled, working-class
childhood and grew into different roles - from Rock Star, peace
advocate, social activist, women's rights advocate, and managed to
fashion a philosophy that elevated the human spirit and encouraged
people to work, individually and collectively, toward a better world.
Like Socrates, Lennon wanted to stimulate people to think for
themselves.
"There ain't no guru who can see through your eyes," he
sings in "I Found Out."
Lennon said he knew he was 'different,'
even as a child, sometimes feeling lost and bewildered by it. "I was
different from the others. I was different all my life. Therefore, I
must be crazy or a genius. There was something wrong with me, I thought,
because I seemed to see things other people didn't see. I was always so
psychic or intuitive or poetic or whatever you want to call it, that I
was always seeing things in a hallucinatory way."
Throughout his
short life, Lennon fought many existential battles with himself and
whatever he thought of as God. To interpret Lennon's spiritual hunger,
Lennon searched for and sang about the truth, discarding religious
indoctrination and accepted norms when they proved unhelpful.
In
1966 Lennon was famously quoted as saying that the Beatles were more
popular than Jesus. The quote sparked outrage in both the US and the UK,
but the real problem with what Lennon said was that there was an
element of truth in what he said. The Beatles WERE more popular (meant
more) than Jesus himself for youth in England and America at that time-
as do television, video games and many other things of this world to
many people today.
Lennon's personal spiritual journey was a
public one; from his experimentation with drugs; his encounters with the
Maharishi; to his undertaking of primal scream therapy, which helped to
grow a number of self help/spiritual fads that mirrored the shifting
moods of more than one generation. In fact, The Beatles 1968 visit to
India to learn Meditation at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, is
credited by some as the first change in attitudes in the West about
Indian spirituality. Amidst widespread media attention, their stay at
the ashram was one of the band's most productive periods.
John
Lennon was a man who both reflected his times and influenced them. He
did his searching right out in the open. And if anything, he was
probably too honest about both his doubts and his beliefs for his time.
"Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell below us,
above us only sky. Imagine all the people, living for today," said
Lennon, in the anthem that for many defined his life. "Imagine there's
no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no
religion too."
Ironically, Mark David Chapman, who shot Lennon in
1980, said that he had become obsessed with the political messages in
Lennon's music. He was incensed by Lennon's "bigger than Jesus" remark
and stated he was further enraged by "God", and "Imagine."
Toward
the end of his short life, Lennon referred to himself a "Zen Christian."
He left us with a great legacy of self-examination and spiritual
philosophy.
10 Great Quotes from John Lennon:
1) You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are.
2) If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment