The true nature of each soul is pure consciousness. All the rest that comes about in the outward manifestation of the physical world (including all the fluctuations which end up as thoughts and actions) is just clutter. The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being. But you can turn off your mind, and go to the part which Maharishi described as: ‘Where was your last thought before you thought it?’ Even when you are asleep you are having dreams, so there is never a time from birth to death when the mind isn’t always active with thoughts. That you may see the meaning of within – it is being.’ From birth to death all we ever do is think: we have one thought, we have another thought, another thought, another thought. Then it says, ‘Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void – it is shining. So the song starts out by saying, ‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying.’ The goal of meditation is to go beyond (that is, transcend) waking, sleeping and dreaming. Basically it is saying what meditation is all about.
You can hear (and I am sure most Beatles fans have) ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ a lot and not know really what it is about. Hmm hmm.’ He could have said, ‘Bloody hell, it’s terrible!’ I think George was always intrigued to see what direction we’d gone in, probably in his mind thinking, How can I make this into a record? But by that point he was starting to trust that we must know vaguely what we were doing, but the material was really outside of his realm. He was a slightly older man and we were pretty far out, but he didn’t flinch at all when John played it to him, he just said, ‘Hmmm, I see, yes. This is one thing I always gave George Martin great credit for. We would be sitting around and at the end of an Indian album we’d go, ‘Did anyone realise they didn’t change chords?’ It would be like ‘Shit, it was all in E! Wow, man, that is pretty far out.’ So we began to sponge up a few of these nice ideas. This was because of our interest in Indian music. John got his guitar out and started doing ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and it was all on one chord. George Martin was there so it may have been to show George some new songs or talk about the new album. We got back together after a break, and we were there for a meeting. I remember John coming to Brian Epstein’s house at 24 Chapel Street, in Belgravia. Right away, on page 14 in Leary’s introduction, he read, ‘Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.’ He had found the first line of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, one of the Beatles’ most innovative songs. John was delighted and settled down on the settee with the book. His eyes soon alighted upon a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, Dr Timothy Leary’s psychedelic version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
#Mr children tomorrow never knows portable#
Immediately friendly again, John talked about Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, laughing about his school magazine the Daily Howl: ‘Tell Ginsberg I did it first!’ Miles found him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche and John began to scan the shelves. He launched into an attack on intellectuals and university students and was only mollified when Paul told him that he had not understood what John was asking for either, and that Miles was not a university graduate but had been to art college, just like him. It took Miles a few minutes to realise that he was looking for the German philosopher Nietzsche, long enough for John to become convinced that he was being ridiculed. John wanted a book by what sounded like ‘Nitz Ga’.