Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh: In search of enlightenment in 2020
Writer: Giulia Caligari
There where John and Paul signed the last truce, Ringo suffered from stomach ache and George played the sitar. Fifty years from the mythical journey to India of the Beatles, we went into their ashram in Rishikesh, India.
Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh: all you need is Om
The Beatles with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (in the center) in the ashram of Rishikesh in 1968 (the photo is of the exhibition Beatles In India in Liverpool, which will open in February). In the row at the bottom: Ringo Starr and his wife Maureen, Jane Asher and then-partner Paul McCartney, George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd, Cynthia and John Lennon. (Photo Paul Saltzman).
Overview: Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh
In 1968, the Beatles and a large entourage abandoned their fashionable London outfits for kurta and garlands of marigold, and crossed a very dense forest to reach an ashram in Rishikesh, in the North of India, where they spent weeks writing songs.
There were George Harrison, devoted follower of Transcendental Meditation, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had begun to argue about the direction of the group; and Ringo Starr, the drummer, who was so uncomfortable with the Indian food rich in spices that he had brought a supply of beans. He had lasted ten days.
“If you look at all the photographs of Ringo in Rishikesh, you will really find very few in which he smiles,” explains Raju Gusain, a local journalist who has become a kind of expert of the Beatles’ Indian adventure.
Academy of Meditation,
The Beatles ashram, originally International Academy of Meditation, is located in India, in Rishikesh. It was nicknamed in this way because of an intense stay of the 4 mythical baronets of Liverpool. Their purpose of journey was that of practicing transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
He is an Indian guru that besides the Beatles was followed, at the time, by the Beach Boys, Mick Jagger, Mia Farrow (who went there with sister and brother) and other names still known of the star system.
“Do not fight the darkness, bring the light and the darkness will disappear” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The discovery
I knew the existence of this space since long. I am passionate of music and India. The Beatles I liked since little girl, but I did not know how much the ashram, or what remains of it, would become important for me. When I lived in Rishikesh more than a month, to study yoga, it was a refuge in the silence, a hymn to the discovery, a sweet escape.
My school of traditional yoga (also in the clothing, in the dress code, of us students, because yoga in the last times has been quite glamourized) was located in the old part of Rishikesh.
At Ram Jhula that is also one of the two walkable, and choreographic, bridges here in the area. Nearby is situated also the famous ashram Parmarth Niketan, recognizable for the beautiful statues that represent Indian divinities and a great Hanuman, the monkey god that carries in the heart, with devotion, Sita and Rama.
In front this place of meditation, every evening, takes place a puja, a very suggestive ceremony on the bank of the Ganges. In the same hour, there are also others very small, equally luminous and full of beauty. And that poetry that only India knows how to give.
Today the forest has swallowed the ruined buildings of the ashram, erasing every trace of celebrity from the halls. But the complex will be reborn soon: many of the structures, unused for a long time and reopened to the public only recently, will be renovated.
A new museum will display what remains of the Beatles and of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru whom the group had suddenly repudiated towards the end of the stay in Rishikesh.
Beatles ashram: an inner dimension
When I think back to my walks in the ashram, together with the companions of the yoga course, or people I met in Italy, in particular contexts, and who materialized there (another magic of India that makes appear people that you would never imagine, suddenly) I cannot help but think of a dimension of being, wild, and feel gratitude towards my companions of travel, of time. It seems to me I see again G. playing the guitar in a small pavilion, while the rain begins to fall, and it is Christmas. And, then,
I. begins to dance, happy, while some Indian tourist takes photographs of her, then to send them to her by mail. Meanwhile A., passes with his small backpack, and then it is impossible to know that, in the future, we would meet him at the European Rainbow in the Alps, time later.
One can walk for a long time alone, undisturbed, stop in the small bungalows of meditation that vaguely recall the pajare of Salento, or the trulli of Alberobello, dream, meditate, explore, practice yoga. For me the Beatles ashram was a beautiful discovery, I fantasized about how it could have been at the time – in 1968 – to live there.
I was surprised to reflect on the genuineness of 4 boys who undertake a long journey to go into the India of their guru, together with wives and companions, to meditate and then to put everything into question. Even the very guru. And to question themselves.
Moreover, it is known that India shakes and its instruments to do so are countless, often they pass through gurus, true or false that they may be. I too have been in ashrams, from one I ran away like the Beatles, but I learned the lesson that I will keep in my heart. And I feel tenderness towards the yogic guide of that time. After all the gurus, whether they are true or false, indeed, take a good load on their shoulders.
Modern architectures in an ancient and wise land
Walking in the Beatles ashram I had the sensation of living two times, simultaneously. Some architectures are those ancient, typical of India, others so futuristic that you feel yourself inside one of those strange and profound films at the same time like Nirvana by Gabriele Salvatores.
Impossible not to realize that this place was designed in harmony with nature, and the Indian dimension. The small constructions are perfectly set in the scenery.
It seems to walk along the paths of a promised land that has been struck by a curse, that of the games of power. Games that succeed in entering even the most beautiful and luminous contexts and destroying them, if there are not solid foundations. Definitively, this place through its ruins can teach a great deal.
At a distance of years
Or that day in which, simply, as hypnotized, we came out from the school of yoga to go to the ashram and we entered into one of the many small houses of meditation – who knows who has lodged inside at the time – to find ourselves, then, going up the inner stairs.
And to sit on the roof to listen to the sound of the Ganges, a few meters from us. In silence. And the green of India caressed the aura of our bodies, stirred our entrails, mixed everything again with its enchantment.
India can be a weaving witch, good or bad, or both, and it ties you forever with millions of threads. India possesses you, hypnotizes, and you can only delude yourself that you have the control, she moves everything.
How to arrive at the Beatles ashram
The Beatles ashram is found, in line of air, very near to these points of reference, completely immersed in the nature. To reach it one walks a beautiful walk moving away from the inhabited zone, going into towards a Ganges that becomes desert of prayer.
Because you do not find anyone, if not some creature of the nature or sadhu in retreat in his hut, built with industrious and ancient hands.
Those who have left everything to follow the path of the search of the truth. Some signposting, handmade, indicates the direction. To enter in ashram, which in the meantime has been expropriated by the Indian government, one pays an entrance that in 2018 was of 150 rupees for the Indian tourists, with discounts for senior citizens or students and 600 rupees for the tourists.
A short note: in India all the entrances to monuments and attractions have different prices for the locals and for the tourists.
Not a place for anyone
Someone may not feel the motivation to go in a decayed, abandoned place. To go there only because it is called Beatles ashram? I understand. The truth is that I move always following the stomach, my explorer instinct, and I found it poetic, despite the regret for the neglect in which it lies and it is impossible to deny it.
But there is the nature that shows its power, towering over everything and taking with its brilliant green, that green India that has a palette of shades (redIndia, fuchsiaIndia, orangeIndia) never seen before, every space. And an incredible energy.
History of Beatles
On the other side of the world, in Liverpool, The Beatles Story, a museum dedicated to the band, will host next month an exhibition that marks the fiftieth anniversary of the band’s trip to India. Over the years, as from the West numerous travelers in search of spirituality arrived to find enlightenment, Rishikesh has become more and more chaotic and populous. But at the time of the Beatles it was a sleepy little village on the banks of the Ganges.
A few months before the trip, George Harrison, who had discovered the sitar and Hinduism, had organized in England a meeting between the band and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the progenitor of Transcendental Meditation, which involves sitting and repeating a mantra mentally.
In the end, the rest of the group had agreed to leave together in February of 1968 to visit the ashram of the Maharishi in Rishikesh, recruiting wives, girlfriends and an entourage that included, among others, Mia Farrow, Donovan and Mike Love of the Beach Boys.
The band, said Harrison, wanted “to try to find its core again.” In the evenings, the group sometimes neglected the rule of the ashram of not drinking alcohol for a “little glass of homemade liquor” smuggled from a nearby village.
The ashram had remained operational for many decades after the Beatles had left, and had hosted dozens of sadhus, or holy men, who lived in small dome-shaped huts and meditated with their backs perfectly straight. But at the beginning of the 2000s, the land had been taken into management by the government, which then had left it in a state of total abandonment, at the mercy of leopards and elephants from a nearby reserve.
In 2008 the Maharishi had died, who had for a long time moved to Europe. The numbers today are still not very significant: last year the ashram was visited by about 13 thousand tourists, predominantly Indians.
At the foot of the ashram, yoga centers have sprung up like mushrooms along the Ganges, and visitors from all over the world are encountered who read books of Osho, buy crystals, and wander with vermilion red stripes on their foreheads. Also a venue dedicated to the music of the Beatles, which serves gluten-free foods and looks out over a series of hills wrapped in mist, attracts quite a lot of customers.
When the group left Rishikesh, very different impressions of the trip emerged, with Harrison saying that there were “a lot of unreliable characters” at the ashram, including some members of the band, and Cynthia Lennon wondering why Magic Alex, “whom I did not see meditate even once,” had spread those rumors.
“It was terrible to leave in that atmosphere of distrust and disagreement, especially considering that we had enjoyed for so long the kindness and generosity of the Maharishi and of his followers,” she had written in her memoir.
But John Lennon was less convinced at the time, and had written his last song in India, Sexy Sadie, which originally was titled Maharishi, as a thorny tribute to the guru and to a chapter of life that was being left behind: “Sexy Sadie, you’ll get yours yet, however big you think you are.” Translated: “Sexy Sadie, you will get what you deserve, despite how big you think you are.” Translation by Gioia Guerzoni Photo Paul Saltzman.
Conclusions
Every place has its story and can teach us that we can transform our inspirations into blessings or curses. The same destination, seen by other eyes, represents a totally different dimension because different are the eyes of who looks, the lived experiences and even the steps and the intentions.
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