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 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/music/newsid_1646000/1646729.stm

Harrison mourned around the world

Beatles fans across the world gather in mourning for singer, guitarist and songwriter George Harrison, who has died of cancer aged 58.

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George Harrison led the Beatles in exploring Eastern mysticism, something which was to change him profoundly.

One reason he became interested in India, he was to say in a 1992 interview, was because "it unlocked this enormous big door in the back of my consciousness".

It brought him in close contact with an Indian spiritual guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Harrison became deeply interested in India

Indian journalist Saeed Naqvi shared an apartment with Harrison at the Maharishi's retreat on the banks of the Ganges in Rishikesh, where they were attending a course on transcendental meditation.

"George was easily the most naive of the Beatles, but he was also the most sincere. The others were out to have some fun but George was serious about India and the Maharishi," he told BBC News Online.

"I remember his spending hours outside the Maharishi's room, playing the sitar and composing - he even composed a piece with Donovan which was never cut."

Eventually he became a devotee of the Hindu God Krishna, donating large sums of money to the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and even donating a 23-acre site outside London to the movement.

The 1960s have long passed and India is now home to the MTV generation.

But for some, Harrison brings back memories of a time when the West turned to India for inspiration and enlightenment.

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"The lyrics are the essence of Transcendental Meditation. You can hear it a lot and not know what it is about. The goal of the mind is to go beyond, that is to transcend, waking, sleeping and dreaming.
So the song states:
"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying".

~ George Harrison: talking in the Beatles Anthology book about the song - Tomorrow Never Knows, 1999.

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George Harrison pictures:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/music/newsid_1430000/1430259.stm


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