The Beatles and the Guru

Over the course of this year, the centenary of William F. Buckley’s birth, we will republish an article by him weekly. This week’s column muses about the Beatles’ futile and expensive search for meaning in South Asia.

London — The doings of the Beatles are minutely recorded here in England and, as a matter of fact, elsewhere, inasmuch as it is true what one of the Beatle-gentlemen said a year or so ago, that they are more popular than Jesus Christ. It is a matter of considerable public interest that all four of the Beatles have gone off to a place called Rishikesh, in India, to commune with one Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

The gentleman comes from India, and the reigning chic stipulates that Mysterious India is where one goes to Have a Spiritual Experience. Accordingly, The Beatles are there, as also Mia Farrow, who, having left Frank Sinatra, is understandably in need of spiritual therapy; and assorted other types including, the press reports, a space physicist who works for General Motors. It isn’t altogether clear what is the drill at Rishikesh, except that — and this visibly disturbed a couple of business managers of the Beatles — a postulant at the shrine of Mr. Yogi is expected to contribute a week’s salary as an initiation fee. A week’s salary may not be very much for thee and me, but it is a whole lot of sterling for a Beatle, and one gathers from the press that the business managers thought this a bit much, and rather wish that the Beatles could find their spiritual experience a little less dearly.

The wisdom of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is not rendered in easily communicable tender. It is recorded by one disciple that he aroused himself from a trance sufficiently to divulge the sunburst, ‘Ours is an age of science, not faith,” a seizure of spiritual exertion which apparently left him speechless with exhaustion, I mean, wouldn’t you be exhausted if you came up with that? It is reported that the Beatles were especially transfigured when the Maharishi divulged, solemnly, that “speech is just the progression of thought.” One can assume that the apogee of their experience was reached upon learning, from the guru’s own mouth, that “anything that comes from direct experience can be called science.” It is a wonder that the entire population of the world has not gravitated towards the cynosure capable of such incandescent insights.

I am not broke, but I think that if I were, I would repair to India, haul up a guru’s flag and — I guarantee it — I would be the most successful guru of modern times. I would take the Beatles’ weekly salary, and Mia Farrow’s, and the lot of them, and I would come up with things like: “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as * * * forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be thankful.”

To the especially worldly, I would say: “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” Can it be imagined that I would be less successful, quoting these lines, from a single letter of St. Paul, than Maharishi Mahesh Fakir has been? The truly extraordinary feature of our time isn’t the faithlessness of the Western people, it is their utter, total ignorance of the Christian religion. They travel to Rishikesh to listen to pallid seventh-hand imitations of thoughts and words they never knew existed. They will go anywhere to experience spirituality — except next door. An Englishman need go no further than to hear Evensong at King’s College at Oxford, or to hear high mass at Chartres Cathedral; or to read St. Paul, or John, or the psalmists. Read a volume by Chesterton — The Everlasting Man; Orthodoxy; The Dumb Ox; and the spiritual juices begin to run, but no, Christianity is, well, well what? Well, unknown.

The Beatles know more about carburetors than they know about Christianity, which is why they, like so many others, make such asses of themselves in pursuit of Mr. Gaga Yogi. Their impulse is correct, and they reaffirm, as man always has, and always will, the truism that man is a religious animal. If only they knew what is waiting there, available to them, right there in Jollie Olde Englande, no costlier than 2/6d at the local bookstore. It is too easy nowadays to found new religions, though the vogue is constant. Voltaire was once abashed at the inordinate iconoclasm of one of his young disciples who asked the Master how might he go about founding a new religion. “Well,” Voltaire said, “begin by getting yourself killed. Then rise again on the third day.”