George Harrison and Ravi Shankar appearing on VH1 for an interview conducted by John Fugelsang, 1997

George Harrison and Ravi Shankar appearing on VH1 for an interview conducted by John Fugelsang, 1997. Photo by Marc Bryan-Brown/Corbis Outline.

“If you want to know anything in this life, you just have to knock on that door — whether it be physically on somebody else’s door or, which I was lucky to find, is through meditation. It’s all within. Because if you think about it, there isn’t anything — I mean, in creation, the whole of creation that is perfect. You know, there is nothing that goes wrong with nature — only what man does, then it goes wrong.
But we are made of that thing, the very essence of our being, of every atom in our body, is made from this perfect knowledge, this perfect consciousness. It superimposed on that is through, if I can use that word, the tidal wave of bullshit that goes through the world. So we’re being barraged by bullshit. But not only that, the way the world is structured or the way creation is structured, we have duality which says: yes/no, good/bad, loss/gain, birth/death, and it’s this circle that you get trapped in. It’s like the Memphis blues again. And that’s the hardest thing to understand: what is causing both of these things? What is causing day and night, good and bad? It’s all the cause and this is the effect. I mean, we’re getting really transcendental here, but… our physical being is really, only a very, very subtle level it’s just like the sap in a tree is the sap and it runs throughout all parts of the tree. It’s like that. Our bodies are manifested into physical bodies but the cause, the sap, is pure consciousness, pure awareness. And that is perfect knowledge, but we have to tap into that to understand it. And that’s really why for me this record [‘Chants of India’] is important because it’s another little key to open up the within, for each individual to be able to see it, and turn off… ‘turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.’” - George Harrison, VH1, 1997 (x)