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In 1967, he found an opportunity to write a song embodying his insight. Tensions, bigotry, and bad temper were replaced by understanding and love.” Twist of Lennon, that while she had concerns about his indulgence, “In many ways it was a The catalystįor this transformation was his experimentation with drugs, most notably LSD, which helped him breakĭown some of the defensive walls erected in his traumatic youth. While rejecting traditional idols, Lennon came to see his own cardinal value as love. In effect, he rephrased Descartes’ axiom: “I don’t believe, therefore I am.” Systematically renouncing belief in Jesus,īuddha, the Bible, the Gita, and other glorified entities including Elvis, he asserted himself as a free-thinking Served as Lennon’s personal declaration of independence. Is intrinsically neither good nor bad – just as electricity can be used either to execute a criminalīy the end of the decade he had distilled his definition of this impersonal deity into a memorableĪphorism: “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” The song in which it appears, God, Not as a personal deity but a resonant energy that pervades the universe, a ‘powerhouse’ which Lennon found intellectual satisfaction in having the hazy mysteries of ChristianityĮxplained so prosaically, and the book helped change his conception of God. Its subject was a demythologized Jesus, a Jew who was soĬonvinced he was the predicted messiah that he conspired to fulfill the old biblical prophecies throughĪ deliberate plan of action. He had just discovered a book by Hugh Schonfield, one of the original Dead Sea Scrolls What was not widely reported was the catalyst for his new objectivity about the Christian beliefs radio stations, their records tossed into bonfiresĪcross the South, and Lennon ultimately stumbled through a widely-reported apology at the beginning of With an off-hand comment during an interview, that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” Theīeatles’ songs were soon banned on over 30 U.S. The public first became aware of his iconoclasm a few months later, when Lennon sparked a firestorm

That unanswered appeal marked the beginning of a search that lasted for a decade, an anguished searchįor a new foundation on which to base his life. He locked himself in the bathroom at his home in Weybridge, got down on his kneesĪnd begged for an acknowledgment, a sign, a revelation – some hint that his appeal was being heardĪnd some clue as to what he should be doing. Thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in Had settled over him with his success, Lennon decided to follow the advice of Jesus (“. One night in the winter of 1966, unable to shake off the pall of meaninglessness that ironically The Bhagavad Gita and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. He ought to do sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do.” He concluded that each personĬan only fill the void of meaninglessness by discovering “for what, to what, or to whom he understandsĪt George Harrison’s suggestion, Lennon tried to find solace in two sacred books of the East: Search for Meaning: “No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what Inner emptiness, a void within themselves.” Frankl summed up the predicament of modern man in Man’s Frankl called ‘theĮxistential vacuum,’ the state in which individuals “are haunted by the experience of their Unfulfilled by material success, he had stumbled into what psychiatrist Viktor E. To his close friend Pete Shotton he confided: “The more I have, the more I see,Īnd the more experience I get, the more confused I become as to who I am, and what the hell life is all

Robinson’s Richard Cory, he was growing more alienated at the same time millions went to sleepĮnvious of him. In the closing months of 1965, John Lennon was sinking into a personal despair completely unsuspectedīy the millions of Beatles fans who believed their image as lovable ‘mop-tops.’ Like E.A. SUBSCRIBE NOW Articles The Philosophy of John Lennon What is it like to be a Beatle? Gary Tillery argues that Lennon’s pronouncements, both cynical and idealistic, reveal a sincere and original thinker.