by Allan Tong
"I need to find myself," Paul Saltzman proclaimed in late 1967. Life lacked meaning for the 24-year-old Toronto filmmaker. Only India attracted him, and by chance he caught wind of a documentary crew needing a sound man to record there. So, what if never recorded audio? He bluffed the job interview, begged someone to teach him sound and, with $200 in his pocket ($1,800 today), Paul flew to New Delhi on December 4.
During the filming of Juggernaut somewhere near Rajasthan, Paul received a letter from his girlfriend back home. She wrote she was breaking up with him and, even worse, was moving in with another guy. A knife plunged into his heart. Screams gripped his skull. Then, one of the crew members suggested he try meditation to ease the heartbreak.
In early February, Paul journeyed to Rishikesh in northern India, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, so he could study under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, one of the world's most famous gurus. In fact, The Beatles' embrace of the Maharishi put him in the spotlight. Though Paul had attended a Beatles concert in Toronto back in 1964, he wasn't a huge fan and didn't know the band were in Rishikesh. In fact, Paul couldn't enter the ashram because The Beatles were there. He had to wait eight days before he was allowed in.
"I was taught meditation in five minutes, and I did meditation for 30 minutes. It was a complete miracle. The knife in the heart was gone. The screaming in the head was gone. I was in a state of bliss."
After a few days, The Beatles started chatting and joking with Paul. One day, he was sitting with John when the head Beatle asked, "So, what are you doing here?" Paul revealed his heartbreak.
Replied Lennon, "Ah, yes, love can be very hard on us, can't it, Paul?"
"Yes," agreed the Canadian.
Lennon looked away, then glanced back and said, "You know, the great thing about love is you always get another chance."
Lennon's reassuring words were a gift, but Paul could not have known that Lennon himself was probably talking about himself. Lennon was secretly in love with a new woman, Yoko Ono, and would soon leave his wife, Cynthia, who was part of the ashram here. Paul had noted the icy distance between the married couple in the ashram.
Paul's other key memory of that week happened when he was sitting alone with George Harrison. "I'm just going to practice the sitar," said The Beatle who had introduced his band mates to meditation and helped launch Indian music in the West. "Do you want to come?"
Recalls Paul, "We go to his small meditation room, small, like our knees are almost touching. He picks up the sitar. Everything else was white, except the wood on the sitar. He starts to play and I close my eyes. It was a transcendent experience. I don't know if he played 10 or 40 minutes. It was timeless. As he finished playing, I opened my eyes, and I could see energy in the room--I had never seen that before--because I was in a state of bliss."
With no trace of ego, Harrison then said, "The Beatles have all the money you can dream. We have all the fame you could wish for. But it isn't love. It isn't health. It isn't peace inside."
Paul chokes back tears as recalls that moment to a room full of people who've come to view his photographs of The Beatles in Rishikesh 57 years later in Toronto. "That was life-changing. He was a man of profound humility. True humility is recognizing your size in the universe.
Paul was speaking at a special reception hosted at the splendid Space* / Markham Street Gallery in downtown Toronto on a humid early evening on July 24. Many of his 54 photos of the Beatles adorn the walls on one floor of this new gallery. There are photos of John and Paul in white kurtas and sandals as they strum guitars, of Ringo aiming his 8mm home movie camera, of George relaxing in the shade. Photos capture some of the Beatles' celebrity entourage, including Donovan, Beach Boy Mike Love, Mia Farrow and her sister, Prudence, who inspired John Lennon to write The White Album ballad, Dear Prudence. They all came to literally to sit at the feet of the Maharishi, as captured in the exhibit's centerpiece.
Paul didn't unearth the photos for 30 years until his daughter, who became a Beatles fan, learned that her had met The Beatles and wanted to see the images. Since 2000, Paul has exhibited the photos around the world, published books, and made a film about his fateful week. He's been organizing 16-day tours across India to Rishikesh (22 days including a pilgrimage to Bhutan), even at the age of 82. When he first showcase his photos in the early 2000s, The Beatles legally challenged Paul, who later won. By 2005, at least Ringo had changed his tune--he signed several photos (all bought by a local collector, confirms a Space* manager.)
Paul never thought of asking the band for autographs, but gained their permission to snap a few photos.The images are significant, because they captured the most influential band of their era about to enter a new phase of their careers. Only five months earlier, the band had lost their manager, Brian Epstein to an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. They left London as they were about to launch their new company, Apple, to protect their earnings from Britain's punitive supertax of the time, but would ironically destroy the band. In mid-February 1968, their Magical Mystery Tour, was riding the top of the American album charts, while the revolutionary Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was still in the top 20, nine months after release. Despite this material success, The Beatles, led by George and his wife Pattie, sought spiritual peace thousands of miles away in the hills of India.
Only twice did Paul Saltzman pull out his Pentax, capturing the Beatles at their most relaxed and unguarded. They are unshaven and smiling. They play music in the sun and shade. The pressures of being a Beatle are miles away. The riffs and songs that John, Paul and George composed in Rishikesh wound up on the celebrated White Album nine turbulent months later. There's no trace of psychedelia in these images, no hint of the furor that will arise later in 1968: The Beatles fighting in the studio, Apple bleeding money soon after lauching, and the public turning against John and his new soulmate, Yoko.
Paul Saltzman's photos capture The Beatles in their last moment of group unity, when the sky remained limitless.
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