Not so "Wonderful Tonight"

I had highly anticipated Pattie Boyd’s biography and not just because she was married to two famous guitar players, George Harrision and Eric Clapton, but because Pattie Boyd was one of my teen idols.

I was a Beatle fan, and I still am, but like many young pre-teens, I was fixated on George’s beautiful, trendy wife. I loved her hair, her eye makeup, her clothes, and how she radiated the 60’s look. In her book, she underestimates her own influence on the era. Apparently she lacked confidence and found herself not once, but twice married to addicts, hoping their addictions would subside and they might take notice of her—and, sadly, she maybe didn’t realize the world had already noted her beauty and brains. She also started trends that the Beatles were credited for, like eastern religion—yet she was the one who introduced them.

Most readers and reviewers are going to miss what I picked up in the book because our current culture embraces all religions, and we have a nostalgic view of the Maharishi Yogi and the Beatles at Rishikesh. But Prior to their introduction to eastern religion (Hinduism, Krishna and Self Realization Fellowship), she and George had a good and solid marriage. Afterwards he spiraled into addictions and abuse until their marriage dissolved. She writes about how he was either holy or holy-hell, how he was either chanting or screaming. How a good young man from loving family had turned into someone else right before her eyes, and all under the guise of being spiritual.

It’s not surprising to this reader that George’s personality had changed, that he began to suffer depression, that he became sexually immoral, addicted to drugs and abusive. That is what happens to a brain on meditation. He isolated himself in a room inside a big castle, trying to become one with God. He thought if he chanted enough—if he didn’t talk to his loved ones, he was making progress. He disassociated. Disconnected. That is what eastern religion teaches. You go off on your own to have your experiences. You live in silence. You live an austere life—it’s all about you.

We knew many such people, my husband and self included. We were either fully into our addictions or fully into our meditations. Many of our friends have died as addicts and yet they did so believing that eastern religion would save them from the demons they fought. Meditation is a drug—it is as addictive as any pill or drink, and that’s why many addicts can’t break the chain by trying to meditate their way out of addictions

There is not an ounce of Grace or Forgiveness in eastern religion. These two concepts just do not exist. You are personally responsible for your life—and lives to come. You live on a reincarnation wheel, and around and around you go until you get it right. But the lie is—it’s not possible to get it right. This is a broken world and we are broken people. Not one baby born today is going to live a perfect life without sin. It is just not possible to attain God status, and besides Jesus, there isn’t a soul on this earth who can prove otherwise. George included.

Besides the devastating ill effects of eastern religion, Pattie's book is insightful, paints an amazing picture of the sixties, the Beatles and of the lost dreams of many from that generation.