sixties
"Don't worry, be happy." This phrase for the most part summed up the philosophy of the hippie culture. People were to love each other, and there was happiness and bliss. The hippie philosophy, though, didn't just create itself. The hippie movement was revolutionized by Eastern influence in the areas of spirituality, music, theater, art, and drugs. The views of the East made the hippie culture more than just a small group of extremists. The power of the philosophy made the movement a revolution. In order to understand the role Eastern philosophy played in the hippie culture, one must first have background in the gurus and teachers of the East. Gurus are individuals who teach the world about their spiritual way of life. Meher Baba was one of many gurus who had a large following in the United States in the sixties. He preached about Eastern philosophy and was popularized with influential quotes such as "Don't worry, be happy." He was one of the first people to bring Hinduism to a large group of Americans, although was a man of few words. 1920 through 1968, Meher Baba didn't say one word, yet maintained thousands of followers (Bhairava p.210). "He took a vo
One might speculate that without Eastern influence art wouldn't have broken all the barriers the Western world had previously set up for it. Without all this uneasiness, the messages of the hippies wouldn't have been heard as clearly as they were. Just as his last book, people viewed it as a manual for how one should meditate and use drugs at the same time. The best example of a musical group being influenced by the East is The Beatles. Both Alpert and Leary were very much into Hinduism and Buddhism at the time (they both were followers of gurus from India), and were both looking for a way to link religion and drugs. The music used ragas (Indian scales) that were native to that of India (Grill). The book became popular quickly, and over a million copies have been sold to date (Jones p. Both the movement and mandala were new to the majority of the Western world, taking the world by surprise (Arguelles p. Artists such as Ravi Shankar, an Indian sitar player, played with The Beatles in some of their concerts. He brought his new medical philosophy to the United States, claiming that meditation could heal the body. 4), all of which were originally from Indian music. Eastern culture took the hippie movement and gave it guidance; it took drugs and gave it meaning; took religion and made it fulfilling. It also gave instructions on how much LSD should be used, reasons for using it, and when it should be taken (Leary p.
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