How a Canadian man's existential crisis led to these very famous photos of the Beatles

Some never-before-seen photographs from Paul Saltzman's Beatles in India series are on display at Toronto's Markham Street Gallery
Paul Saltzman’s Beatles in India photos came as a result of a serendipitous meeting

A group of people wearing flower garlands sit cross legged on a platform.  In 1968, filmmaker Paul Saltzman went to India and took some photographs of the Beatles that eventually became very famous. These photos would form the basis of a book, as well as a show, on now, at the Markham Street Gallery in Toronto.

But at the time, Saltzman didn't go to India with the intent of having a book or a gallery show or even photographing the Beatles at all. He didn't even know they were there. He went because he was having an existential crisis.

Saltzman says that, at the time, he had everything he could have wanted; he had a budding career in film, an apartment in Montreal, a girlfriend and a cool car. But one morning, he woke up and realized: "there were parts of myself I didn't like, and I wasn't a very self-reflective person, so that was a shock." Sitting on the edge of his bed, he asked himself what he was supposed to do about that, and he heard "a deep inner voice that was all calming and all loving." It was a voice that he describes as that of "his soul." And that voice told him to get out of his environment, and specifically, to head to India.

So he did. He got a gig as the sound engineer on a National Film Board documentary crew heading to India — despite having no experience doing sound. Unfortunately, his trip didn't go quite as he planned. While he was away, he received a letter from his girlfriend back in Canada, dumping him.

"I was shattered," he says. "I was devastated. I've had heartbreaks … and that was the worst heartbreak I've had in my whole life, including two marriages that went south."

An acquaintance told him to try meditation to get over the heartbreak, which led him to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh. Unfortunately, when he got there, he was told by one of the Maharishi's assistants that he could not come in "at this time," because the Beatles were there and the ashram was closed to the public.

Source: cbc.ca/Chris Dart

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