Mystical One

‘Mystical One’ is the sixth song on George Harrison’s tenth solo album Gone Troppo.

The song’s lyrics find Harrison “happier than a willow tree”, quietly contemplating life, and finding contentment in the “sweet serenity” of an unidentified other. It could be God, his family, or an amalgamation of everything he held dear.

Although Harrison did no promotion for the album, he did grant an interview to Mukuna Goswami, a spokesperson from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). It was published at the beginning of 1983 in Back To Godhead, a magazine established by Sri Prabhupada in India in 1944.

It takes a certain amount of time and faith to accept or to realise that there is no difference between Him and His name, to get to the point where you’re no longer mystified by where He is. You know, like, ‘Is He around her?’ You realise after some time, ‘Here He is – right here!’ It’s a matter of practice. So when I say that ‘I see God,’ I don’t necessarily mean to say that when I chant I’m seeing Krsna in His original form when He came five thousand years ago, dancing across the water, playing His flute. Of course, that would also be nice, and it’s quite possible too. When you become real pure by chanting, you can actually see God like that, I mean personally. But no doubt you can feel His presence and know that He’s there when you’re chanting.

Gone Troppo was reissued in 2004 with one bonus track: ‘Mystical One’ (demo version).