Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream

最近很喜欢Tomorrow Never Knows的前两句，今天认真看了看歌词，发现整首歌的歌词都很有诗意：

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream

It is not dying, it is not dying

Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void

It is shining, it is shining

That you may see the meaning of within

It is being, it is being

That love is all and love is everyone

It is knowing, it is knowing

That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead

It is believing, it is believing

But listen to the colour of your dreams

It is not living, it is not living

Or play the game "Existence" to the end

Of the beginning, of the beginning

Of the beginning, of the beginning

Of the beginning, of the beginning

Of the beginning

我觉得这是一首关于存在的歌，关闭意识、停止思维，去感受自己的存在，“爱是全部，爱是所有人”颇有“美即是真，真即是美”的意思，表达着披头士的一贯主题：爱。而由于受到印度哲学的影响，死亡在披头士这里并不是一件悲伤的事情，生死循环无端，只有无知者才可能对死亡进行哀悼，只需玩转这存在的游戏直到尽头。而作为专辑的最后一首歌，如同生命的循环，这结束也是新的开始。由于Ride首专的首曲Seagull对这首尾曲明显的借鉴，可以说在音乐上实现了轮回的主题，Seagull这个名字大概是对Tomorrow Never Knows里保罗笑声的一点调侃。

小乔对这首歌的解释如下：

You can hear (and I am sure most Beatles fans have) Tomorrow Never Knows a lot and not know really what it is about. Basically it is saying what meditation is all about. The goal of meditation is to go beyond (that is, transcend) waking, sleeping and dreaming. So the song starts out by saying, ‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying.’

Then it says, ‘Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void – it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within – it is being.’ From birth to death all we ever do is think: we have one thought, we have another thought, another thought, another thought. Even when you are asleep you are having dreams, so there is never a time from birth to death when the mind isn’t always active with thoughts. But you can turn off your mind, and go to the part which Maharishi described as: ‘Where was your last thought before you thought it?’

The whole point is that we are the song. The self is coming from a state of pure awareness, from the state of being. All the rest that comes about in the outward manifestation of the physical world (including all the fluctuations which end up as thoughts and actions) is just clutter. The true nature of each soul is pure consciousness. So the song is really about transcending and about the quality of the transcendent.

I am not too sure if John actually fully understood what he was saying. He knew he was onto something when he saw those words and turned them into a song. But to have experienced what the lyrics in that song are actually about? I don’t know if he fully understood it.

试译之：

你可能（我相信大部分披头士粉丝是这样）听了很多遍Tomorrow Never Knows但依然不知道它在说什么。它基本上所说的是关于冥想的事情。冥想的目标就是超越清醒、睡眠或梦幻的状态，所以这首歌一开始说：“关闭你的意识，放松，随流浮沉，这并非死亡。”然后是：“抛下所有思绪，投入闪耀的虚空，那么你将看到其中的意义——存在。”从出生到死去，思考是我们一直在做的事：我们有了这个想法，我们有了那个想法，再一个想法，又一个想法。就算是睡着了，你也会做梦，所以从生到死，我们的头脑从没有不进行思考的时候。但你可以关闭自己的意识，从而进入Maharishi所说的境界：“在你思考时，你的上一次思绪在哪里？”

这里的主旨在于：我们就是这首歌。自我来自完全的觉知状态，来自存在本身。物理世界中所有其他的外在表现（包括以思维和行动作为结尾的所有涨落起伏）只是一团混乱。灵魂的真实本质是纯粹的意识。所以，这首歌实际上谈论的是超脱和超脱所具有的性质。

我不太确定列侬是否真的理解他在说什么。他知道自己获得了一些体验，于是把它们写下来变成了一首歌，但经验过这些就意味着理解这些东西吗？我不知道他是否真的理解这首歌。

By the way, 这首歌的名字又出自Ringo的一个语法错误，类似的Ringolish还有A Hard Day’s Night, Eight Days A Week啥的。好，这下四个人凑齐了，可见这的确是首优秀的披头士作品~