The Inner Light - Take 6 / Instrumental Backing Track

George Harrison wrote this song and sang lead. It was released as the B-side of "Lady Madonna" and was Harrison's first song to appear on a single. It's the last in a series of Beatles songs Harrison wrote that were influenced by Indian music and Eastern philosophy, following "Love You To" from Revolver (1966) and "Within You Without You" from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

The lyrics are a translation of a section of the Tao Te Ching, a sacred Chinese text dating back 2000 years that was written by Lao Tsu, a contemporary of Confucius. The text is a rendering of Tsu's accumulated wisdom; it forms the basis for much of Chinese thought and philosophy, focused on the spiritual aspect of life. There are 81 short chapters of Tao Te Ching. "Inner Light" is the title of Chapter 47, which translates to: Without going outside, you may know the whole world Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of heaven The farther you go, the less you know Thus the sage knows without traveling He sees without looking He works without doing Harrison's lyric tweaked the translation a bit for clarity and sound. The biggest change he made was repeating these lines to reinforce the central theme: The farther one travels The less one really knows

This song has a similar theme to "Within You Without You," which is that we must look inside ourselves for enlightenment.