Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

Geez, I've read through all these crazy explanations, and finally the last guy - haloofflies - gets it right.
There are few people whom I love and honor more than John Lennon, so take the following as my best attempt at an explanation for some of his less than wonderful behavior.

John had a long, long bitterness with the Maharishi. While that trip to India triggered a long series of spiritual epiphanies in John (witness "Tomorrow Never Knows", "Across the Universe", "Number 9 Dream"), he could never get over what he saw as the Yogi's pretentiousness and undeserved sense of self importance - which became magnified for John, due to his strong projection of these qualities (actually dark qualities within John himself) onto the Hindu Master.

John saw his own flaws in the Maharishi, and envied and resented the Yogi’s throng of followers with their unconditional love.

John’s first putdown was mild –“Nowhere Man” somewhat affectionately casts the Mahesh as a person of no consequence. But by the time of the White Album, John’s envy of the Yogi had congealed into outright derision, most clearly stated in “Sexy Sadie”:

“How did you know the world was waiting for a lover? You came along to turn on everyone”

...Clearly roles John cherished as his own. But the Maharishi had effortlessly seized them (and had in some way diminished John’s role, or so he thought).

“Everybody Has Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey” celebrates the truths taught by the Yogi, while at the same time fingering him as a hypocrite.

“your inside is out when your outside is in your outside is in when your inside is out” speaks to the bliss felt when one is able to let go of separateness and its accompanying fear, and just become part of everything – i.e., no distinction between the self and other (definition of “Nirvana”).

But then the speaker in the song goes on to shame himself by declaring that all people except himself have something to hide. Well to be exact, except for him and his monkey.

Well the Maharishi didn’t carry a monkey – unless it was hidden. So the speaker (the Maharishi) has stupidly revealed his hypocrisy.

John’s messiah complex was a western one, complete with required suffering. The Maharishi had no such requirement of suffering for himself. It was this accompanied by the Yogi’s apparent complete happiness (something John longed for but never reached) that ate at John so deeply and for so long.

John saw his fame, fans, and influence as a reward or compensation for the suffering he endured because of his deep sense of abandonment that haunted him throughout his life.

Yogi got it all for free.

This song is not about Heroin - at all. This song is about the Maharishi and written in India. This songs working title was Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Maharishi..George convinced John to change the title. Same goes for the song Sexy Sadie which was entitled "Maharishi" which was written when John's relationship with the Maharishi went sour. If you replace the words "me and my monkey" with Maharishi...there you have the original words.

I think that this song is about drug addiction,hence the monkey..as in monkey on my back. We all know that the more you do a drug the more you need to reach that same high...as in" the higher you fly the deeper you go". We have all heard mention of being on an acid trip and getting inside yourself...as in" your inside is out and your outside is in".But then again, I could be wrong.

I really don't think so Sponge. It definatly about masturbation.

i think that's one of the maharishi use to say to them (the come on...come on part)...but i dont know about the monkey though

"That was just a sort of nice line that I made into a song. It was about me and Yoko. Everybody seemed to be paranoid except for us two, who were in the glow of love. Everything is clear and open when you're in love. Everybody was sort of tense around us: You know, 'What is she doing here at the session? Why is she with him?' All this sort of madness is going on around us because we just happened to want to be together all the time." - John Lennon

Basically the song is about how John felt that everyone was so nervous, except for him and Yoko because they were so in love. George Harrison also believed the "monkey" part was a reference to John's heroin habit, so there's definitely a heroin influence. "Oh, the deeper you go the higher you fly, the higher you fly the deeper you go" - definitely sounds like a drug reference to me.

WIERD,BUT STILL GOOD WITH THE BEATLES YOU NEVER KNOW TO EXPECT

yeah, its really weird. but also the coolest song title ever.

so what do you think this song means?

isn't it about heroin addiction? it's these lyrics which seem to support the theory: "The deeper you go the higher you fly; The higher you fly the deeper you go"