John Maxwell Taylor's varied talents take him on a life journey that leads to a spiritual path: Creative Cleveland

by Evelyn Theiss / Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporter

Sunday May 24, 2009, 12:01 AM

   Scott Shaw / The Plain Dealer

The hero of Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha" had nothing on John Maxwell Taylor. Like that fictional figure, Taylor experienced a lot of heady moments at a young age. The English-born Taylor lived the high life in the early 1960s as a rock star in France. As a teen, he was the lead singer and guitarist for Johnny Taylor and the Strangers, a band that opened for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. By 1967, he'd moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a studio musician and hung out at Malibu parties with rich hippies like Peter Fonda. Then a picture that he found on the dusty floor of a Hollywood Laundromat led him to take the first steps on a spirit-filled path.

Now, four decades later, Taylor, 66, lives in Cleveland Heights with his wife, Emily, whom he married in May 2006. Here, he's found a way to concentrate his varied life experiences into an integrated life of creativity.

Taylor is an actor and playwright and makes his living as an author and lecturer, doing seminars all over the country; he recently returned from a lecture gig on the West Coast. He's back at home with his wife and their golden retriever, Lucky, in a house he describes as Frank Lloyd Wright-meets-Tibetan ashram. Naturally, it has a room dedicated to meditation. And no, even in the winter, he doesn't miss San Diego, which was his home for nearly 20 years. "My friends in California couldn't believe it -- Cleveland?" says Taylor, his Welsh-British accent enhancing his delivery. " 'You're moving to Cleveland?' 'Yes,' I told them. 'I'm leaving the great flakes for the Great Lakes.' " Life has taken him from England and Wales to Paris, Hollywood and now, perhaps most unexpectedly, Northeast Ohio. As a young boy, he loved the adventure films of Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power. So when you ask Taylor about his life so far, he puts it this way: "It's been a rollicking, swashbuckling adventure."

Music, poetry dominate early life

John Maxwell Taylor was born in Lancashire, England, but since his parents were separated for a time, he spent part of his childhood in Anglesey, Wales. His father was a "deputy director of public cleansing" -- British for "snow removal" -- and played in a New Orleans-style jazz band. His homemaker mom taught him the poetry of Dylan Thomas and elocution. All would serve him well decades into the future. "I got my musical gifts from my father and my mom taught me to speak well, yet not with a posh accent either," he says.

Taylor loved to read, too -- especially myth-based stories, like those of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. One of his most upsetting moments came after a bout of scarlet fever, which his immersion in those beloved books got him through. The doctor ordered the books burned, so as not infect anyone else. "That was the beginning of my spiritual journey," Taylor says. "It was as if in my fever, I'd had a vision of the Holy Grail, and then it was taken away."

By the time he was 16, Taylor had a powerful new interest: Rock 'n' roll had come to the United Kingdom, and Taylor had learned to play guitar. He and his band toured in England, then France, where they hit it big by singing American hits like "Breathless" in French. "I didn't speak French, so I had to learn the words phonetically," recalls Taylor. The band was a big success, but then, as Taylor says dryly, "The French are an excitable race." Soon after, he moved to California and found steady work as a musician, singing with Lee Hazelwood and playing guitar in sessions with Glen Campbell, among others.

But a person couldn't be in Los Angeles in the late 1960s without meeting inevitably unhappy pleasure-seekers. Taylor felt dissatisfaction, too, and hungered for something more. Then one day, while waiting for his laundry to finish, he looked down at his feet and saw an image of a godly looking man. It was the Paramahansa Yogananda, best known for his book "Autobiography of a Yogi." The photo had been torn from a brochure advertising a spirituality talk by a Swiss monk, Brother Anandamoy, who had once studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright. Taylor went to the lecture with an actor friend, and, as the monk spoke, Taylor saw the audience seem to disappear and the chrysanthemums onstage begin to emanate wide rays of light. No one else saw anything unusual, but when Taylor described his vision to the monk, he responded slyly, "Sometimes God gives us a little come-on."

Taking first steps on spiritual path

Taylor's visa was not renewed in the late '60s, so he headed back to England. Setting his spiritual moment aside for a bit, he began working on a concept album -- a new trend at the time -- with two fellows, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. But, in short order, another of the duo's projects -- "Jesus Christ Superstar" -- became a gargantuan hit, and Taylor never saw them again. Fed up with the music business, he went back to Anglesey. As he described it in one his books, he lived a solitary, celibate life in a mobile home, meditating, sometimes fasting and reading spiritual books. He often went to hear spiritual teachers from India who visited the United Kingdom. "It was an intense time that I wouldn't want to go through again," he says. "But that was the making of me."

Then Taylor moved to the spiritual community of Findhorn in north Scotland, where he lived for nine months. He met the woman -- a former Benedictine novice -- who would later become his wife. Because of her, he ended up back in California, where they had two children and where he worked as a musician and owned a recording studio. All those years, he kept seeking -- going deeper, reading about such mystic thinkers as the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung and the Greek-Armenian spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff.

Taylor was especially taken by the work of Jung, the man who'd come up with now well-known concepts such as psychological archetypes, synchronicity and dream interpretation. After his hand fell upon Jung's book "Memories, Dreams and Reflections" at a library, an enthralled Taylor wrote a two-act play, in poetic form. Taylor played not only Jung and his mentor Sigmund Freud, but Jung's wife, Emma; his mistress, Toni Wolff; and several others. Taylor, by then divorced, traveled the country, as well as Europe and Australia, performing his "Forever Jung" play. He played the roles from 1995 to 2001, more than 250 performances in all. For two hours, he'd transform himself into Jung and 19 other characters onstage.

An unexpected connection in Cleveland

Taylor came to Cleveland several times, performing as Jung in the late 1990s and later doing seminars on other topics at several Unity churches. Some were on the book he'd written in 2001, "The Power of I Am," which was about being conscious in daily life and dealing with people assertively, not aggressively. While speaking at an East Side Unity church, he met Emily Mueller, a lifelong Clevelander who also recently had had some powerful spiritual experiences. She was so transfixed by Taylor's presentation that she and some friends went to hear him speak at a West Side Unity church a few days later, and then a group of them went out to lunch. Taylor and Emily had an immediate connection -- and the timing was incredible, she says. Her husband, from whom she was separated, had asked her for a divorce two days before, and Taylor had just ended a relationship. "Neither of us was looking for a relationship," Emily, 53, says. "But there was this incredible channel of energy between us -- it was like a warm shower of energy and love was flowing through me."

Taylor headed back to his home in California, but the two stayed in touch. Soon they were courting, mostly long-distance, for two years. By then, Taylor knew he wanted to be here, with Emily; he'd also fallen in love with Cleveland. "In California, you find people everywhere who say they're on a spiritual path," says Taylor, who doesn't care for the flighty types he calls "bliss bunnies." "Here, that doesn't happen as often, so you appreciate your fellow travelers all the more."

The couple say their relationship has transformed each of them, spiritually and personally. Inspired by that, Taylor has published a second book, called "Eros Ascending: The Life Transforming Power of Sacred Sexuality." It's a book that addresses such topics as tantric ecstasy and Jungian androgyny. But it really elaborates on the way that the intense chemistry of love, which can dissipate after a year or so, can be turned into something deeper that allows each person to tap into a higher energetic connection. "The creative force in our bodies that enables us to create children in our own image can be redirected inward to create ourselves," says Taylor. "We give birth within our minds to 'thought children' of artistic brilliance; we expand our vision of life's possibilities."

Taylor reflected on what he considers to be the gift of his past few years in Ohio. "Living here has allowed me to become more grounded," he says. "And that enables me to speak to people in a more grounded way." Which doesn't mean he can't have a bit of fun. Not a fan of idle cocktail party chatter, Taylor might say when people ask him (as they inevitably will), "So, what do you do?" "I'm a professional seeker of enlightenment," he'll respond, which is usually enough to scare off his questioner. If they really want to know more, he might say he's an author, public speaker and playwright. Or he might simply add, in his mellifluous baritone: "I've lived a life of balanced recklessness. And I follow my road where it takes me." Even, or especially, when that might be to Ohio. Like Siddhartha's journey, Taylor's has diverged from material pleasures to an internal path toward peace. Unlike Siddhartha, he found a companion on the same path.