John Winn notes that Harrison had presaged the message of "The Inner Light" in an August 1967 interview, when he told New York DJ Murray Kaufman: "The more you learn, the more you know that you don't know anything at all." Writing in his study of Harrison's musical career, Ian Inglis similarly identifies a precedent in the song "It's All Too Much", where Harrison sings: "The more I learn, the less I know." Composition and musical structure "The Inner Light" was Harrison's third song in the Indian musical genre, after "Love You To" and "Within You Without You". While those earlier songs had followed the Hindustani (North Indian) system of Indian classical music, as sitar- and tabla-based compositions, "The Inner Light" is closer in style to the Carnatic (or South Indian) temple music tradition. Harrison's progression within the genre reflected his concept for the Wonderwall soundtrack – namely, that the assignment allowed him to create an "anthology" of Indian music and present a diverse range of styles and instrumentation. The composition is structured into three instrumental passages separated by two sections of verse. The buoyant mood of the instrumental sections – set to what author Peter Lavezzoli describes as "a raucous 4/4 rhythm" – contrasts with the gentle, meditative portions containing the verses. The contrast is reflected in the lead instruments that Harrison would use on the recording: whereas sarod and shehnai, supported by pakhavaj, are prominent during the musical passages, the softer-sounding bansuri (bamboo flute) and harmonium accompany the singing over the verses, as the sarod provides a response to each line of the vocal. In the last instrumental section, Harrison incorporates the conclusion of Lao-Tzu's poem, beginning with the line "Arrive without travelling". The melody conforms to the pitches of Mixolydian mode, or its Indian equivalent, the Khamaj thaat. Musicologist Dominic Pedler writes that the tune features unusual tritone intervals, which, together with the musical arrangement, ensure that the song is far removed from standard "pop tunes". In a further departure from Harrison's previous forays into Indian music, both of which made extensive use of single-chord drone, the melody allows for formal chord changes: over the verses, the dominant E major alternates with F minor, before a move to A over the line "The farther one travels the less one knows". In the opening words ("Without going out"), the melody uses what Pedler terms a "hauntingly modal" G-B-D