 As reproduced in I , Me , Mine , Harrison wrote the lyrics to " Living in the Material World " on portions of a torn @-@ up envelope , which was previously addressed to Terry Doran at Apple Corps in central London , its postmark dated 7 November 1971 . The song contrasts the world of material things against spiritual concerns . The verses describing the material world are set to rock music , over what Harrison biographer Simon Leng terms " George 's favourite ' Get Back ' rhythm " . The two sections describing the spiritual world – serving as the song 's middle eights – use a more gentle melody backed by Indian instrumentation and so recall Harrison 's 1967 composition " Within You Without You " , in Leng 's view . While admiring how other Harrison lyrics from this period " resembled Vedic sutras " , author Joshua Greene writes that in " Living in the Material World " he " condensed a lengthy passage from the Bhagavad Gita into a dozen simple words " . 
