Sean Ono Lennon on Growing Up with ‘Good Witch’ Yoko Ono — and ‘Rebelling’ Against Her ‘Cosmic, Woo-Woo Stuff’ (Exclusive)

It’s hard to imagine growing up with John Lennon and Yoko Ono as your parents. But an expansive new box set reexamining Lennon’s 1973 album Mind Games offers a fascinating glimpse of daily life in a household run by two cultural titans. 

The project was overseen by the couple’s only son, Sean Ono Lennon, who has overtaken management of his family’s artistic legacy following Ono’s retirement from public life. Part fine art, part time capsule, the limited edition Ultimate Collection Super Deluxe box boasts revealing remixes produced by Sean himself, plus a treasure trove of puzzles, maps, replica art pieces, and a coffee table book — all contained in a 40-pound, 13-inch cube. 

The effect of the gargantuan package is almost comical. To Sean, that’s partially the point. “I feel like everything my dad did had a bit of humor,” the 49-year-old tells PEOPLE. “People who grew up with him in Liverpool say that he was the kind of guy who would make a joke even at a very difficult time. So humor was an important factor in this [project]. The initial concept for me was ‘mind games.’ What are mind games? They’re games of the mind! So I thought we would play with people’s minds a little bit. We have illusions in there, we have some games, we have some hidden secret things. There are multiple layers to it.” 

Many of the objects contained in the set are items he recalls seeing around the family home, reflecting his parents’ unique worldview: palmistry prints, I Ching coins and astrological charts. “There are all sorts of things that reflect the way they were thinking at the time — which was very cosmic, to put it mildly.” 

Arguably the most innovative aspect of the Super Deluxe set are the “meditation mixes” of nine Mind Games songs, which put the listener into a relaxed, trance-like state through the use of binaural beats. The tracks are designed to be heard while employing Lumenate, an app that utilizes smartphone flashlights to strobe in distinctive patterns to neurologically guide users into an altered state of consciousness.

The practice may sound cutting edge, but it’s something Sean has known since childhood. “I grew up with these Stroboscopic goggles that I would strap to my head that flashed these different alpha waves,” he explains. “They were in my dad and mom’s bedroom — they used to meditate with these goggles. So the Lumenate app is actually connected to John and Yoko directly because that’s something they did.”

The collection itself is encased in a replica of a minimalist sculpture Ono initially constructed in 1966: a clear plexiglass cube dubbed “Danger Box.” The piece is labeled with a plaque above a small hole. A second plaque beneath is engraved with the humorously ominous advisory: Warning: The management will not guarantee that a hand when put in this hole will come out in the same condition as prior to entry. Sean remembers taking that notice very seriously as a child. “We had [a Danger Box] at home. It’s just a plexiglass box that you put your hand inside, but I was kind of scared it might turn into something like a monkey hand or something!” 

Some fans are confused why a project reexamining a John Lennon record should be housed in one of Ono’s art pieces. It was a choice made very deliberately by Sean — who served as creative director, alongside art director Simon Hilton — to illustrate her status as John’s constant creative collaborator. Even “Imagine” — arguably his most iconic song — was based in concepts found in Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit, a series of instructional poems. “The idea of ‘imagine this, imagine that’ — that’s a Yoko idea. If you read Grapefruit, many of those pieces open up with ‘imagine this’ or “’imagine that,’ right? My dad admitted to it. [In 2017 she was belatedly awarded a co-writing credit.] His entire life and art was infused with his relationship with my mom, so I think it’s appropriate to wrap the entire set in Danger Box.”

Ono, he says, remains a devout disciple of tarot, astrology and numerology. “She is deeply into cosmic things, to a level that I’ve never seen in anyone else. You could argue that she’s a good witch,” he laughs. “I was raised with so much cosmic woo-woo stuff that I rebelled against it. I was more interested in science and rational thinking. Growing up, it just felt like everything always had to be about numbers and calculating dates for astrology. [I’d say] ’Mom, can we just do something without worrying about what the tarot cards say?!” 

The differing perspectives have led to some philosophical debates between mother and son. “I was having a discussion with her a few years ago. I said, ‘Mom, I don’t believe the universe can work this way! There’s no way the number of something matters, whether it’s a seven or a nine.” And she said, ‘But that is the way it works…’”

Despite his inclination towards secular reasoning, Sean says he still feels a pull towards the mystical. He describes it as his version of Catholic guilt. “No matter how much I try to reject what I would call supernatural thinking — or superstitious thinking — I can’t get it out of my being. I still worry when there are coincidences or if I see the ‘wrong’ number on a hotel room. No matter how rational I pretend to be, I still have it in me. Maybe it’s genetic, or maybe it’s just because I was raised that way. But the truth is, I secretly do kind of believe all that stuff might be real.”

Given her unorthodox worldview, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Ono — whose image should, by all rights, be the featured photo on the Wikipedia page for “iconoclast” — was an ultra-bohemian free-range parent. Not so, Sean says. When asked if she ever laid down the law as the household heavy, he responds with an emphatic “Oh my God, yes!” followed by the long laugh of a man who’s obviously seen a maternal scolding or two. “I mean, my mom is very powerful. She was always very clear about what her opinion was, let’s put it that way. But to be honest, a lot of what I realized over time was how very right she was about so many things when I was growing up. I think when you’re a kid, you resent your parents for so many little things. And as you get older, you learn (if you’re lucky) to appreciate them more.”

One of the most valued insights gleaned from his mother concerns the confidence to create. “She showed me that art is conceptual,” he says, “That’s influenced me the most. The essence of concept art is that it doesn’t matter what medium you express yourself in because it starts in your mind.” It was a lesson learned by example, as Ono turned her hands to painting, writing, recording, sculpting, and performing — anything to serve the idea or emotion. Sean’s approach to art has been equally unrestricted. “For better or for worse, I’ve made films, I’ve made oil paintings, I’ve done rock records. I’ve even done a jazz record this year. So, for whatever it’s worth, my philosophy about being creative completely originates with this Yoko mentality of ‘art is conceptual.’ The medium is secondary.”

With age, Sean has begun to warm to his mother’s metaphysical approach to life — and beyond. “I try to be rational and scientific in my world view, but sometimes things happen that feel beyond the realm of what is knowable.”

He’s still trying to work out an incident that occurred while on vacation in Jamaica, when his dad — who died in 1980, when Sean was 5 — paid him a cosmic visit. Sean turned the key in his rental Jeep, only to hear a familiar voice speaking through the radio. “The second it came on, I hear ‘Darling, darling, darling… darling Sean.’” It was the fadeout of “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” the tropical-tinged lullaby John recorded for him months before his death. “It was so weird. He only says my name once, at the very end of the song. What are the chances? I’ll never forget that. Again, I struggle with my own superstition. Obviously I admit that it’s probably not magical… but it really felt like it was.” 

For more from Sean Ono Lennon, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now.