Well his Guru, Meher Baba, to be more exact. As much of a Who fan I am, I never really got that whole thing with Pete.
Larry Norman wrote a rock musical, The Epic, in 1966. He wrote others later. He suggested that Pete Townsend was inspired to write Tommy from those early efforts. I do not necessarily embrace that view, but I found Norman to be generally candid, and he certainly knew many of the rockers of that era, such as Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney.