still here now
RAM DASS
in conversation with
ALEXANDER BLAIR EWART
Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert) has been at the forefront of
the new consciousness movement since the early sixties when,
while on the faculty of Harvard University, his explorations into
consciousness and intensive research into psilocybin, LSD 25, and
other psychedelic chemicals, in collaboration with Timothy Leary,
Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and others, brought
him controversy and a dismissal in 1963. In 1967 he travelled to
India, where he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the
name Ram Dass. Since 1968, he has pursued a variety of spiritual
practices, including devotional yoga, various Buddhist meditation
practices, and Suft practices. In 1974 he created the Hanuman
Foundation, which organizes his lectures and workshops, as well as
developing projects such as support for conscious dying and
spiritual help for prison inmates. He is currently cofounder of the
Seva Foundation, an international service organization dedicated
to alleviating suffering in the world community.
Ram Dass has authored a number of books on spiritual topics,
including. Be Here Now, Remember (1971), Journey of Awakening
(with Daniel Goleman, 1978), How Can I Help? (with Paul
Gorman, 19S5), Grist for the Mill (with Stephen Levine, 1987), and
Compassion in Action (with Mirabai Bush, 1992).
ALEXANDER BLAIR EWART: Like so many people, I read Be Here
Now numerous times and I still look at it occasionally. But you've come a
long way from there over the years. How deeply held are your original
Hindu inspirations at this point in your life, and how are those inspirations
affecting what you are currently doing?
RAM DASS: When I first opened to spiritual dimensions of consciousness
through psychedelics, I found the experience ineffable. I looked around for
metaphors, and the metaphors that were available and very helpful to me
were originally Buddhist, through the Tibetan Book of the Dead. And then
that opened up into the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Hindu
tradition. Then, of course, I went to India looking for some cartographers
who could read those maps, found my Hindu guru and explored the
practices of Yoga. I don't think at that point I became a Hindu. I just used
those practices, and I think, as time has gone on, I've broadened the scope of
my practices to embrace a lot of different traditions. I would say that the
universality of the, truth that underlies spiritual traditions daily infuses my
life with meaning. But I wouldn't say it's primarily Hindu any longer.
ABE : There was a point when you were seen by millions of people as a
major spiritual guide. just the fact that you existed and who you had been
was a very powerful thing for a lot of people. I imagine that you've gone
through various stages in the evolution of guru consciousness and I know
there are a lot of people out there currently who are reaching a sort of
teacher/guru stage for the first time. What do people need.to watch out for
on the path to being a spiritual teacher or guru?
RAM DASS: I think that when People feel the need for spiritual growth, if
they recognize that yearning as coming from an intuitive wisdom within
themselves, and they seek the deepest truth, then they should just stay open
to all of the things around them and keep running things by that intuitive
wisdom. Each individual is unique and in that sense has to find a path and
guidance that is I absolutely suitable to their unique predicament. Therefore
they can't respond to somebody else telling them, "You should do this," or
"This is your way,” or "I did it, so you should do it." I think a person has to
look at the smorgasbord of opportunities and then find that one which feels
intuitively right. Once you find one and you start to do it, it doesn't mean
you can stop using that intuitive criterion. You’ve got to keep using it.
.Sometimes you start on a path, you've joined the club, and everybody
around you says, "Aren't you wonderful, you're one of us," and then it
doesn't feel good somehow. You've got to trust that intuitive feeling, even if
the situation is very pure. I think the response "This method/person/
technique and I have no business with one another at this moment" is the
statement you'd make. You don't have to judge that the method or the guru
is impure or anything. You just say, "In my intuitive heart I don't feel there's
any work here at this moment." And if you trust that, that's a good protection.
ABE : Is a guru or teacher essential?
RAM DASS : In India they say, "God, guru, and self are one." Whether you
follow the path of devotion to God and study the Word of God, or whether
you follow the path of finding a being who reflects the ultimate truth and
then form an emotional relationship that helps you mirror your own
impurities, or whether you go deep within yourself, you can get spirituality
through all kinds of methods. So, if you don't have an external guru, you
certainly don't have to worry about it. It's not going to slow you down. It's
wonderful to have a being that is a good mirror, but you certainly don't need it.
ABE : A lot of people, including Ken Wilber and Dick Anthony, have looked
at the transpersonal psychological stages that the ego of a Westerner goes
through in the process of becoming "enlightened" and then becoming a
spiritual source for other people. And there definitely seem to be stages of
ego inflation involved in that. I'm wondering if I can get you to talk about that
process, and how you came out the other end of it, which you obviously have.
RAM DASS : Well, I don't think I've come out of it completely. I don't
think, until the last gasp before the moment of full enlightenment, is one
ever free of some ego in the way in which one pursues one's spiritual path.
At the beginning of spiritual seeking, the choices we make are very much in
the service of our ego structures and needs. But as the practices work, one
begins to extricate one's awareness from identification with the structures
of ego and starts to connect to the deeper truth that lies within one's
awareness, or behind the phenomenology of self. So, in a way, you're using
leverage to push against the actual structure that got you into the game in
the first place. And it's really fascinating to see that. I mean, I may have
been chosen, or was attracted to, and dropped into the slot of being a chela
or disciple to my guru because of my need for that kind of a father figure,
psychologically. But as the process goes onward that particular motivation
becomes somewhat irrelevant, and what you're left with is the purer and
purer essence of what that connection is.
ABE: I wonder to what extent it becomes possible for people to be able to
take a reality check on their ego at a stage where they feel that it isn't really
that present?
RAM DASS : I'll tell you what I do. First of all, I surround myself as much
as I can with people who bust me, who are satsang (speakers of truth), or
sangha (holy family), a community of beings, whether they're teachers in
various traditions or the people I work with. And the nature of the contract
that I have with the people I work with is, "Look, I have lots of ego. When
you see it getting in the way, and me not seeing it, would you point it out to
me? I'll hate you for doing it, but I still want you to do it. And let's be good
enough friends so that you can withstand my lashing out at you for doing
it." Then, of course, when I go and study with a teacher, I open as far as I
can to what the teacher's technique leads me to, and often that shows me my
own way of manipulating the game for my ego protection, because the ego
dies very hard. You're not trying to kill your ego; you're just trying to kill
the power it has over you.
ABE : A number of thinkers and writers have said that the primary sickness
of the West is ego sickness, that there is this tremendous isolation and a sense
of unwarranted competitiveness among people at levels where it just shouldn't
be. Do you see that as being the reality of the Western world at this stage?
RAM DASS : I do. I think I would phrase it slightly differently, though. I
would call it individuality, that which we represent which is separate and
unique, in terms of the multiple planes of our identity, and that which is also
part of the whole. When the balance gets out of whack we get so preoccupied
with our separateness that we lose that part of our consciousness that is one
with all things. And once we get into the separateness, which is the ego of
boundaries, self versus other, we get very frightened, because that
separateness is very little and the forces around us are very great, whether
they be parents, culture, floods, or whatever. So we build a whole structure
of life based on that fear, or based on trying to ameliorate that fear. Once we
come into the balance, where we are rooted in our interconnectedness with
everything, in terms of community and in terms of unity with spirit, we can
then honor our uniqueness without being frightened, because we are never
away from home; we're always still part of it all. And that balance is, to me,
where the full human potential is realized. I think that the way we've
screwed up in terms of ecological issues has been through our separateness,
not realizing that we're part of a symbiotic community.
ABE : Do you see the rise of spiritualized feminism, if I can call it that, as
being an actual and real healing force in the face of that collective condition?
RAM DASS : Well, there have been certain kinds of mythic structures in
our society that have identified men with rationality and women with
intuitive wisdom. I see the rise of the recognition and acknowledgment and
respect for intuitive wisdom as an incredibly valuable asset for us. My sense
is that ultimately all of us have all of it, and on the social level I think
women have been kept by cultural structures from contributing and being
respected, not allowed to bring in their full potential to make society richer.
And I'm delighting in the way in which women are finding a voice, and that
wisdom, if it is respected, enriches the culture immensely.
We got out of hand. We got to thinking that our prefrontal lobe and the
science and technology it spawned would be our salvation. I think there's an
awareness now that our minds just keep screwing things up; we don't get out
of it through our mind.
ABE : The earlier Baba Ram Dass, or Richard Alpert, was very strongly
associated in the minds of millions of people with "non ordinary realities."
I'm wondering to what extent that other side of life is a part of your life now,
after what must be nearly three decades of meditating and engaging in many
diverse spiritual practices?
RAM DASS: I would say that the past thirty years have been an attempt to
integrate planes of consciousness, or altered states, with normal waking
consciousness. At first my earlier work was involved with going out into
these altered states, these other planes, astral, causal, whatever you want to
call them. And then I began to come back and slowly figure out how to
integrate them. At first one does it all sequentially. But over the years I kept
working at it by going in and out and in and out through all my practices, to
try to find a way to have it all more or less simultaneous.
ABE : Does an example of this integrated awareness come to mind?
RAM DASS : Yesterday I was with somebody who was dying of AIDS he
died last night I knew and had worked with him for a number of years and
I loved him very much. So, at the emotional/personal level, my heart is
hurting because I'm losing a friend, and at the deeper level of my being I'm
watching the beauty of the Law unfolding and the transformation
happening. At a deeper level still, it's all empty form. And all of these things
are true at the same moment. When I've stopped needing to alight with my
awareness in one place or another, it's all there all at once, and it's kind of a
gestalt that integrates the planes of consciousness. It's far out to feel the pain
of loss and the joy at the same moment. At first you think something's
wrong; you're supposed to be feeling one or the other.
ABE : Do you, then, feel that there is some sense of personal immortality, or
that whatever God bit that we are simply goes back into the All or the One?
RAM DASS Well, there is certainly a part of us that has never left the One,
that is just the One manifested in a unique form on certain planes, in which,
when you identify with that uniqueness, you lose sight of that part that isn't
so identified. So, in one way, nothing's happening, and there's no time, and
so it's all a hype at that level. In terms of where you go after you die, I really
experience transmigration as a function of the level of karmic evolution, and
so there are beings who carry from birth to birth a kind of unique psychic
DNA that probably projects them because of their thoughtforms into a
continuity of uniqueness for many many rounds, until it gets so subtle and
so light, and there is no karma being created, that at that moment when they
drop their body there's no grabbing towards something else. At that moment
the awareness is just back being the same awareness that is in trees and
rocks and earth. If you stand outside of time that whole evolutionary cycle,
which could take, in Hindu terminology, Kalpas and Yugas...
ABE : ... fifteen figure numbers, right?...
RAM DASS : Yeah. It happens in just a blink of the eye, and in the final
sense nothing happened because there's no movement. So, I'm playing at all
those levels all at once.
ABE : We have the insight that the ego is limiting, and at the same time, out
of that awareness of the One, something that we could call compassion
begins to germinate in us. And I wonder if it's from that perspective that you
have arrived at what your current life is about?
RAM DASS : Well, my book Compassion and Action autobiographically is
just about that issue, spelling out that transformation. And I think it's
absolutely true that as you experience that which lies behind your
separateness and other people's separateness, you ask not for whom the bell
tolls; you realize that the hurt in the world is our hurt, and you find yourself
drawn more and more towards those actions which release suffering
wherever it is. You feel, as you're being an instrument for that, constantly
dissolving into deeper and deeper harmonious ways of being in the world.
Now, when you look at me from the outside, you say, "Isn't he a good,
compassionate, kind, serving person?" because all I do is serve. At another
level that has nothing to do with what is going on inside. Inside I'm just
getting off on it. [laughter] It's an incredible rush, I just love it.
ABE : That's an important distinction you're making there, because in the
West, particularly since the time of Kant, the whole idea has been to do
your duty, regardless of how you feel when you're doing it. So you're
saying that the love and the enthusiasm for what you're doing has to be
there or it isn't quite real?
RAM DASS : I think that there are stages. In the early stages you do acts of
compassion, partly out of righteousness, to be a good person, to see yourself
as a good person, to do your duty my dharma, my obligation. But I think
at the levels where the surrender gets deeper there is none of that left. It's
merely just a part. It's just like trees giving off leaves and rivers flowing
downstream. The river isn't saying, "Aren't I good to flow downstream?" or
"I must," or "It's my duty."
ABE : A lot of people feel that they would like to do some kind of service.
But on the other hand, they're afraid of being gullible or maybe being taken
advantage of. How does discrimination play into this highly enjoyable act of
compassion?
RAM DASS : Intuitively, when you're quiet enough so that you're allowing
intuitive wisdom to guide you, rather than linear, analytic, intellectual
discrimination, there is a sense in which you understand the gestalt of the
existential moment, which includes all of the forces acting upon you,
historically, physically, socially, psychologically, spiritually, and you couldn't
ever rationally weigh all that stuff. But you can intuitively, out of that,
arrive at an act that feels appropriate, harmonious. And that may include
setting boundaries on what you can do and what you can‘t do. At certain
stages the ego needs to be fed, and at other stages it's more or less irrelevant.
And you can't make believe it's one when it's the other. You can't get a model
of "I wish I were Christ or Buddha, and therefore I will act as if I am and it
will all be all right," because you might end up as what I call just a "horny
celibate" [laughter], somebody busy not doing something. So there is a
timing for different levels of compassion, and you've just got to know, you've
got to listen again and again to know what boundaries you set, because it
doesn't pay to burn out and get angry and then get to hate everybody you're
serving. I mean, that obviously isn't "healing the world."
ABE : In terms of meditative states in relation to discrimination do you
think there really is a state where, as the mind clears and you become more
centered, more in touch with the reality of the One, it becomes possible to
actually comprehend other people's motives?
RAM DASS : Oh, I think absolutely there is. The quieter you are, the less
you are identified with any time/space locus you're standing in, the more
you are everything around you and you are their motives as well as your
own. Once you get out of the trap of time and space and into those planes of
awareness where you are one with everything, then the ability to focus on
any point would tune you into their motives, and if you have the power to
bring it into consciousness, you would know that you knew their motives. Or
you can leave it at the intuitive level, where you just respond from an
understanding of their motives without knowing that you know it.
ABE : Which is the wiser course, do vou think?
RAM DASS : I think the wiser course is to respond without knowing you know
it. The whole issue of having "powers" is tricky business, a very risky game.
ABE : The siddhis (psvchic abilities or powers).
RAM DASS : As my guru said in his charming and rascally way, "Siddhis
are pig shit" [laughter] he, out of whom miracles poured continuously. But
he wasn't busy doing them. They just were there. That's different.
ABE : And yet, as you know, in the new age movement, for instance, and in
a lot of contemporary spiritual movements, this pig shit seems to mesmerize
an awful lot of people.
RAM DASS : But that's all ego. There's a huge amount of ego in the new
age movement. It's everybody enjoying the "powers." I mean, if you move
from powers of, say, psychology to powers of astrology, and knowing stuff
about people because of their astrological profile, you feel you've got more
power than you had before. Power is the third chakra; it's not that interesting.
I think Westerners are obsessed with power because they feel so tiny, because
they got caught in their separateness.
ABE : When we speak of compassion and service in the West, what is
triggered for people is our Judeo Christian past, which was a very romantic
past I think it was Nietzsche who described Christianity as "Platonism for
the masses" so that we have these romantic feelings about having an ideal
society. What would be the distinctions between this approach that we're
speaking of here, and that more traditional romanticized idealism about how
society should be?
RAM DASS : I think the romanticized one that you're speaking about is
product oriented, and what we're doing is process oriented, that is, you end
up being what you are, and out of it comes what comes. You don't do it
necessarily to bring about a certain end. You do it because it is appropriate
action. But you don't know how it's all going to come out, and you don't
even know whether how it comes out, which isn't the way you think it
should come out, won't be better. So you're not holding a model of the end
product and then manipulating things to get them there, which is a way of
turning everything into an object to he manipulated.
ABE : We tend to think about social change as activism that has a goal.
Now, you are highly active and what is in the book Compassion in Action is
about action. What is the difference there?
RAM DASS : I think the difference is in the stance and the investment. For
example, when we went to Guatemala we had enough money for four
villages. But there were thirteen villages that were starving. And we just didn't
have the money for all of them.. So we said, "Well, we'll give to four this year
and we'll give to the other nine next year, if we can." And the Guatemalans
said, "Well, if you give us for the four, we're going to divide it up among all
thirteen." And we said, "Well, that isn't necessarily the wisest strategy for
people to stay alive." And they said, "Well, you don't understand. In our
holy book, it says that when you're walking along and somebody falls down,
you help them up and everybody walks a little slower."
ABE : How do you resolve those differences?
RAM DASS : What we've learned over and. over again in our work with
other human beings is a listening, collaborative approach, rather than
having a fixed model of how it's to come out. In Nepal, where we work with
blindness, we say, well, we'll put in educational systems because a lot of
women in the villages don't realize that there is cataract surgery available,
and they could see again. And as we go into education programs, we find out
that a lot of people think that when you get old you go blind and that's fine,
and they don't want to do anything about it. Do we say, "You've got to do
something about it, because we have a model that seeing is better than
blindness"? Or, maybe, as they go blind, they find a new role in the society,
and what the hell, that's no worse than anybody else's life. So, it teaches
us, in a way, a humility about our own models of reality that I think is
extremely important for us. At the same time you do aim to eradicate
needless suffering, and you can have a model that says "blindness is
suffering," but you can't have it so rigidly that you force everything into it.
ABE : You spoke a moment ago about the ego that has been in the new age
movement and the immature involvement with "powers." Do you see that as
being a natural process, in the sense that people become first involved at an
ego inflated level, but that because they have gotten involved, they will go
through these changes and become more mature spiritual beings?
RAM DASS : I think that's absolutely true. There is a confrontational
moment that we are facing currently in this period of the nineties, where the
uncertainty about lifestyle and longevity that's created by ecological
imbalances, economics, political and social instability is forcing people to
see the way in which part of their zeal to get into other planes has had a
denial root in it. And they realize, I think, the same thing that I felt, that
getting high isn't the same as getting free, and that finally you would like to
be free more than you would like to be high. And you just can't push
anything away. I think the "la la land" world of spirituality is giving way
now to a much deeper kind of karma yoga, or groundedness. You know, the
pendulum flips back and forth, and when it's reactive it often has a negative
component. People can say, "Oh, all that spiritual stuff was bullshit, and
I've got to get back to what's real," which is just as much a mistake as
saying, "The spiritual dimensions are everything and the rest is an illusion."
I think you've got to see these as all relatively real and also relatively not real.
ABE : In the aftermath of a collapsed culture, which I think we are in and
have been in for a long time now, we seem collectively to be wandering
around in a kind of no man's land, looking for pathways across it, but
mostly going around in circles. In a larger collective sense, do you see us as
already beginning to cross over out of that sense of lostness into a new
reality? Or is it that we are just at the very beginning of going into the valley
of disillusionment?
RAM DASS : Oh, I think we're at the beginning. It's going to get much
more colorful, and that's why these are very exciting times. We've got to go a
long way to find a new balance that allows us to be perfectly poised between
life and death, between future and no future, between lifestyle changes and
holding on, between chaos and cosmos, between the formless and the
formed. In all these tensions, we have to find our balance, so that we're not
trapped in one and therefore frightened by the other. And I feel that it has to
do with a kind of cultural readiness, as well as the purity of the message. If a
culture is ready, I don't know whether there has to be a traumatic opening or
just some moment, some little window of opportunity, through which that
message of purity, that new journey, can sweep through collective
consciousness. And I think we're just beginning on that journey now.
