Ram Dass

A friend of mine on Facebook sent me a video of Ram Dass talking on spiritual matters. I'd heard the name over the years but knew nothing about him. I was impressed by his presence in the video even though he struggled with his words due to a stroke that he suffered in 1997. "We are fingers of consciousness for the one consciousness" was one memorable phrase. I was prompted to read the Wikipedia article about him and it turns out he has a very interesting background.

As Richard Alpert, he was a close friend and associate of Timothy Leary and both of them were dismissed from Harvard in 1963 for activities surrounding their Harvard Psilocybin Project.

He visited India in 1967 and corresponded with Meher Baba who would have been in seclusion at the time and so not accepting visitors. He went on to meet Neem Karoli Baba who became his guru and gave him the name "Ram Dass" which means "servant of God". His first meeting with his future guru was quite transformative. He describes it quite poignantly in an interview as follows:

I was coming up a hillside and I saw him sitting under a tree with eight or ten devotees around him. I'm standing at a distance and the guy who is with me is on his face touching this his feet, and I'm thinking, "I'm not going to do that."

Neem Karoli Baba looked up at me and said, "you came in a big car?" We had come in a friend's Land Rover that we had borrowed so this guy could come and see his guru to get his visa. So I said, "yes." And then he said, "you will give it to me?" Now, coming from Jewish charities as I do, I had been hustled, but never like this! I was speechless. The guy I was with leans up and says, "if you want itMaharaji, it's yours." I protested and said, "you can't give David's car away!" I was aware of everybody laughing at me, but I was very serious. (laughter)

Then Neem Karoli said, "take them and feed them." So we were taken down to the temple and fed lunch. Then he called me back up and he told me to sit down. He looked at me and said, "you were out under the stars last night," Then he said, "you were thinking about your mother." My mind started to get agitated and I started to entertain hypotheses as to how he could have known that. Then he said, "she died last year," and the dis-ease kept growing. Then he said, "she got very big in the belly
before she died." My mother had died of an enlarged spleen. And then he closed his eyes and he rocked back and forth and he opened his eyes and looked at me, and in English he said, "spleen."

When he said that, my mind just couldn't handle it. I just gave up. Something shifted and I started to feel a wrenching pain in my chest. There was a radio show on many years ago called Inner Sanctum and they opened this screeching door at the beginning of every show. I felt like this door that had been long closed was being violently forced open. I started to cry and I cried for two days. And after that, all I wanted to do was touch his feet.

I had recognized that not only was he inside my head, but that everything I was, he loved. There was not a part of me that he didn't know, and he still loved me. So, all the models of `if they only knew that little thought that I don't even admit to myself, they wouldn't love me,' didn't apply.

This wasn't an intellectual process. It was a direct experience of that quality of unconditional love. It took that long (snaps his fingers) and all the rest of it has been basically irrelevant. I cherish everything that came after and I got all kinds of teachings, but the thing happened at that moment. He didn't do anything, he just was it. He was an environment where my ripeness to open had a chance to express itself.

Now 77 years old, he lives on Maui in a rented house overlooking the ocean and a sense of the atmosphere there is conveyed by this report by a visiting journalist a couple of years ago:

His house feels like a temple. There are altars everywhere, covered with pictures of saints, tropical flowers, candles and incense. He has a photo of George Bush on an altar, “because he’s someone I have trouble loving.”

He greets every visitor with joy and fixes his attention completely on that person, even the ones I find tedious. When his assistant, Kathleen Murphy, tells him she’s going into town to do errands and asks, “Is there anything you want?” Ram Dass looks in her eyes, then smiles. “That you have a good time.”

At 75, Ram Dass feels he’s demonstrating “a way to grow old and prepare for dying.” I ask how he prepares for dying. “With quiet presence, and by practicing change,” he says. “Being content with change. I’ve been changed by a stroke…and I’m happy. Death is the biggest change we’re going to face in life. So we need to practice change.”

I particularly like the George Bush reference. 1n 1973, Ram Dass wrote his famous book "Be Here Now" which I certainly intend to read if I come upon it. The title of the book is very similar to "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle, the book that seemed to reignite in me an active interest in spirituality. It was a friend at work who recommended Tolle's book to me and she was quite persistent that I read it, despite my initial reluctance. The recent recommendation from my Facebook friend is similarly appreciated. I guess you really can get by with a little help from your friends.