Ram Dass: Balance and Tension – Here and Now Podcast Ep. 249

that part of you that is separate that part of you that is your senses and your thinking mind is all part of what changes there is however a component component isn't the right word because it implies something else and it's all part of the same thing but there is a plane of reality in which you recognize or you are what isn't changing it's not you it's just what isn't changing it's the base from which change all occurs resting in that and resting in change dealing with that balance and tension that's the art form that's what all the spiritual things lead you to [Music] ultimately welcome everyone to the Romos Here and Now podcast this is episode 249 balance and tension I'm Jackie de brinsa and as always it is an honor to be here with you this incredible community Through Time and Space honoring the wisdom of this great luminary thank you for tuning in this episode is a continuation from the last one 248 and it's a lecture recorded in Edgerton Massachusetts in 1992 and and the first part of this episode just really brought forward to me this lovely poem by ha called a great need and it goes out of a great need we are all holding hands and climbing not loving is a letting go listen the terrain around here is far too dangerous for that and isn't that the truth right we need each other uh we've got to have each other's back and as we do that um it looks different from different planes and so in this episode ramdas is talking about how awareness of these different planes of Consciousness can shape our perceptions and experiences and he reminds us that what appears real on one level may just be a relative truth from another level and he sort of challenges us to break free from our limitations of mind and encouraging us as he typically does to tap into that boundlessness of heart and love and that deep awareness that resides in each of us and you know we all know that is so much easier said than done but we keep practicing we keep showing up now there's this one part in this episode that's very nuanced um he's talking about navigating social justice with Grace and authenticity while being on these different planes of Consciousness and this is a really delicate conversation even more so 30 years later because it's really easy to blindly Overlook the subtleties of this conversation and sort of use these teachings to bypass our own discomfort around the history of Dominator culture or to we might negate others lived experience of diversity within the unity and I know some of you will take you with me for even bringing it up suggesting that I'm doing the very thing that he's warning us about I'm not just letting it go and maybe that's true um and I know that we live on different planes of Consciousness simultaneously and I also know that most of us especially in the west spend 99% of our time on channels one and two the physical and psychological planes and from that place it's important for us to care for each other to care for our unique histories and offer consideration and so I know that I have incredible privileges in this culture and I know ramdas had even more and so it's just important to recognize that when we dive into these nuanced subtle conversations but I think you'll hear this too as you listen the message is this idea again of including the Paradox the both recognizing and honoring the diversity and real experience of our incarnations and remembering we are also more than how we know ourselves to be it's not an either or it's a both and and he also goes on to remind us that we're all in this together which is why we become allies to each other all of us um it you know that means doing our inner work as well as our as well as our outer work as well as our outer work work um in fact it's precisely through this inner work that we become better equipped to navigate the complexities of the world and I say work but you know that's not necessarily the best word it needs to include lightness and play I had a mentor and he used to say hey this is way too important to take seriously which you know I think is why many of us show up to these episodes in this podcast because we love ras' honesty and his insights and especially his humor so in just a moment you'll be treated to this wealth of wisdom straight from Romos and you're not going to want to miss any of it but I do want to take just a few seconds um to let you know what's happening here in the love sery member Romos world and first I just want to let you know that papadosio is releasing their second collaboration with romdas uh Friday it's called the antidote for fear and it's a combination of rams's words and musical improv improvisation and uh as we've learned from so many of these they're amazing so it'll be available or is available everywhere you stream music and earlier today I got off the First Community call for the Romos reimagined life and teaching course and this first week we're talking about the space suit taking off the spacit the ego roles we all seem to identify um ourselves by and most of us know that this first happened for Romos with an LSD trip and um there's a big conversation going on right now about psychedelics and mental health but there's also other conversations happening around psychedelics and Consciousness and spirituality and Science and so we want to invite you to that conversation we're starting a new free monthly Community conversation officially called the Explorers Club AKA innerlight school and it already has an amazing lineup of speakers including Bruce damer Spring wasam the myth hoffers East Forest and R web and others uh we're going to kick it off on April 25th with Bruce damer who's a researcher at UC Santa Cruz an associate of of the NASA astrobiology Center and developed a hypothesis around the origins of life that is changing where they Place The Rovers on Mars and all of this came out of a psychedelic journey and he believes that these non-ordinary states however you achieve them can be an agent for Creative problem solving both for ourselves and for what this world needs right now so to find out about this as well as our free monthly Soul pod meetups and Affinity groups go to ros.org fellowship and if you want to work with your mind in other ways accessing those alpha waves that bring in those sweet flow States then you can find some support with magic mind this incredible little drink that helps you stay focused energized and creative throughout the day it has so many great ingredients and herbs as an herbalist I'm stoked about this it contains bopa which is a neut Tropic which is you could say like a brain vitamin uh check it out and get up to 50% off your subscription for the next 10 days with the code Romos just go to magic mind.com rdos as always we give such thanks for the privilege to be here with you and we dedicate any good that comes from these teachings and these episodes to all beings everywhere may they Ripple out in your lives and throughout the world so here is ramdas here and now Namaste and blessings [Music] when I sit with a person that is very ill with AIDS related symptoms and close to leaving her or his body and that person's dreams are crushed and often they're ostracized by the family and it's economically hard and the social ostracism from the community all this stuff there's a part of me in which each time I'm doing that my heart is breaking for this human being it's breaking from the levels of pity for the plight of another person it's also breaking from empathy from imagining myself being in that same predicament realizing how horrible it would feel an opportunistic illness you don't know what's going to strike next you just get better from one thing and another thing hits you that part of me that is reacting with the breaking heart that is common to most of the people that are around that person I remember once teaching a course with Elizabeth Ross kuer Ross and this nurse said I've had cancer for some 15 years and I have three children young children I've had many operations and I'm a nurse and she said if I if you came to the hospital to visit me what would you feel and then they met a list on the board and somebody said I'd feel angry at God that a young mother should be this sick I'd feel and they had a whole list of things that came out of pity and empathy and then she said how would you feel if you were me she said everybody's so busy reacting to my predicament nobody's with me can you hear that one can you hear that the person like when I look at the woman lying there dying of AIDS I see a person dying of aides and my heart breaks and then behind it I see a soul just like me an entity an awareness that is going through a process called dying of AIDS you in there I'm in here what are you doing today well I'm dying of AIDS what are you doing well I'm helping you ah so here we are now part that sounds callous but part of that is incredibly liberating because the question is who's dying of AIDS and from where I sit only on a couple of planes of reality is something interesting happening called dying of AIDS Buddha has this great image which I it's probably apocryphal but it's a great story it's the image you probably mostly know of somebody saying how many times have we been through this and he said imagine an a mountain 6 miles long 6 miles wide 6 miles high it's actually the length of time it takes a water buffalo to walk but that that's translated into miles he didn't say miles and he said and imagine every hundred years a bird flies over the mountain with a silk scarf in its mouth and runs the silk scarf across the mountain once in the length of time it would take the silk scarf to wear away the mountain that's how long you've been doing this just allow it for a second just play with it for a second my life you know what life is like it's not even a blink of an eye it's a oh there goes that one e goes that one I was boiled in oil that time how you the Dal Lama said really be kind to everybody not only because you know because they're nice but because once they were your mother that's giving me pause I'll tell you I mean I think he didn't fully appreciate my mother but at one level when I come into a room with somebody that is going through some incredibly traumatic experience one level of me my heart is breaking and another level of me is feeling an equanimous awe and appreciation of the way in which it's all unfolding and I don't even at that plane I think it's absolutely presumptuous of me to be judging the game I don't even understand it it's funny when there's a mystery you decide somebody did something wrong because you don't understand it and suffering is such a mystery I I've talked about this before but uh when my stepmother was dying a few years back I was taking care of her and she and dad and I had had wonderful times down here and mana and on the vineyard and uh she was a tough New England Um poker playing gin drinking you know really good tough gal strong opinions about everything and then she was dying of a very painful cancer and really loved her I grew to love her deeply and I would have done what I could to take away the pain I was giving her all the stuff she needed to get rid of the pain but still the pain was there and there was a point where the suffering went on and on and then at a point she gave up she just gave up she stopped not only wasn't she trying to live which she had given that up before but she wasn't even pushing against the pain she just gave up which in our culture is a real no no don't give up come on you can do it she gave up and because I was there with her and I was really doing a lot of inner practice and just very spacious as she gave up there was a new moment and the new moment was it was like for me watching an egg break and something new be born what emerged was a being that was so present and so in the space of love and joy and appreciation and and uh uh Clarity that she hardly knew herself at that moment because she had never been in touch with that part of herself through most of her adult life and she and I just went into Rapture together and she stayed in that until she died in fact as she died it was very far out because she said as as I've said before she said Richard sit me up and I got her legs over the bed and she was falling forward I put a hand on her chest and she was falling back I put a hand on her back her head was Laing I put my head against her head so she was sitting absolutely straight and she took three breaths each one the exhalation longer than the inhalation and she stopped She left her body and there are Tibetan manuscripts that describe the way in which certain llamas die and they sit up straight and they take three breaths and they leave she came from Dorchester how did she know that you know like how did she know what's the sense of I going to India if she knew it all along but at that point I thought to myself how presumptuous of me to have decided that that suffering was something my heart wanted to take it away cuz I loved her as a person but that suffering broke through something in her that brought forth that thing that might never have come forth in this life otherwise and I don't say well next time I'd let her suffer I said I've got to come to terms with the fact that there are two forces in me one of them that appreciates the awesome nature of the mystery that includes suffering and death and the other that hurts like hell about it because I'm an individual being empathizing with other individual beings and there's a the other part of me however is a Unity connected with the whole process and what I'm learning which is quite extraordinary is that as I simultaneously live in these other planes of reality more and more instead of sequentially going in and out of them getting high coming down getting high coming down but learning how to live simultaneously that's what I use the beads for it's what I use meditation for it's constantly balancing and creating the tension of living life with passion and at the same moment the equinity the spaciousness the presence the loving Embrace and playing with the fact that you're one and you're many you're formless and you're form you're unique and you're not you're somebody and you're nobody and living with all that simultaneously that's the art form of Being Human to me and to me that's the space from which you can respond to change in the world and balance the freaking that's happening in you as a separate entity when you realize that the jig is up and the other part of you is saying ah Jig Is up it's the story of the woman who gets pregnant by the fisherman and she doesn't want to admit it's the fisherman so she said it's the monk up in the monastery so when the baby's born the town's people all take take the baby up to the monastery and they knock on the gate and the monk comes to the gate and they say it's your baby you must take responsibility for raising it and he says Ah so and he takes the baby and closes the gate N9 years later the girl is dying and she doesn't want to die without confessing and she confesses it wasn't the monk who impregnated her and they all go up to apologize to the monk for this thing mistake they made and they come they knock and he comes with a child and they say we're sorry and it's you know if you'd like we'll take over the raising of the child and he said ah so sorry all the fery tickets are sold for cars for the next 3 months ah so ah so ah so a so I mean look at your own life how ready are you for an AO you know AO can't afford the house anymore a so it's fun it's really fun to play with levels of reality it's really fun if you stay too much at the level of individual and somebody it really it it's I find it very finite and boring it's like living in As the World Turns or something like that it's you know it's it's you know will she won't she can I can't I you know who cares you know people come up and say I mean I don't even care about my life it's going to be interesting any way it goes you know if it if you get up and walk out that'll be interesting and if you love me that'll be interesting and if you're in between that'll be interesting what difference does it make that's your problem not mine I was taking care of Dad after my stepmother died then I started working with Dad and or being with him more and there was this great moment dad had gotten Dad used to be a very active um person with strong opinions also and an achiever and all that and then and he didn't he everybody didn't loved my father and um but as he got older he got more and more quiet until finally by the time he's about 89 he's just lying there with this kind of smile on his face all the time sort of like a little not a but a smile and uh so one of my relatives comes this guy and he never like Dad he said uh how you doing Dad just smiled at him the guy went outside and I was talking to him he says son of a [ __ ] he still won't talk to me then my aunt came who loved my father incredibly his little sister George how are you and he smiled at her and she said oh my god what have they done to you where have you gone he and I was sitting there just holding hands just sitting there just smiling at the world and they were both miserable and dad and I were both happy so who won who won how do you keep trying to hold on to something as if it's not going to change when it's built into the system that it's going to change how do you meet somebody behind the changing I gave a lecture on Aging in New York recently and I listed all the things you're going to get it was great fun you know insomnia high blood pressure you know and the whole list all a list all a list a I us loss of hearing loss of seeing ready I said you know you're going to spend your whole time pushing against the system is that going to make you happy in a culture that worships youth are you going to be miserable because you grow old it's like this tree is going to drop its leaves oh my God the Japanese monk that's dying and they say you haven't written your death poem and he says oh I haven't written my death poem and he picks up a brush and he calligraphies and he dies and the poem says birth is thus death is thus verse or no verse what's the fuss a certain kind of lightness about it all that part of you that is separate that part of you that is your senses and your thinking mind is all part of what changes there is however a component component isn't the right word because it implies something else and it's all part of the same thing but there is a plane of reality in which you recognize or you are what isn't changing it's not you it's just what isn't changing it's it's the base from which change all occurs resting in that and resting in change dealing with that balance and tension that's the art form that's what all the spiritual things lead you to ultimately the spiritual practices and the religions are taking people who got completely lost in their separateness and helping them to awaken to these other planes of reality which are called spiritual or whatever you want to call it God or everything astral causal Locas mansions in the Hebrew tradition whatever you want to call them but the end result isn't to leave and go somewhere else the end result is to honor the human Incarnation by coming recognizing these other planes and then integrating them in so you what call you spiritualize life you bring the unity in along with the diversity that I can be with somebody who is different than me and I can acknowledge the diversity and at the same moment recognize the unity but to do that for us to get to that point is a tricky social problem is this too much or I can I can go a few more minutes are you still here okay um like we we had this uh sa and uh Insight Meditation society and St John the Divine and uh I think wbi we all got together to sponsor this uh Retreat for social activists spiritual Retreat for social activists cuz social activists burn out all the time you know you try to take on a project like uh like a nuclear waste or something and it's you know it's going to go on and on and it's big and there's so much ignorance and so much reactivity and so on and you just kind of get tired in the whole thing and so we were suggesting maybe there was a place you could stand that would allow you to be continually nourished by what you're doing instead of starved by it so we designed this Retreat where there'd be meditation practice and there'd be Spirit Dharma talks and then there'd be small groups and all that but it was for political activists and they're political activists after all and so there was a contingent of Latino Chico and African-Americans who got together and they overthrew us about the second day in the retreat they said we're not going to have any white honkies telling us how to run a retreat that's the story of Our Lives I mean we were they said you should have taken us gather Us in in the planning of the thing they were absolutely right but I tried my spiritual uplevel I said look why are you making this us them we're all one they said don't give me that crap that's an interesting question and the clue of how to deal with that was given to me when I was doing a um television interview of a very beautiful man named zman shakar a rabbi and I said to zman the first question I asked zman if you were an Israeli what would you say to a Palestinian to which zman replied o oi that's a problem and then he said you know he said before we can be together we have to be able to grieve with one another with one another to grieve with one another and that kind of I heard that inside deep inside myself and so we all sat around talking figuring out what to do and what happened was like a beautiful description a way a manifestation of what Zan had said because at this Retreat which is a 5-day Retreat we ended up having what was called um a fishbowl in which we all sat around the outside and then inside went people of different groups that were oppressed there were people of color there were women there were gays and lesbians and these were different groups at different times but all the people of color would get in the center and they talked to each other about what life was like being oppressed because of their color and the rest of us would listen and then each group got in and the white men got in there too they had their moment because there's oppression in also being the oppressor and after that had gone on for about two days we found at the end that we as a group had bonded together as a family of shared of humanity shared Humanity appreciating our various unique predicaments and through that appreciation finding the common quality of our Humanity from which we could bond and act and be strong but it took that process the predicament is that if you don't have both planes going you just get into the grieving process and it doesn't go anywhere it just keeps feeding on itself the self-pity the so on I mean there are people that are going to be abused children with Bradshaw all the way through I mean I think it's good to bring it out to acknowledge it to feel your way through it and then to let go of it I don't think any definition of yourself is interesting enough why do you keep locking yourself in with the definition how do you do I'm a lawyer but you're in bed my dear I'm still a lawyer you [Laughter] know even woman man all of these they're they're trippy they're too trippy they're all worth going into honoring finding your part in it honoring meaning filling it with neither aversion or attraction just being in it just being here in it and then letting go of the limit of defining yourself in that term I would suggest that it is possible to live with your Compassionate Heart open which appreciates that it's all us it's even all me the levels of working to relieve other people's suffering I remember with Dad when I was taking care of dad the first thing I did taking care of dad I thought I'll take care of dad people said aren't you great taking care of your father and I'd say well somebody has to do it you know i' milk it cuz it's it's certainly milk I mean you know he really took care of his father wasn't that what a what a guy what a what a guy he then the next level I I burn that one out after a while you know you can only milk them for so long you get bored you know you need new plots so I tried the new one this is my karma yoga dad you're my karma yoga um let's take a shower I'm going to take you I'm going to God through taking care of you that was an interesting trip that lasted for a good while that got boring after a while too finally I was just taking care of Dad we were just hanging out one of us [ __ ] one of us cleaned it up it didn't really matter who was doing what anymore it was just a process we were just being together in the process of life and we weren't I wasn't self-consciously defining it any longer it was just a part of what you do like you you brush your teeth or you get up or when you're hungry you eat or you whatever and at that moment I felt a very deep resonance in a Harmony in what it really meant to be honoring my father honoring and it was no big trip I wasn't thank you or anything because when an act is coming out of that level of compassion I wasn't doing it for Dad we were both this the phenomena within the space of there's a father there's a son there's these things being done and there we are and being in that space who's giving what to whom it's like if your hand is in cot in the thing and your other hand pulls it out this hand doesn't turn to this and say thanks because they're both part of you well that's the way it starts to be in the stuff in compassion I mean that's the fun of the sa Foundation learning how to do this stuff in big scales in blindness and poverty and third world and all this stuff without getting into aren't we doing good or without getting into milking it for righteousness or trying to get off on it but just realizing that as you recognize you're part of everything who suffering is it anyway it's not their suffering it's not our suffering it's the suffering and your Compassionate Heart isn't my Compassionate Heart it's the Compassionate Heart and the action is all happening at the level of action and behind it all the statement one does nothing and nothing is left undone when you are able to simultaneously live on those planes of consciousness and handle that tension and that balance then your every act towards other human beings brings to bear with it equinity spaciousness and joy it's interesting you're standing in the checkout counter and it's long and you're tired and somebody up there that's going through their pocketbook to find the pennies and it's a whole thing and you're sitting there doing your growl and your how inconsiderate see and then I'm holding my beads and suddenly a ROM goes through my mind and my Consciousness flips and I see the absurdity of my predicament I mean this is the way it is it's interesting you out in the woods you know and you see pine trees and you say ah Pine then you see a garl tree and you say ah narl tree but the minute you get around humans it's not ah Slowpoke see ah essence of Slowpoke wow I haven't seen that in a long time it's damn Slowpoke you know it's far out just the shift to being an appreciator of life it's just a flick of Consciousness it's not a big deal you don't have to sign up for anything you know it's just a flick of Consciousness I train myself so every time I find myself judging I flick into appreciation I just train why that ah you know I mean I I have this situation where my heart closes around certain people and I realize it's because I'm afraid or I judge cuz judge is related to fear it's power it's all that stuff and so I've been working with it I really have been working with it and I've told you about what I've done in the past I like for a long time I had a lot of trouble with Casper Weinberger who was a secretary of defense that I really just didn't like I mean he wasn't an evil person he was just wrong you know and so I couldn't open my heart to him you know I try and I couldn't so I took his picture and I put it on my Puja table so that in the morning I'd light my incense and candles good morning Christ good morning maharaji good morning Mary and Anand my ma and then hello Casper and I I'd realize how far I had to go yet because all Casper was I mean that's my Guru in drag my Guru is is at Central Casting costume place and he says I'll put on my Casper Weinberger mask and that'll get him he'll think it's real see and I can't I mean if I met Casper Weinberger i' go you know hello what what is that going to liberate him that's going to reinforce his entament in Casper it's like the his Holiness the Dal Lama when they said are you angry with the Chinese he says no that isn't that isn't practical and it isn't I mean it's not going to make the Chinese open up more you and you can oppose somebody cuz Kabir the poet had the Great Line do what you do with another person but never put them out of your heart it doesn't mean you're a squash it does as my mother would say don't be a squash it doesn't mean you let people walk all over you and you don't stand up for actions some actions stink and they hurt people and when you see them you want to stop them and you often are an actor to stop it because it's the part you play in the drama the question is where is your heart in that process do you close your heart when you say no to somebody and that's a key issue if you look at the way you deal with people when you say yes and you do give them what they want you'll notice how open your heart is because you feel safe and loved and the minute you say no watch how you constrict a little bit and practice watching that and get to the point where you can go inside and you can see the nature is the laws of the universe in which in this drama my part is to say no I'm saying no to your actions I'm not saying no to you it's like Gandhi said the British must leave India but they must leave as friends and he was looking behind the veil he was meeting people on two levels at once he was available and this is what we ultimately offer each other it isn't that we don't oppose each other it doesn't that we don't meet in all these different social roles with each other it's that we work on our minds and hearts to create environments where other people are not trapped in a role or a definition where we can meet as full human beings where we can meet within the play and the dance of it all like you play tennis you go out to the tennis court to compete but the funny thing is you both collaborated to get on the tennis court so you're collaborating and you're competing and that's called good sportsmanship when you forget it when you're just collaborative and not competitive you give away the game that's not right when you're just competitive and not collaborative you end up really a bad sport when you lose or arrogant when you win and there are all these ways in which we learn to work with two levels at once but there are other levels too than just cooperation and competition there's interdependent Y and there's unity and there's emptiness and those are all equally true and as you and I learn how to live simultaneously we then become the instruments in a changing world to bring to that situation the kind of hey the kind of equinity the kind of presence the kind of Joy the kind of allowing for the mystery that allows us to be an instrument in the situation that relieves and brings about a harmonious situation and relieves suffering and what you and I offer each other is ourselves as an environment you don't have any moral right to force another person's Consciousness to do this or that you can legislate about their actions but their Consciousness is theirs but you can create an environment where another person can come out and play if they want to so that when I go around somebody that's dying if they want to be busy dying that's up to them I have no moral right to take away their drama but I'm right here in case they'd like to wink the I'm right here in case they want to play at more than one level and what you experience is that when you're not caught in the drama no matter how thick it is and dying is very thick one that's the heaviest one going and when you can not get caught in it and still be there not get you don't avoid getting caught by closing your heart and defending you can't do that that's cold the person doesn't feel anybody's there for them you got to keep your heart open and it's hurts and you're right there and you're in love with the person and at the same moment there is the joy and the EO ity of the universe unfolding in its own beautiful way I mean cancer cells aren't evil they're just being little cancer cells that's what cancer cells do oh my goodness my goodness I mean this is this is a real moment when your life becomes a statement that either exacerbates the predicament you are either the problem or you're the solution I guess or you're a little of both but you work on yourself I mean I work on myself in order to become clearer I do it because I realize I'm part of the web of it all CS Lewis said you don't see the center CU it's all Center where you are is the center of the game it's all going out from you there something that just changes where you become part of the dance of the healing of the whole system don't and you don't end up being so harden yourself for all the ways you're still in mass of denial I mean my stepmother as she was dying she gave me her car as an act of love it happens to be a car that pollutes the atmosphere what am I to do what am I to do probably I'll turn it into a planter or something sooner or later aging Decay dying RKA who's one of my favorite poets he said Love and Death are the great gifts that are passed on to us that most of us leave unopened instead of woring am I getting enough love Do You Love Me Do I love you how much do you love me are you sure you love me will you love me later I don't feel loved how come there's one other level of the game and that is to keep quieting down until you enter the space in the UN ierse where you are love and out of that comes abundance not deprivation and instead of going around like a dry sponge trying to be moistened by the outside world you go around just watering everything you see and you can practice you can look at somebody in the supermarket and look at them with love just look at them and realize you and they are in the stew together and look at how they're dealing with it look at what they've gone through look at the lines in their face look at it all appreciate it appreciate US US US US enter into the space of love with other human beings not I love you not possessive not collecting I went from years of nobody loves me do you love me enough how much will you love me and then as a result of all the spiritual practices I started to realize that I loved people without needing them to love me back I started to love people and I but I had the model that I needed love so bad that when I felt this feeling towards somebody I wanted to collect them so I lived in communes you know cuz one isn't enough you look and there's somebody else you love let's live together then I saw that it's politically just very complicated so I realized that I couldn't live with all my lovers so I got to the point where I'd meet one and I'd fall into this place of love and I'd say let's have coffee or herb tea or whatever and then I take their phone number just in case later all the lovers I had already had collected should leave and then I realized I was still working on a deprivation model why should I assume that I'm going to run out of lovers since the next person I meet's another one it's all just God and drag and so I started to be able to get down the street and look at somebody and be so in love with them I couldn't bear it and not even wink not even say hi or are you feeling what I'm feeling you know I'll just I'm going to end with one of my my oldest and dearest stories it's an Old Chestnut and then we'll take a break and then those of you that our glutton for punishment can come back and we'll do questions and answers and turn up the lights and hang out together for a while long this is great stuff I mean for me I love it I don't know I don't know what you're doing here but I'm I may be psychotic but you paid to hear me let's put it let's look at that but this is this is this is one of my this is a vintage story came back from India in 68 or9 I was so high I mean I'd been fasting and doing breathing stuff and being a yogi and I was so my Guru was oh God I had light pouring out of my head and I was living on all these different planes but sequentially you know I get high and come down high and I was working at it I was living in a little cabin cooking my own hedri and washing in a pale and stay trying to keep my high from India and so uh I had this old um car this 1938 limousine Buick limousine weighed 6,000 lb it was a real tank like and I had opened up the trunk so I made it into a camper in the back seat and I was going across to California to teach at esen it's going to be a two-e trip across the country and I was on the New York throughway this was the first day and I was cruising along I had one leg under me and the other on the accelerator and I was using the names of God I was just remembering the names of God you know just keeping the and I just kept enough Consciousness on this plane to keep the car in the road you know and to be reasonable because you can't forget your ZIP code it's you got to keep your levels together and so I'm singing to Krishna who is one of the forms of the unnamable uh who is um often characterized as the the lover the God as lover with the Beloved and I'm just I'm just feeling in love with Krishna because and I'm saying Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna is blue and he plays the flute it's a blue boy usually and and all the milk Maids go Gaga over him and it's um and it's all about God it's not okay so um on moonlit nights in the yumna river he manifests there are 17 thou he plays his flute and all the milkmaids leave their everything and go to the river and there he manifests himself in 177,000 forms and makes love to each of them in the way that they most would like there's a whole sect in India of men who dress as women in relation to Krishna because Krishna in that sect is the is it's a y yab yum type Force thing so I'm thinking about Krishna krrishna Krishna this blue Krishna and I suddenly become aware there's a flashing blue light in my mirror my rearview mirror now so 3/4 of me is with Krishna that part says he's come and the other quarter says it's a New York state trooper and I should stop so I pull the car over and stop and up to the window comes this being and he says may I see your license and registration now what I see is the Beloved I mean this I mean how would God come you know I mean came as a carpenter once I mean why not as a state trooper what have you got something against God coming as a state trooper so sure you can have my license and registration I God take anything you want you know now I'm not saying that because I live through the 60s I know what you can't say so you don't tell everybody everything but so I say of course officer and I had in my license and registration but I'm just looking at him with such love see so he walks around the car and he goes and he calls home or whatever it is you do and he comes back and he said well he said you were going too slow and he said if you're if you're going [Applause] to well better if you drove on the ancillary roads and I said thank you so much and I'm I'm just you know I'll do anything just to keep him there because I know it's Krishna I mean he can make believe he's a state trooper but that's his business you know so now he's used up his material but the thing is he doesn't want to leave see because how often is a State Trooper loved that deeply I mean it's I mean I'm not coming on to him it's not that love it's it's just like yeah you know like whooo you know I'm just looking in his eyes like and he doesn't want to leave but there's very few routines you can do you know with within the game plan so he says great car you got here see that gives us a whole new thing see and I can get out of the car and we can spit and kick the tires and hit the fenders and say they don't make them like they used to and talk about straight eights and slant sixes and old cars we've had and we work that really for a long time and I'm just you know I don't care we could be talking about you know the sewer system in Russia for all I care I'm just yeah and finally he's run out of that and there's nowhere he can go now he's either got to blow his cover and admit he's Krishna you [Applause] know but instead he says well be gone with you which that's not quite state trooper talk but we'll give him one Arrow without you know so I get into the car and I'm just driving away he's moved back to his Cruiser and I look in the mirror and he's waving me I think now wait a minute state troopers don't wave so that's to me an example of living on more than one level simultaneously and I do it most of the time and people come up and say and I say really and they don't know what I'm seeing I mean I'm hearing them say it but behind it I'm just looking into your eyes you here I'm here far out how's your drama doing these oh you don't understand W really oh and you're hurting and you're joyful and you're everything and this other part of you is just at play at play at play in the fields of The Lord At Play It's God at play you can decide to be the play thing or the player the play thing is who you think you are and who you think you are thinks it makes choices and it's coming and going and doing all this stuff behind it all is the player this podcast is brought to you by the love serve remember foundation and ros.org we appreciate you listening and we appreciate all the support that you've given us please continue that support and donate at ros.org we can then continue to share what r us has been sharing for all of these years thank you

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 11,650

Keywords: Ram Dass, Be here now, ram dass be here now, ram dass podcast, ram dass meeting guru, be here now network, maharaji, maharajji, neem karoli baba, ram dass guru, ram dass here and now, ram dass talks

Id: rMZZHxs6VLE

Length: 59min 35sec (3575 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024