Ram Dass on the Levin Interviews | Part 1 of 2 - BBC 1981

for the last in this series I'm talking to a man who has achieved a remarkable synthesis between modern culture of the West and the most ancient culture of the east here's what though he wouldn't call himself one many people would call a guru he's the author of books like be here now and grist for the mill he's Baba Ram Dass you don't really look like anybody called around us tell me who you were and how you got where you are hmm I was born given the name Richard my last name was Alpert and I grew up in the United States and Boston I went on to study psychology took a PhD taught at Harvard or some years got involved in the early 60s in research with psychedelic chemicals such as LSD research these four five of six years then went to India where I met a spiritual teacher and realized in India that they had maps for the types of things that we were thinking we were the first explorers on the earth they already had maps about this terrain of consciousness and at that time I was given the name Ramadan's which means a servant of god rom is one of the names of God and das means servant and I came back from India and became somewhat of a yoga yogic teacher I guess and the name ROM das was useful to me because every time somebody calls you servant of God it reminds you about what your business is about which Richard didn't really do so even though all of the trappings of Ramdas are now gone the Indian clothes and the beads and I'm not anymore a Hindu than I am a Christian or a Buddhist or a Jew or a Islam are you care to say then in that context what you are you're not those things or in a sense perhaps you're all of them I think I think in every one of them is living spirit and I think I am completely hooked on living spirit and that which truth brings you to and at the highest or most esoteric essence of each of the religions is that same truth and I am very much attached to spirit not particularly to religious forms did you you went to India a new spiritual teacher with respect would you say was great so you had a conversion of any kind well you know what seems like critical moments in a life when you look back later you see that there was a lot of preparation in your being for that I sure that the first time I understood the scientific method it was an opening for me I'm sure the first time I took psychedelics it was very definitely an opening for me I'm sure the time I met the teacher it was a very clear opening for me because I saw in him the possibilities that I had dreamed that human beings were capable other how far then do you feel that all that was in some way somewhere preordained for you that there's a path that your feet have been set upon well I don't know whether the word preordained is exactly the right word it seems to me that the entire universe of forms is lawful in its unfolding and that it is not by chance that each event occurs I don't know that it is determined at some distant past moment it merely is a set of lawful interactions and if you could stand back far enough you could see and predict the way it would work in time and space so I have adopted the role similar to the Tibetan milarepa sort of listening to the universe to hear the part I play rather than thinking that I am so much of a choosing instrument oh we all oh yes yes this is the this is the evolution I mean the ultimate understanding that I have now is that we have taken a human birth in order to have a series of experiences which are vehicles for our awakening out of the illusion that we are only separate exclusively separate separate from what separate from the totality of form or what might be called God or the formless devise behind form in the one it could be called the one and the it seems to me that the journey of awakening leads one to go from thinking that the reality that you grew up with where your parents said settle down to reality this is real gives way to understanding that that's only relatively real that there are many types of realities not only cross-cultural but planes of awareness as well and that you go from the identity with your own separateness which is true on one plane like this plane you'll burn it and I'm run to us then we go up another one in which we can look and we can see at one level we can see your body and my body that's one plane of reality we could flip our channels see another plane where we see your personality and mine now we're in the psychological domain we could flip another channel in which we could determine that your astral identity you could be in Aries or Amon Aries you might be Leo Sagittarius or whatever another matrice matrix of individual difference we flip the channel once more and when I look into your eyes I see another human being just like me but in a different package all right and then all the individual differences become packaging these are planes of consciousness if I flip it once more and look into your eyes it is myself looking at myself looking at myself there's only one of us in drag making believe we are the many if you will all right and the complete cycle you going from the many into the one and then coming back into the many to delight in the forms of individual difference not to reject the physical plane by any means but that's the cycle of awakening as far as I understand well what happens when we get to the channel to use your metaphor Mitch - very it hits the jackpot what comes up on the on the machine what are we looking for what's the ultimate in what's the what's at the end of the range well you see at that point you have transcended time and space so there is no beginning and there is no end so the entire image is really a faulty one you realize at that moment all right so that's part of it you have transcended time and space you have transcended any attachment to a separate identity even though you still enjoy the separateness as you as you will all right you have become experienced you have be cut you've transcended dualism the separation between subject and object so that at that moment you are the river or you are the tree you are one with the universe and you it is beyond even the experience of cosmic consciousness which is a lower trance state actually you've actually transcended that one and at that point there is no self consciousness you are merely part of the DAO of the flow of things in the universe but if we are part of the universe at all of us all the time how come we have to become that thing I mean what's what's happened you talked about that seems separate from it why why should we be separate from it well this is the question of how did it all begin rise in form why about the Apple original sin which metaphor do you want to use where you means was it merely the one of us creating the many in order to come to know itself because there was no way a one could experience itself so it plays with dualism because as you awaken out of dualism you realize that the entire thing was like a dream or a dance or an illusion not meaning it's not a pejorative to say that it merely means that it didn't have the solidity you thought it did so in one answer Buddha's answer is it's none of your business with meaning that the rational mind can never comprehend the system that created it it in other words a system can understand a system meta to it which is merely a logical problem when you where you put it it sounds as though you're one your totality or God and these are only labels where agreed I'm sure has so to speak set us a task is that what you believe well first of all it's not anything separate from us so we have set us a task and we could call it a game of hide-and-seek we could call it we merely but you see the predicament if you look at the wheel of births and deaths in which you go from the one into the many and then awaken back into the one and then stand back from that wheel outside of time and space you see that there is nothing happening there is no beginning of the there's no end it's merely if you look at a clock that at some point you think you are at 5:25 you think that's who you are but actually if you stood back you would see that you are the Buddha you are the first cell separating and you are also the holy man at the last moment of enlightenment there all right there it's the all the incarnations are always present every moment but then are we just going round and round and round yes nothing's happening at all actually that sounds a trifle pointless but you don't clearly look at you you don't think that's pointless well the experience of going round has the point in it the totality just is God just is God isn't going anywhere it always was is and will be and there is in a way it is only when you understand that it's pointless that it gets interesting we are always clinging to what's the meaning of this yeah how important is this yeah but maybe it isn't that important maybe it has the beauty of being as Hermann Hesse's says in journey these leo says it's a beautiful dance it's a beautiful game an exquisite game a play in India it's called Leela the play the dance but how can human beings abandon that concept of meaning I mean that is surely the whole structure of everything we stand on the floor will fall in if we have done and that won't it but it's after the floor falls in and after you have transcended thinking of yourself as somebody going somewhere I mean I if I were to define what I am I'd say I'm in training and nobody training I'm in training to become nobody special which is the it's understood in the Zen image of nobody special and then out of that you come back into the play you do it as Don Juan says in the Caston ATIS books you live and you huff and puff as if it had tremendous meaning you appear as if it does but yet it doesn't aren't you reducing us to meaninglessness in the in the sense that of course we all think we're the center of the universe if you like and you are telling us we're not let understand that but aren't you going further than that and dissolving the whole point of us at all I mean this thing you don't believe you know this is an accident I take no I think that the the error is it's the oversimplification is taking one plane of reality and investing it with some higher value than another on one plane of reality it is absolutely perfect law unfolding no other than merely the unfolding of law no more meaning than that merely a set of events evolving one from the other on another level on this level had there as choice there is motive there is intent there is goal there is purpose and we play on this level with the purpose and most of us take it very seriously and part of awakening is that you started' do it from a different level you do it out of a delight and a playfulness even though it's all heavy and serious you know it there's a different quality of the way you live life well another question that comes up at this moment I can't resist it to put it in an obvious modern metaphor can you sell soap with it I mean what how do you what do you do you live in the real world never mind about how many other worlds there are and the planes of illusion I understand that but we live in this world we cross the street looking right left we go buy food in the in the ground let's burn the question is how we live in the world not whether we live in the world because we have taken incarnation here because that's who you and I happen to be on this level of our evolution that we end up on this plane together at this moment knowing each other at least on this plane but as Christ points out one lives in the world but not of the world and you slowly realize that you that that this is a form that's manifesting and you dance with it you wear it like your clothing you honor it you take care of it you keep it clean and neat and you find out how it harmoniously expresses itself but we have what do we have you tell me responsibilities to one another very important ones - do we not have our fellow man our fellow creature absolutely and as you listen to hear why you have been incarnated and what function you have within the incarnation see this Bernard has a function you as a cosmic as God is at play as at rest eternally there's a part of you that is at rest and then there is this form that has purpose and function and you are constantly listening to hear what your function is and the quieter you become the more you hear your function is that of service of leaving the suffering that exists because you you experience at one level of consciousness your identity with all other beings see behind as we went through the changing of the channels there is a place where you and I are one and if you are suffering I'm suffering you see ultimately and there's where social responsibility comes in finally

Channel: Baba Ram Dass

Views: 280,198

Keywords: god, separateness, interview, spirituality, planes of consciousness, the one, Neem Karoli Baba, Hanuman108108108108, spiritual teacher, Dass, guru, methods, Ram Dass, spirit, BBC, the Levin Interviews, awakening, source, illusion, Ram

Id: 6eaRPVTepNc

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Mon May 19 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/-Intronaut-]

I like how he talks, by the way the babaji who initiated RamDass was Neem Karoli Baba a towering personality from India.

[u/gimmesomespace]

I wish I was more mature, but I can't stop chuckling at his name.

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[u/katentreter]

good interview