Ram Dass Now

Be Here Now ends with the image of a person standing on a bridge, perfectly reflected in the clear water below. The bridge supports the person standing there as well as taking her from one side to the other. Maharajji is the bridge in my life, the foundation of my faith and the vehicle for my transformation, and the reflection in the water—the great mirror in which I can get a glimpse of my own perfection-to-be.

After all, what is perfect in this life? There is no perfect place to live, and I’ve lived in a lot of places. New York and Montreal had cold nasty winters, ice on the roads, and a long stretch of dark grey months that left me depressed as winter dragged on. Santa Fe was gorgeous huge skies and mountains that glowed red in the setting sun, but seventeen years in the desert was enough dryness. L.A. had perfect weather, but then the ground would suddenly shake. If you ever want to break the illusion that the ground is solid under your feet, live in earthquake territory. And now Florida, with its moist warmth . . . and summer heat and hurricanes.

It’s like the shows on television where people are hunting for a house and have to make compromises. Do you give up having a garage because you love the big closets, do you settle for less square footage because it’s in the right school district, or do you live with noise from a nearby road because the house is perfect in every other way? There’s always something.

Except with Maharajji. Wherever I pushed, there was no impediment, no blockage, no ego in him. Just love. There were no rules to rebel against. There was nothing about him I would have changed, except, of course, him leaving his body. Although I’m sure that was perfect too. Otherwise, I would have kept clinging to something outside myself, waiting for the next instruction, the next pat on the head. So for the last four decades, all I could do was follow to the best of my ability the basic directives he did leave us: love everyone, feed everyone, remember God. It turns out those seemingly simple words embody an entire path for spiritual evolution.

Everything ends. Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, and Shiva destroys. Marriages crumble, children leave home, parents die, money comes and goes. This blogging experience ends.

And I’m still standing on that bridge, watching myself go by.

Maharajji on bridge to Kainchi

Relax. It’s all an illusion. It’s yet another transformation in a long line of births and deaths—out of the formless into form, out of form into formlessness. Out of the void into compassion for the ten thousand things of earth, out of the world of things and back into the void. It sounds so easy.

When we first got back from India in 1972, we thought these moments of transition would be a snap, although back then it was the transformation of birth that occupied us. We were young, newly married, and pregnant or wanting to be. As far as we knew, we’d be spending our lives going back and forth to India to be with Maharajji, who would guide us and our children gently in the direction of liberation. He didn’t have disciples (as far as we knew); he had devotees, and devotees could be householders instead of renunciates.

We felt safe, protected under his blanket. Specially graced. What could go wrong?

A group of us landed at my father-in-law’s “farm” in Canada, holding tight to our Hindu-style beliefs and a mind set that anything natural was good. The first baby born at the farm arrived after six hours of picture-perfect labor. The mom barely uttered a sound as she concentrated on her breath, squatting to bring forth an infant in an effortless delivery. Wow, we thought, this is a piece of cake. Why does the medical world make such a big deal out of birth? Philistines, all.

The next birth followed soon after. Except this time, the mom screamed in agony. We soon found out why—the infant was breech, one tiny leg dangling through where the head should have been. We had no medical help, just an emergency booklet that one of us read while the dad-to-be went in, brought down the other foot, and pulled out a still, blue baby. After giving infant CPR, following the instructions being read out of the manual, the child finally gave a cry. Everyone in the room cried. We would never be blasé about the transition of birth again. (By the way, that child, now in his late thirties, just did a great job putting together the e-book for Be Here Now.)

Death has proven much the same. For some, a simple withdrawal from the world, a peaceful breath out followed by no breath in. My dad went that way, curled in a fetal position, old age looking just like a newborn. For Maharajji, physical death was an escape from “central jail.” For others, it’s a struggle—the desire to stay, the inability to let go of attachment to loved ones, and fear of the “nothingness” that lies beyond. These ones do not go peacefully into that good night.

Birth and death. The two big transitions—from formlessness to form and back again. As someone who coached many moms through labor in my early years and now is poised to deal with more deaths than births, I have felt the angel of birth and the angel of death as the same guardian of the sacred space of transformation.

All this just to say I don’t see the Bodhisattva thing as a problem. It’s not void versus compassion. Not nirvana or samsara, not birth or death. Brahma creates, Vishnu sustains, Shiva destroys so the natural cycle can start all over again.

Hail the goer!

I’ve been reading Be Love Now and I love the way Ram Dass is revisiting his early experiences with Maharajji, looking back at the beginning, filling in the blanks in between the layers of the stories we’ve heard before. When I think about those first awful weeks after his massive stroke, when we didn’t know how much brain function he would recover and the prognosis looked grim, and then read the way his memories pour out in the new book, I’m so grateful for the round trip Ram Dass been able to make.

He talks about the six months he spent at Kainchi after first meeting Maharajji and how they seemed like “one timeless moment.” I understand. I also keep revisiting the time I spent in Maharajji’s presence. And revisiting is the wrong word for a timeless experience that lies at the core of who I am and who I’ve been for the last four decades—a devotee of Spirit who tries to live with no “scruple of change” as the drama plays itself out. Rereading Be Here Now, and first reading Be Love Now, is like having a round trip ticket to ride once again the waves of love and surrender, joy and despair, of that timeless moment.

Like Ram Dass writing his new book, I’ve been immersed in the past. I’ve started archiving the stories of those of us Westerners who were with Maharajji during those few brief years in the early 70s before he left his body. Looking back four decades, what is amazing for all of us is how vividly that time stands out. We may not remember everything he said, or the exact progression of whether it happened in Kainchi or Brindavan or Allahabad, but the feeling, the space, the connection is always there—timeless.

What can erase from memory the greatest love story of your life?

One of the things that those of us who kept journals during our time with Maharajji did was to write down quotes that were relevant to us. I don’t have a lot of words today. Instead, here’s a quote I’d written in my journal back then.

“When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden amongst his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.”
–Gibran, The Prophet

A page from Maharajji's "journal"--all RAMs

There may be no place to go, just the OM home of the here and now, but I’ve been traveling for the last two weeks and, let me tell you, I’ve been a lot of places both inside and out.

First I went to Albuquerque for my goddaughter’s bat mitzvah. There was the mishpuka (a probably misspelled Yiddish word that means all the crazy relatives) and all the chaos involved in helping to put on and photograph a series of events (rehearsals, meals with out-of-towners, the main service, the big party). There also was my goddaughter’s absolutely exquisite singing of her Torah portions and the blessings and prayers. For her, it was truly a spiritual initiation, a rising into the next level of both adulthood (or teenager-hood) and commitment to her path (at least her path at this moment of her life), and a real sense of community. But being Jewish never cut it for me. Being Jewish meant bagels and lox and The New York Times. I loved her singing, but somehow Sanskrit resonates more with me than Hebrew.

Then I went to Santa Fe, where I spent days with my ex-father-in-law, the 90-year-old patriarch of a large family of Maharajji devotees. He’s starting the process of turning inward. He’s not into storytelling, doesn’t seem to have real highs or lows, just a steady march on shaky legs into a hopefully dignified ending. He is living the lessons of changing and letting go that are so necessary at any stage of life, but especially the one he’s now facing. And the same is true for his wife of the last 30 years, as her life changes along with his.

I saw old friends. Some are going through extremely difficult times of suffering—loved ones dying, children with serious problems, career frustrations, economic difficulties—heartbreak in all its manifestations. All the sorrows of the world. While others are rising above, getting through the hard times and coming out stronger and more alive and more creative.

The wheel of karma. The law of life. It’s in the midst of all this living that we learn to let go. It’s loving fiercely and letting go. Parenting and letting go. Watching parents go. Living more here, in the moment, in the now of life, whatever it may hold, whatever it may ask us to hold.

And then I went to Taos, the home of America’s Hanuman, the one temple in the West that bears Maharajji’s name. And oh, what a tempest in a teapot that’s been over the decades! The factions, the fights, the wounds that have been inflicted and never let go of. Along with the rich silent heart space where the beautiful murti of Hanuman and Maharajji’s tucket share equal billing.

Ram Dass created the temple inadvertently. I don’t know where his desire stemmed from, but he was the one who had a 600-pound marble murti sculpted in India (in his flying pose, as he was going to have to cross another ocean) and brought to America. We had a small bandhara on some land in northern New Mexico, where the crate was opened. And suddenly there was the question: What are we going to do with him? Where will he live?

He wound up living in Taos, and it’s there that I felt the pull of polarity the strongest. The temple/ashram is a large container for the area seekers and devotees, the hungry or just crazy. I always thought of it as a big pot of soup, a caldron, really, and Maharajji picks up his ladle and stirs the soup, and all us little veggies collide into each other, and in the process, melt a bit more. My old (and getting older) friends spend less or no time at the temple, some with nostalgia for the good old days, while some actively oppose its existence.

In the end, we all define our own path. There’s no need to worry about “finding” ourselves. Here we are. Doing what we do. Suffering/loving/suffering/loving in a million different ways. It gets so clear: love it all. Love what’s happening now, right in front of you. When you keep loving, keep the heart open, and try to be kind, even the suffering is love.

Today I fly home. As if I ever left.

Taos Hanuman

And the Word was RAM. Many say that the first manifestation of sound was AUM, but as far as Maharajji was concerned, everything revolved around RamRamRamRam. He’d be sitting quietly on his tucket, rocking and swaying to the silent tune of Ram. Sometimes he chanted RamRam (go to the home page of www.nkbashram.org and you can hear him chanting Ram). He didn’t use a mala, but would touch each joint of his fingers with his thumb, over and over again, as he did his Ram Nam. He told us, “By taking the name of Ram, everything is accomplished.”

By the time I got to India, I was already on the RamRam bandwagon, having impressed the sound onto the wooden mala Ram Dass had given me in New Hampshire that summer on his father’s farm. He had attached a little thread of Maharajji’s blanket to the end of the “guru bead” on the mala, and it was amazing the amount of connection that little thread had . . . . it pulled me right to India. Of course, I’ve had many different malas since then, and used a number of different mantras over the years to connect to certain energies, but RamRam has always been home base.

Ram. That simple word is more than just the name of Rama, the avatar of Vishnu and hero of the Ramayana, or the name of the formless Absolute. It’s a seed syllable for the element of fire, and it certainly plunged us into the cauldron, burning in the fire of love. Many people mistakenly think that our time with Maharajji was all grace and bliss. Grace, certainly. Bliss, well, sometimes. When the light is so very bright, as it was in his presence, everything that’s buried within you, all your shadow stuff, comes up and looms larger and darker than you can imagine. I spent many hours sitting on a rock in the river that runs behind the ashram in Kainchi, crying my heart out.

And Blake, part of what created such pain and suffering, even in the presence of the guru, was the confusion created by the very question that’s plaguing you about the spiritual versus the worldly. Did I have to be a disciplined and unattached yogi to “go to God,” or was it okay to be simply a sloppy bhakti who wanted to get married and have kids and nice dishes? Did I have to do rigorous practices so I could merge into the Oneness, or was it all right to kick back and have some fun in good old duality?

Over the years, I had a lot of trouble with those who answered every question or viewed every situation with an “up-level.” Like those who said about Maharajji leaving his body, “But where could he go?” and claimed not to miss his form when all I wanted was to touch his feet one more time. Sure, in Oneness, I AM all form, the breath, the river, the guru, and the void. But down here, rooted in the Mother, I’m definitely attached to my kids and grandkids and Project Runway.

And you know what? It’s all okay. Just keep saying Ram, whenever you remember to. After a while, it says you.

a glimpse of the lake in Nainital

If Maharajji taught me anything at all, it was that there’s no place to hide. Of course, it’s taking a lifetime to internalize that message. If he knew everything about me, which he made abundantly clear that he did, and yes, still loved me unconditionally, did I think that ended when he left his body? If I really knew that god, guru, and self are one, I wouldn’t ever try to cover myself with the chilly waters of that old river de-nial.

I remember back in the first week I was with him in India. It was so intense, so powerful, that I took a “vacation” from going to Kainchi one day. I washed my waist-length hair (a long procedure that took two buckets of hot water), smoked a chillum, bought a bag of my favorite Indian sweets, and went for a boat ride on the beautiful lake in Nainital.

The next day, when I arrived in Kainchi, Maharajji looked at me so sweetly. “You like the scenery in Nainital?” he asked. Although phrased as a question, it was in fact a statement.

Yes, Maharajji.

You like Indian sweets?

Yes, Maharajji.

Then he raised his hands and pretended to be smoking a chillum.

Ah yes, Maharajji. And I was taking a vacation from what?

I loved the way Maharajji let us know he knew. It was never cruel, never accusatory. He usually did it in a way that others around wouldn’t even know what was going on.

I was smoking a lot of beedies (those foul little Indian “cigarettes” made with a tiny bit of low-grade tobacco wrapped in a betal leaf) those days, mainly to hang out with the guy I was interested in. I really wanted to quit smoking, but didn’t want to lose the opportunity. One day, as I entered the ashram, Maharajji started up with me about smoking beedies. He said he caught me red-handed. He said he was the CID [the Indian CIA] of the heart. Stop! Then he called me over to sit in front of him and put his feet in my lap and held my hand. I gave away my pack of beedies. After lunch, Maharajji called me over to congratulate me on not smoking beedies anymore. Instant reinforcement! And then proceeded to marry me to the guy.

Yet, year after year, I find ways to hide. I’ve hidden from relationships under too many layers of fat. I’ve hidden from myself by getting wasted and watching TV instead of doing my creative work. I’ve hidden from my own needs by constantly caretaking others. Even knowing that the god/guru part of me knows my heart’s desires, I foolishly try to hide.

From what? Love?

It takes an immense amount of courage to live in love, in truth, in openness. Even though I asked Maharajji for a pure heart and mind and for faith, I guess I forgot to ask for courage. Back then, I didn’t know how much I would need it.

I met the guru in stages. I first came into the presence of Oneness on my first LSD trip. Of course, I had been primed for the experience. I had heard Timothy Leary give his “turn on-tune in-drop out” talk at the Fillmore East (along with his sidekick Richard Alpert!) in an Easter special called “An Evening with God.” The upper rafters, where I sat with my college boyfriend, reeked of pot, which I had not yet ever tasted. I thought the evening was extraordinary—the psychedelic slide show alone was mind-boggling—although my boyfriend thought it was all a bunch of baloney. We broke up shortly thereafter.

Three weeks after I first dropped acid and dipped my toes into the ocean of non-duality, I met Ram Dass, who was imbued with the presence of the guru. After the summer of living at his father’s farm, I went to New York to figure out what to do next. At a girlfriend’s apartment in Spanish Harlem, we dropped acid. The next day, home alone, as I fell into lower (and somewhat frightening) astral levels of consciousness, I got scared. Sitting in front of the little black-and-white picture of Maharajji that Ram Dass had given me, clutching my New Hampshire pine mala, I recited a mantra: “I’m scared and you have to help me.” Over and over again.

The picture disappeared in a flash of blue light, and I saw Maharajji, live and moving. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was enough for me to get through the down side of the trip in one piece, knowing he was with me.

I got a larger picture, hung it on the wall of my rented room in Manhattan. During the day, I worked at a PR firm so I could earn the money to get to India, but I spent a lot of the rest of the time in relationship with that picture. And I would see Maharajji twinkling at me. Sometimes he was bearded, sometimes he just had a mustache and I thought someone else was showing up. (Later I learned about the barber who periodically shaved him.) I did everything in my life in front of that photo. Needless to say, I didn’t tell anyone I was talking to a picture all the time.

Fast forward to India. Finally, after months in South India followed by six weeks of hepatitis in the Evelyn Hotel in Nainital during monsoon, I walked across the bridge and entered Kainchi ashram for the first time. There he was, wrapped in his plaid wool blanket, sitting on his tucket, twinkling. I was home. My heart knew it.

Maharajji turned to me. “You used to talk to my picture all the time,” he said. “You asked many questions.”

It’s a good story. I can talk about it. It doesn’t explain the feeling I got when he touched the top of my head with one finger and changed every molecule in my body. Or the waves of ecstasy when he gently brushed my arm with his hand. Or the way my brief seven months with him, almost 40 years ago, is still present today.

After that first terrible 9/11, when Maharajji left his body in 1972, I had to relearn my relationship to the guru. It’s been a struggle to find the place where “god, guru, and self are one,” as he used to tell us. There are no easily tellable stories, but the goal still stands before me, beckoning me on.

the one I talked to all the time

The Divine Mother. She is my mother; she is my father; she is my brother; she is… me. When Maharajji started giving the Westerners new names, I became Parvati. The fairy godmother of all fairy godmothers had waved his magic wand and I went from being Barbara, the barbarian or stranger, to suddenly being the wife of Shiva, the wife of God. Not bad, I thought.

I had never really related to Barbara, or Bobbi as I was called in college, or Bobbi Sue as one branch of the family insisted on calling me. Or Bob, as my mother tended to call me. Bob, now really.

Maharajji would periodically look at me and ask, “Who is Parvati?” My stock reply would be, “Shiva’s Shakti.” Merely the energy of the entire universe. Uh-huh. Sometimes I’d say, “The wife of Shiva.” Maharajji proceeded to get me married. Maharajji asked me if Parvati had a son. Yes, Ganesh. Did she have another son? Yes, Skanda. He laughed and clapped his hands. Sure enough, years later I had two sons (although I had foolishly picked out girls’ names the second time around).

Throughout the years, I keep coming back to the question, “Who is Parvati?” I’ve been through all the relationship roles—daughter, sister, lover, wife, mother, grandmother. I failed at a number of them. Nope, as hard as I tried, none of those defined me. And being the goddess in the west is hard. I introduce myself as Parvati and people look at me quizzically, “Poverty?” Hopefully not.

I studied the goddesses, researched the divine feminine. I spent years doing Tibetan Buddhist dakini practice. I did mantra and puja. I pondered the significance of having King Himavan, the Himalayas, as my father (Parvati literally means “daughter of the mountain”). I read the mythology, searching for clues. I sought to find the courage to be the goddess.

Worshipping the Divine Mother is one thing; becoming her is something else again. It’s a journey of many lifetimes, a stumbling into grace . . . a pendant in the ear of the Divine Mother.

In the short video clip of Ram Dass posted on this site, he says that in the two years between his first meeting Maharajji and going back to India, in all the countless lectures he gave during that time, his “words were coated with Maharajji.” Some didn’t get it, many did. Be Here Now, the distillation of his talks from that time period, touched millions of others. Those of us who wound up in India at Maharajji’s feet heard him loud and clear—the trumpet call to wake up, the message that LSD would only get us so far on the journey, the realization that the holy books were all real, and that enlightened beings did exist and could touch our lives.

In India, they said that Ram Dass had “the gift of Saraswati.” Saraswati is the goddess who is the consort of Brahma, the Creator. She’s the muse, the portal for creative expression, such as music and poetry. Ram Dass was like a fountain whose words endlessly poured out the essence of Maharajji. And his delivery of that essence made it easy for Westerners to “get.” We could relate to him—this very smart, very funny “bad boy” who’d been kicked out of Harvard—and we could catch a glimpse, a taste, of what he had experienced in the presence of Maharajji’s unconditional love.

I know that when I initially met Ram Dass in the summer of ’69, and heard him speak to the dozen of us who were gathered in the barn at his father’s place in New Hampshire, it was the first time in my life I felt like I was getting answers instead of more questions. My search, which had led me through all the “dead white guys” of Western philosophy and psychology, alcohol, sickness, hallucinogens, and failed relationships, had finally paid off. I moved into a tent in his father’s backyard the very next day.

This year, around 40 of us gathered in Maui with Ram Dass for a reunion. We’d all been through a lot in the four decades since we’d been with Maharajji. There was Ram Dass’s massive stroke years earlier, and the gratefulness that he was still with us, and able to speak far better than the doctors ever expected (with the added benefit of those long pauses that give us time to sink into the heart space). There were the deaths of satsang members to remind us to appreciate the blessings of this life. But no matter how much time has elapsed, no matter how many challenges we’ve faced—divorces, bankruptcies, physical issues, difficulties with family and friends and businesses—we were still all joined in this large family of the spirit, still telling and listening to the stories, the words, that have coated our life with Maharajji.

And no words can express the gratitude for such grace.

There was a period of time in Brindavan when Maharajji would send us over to see Anandamayi Ma, the epitome of Mother. We’d take garlands and fruits, walk down the dusty streets of the ancient town sacred to Krishna, and enter her ashram. She’d be surrounded by an impenetrable wall of “lions at the gate”—the women who guarded her fiercely. You couldn’t approach her except by standing on the darshan line and waiting your turn, which meant turning off any judgment about how different it was with Maharajji, who allowed us such easy access.

Of course, it was well worth it. The rush of Mother love in her presence, the sweetness of hearing her pure open-hearted singing to Krishna. The only real lions at the gate were the ones in our own minds and hearts—the thoughts and emotions that could keep us in a state of separation when all we craved was an uninterrupted flow of love.

The external guardians of sacred space are so much easier to deal with than the savage inner ones that seem to bar our entry into love, into freedom, into peace. The lions that roar about making money, finding/saving a relationship, taking care of the kids and grandkids and aging parents. The ferocious “I’m not good enough,” “I’m impure,” “I’m too fat,” “I’m too old.” And the sneaky ones, like “I’m doing such good service.” I. I. I. Ay yi yi.

The battle with the lions at the gate. (Where’s Russell Crowe when you really need him?) Long ago Ram Dass gave us a metaphor for dealing with the inner lions that still works for me: Sitting by the banks of a river and watching your thoughts/emotions go by. The river isn’t going to stop flowing. The ego’s stream of desires and distractions is endless. But if I can remember to witness the flow instead of getting stuck in it, instead of drowning in hopes and fears, past and future, if I remember to watch the river while staying on the banks, resting in my faith in Maharajji, then it’s all okay.

Like loneliness. There are times we feel alone in the universe, whether or not we’re living with someone else. If we get trapped in the feeling, life sucks. If we can remember it’s only a wave that will wash over us and then leave, we can get through it. I asked Siddhi Ma about loneliness. She said, “Loneliness happens.” So does everything else—birth, death, love, hatred, peace, sorrow.

Siddhi Ma

Sit on the banks and watch the lions as they gracefully lope past.