Ram Dass Now

There is a perfection to the web of life that we can’t always see. The forest for the trees? Yes, I think it’s something like that.

Last spring I was asking for a natural way to share my column. My boyfriend was here on his first visit from New Zealand and I had been away from email for a while. One day I sat down to go through some of them and I saw a message from my sweet sister-friend Deneise Newman, a forwarded call for writers from Stephanie Reiter at Love Serve Remember Foundation.

Stephanie’s invitation to talk further came just as Andrew was getting ready to leave, and I told Stephanie so when I replied. The warmth in her response back to me made me realize, “I have a shot at this.” Connection.

I loved answering the questions she asked, name dropping Vrindaban, acknowledging the Dead shows as being as influential as any blue, oddly square-shaped book.

This blog brought me back home again in an unexpected way. That is, I wasn’t focused on Ram Dass or even NKB satsang. Ah, see, there are not limitations to the guru, to the love RD is writing about in Be Love Now. Now I’m smiling as Durga Das comes on my Pandora. I had recently been at a kirtan with him and Mira recently. Yes, we are everywhere.

Nevertheless, finding myself expanded as a writer — and nothing could have been a more perfect launching pad — simply by doing nothing: by staying home and getting to know my beau after 18 years beyond those beaches in sunny Greece . . . it’s quite amazing how we grew into each other over these years and seas, but that’s another story.

See? We don’t see the whole web. It seems as if there are other stories. But it’s all one.

I got my natural way to share my column. That’s one major boon.

I got to read every page of Be Here Now, those mysterious pages, looking through the images to see Sita moving aside. Surfing with Shiva while I read Jed McKenna’s books and my whole world fell apart. Writing with these pages gave me a generous place to sink into, process and create about the changes: Hail the vampire!

Hail the Now.

Hare Hare Mahadeva Shambo chants through my Pandora soundtrack. Kashi Vishwanata Gange.

See, I sat on the banks of the Ganges and Continue reading

I also love the final image of the sacred 108 pages. The bridge serves us when we need to cross what seems to be a flowing obstacle; it helps us remember when we pause on it to look at our reflection; it helps us to love when we use it to cross over to the people who wait for us on the other side. It’s the perfect image for the final page of BHN’s From Bindu to Ojas~Ram Dass saw the bridge, paused on the bridge, and crossed over it. He does it again from Be Here Now to Be Love Now.

And with a reflection, you’re looking down at the illusion of yourself, and identify with it; but it’s not you, it’s just a reflection. Right? Depends on how you look at it: what you see IS you (the reflections, the water itself, etc)  vs it’s your brain separating you from the water that has your reflection in it. The simpler way is usually pretty good. So, both. I go with both.

I’ve had only one picture in mind during these 108 days, and I knew I was going to show it on the final blogging day because it’s my version of the bridge on 108. I took this picture in the Fall of 2008 in Austin, Tx.  This old fisherman sat patiently floating in the middle of the reflection simply waiting for fish. Then he came to rest in the eye of what the reflection completed as a fish that reminded me of the Christian Ichthys. I was stunned. He WAS both the reflection, and himself at the same time; reflected and reflection.  I was immediately taken back to this final page of BHN when I saw the image.

Ram Dass has given us a bridge; just as Maharajji gave to him; Just as Hanuman bridged the ocean with a great leap to serve God and the beloved. I am grateful to have participated in this blogging experience, and am more assured that while I am still on my bridge, that I can enjoy my reflections as I move to the other side in each moment as it presents itself.

Namaste’
Jon

Icthys Eye - Fisherman rests in the eye of the Icthys

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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

I don’t know how long these changes will last. If they are something you come back from. It doesn’t feel like it now. Can’t go back to human once vampire. No more caterpillar, eh moth? Further. That’s the course of this transformation.

Who can say when it started? If you want to bake a yogini from scratch, first you have to create the Universe.

Parts are dying away. Some parts are not going quietly. Others are already gone, gently dispersed. The peace that buzzes within keeps me from going completely crazy. From being admitted to the mental hospital with the rest of the boys who’ve seen the light. I’m more likely to freak out and melt-down at life circumstances, not the fact that I’m shifting into unfamiliar territory. It is, in fact, the life circumstances that provide the grist for this proverbial mill of awakening.

MAGIC THEATRE

FOR MADMEN ONLY

PRICE OF ADMISSION

YOUR

MIND

(see p. 102)

Take it. I know I have no choice. It’s a sweet way to live, not having to make choices. I mean, instead the information is obvious to me when it needs to be. The only choice I have to make is to wake up, moment to moment. But am I even choosing that?

All grace. All grace.

It’s a trippy life. But this is how it is for me. I wouldn’t change it, even though people are dropping away because I really only want that satsang, and even then, only on the fringe. And really only those who are going where I’m going, and no one really can go where another must go (“That path is for your steps alone.” Right Blake? Right Zach? Right Jerry?)

I’m in an interesting position where I’ve just had a massive love-infusion ~ that continues in my heart and via Skype ~ all occurring during this massive tuck-in I’ve been doing over the last several months. I feel loved and supported greatly from the Universe and feel very little need or desire for human interaction. Well, maybe little desire is the best way to explain that. I do feel craving for it at times, but I just can’t bear the small talk. And I’m not speaking the same language as most people I know right now. As most people, across the board, I’d say.

It’s one of the things I love about my mate. He doesn’t stir my mind up with head-spinny chatter, dramatic or otherwise. We just get to be. I can carry on with my shape-shifting, he can carry on with his zombies, and we’ll meet on the couch at ten for the next disc of The Wire. He gives me love and support all the while contributing to a grounded stillness in my being. And I don’t really have to talk to anyone else.

I’m grateful for the cocoon.

Remember the days of travel before cell phones, internet, email, Facebook? One could head out on a journey, a pilgrimage, and not be in touch all that much. Liberation! I realize even as I type this that the sense of not being liberated to go out-of-touch is as much a false construct as anything else.

Does it require a gentle apology? Friends? Family? I don’t know what to say because I feel that I don’t know how to put it in language — verbal or otherwise.  I’m just doing something different right now. The hero’s journey is always a solo one. I don’t use that language to dramatize, only to draw the metaphor. We all have our version of it. And once the seed has been planted . . . you don’t have any choice! (p. 101)

You gotta die to be born. (p. 98)

Parts fall away. Into the nothingness out of which they arise. The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

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A great yogi once was asked what’s the secret to enlightenment, he replied “when I’m happy I laugh, when I’m sad I cry, when I’m hungry I eat and when I’m tired I sleep.”

Simplify everything. Our egos and emotions want to complicate it to no end making us think that our issues are somehow the defining factor in our experience. That may be true as it relates to our perception but the trick at getting through our issues and being here and happy right now is to simplify everything. This is not an original thought I know, I’m just saying it because it rings true to my heart at this moment and I need to feel that.

I’ve always found that my tendency is to want to go “through the doorway too fast.” My intellectual mind wants there to be some trick to being on the path like I have to learn all of these complicated mantras, I have to be a level 3 yogi, I have to be a scholar of the vedas, etc. All of these things are great I guess but most of the time I think it’s ego that’s driving my motivation to do all of these things faster and better. My favorite beautiful yogi teacher Saul David Raye always reminds his students that the ancient yogi mystics never heard of Level 3 yogis, that we made that up. And I’m learning that all of the conflicting motivation makes it hard to deal with my issues (or with others) a problem. Matters of the heart when infused with ego sure does make for some confusing realities.

I feel that there’s a little misunderstanding with how eastern spirituality is being practiced in the west. Because of the explosion of yoga and bhakti there is a whole new world that is being exposed to us in the west. So many new ideas, texts, asanas, chants, teachers and traditions. We get so hungry to learn them all but as we all know the far out thing is that they are all telling us to Be Here Now. That it’s all ready within. Just don’t go “through the doorway with your ego” (pg 98). That’s it. Again, simplify everything.

It’s so frustratingly perfect that Maharaj-ji would constantly reply to queries with “love people. feed people. remember God.” I can see it now – all of these smart westerners coming to him with all of these complicated problems and questions and then he would just look at you and say that. Over and over again. Ram ram ram ram ram. Over and over again. Ram ram ram ram.

It all sort of lies in the “funny about that” place. Whenever I find myself in conflict I just want to reply “love serve remember” or repeat the maha mantra. I want to go there so badly but I have to learn that even though I want things to be that simple I must understand that everybody else’s experiences are different. We are all unique and are in different spots on the path. Furthermore I’ve also learned that if you try to force your trip on somebody who doesn’t want to hear it then you just make matters worse. When in suffering or conflict finding that delicate place where there is beautiful common ground is the sacred dance. That’s the place where you realize that most of the conflict you may be in is actually quite small and insignificant. You go through so much struggle to realize that love really is such a sweet solution.

We are nearing the end of our blogging journey. Only one more post left. I feel that this week is inspiring me to report back on how this book can be applied to my daily life. What it did for our culture is immense, what Maharaj-ji was like is very interesting but how we can apply this to our lives and be better people needs to be said. It’s my hope that I can contribute in a small way.

Being in love, sharing sacred song

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 just Googled “multiples of 7″ to figure out what pages we’re on. In case you’re wondering, it’s 91 – 97. But who’s counting? It seems like we’re so deeply into this project that everything is relevant. But let me read a little bit here, and I’ll get back to you.

Again,

p. 91 going back, back, back . . . until you are the idea that lies behind the universe you are literally it you’re not making believe you’re it YOU ARE IT.

But yet the mind, the tool we’ve been/I’ve been most trained with in this life so far, can’t push beyond the skull, is trapped inside the limits of the ego.

It’s okay.

See, that’s the thing. The slice of me that’s turning these brown pages, looking loosely at words: duality . . . realized . . . ocean . . .

the part that tries to understand and tries to knock out through some barrier or another . . .

it’s all one and infinite and

the knowing is way beyond anything thoughts or the mind can understand or words can understand or really even point to. See, and that’s okay. I am/you are/we are it already and infinite and unknowable. It’s relieving.

Like Zach, in this moment I don’t feel like putting words to it.

Let me read some more.

p. 93 you go from form into formless

see,

I don’t even have to understand. In fact, I can’t understand.

Hilarious, the knocking from the inside.

p. 94 what has submitted to fate becomes part of the always so

Stop fighting. Just stop fighting. Just drop it and be here on the couch, back softly sunk into the hand-me-down leather, tongue in my mouth, poking between my teeth, chill fan breeze on the backs of my hands. No thoughts.

No thoughts.

The always so is completely silent and infinite – beyond thought. Submitting is ultimate liberation. These things are paradoxical. And we’re trained to fight and complain and push push push. Somewhere in A Course in Miracles it says that something in us thinks that by pitching a fit (pouring out heavy emotions) we can change the always so

the already so.

And I have seen a Bodhisattva Continue reading

I’m so happy to be back here with you, my brothers and sisters. Last week, I was contemplating the silent freeways while my head was in the clouds in Maui. Tough life I know. For whatever reason getting to a computer to write just didn’t seem to work out. Funny how that is – I was near the source with Mr. Be Love Now himself yet I felt like I had very little to say. Somehow just being with Ram Dass in the gorgeous manifestation of mother earth left me with few words, I was just floating from one moment to the next.

I always experience this very powerful visual metaphor when I’m Hawaii. I’m on the beach in Maui and I can see, very clearly, a birds eye view of my body sitting on that beach. I can see from deep outer space my little body on the edge of a tiny island that is the most remote land mass on planet Earth. There I am, just sitting on a spec of rock in the middle of the ocean. Because of the physical circumstance that this vision puts me in I can go deeper and really understand my connection to the rest of the universe. I am no different than the sand, the ocean, the fish in the ocean or than the earth itself.

The trip about being human is that we’re aware that we’re aware. We may be the only species that is aware that we’re aware. So I see that I’m just this sentient life form in the middle of nowhere – I can vibrate into oneness with the one, the formlessness. Touching the sand and feeling the warm water I can blend into matter. Slowly though, balance kicks in. I become aware of sight, sound, touch, ego, responsibility, perceptions. The role that I am a man with relationships, jobs, money and speech weighs on me and suddenly I’m back to participating in this incarnation. Oh no. Is there illusion here?

Page 93 cracks it open “A fully realized being – you must delight in the exquisiteness at every single level. you must take joy in your maleness or femaleness.”

It’s that expression of love found within my role that I don’t subscribe to the notion that it’s all just a meaningless illusion. Sure, we made up the idea of working 9 to 5. But the energy that I put forth in all my actions contributes to the energy that I find when I’m just being in oneness at the beach. It all has to work together.

In fact, if I had to summarize one lesson from “Be Here Now” it would be that this path encourages me to be present in every moment – mundane or not. You still have to “chop wood and carry water” (pg 96). The dance here is really finding the balance that makes it all work together. If I go too far one way I bliss out and don’t do much of anything. If I go too far the other way I perform meaningless actions that are unconscious and robotic.

It’s fun to live on the edge. I have a friend who once said that he lives on the edge because “that’s where all the action is.” Damn straight. When I sit on the beach in Maui I seriously contemplate selling everything I own just so I can continue sitting on that beach. But then I fall in love with my role and some of my desires. I learn to embrace them as sometimes flawed but always perfect. I relish in the deliciousness of kissing my mate, or eating ice cream, or the miracle of sound that comes through my iPod. Ram Dass has told me over and over again that I must “love the chair because it’s a perfect manifestation of the one.” If “flow in harmony with the universe. i can still do my thing” (pg 96).

That edge where consciousness, love, God and being human all play together is what’s really giving me a lot to think about these days. It’s so far out to think that I’m eternal and “can be anything this time around.”

Om Maui Om

The ‘Hail the Goer’ mantra has particular significance for me. Right beside it is all of pg 88. The comfort of this almost chaotic looking page is that it’s presentation may make you look particularly carefully to make sure that you’re reading the words that are actually written. . . if you’re like me, you have to ‘work at it’ to see it, literally. But the message is so comforting that the work leading up to it is completely worth it.

That the water just goes on down stream, just like your senses just do what they do (and on this page, you get great exercise in the visual ‘doing’ something) . . . that you can overcome attachment through a simple exercise (karma yoga, candle focus) truly practiced, is relieving; this makes a lot of sense to me.  And what’s in sharp focus? Waiting for you to be drawn towards it (maybe as soon as you look at the page)? The clear Om Mani Padme Hum mantra. I mean, it’s literally the clearest thing on the page, visually. Where his heart rests, watching the unfolding happen. That’s just a warm sounding place, no matter what’s going on– it’s comforting to know that somebody’s there, in that warm place, and knowing it, and giving you a mantra to focus yourself so that you can find it too.

And not just that . . . also that there’s no claim to need to attain a permenant state of non-thinking just yet; and that the thoughts that you DO have can be appreciated for what they are (” . . . few people who know me don’t appreciate the fact that I think and have keen discrimination and have not lost my mind and I am a sophisticated aware being”).

So you work pretty hard to actually read the page, and to get the tone and rhythm of it (though I guess many may not work at it at all and read it easily, but I think y’all will know what I’m referring to), only to find that, like water,  you do what you do, but you neither have to be attached to it, nor absent from living life. Take heart that there’s somebody guiding you home either way. Om Mani Padme Hum.

When I got Be Love Now, I opened to a random page to see what was revealed to me. Page 116 talks of what the guru does. I think he’s the one that’s sitting in that warm heart place calling you home, waiting for your awareness to merge into one with with the mantra. Far out as that sounds to me, the idea resonates with something in me; I’m not entirely clear on what yet, but it’s comforting in the same way as pg. 88 of BHN.

I haven’t finished Be Love Now yet, but I can say that it is truly as beautiful in it’s essence and presentation as Be Here Now–and it goes beyond that too. When you read it, notice the voice that it sounds like it’s in–I like to imagine Ram Dass speaking the words out loud, in conversational style with me. For me, it’s a laid back, deeply heart-felt tone speaking to comfort, not just inform. I could go on . . . but suffice it to say that I’d suggest getting a copy. Please stop by www.BeLoveNowBook.com and take a look around, watch the video, and get a copy of the book. Really. Watch the video. “. . . You. . .Love everybody.”

Namaste’
Jon
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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