Ram Dass Now

I am about to set out toward the Cambridge, MA area today to see my daughter at college and spend an evening of chant with David Newman, Girish and Donna Delory. Blissy day. I love Cambridge with all of the intellectual vibe and international influence. It is such a mix of  out–of-the-box and status quo. I have spent hours in The Harvard Coop absorbing the constant flow of languages and cultures and mindsets evidenced by the variety of books that make their way to the check-out.
I lurk behind stacks of books eavesdropping on conversations hoping to overhear something from the mouths of one of those brilliant minds that will open me up to a new perspective.

“BECAUSE WHEN YOU KNOW HOW TO LISTEN EVERYBODY IS THE GURU”. page 78

The Coop is near the top of my long list of favorite people-watching venues. I can sip my latte while indulging my voyeuristic tendencies and let my mind wander uninterrupted for hours.
During that meandering mind travel I often find my way to thoughts of Ram Dass and his days at Harvard. I try sometimes open my mind’s eye to see him all of those years ago strolling the streets of Cambridge or through Harvard Yard. With his quick mind, eloquence and radiant smile beaming …impressive and engaging. If I had met him there all of those years ago I wonder,would his words then have resonated in my heart as they do now? I know I would have loved him immediately. I just know. But I wonder if my pure seeking soul would have recognized that this man would come to be one of my closest companions on the journey of my life.

He has led me through words and example from Be Here Now to Be Love Now.

A long time ago Ram Dass gave me a mala with a single thread from Maharaj-ji’s blanket just as he had given to Parvati. He must have passed along thousands of those threads over decades with each one connecting perhaps to that thin thread of ego that was Maharaj-ji and creating thread by thread a blanket of love. A simple gesture with profound results. Another example of the gentle wisdom that is Ram Dass.

I love the imagery of the words, “ a subtle thread to keep in contact”. I so often refer to the thread of connection that runs through my life. It is a steady connection to the deep, abiding love of the divine that is always there.
The weaving of that thread through my busy minutes,days and years  is creating the unique pattern of my life with all of its imperfections and beauty. The thread is subtle and pure and although I am very much involved in my human life and all of the duality,ups and downs, joys and sorrows, successes and mistakes, etc. I am  never disconnected from that thread.
It is my lifeline and I am grateful. Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram

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.

- He’s sitting up there (in here) all the time.

What is this eye? Is it the chicken/the guru that watches all the time, sees, knows everything, just checks it out? Smiles gently like the Buddha? Cracks up wildly like we used to way back when we first smoked pot?

Is it my eye?

Singing these words:

I know that I’m not driving this train. I am consciousness being played through a character.

At the moment it sounds like “Bernie’s Chalisa” off of Flow of Grace. Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram

Sita Ram Sita Ram Sita Ram Sita Ram

And the words don’t mean anything,

and it doesn’t matter! Isn’t that good news?

It just happens that I dig this kind of music, but it is not access to the guru. How can I have access to that which I am?

So.

of late I don’t talk with as many of my friends as -

- as when? as what?

this personality appears to be changing and I don’t feel like explaining it. It almost has me put on a veneer of indifference, nay, almost defense. Football pads? When you’re pulling the clothes out of the drawer of who you think you are, the wardrobe inevitably changes. I’m not driving this train.

This blog gives me a nice place to spill it.

I’d rather write than talk with most people these days. I’d rather create than talk about the weather.

The trips that we’re into are the trips that we’re into. Always a writer. Always a traveler. There are things about us that we can’t help.

Including the seething resentment, brother Zach. Including the puking, sister Melissa. Including absolutely everything about this moment you’re I am experiencing right now. Eyes closed, can I still type? And feel the fan blowing in a low swirl above my head? Smiling as I realize I’ve made an error and backspace to correct, eyes still closed.

What is that eye?

- I just have what I have going with my own karma.

- You hang out with yourself because there’s nobody home there at all.

- He is a perfect mirror since there’s nobody here.

- Not: “I really love Ram Dass.”

- “Well, everywhere I go, the chicken sees.”

To continue the conversation, please also visit

www.nowstayopen.com

and

www.facebook.com/StayOpen.

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

I really enjoy reading page 52. The visual images are really simple and capture so much. If I imagine Ram Dass telling me what he means for me with this page, I picture either him looking at me with a grin waiting for me to finish my verbal thought train, and/or him saying:

Relax man. You may feel important, and like the rest of us, you are, but just not in the way you thoughts have you thinking that you are. Remember that being attached to anything, including the role of helper or lover, etc., creates suffering, which means more time here to work through it. But you do that because you love the Divine Mother; that total embodiment of all experiences —your greedy pursuit (attachment) of that perfect affection/resonance that totally reflects you, paradoxically keeps you all locked up, away from your transformative fire; you stay stuck in the role of ‘experiencer’. . . all so that you can sit with that amazing lover a little longer.  Whenever you’re ready . . . to re-union with her very essence, instead of being distracted by her trinkets . . . then things will happen in a really cool way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“As long as we’re greedy for experience we’re going to be around for quite a while . . . “

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You’re here to go on whatever trip you need in order to find your courage to face your fire (the crisp trip, Tapasia), then get what you need from the greed trip, then move on. But no rush.

And all of these ‘fires/lessons’ are but specks on the beauty of the Divine Mother, who is waiting for you right here  . . . Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhisvaha om

I realized as I was writing this that it’s completely Ok for me to ‘want’ to hang around here and bask in her light. It’s Ok to have that greedy longing to love the essence that reflects me (and all else) so well. James Taylor sings:

Whenever you’re ready
You could see a dream come true
Whenever you’re ready
I’m just saying it’s up to you
Whenever you’re ready
Things could start looking up
Whenever you’re ready
Take a big sip from the loving cup

So, whenever you’re ready to release attachment to the Divine Mother, you’ll finally be at one with her, drinking tea from the loving cup.

Namaste’

Jon

__________________

www.gathealing.com
www.gatehealing.com/blog
www.twitter.com/gatehealing
www.facebook.com/gatehealing

“When you meet a being who is centered you always know it. You always feel a kind of calm emanation. It always touches you in that place.”( pg.47)

I have no idea who the guy in the drawing on page 47 is, but I met him this week or at least it looked very much like him. The really interesting thing about it is that I hadn’t looked at page 47 yet when he showed up in my day.

The man was entirely present in a remarkable and memorable way.

It was the tenth day of the ten days allowed post-registration to get my car inspected and I was feeling a bit frantic in a too-much-to-do-too-little-time sort of way. I took a corner fast and swung the car up to the bay door of a quick-change oil place with a sign that said “We do State Inspections”. I was leaned over digging through my glove compartment looking for  my registration papers while at the same time trying to call my son on my cell phone when he walked to the side of my car. After trying twice to open the window to speak with him (I had managed to open both back windows) I finally flung open the door in frustration and leaned out to talk. He was entirely present. He patiently listened to my  crazy rambles.  He then  slowly and with intention compassionately explained that the shop was closing for the day and they wouldn’t be able to inspect my car.

It didn’t matter because that wasn’t really why I was there.

The contrast between his calm demeanor and my frenetic random expending of energy was so dramatic that I wanted to forget about the car inspection and ask him to go for a walk. He touched me in that place where I feel calm…that place that was waiting for me to return to after I was done doing my mad dash to nowhere. He helped me remember.
It seems this gentle man showed up in my life on just the right page…both literally and figuratively. He was a real-life example of how being that “calm center” can help others find it in themselves.

I kept seeing him in my mind’s eye and feeling that calm emanation and its effects on me. I also thought it ironic that he worked at quick change oil place. I love that the universe has a sense of humor!

Later that evening I had a small existential crisis while brushing my teeth. I had a moment where I felt like I moved completely into now and it startled me. For a split second I felt everything around me in me and vice-versa. Everything just was. Time didn’t stop. Time just was. I didn’t disappear and things around me didn’t melt away but there was a different quality to my perception.

Clearer and freer.

Maybe it happened because I started my tooth brushing that night by paying close attention to the process. I slowed down enough to notice how cool the tube felt in my hand and how the little ridges on the top gripped the fleshy part of my thumb and index finger as I applied pressure and twisted. I breathed in deeply the smell of peppermint as the white paste settled into the bristles of the wet brush the way wet sand held in a hand oozes through fingers.
I slowly looked up from the toothbrush and my eyes met my eyes in the mirror. Wow! I looked deeply into those eyes that looked into me. I wasn’t looking at me in the mirror and I wasn’t me looking in the mirror. It all just was.

“Is-ness” (pg 46). A fleeting glimpse of deep calm.

The pages of Be Here Now provide a framework for working with my everyday experiences with the intention of waking up and infuses it all with wonder and meaning.It all becomes sacred.

Thank you Ram Dass.

I have to share that as I was working on this page Todd Rundgren’s song “I Saw the Light” just happened to play on the radio. Seems appropriate.

Todd Rundgren-I Saw the Light

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.

A video message…

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.

Desire. I remember the moment Maharajji asked me if I had any questions. Before coming to India, I had read The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna so I knew the “right” answer to such an important question. After all, this was my chance to get all my loftiest desires fulfilled. I asked for a pure heart. He said, “Love all as Christ did.” Oh, is that all? That might be a little difficult, so I also asked for a pure mind. “Love all men as brothers.” Uh oh, I had some other desires in that direction.

I asked Maharajji to bless my parents. He said that when a daughter is born who is a devotee, the family becomes believers. He again said they would believe in God (still waiting on that one, which is the trouble with promises made by timeless beings), and that I hadn’t believed in God until I met Ram Dass (very true). And that sometimes I strayed from the path and sometimes I didn’t believe in Maharajji. Oh dear! So I asked him for faith. Acha.

Desire. What a tricky concept. No wonder it was #1 on Ram Dass’s slate board.

There are the desires that are the “golden chains”—the desire to be at One with it all, the desire to love all as Christ did—the “up-level” desires. And then there are the other desires—someone to love, a place to live with a washer and dryer, chocolate (the opposing desire to losing 20 pounds). The tricky part is not berating yourself for the “lower” desires. Desire is the creator. After all, if we didn’t have desires, we wouldn’t be here, on Earth, now. We wouldn’t have created the world, our world, the one each one of us lives in. Desire is the universe.

Desire is a trap. Of course it is. Someone once taught me to wend my way through my personal chaos by asking myself what did I really want versus what did I really need. It’s those wants that keep pulling us away from center, from the now (as Blake so wonderfully illustrated in his post “Enough!”). And forget giving up the desire to experience the bliss. I will gladly come back into duality, lifetime after lifetime, to be with Maharajji again.

What I want, and need, is to live in Spirit, in the ebb and flow of the yin and the yang. Slowly, slowly, I move along the path laid out in the great Gayatri Mantra: From the unreal, lead us to the Real; from darkness, lead us unto Light; from death, lead us to Immortality.

Om, shanti, shanti, shanti.