From Victimhood to Creation-Ship

Be here now. It's interesting to reflect on who's gathered here. See, as I sit here looking at you, what I see depends on what I'm busy being. If I'm Richard Alpert, you're an audience that has come to listen to me speak. If I am Ram Dass, you and I are seekers here to share the journey. If I am a soul in an incarnation, You are fellow souls in incarnations and this is a soul fest which we are hanging out to take stock of what's happening in our incarnations. It's pretty interesting. The Chinese proverb It is a curse to be born in an interesting time. And here we are. Unless you don't find it interesting, your work is always very clear. Since in Ming, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences, I should for one. Some of you that I don't give linear presentations any more at this moment. I also don't have any rules, and if I acknowledge my own role as creator, then when I look out I see that you are equally the Creator and there is only one of us here in drag, so to speak. We are making believe we're separate. Scary, isn't it? It's like you play hide and seek with yourself. And if I see even that is just another thought that arises exists and passes away. And just keep seeing the thoughts arise, exist and pass away. Each a total universe. Each of birth. A life and a death. I start to tune. At what level? I don't know. To the space that exists between the thoughts. It's like the sky that exists behind the stars or within the stars. And then all forms are like waves on the ocean, and everything becomes its natural, primordial, and manifest self. From that level, there is nobody looking. There is nobody to look at. There is nothing to say. That level is as true as any of the other levels. Some of you think we have serious business here tonight. That's the level. Some things. Some are just have a cosmic giggle in their hearts. That's a level. Some are busy with the judging mind. Well, he's getting old. He's just like he used to be. Nothing's happened. It's all bullshit. I was 52 weeks ago. That far up. It was actually four weeks ago. I just lose it. I keep losing time. That's why being 50 is kind of far out. It's like my mug is a 74. It's the same level. Congratulations. You're 50. Well, I'll certainly try. I will try to be 50 all year long. I've just got to figure out what 50 year olds do. Right. He should look wise, but not arrogant. You should slow down a bit and get more introspective. It's great. It's fun When you stop identifying with your melodrama. It gets so light when you stop being the victim and start being the creator. I mean, in you are all of these things just like in me. You can pick which you you want to juice up. We have to have the mic down just a bit because I'm getting feedback. Well, you may have to listen more carefully or you may have to recognize that that may be a blessing that may save you from getting lost in our intellect. So victims are a karma. They are karma made manifest The author. The creative impulse, the creative spark that is consciousness is always free. You are both free and trapped in your freedom. You created your entrapment, and often you identify with that which is entrapped and feel entrapped. And yet in you is the Buddha nature. In you is Christ consciousness. The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. You and God are one because there is only one. I don't know. I had a lot of people of feeling afraid these days. That's interesting. The other day I was up in Eugene, Oregon, speaking to a group of Eugene people, Eugene Ians. We were a panel that was Joan Halifax and Alina Cho, Gil Greenwood she child from children. And we were talking about death. And when it came my turn to speak, I. I thought, how do you talk about death? Because it's such a hype. I mean, it's obviously the conversation about life and it's the conversation about change. And if you are in your lifetime, recognize any fear concerning change. That's your fear of death. In the eighties, have all of the forces in play of a speeding up towards what seems like imminent change? You can write a number of scenarios as to how dramatic that change will be. It may be the end of the species, it may be a realignment of power, it may be economic breakdown, it may be an increase in anarchy, it may be more repression and loss of freedoms. It may be war limited nuclear holocaust. It may be an awakening of consciousness that transforms the whole thing into a flower. Are you ready? The great way is not difficult for one who has no preferences. Can you not care whether it is heaven or hell? And at the same time, Well, let me not get us off the hook so fast. Can you not care whether it's heaven or hell or heaven? Oh hell. It's a great story about the the samurai Samurai who comes to the monk and he says, Monk, teach me about heaven and hell. The monk looks up at this huge samurai and he says, Teach you about heaven and hell. You call yourself a samurai. You dirty, you smell your sword. Looks rusty. Who would hire you as a samurai? You're a fool. You look stupid. I couldn't teach you about heaven and hell. The veins on the neck of the samurai stand out. His face gets all red. Finally, he just loses it completely. And he whips out his sword to kill this insulin monk. And the monk says, That's hell. And the samurai sheaths his sword, realizing what teaching he's just been given that the monk has just offered his life really, for this teaching. And he vows in honor. And the monk says, And that is heaven. And also flick of the mind. Heaven and hell. Heaven and hell. I was just in Benaras this winter, and I was walking towards the bathing God, and there were a long line of lepers and they all had begging bowls and we had some coins between us. And so we divided up the coins and I walked forward and I ended up with about 18, 20 coins there, about 150 lepers. What to do? I found myself in this peculiar situation as I walked down the line of trying to decide who should get the coins. Was missing a nose worse than having all the fingers rotted away on one hand. How bizarre. Until finally, since there was no rational way to deal with this situation, I had to transcend that plane of consciousness and go into the intuitive mind and just do what I did. And when the coins were all gone and all the guilt was gone and all, I quieted down enough and I just looked at these beings. Here were all these fellow beings looking right back at me, and they didn't seem to be terribly busy being lepers. They were just running through leprosy. It turned out I later found out they have a union and they share all the money. Anyway. And they created a creation. And I found in their eyes that they were less lost in their creation than most of us are. And when I have seen people who have their limbs rotted, who are living in one of the poorest and harshest countries of the world, and who are not lost in their melodrama for one reason or another, how can I be afraid on the physical plane? You and I may meet next time under a bridge eating rotted food out of rusty cans after the Holocaust at you rammed us? Yes. Far out. You want some of this? Sure. We're heavy, wasn't it? Yeah. Well, here we are. Yeah. A conscious being is somebody who is listening to the harmony, to the way of things and is able to flow with change. It's interesting the discrepancy that starts to coexist inside one one part of one is just sitting with it all in it's perfection. Just grok it just. Wow. Ooh, You dig that? Oh, even be on that one. Just now. It's like looking at Michelangelo, creating, you know, David and the Captive and all the time. Everywhere you look, it's just pure creativity. And all the forms are perfect. They are all essence what they are supposed to be, and there's nothing to be done. And in that realm, suff --- if you don't know about it, Amnesty International will tell you about it. Save it will tell you about it. On and on and on will tell you about it. Oxfam will tell you about it. And to the extent that you are attuned and open to everything, meaning all the plains of your consciousness, and don't turn one off and grab at the other, remember, the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. And it also says in this little tract, if you wish to move in the one way, do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas. You see, you can't be an emptiness junkie. You that's known as an up level copout example Sunflower. It's your turn to do the dishes. Sunflower says We are all one true enough sunflower, but it is still your turn to do the dishes. That's called grounding. And for a lot of us, grounding has become kind of fascinating how to be the one and play it. The game of the two, how to know it's all all right and yet be so open and so pained and so in agony that you can only do what you can do to relieve suffering wherever you find it. Because what else is there to do? And you do it at whatever level it happens. First you try to decide, I'll do it at the highest level, but you find out that you have unique karma and you do it. And whatever part you play. Last night I was staying at a motel and around two in the morning I went in to get change for the Coke machine. It's Coca-Cola, and there was only a dollar bill. I was changing and the night attendant came out and he said, Aren't you around us? I said, Yes. And he said, Can I talk to you? Okay. And he said, You know what? You said, I've read books and I've really touched all of this, but I don't know how to manifest that. Here I am, a night clerk in the this motel. That's it. I mean, is that enough? And I blowing it. Shouldn't I be doing something more? I mean, can you hear the question? Well, the first answer is it doesn't make any difference. To which he says, Well, it makes a difference to me. To which I say, Well, that is your problem. Because until he will embrace the original sin, until he's free to see that he is the creator of the situation he finds himself in, instead of just being himself that's found himself in it as the creator. He will listen to the harmony of things and we will find out how does the Buddha manifest this time? And it might be as the night clerk in the motel. I mean, what form should the Buddha come in golden robes, aerial chariots, a scent of flowers. How spiritually materialistic of you? How about a motel owner, night manager who likes to frequent bars and meet young ladies? God couldn't come in that form. Come on now. See? And because you don't think so, you won't see it. Most people are so busy with their trips that God could be standing on the corner just looking and everybody would walk by seeing something different. Horny people would see irrelevant depending on the suit God were wearing or the dress people would notice or not notice. First, you have to allow it all to be just the way it is before a change starts to happen to your to the forms that manifest through you. As long as you don't buy your own trip, you're frozen in a certain way because you're pushing, which creates the you keep creating the reality of the thing you're trying to get rid of. It's like people who spend 30 years in psychotherapy just investing in the reality of their personalities. That's a big investment. I teach because I teach. Because I teach. Because I teach. It's no big deal. I am just a part of a process. If, as I listen more and more quietly, non teaching is, then there will be non teaching of this form. You see, I realize that all you and I have to offer one another is what we are, not what we think we are. And when I come out here I can say all kinds of things. You're not really picking up on that. You are picking up on what I am, and it's either feeding a place in you that also is or it isn't. And maybe tonight you are a motel night clerk, and tomorrow you're not. Maybe ten years from now, you're still a night clerk in the motel. He already can. You allow for all possibilities? Can you allow for the fact that just as you are manifesting is exactly the way you are supposed to be manifesting, and that the whole scene is going fine? Can you just get out of the drama just long enough? Just take one breath thinking I was with this woman who was dying and she said to me it was the night she died, actually. And she said to me, Ram Dass, she said, Please help me. I am so bored. And I said, Well, Gene, that's because you're busy dying all the time. I mean, it's just one scenario. You don't have to do it full time, you know? Couldn't you die like 5 minutes an hour? And the rest of the time, what's your body die? You just hang out, you know, listen to the birds and stuff, you know, to be busy dying all the time. It's a very draggy role to play all the time. You know, any role is I mean, you know, it's like driving a bus. What do you do? I drive a bus. You're home in bed. I drive a bus. You know, like I say, it's like I mean, you have thousands of rolls, thousands of them. So I that's why relationships are so far out, because it's like crowds of thousands just between two people. Boy. And if you've got any hang ups about change, you better watch it because nothing changes. Like another being's personality is busy. The minute you think you know, somebody watch it, sleep sleepy time. Relationships are the most exciting, volatile, tantric technique going, but they are just breathtaking and almost everybody's drowning because everybody takes the role, only goes up to the level that relationship is real. Last Friday, I was part of a marriage ceremony. I was the third part of it. It was Malcolm and Shelley were getting married and I was playing the other part, the Fear witness. And as I was reflecting each time when I do that, which isn't very often, I just see in my mind the pyramid with the two people opening themselves to the place where they are. One awareness and then coming back in to being the two separate entities male female yob You inyang and dancing the dance of the two rooted in the one and that the marriage is the vehicle of the two coming into the one not to deny the tuneless, but then to dance as to the difference of being caught into and dancing into is before solitary there is chopping wood and carrying water, and after that tree there is chopping wood and carrying water. Nothing special. And yet. But as long as you want something, you keep freezing in the process. You keep demanding that your partner or your other people or the world stop for you so you can get hold of a place to stand. You said you'd be here at six. Okay, hold on tightly. Let go lightly. It's 630 and you are not here. But here we are. But the dinner tonight we are having spoiled dinner. So I talked about it last. Who knows? I don't remember. My father is a public speaker or he was in years gone by and after every lecture he'd lecture in Cleveland. Then you go back to his hotel room and write down all the things he said in Cleveland, and he'd have them in the files. The next time he came to Cleveland, he'd run through the file and he wouldn't repeat himself. This couple came to see me and they said that they wished me to marry them. And I said, Well, I only marry people that want God and they, Oh, we want God. I only marry people that understand that to get God, you've got to be truthful. Oh, we understand that you're really ready to live. In truth, yes. She was particularly vociferous. So I turned to him and I said, If there's anything at all that you can tell her, would you now tell her? And there was a silence. And then he said, Well, after you and I decided we would stay together and just be with each other a --- because she really felt her part. I mean, it was real method acting. And I lay down on the ground and after about 10 minutes I said, Well, look, you came here to get me to marry you. And it seems that we've run into a slight snag here. So you have three choices, it seems to me. One is that you can get rid of this rat. I mean, he is completely a snake. He told you he wouldn't, and he did. And how could you ever trust him again? I get right back. You. If you want to get rid of him. He's absolutely a rat. And you're right. Okay. The second alternative is you could say, Well, I'll try to forgive you. That one you got to watch. That's it's. You would put out the garbage after all. I'm trying to forget about Sue. This is 20 years later. We can all laugh because none of us do that. That's what Don Juan calls holding on to personal history keeping score. It's called. And the third alternative is you can say ISO. So you're a rat and the snake in the grass and you're everything else. And here we are. And I still want to be with you. So let's go. I mean, that's who he is. He's just showing you who he is. If it's too heavy for you, find somebody who's something else. They now have a baby and it's all hell. Who knows how it is? I actually have no idea how it is. I really certainly hope I didn't lay a curse. I hope it's heavenly for all of them. But we have such a hard time letting go of our guile and regaining our innocence because our minds are so clever. We can imitate spiritual things so well. That's. That's. I sat with Werner Earhart once for 3 hours looking into his eyes, and he could do it so well, and yet he wasn't. What could I do about that? At least I couldn't because my heart didn't experience. I kept saying word of my heart doesn't experience it. You say it, you very confusing. You must be a form of God. I am not ready to hear yet. Maybe I'm power tripping with you. I mean, you are making 7 million a year and I'm not, so it must be upsetting to me at some level. I'm a Jewish boy too, you know, I was in Hawaii recently and Bhagwan does something you may remember by one does from somewhere. Yeah, Bhagwan does had just finished taking acid and and Bhagwan Das and I took some acid together on the north side of Oahu and these helicopters kept flying over carrying artillery on chains in front of our eyes every 15 or 20 seconds. Bhagwan does picked the wrong spot, apparently that's who Bhagwan does, is if some of you don't know he is. He's got a lot of Shiva energy. We had a very extraordinarily beautiful visit together. This time he and his wife and his kids. It's an incredibly loving scene. And I realized that for Bhagwan, just as it was absolutely perfect, he hasn't had any ground for years. He can hardly get to the toilet. You know, And suddenly he's got this language and this whole thing and he's going to conquer the world. He's now a computer real estate salesman or something like that. And so, I mean, I that's great. You know, I mean, there's no chance he's going to become like a humanoid, you know, like a little. Werner. Hello? Hi. It's all shit. You know, it's hard to know who the straight players are in the game. Really? I have a terrible time. Yeah, I keep. I keep picking the wrong horses all the time, it seems. Which is. Okay, from my point of view, I mean, anybody that's looking to me to decide what they should do, that's their problem. You know, I pick all these people because I need some teaching that makes me attracted to them. And then later maybe I've had enough of that teaching and I walk away and there's all kinds of stuff. I think all you owe teacher is to get liberated. You don't have to liberate your teacher. You don't have to become a connoisseur of clay feet. You know, a lot of people sit around. Well, I don't know about him because he was seen at a bar with a eating a dead. You know, I don't really mean to knock Werner because I don't really understand. I can say this, but as far as I can see, it'd be great to take a course of EST, which I never said publicly before. I think you'd be a fool to become an est person. I think one course gives. I've seen lots of people grow a great deal from one course, and then I see something else happen that just kind of loses interest to me. I mean, that's what, you know, just in fairness to I'm doing this book about Emmanuel manuals like Seth and I first heard Emmanuel on station WBEZ in New York, which is far out because you hear disembodied voices on radio, but usually you assume there's a there's a body at the other end. If he would have got to the studio. But who's to know? You know, I mean, every time you pick up the telephone, you assume there's somebody out there which is really funny. You know? Well, actually, Emmanuel speaks through a gal named Pat Roder, guys. And I know Pat and I know Emmanuel. And either it's it's really either exquisite schizophrenia or it's because Emmanuel is incredibly good and very different than Pat. Pat's a nice gal, But I said to Emmanuel, Emmanuel, I talk about death a lot. What should I tell people about death? Emmanuel said, Tell him it's absolutely safe that, you know, I have no prejudice. Like I'm not prejudiced about race or sex or color, and I'm not prejudiced about bodies, whether even whether a person has one or not. I mean, I'm willing to have a friend like Emmanuel. That's great. When you like a friend that says that, he says that's like taking off a tight shoe. I said to him, Emmanuel, what's my problem? He said, You, you, you've been enrolled in a school and you're refused to take the curriculum. So why don't you try being a human being, accept your passions, allow your humanness. It seemed like pretty good advice. So I took the winter off and for Tell me, November, December, four months, I was Richard Alpert in England, in Paris, in Florence, in Rome, in Goa. I was like three in Florence and about five weeks in Goa. We were. And there was hash and there was grass and there was a there was fish that was beer. It's French fried potatoes. There were no temples. I was at Benaras. I went to the bathing gods and the dying. I always like to check into Benaras because it's so heavy duty and I touch places in myself just through being, just through not being Ram Dass for winter. Places like I remembered from when I was two years old and I experienced that what I was doing was starting to bring it all together, finding God in me in the way it is in my humanness, not in spite of my humans, that I could be vulnerable, that I could be jealous. I mean, there were times when I was so jealous I would climb on the walls. I thought me Ram Dass climbing the walls from jealousy. How could this be? But there it was. But with it was this other part of me that was absolutely blown away and delighted. Find all this humanity lurking. It's interesting that as your you could call it faith, but even that's almost got a two dualistic kind of tinge to it, like because the lowest definition of faith is faith in something while really you live in faith, which means in harmony with or in oneness with. But but it's sort of like faith. The more faith you have that you aren't who you think you are, the more you can allow yourself to be what you think you are. You can play with the forms because you are less frightened about getting lost in them. You at first you come up for air and you say, Wow, geez. And all the time I thought, Wow, man, where do I get more of this stuff there? And then you get addicted to the memory of that moment as karma reasserts itself thickly. And you say seven years ago on a Tuesday night, I saw that it wasn't the way I thought it was. You're like the Ancient Mariner. That's who he is. He's seven years ago on Tuesday night. And somewhere along the way you stop holding o --- ion, using up 40 plus percent of the natural resources of the world playing king of the mountain. Pretty interesting, isn't it? Feels a little strange, doesn't it, to look at it that way. Over Gandhi's tomb, it says, Think of the poorest person you've ever known and ask whether your next act will be of any use to that person later. Man, I'm just going to catch this flick. Can we? Is Gandhi's statement a big statement of guilt be guilty? You see, like I live in a place where I see that there is only one of us. And I realize that what keeps me from being in God is that I live certain acts as if I believed that there were more than one of us and that some of us were them. And I'm doing that because I'm trying to hold on to something. It's like the Saber Foundation is a foundation designed to get rid of unnecessary blindness because 80% of the world's blind are unnecessarily blind. It turns out. And there's the doctor, this doctor Venkata Swami, on the board. And he explains to me that in India they do cataract operations and they do one in the in the clinics, the eye clinics. They can do one cataract operation every 4 minutes and it costs $5 and that there are presently 7 million people in India waiting for this operation. And some may wait their whole lives. What am I going to do with my next five bucks? If it was my father that was there, if it was one of you that came up blind and said, Could I have $5? And I couldn't see? Or is it them? Those people that are blind in India? Now, the answer to this quandary of how you live simultaneously on two planes of consciousness in which there is only one and there are also many. That's the interesting game for consciousness. And you hear different answers to that at different times. At least I do seem on while, for example, said, How can I eat more than the poorest person in the world eat so she starve to death. And a great writer philosopher died because in her mind that was her here. Her particular route through as with the starving people in the Irish prisons. But you can't imitate anybody. Buddha, Christ, Mother Teresa. You got to listen and hear your route through. What does it mean to be living in this county? What does it mean to be part of this family? What does it mean to have been born of this religion? What does it mean to be part of this nation? What does it mean to be part of this ecosphere? What does it mean to be this sex? What does it mean to be this age? What does it mean to be living in 1981? What does it mean to have this job or not have this job? What does it mean to be on welfare? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean to be a soul that took a human incarnation? What does it mean to be an illusion? The answers to those you are never going to get with your rational, linear mind. No way you are going to have to up level it. You're going to have to open to all of it without pushing and pulling and just allowing it all to be. And out of it will come some action and you will begin to trust that action more so like people come to see me and they come to see Ramdas for one reason or another. And at first there was so many people that I didn't quite know what to do. So I started to build categories of who I would see, and that's like lepers. How do you decide? But I saw that I was doing all that because I was afraid that if I just open to my intuitive impulses, I would just let my psychology take over and I would probably just have all those beings I lusted after or who were rich or powerful because I didn't trust my own motives. And then I watched that as I played that one out, and I saw how empty that was, and it forced me in deeper, in which I just intuitively respond without judging why I respond that way. The response is based on tomorrow and yesterday and fatigue and the understanding there's nothing to do for anybody and my love for people and my hearing, the vibration they send and everything. And sometimes they say yes, and sometimes I say no. And I am learning, as I'm sure many of you are, how to say no without turning off your heart. It's hard, isn't it, not to do something somebody wants you to do without pulling your heart back a little bit because you know that they're getting angry or you're giving them pain. But surrender doesn't mean surrendering to everybody's mind. It means surrendering into the harmony of the totality of the way it is. And out of that, sometimes you say no, and sometimes you say yes. I have maybe 60 letters at this moment, a pack with elastic around it of organizations asking me to make a contribution all the way from the like Greenpeace, Oxfam, George McGovern for something or other different political issues, Amnesty International Care monasteries individuals doing works of art, friends that are up against it. And I take checkbook in hand, pen in hand. And what happens if I what am I going to say? Everyone will get $10. I just go through and at some moments. Yes. And at some moments, no, because there's an infinite number of lepers. We are all suffering in different ways. I went spoke in New Hampshire. This was many years ago. It's about 68, I think. I spoke at a Jewish summer hotel, sort of like the Borscht Belt, except in New Hampshire. And it was after five weeks of rain when many people had canceled their reservations and so on. But some people were hanging out. It was the first sunny day and I was to speak right after lunch. This place had three golf courses and five lakes, and the manager took me downstairs into a room that had pictures of Rudy Vallee and Gloria Swanson and all the people who had been here to this hotel as entertain sign to Frank with love. Oh Clinton. And he said, Look, he's got a cigar. I mean, it's all perfect. He says, look, he says the first day of sun, he says, we want to get all of them out on the lake and the golf course. So he says after lunch, they got to sit for a little while. So you talk for 20 minutes. Okay, Come on up. We're having brisket for lunch. Great. So we have lunch and afterwards we go outside and they're sitting out on the patio. All of us are out on the patio. And here are these very portly gentlemen in bathing trunks with cigars and very portly ladies, some of them with see through bathing suits and blue eye eyes and Cahiers. And they were all index chairs reclining. And I was on for 20 minutes. So the reason I was there is very peculiar. I mean, why would I do this even, you know. But like 20 years before that, 25 years my father had spoken at that hotel raising money for the United Jewish Appeal for Displaced Children in Europe Joint Distribution Committee. And it just felt like father, like son. I'll do it sort of, you know, I'll mean I'll honor my thing, so I'll go do it. All I got was lunch out of it. They didn't even pay my gas. That's how tight those Jews are. Ten. They're paying for it now. So I said to everybody, I said, Well, you've got it made three golf courses, five lakes. The parking lot is filled with Cadillacs. You have finished a delicious pot roast dinner. The sun is out, you have furs, life insurance, places in Florida, condominiums. Your children go to good schools or you've got them a good psychiatry course. You've made it. You've got it. This is it. Is it enough? That was the dirty card. That was the power play, which I would no longer do. That was the uncompassionate act. Two and a half hours later, nobody had moved. And when I got up to leave, I walked across towards my I had a 1938 Buick, which I had shined up for the occasion. I walked across to my Buick, and I looked back and here were these people all walking across the lawn to see me off portly, see through them. But for the moment, us recognizing in themselves something touching something far out, isn't it?