Ram Dass: From Victimhood to Creation-ship — Part 2, Petaluma 1981

[Music] be here [Music] now it's like going to death row in San Quenton I mean it took me a half hour to get up my courage to drive in the gate I sat outside looking at San Quenton saying I don't want to do this man she death row this is too heavy was scheduled how do you do and then finding as I walked down the rad shaking hands with each guy through the bars of his cell out of about 32 people 28 of those beings are right here sitting in this very audience are on this very stage just us just happens they murdered somebody and the lepers it's just [Applause] us David Spangler uh who's connected with um Finn horn or used to be and he's got a little booklet out about conversations with John which is his Emanuel I guess John sounds just like David Spangler as I guess Emanuel is going to sound like me since it's probably projections of all of our minds and John says to David you got to separate the USSR from the Russian people they have different folk Souls there's only a very thin covering of USSR over the Russian people who are they them or us I have an mg and I drive around with a top down driving from gig to gig I mean I got a great gig I just share Dharma I'm a Dharma sharer you rent a Dharma Shar and you wind it up and out comes Dharma and in my mind as I'm driving having an ecstatic time driving through the mountains on my way from Albuquerque or to Boston I just drove from Boston and I had wonderful conversations with all the policemen who stopped me for speeding how do I know why how we're supposed to meet I mean I met an American Indian policeman in Arizona who was he was writing out a ticket he we got talking about God and Elders in his tribe Uncle David and so on and we just fell in love right there in the police car right in the cruiser I met an American Indian in New Zealand this winter I told you it wasn't going to be linear is this two no the hell you can leave any time if it's not what you expected I met this guy Orin lion he's a uh chief of a tribe in New York state and he was at this um NASA festival and I was at this winter with uh Steve and Ina gasin and um Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie bird John May May and um the Hari Krishna group and Buddhist groups and energy groups and was far out 15,000 of us out in the bush in New Zealand and Orin lion was there and I experienced being in the presence of a true warrior he was so committed to his cause he's the guy if you whenever you see movies like Wounded Knee he's always up in the front lines marching right into the machine guns very clearly and strongly and solidly and non flickery he is totally committed to his part in the dance which is to advise us and his people of the Heritage and tradition that they their lineage he is a transmitter of lineage and a protector of the lineage and he will go to his death within that roll and at the same moment when I looked into his eyes there was not one drop of anger he was right here have some more beans and looking into his eyes I flickered through all my little rols liberal white man rolls and they were all just little myths that I was I blew away and there we were fellow human beings and he had his thing to do and I have mine to do and you have yours to do driving in the mg Sun out singing sham Jam guming along right there is my Guru and right there is the poorest person I have ever seen and right there are my teachers and right there is my mother and there is my father and right there is my country and right there is my Judaism and right there is my love of Christ and right there is Buddha and right there is Allah and right there it all is and I'm just approaching Flagstaff I throw my neck out on the way into Flagstaff so my father has given me a jar of the jelly that he makes raspberry jelly with two ramas four ramas it's printed so I'm hungry so I go to open the jar and in trying to open the jar I pull a muscle in my [Applause] neck so I go to a chiropractor and flags stff now I want him to adjust my neck and cut all the cuz I want to go on to California I don't want to be healed I just want to have my neck straighten and he walks in and he introduces himself he sits down he says well what do you do two hours later he and I are so close in the spirit that both of us are [Music] healed who knows what what's about the the great way is not difficult for one who has no preferences or another saying truth awaits Eyes unclouded by longing even now are you waiting or just being [Music] is there something you think you need to hear that you don't know already are you busy not knowing something I'm not busy knowing something we are just talking to ourself I don't know any anything you don't know it's just my part to talk about it it's no different you and I are Divine and we are human and we are all the levels in between we are myths we are legends we have lineages we come through Rays there's only one of us the whole thing is a dream and it's all real form is no other than formless says the diamond Sutra formless no other than form My Method through is I'm of a lineage which is connected with a monkey called hanaman and hanaman is that form of God which exists to serve God it's the relation the baky form of devotion through service there's devotion through being lovers like Rada and Krishna this is the path through service but it's also path through love there are all these levels of service I am serving not that one or in that one patanjali patanjali paneles ashang yoga eight limed yoga Raja yoga says in Yama in purification first eight includes nonre receiving non giving non- giving is the Sutra there is no giving no giving no receiving no attachment no identification with being The Giver because then you create the receiver no identification with being the parent because then you create the child no identification with being the therapist because then you create the patient no identification with being da da da da you keep creating the polar opposite the complimentary role every time you identify with a role so what is giving where there is no giver and giving through love since love is and you and I come into love then I will serve that love it's a very subtle path it turns out I hadn't realized that it seemed very gross to me like sa is a word that's a Sanskrit word it means service and the people that are part of sa for the most part are very gung-ho people they're really out to save the world and to get rid of blindness there an interesting question of whether or not how identified you have to be with the polarity to juice up the action can you as Don Juan says huff and puff and make believe it matters even though you know that it doesn't is that too scary for everybody cuz when I meet righteous people I see an opa in their eyes CU they are busy being good and it isn't good enough it doesn't liberate bbys it means anybody it doesn't liberate it's subtly serves but ENT traps and you've got to see that your act of service is really an act of service to the extent that it liberates the minute your act of service defines who the recipient of your service is you immediately imprison that other person in a definition you serve because you serve because you're serving God which comes in all forms this is a routine I've done before but it just beer is it's so delicious and It just fits into this into Petaluma so well it's the one where you taste and touch love and you feel you are in love and you walk down the street and you see somebody and they are in the same space and you look at each other and it happens it happens the magic happens do you believe in magic yes at that moment it happens and you say would you like to build a nest with me and you build a nest together and it's all cuddly and then you go to the grocery store to get soy burgers and cir and at the checkout counter you look into the eyes of the person doing the checkout and it happens again have you ever considered a Minaj ATA you ask soon thereafter there are communes but after a while you begin dense though you may be and Lusty though you may be you begin to realize that that feeling you're having does not really require that you collect that part of you that just arouse that feeling awaken that feeling again that you are the feeling and you're seeing it resonating in other people and you get so you can walk down the street and look at your beloved and say you see at first you don't quite you're ready to not collect it but you can't really not affirm it so you and and say are you experiencing what I'm experiencing or hello or wow or just and then after a while you just walk down the street and you just look at somebody and you can walk right by and it's not walking by with denial it's not walking by by turning off your heart it's walking by by recognizing what is that we are all in love but there's nothing particularly to do about it you don't have to do anything we're so busy being doers you got to do it affirm it just be it it's enough and in that quality of love you know how you feel when you're in love and you would like there's one orange and you make it into juice for your beloved when you really wanted orange juice cuz you want more for them to have juice than you want to have juice and since I'm a Jewish mother even if they don't want [Applause] juice serving is serving your beloved that's who's blind in India that's who's frightened in Atlanta that's who's starving in Africa that's who's imprisoned in El Salvador or Russia or the United States and what I experienced when I was at that Jewish hotel and what I experienced in death row and what I experienc at this moment it's here we are in love there's no seduction it's not entertainment there's no collecting this just is this is satsang this is sa this is the community of the spirit this is the recognition of our being it's no big deal where two are gathered where one is gathered few hours from now this will be a memory just like it's a dream just like your dream was last night did it really happen I had this funny experience just day before yesterday I have an old friend from earlier days in the' 60s that we were connected through a number of dealings of one kind or another and he was very kind to me in those days and then he fell on hard times and I was visiting him once not terribly hard times but at one point maybe 3 four years ago I loaned him some money I saw that he needed rent money and all and I said look I've got an extra 2,000 in the bank if you need to use it go ahead cuz you know and he didn't say anything he just said okay because his and his lady said yeah we really need it so I wrote a check for $2,000 and I put it on his kitchen counter and years have gone by and in the meantime he's done very well and everything's going fine and all kinds of people come and ask me for bread and there's only so much to go around and I suddenly figure well maybe I should tell him it's time to pay the 2,000 so I go to see him and I say say by the way uh those that 2,000 I loaned you if at any time you can get it together it would be nice cuz some other people could use it and I got some debts I could clean up and he looked at me and he said what 2,000 see how real the story was up to that moment now immediately you I don't know maybe there was no 2000 cancel checks things like that let go lightly [Music] wow well if you don't remember it let me tell you what happened happened and I told him what happened that evening he said uh well if my lady was here she must have heard it we'll ask her okay I said look my trust in you is so strong that I would just ass soon believe you as me I don't trust me as far as I throw me most of the time so if you say that there's no $2,000 as far as I'm concerned there's no $2,000 you know it was just a thing in my mind anyway so I'll change my life a different way and we went about our business talking and after a while he says you know I'm beginning to remember that incident and by the end of the evening he had remembered it and he said I'll get the bread TOA I've got the money is that interesting I went swimming over in Marin the other day came back and my car had been broken into and all my clothes have been stolen a duffel bag with all my clothes I'm on tour so they're all my best clothes [Music] my toilet kit it's interesting to watch yourself in those moments about the second thought I had was wow I can have a whole new wardrobe I'll still lock the car and I won't leave the suitcase of the bag so people can see it and I feel compassion for the person who did that or people who did that I mean I wished I lived in a world that was conscious enough where people didn't do that to each other but this is what it is and you have property and you're attached to your property and you're running afraid it's only clothes and what Christ pointed out was it's only a body no big deal not worth getting all excited about this situation we find ourselves in is so breathtakingly Exquisite because this period of time which is so fascinating and with there's so much change change in the air and so much realignment of all kinds of stuff and breaking down of systems and Awakening of values and real deep transformations in the culture in the Woodwork and all of that and to stay a little conscious in that allowing you to Delight in it and keep your heart open in love becomes the actual Catalyst for the transformation of energy continually through you so that the fear gets turned into a creative life force it gets turned into light because you can eat fear because you're not afraid you're not making believe you're not afraid see the reason I work with dying people all the time is because it keeps me so straight because it's really hard to be a bullshitter when you're dealing with somebody that's right close to death cuz they got nothing to lose and they're really listening I get incredibly high from being with people just as they're about to die by the way I gave you a gift I hope you all got it this is a expensive two tone color reproduction he about 5 cents a piece of um my Guru in one of his more fetching poses he looks the cross between a kind of a an imbecile and that what gets me is that one breast hanging out that's really what I like cuz it's really the mother that giving quality and U and then out of his fingers it's fun cuz those fingers that hang out and it and his toes at any rate on the back of that are all kinds of information the number two is the dying project which is part of the hanaman foundation which is the monkey and if you just want to know about the dying project by any chance you can write there and you can get a newsletter if you're dying and can't wait to write you can do 2b which is the hotline and you can call up but you only call if you want to awaken through dying if you're just dying don't bother calling because everybody dies I think you should know that that no matter how Immortal you may be as William San said he thought he was you you're going to die and so uh what our project is about is if you're dying and you would like to use you're dying as a vehicle for awakening realizing it's just another drama and you would like to awaken through dealing with some really heavy drama like pain call us because that's not a sest uh we won't create the pain we'll just because we like to or we can put you in contact with people who like to hang out with people who are dying as a vehicle for working on themselves there are no professional Dyers we don't have a a dying club or you're not a trained Dyer or something like that and then this guy just bought a building as a real estate investment a house which he is letting us use very kindly and that's so our we have now a dying Center where you can come and die you got to promise you'll die if you come you can't go and get healed which is a and you going to do it soon so I don't know how they'll select the people really I mean it's a it's clearly a problem I don't think we we've figured out how to do that yet it's a funny one about dying and healing you know uh about a year ago I uh it's another perhaps repeat story I was out in front of the hospital room of Gregory Bateson who had had a heart uh had cancer around his heart and it was expected to live for two weeks and he lived for about a year or more and um I was in the room helping him he just finished surgery and I was PR there to help him die which was a little bizarre since Gregory could talk me around in circles about everything and I came out and there was Ken Peltier ready to go in to teach Gregory how to fight the cancer and live and I said Lois Bateson was standing there I said um Ken look uh I don't want to undermine your work I mean uh I want you should heal I like Gregory I'd like to have him around for a while you know uh am I undercutting him by your work you know do you need to have him real Angry like he really thinks he's at cancer and we reflected in the corridor and we realized that the optimum place of the most conscious being was the best space to be in for healing or whichever way healing went whether it was dying or living that's the story of my Guru saying about somebody that's dying and he won't go see them and he says here give him this banana he'll be all right and they take home the banana and they mash it up cuz it's from the guru and they feed it to him and eats the last mouthful of banana and dies that's my Guru if you got a good Guru story of your Guru screwed up every time all he said was he'll be all right [Music] where was I huh Tibetan Book of the Dead let me just run you through just I'll do this in five minutes should take 49 days but we'll do the short [Music] form see you're dying that's given and um as you're dying you you the Earth element starts to leave and you feel heavy and then the water element starts to leave and you feel kind of dry and thirsty and then the fire element leaves and you leave feel cold kind of clammmy cold and dry I guess and then the air element leaves and your out breath is longer than your in breath until pretty soon you don't in breath anymore and the the breath and the Consciousness principle then start to separate and at that point the male and the female principles which came together at the moment that your Consciousness entered break apart and the male part of it goes up into the head and the female goes down here into the belly and then the two of them come back together and they meet in the heart at which point there is like an atomic explosion there is only light and that is the entering of the first BAU where you enter into the light and if you are cons sufficiently surrendered that is if there is nothing you are clinging to at that moment then you become one with light and that is the end of the reincarnational cycle however if that for any reason is quote too much you black out during that period and you come back into some semblance of awareness in the SE in the fifth BTO the next BTO and the fifth BAU is full of the 10,000 horrible visions and the 10,000 beautiful visions and so all of the things that scare you come and all the things that attract you come and if you are conscious at that time you see them all as apparitions created by your own mind but to do that you would have to see all that now and if you don't see that you grab at this or push away that and then you start to get reborn into various planes of their six plan system you can be a daa you can be a Hungry Ghost you can be an animal you and Etc be born into the hell Realms of the demon Realms or [Applause] human now if you're going to be born a human as you come into the sixth B you start to look for a birth and the way the Tibetans describe it at that point of you point you become aware of your mother and father copulating and you are attracted to one and repelled by the other and that is the definition of your sex and that at the moment of conception the Consciousness principle enters and you start the Incarnation at any time up to that moment you are free to become so conscious that you are aware that you are the Creator and not the created and you are free at any time in this life or in any subsequent life or at any time between lives to step off the BAU Mill meaning the islands in between the space you can stop Island hopp because this is just a BTO anytime there's no time in the game of Enlightenment it's a hype I'm not going to be enlightened for many births it's just astral fun and games all of the BOS are elusory and they are all real they're real if you make them real the llamas were describing to me the franticness with which beings are trying to get a human birth franticness looking for a space to climb in between to grab a human bird that's part of my learning to understand what the Tibetan what the Buddhist talk about when they talk about a precious human birth meaning a birth in which all the ingredients are available to us all the Sandpaper all of the stuff is necessary for us to do to awaken to become liberated that's why somebody who commits suicide sort of a moment after realizes oh not bad or good but geez I just kind of blew it I got to wait around now or I got to try to get another one to get on with it the older being you are meaning the less attachment you have the more conscious you are at the moment of death the more you are part of the conscious creative force that creates the form you manifest in next the more you in effect choose your parents choose the environment choose the time and the place the less conscious you are the more Milly world into form when you begin to tune to death enough you hear what Don Juan is saying about keeping death over your left shoulder as the way to be fully alive and you live as a Warrior fighting your last battle every moment nothing special nothing dramatic but that you are ready every moment and you are right there when Gandhi is shot he doesn't say I've been shot he says Ram when the pope is shot he says he calls out to the Madonna when Reagan is shot he says I forgot to duck [Music] laugh if you will but when John Lennon is shot he says I've been shot everybody's got their work to do everybody has their moments there was one dying woman we were with up here up in down in Marin County who had been using the Jesus prayer for a long time and then she got to the point where she couldn't use it anymore because it was made her too distant from Jesus and she just started emerge into the heart and she just went into light you could watch it happen it was like in going into water but with all that imagery let me just add to you one little more ingredient since this is the way my mind works I'm just playing with stuff Emmanuel says I say to Emanuel Emanuel when I talk about death and talk about people dying into the one people get frightened they don't want to leave their separateness he says oh you humans and your duel ISC Minds why do you think that dying into the one has anything to do with losing your separateness oh thank you caught again okay for two hours you have sat here imagine that we're going to take a break for a few minutes and then we're going to reconvene those that wish to if you are going to leave now let me assure you that there is nowhere that you can go see cuz we're right here and if you go home and go get undressed and get on the toilet and say Where am I you will be forced to answer I am here and that's where we are we are right in your toilet with you there's no way you can get away you're just doing your dance and it's okay cuz there's nothing to be gained here obviously there's nothing you didn't already know those of you that would like to hang around afterwards we will play a game called The Answer Man in which you make believe you have questions and I make believe I have answers all right [Applause] it's very nice being with you all I want you to know uh I I really feel it's okay to be quite nonlinear and quite heavy duty uh just the way I feel tonight uh I trust you as an audience because I recognize you it's nice because it doesn't make any seduction happen in me at all [Applause] let's just before we take a break one thing just just a whim for me okay starting over there roll roll roll your boat gently down the stream roll roll roll your boat gently down the stream roll roll roll your boat gently down the merily roll roll roll your B gently down the stream merrily merily merrily merrily life is but a dream life is but a dream life is but a stream roll roll roll your dream gently down the merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily merrily roll roll roll your boat gently down the stream merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream life is but a dream life is but a dream life is but a dream life is but a dream life is but a dream Ro Row Row Your Dream gently down the stream merrily merily life is life is a life is b a life is b a life is B A Life Is Life Is Life Is Life Is Life is life is [Applause]