Dass Conversations with Ram Dass

Interviewed by Sridhar Silberfein
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9906314-5-3
Verlag: Love Serve Remember Foundation
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 123 Seiten

Since Bhakti Fest's inception, Ram Dass has made an annual appearance through exclusive interviews with founder, Sridhar Silberfein, who travels to Maui each year and films their conversations. Known for their humor, inspiration, and unmasked devotional attitude, these videos have been a highlight of the festival for the past six years. Transcribed for print and edited by Amy V. Dewhurst, author of Heartbreak Yoga, with a forward by notable kirtan artist Krishna Das, these illuminating conversations are presented in ways that are relatable to the Western yogi, no matter their level of practice or experience with yoga and Eastern spirituality.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dass, Ram

Leseproben

2009 The Souls You Are Going To Meet Ram Dass: Hello Everybody! Namaste! You are having a wonderful time in Southern California and I am having a wonderful time in Maui. We are together with this technology. Sridhar: Welcome Ram Dass. We want to extend a loving, welcome and appreciation to you here at Bhakti Fest. Since you don’t travel any more we will enjoy your wisdom with this exclusive Bhakti Fest interview. Thank you so much. There’s so much overload in society today. Whenever we see the news, and see all the disasters and wars and epidemics, how can we be better prepared spiritually and psychologically to handle whatever comes? Ram Dass: All that is the drama of culture. Unless you can stand back inside yourself and unless you can watch the melodrama of your life, you get caught. It’s like, you’re a soul and you delved into this incarnation, which includes all of the karma that you’ve created. The strategy is to remain a soul and not get caught in your incarnation. Things in our environment are sad or happy, and will go in and out, in and out, but we are trying to get a center, working from our big Self, our large Self, in which we can witness the drama of the incarnation. Sridhar: What is your current feeling on mind-altering substances and how they relate to the spiritual path? Ram Dass: Well, I did mind-altering substances and I know that they took me from psychology to Maharajji. They helped me understand levels of consciousness. If I hadn’t had psychedelics, I would have gone to India and just turned my nose up, because I was so busy being a social scientist. These planes of consciousness, which I now live in, these soul planes, and spiritual planes, I would have had no time for them. I say to people when they say that they are going to use psychedelics, I say, look for a guide, someone that knows what psychedelics are, for a guide that can guide your trip in a spiritual direction, because otherwise it can get into astral things. You get involved in colors and sounds, and you’ll waste the trip. Because when you take psychedelics they are an invitation to these planes of consciousness. These planes are all within all of us. The psychedelics magnify it, and show us things that are inside of us that the society doesn’t know. Sridhar: There are a lot of spiritual teachers and Gurus that say smoking pot interferes with the meditative process…. Ram Dass: It seems to me, try one or the other. Those are two different methods. Meditation is a method and pot is a method. There’s not any reason that you can’t do these methods all the time, but you don’t mix them. I have certainly gone far, far, out in my consciousness from pot, and I’ve gotten far out in my consciousness by meditation, but I know that they are not mixable. Sridhar: So, you don’t smoke pot any more, Baba? Ram Dass: No, I haven’t smoked pot in about eight years. I don’t really want to screw around with my brain because we are trying to reprogram the brain, which got a little screwed up with the stroke. Sridhar: What is the best way to keep the faith? Because without faith we all seem to be very lost. Ram Dass: You have to understand that faith and belief are different things. Belief is the mind, and faith is the heart. I can only tell you that my faith came from Maharajji. I found another heart that transmitted that faith to my heart. It’s the same thing that I’m trying to do in this presentation. I have a tremendous amount of faith for spiritual matters. And once upon a time, I didn’t have faith, didn’t have faith. Sridhar: Was that around your stroke time? Ram Dass: Right after the stroke, I had lost faith. Faith in Maharajji too, and I got very depressed because I had a lack of faith. Then I got thinking, “Why?” I began to think Maharajji had been there for me all the time until the stroke, and I thought, or I said to him in my mind, “Where were you, where were you? Did you go out to lunch or something? I needed you with this stroke.” I started talking about fear as grace. Like with the stroke, I still think that it was part of nature, the nature of my heart. I had Maharajji’s picture on the wall in the hospital. All these people were saying “Terrible, terrible stroke.” I tried to put these together, his grace, stroke, his grace, stroke; back and forth, back and forth. I saw that a stroke could be incredible grace. For example, I couldn’t speak, and I was turned on by the silence. Here’s my wheelchair, and I have a place to sit all the time. It’s all grace. All the time I’ve had to find things in myself, like I used to be very independent and now I’ve had to learn to be dependent, and that is real learning for someone who is independent. That was a bit of a grace. So in fact, my reaction to the stroke was the grace. Fierce grace. Sridhar: It must be frustrating at times, having to depend on people. Ram Dass: Well, it’s frustrating for a moment, and then I deal with the frustration. The frustration is a thought, and I am an aware person, and I am aware of the thought passing through. I don’t get frustrated, I can’t. Or, I can get frustrated, but it comes and goes. Sridhar: So when the thought comes, one has a choice of whether to react or not. Ram Dass: That’s right, that’s right, but I am centered in my heart. I’ve got a little phrase I use, “I am loving awareness. I am loving awareness.” I am aware down here in my spiritual heart, in the center of my chest, and this is the awareness, and this is the soul. The soul is aware of your incarnation, and with the incarnation comes frustration, which is a thought. It’s just a thought. Just like I am aware of my ears hearing, aware of my eyes seeing, I’m aware of my mind thinking, and these things just become the passing show. Sridhar: So we should all remember that, “I am loving awareness?” Ram Dass: Yes, yes, yes, because you start with “I am awareness.” That I got from Buddhist meditation, that I was the awareness, and that everything was the object of the awareness. And then I got “loving” when Maharajji instructed me, with his telling me about love. Sridhar: You speak about Maharajji, Neem Karoli Baba. How important is the Guru/disciple relationship on the spiritual path? Ram Dass: Well for me, it’s all-important, because I follow the path of Guru Kripa. Here is what happened to me when I met Maharajji; I had been somewhere else the night before, I went to the outhouse and I was aware of the stars, very bright and very near. Then I thought of my mother, she had died six months before. I was a Freudian. I was going to the outhouse and remembering my mother, so of course it freaked me. Then we drove to Maharajji’s Ashram. He said to me, “You were thinking about your mother last night.” That’s pretty good, I had not met him, I was just a passenger in a car. I said, “Yes.” That softened me, if he knew that stuff, he knew everything. Then I looked down at the ground and I started to think “Oh my God, if he knows that, oh, oh, ah….” He knew Every secret of my inner stuff. He was a mind reader. I had about fifteen things that I didn’t want anyone to know. I looked up at him and he was looking at me with unconditional love. He looked at me…that was something that I never had. My parents, they were conditional lovers. They loved me, if I was a good boy. My teachers loved me if I’m a good student. My friends would like me, if I did what they wanted. It was always IF, IF, IF, and this man was looking at me with unconditional love, and I had never had that before, ever, ever, ever. He knew all my things and he’s loving me, he’s loving me. That unconditional love changed my way of thinking of myself. Even with all that secret stuff, I was a lovable being. Certainly, that moment changed me. At that point I had planned to go to the United States two days later, and I never went. I just stayed near him. I stayed near him because of the love, and the miracles and all that stuff, but it was the love. The thing that a Guru does, he’s far ahead of you in the path, and he can counsel you about your spiritual path. And then, he is so entrenched in his atman, in his God soul, that he mirrors your God soul. Whenever I met Maharajji, I felt like I was a soul, just being around him. And now, even just thinking about him, a picture, or...