The Unified Theory of Ram Dass
gq.com
gq.com
Unity of God, guru, and Self is the higher truth, and if your veil of attachment is very thin, you may be able, like Ramana, to penetrate directly to that essence in the heart.
But most of us, to get through our busy human incarnation and the profusion of forms we find in our lives, need guidance and help. Seeing the guru as separate from oneself is a way to approach it in steps of lesser truths. It’s a first step toward becoming the One. The reality of the guru or guide as separate from oneself is a method or vehicle for coming to God. It’s using a relationship with a separate entity, dualism, to get to the One, to the reality that the guru is identical with your inmost being.
i.e. God=Guru=Self, see: https://www.ramdass.org/god-guru-self/
However, of all the things Ram Dass has said and done, the mantra (from the article) is all we really need to remember:
“So I accomplish the move from head to heart, in part with mantra: I am loving awareness. I am loving awareness. I am loving awareness.” With each repetition of the mantra, Ram Dass slowly begins charting the daily process of moving his consciousness out of his thinking mind and toward his open, present, compassionate heart—from ego land to soul land.
“All the universe is love,” he continues. “And I'm loving all of the universe.… Everything—everything—has love in it.”
<3
As to exactly how you personally should interpret "all the universe is love", well, it's a very personal thing. Perhaps the most general way to convey how that feels to me is: extend your deep inner-child maternal love outwards to encompass the rest of humanity, the Earth's ecosystem, and the natural conditions that gave rise to life itself. Like the feeling of warm sunshine on a cold day.
I don’t see how invoking Jordan Peterson’s ‘Darwinian Truth’ gives any weight to the claim that all the universe is love. I would agree that you could indeed hold it to be an axiom.
You might believe that it is beneficial for humans to hold this axiom to be true and act accordingly, but this is still your subjective opinion. It supposes that humans are a worthy universal end, and the axiom remains an axiom.
I don’t know what you mean by unbroken maternal lineage. My maternal experience was very much broken. From what my mother has told me, so was hers.
What is the extension of deep inner child maternal love to encompass the test of humanity? Is it not just another way of saying that you just wish that everything were hunky dory? Things don’t seem to work that way in Darwin’s world.
I don’t want to disregard the idea of unconditional love for family and beyond. Many people can afford it. However, many people can’t, and it isn’t a truth that we must strive towards either.
There is a multitude of subjective value systems which man has chosen to live by, ostensibly, collectively and in private. Some have chosen to build empires, never having children. Some have chosen to build loving families. In neither case is it guaranteed that a majority will wake up smiling and feeling happy every day. That’s fine too.
Challenge accepted, I will play your language game :)
> You might believe that it is beneficial for humans to hold this axiom to be true and act accordingly, but this is still your subjective opinion.
I live in quiet certainty that one day, eventually, everyone will be holding this same opinion and hold this axiom to be true. I do not necessarily expect to still be around to witness it personally.
By unbroken maternal lineage I am referring to the 9 months of sufficient love and nurturing required for a mother to produce a baby human, as has happened 100% consistently and successfully for millennia to arrive at each one of us. Any love received post-birth is a bonus. I accept that this view is harder to appreciate in some circumstances and is often obscured by many layers of trauma.
> Is it not just another way of saying that you just wish that everything were hunky dory?
I think to hold the perspective I'm describing you have to let go of seeing the problems in the world as problems. Things are simply happening. Suffering is happening. Life is unfolding. At some level I'm certainly still entertaining a wish that everything might yet work out to be hunky dory, but these days I can readily accept that such a wish will only ever be an illusion. I guess that is my second axiom.
You might enjoy briefly hearing Alan Watts tell The Story of the Chinese Farmer which beautifully expresses this general acceptance of life as it is currently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX0OARBqBp0
> Many people can afford it. However, many people can’t, and it isn’t a truth that we must strive towards
Many people might think they can't afford to love because life can grow intense and feel very serious sometimes, even dangerous, but love is free and it is always the best course of action. What else could each of us be striving towards if not a world with more love (even if only for ourselves)?
> In neither case is it guaranteed that a majority will wake up smiling and feeling happy every day. That’s fine too.
I agree, that's fine. Sadness is just as meaningful a feeling as happiness. These are just feelings.
I’m really not sure what to say regarding the love, though. I’ll leave it here.
I think there are only very few people that are really spiritually enlightened and they are not necessarily the famous gurus.
I know nothing about Ram Dad's but when I was more involved in yoga I saw some very shady behavior of public gurus.
I've had many teachers that were superb at imparting their lessons while living with the foibles and flaws of being real people. You take what you need from the teacher and move on.
An example in popular culture: someone like Bill Cosby, who I am sure influenced countless people to be better people. Well, it turned out that he had major problems (to put it mildly!). Does that negate the "lessons" that he imparted in another aspect of his life? I would argue no.
I know you aren't negating this argument in your post, but I just wanted to say this and chose your post to glom onto! :)
Same for some gurus who outwardly are serene and friendly people but their ashram is a dictatorship that terrorizes and manipulates people. There is also a lot of sexual abuse going on. Ram Dass himself did questionable things.
I think bad behavior negates the teachings or at least diminishes them by a lot. How am I supposed to know something works if it doesn't work for the teacher?
Unfortunately there are only a few authentic gurus and teachers.
- Nietzsche
My favourite example of this (albeit not one that's always been at peace) is the Dalai Lama. Dude goes around talking about love and acceptance and whatnot, which is great and he seems like a great guy, but his experience as someone with an international organisation dedicated to looking after him is maybe not 100% relevant to the life of some random pleb in a Western country.
I don’t think the Dalai Lama is a great example. He doesn’t do it out of choice but out of duty. It’s what a Dalai Lama is expected to do. They are believed to be the reincarnation of an enlightened person who represents compassion. He’s also the head of the exiled Tibetan state, so he probably will have people looking after him whether he likes it or not.
Richard Bucke got to me before Richard Alpert. Alpert's advanced technology just delivered more current.
http://www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/dass.html
Some interesting tales by Ram Dass about how Neem Karoli read his mind, ingested ginormous amounts of LSD without any effect, etc; here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb2BWvRN090
The specific story about the Baba reading Ram Dass' mind and informing him that he was thinking about his mother and that she had died of spleen failure stayed with me. Maybe he was informed the previous night that a Professor from the US was arriving whose mother died recently of spleen failure and the rest was about creating an illusion of omniscience?
In any case, a large number of these gurus turn out to be sexual predators, and it is absolutely crushing to those who follow them to discover this.
UG "masturbation is better than meditation" Krishnamurti was a much needed respite from these masters of bullshit for me, personally.
Even in the article Ram Dass is saying that he gave LSD to the Harvard undergraduate at least in part because he found him attractive. It makes me wonder what else happened in that encounter, but it's certainly a large abuse of power to have a professor giving undergraduate kids LSD.
I also think any discussion about these sorts of western gurus must also include dialogues about race, class, and privilege. If he could afford a Cessna, a Mercedes, a sailboat, and multiple apartments, it certainly was not from just a professor's salary. It's a whole lot easier to take a bunch of drugs then go practice asana and pranayama in India with the sort of safety net it sounded like he had.
Yeah, these guys give off slimy vibes, but I wonder if this term is a little harsh. Women associate willingly with these men, and ostensibly enjoy doing so. If all participants are willing, what is the difference between predation and normal human interaction? Is it not normal for women to be drawn to power and influence?
Sexual predator may be not that bad considering the alternatives like "Thank you for the Kool-Aid, reverend Jim"
I recommend learning about cold reading.
(A major component of it isn't just that it's quite easy to talk information out of you with vague prompts, it's that after the fact you will tend to remember that information as having originated with the cold reader. For instance, if the cold-reader just says "You are thinking about someone very close to you" and you say, "I was thinking about my mother", you will later remember the cold reader saying you were thinking about your mother.)
The news only talks about the maybe 5 predators, not the 2000 who haven't completely lost their Way.
Turns out The Church had the same problem, on steroids.
Pollan's book comes at the fulcrum of the movement where a lot of people have been carefully, and strategically, working on rehabilitating psychedelics without spooking the state again. Leary as scapegoat fits into that perfectly. Maybe too perfectly?
Leary was brilliant and complex, more interesting than the caricatures, which he admittedly drew a lot of himself. And I would say tragic. I felt from the documentary that prison broke him. His daughter killed herself (also in jail) and his son publicly denounced him and refused to speak to him. The film didn't mention those things.
edit: pronoun clarifications
> When I asked Rick Doblin if he worries about another backlash, he pointed out that our culture has come a long way from the 1960s and has shown a remarkable ability to digest a great many of the cultural novelties first cooked up during that era.
“That was a very different time. People wouldn’t even talk about cancer or death then. Women were tranquilized to give birth; men weren’t allowed in the delivery room! Yoga and meditation were totally weird. Now mindfulness is mainstream and everyone does yoga, and there are birthing centers and hospices all over. We’ve integrated all these things into our culture. And now I think we’re ready to integrate psychedelics.”
Doblin points out that many of the people now in charge of our institutions are of a generation well acquainted with these molecules. This, he suggests, is the true legacy of Timothy Leary. It’s all well and good for today’s researchers to disdain his “antics” and blame him for derailing the first wave of research, and yet, as Doblin points out with a smile, “there would be no second wave if Leary hadn’t turned on a whole generation.” Indeed. Consider the case of Paul Summergrad, who has spoken publicly of his own youthful use of psychedelics. In a videotaped interview with Ram Dass that was shown at the 2015 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, he told his colleagues that an acid trip he took in college had been formative in his intellectual development. (Jeffrey Lieberman, another past president of the American Psychiatric Association, has also written of the insights gleaned from his youthful experiments with LSD.)
I had a friend I was tripping on acid with, back in grad school, and he picked up the Be Here Now book, read the intro and said, "Wait, did he seriously change his name to 'Rammed ass?!'" .. I've always wondered about his intent after that. :-P
You might have known other people with similar last name (eg: Anil Dash).
The most common pronunciation is "Das"
(Really, it's the recipe for a successful life. In fact, when you've tasted what he's offering, you may find that stock options, sales funnels, and customer acquisition costs no longer excite you.)
“I got dismissed from Harvard because I had given psychedelics to an undergraduate. We had agreed with the dean that we would not give psychedelics to undergraduates.” Ram Dass flashes a mischievous grin. “He was an attractive kid.” So do you suspect, I ask, that Maharajji had a hand in making you attracted to men because it would ultimately lead you to him? “I suspect,” he replies with a nod. “He's a rascal.” “Maharajji?” I ask. “Yeah,” Ram Dass says.
There are truths to be seen through the eyes of a child, but there's also the rape-facilitation, too.
I definitely should have been more charitable in my reading, I got stuck on this:
> The most effective rape drug ever, turning adults into children who can be exploited
I was looking to tease out some clarification, because the implication that these drugs turn adults into children and prime them for rape seems like a strange leap from my perspective.
I’ll happily chalk it up to my lack of charitable reading and assume in good faith the commenter was referring to the drugs combined with the power dynamics.
Listening to some of Ram Dass's talks from the 70s, I've been struck by how far ahead of his time he was in facing up to the power dynamics between gurus and disciples, and especially the sexual power dynamics between them. His statements on this from over 40 years ago sound pretty contemporary today. That's unusual, given how different a time that was. So unless you guys have specific evidence that Alpert raped people, I can't help but think you're picking on the wrong figure.
Years later, Alpert/Ram Dass mused that one reason he had slipped up and allowed an undergraduate into the study was because he had found the undergraduate attractive. There is no suggestion that he acted on the attraction. He was simply looking back on his own motivations, reflecting on what might have led to his career-destroying move.
One of Ram Dass's qualities as a spiritual teacher/speaker/seeker has been an unusual openness about his personal experiences. He was talking about being gay, for example, long before that was socially acceptable. I think it is a positive thing that he has been so willing to share his own struggles and challenges. Maybe when some other guru character admits to an "attraction" years later, that would be a euphemism for "seduced" or "raped". But there is no reason or evidence to conclude that here. This was just Ram Dass sharing his experience with the same openness he always has.
“I had leanings towards homosexuality.... I got dismissed from Harvard because I had given psychedelics to an undergraduate. We had agreed with the dean that we would not give psychedelics to undergraduates.” Ram Dass flashes a mischievous grin. “He was an attractive kid.”
Edit: From the link below: "To prove someone guilty of any crime, the prosecution generally must prove, 1. That the person physically committed the act in question, and 2. That the person intended to commit the crime. Intent in criminal law is complicated. It refers to a person's state of mind. Criminal intent can be either general intent or specific intent. Most crimes are classified under one of the those two categories. Specific intent crimes, require that the person actually intend to commit the crime. General intent crimes only require proof that the person intended to commit the act, not the crime. For example, theft requires specific intent of not only taking the item but also intending to permanently keep it - depriving the owner of possession permanently. With general intent crimes, the fact that the act was committed is enough to prove intent. "
https://videos.lawinfo.com/litigation-and-appeals/how-can-a-...
"...I got dismissed from Harvard because I had given psychedelics to an undergraduate. We had agreed with the dean that we would not give psychedelics to undergraduates.” Ram Dass flashes a mischievous grin. “He was an attractive kid.”
That's all that is said about the situation.
LSD certainly is not. It's not the safest of psychedelics from the psychological point of view (give it to a kind loving person and they will become even more loving and enlightened, give it to a psychopath and they will become even more dangerous) yet it usually doesn't switch consciousness and reason off (quite the opposite) and doesn't stimulate sexual desire. At least when taken in reasonable doses.
"Over the course of several years, Alpert claimed to have taken some 300 acid trips. Inevitably, the problem became one of facing the blandness of coming down.... Once, he says he and five others locked themselves in a building for three weeks and dropped 400 micrograms of LSD every four hours. Still; when the trip was over, it was over. Finished. Done. In “Be Here Now,” Ram Dass describes the pain: “It was as if you'd come into the kingdom of heaven and seen how it all is, and then you got cast out again.” Looking for a way to get up there and stay up there, maybe even without drugs ... Alpert split for India."
Today. tuned out, turned off, and dropped out of sight.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/04/archives/confessions-of-a...