Ram Dass has died | Hacker News Reader

Ram Dass has died

tricycle.org

372 pointsokareaman192 comments

I did some work for him about 15 years ago -- helping him set up an ecommerce store with oscommerce. Really really bright guy, amazing staff that shared his values, and a quaint little office space where they'd send the books and other things out.

Really pleasant guy.

There's an earlier article discussed on HN that kind of summarises who he was

The Unified Theory Of Ram Dass https://www.gq.com/story/the-unified-theory-of-ram-dass

HN nov 18 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18558488

From the GQ article:

> ... with his former life as a 29-year-old clinical psychologist on the faculty at Harvard named Dr. Richard Alpert. He'd been the pride of an esteemed Jewish family in Boston, with an impressive résumé (gigs at Stanford and Berkeley, a corner office and sterling reputation at Harvard) and all the trappings of success that came with his swinging young professorship, including a blue Mercedes-Benz, a Triumph motorcycle, a sailboat, a single-engine Cessna airplane, a live-in girlfriend in an apartment on one side of town and a live-in boyfriend on the other.

Maybe I'm out-of-touch with Harvard compensation ranges ... but is this practical given solely his salary or would he have need to supplement his income with family wealth or other income sources?

He had family money.

This part is more or less quoted from the talk in the first episodes of his podcast At least of the airplane he then later says ”well the bank owned it”. It was something he bought because Leary insisted they go to Mexico, he was still taking flight lessons at the time.

"Now the whole idea of a meditative practice is the process of very simply extricating awareness from the identification with thought & sensation." - Ram Dass

To any podcast listener I highly recommend: Ram Dass Here and Now.

It along with reading the Bhagavad Gita certainly changed my life and mindset forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9I4SVWpfdM I guess?

yes

Bhagavad Gita also advocates for varna system which is one of the shames of hinduism.

But not based on birth. It is advocated as a social structure based on the kind of work you do.

Sure. Maybe that's why the newborn child of a Brahmin is a Brahmin. /s

But seriously, as a Hindu I gotta ask, do we honestly think people are that clueless to fall for this bs?

I'm listening to Here and Now for the first time. Amazing stuff.

Richard was a beautiful soul who recognised, embraced and embodied the primacy of love. His life was his message.

he kept taking lsd trying to to recreate that specific feeling the trip can give you only to later learn you can get to that place without the drugs.

i had no idea he had a debilitating stroke. imagine being someone who’s life is defined by your good ability to articulate ideas hard to explain and communicate with anyone and then instantly turn to someone who has trouble expressing your thoughts. and doing that 20 years. man getting old fucking blows

He found peace in the stroke. It wasn't entirely bad, and he'd probably laugh that you felt more strongly about it than he did. Here's an interesting interview with him on just that:

https://www.readthespirit.com/explore/the-ram-dass-interview...

Absolutely, there's an excellent documentary about this called Going Home https://www.netflix.com/title/80209895

> ...Going Home

OMG not familiar with the person being talked about but "going home" resonates with me. leonard cohen wrote some powerful songs in his old age and "going home" is one of them.

I wonder if the chronic LSD use and the stroke were related.

There's absolutely no scientific basis for that, besides that I don't think he used LSD much if at all past the hippie period. Certainly not regularly (and there are people who have used LSD weekly for years with no apparent damage)

the nyt obituary mentioned that he used it a couple of times a year into old age

There are also many people who've used LSD a lot and end up with mental issues caused by the drugs. But not as far as I know, not strokes or anything like that.

LSD is used in ridiculously minute quantities, with standard doses measured in micrograms (millionths of a gram). It's astonishing enough that this can have a profound effect on the brain, but it's highly unlikely to cause physical damage to larger organs like the heart.

The size of the dose is not a great measure of safety. Botulinum toxin has an LD50 in the nanograms, and several other toxins in the same range of LSD, that being micrograms.

Now no strong evidence of toxicity has been found from LSD, but that's not due to it being taken in small doses.

In theory, every LSD dose consumed is pure LSD. In practice there are many stand-ins that are cheaper and easier to produce. They have different tox profiles and one never knows what one is actually taking unless you run your samples through a battery of quantitative tests. The one or two field tests out there are easily fooled if the counterfeiter is of a mind to fool them

I'm not sure that's true for LSD. It's much stronger per mg than other such drugs and as a result tends to be added to other things rather than having things added to it.

My understanding is that synthesizing even one atom of LSD is probably more expensive and difficult than making several grams of some NBOMe derivative. The production costs don't scale to zero and the synthesis itself is beyond the abilities of some "drug cooks"

Don't have any personal experience. I was a grad student working on organic synthesis once but never did anything illegal

Too bad it's not legal and regulated. I personally am just fine with reality and don't use any reality altering drugs but it would a lot safer if LSD was a regulated substance that the FDA could insure its quantity and quality.

Certainly something that should be studied. Too bad the federal government in the US effectively banned any research into LSD for decades.

So we should lift the ban on LSD research so that we can give people LSD and see if it increases their risk of stroke?

Correct; instead of armchair pharmacist-ing on some internet forum, we should collect actual data about its effects so that people can make more informed decisions about what/whether there are good uses for this chemical. Just like we do with other drugs.

No, that's not what we do with other drugs. No one goes to an IRB with "We suspect this drug is bad for people, we should run a study to find out," and gets approval for that study.

If you wanted to perform an observational study on whether or not people already consuming LSD are at heightened risk of stroke, I highly doubt the federal ban would affect that.

There are lots of suspicions about how LSD might be good for people too; how do we figure out which suspicions are factual and not?

There are more and more studies emerging (see https://maps.org/research/ and https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/09/04/hopkins-launches-psychedelic-...). That said, Erowid, and anecdotal reports, can be very valuable as well.

Yeah, I definitely don't disagree that informal reports are useful too. Was just reacting to the idea that it shouldn't be studied at all because of some rumors.

As opposed to banning research on everything that hasn't already been researched because it could have some negative health effect we don't know about?

Yeah that's typical conservative mentality that is feeling based rather than reason based. It's a real shame how backward governments are in this respect.

It doesn't, and I'm willing to donate my own body and mind to science to prove it if ever given the opportunity, and there are many others who feel the same way.

You won't have any trouble finding test subjects who are entirely cognizant of the dangers but place emphasis on pioneering the study of pyschochemistry.

The US maybe but there was research in London recently

>A group of psychologists at Goldsmiths, University of London, led by Devin Terhune, published the first placebo-controlled study on microdosing in late 2018

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-microdoses-of-...

Strokes are _very_ common. It‘s the third most common cause for death (or something in that ballpark). A lot of the leading figures in psychedelics lived long lives. Incidentally, Alexander Shulgin also died at 88. Albert Hoffman lived to 104.

No.

There's actually a quite interesting movie about Ram Dass, about his life before and after stroke. It became a revelation that continuing living required digging deeper, and made him question much of his past, acting like the famous yogis and fooling around. When high on spirit, one may become a bit arrogant and full of oneself. He got more or less to see himself as "no more enlightened" than others, realize more of being the same as others, conscious sameness. That being a yogi is about much more than being famous, wealthy or having good health, none of that actually.

Lots of spiritual saints have had bad accidents and maladies in their life. Their power is often how to turn it to something deeper, meaningful, helping others and being inspirational - or just make a laugh about it. Ashtavakra was a total cripple (Ashtavakra means "8 knots" in the body), yet is studied and highly revered in India for his Gita.

No Apple right?

Be Here Now got Steve to India for a year. A year in India is a long time.

And back he came, and so came Macintosh.

There is a connection. Think different. India can do that to you. Along with blowing your mind.

Of all the bogus teachers of the 60-70s, Ram Dass was the real thing. He overcame a lot, thanks to the example of Neem Karoli Baba. Be Here Now was consonant with and a testimony to The Perennial Tradition.

We live in times where that tradition - except where it's still living amongst people close to the Earth - is completely blanketed by bogus substitutes and diversions. Too bad, because we could sure use a macrodose.

Through that article I looked into an organization Ram Dass was involved in called Social Venture Network which seems to have rebranded as Social Venture Circle.

The article seems to mistakenly say Ram Dass founded it (he's not mentioned in their wikipedia article at all) and a post on his blog seems to just say he "started to hang out with them" but it still seems like an interesting organization. Does anybody have any experience or thoughts on it or their initiatives?

I believe this is the current website: https://www.svcimpact.org/

“Be Here Now” absolutely clusterfucked my brain when I first read it, on LSD.

This is sad news, but who knows what is beyond death’s door? He was done of the few who not only sought out Death’s address but also mapped out the neighborhood.

This hit like a truck. I don't feel sad, but I do feel strongly about it. Hope he met death in peace and excitement.

Same here. I surprised myself by shedding a few tears, but they were happy tears for a man and life well lived. His living example and teachings helped me in many ways over the years, starting with the practice of living in the moment or "Be Here Now" up to his talks on subjects like addiction. Here he discusses his own addiction to food and the anxiety behind it: Overcoming Addiction & Attachment - Ram Dass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV7PyQDod40

It's fascinating to me, how this demographics on HN is really generally clueless (except with a few exceptions), have NO CLUE to what happened in the 60's clueless. I guess it's just a generational thing.

That was probably one of the most incredible mind fuck earthquakes to blow up our society and rebuild it.

But I guess that's history. And each generation has it's own. Today we have Justin Bieber. Then we had Hendrix.

Times sure have changed. :-)

9/11 and the financial crisis seemed pretty earthquake as well.

I never understood the fascination with these gurus. They repackage old ideas and dress them up a bit before using them to lure in weak-willed and gullible devotees. Most, and Ram Dass was no exception, were incredibly flawed people, albeit intelligent and charismatic, with clear psychogical issues.

Dass bounced around between gurus that exploited women and men before returning to the US to do much the same. That, the drugs, and the lies over the years just makes whatever he says unpalatable.

"They repackage old ideas" Old in the East, new to the West. I'm sure Ram Dass would agree that he was a flawed person, except possibly the allegation that he lied. What kind of lies are you talking about? If you want to call students "gullible devotees" ok. You say "exploited women and men" to mean he had sex? You think he should have been celibate? You're looking at the finger, not at what the finger is pointing to.

Let's say you get sick. So you get in your car and drive to what Google maps says is the nearest hospital. You arrive, and people dressed as nurses and doctors are bustling about. They check you in, perform some tests, give you some medicine, and you pay before you leave. The medicine sort of works you think, and with time you get better.

A week later you find out that the hospital was actually run by people that had little formal training as doctors. Some took a few classes on Coursera or first aid training, but none really devoted themselves to the profession beyond a cursory level. But they seemed so professional you think, but then again without medical knowledge how would you know? On top of that you find they've been using their position to influence medical opinions behind the hospital, gain fame, and earn large sums of money from desperate people looking to be healed. Sure, they inadvertently cure some people, and others just got better due to time.

To me this is like Ram Dass and so many other gurus. Their lies are layered under the façade they present and under the ideas they explain, most often poorly and without context. They may inadvertently help people, but just as much they are preying on those desperate for answers and help. They are unqualified scam artists who know just enough to be dangerous. The lie is embodied in who they purport to be and in the help they try to provide.

Can you give an example for one such lie coming from Ram Dass? I'm not saying there isn't one because I'm not familiar with his work but I'm familiar with another "flawed" guru, Alan Watts. And while you may not enjoy his ideas or think he is correct it would be very hard to call him a liar because what he does is simply take reality and give you another angle to look at it from.

These spiritual gurus are like a distinct type of art. Not everyone is partial to it but certain segments of the population are more likely to find something in it that moves them. You may call these people fools but it's not much different then holders of one political viewpoint viewing the holders of the opposing one as fools. These are just perspectives, there are no absolute right and wrongs here (leaving aside some extremes), because the human experience cannot be narrowed down to science.

Can you point out where the people in my hospital example lied? If they never claimed to be doctors, but dressed up and acted as them, is it a lie? Lies come in many forms, some are explicit and others less so.

I don't see them as fools, but as charismatic and intelligent people who have found a way to garner adoration, fame and other benefits by exploiting psychologically weak and vulnerable people. Whether they do so knowingly or not varies from guru to guru. I think many of them do start off with good intentions but quickly find themselves buying into the mystique others have built up around them. They are often as weak as their devotees. Dass falls into this camp in my mind. Is it wrong, no, but I feel it's important to point out.

> Is it wrong, no

Yes you are wrong about Ram Dass. He was no Osho or Jim Jones.

> you find out that the hospital was actually run by people that had little formal training as doctors

Ram Dass aka Dr Richard Alpert was a Harvard professor of Psychology

this is unlikely to be a popular opinion here :-)

but as someone who lives in a culture (India) overrun by "gurus" of all shapes and forms, spouting Roscharchian mumbo jumbo packaged as "ancient wisdom", I largely agree with and sympathize with your viewpoint.

As an Indian who isn't in India at the moment, I empathise with you. I just googled for "Guru arrested" [0] and there seems to be a ton of results for the search term. It is really unfortunate that a lot of people are abusing their position as "Gurus" to cater to their base needs.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=guru+arrested&oq=guru+arrest...

> Dass bounced around between gurus that exploited women and men before returning to the US to do much the same.

The book "Saints and Psychopaths" talks about a case where Ram Dass was following an explotative guru in the US in the late 70s. I thought it was interesting that he was still doing that then, and also that the story isn't so well known.

But what do you mean by "the lies over the years"? He never struck me as a liar.

Perhaps lies is not the best word in this case. Is there a word in English for someone that gives advice knowing that they themselves are not qualified to do so? Like if I were to confidently give you medical advice despite not being a doctor. Putting on a façade?

Charlatan

Quack.

> repackage old ideas and dress them up a bit

Philosophies & religions (hell, ideas in general) have always been iterative in this way. They all have a genealogy that goes back in time further than is commonly assumed.

I’m a fan of Ram Dass - but not “fascinated”. To me he was like a spiritual comedian sharing the absurdity of this life. I find it’s helpful to get perspectives from far out people - perhaps so I don’t have to venture so far out myself. By no means does he get a pass for any transgressions.

Talk is cheap. Talk that makes broad, vague accusations is cheap. Talk that makes accusations of the dead is cheap. Talk that makes accusations without backing them up with evidence is cheap.

You just slung a boatload of cheap mud.

Ok, but please don't respond to one indignant comment with another. We're trying to avoid that here, and a thread about Ram Dass is a great place to work on it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

good point

What has Ram Dass taught that was anything more than feel good self-help level material put into a palatable form fit for those wanting to hear soothing words?

Sure, he was intelligent, had a PhD, and was a likeable guy. He also spent much of his early years doing drugs (LSD experiments) and bouncing around ashrams in India with less than reputable gurus.

The guy was quoted as saying Jerry Garcia was a Bodhisattva, if that says anything about his state of mind.

He was, like most gurus, exceedingly arrogant at times. 'It is useful here to remember that your guru, even though you may not have met him in his manifest form knows everything about you, everything.' Who says stuff like that?

Dass was no more put together than anyone else, especially considering how he boucned around with ideas, even becoming a devout evangelical Christian at one point. The guy was put on a pedestal by people and he made the best of it.

There is tons of stuff that weighs against the guy, but I'm on mobile and out and don't remember much. I don't consider him to be wholly malicious in his actions like many purported 'gurus,' but he is still a scam artist for letting others follow him while reaping the benefits.

There would be no 60's generation w/o Ram Dass and Tim Leary. We would have continued the 1950's mind set. As they say, "those 2 just closed the door shut on the '50s, and blew our minds with what came next."

Sounds like you are missing that part. I've attended Ram Dass lecture, he just blew us all away. He was that far out. He got it. He really did. Life, Death and what comes next. Just got it. Like no one else. He just did.

HIGHLY suggest watch this one. Dying To Know - Ram Dass & Timothy Leary - Documentary

https://youtu.be/WAAON4PjJTs

Let's drill down,

Why go to gurus to listen to ideas or ideology, that you can read in books and practice at your home?

Why go to college when you can learn anything from books or by working on it (as profession or hobby)?

Why go to tax planner when you can file taxes on your own?

In World, where information is asymmetric, (and we lack time to acquire information or expertise) we need help. They are our references/guides, with assumption and hope of good faith (No fiduciary agreement)

This is classic Principal Agent Problem.

Does Principal has flaws? Yes. Do they always work in good faith? No.

Simply put, What to do with information/guidance one receive is their prerogative and life/lifestyle of these people is theirs.

Should we appreciate ideas more than the people behind it? Yes. Will we ever do it? No.

I know you want to "drill down" but your choice of comparisons is not apt.

Why do people go to Tarot card readers? It is almost certainly possible to study as much about Western esotericism and ritualistic practices as it is to study about ancient Indian religions. You have the same asymmetry of knowledge (Tarot card reader took the time to acquire expertise which you don't have time to). You have the same person/idea division (maybe your Tarot card reader is a drunkard and a philanderer but he can sure read those cards).

I think we have some weird prejudice when it comes to Indian spirituality. For some reason we bend over backwards to give it the benefit of the doubt that we deny to other traditions. You want to compare Indian Gurus to college professors and tax planners. The truth is they are closer to psychics and spirit mediums.

I don't know about Eastern vs Western religions/"spiritual paths" but I find them both to be a waste of time. Any type of "revealed knowledge" whatever the source should be treated with suspicion if not disdain.

I feel you completely missed my argument here, which ended with,

Does Principal has flaws? Yes. Do they always work in good faith? No.

Simply put, What to do with information/guidance one receive is their prerogative and life/lifestyle of these people is theirs.

Should we appreciate ideas more than the people behind it? Yes. Will we ever do it? No.

———

One does not have to ”follow” these gurus, be it Indian or otherwise. But I also believe, one should have open mind to listen to all ideas. Eventually, What one doss with these ideas is one’s choice. It has nothing to do with bending over backwards.

> one should have open mind to listen to all ideas

Maybe you missed my argument then? Why not keep an open mind about Tarot, astrology and the healing power of crystals? At least in the West, these ideas are ridiculed outright and the ideas behind them mocked by the association. Yet the "love is the answer" surface of most Guru philosophy has almost the exact same philosophical centre as the esoteric roots of those practices. For some reason while most feel no compulsion to defend western esotericism they do insist people have an open mind about Indian spiritual ideas.

To be clear - I have no care at all what someone wants to study. My point is that there is a drastic difference in how we treat these ideas within popular culture. Spiritual teachers that peddle Indian ideas are treated significantly differently than spiritual teachers that peddle western ideas. As far as I am aware there is no basis for this. With your attempt to compare Indian spiritual teachers to accountants and professors you just provided an opportunity to highlight this difference. I know of no one who would allow such a comparison for a Tarot card reader.

What one study, listens or believe is their choice, regardless of the medium through which one acquire that learnings (be it a professor or guru. By your argument all professor and accounts are almost always correct because?)

Also, just because something is science does not make people believe it (for the most part of our civilization earth was flat and for many global warning is hoax) Similarly, just because something is NOT science does not make people NOT believe it too.(the whole world of placebo is not science that has shown to work for many)

cheers,

You're not really drilling down. All these pseudo-spiritual "gurus" lay the entire basis of their thinking out using mystical thinking to explain things rather than anything intellectual. I'd rather follow a random number generator with where to go next with my life experiences than these types of frauds.

You’d be surprised to hear many of these spiritual gurus. Their ideas are much more logical (if not intellectual) than an average priest (of any religion) whose learning/ideas are almost always about religion. Again, I’m not making the case for or against anyone here.

Like I said in my previous comment, One does not have to ”follow” these gurus, be it Indian or otherwise. But I also believe, one should have open mind to listen to all ideas. Eventually, What one doss with these ideas is one’s choice.

If I had a house in Maui along with all the academic and financial success he's had (in no small part as a consequence of being born into money), I too would love everyone and consider all of my actions "an offering to God"

The messengers are usually flawed, but the message is good. Same with so many other things which can positively enhance our perspective: comedy, art, music. The messengers are one of us, and while they’ve often glimpsed a possibility most of us haven’t seen, they’re still bound by the same limitations of humanity the rest of us experience. Their message can be guideposts toward a better existence, even if their examples fall short. Finger pointing at the moon, and all that.

Hmmm, to me, it’s not about the person at all. It’s about their message & whether it’s helpful for my own mind.

“It’s entirely possible, as far as I’m concerned, psychedelics are another yoga” Ram Dass in “The Only Dance There Is” page 47. Published 1970

November 26, 2019 The FDA is fast-tracking a second psilocybin drug to treat depression https://www.popsci.com/story/health/psilocybin-magic-mushroo...

Richard Alpert (before becoming Ram Dass) on LSD experience in the interview from the 1960s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P3TrGCMHNU

And Timothy Leary in the interview from 1966:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXBg3BVDVHM

What seems extremely impressive now, is how clear their thinking was, and how confident they felt in the importance of what they have to share.

And it wasn't something one could have just found in the books.

What an amazing person. He has somewhat been my guide and mentor although I have never met him personally. He will always be in my heart. Hope he achieves whatever he hoped for in his afterlife.

A good man. He will be missed.

I recommend his "Be Here Now". Such a fine book.

This was posted on Twitter:

“I encourage you to make peace with death, to see it as the culminating adventure of this adventure called life.

It is not an error.

It is not a failure.

It is taking off a tight shoe which you have worn well.”

- @BabaRamDass

️️️️️️️

> Curious to see how a spiritual adept would react to LSD, Alpert gave Maharaj-ji a whopping dose. It had zero effect on the holy man.

This is oversimplified and maybe a bit misleading.

Ram Dass's own account[1] of giving Neem Karoli Baba the "Yogi Medicine" is more colourful and to me suggests that there was some effect and that the Baba was able to tolerate it for the first hour, after which Ram Dass was possibly not present with the Baba for further observations.

[1] https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-gives-maharaji-the-yogi-med...

Your comment is leaving out the last part, which is crucial:

And then we waited. After some time he pulled the blanket over his face, and when he came out after a moment his eyes were rolling and his mouth was ajar and he looked totally mad. I got upset. What was happening? Had I misjudged his powers? After all, he was an old man (though how old I had no idea), and I had let him take twelve hundred micrograms. Maybe last time he had thrown them away and then he read my mind and was trying to prove to me he could do it, not realizing how strong the “medicine” really was. Guilt and anxiety poured through me. But when I looked at him again he was perfectly normal and looking at the watch.

At the end of an hour it was obvious nothing had happened. His reactions had been a total put-on. And then he asked, “Have you got anything stronger?” I didn’t. Then he said, “These medicines were used in Kullu Valley long ago. But yogis have lost that knowledge. They were used with fasting. Nobody knows now. To take them with no effect, your mind must be firmly fixed on God. Others would be afraid to take. Many saints would not take this.” And he left it at that.

I left out the whole thing, actually, but my opinion took that into account. I get the impression that Ram Dass was a bit of a Karoli Baba fanboy and certainly the drug had enough of an effect that Karoli Baba felt something, even if he didn't outwardly show it; or perhaps Ram Dass was too starry-eyed to note it as such.

Well it teaches us a couple things.

The same narrative replays with many successful people - Bruce Lee (Jiddu Krishnamurthi), John Lennon, Brian Josephson (Mahesh Yogi), Steve Jobs etc etc. And from there it becomes myth for the rest of the population.

Taking drugs/performing a ritual/chanting a prayer/meeting yoda (authority figure) etc - is people trying to cope with something that has happened in their life.

Therapy options weren't great back then, and people had to work out by themselves, what we take for granted in a modern psychology textbook today, all while going through some traumatic life event.

Even today it's not straight forward to do and it becomes easy to poke holes in the path people took and even currently take. Which then leads to defensiveness and reactions, which further misguide and mislead everyone.

It also points at the need of some smart people for an Authority Figure to validate whatever new narrative they are trying to rebuild about themselves and the world after they go through some trauma and their existing narratives break down.

I didn't intend to come across as poking holes into Alpert's telling of the Karoli Baba/LSD story. If anything, Alpert told it seemingly without deliberate exaggeration.

It's the retelling of the story in this oversimplified version (as I've even heard Sam Harris tell in a podcast) of a Himalayan Yogi taking LSD with no effect that I wanted to highlight as incorrect, in the sense that it diverges significantly from Alpert's own account.

And yes, I also think he was a bit overly enthusiastic about Karoli Baba at the time. Don't we all act like that at many points in our lives?

Agree. I was just adding some context about these narratives. And I really have no issues with anything you have said.

>To take them with no effect, your mind must be firmly fixed on God.

Reminds me of Mark 16:18 where Jesus is speaking of those who believe: "...and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not harm them..."

touch base here: "Be here now" transformed my brainz too. afaik Ram Dass is well and alive, and will be for many years to come

"When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are."

– Ram Dass

It’s correct to regard trees, but not people, as products of their environment. Trees don’t make choices. People do.

Then I advise you to read what you’ve posted on an obituary thread and change.

People's choices also are in some way a product of their environment (heritage, parents, neighborhood and so on) and their suchness/nature, both of which they can't do much about - aren't they? Besides, judging them is hardly useful - they're what they are and society has already got the consequences part covered so what's judgment adding here?

Isn't expecting society to take care of the consequences part just delegating judgment?

Idle mental judgement vs formal societal one with physical consequences.

but we only have formal societal judgements because we people made idle judgements and then talked about them with each other and formalized it - no?

Do we need to keep making personal judgements to keep the social ones going? Was it really a bunch of people idly judging that really lead to the formal ones to be defined?

IOW sure if objective judgement is needed towards some utility - making formal/societal ones - do it. The point like with every 'don't' is not to say don't judge no matter - point is don't generally judge unless it is fair/useful/targeted towards general betterment.

I think there is inherent value to openly judging people, and there is nothing inherently wrong with having and expressing "negative" emotion. IMO where we are actually failing as a society is in our acceptance of /being judged/. And I do not mean acceptance in the way where you must feel positive about it - my point is exactly the opposite; openly judge them right back. If two people judge each other harshly and also are accepting of each other then they may still carry on with seizing opportunities to help each other rather than creating distance and trying to forget each other exists. Over time, the confrontation is a catalyst for evolving our behavior with each other but only if we are all accepting of being judged

If I am truly honest, I think it is ironic to preach for people to not do something (like judge) as a means of supporting an acceptance of people's behaviors. I feel like there is an underlying assumption to your stance that judgement and harsh language is inherently bad. You can both accept someone the way they are and judge them for it.. and I personally believe it is /required/ to accept them the way they are in order to provide a more "objective" judgement.

edit: to answer your question, yes i believe idle judgements are the grassroots to future formalized societal rules. formalism is a well studied idea in philosophy and is ultimately a self sustaining illusion built upon informal phenomenon. In other words, you cannot create a formal system to govern subjective behavior without informal subjective behavior laying the groundwork first.

Maybe the point is that most people are also products of their environment (culture, family, etc).

An exercise I learned from Sam Harris that finally started to convince me that free will is an illusion goes as follows:

1. Choose a movie title

2. Now do it again with your eyes closed and try to figure out precisely how you chose the movie title.

3. Keep doing it.

After a while you realize that stuff just “appears” to us. The same holds true for more than just movie titles. How exactly that process works, or why it appears like as if we have free will is an interesting subject.

You really think you didn't choose to engage in and persist in that exercise? You don't think you had any choice in considering the arguments and whether to accept/reject them?

I honestly understand why determinism sounds like a compelling theory, but it's not just experience that defies it. I see no compelling reason to argue for determinism if you sincerely believe in it.

Ok, let's go one level deeper. How do you decide which argument makes sense to you? For example, say you choose 'X' or 'Y' because of criterion 'A'. Why criterion 'A'? What makes you think that that's a suitable criterion in this situation? Repeat ad infinitum."It's obvious", you say in frustration at the end. But is it really? There's a reason we are nowhere near AGI...

Anyway, try defining free will precisely. You'll find that it's an extremely incoherent concept (within our current model of causality) . Try posting your definition and I'll be happy to poke holes in it. There's a reason that the free will vs determinism debate hasn't gone anywhere for thousands of years. Perhaps we need a new way of thinking about causality.

The fact that we use intuition in choice and not some formal rational system seems orthogonal to whether we're making choices or only experience an illusion of choice.

Legally determinism is rejected out of hand, interpersonally we assume that individuals bear responsibility for their choices, it's only in some abstruse metaphysical sense that determinism means anything, and there it's largely meaningless.

determinism is frequently weighed in consideration of criminal cases; eg mental illness and insanity affecting sentences

While there are qualifiers for things like mental illness, the system assumes free will by default making rare exceptions for responsibility for people in some states of mind. Whatever that is, it's not determinism.

if a person is not held responsible for the actions they carry out, what can the underlying logic be but a rejection of free will? things will get truly interesting this century as we get better at projecting probabilities based on genetics and personal data; if a man is less culpable because of predispositions, why should we even let him out? this is a fundamental tension in our justice system.

I can agree that you are factually correct, but I disagree with the conclusion. Namely, "coming-up with something" in your head definitely looks a lot like things are appearing out of nowhere.

But we also make choices and decisions as we encounter situations. I'm not a particularly creative person, so I see my freewill expressed more in the form of the decisions and choices I make. I am fully conscious that if I do this, that is a likely outcome, good or bad. I have emotions that affect my judgment and decisions, but I also have the ability, with my own willpower, to choose to overcome those as well.

To describe this process as just thoughts appearing to me seems overly simplistic. Just because we don't understand a process in intimate detail doesn't mean we can ascribe to it sheer randomness. There are very real things happening, and we acknowledge this through other, more complex emotions like guilt, regret, sadness, and so on based on our actions that go a certain way and then with pride, happiness, and confidence when they go another way.

It seems like an overly complex system for things that just "appear" in out head. The fact that we experience these emotions as a result of choices indicates to me that we are capable of acknowledging when we've made a "right" or "wrong" choice, and sometimes it's also "complicated", like almost everything else in this world is (i.e., somewhat in between).

In re: free will, illusion of: see "Planet Without Laughter"

> excerpted from "This Book Needs No Title: A Budget of Living Paradoxes" by Raymund Smullyan

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html

"I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills" accompany me in all situations throughout my life." -- Albert Einstein

Being capable of feeling like an observer to your free will does not make it any less yours in my opinion. Also everything you think of in this moment was seeded in the past by your free will.

And you can use ideological systems, like math or economics or even your impression of another person, to generate endless amounts of ideas. And for each of them you veto all other possible options in order to generate the one you do at the time you do so. Then on top of that you have the conscious power to accept or reject the idea you've generated.

I've come to believe that humans are only really responsible for their behaviour when present, and then their behaviour is compassionate and kind. Most people, most of the time, are more-or-less running on automatic, like meat-robots.

In other words, if they are asleep they're blameless and if they are awake they're harmless.

I'm not claiming it's true, I'm just saying that it's helped me to be more forgiving and easy-going.

>I've come to believe that humans are only really responsible for their behavior when present.

True. Being present means you observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking and the body acting. It means you bring yourself into focus, becoming aware of your own existence, watching the motives and the results of your actions, and Studying the person you have built around yourself, inadvertence. I became less judgmental, and calmer since i began learning to 'query' and question my motives. These days I don't do it as often as I used to, but i am much less on auto-pilot.

This comment should not be downvoted. We have yet to explain all the inner workings of the brain nor the exact mechanism that drives human behavior. Some future discovery will, perhaps, make our current understanding look downright stupid and primeval in retrospect.

Let's state the obvious: humans _choose_ to modify themselves and their surroundings in a way trees do not, and it offers us the ability to move away from the light if we want. Failure to recognize this apparent difference stunts any drive to investigate further and it's insulting to both humans and trees.

On a level of empathy, I get it. We need compassion for eachother and predicaments that are often not of our choosing. Fine. Let's at least say that in some ways people are like trees and in other ways they are not. Ultimately that's not a very deep insight and rings very much like the kind of thing teenagers say while stoned.

However - I mean no disrespect to Richard or Ram or however he wanted to be called. The man did incredible work toward helping his fellow humans and for this reason alone he deserves great respect. I'm sad for his loss and I hope I can do even a portion of the good he did during his life.

> Trees don’t make choices. People do.

There are philosophies that believe otherwise.

I get the concept of appreciating people for what they are, but I don't know what to do with this knowledge. Maybe I can apply it to an eccentric neighbor, but how would I apply it to an unproductive employee, lying partner, or self-destructive friend.

Thinking more about this, the forest is like a busy sidewalk full of people, but the people in our lives are more like the beautiful tree in the back yard that we take care of.

If a tree is harmful (poison?) or dangerous (about to fall and crush you?) you either cut it down or stay away from it and warn others to stay away from it.

I think that quote is describing the fundamental attribution error: "the tendency for people to under-emphasize situational explanations for an individual's observed behavior while over-emphasizing dispositional and personality-based explanations."

When you see someone cut you off in traffic, you might instantly assume they are just a born jerk that doesn't care about others, but maybe they are rushing to the hospital.

In practice, you deal with the unproductive employee, lying partner, etc. the same way you always have. You still need to protect your own interests and not let people take advantage of you.

But it means you don't let it affect you emotionally in the same way. While most people have a kind of internal monologue that goes "why are these people so bad, why is the world wronging me, I didn't do anything to deserve this, why does life suck so bad sometimes, it's all these people's fault" you instead learn to just accept that the world has these people and not to waste emotional angst on them. You deal with them as necessary and then move on internally without anger, hatred, etc.

I used to lose my shit at underpeforming co-workers all the time and then a more experienced guy pulled me aside and gave me a quote that was intended to do the same thing as Ram Dass's tree quote:

"Nobody comes to work to do a bad job."

What I realized that judging other people narrowed my vision so that I couldn't see any options. All I could see was that they were bad people who were going to hurt the project.

When I could hold off on personalizing other people's performance then I could start to spot other reasons and sometimes even figure out constructive solutions. Maybe the other person is not delivering the code I need because they were given competing priorities.

So, yeah, as you say, you still have to deal with these situations. I just found that I could see many more options for how to deal once I stopped being so judgmental.

If a man is crossing a river And an empty boat collides with his own skiff, Even though he be a bad-tempered man He will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, He will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, And yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty. He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat Crossing the river of the world, No one will oppose you, No one will seek to harm you.

If you think someone would hold their tounge because their car got hot by an empty one, i got some youtube compilations to enlighten you.

> In practice, you deal with the unproductive employee, lying partner, etc. the same way you always have.

This is one option, but not the only one.

"When you go out into the office, and you look at the landscape, you see all these different employees. And some of them are highly productive and collaborative, and some of them are less so, and some of them are positive high-achievers, and some of them are whatever. And you look at each employee and you allow it. You see [or try to see] why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that they didn’t get enough love or understanding, and so they turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the person."

"The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are."

I think what Ram is getting at in the last paragraph is something along the lines that, while we can engage with nature in an unassuming, open-minded way, doing the same with other humans is extremely difficult. Due to our lack of control over our own minds, they get up to all sorts of mischief, jumping to unfounded and epistemically unsound conclusions, feeding our conscience minds with a representation of the world that is largely a hallucination.

One way of dealing with this in the case of a problem employee, is to talk to them. Easier said than done though of course, because that process is subject to the very same problem, and others.

> In practice, you deal with the unproductive employee, lying partner, etc. the same way you always have.

> But it means you don't let it affect you emotionally in the same way.

“When the great doctor D. T. Suzuki was asked what is it like to be enlightened he said, ‘It’s just like ordinary everyday experience, except about two inches off the ground.’”

— Alan Watts

Spot on! You shouldn't go to bed upset with that lazy/bullshitting coworker, yet you keep your healthy skepticism and protect yourself. And while you aren't "mad" at it, you don't pitch your tent beneath that dying, leaning tree with the exposed roots.

Just 'cause you appreciate a tree doesn't mean you're going to stand by it if it's about to fall on you.

Many spiritual gurus don't get married, have kids, run companies or live in violent areas. These are some of the most challenging (and potentially rewarding) social structures we have. They test you in deeper, more unexpected ways.

While "appreciating what is" is a great general rule, like any world-view it can be limiting.

I can imagine it's much easier to follow these concepts when you're safely surrounded by admirers. It's probably much harder to walk into a hostile / life-threatening situation and "appreciate what is".

> I can imagine it's much easier to follow these concepts when you're safely surrounded by admirers. It's probably much harder to walk into a hostile / life-threatening situation and "appreciate what is".

Except a handful of spiritual gurus who get famous, a overwhelming majority is not surrounded by admirers.

I can imagine it's much easier to follow these concepts when you're safely surrounded by admirers.

I can imagine that Vietnamese Buddhist monks of the 60s would share your sentiments. But they, too, could only imagine how much easier it might be. Well, I guess they didn't have to imagine very hard, as it was a lot easier just a few years back. (As background just in case, puppet pro-Catholic government was installed in Vietnam, and the national religion of Buddhism was effectively outlawed, leading at least one monk to set himself on fire in protest.)

I appreciate what you're driving at, I really do as I sit here on my couch in my warm house in one of the most wealthy U. S. suburbs in the country. Easy to do White Guy Suburban Buddhism in that environment. But just because many have it easy doesn't mean it's useless when times are hard.

Have you ever tended a garden? practical garden experience makes the answer pretty clear. You don't get angry at the rose bush for not having the roses you desired. You fix the problem, or get rid of the rose bush, or just let it be.

The same way you dont hang a hammock in a tree with a feeble trunk or dont sleep below a tree infested with poisonous insects.

You see them for what they are, without emotions and judgement and you do what is right.

In your mind, sincerely wish them well. Even if you can do nothing else for them it's OK - you are already doing good in the world.

Most people, when they look at life see it through a haze of memories of the past and worries of the future. To be able to see things as they are is the aim of spiritual practice.

That's neat. But trees don't cut you off in traffic or steal your packages off your porch or murder your aunt or cuss you out or talk too much or tell lies, etc. etc. etc.

They also don't make you soup, buy a birthday card, bring you flowers, hold the door for you, give you a hug, say I love you.

So, people aren't trees.

trees will fall on you and kill you. so just like people, trees will hurt you.

trees will recycle carbon into oxygen, provide cover from the sun and rain, and strengthen the soil. so just like people, trees will help you.

I like this quote, but it's good to remember why judgement exists. Judgement exists because it puts pressure on people to conform. You disapprove of their actions, and you let them know either explicitly, or implicitly through your behavior towards them. We all exert pressure on each other to conform to expectations. In an environment with no judgement, nobody conforms, everybody does what they want.

I'm saying something pretty banal really, everybody knows this. Ram Dass's quote here is emphasizing that you can be overly judgemental. You can be stuck in an endless rumination cycle where you stew over the failings of people around you. If you're in this mode of thinking, it's good to take a step back and think of humans like trees. But similarly, if you're constantly being taken advantage of because nobody thinks you care strongly about anything, well, maybe consider becoming more judgemental

> But similarly, if you're constantly being taken advantage of because nobody thinks you care strongly about anything, well, maybe consider becoming more judgemental

Being judgmental will do absolutely nothing to stop those people from taking advantage of you. only if you change your behavior can you change the situation. Looking at your situation fully and completely without fear and reactivity, that will save you. Judging all those people who are "doing this" to you, will do nothing but make you miserable. It is of course our nature to be judgmental but the work of Ramm Dass was to separate out those judgements to arrive at a state where you are truly not judging people. Has nothing to do with seeing what it is they do. an earthquake could level your town, and you see exactly what it is this earthquake did, and it was horrible. but you don't "judge" the earthquake, it just is. that's ultimately the state of all people too.

This is where I feel Reason comes in. While emotions are important, facts are always more important. Judging people is good if it's to further your own self interest otherwise it's a complete waste of mental energy. "Judging others" is a fact of life and has to be done, what shouldn't be done is doing it unnecessarily, especially when other people have no affect on your life. For example judging people over sexual/religious choice reasons is most often a waste of energy and shows your own unfair biases and character failures and just a projection of lack of self-esteem.

> Being judgmental will do absolutely nothing to stop those people from taking advantage of you.

You're right if we're talking about people who know you wouldn't like something and do it anyway (sociopaths / assholes). But you might be surprised how un-subtle the effect of knowing "that person will get pissed if I do this" is on changing people's behavior. Most people are reasonable, and they try to take the feelings of other people around them into account when deciding how to act. If your demeanor is always "Everything's cool, I'm taking it all in with no judgement" you can't really be surprised if people don't consider your preferences when making decisions.

> If your demeanor is always "Everything's cool, I'm taking it all in with no judgement"

No, you can walk away, or curse them out, or punch their lights out. These are all actions that do not imply you've "judged" them for what they do. There are multiple levels of perspective at play, but if you want to read Ramm Dass' writings with the assumption that being non-judgmental is a crock, that's pretty much how you'll come out of it. He was totally OK with that so in honor of his passing I will try today to be OK with it also.

I don't necessarily think his writings are a crock. I haven't read much of his work, but I read Paths to God and found it enjoyable. Largely, I guess I'm trying to contextualize judgement vs. non-judgement. If you're saying you can punch someone's lights out without judging them, my interpretation is that you're going through some process like this:

1. Suppress emotional judgement. (Maybe do this by re-framing their actions as something that is the way it is, like a tree or a river)

2. Evaluate the situation with a calm mind

3. Come to the conclusion that their behavior is undesireable in one way or another

4. Decide that in order to dissuade them from behaving that way in the future, you should punch them in the face.

5. Punch them in the face

I think it's probably a reasonable goal to insert a "stop and think" step before doing drastic things like punching someone in the face.

But I also think there's a non-negligible effect from using your emotions (in this case, the emption of judgement), to propel you to actually take action. I think it's very unlikely people are spurred to action by something that doesn't move them personally. There's just a bit of difference between "I'm mad about Trump. I'm definitely judging the hell out of him." and "I've come to the conclusion that Trump is a suboptimal president." I think a person in the former mindset is more likely to actually take action.

And again, I think in the context where people are too judgemental, and spend a bunch of time unproductively stewing about things, Ram Dass's advice to remove judgement is a good corrective.

> In an environment with no judgement, nobody conforms, everybody does what they want.

And the problem with that is, when nobody conforms, no profit can be made. A large part of Silicon Valley is predicated on people conforming (Facebook/Instagram, Twitter,WeWork, Snapchat, Amazon, Microsoft).

Judgment has been carefully bred in us, otherwise neoliberal capitalism would be unable to function and so the fat cats wouldn't be able to get their salami.

I know that "conforming" is a short-hand in literature for authoritarianism, lack of creativity, etc etc. But it gained that connotation in a context where our culture moved from a high conformity past, into a slightly lower conformity present. Much was gained when we allowed individuals more freedom.

By contrast, "no conformity" is a truly terrifying thing. Acting together towards common causes is a direct result of the ability of humans to sublimate their own personal desires to some degree and conform. Basically everything humans have accomplished is because of our ability to work together, and cooperation means not acting exactly how we'd like in every situation.

> Judgment has been carefully bred in us,

This is 100% true, but it isn't neoliberalism that bred it into us, it's that successful cultures had certain attributes that allowed them to conform, cooperate and accomplish things. This is humanity self-domesticating, not a sinister movie plot about corporations

Ram Dass just made me feel really bad about my hobby of Tree Shaping.

https://images.app.goo.gl/J5wzRAKuMjjZ8Lsv5

> Tree Shaping.

Tree mutilation

"If there is an enduring figure emblematic of the consciousness revolution of the 1960s and 70s, it is arguably the Harvard professor and LSD researcher-turned-spiritual leader born Richard Alpert but known the world over as Ram Dass."

I think HN needs an obituaries section. I'm not kidding.

"RAM" in headline should not be all caps, right?

> LSD-75
lsd-25
...
> Curious to see how a spiritual adept would react to LSD, Alpert gave Maharaj-ji a whopping dose. It had zero effect on the holy man.
This is so unlikely. Either the drug was no good, or Maharaj-ji was on something that negates the effects of LSD (anti-depressants, benzos, barbiturates, etc.)

Absolutely, either he wasn’t given LSD or the dude was on a tremendous amount of benzos. I read elsewhere that the dose was 1200 mcg, which is a very strong dose. Most recreational tabs are 75-250 mcg
LSD having no effect on Maharaj-Ji is about as likely as Prince Andrew not being able to sweat because of a scare during the Falkland War.

Maharajji's (Neem Karoli Baba) only possession was a blanket and he was living in a remote village in North India in the 60's. There is little chance that he had access to the drugs you mentioned.
And the LSD that was carried by Ram Dass was made by Sandoz, arguably the purest LSD that you could ever get.
May be reading Ram Dass' account of the event in _Be Here Now_ will provide some much needed context.

An anecdote being published in a book doesn’t make it true.

Correct and one should also point out that the field of yogis, spiritual teachers and holy men is full of fraudsters and charlatans.
That people seem willing to give unwarranted credit to some famous guy's claims does not invalidate your point. Ram Dass has said and written a lot of nonsense.

It is worth more than a downvote to mention here .. even if what you say is completely accurate, it is not the right time to say this, for really a lot of reasons
To address the content of your ill-timed comment, I enjoyed the book "Holy Madness" by Georg Feurstein. Details on request...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Feuerstein

When you read about Indian holy men, don’t take things literally. Instead, appreciate the message of the story

Theory: It had no effect because his sadhana already crossed the zone of consciousness LSD moves one to.
In advanced meditation alot of “effort” is spent on ignoring ephemeral phenomena including the kinds of visual and auditory phenomena LSD induces. An expert meditator at his level would likely be able to move freely into the “LSD Frequency” and out again with no drugs required.

I call bullshit on that. Besides the rampant charlatanism that infects the "expert" meditator community, my own multi-decade experience with meditation tells me that anyone who compares it to LSD or other strong psychedelics doesn't know what he's talking about.
You could be meditating for 10 years and not come anywhere near close to what 1 hit of LSD unveils about the mind and "you".

To be fair, we have no way to disprove anything about another person's subjective experience. Someone could have a special aptitude or talent in "meditation", broadly speaking. Our own accomplishments may not be any indication.

In same context, I never understood how did we conclude sugar is sweet ? Does my 'sweet' feeling is same as yours ? Crazy paradox.

Everyone's experience of sweetness may indeed be different, but at least the standard way to induce the experience of sweetness is ubiquitous and immediate. Just taste sugar. Decades of meditative experience is far less commonly found.

I also have "multi-decade experience with meditation" and, to me, LSD is a kind of toy. (Not in the sense of something to give to kids to play with, but rather in the sense of something not worth the time of sober seekers.)
YMMV

Beautiful way of putting it.

brains are a lot more complex than ordinary daily mind lets on.. corollary, things happen that we didnt know could happen

I think it had an effect, but it is possible that, through meditation, he had already achieved similar states of mind and become adept at controlling/navigating them.
This is totally anecdotal and based only on experiences I've had though. It's hard to make blanket statements about the nature of psychedelics.

It makes sense if we think about the adult mind as a rigid psychologic construct that temporarily loses rigidity when taking a psychodelic; so it doesn't has any effect if the mind has no rigid psy-construct to begin with.

Reading that sentence, “it had zero effect”, since there’s no context, no details, no elaboration at all, I wondered to myself if what Ram meant was that it had no lasting effect, no spiritual effect on Maharaj-ji, that it didn’t change his mind or world view at all. Perhaps Mahara-ji was tripping just like anyone, but afterward didn’t care or see it as any sort of enlightenment, and saw it the same way any of us would view getting drunk. That would have been a pretty serious blow for Ram; his own belief at the time was that LSD changed his life and presumably his hope in sharing it was it would change others. Maybe when it didn’t change Maharaj-ji’s life, Ram viewed it as having had zero effect.

"...I added yet another, making the total dosage nine hundred micrograms–certainly not a dose for beginners. Then he threw all the pills into his mouth. My reaction was one of shock mixed with fascination of a social scientist eager to see what would happen.
He allowed me to stay for an hour– and nothing happened. Nothing whatsoever.
He just laughed at me."
Did the guru pull a fast one?
An hour is not sufficient time for a peak.

The most believable explanation is that the guru only pretended to take them, or their trip just hadn't really started. I don't know why Ram Dass doesn't seem to consider these options, and it makes me wonder if he's too credulous in general.

It also depends on what "zero effects" means, exactly.
Thanks to a lot of meditation myself, I generally remain almost perfectly lucid on very large doses (10g+) of psilocybe cubensis. But boy, stuff is sure still happening. It's closely related to this quote above:
"Now the whole idea of a meditative practice is the process of very simply extricating awareness from the identification with thought & sensation." - Ram Dass
The more one practices this, the less one "loses oneself" in the ever-changing swirl of phenomena passing through the experiential field.
I should also add that this "witnessing" phase is not the end of the story, either. I'm not necessarily a big fan of Ken Wilber, but I like how he describes it here:
"This is actually the profound discovery of… the pure divine Self, the formless Witness, causal nothingness, the vast Emptiness in which the entire world arises, stays a bit, and passes. And you are That. You are not the body, not the ego, not nature, not thoughts, not this, not that – you are a vast Emptiness, Freedom, Release, and Liberation.
With this discovery… you are halfway home. You have disidentified from any and all finite objects; you rest as infinite Consciousness. You are free, open, empty, clear, radiant, released, liberated, exalted, drenched in a blissful emptiness that exists prior to space, prior to time, prior to tears and terror, prior to pain and mortality and suffering and death. You have found the great Unborn, the vast Abyss, the unqualifiable Ground of all that is, and all that was, and all that ever shall be.
But why is that only halfway home? Because as you rest in the infinite ease of consciousness, spontaneously aware of all that is arising, there will soon enough come the great catastrophe of Freedom and Fullness: the Witness itself will disappear entirely, and instead of witnessing the sky, you are the sky; instead of touching the earth, you are the earth; instead of hearing the thunder, you are the thunder. You and the entire Kosmos become One Taste – you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, hold Mt. Everest in the palm of your hand; supernovas swirl in your heart and the solar system replaces your head…"

Can’t find the reference, but according to a contemporary, Maharaj-ji palmed the LSD.
Then later, mixed it with sacred ash, and gave it as prasad to his devotees. Who were duly impressed with his shakti!

Ram Das himself admitted that he later found out that Maharaj-ji didn't actually take the LSD, but faked taking it.

Spirituality and philosophy are for people who can't get into actually important fields related to science, right?

science is for people who can't get into the real important field of life, like spirituality :P

Ha! Science can only get you so far and there are areas where it falls on it's face, for example explaining consciousness and that is where Spirituality and philosophy need to step in.

Or for those for whom science has answered as much as it can and are still looking for answers.

This is an important question that you must answer for yourself

Science will not help you with:
* Dealing with your own death or death of loved ones.
* Finding meaning and purpose to life.
* Dealing with anger.
* Coping with trauma.
* Coping with adversity.
* Dealing with addiction.
* Coping with social anxiety, acceptance or isolation.
* ...

True...

Psychology / psychiatry aren't sciences?

Reading all the psychology books in the world will not help one who is going through one or more of these issues.
Calling them soft sciences is the most generous categorization they deserve.

I disagree. Reading about psychology can provide you with a framework for understanding your own thought patterns and the behaviour of others. It's also often helpful to know that what you're going through isn't uniquely catastrophic; that it's part of the human condition which others have experienced and worked through. These may not work as fast or effectively as a therapist - especially in the acute phases - but they'd help considerably.

Not according to physicist Freeman Dyson [1]:
Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.
Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. The media exaggerate their numbers and importance. The media rarely mention the fact that the great majority of religious people belong to moderate denominations that treat science with respect, or the fact that the great majority of scientists treat religion with respect so long as religion does not claim jurisdiction over scientific questions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Science_and_reli...

> A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
—Einstein

His name is Ram, not RAM. I find this kind of headline editorializing inapropriate given the circumstances.

I don't know what happened there. I certainly didn't do that intentionally. I thought I just copied the title. I think I did and then the magazine revised their headline. Mods, please fix it.

It's likely HN's common error fixer. You and the magazine probably did nothing wrong, don't worry.

ahh yes, this is a computer oriented site and the abbreviation for random access memory may have it own special place it the spell checker.

Scunthorpe strikes again!

Prediction: resurgent Hindutva and global projection of Indian economic and cultural influence will result in a global awakening to the wisdom contained in ancient Vedic traditions. We might even see Sanskrit learning centers outside language departments like Oxford and Chicago.
I think the best place to start is probably with the Ramayana. And the age old question troubling sages for ages: Why does Ram banish Sita?
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Ramayana

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