Ep. 268 – Ram Dass and Stephen Levine: The Heart of Healing

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Welcome to another episode of Ram Dass's Here and Now. I'm your host Jackie Debrinska and you. Each of you is part of this worldwide sacred community, this satsang with all of us pointed towards our own awakening and evolution. We're so glad that you are tuning in for this perennial wisdom from this incredible luminary. This week we dive into a beautiful and profound and for many of us, challenging subject. Something that will eventually touch all of us. It's about pain and healing and death. And in this episode, Ram Dass and Stephen Levine. It was recorded in San Francisco in 1980 and it's the first of a three part series on these topics. So for those of you who might be unfamiliar, Steven Levine was a renowned teacher and author in the field of death and dying and he co founded Loving Kindness Meditation and spent days, decades guiding those facing terminal illness with compassion and wisdom. His works such as who Dies and A Year to Live, which is not only this incredible book but it is this profound practice to go through. Highly suggested but these works, they offer profound insights on living fully while confronting our mortality. And Stephen and Ram Dass often collaborated, especially looking at these themes of consciousness and healing and the nature of life and death. You know, just some light things for a Saturday, anyway. In today's conversation, Ram Dass and Stephen reflect on their work with those nearing the end of life and how their personal experiences shape their understanding of healing. That healing isn't so much about fixing the body or getting better. It's actually something much more profound and almost like a magic of finding wholeness in our lives and our hearts. And this approach that they're talking about, it reminds me of something I learned, gosh, a couple decades ago, maybe when I was in my Wise Woman traditions training. And it's this idea that healing is not about measuring or overcoming or fixing, that you can have cancer and still be healthy. Instead, healing is about finding our wholeness, a wholeness that unfolds when we embrace the natural flow of life and death, recognizing that all of it, all of it is part of the journey. The hopes, the joys, the fears, the pain, the unsteadiness. It's interconnected and necessary in some ways. And this is sort of a radical approach and opinion in the face of Western and alternative healing models. But it can offer an incredibly potent approach as we move through the ups and downs of illness and loss and just life. So as you listen, you'll hear them speak about healing as an act of presence, accepting the truth of the moment, touching pain with compassion, opening our hearts to the deeper wisdom that suffering can reveal and is necessary to reveal sometimes. It's a really deeply moving conversation, very tender. And it invites us to lean in not just to the conversation, but to our human shared experience of impermanence rather than shy away from it. And they share some raw personal stories. Ram Dass talks about his experience with his stepmother in her final days. Stephen talks about his experiences with clients with his work with Elizabeth Kubler Ross. And they highlight the importance of showing up with love and openness and presence. And it's once again this reminder that we cannot control what happens to us or our loved ones or our lives. But we do have a choice in how we respond to difficult moments. And I think that can be applied to everything in our lives these days. So before we dive in, I want to take a moment to once again talk about the incredible power of plants, specifically a few that bring clarity and focus. And magic Mind is this little drink that has so many incredible ingredients for our brain that help us stay focused and energized and clear. And whether you're managing a busy day or navigating Life challenges. Magic Mind is a great way to boost your energy and mental clarity without the crash. So learn more and get a special offer by going to magicmind.com Ram Dass and using the code Ram Dass. And also if you like to support this podcast and gain access to exclusive content, bonus episodes and more, please visit us@patreon patreon.com finally, if you prefer to watch, you can view this full video of this conversation on Ram Dass here and now YouTube channel. So with that, let us settle in and join Ram Dass and Steven Levine. And as always, we dedicate the merit of this as a practice, our listening as a practice, that it may benefit our lives and that it ripples out into the world to benefit the lives of all beings everywhere. And with that, here is Ram Dass here and now. Namaste and blessings.

Some months ago, Ram Dass and I were talking about the possibility of putting together a conference on the spiritual potentials involved in any crisis situation, but particularly with aids. And we had ideas of maybe a very large thing as a benefit to many of the groups actually who sponsored this. But as we looked at it, we saw things were changing so quickly, so much knowledge was coming up so rapidly, that almost nothing could be planned nine months in advance that then we would just go in there with a model that may have already, well, decayed behind us. This event came up much more organically. Talking to Daniel, he said, would you like to visit 5B? And here we are on 5B. 5B is the AIDS ward at is it San Francisco General? Maybe if we saw this as 5B, as though it weren't happening to someone else, as though we weren't innocent bystanders. This process, whatever it may be today, might be yet more powerful to look at this now here S5B. Feel your body now as though it was on 5B, not in quote, safe territory. So that you don't just listen, but instead you participate. So that we aren't touching the pain in others bodies, in others minds, with fear. Ram Dasa and I were looking at the title of the event. It's called Healing into the Heart of AIM Ram Dasar. Will you know, dying isn't mentioned anywhere in that circular. And it was really evident how small, how shallow we may consider healing, how we may miss the point. And that healing may not well be changing the nature of the body. I don't quite know what healing is, but my sense of it is the process of it is to touch with love that which you've so often touched with fear and anger and hatred. It seems that when we're starting to move toward making room for ourselves, making room for our pain, making room for our joy in our heart, the healing is happening. And whether or not it's manifested in the body may be secondary. Some of the most miraculous healings I have ever seen were people on the way to dying. The healing they took birth for seemed to come to completion. Yet the body didn't reflect that healing, though they left no traces of unfinished business, no broken hearts, no closed minds. They did what they could to finish, to touch with love that which they may have touched with confusion in their past. They healed their life, not just their body.

I'd like to be very personal for a moment. I really wanted to be here today because I felt that it would be a gathering that would be reaching for truth. And that we would approach territory that maybe we have to hold hands to approach. It looked up until three days ago that I couldn't be here. It was Stephen Levine's friend. Because I was busy helping my stepmother to complete her work and leave her body. And she indeed left her body in my arms Monday. And in those the last 12 days when I was nursing her.

Both of.

Us got healed by the process, not just Phyllis. She finished her work in those 12 days. We talked about the mystery. We talked about pain. We talked about life. We talked about family. We did a will. We did all the banking business. We took pills and went to the bathroom. And our souls touched so tenderly in the presence of this intensely real process that we were sharing. Not alone, the two of us. My father, her husband was there. He's 87, so he was a quiet participant and other people helping. And I had a chance through those days to see all the little corners in me that run and hide into concepts.

Into.

Pat formulas. At one point, I was saying all the wise words. I think I had stolen them from Stephen. I was doing a pain meditation. Phyllis at one point said to me, I don't understand the pain. And I was saying, explore, relax, open. And I was doing it up in here. At that moment, she put her hand on my leg and she said, stop talking. My ego went. But I realized that the realness of what we were experiencing together was more real than all those words were at that moment. And that our presence together.

Was so.

True for both of us that it was something we could open into and feel fulfilled. Even in this process, which everybody around was looking at as, isn't this horrible? I would walk out of the room with Phyllis as she went to sleep. I go out of the room and I would be, I wouldn't say in bliss, but I was in ecstasy, ecstasis, out of the static. I was not in my conceptual mind. I was just in the moment. I was just present in the moment. It was just so intense. And the telephone would ring and it would be somebody and they'd say, oh, you are so courageous to be doing this. Aren't you kind? Aren't you wonderful? How horrible this must be for you. And if I even suggested to them that it wasn't horrible, I could feel the. The sense of incomprehension come into their mind. There's no way they can understand. I remember attending my mother's funeral in 1966. And I had taken LSD to go.

To the funeral.

Because it seemed reasonable to me. I wanted to enjoy the funeral. I wanted to be with her.

And.

So the way the funeral was staged, it was a big funeral. And. There were some extraordinary moments in the funeral. I'll digress for just one extraordinary moment. There was a. The casket was up in front in the temple and there was a blanket of red roses. A blanket of red roses on the casket. My father always gave my mother one red rose on their anniversary. And my mother gave my father one red rose. That was. They had been doing that for 40 odd years. As the casket was being wheeled out of the temple, it came abreast of the first pew where my father was sitting with us. And it went by and one red rose fell off the casket at my father's feet. My father leaned over and picked it up. We all went out and we got into the big black Cadillac and everybody came up to the window and said their. And my brother said in the car, me, my brother, one brother who's a lawyer and his wife, very conservative. One brother who is very expansive in his consciousness, you could say. And me, my father, my expanded brother said, it looks like mother sent you a message. And everybody in the car agreed. In that moment, the intensity of the emotion, everybody agreed. They all, in a way, rose up out of themselves. At any other time, three quarters of that audience would have said, what are you out of your mind? It was just an error, you know. The rose fell off immediately. We had to preserve the rose, call places to get a glass thing to hold it. And then as the years went by, it turned brown because the process didn't work. And then, of course, we didn't know what to do with this kind of dark, dirty water. And I went into the garage and behind a box And I found it. And I thought, there's the last message. Trying to preserve that which changes. It's ephemeral. Can't hold the message. Well, that wasn't why I'm telling you the story. The reason I'm telling the story was because we went to the cemetery. And the way they staged the cemetery is the family is on one side of the. Of the hole. And all the mourners are on the other side. So they can look at the family. And we're all standing there in dark suits. I was at that moment, my mother and I were whispering to each other because, remember, I'm on acid. And she and I were enjoying. And we were saying to each other, look at the web of love that you have been immersed in this lifetime. And all of the love of all these people and how powerful it is.

And we were all.

I was just in. I was in delight. I was in bliss. And at one moment I realized as they watched us that if I smiled at that moment, he's the one that takes drugs. And I experienced that same thing this week. That Phyllis and I were in a space that was so intimately clear and present. And it was very hard to find.

Who I could share that with.

But who was willing to consider the possibility that something as profound as the process of leaving your body could bring people into the moment so thoroughly that they could be fulfilled. Fulfilled. And she died Monday. And I arranged for dad to be taken care of so I could come.

Here to be with you.

Because I thought you'd understand. And I thought we could come into deep truth together today. But the point that I made before was not just that Phyllis was being.

Healed.

But that I was being healed. About a week ago, I attended a. Meeting for a support group for volunteers who are buddies, for people that had aid. It was a group of seven people. They had been meeting for many months, intimately openly trusting me. And they had to give permission, every one of them, for me to be present, which they did kindly, because I wanted to come as a fly on the wall just to hear what was happening. They each went around the room and each one of them described in considerable detail what was happening in their particular relationship with their buddy. And I had come wondering whether I had anything to contribute. And by the end of the meeting, I felt that I did. And that reassured me that I would have something to contribute today. Because what I saw was incredible caring, incredible kindness, incredible reaching out beyond themselves. Many of these people had full time jobs in service. And then evenings they were going out as many of you are to serve even more. But what I saw in one form or another was burnout, burnout, burnout. There was some way in which the richness and the intensity, it was like they were plugged into 220 instead of 110. It was so intensely real. And the way they were standing in relation to it was such that they were feeling overloaded and finally exhausted and feeling they needed vacation and they needed to do something to relieve it. And they needed to go to a movie. They needed to get away. When I was with Phyllis, I got fed. And every time I saw something in me that made.

It.

Made me start to burn out, I went right to it to examine it. Because I could see that if I could open to that thing which made me burn out. And come back into a space which we're going to be talking about this afternoon, there would be a way to be with Phyllis in that space, continuously being fed, getting lighter, more present, more playful, more clear. Dream, possibly. But it feels very real and possible to me. And I think we collectively have the experience, the experiences to offer into the stew, to figure out how to come up for air through the incredible process we are facing together here.

I was thinking of the first time I ever sat next to somebody who was terminally ill, who was very, very sick. I'd been teaching with Ram Dass About 10, 12 years ago, and Elizabeth Kubler Ross had come to the retreat. We had a few minutes together, and it later developed that Elizabeth and I started working together. The first retreat that I went to, I went. Elizabeth asked me to come, and I was, I thought, going to be there to show people who were working with patients, people in crisis, how not to burn out. By meditative techniques that brought you directly in contact with the quality that was draining your energy so that the resistance around that could fall away and just the thing itself could be dealt directly with. One could really touch the heart of the matter, not leave the skid marks of resistance. Last day of the retreat, Elizabeth says, I want you. And I had been with a dozen, maybe 20 people who were terminally ill. But I was in a role. I was very safe. I was the one who knew and they were the one who didn't. And I was there to. For osmosis. But Elizabeth wasn't going to let me get away with that. Luckily, she said, I'm going to go see a patient in. We were in Texas, in MD Anderson Hospital. She's the first woman. This was a long time ago. She's the first woman to have a marrow transplant. To survive this long. She'd been alive about 15 days since the transplant. And I thought, remarkable. I'm going to get a chance to see a real expert, a really skillful person, be with someone who's in crisis. I'm going to learn a lot. As we walked in the room, Elizabeth pulled the chair up next to the bed. And I was looking for where I was going to sit. And Elizabeth said, you're sitting here. And I sat down next to this translucent being, 28 year old woman in extremely advanced stages of leukemia. And as I sat down next to her, all my years of meditation, all my knowing just dropped away. I think at that moment I was probably closer to death than she was. I was terrified. And I saw how my fear touched her presence, her being, and wanted to change it. And it wasn't just that I wanted to relieve her pain, but that she was such an intense mirror for my own pain that I could hardly stand sitting next to her. I saw all my desires for control, all the places inside of me. I wished I were Captain Karma and could touch her and take away her pain. And then pose from my picture in the Houston Chronicle, an informal shot, of course. And as I saw the dull wittedness with which I touched her pain, the old mind with which I touched her pain, I saw that with all the years of meditation, nothing had had such a direct impact to confront me.

With.

The holding in such an immediate situation. And I saw that the value of sitting next to her was to explore the suffering that keeps us separate and the suffering that kept her separate. It was too powerful an opportunity to let go. And really, this work that I have found myself doing for many years has been as work on myself. When I first was with someone in the first years, if I was with someone who was in very intense pain, sometimes it would break my heart. And sometimes I would find myself praying that their pain should be removed because I couldn't touch their pain, because I couldn't touch my own pain with an okayness. I couldn't touch their pain with an okayness. And then one day I went to sit down next to a patient, a woman who was in agony. And I closed my eyes to pray and the words simply couldn't come up. Take this being's pain away. I realized how much ignorance was motivating that prayer. How did I know? The prayer choked in my throat. Now sometimes I'll sit next to someone who's in pain and I'll close my eyes and all I can pray is may they get from whatever this Experience is the highest possible potential. May this enlighten them, may this free them. I no longer am so short sighted that I second guess God and think that someone's pain should be removed. I'm also not so free that when I see somebody settle back after pain leaving their body, that I too don't take a deeper breath. A woman we know was dying in the hospital. She'd live her life in extraordinary separation to such an extent that as she was dying, and with a rather bone metastasis, cancer, in a lot of pain. Her children wouldn't visit, none of her work associates would visit. And because she had lived her life in such anger and judgment, in such closed heartedness, she was constantly blaming the nurses for her pain, she was blaming the doctors. And she became. Her room became such a place of anger and judgment and fear that she had no visitors. And the nurses took longer and longer to answer her call. They referred to her as the bitch on wheels in 41B. As her pain got worse, she had no place to turn. She had always touched with anger and hatred that which was dissatisfactory. And now it was her that she was touching with that. And the pain was becoming beyond unbearable. Six weeks after she'd been in the hospital, the last month, of which probably she was in almost complete isolation, because anyone who came in her room was met with such a barrage of mean spiritedness that nobody wanted to be around her. One night, four in the morning, absolutely unable to stand it any longer, jumping out of her skin, laying on her side, curled, embryonic in the bed, tremendous pain in her lower back, in her hips, in the back of her legs. All of a sudden she gets the vision. But it's more than a vision, it's the body experience, it's the sense. And there she is, laying on her side with this tremendous pain in her.

Back.

In her hips, in her legs. But it's not her. She's a woman, a dark skinned woman laying on her side, mud floor in a hut in Ethiopia, with an empty breast at which is suckling a starving child. And the woman is dying and the woman has tremendous pain in her back, in her hips, in her legs. Then all of a sudden she experienced herself as an Eskimo woman giving birth in a complicated birth, dying with tremendous pain in her back, in her hips, in her legs. She said in the course of that evening she touched the 10,000 women in pain, dying at that moment. Image after image, experience after experience arose. And she came out of it saying that she realized that it wasn't My pain that she was experiencing, it was the pain that she had come from the separateness which pain often throws us into, and had found in that separateness the universal. And as she stopped seeing it as my pain and started seeing it as the pain, we saw a healing beyond compare. Her heart became so open. She lived six weeks more after this experience. In the course of that six weeks, her room started to be the place that the nurses would go on their break because it was the most revitalizing energy in the hospital. Her children came to visit. She met her grandchildren for the first time. A few days before she died, one of the nurses brought her a picture of Jesus as the Good shepherd with the children and the animals. And this woman, whose heart had been like a rock seemingly before, looked at this picture of Jesus and the children and looked into the picture and said, oh, Jesus, have mercy on them. They're only children. She was healed and died three days later. Not my pain, but the pain. Those people we know who are working with healing seem often to come to the place healing the body seem often to come to the place where they recognize that there is no such thing as just healing my body. It is healing the body we all share, Entering the shared heart to experience the shared pain in the body we all share. Many people that I know who are working with healing, just as in at the end of Buddhist meditations, as you may know, one shares the merit. You know you're not elbowing your way into heaven. The path is not that narrow. In fact, there's no edges. Many people who I know who are doing healing meditations at the end of their meditations send it out to all sentient beings. The pain in their knee is the pain in all those 10,000 knees. 200,000 people die each day on this planet. So when you're laying there in your pain, you're absolutely concretely not alone. And it seems to be the shared healing, finding in the separate, the universal, that seems to be one of the remarkable primary stages in letting the healing in. In trusting that healing doesn't have to do with life and death. It has to do with just this much, just this moment, the heart of the moment. And I think all of our work. Is to let the healing in. Not to think it, not to presuppose it, not to have a model of it, but to open to it, to let it in.

Thanks again for listening to this session with Ram Dass and the Stephen Levine. Learn more about Stephen and his wife Andrea's work@levine talks.com youm can also listen to talks from Stephen and Andrea on the Behear Now Network's guest podcast. Subscribe today on Spotify, Apple or your favorite podcast Apparent.