Ep. 278 – Innocence of Consciousness

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Welcome back to the Here and Now podcast with Ram Dass. I am your host Jackie Debrinska and you. You are the Ram Dass community, those people that have been touched and changed and inspired by the teachings of this extraordinary and beloved wisdom keeper. Today's episode is 278 and it is another incredible gem. Today we are jumping back in time as we always do, but this time to 1977, which is just six years after be Here now was published, and this talk is an interview with New Dimension Radio. They recorded right after a psychedelic conference in Santa Cruz, which is interesting because we are about to head into the Psychedelic Science Conference in Denver in a few weeks and it is wild how timely this conversation from 1977 still is. Today. Ram Dass he reflects on the psychedelic revolution both with great hindsight and a remarkable degree of foresight. He speaks of the cultural shifts of his time, the traps, as well as the possibilities of psychedelics and the deeper and inner work they all point to. Now, if you know me, you know I spend some of my time doing psychedelic integration work. It's what we do after the peak experience. How do we live into the insights we gain regardless of how we got those insights. And I continue to be floored by how much of what Ram Dass offered back in the 70s remains foundational for this field today. You know that inner flight school that he talks about, the Explorers Club that he's mentioned in the past? They're still great ideas for moving forward in these realms with great wisdom. But don't worry if you're not a psychonaut, this episode is still for you. Ram Dass also weaves in deep insights into inner freedom, polarization and conscious social action. As I said, it's a real gem. So it's for anyone who is trying to live with more presence, with purpose and with an open heart in today's pretty complex world. So whether you're microdosing or just trying not to throw your phone across the room after doom scrolling, there's something in this one for you. But before we dive in, I have a few really awesome things to tell you about. First, in addition to integration with all of my spare time, I also teach yoga teacher trainings in Knoxville and I love sharing about the ancient texts and you can often hear those texts coming through much of what Ram Dass is talking about. So the Yoga Sutras is one of my favorites and it really gives some great advice of how to live in this world, both external with our bodies, with our minds, and with our more subtle realms. And the first limb, if you know it, includes this concept called Brahmacharya and our western psyches. Often the translators translated it as celibacy, but there is a better way, I think, to translate it as energy management. And I think all of us are trying to figure out how to better manage our energy in this world of, you know, hyper stimulation and multitasking and the distractions of all of the things. So you have heard me many times talk about magic mind and. And yes, I am still in a committed relationship with them. They sent me their original formula over a year ago and I immediately fell in love. I drink it every day. And since then they have added two new options. They have Magic Mind Free, which is caffeine free for calm, steady afternoons. And then they also have Magic Mind Max. And this is great for when you just need that extra little boost. It has three times the caffeine and some extra nootropics. And personally I start my day with either the original or the Max, depending on how many multitasking tabs I have open in my brain. And in the afternoon I reach for the free as my like sweet little treat that doesn't have any caffeine to spike my system. And as an adaptogen lover from way back, I can honestly say that this is the tastiest and easiest way to get my brain and mood support. So even a friend of mine who was skeptical when he heard me talk about it on these podcasts, he tried it and now he is a total devotee as well. So the best part is right now you can get 60% off your first subscription with our link and code. And that's a lot. That's like grab it like they before they come to their senses sort of level. So go to magicmind.com romdasmf and use the code ramdass60. Oh and they've also got 100% money back guarantee so it's zero risk. And if today's episode sparks something in you and you want to come hang out with us in real life, we will be at the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference in Denver June 16th through the 20th. We're hosting a Ram Dass sanctuary space with immersive art installations and there'll be a panel with Raghu Marcus, spring Washum and Dr. Tony Bassis on psychedelic integration and spiritual practice. And we have a 15% off code for you. Go to psychedelicscience.org and use the code LSRF15. And if you're craving a deeper retreat, ooh, go check out our friends at Reunion in Costa Rica. They just sent us a picture of their new Hanuman Morti and it is straight up breathtaking. So if you want a healing, mind opening, grounding vacation and a spiritually rich environment, check it out. Reunion Experience and use the code BEHEAR250 for $250 off any stay. So all of these people are helping to bring this podcast to you for free every month. So check them out. If you don't want these intros, get a Patreon subscription. So with that, thank you for sticking with us. Take a deep breath in, let it out, and let's head back to 1977 and drop into the timeless wisdom from Ram Dass. Here he is, here and now. Namaste and blessings.

In mid October of 1977 at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a colloquium was held in honor of a visit by Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD. It was called LSD a generation later. Among those present were John Lilly, Ralph Metzner, Allen Ginsberg, Stanley Krippner, Stephen Gaskin, David Smith, Irving Oil, Ed Elkin, Timothy Leary, and a man who introduced himself as Richard Alpert. For a moment, it seemed like a Time warp. There was Richard Alpert, Associate of Dr. Timothy Leary at Harvard. Then we noticed that he was sitting cross legged in his chair. And it was obvious that Ram Dass was addressing us with a glint of cosmic humor in his eye. Ram Dass, the constantly evolving being who has introduced so many to extraordinary states of consciousness. Over a year ago, when he left New York City, we'd heard that he had gone to the Far east to. To India. Then we heard that he was in Thailand, then Bali, then that he had returned to the United States. But it wasn't until this conference that we knew that he was once again among us. We took that opportunity in Santa Cruz to ask if he would come to San Francisco and spend an evening with New Dimensions Family. He consented, and a few days later a number of us gathered informally and we began our discussion by asking him his thoughts about the gathering that had just occurred in Santa Cruz. And this is what he said.

Just parenthetically, generally I don't think about it. I bet I don't think about much of anything that happened because I find I get exhausted if I try to collect stuff. So it sort of was what it was. As such. I had a delightful weekend, right? That's about what it was. A delightful weekend was simultaneously both important and trivial. It was certainly interesting to see people I haven't seen in a long time. With very few of them do I feel I have much work to do. So in a way it's like. It's in a way kind of an irrelevancy. Pleasant and delightful, but kind of an irrelevancy. Almost like a high school reunion. Like a high school reunion, yeah. Now the other part of it is the way in which whatever responsibility is left concerning psychedelics in my life and as such my process was to come there. And when it came time for me to make my statement, to say I took LSD last year in Bali and this is what happened, this is why I use it. But I don't feel like I'm in the role of being somebody who should be setting policy or anything like that, because that isn't really what my work is at this time. So I felt a very laid back participation. There were some delightful moments in it. I mean, there was some delightful interplay with Timothy and there was some delightful interplay with Stephen Gaskin and Ralph Metzner and his wife. And I went back and took about a two hour hot tub together and cleared. Did a lot of beautiful things about therapy and death and just a lot of very beautiful stuff. And that was a great joy to be with Ralph again because he's grown a great deal in the past couple of years. Then there were sadnesses for me, seeing people who I was with at a time when we were all growing and then coming back and seeing that they haven't grown and that they're sort of living out. It's like the high school football player who can't stop being a football player, you know, even though it's all over. And that was a little snow. I really got great delight out of Hoffman's style when I met him back in Basel, Switzerland, in 60, whenever that was three, four, somewhere around two. He was very guarded and very conservative. And I thought he was going to play that role when he came here. But at the dinner party before the evening lecture, when all of the, you know, guests were sitting around and he stood up at the end of the table and he said, I don't feel like the president of a corporation, but I do feel like a grandfather and I feel like this is my family. That was. There was a quality of warmth and love and allowing the existence of this phenomenon, which he has to be busy explaining as the hysteria of psychedelics. At the same moment, he honors that he's fed it. So it was a family. Interesting. And he put it all into perspective. I mean, it made it put Tim's role into perspective too. Because Tim is certainly the person who most precipitated its explosion in the West. You know, prior to Ken Kesey's acid test and so on. I mean, Tim was definitely the one that did that. But Hoffman in the background was this giant who, you know, who had, as you could hear in his lecture, just had incredible courage of self. Later, when we were doing experimentations on ourselves. By then he'd already done all that. So ours was a different level completely. Although there were memories of the drama of his experience. When I was thinking just now of. Just came to mind. When LSD first came to Boston, we were all using psilocybin, which is a very mild psychedelic. That was our first year of research with psilocybin. And Michael Hollingshead brought a large bottle of sugar water, sort of thick sugar, which was from England, I believe. And we were told it was a tablespoon worth. And Tim took the first tablespoon along with, I think, Maynard and Flo Ferguson, I'm not sure. And five days later, Tim hadn't spoken yet. And I, therefore, as the second in command, felt we had lost Timothy. So I prohibited all further use of this monstrous chemical Whatever it was, it was. You know, Timothy was such a promising fellow, and we just lost him. But that turned out to be my kind of conservative old lady quality that Timothy has criticized. Silence. So that's my reaction to the weekend.

It was interesting that when Dr. Huffman appeared that evening, that there was a standing ovation. And I think it took him a few minutes to understand the extent of the gratitude that that ovation was representing.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people feel that towards Tim and toward yourself, that it was the doorway for a great many people.

I agree.

Today I had the opportunity to speak with someone who's been heavily into study of the Bhagavad Gita and meditation regularly and Mantra. And I mentioned the conference to him, and he said, oh, that's amazing. He said, it's just 10 years to the day that I first took LSD.

And.

He said it in such a way that it was.

A bit like.

A fond memory, but totally dismissing it and tending to feel that it's best if it's not used at all any longer. And I just posed to him, I said, it's been the doorway for so many people that I wonder how much of the tenor of our times is dictated by the fact that people have not been exposed to it, that it's not readily available, that it's not part of the social structure at the moment. And how much that accounts for the fact that things have moved to punk rock and hate and all of the negativities that we're beginning to see rampant among the youth now, as opposed to the Love Generation and all the positivity that existed then.

First of all, you've got to separate out fads from true processes that are going on in a kind of an evolutionary sense. And a lot of the Love Generation was just as impure as the punk rock is now. These are kind of fads. They're fashions. And I don't think that the punk rock people are, in their deepest beings, are any different than we are. And the Love people weren't as loving as they seem to be. And when we watched the New Age businesses begin, we saw that they were often as cutthroat as anybody else. And that a lot of people, when they came back into living in the world, weren't necessarily much more humane or compassionate in their dealings than they had been before. I mean, it's not. It wasn't. It's not an either or proposition at all. And I think it would have been. It would have been beautiful. I mean, there are A lot of ifs would have fantasies about how the culture could be. But in a way, you've got to understand that we are all of it and that if it went the way it is, it's because of who we are. Who we are. And in. I remember in 66, whenever I did that book with Sidney Cohen on LSD, that paperback for New American Library, I suggested a licensing program and centers where just like you learn to fly, you know, same thing as getting a pilot's license, you could get certified to do exploration with psychedelics. And I think had there been some more socially acceptable vehicle, perhaps more of the, what we call the middle class would have participated more extensively. And there may have been more dramatic shifts in social institutions since they rule and guide so many of them at the same moment. The people that were really intensely desires of changing consciousness strongly enough overrode most of the legal issues and the issues of obtaining. I know. I really don't think that many people who were preoccupied with getting free stopped. I mean, look at the usage of cocaine. Look at the usage. These are all illegal drugs. Marijuana, I mean, illegality hasn't seemed to stop in Prohibition. It didn't stop people from drinking. I think that it added an element of paranoia to the scene, which was unfortunate. I mean, I think that the setting, the set is so important in taking drugs. And when you're afraid that you're. When you're doing something illegal, it just makes it more difficult to get rid of the paranoid set. But lots of people that really wanted to grow have used it. And my own feeling is I wouldn't ever. I wouldn't want to be anybody to keep somebody else from doing whatever they want with that consciousness. That was the article Tim and I wrote back in the Harvard Review back in the early 60s. The politics of consciousness. That people should have a right to. To legislate about their own consciousness as long as they don't hurt another person. And what I saw in the conference was all the activists were ready to sign things and start groups and join. And that's the old revolutionary stance. It's us against them. And the government is them and us is us, but the government isn't them. The government is us too. And the interesting process is as LSD has become less a focal issue, the whole thing's been loosening subtly anyway, as one guy said, although he didn't quite fit in with the zeitgeist of the moment. And so everybody sort of hushed him up, but he in effect was saying, it seems like the FDA is Opening it up, there's more opportunity for research. They're looking around for good projects. And I got a feeling like as the crisis wears off, I mean, I know guys in the fda, they're not. They're not them, you know, they're not bad guys. So maybe I'm the kind of guy that makes that stops process. I don't know. Because I'm so. I'm not that way enough. I don't know.

So you feel that the activism may indeed hamper.

I think it'll just force everybody to take a stand. A government bureaucrat has to take a stand of conservatism. He's got to do it. It's his job. He doesn't have any choice. There are no options for him. So if you don't push anybody to the wall, it all can work out much better than if you start to polarize the thing. And that's the same thing. And I think that in that way, the conference, I'd like it to have very low press in a sense, you know, I mean, I'd rather have it just be part of the whole process of lsd. Because I think it was an interesting statement that the acid on the street is good acid and also that there's plenty of it. I think that's a very interesting thing. And so that if people want to take it, it's around. And certainly whoever they're getting cocaine from and marijuana, they can probably get acid from too. Everybody's got their friendly neighborhood pusher.

But you have some of the original. So I've heard.

Not anymore. Not anymore.

That was the last of it. In Bali.

I have a few Hispanic historical things like the original. Some original blue tabs that were made by a friend of mine just put away. They have no power anymore. But I just kept them as kind of a historical memory. But I don't have. Everything else is gone. I gave it all away.

In Bali, obviously, if you have used it approximately once a year, you use it with a high level of consciousness and you very carefully consider the circumstances and why you're doing it. Would you recommend that for anyone that's using it, that it's not a recreational drug, as some were calling it?

Well, again, I don't want to legislate about how other people live their lives. And I certainly enjoy recreation as well as the next person does. It feels to me that it's a. Underusing something. It's like taking a jet plane to go to the grocery store. Wasting that. It's. It's. It's sad. That we couldn't find a sacramental ritual connected with it that would be strong enough to create a set for people to be able to go deep within themselves with it or deep into the universe that most people take it and then create a setting that offsets the effect of it.

So.

So they're really wasting it. They're really wasting. Because they're going for super sensual and super relational type experiences. And it's just much more than that. But it isn't unless you use it that way, unless you have a right set. And I think that my guru's instructions to me really define my game. And I just don't have any choice. In my head, he said, if you're alone, that's a heavy one. If you're alone, if you're feeling much peace, if you're in a cool place. I never understood that one, but he said it. If you're in a cool place and your mind is turned towards God, you can take your yogi medicine. That was his instruction. And so that's defining because a lot of times people have come along and said, won't you take acid with me? Or what do you say? Let's take acid. I can't. I've got these rules. I use them as a device because I'm aware of how much you share karma with another human being when you take LSD with them. I'm much more careful about consciousness because I really like to get free rather than adding more stuff in all the time. And so it's very, very easy to form what we used to call imprints, but what you could call in Buddhism terms more attachments or clinging through an LSD experience because of the intensity with which you relate to something.

Something or someone.

Something or someone, yeah.

Now this is not. You're taking it with someone, not taking it in the presence of a guide, as was the original suggestion.

If an individual for the first time were taking it for the first time, I would recommend they have a guide. And I would recommend that be somebody that has taken LSD enough so that they are very, very cool about all possibilities. There is really no reason in the culture with the knowledge we have now for anybody to have a bad trip. The bad trip will be created by the paranoia that they bring into the session or the setting. And if they have a guide and they are not straight with their guide prior to the situation, then it could be a horrible nightmare still. Right? Because when you start to, quote, lose control, your control mechanisms, if there is something you're hiding, it gets very scary. The most dramatic example I ever had of that was when I was guiding a session for a man who was. The motives were impure. I knew we didn't have the right relationship, but he had a lot of money and I was running a big scene at Millbrook and I had to go and guide sessions. That was my business at that time. And I had this session with this man and he started to get more and more frightened as it went on. And he went into a total, he flipped into a total hallucination, it would seem, in which he relived the situation in which he and his wife had murdered her father, right, for the money. Then he came back not knowing whether indeed he had said this or merely thought it, right, not knowing whether I knew it or not, no way to ask me. Of course you understand that the dynamics of that situation and the rest of the session was a horror show. I mean it was just total paranoia for the rest of the evening, you know. And so he has since been shot to death. So that whole issue is past issue now. So I. Huh. A heavy trip. A heavy trip, yes. But what I often did was I, as I got more thoughtful about it, sometime I'd be with somebody for weeks who would come to have an LSD trip. And then at the end of a couple of weeks I'd say I'm sorry, we can't have it because we don't have the kind of rapport where I feel absolutely safe that wherever you go I can go with you, that you'll take me with you. And of course crises have occurred, I mean dramatic moments have occurred where I've sort of lost somebody for a while and had to go out and find them. I mean, I'm talking about planes of consciousness, you know. But generally if you have a guide, you're calm and you really want to explore your inner being. I still see LSD as an incredible vehicle for overriding your habitual response patterns, your habits of thought and giving you a free slate to experience your innocence of consciousness once again. Even, albeit it's just karmic setting aside and it's only for a moment and all that.

Could you go into that a little more deeply? Just exactly what you mean by that?

Well, you develop what we call ego, which is a structure. It's like a matrix for defining the universe of who we are and who everybody else is and how it all works so on. And that matrix allows for efficiency, it allows for survival on the physical plane at the same moment. It's only one of an infinite variety of Ways of perceiving any moment. Right. And if you had, if you were free, you could put that model into your computer to use for a functional purpose. But then when you were finished, you could take it out. Like you can put those paragraphs into that typewriter. It'll print out a typewriter and then you take them out again, you know, and you would be able to always have a computer that had no fixed program in it. It would be like a floating program. And the needs of the situation would determine which program, program went into the computer. Right. But what because of the emotional learning that occurs in our original structure where parents teach children and the emotional way it's taught because it's usually non conceptual first, it's emotional feeling structure is at the root of our structure of the universe. There is a very overlearned over reinforced model and it's very, very hard to get outside of it. And what usually gets people outside of it is childbirth or an automobile accident or losing a loved one or approaching death or for some women at time of their period, or there's some, you know, a love affair, something like that will break the set for a moment. And many people then treat that as confusion or as psychosis or hallucination or something basically shock or crisis. Yeah, trauma, as Freud will talk about. Now, what LSD does, is it really at the synaptic level, at the neural, neural connection level. It neutralizes. It puts the computer back into neutral in a way. It doesn't define which way you will go then. That's why the setting is so important and the set is so important because it defines what programs go into your head during those sessions. Then as the chemical wears off, the old habitual patterns reassert themselves. But as they do, your awareness can watch them reassert themselves, which gives you a little leverage on them and a little bit say, aha, here I go. It's like when you fly and you go up above the smog and then you come into Los Angeles somewhere and you start to go back down in. If you were just living in the smog, you wouldn't notice it. You might notice in your throat. Throat, but in your eyes. But I mean, generally you don't see how yellow it all is till you've been out in the blue sky for a few hours. Then you say, okay, here I go back down in again, right? And you can feel the thing thickening and hardening and stopping and locking in again. And when you're done with LSD is when there is no lock in anymore. And when My guru took LSD and nothing happened. It's because there is no lock in. There's no place he's got to go for from since there's no place he's holding. Okay, is that what you.

That's beautiful. Thank you. That really articulates something that I never have been able to do. That's precisely what happens now.

What we did was in the early 60s we really were attempting to what we call re imprint people. Like we would work in the Concord prison or Tim and Ralph did. I didn't actually, but we. I helped in the design of things. They would go in and they would take somebody who like the recidivism rate in that prison was over 70%. The 70% probability those guys are going to be back in prison within a year for doing the same thing again. And we would go into the medical installation there and turn them on with psilocybin. And then as they went out, show them as they came back in the game. And the losing strategy that they were attached to to the theory being they would have a new quote imprint or a new set of patterns or a new perception about it. We were never either systematic about it or what we later, I feel more is that getting high and seeing is only one part of the whole process of change. And it isn't. At first we thought that because we had seen through, we would never get stuck again. And then as I look here it is 12 years later. Timothy's still Timothy and I'm still me. And you could say, well it's different though because Timothy isn't really Timothy and I'm not really me. Well, before Timothy was really Timothy. You understand this thing. But actually when I met those people this weekend, there was still a lot of solidity in them. They weren't. None of them were like my guru. I mean I didn't feel any of them were nobody special. They were getting there, they're getting closer. But there was still the somebodyness in everybody. That's still the thing. Now it's a long way up from a tremendous cultural over learning to get free. But my feeling is that it that attachment to any external form, any method at all, we'll talk more about that I'm sure is just still attachment. And ultimately certain kinds of inner processes have to go on other than just getting high in order to bring about change in life.

But that's precisely what you're talking about when you speak of grist for the mill. It's just more grist for the mill. It's that non Attachment. Such a dangerous word. And yet that's.

Oh, I love it because it is so dangerous. I mean, I love the. I love the. The way it. It infuriates people. What do you mean? Not to be attached. Because they think of it as not involved. And I mean totally involved, but not attached. And it's. I'd like to save the word because it has a very specific meaning of not clinging to things, doing the things.

Put into the machine to write the paragraph.

Exactly. And it's just that.

And it's.

For me, I'm like a rent a body or a rent a roll or a. You know, I mean, I don't know who I am. I don't even care who I am. I don't even care how it all comes out. It's none of my business. I'm really part of a process. It's like the river doesn't care where it goes. It's going to the sea.

It's fine.

There was a lightning, though. That is apparent in people who have been even taking psychedelics. There is a loosening of the hold of any single reality, any single definition of themselves or anything else else in the universe. And what we watched is the social implications of that loosening of the hold. I mean, what we did was we went from like Newtonian to Einsteinian physics in the social psychological domain, going from absolute to relative realities. And it has a tremendous cultural upheaval because you don't have a linear value system which you can lay from one generation to another. Because the. The kids could were countering their parents with other value systems that weren't just revolutionary. They just weren't the opposite of the thing for breaking away. They were really other value systems that were orthogonal to the ones that the parents had held. And that's what makes the culture a much more mature culture in a way, because it's much more available to alternative realities within it.

It's a real evolutionary process.

Yeah, that's really an evolutionary process. But see, from the evolutionary point of view, I don't think a hell of a lot ever happens, really. I mean, I think that any one entity evolves. But when you look at the cross section of the total total, all incarnates on the physical plane, I think they always represent the cross section of new beings and old beings and middle beings. And the reason people incarnate on the physical plane is because of lust, greed, agitation, sloth and torpor and doubt. I mean, the five hindrances of. In Buddhism. And that's who we are. That's what we're doing here. So, you know, it's the process of.

Burning those things away to.

That's it. And when you finish burning them away, you don't incarnate in the human on the physical plane anyway. So the whole idea of making heaven on earth always seems to me like it's a hype in a way, because there is a heaven. This is earth. I mean, it's like changing. Let's make elementary school into junior high school, you know, but then what's going to happen? All the people need to go to elementary school. You know, there are really functional reasons why this game is the way it is. I mean, I think that it's to say this is bad is to say, God, you blew it. And if you had done it right, this would be junior high school.

But that doesn't preclude struggling to make things better.

That's the Bodhisattva paradox, as far as I'm concerned. The paradox is that this plane is what it is, and it's perfect just the way it is. And there is nothing that you do other than to work to make it better and to end the suffering, even though you know that it's perfect the way it is. And the perfection includes your working full time to end the suffering. And that's. There's a beauty in that paradox, an absolute exquisiteness in that paradox. Because every time you get too far over in one side, the other pulls you. You get too far. Because if you get into the. Oh, it's all perfect. Screw it. I'm just gonna lie around, smoke dope and screw and exploit the culture and get my welfare checks. You get too far off on the other side. We gotta do it. Why aren't you protesting? Let's go out. You know, and you've always got to find the balance between those things. And it's. You always pit one when somebody comes up too righteous in their activism. Don't you see? It's all perfect. That infuriates them. Somebody's lying around the perfection of it all. What about ending suffering? Don't you see all those people are suffering? And that little smile on the corner of the mouth of the Buddha, the unbearable smile of unbearable compassion. Oh, God.

Looks like you can taste it.

I live with it all day, every day.

Now that pendulum swing in the last 10 years or so seems to be less extreme. You mentioned many of the hip generation going into business, and it's not the extreme. They may dabble in a sort of.

You called it ruthless.

I don't think it's quite that of entering the world full hog, you know.

To make a success.

Success and make a buck. It seems to just. Just swing into that area and then it's modified by.

That's exactly right. Absolutely. I don't mean all New Age, because the Ruthless, by the way. No, I know you don't, but I. I think you're absolutely right that we are. We go through the pendulum process and then the pendulum gets gentler and gentler.

It seems to be true in the other direction too, of swinging toward overt spirituality.

Yeah.

That it's not swinging all the way in so that it's all encompassing, you know, and just everyone's throwing.

What is going on is so fantastically mind blowing. I mean, just the thing I dreamed of in my dream is happening in that we are transcending the need to define our state of consciousness by external forms. Right. And that's the thing I call the Martian takeover. That is, we are. The consciousness shifts, but people can continue to dance within the social structure and the civilization wearing exactly. Doing the same forms, wearing the same facade, but the inner being has changed. And so the whole idea of New Age isn't as relevant because there's the old age. People can be doctors, lawyers, but they are doing it from a whole different space. And that took a lot of that pendulum swinging before that happened because it went to beads and white clothes and then to the beer parlor, and screw it all, I'm just gonna get, you know, stoned all the time. And then it just kept going back and forth and back and forth until pretty soon you meet people who say, even many people who say, well, I don't have any practice. But yet, as you talk to them, we're right here, their heart is open, their mind is quieting. It's all getting lighter and emptier for them. I said to Kala Rinpoche the other day in Santa Fe, I said, I know that the practices are all important and the tradition's important. But I said, I go around the country, around the world now, and I keep meeting myself everywhere. I keep meeting all of us here and there. And I never have to talk down to people. Everybody's always right here. I don't understand it. If all the practices were so important, what are they doing there? Because they didn't do the practice. What right have they got to be that? And he countered with a beautiful up level with, yes, but if they wish to get finished in this birth. I said, well, I don't know anything about things like that. I said, I just teach lower low grade. That was a beautiful dialogue.

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