Ep. 284 – Every Human Being Has a Right To Be Fed

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And all I remember was my guru saying every human being has a right to be fed. A right, a right to food. He said. Even if he's the worst dacoit in the world, the worst thief, he has a right to food. That food is not a bargaining tool of power. Food is a basic shared manifestation of God and somehow the haves and have nots lose sight of that very easily. We can bargain about television sets, we can bargain about automobiles, but we can't bargain about food.

Welcome back to another Here and Now episode with Ram Dass. I'm your host Jackie Dobrinska and you are the Ram Dass community. Thank you so much for showing up and tuning in. This week we are sharing a talk from Ram Dass that again, felt feels eerily relevant even though it's from decades ago. I think it could have been recorded last week. So it's 1979 and Ram Dass is in front of this crowd in Santa Cruz, California and they were gathered for this simple cause to benefit a local food bank. You know, not super glamorous in the whole world of things, but really important. They're not coming together for politics or prestige, but to serve. At this point, Ram Dass had been back from India for about a decade. You know, he'd met Neem Karoli Baba. He'd tasted the heights of spiritual awakening from many different ways. And now he's still wrestling with these questions that so many of us face every day. How do we take these lofty, mystical truths and bring them into the messy, imperfect, everyday world? How do we feed someone without making a transaction, without creating a power dynamic, without making it about worthiness or unworthiness or deserving or undeserving or us and them? And so, in this talk, he explores that universal tension. He explores the pull between love and fear, clarity and confusion, action and avoidance. And if you are paying attention to the world lately, you know that these are not abstract concepts back then and today. Division, injustice and uncertainty. They're everywhere. It's the human condition. But as the new cycle spins faster than our nervous systems can keep up, it's really easy to feel either frozen or frantic. And here, Ram Dass comes with gems. He doesn't sugarcoat the mess of being human. He names it, he laughs at it. And he invites us into a different way of showing up. Not rooted in fear or self righteousness, but grounded, compassionate action. We don't pretend everything's fine. We don't withdraw from the world. We learn to act from our guiding presence. We hold our heart and our head together. So he gives some really great examples that I think we can still be learning from today. Again, you as always, you hear him weave humor and humility throughout, reminding us that all of this, it's essential to also keep that light touch. Before we jump in, I want to say that this is an older recording. I mean, it's almost 50 years old, so the sound is not perfect, but the magic, magic is still there. Before we dive in, remember you can find this archive of episodes on behearnownetwork.com along with a lot of other podcasts and talks and meditations. So please support our work by becoming a Patreon member. Patreon.com ramdass Also, don't forget that you can find a bunch of Ram Dass material and retreats and community on our inner Academy. And you can show up to discuss this podcast with people via Zoom. It's really lovely. We learn so much more about the talk by getting together and sharing. So check it out. Ramdas.org courses and with that, let's take A big deep breath and let the wisdom of this teacher wash over and through us. And as always, we dedicate any good that comes from these teachings to the benefit of all beings. Namaste and blessings. Here is Ram Dass here and now.

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When this food program group came to see me to ask me to do this benefit, there was a quality which I think you sensed when you heard them presenting it, a quality of purity in their undertaking. I really listened carefully when they came and I looked into my own heart to see what it felt like. And I felt I was meeting people who were experiencing genuine compassion for other human beings. And it fit in with a need in me so deep that this came together just the way it's come together. And up until now, I haven't spoken in Santa Cruz because somehow the chemistry didn't happen, right? But this was the chemistry that was needed. My guru, if there was one thing he reiterated more than almost anything else in terms of instructions, was the simple statement, feed everyone, feed people. And often when we came to the temple to visit where he would be hanging out, we'd be fed until we were nauseous, just fed and fed and fed and fed. And just as you thought you couldn't eat anymore, they'd say, here are jalebies, these sweet sugar and greasy things, you know? And you'd say, oh, I can't say, Baba wants you to have jalebies. Okay, thank you. And those of us that came from traditions of macrobiotics or concern about white sugar and grease had to face the choice. Was it grace or was it grease? And we keep eating. And once somebody questioned him and said, why do you feed us so much? We could eat on much less than this. And he said, it's not your physical hunger. He says, your hunger runs Much deeper than that. He said, this is the hunger of the soul. And you could imagine how many incarnations you have taken where you probably died of starvation and how deep in your karmic DNA is that preoccupation with food. Even when you say, I couldn't eat another mouthful, it's still orienting, where's the food? Make sure I'm not going to starve to death. I used to think it came out of my Jewish neurotic tradition, but I now realize it comes from a far deeper place in me than that. Now there's an interesting issue that's raised by this particular food program because it's got two wings to it. One wing is the Santa Cruz wing, which is, as you were told, three evenings a week there are free feasts for whoever wishes to partake. And then there is the program in Watsonville, which is run in a very different way of preparing food and bringing it to distribution places, helping the people tune into where the food resources are. Now, somehow it's so easy to buy in with your heart to the Watsonville program because you say there are people who have lots of babies and who have terrible wages and they really have need. But look at Santa Cruz. Who are these people? They're traveling people, people from middle class families often. And there's a very slight bit of political tenderness feeding free food to people who are just ripping off the system. And I remember when we were discussing having this benefit, this issue was raised, whether this was a political issue or not. And all I remember was my guru saying every human being has a right to be fed. A right, a right to food. He said even if he's the worst dacoit in the world, the worst thief, he has a right to food. That food is not a bargaining tool of power. Food is a basic shared manifestation of God. And somehow the haves and have nots lose sight of that very easily. We can bargain about television sets, we can bargain about automobiles, but we can't bargain about food. And to me, there is equal joy in my heart if somebody from a family that has millions of dollars comes to the free food kitchen in Santa Cruz as somebody who needs the food because they have 10 children in Watsonville, because it's another human being who feels they need food. And I don't think we want to equate food with the achievement to get food. I think we just want to rethink the way in which we approach the issue of food. And so it feels to me like this gathering is making a sense social statement that Feels good in my heart from a spiritual base just in making a statement. Because every $3 you put in, I am assured that money is literally going into food which is going into bellies of fellow human being. And that feels right on to me. Who are we at this moment, right here? What are you feeling in your heart? All the waiting in line and all the mechanics of coming to a gathering, let all that go. Just at this moment. We are a group of consciousness sharing space, confused. Some of us very certain, some of us with strong opinions, some of us with opinions but no attachments to them. There are Jews and there are Christians and there are Buddhists and there are Hindus, members of Islam, Islamic community, Zoroastrians and numerous more routes through to the top of the mountain. But there's some way in which we all recognize each other at this moment. You here, I'm here, far out. Some of you earlier in the evening were saying, well, when's Ram Dass going to be on? As if there was something that you were going to hear that you thought you needed. I just ask you to look inside your heart and recognize that what I know, in truth, you know in truth, I'm no more realized than you are just a fellow human being on the path and I get all screwed up just like you do. My part of it is I'm the mouth. I just keep saying it. I say our hearts. It's not my heart, it's our hearts. I say our heart. I say what we know but we don't yet know we know. I say what we have to keep saying to ourselves over and over again until we can not only hear it, but be it. None of the issues that you and I as awakening beings face are simple. As long as we think there are problems or questions, we're in the complicated world of our minds. But somewhere within our beings, it is all very simple. The dao is incredibly simple. The flow of things, it just takes quieting down enough, quieting our minds and opening our hearts enough to hear what part we are to play in the drama. Whatever it is that you're doing in life at this time, that's it. This is the statement you're making. When Gandhi was leaving a railroad station in a train, the train was just pulling out of the station station and a reporter rushed up and said, mahatma G, give us a message that we can take, I can take back to our people. And he scribbled on a brown paper bag and he tore this off and he handed it to the man as the train was pulling out of the station. And the. The words written on it were, my life is my mess. What you are at this moment, right now, right here, this second, me and you, this is the statement of our being. This is the best we've done thus far. This is it. Allow it. We spend so much time in our mind saying, if it was only this way. God, if you just hadn't fucked up, if you had made me taller or shorter or richer or wiser, or if you made everybody happier or gave more food to everybody. But you screwed up somehow. What did you do wrong? I'll help you clean up your act. The predicament that you and I must face is to acknowledge, first of all that we may not, with the way we know things, know everything. And the other thing that we have to face is that we have taken human incarnation and we got to keep trucking. You can't sit around and wait to be enlightened. When people are hungry, you got to feed them. When babies are crying and they're wet, you got to change them. The system works by collaborative investment, and we are part of a human enterprise. And we must honor our incarnation at the same moment, not get hooked. That's the work, isn't it? What a. These paradoxes are so breathtaking. I can't. Sometimes I'm just aghast at the recognition, lack of compassion about human predicament. You don't have to go far afield. You can look at yourself, you can look at your neighbor, you can walk down the street to see the suffering of the universe. It's no great surprise. There's pain. There's lots of pain. There's psychological pain, there's physical pain, there's spiritual pain. Practically everywhere you look. It almost seems at times as if Buddha was right, that form itself has inherent within it suffering. Because form is finite. It's like a frozen statement of the infinite. And it's always struggling to break out of its. The limits of any mold of definition. So everywhere in life, on the physical plane, you look, there's plenty. You don't have to look very far to see it. But the paradox. The paradox is that God is perfect. It's all fine. And that freaks. That freaks one part of. What do you mean it's fine? It stinks. That paradox. I mean, I always hear that kind of the funny way we play with levels of consciousness. It's that kind of thing I talk about where somebody says, hey, Sam, it's your turn to do the dishes. And Sam answers, we're all one. Sure, we're all one. And you say, your turn to do the dishes. It's a confusion across planes of consciousness. There is a plane of consciousness. There is a perceptual vantage point within the universe of vantage points, all of which are relative, since there is nowhere to stand, by the way. But there is a vantage point from which you can see merely the unfolding of law, the law of karma, the laws of dependent origination, the laws of the laws of the laws of the laws, the laws of cause and effect. And you can see that this leads to this, and this is related to this. And there is not a form in the universe that is not related lawfully to every other form in the universe. And it's all perfect. It's running just right, including the suffering. And then there's another vantage point when you're in the stew, when it sure doesn't seem perfect at all. And we better get to it right away because it seems to be getting worse. I don't know whether you face that peculiar dilemma of that paradox. I face it all the time. And it's very interesting to not get into Job's predicament. God, you screwed up. And not closing your heart to the suffering by pulling back to say, oh, it's all perfect. Somebody comes up and says, hey, man, I'm starving. It's okay, son. It's all perfect. It's so easy to close your heart, to pull back into your head, to have a philosophical statement to protect you from the pain of the suffering in the universe. So easy. It is equally easy to get caught on the other side of the pole, to get so caught in your heart and your pity and your pain that you lose the space in which you see the perfection. You just get so caught in righteous indignation and hurt and anger and the polarities of the universe, the good and the evil of it. And you forget what the Book of Tokens says, that he who knows not that the Prince of Darkness is but the other face of the King of Light knows not me, says God. Because behind the two, there is one. This is a very fierce journey you and I are on. We are very lucky to even know we are on a journey that says something about the level of our incarnation. But our action to clean up the scene of the universe must come always in our own hearts, first or simultaneously. And how far the game is going to go. What's the end point of the game? There is a story I've been telling every time I speak because it just so captures the essence of something or other. I Don't even know quite what it concerns. The time when the Tibetans were being taken over by the Chinese Communists. The Chinese. And the Chinese were very down on the Tibetan monks, and they were disemboweling many of them. And this particularly heavy colonel, Chinese colonel, who was known for his cruelty, came into a village and he asked for a report from his adjutant. And the adjutant said, all the monks in the local monastery have fled to the mountains except for one monk. And the colonel was furious that this one monk wasn't so afraid of him that he too ran to the mountain. And the colonel walked to the monastery and he pushed open the gates. And the monk was standing in the middle of the courtyard. And the colonel. The colonel walked up to the monk and he said, don't you know who I am? He said, I could take my sword and run it through your belly without blinking an eye. And the monk looked at him and said, and don't you know who I am? I could have your sword run through my belly without blinking an eye. That's the same power as Christ's power, the power of invulnerability, the power that comes because you finally know who you are. Because we no longer identify with those parts of ourselves that are finite form. We honor them as vehicles. We take care of them. But because we do not identify with them, no fear. You want my body taken? It's kind of old and run down and balding and all, but you need it. It's okay. Big deal. What kind of inner space? From what space can that monk speak? From what space can you meet a human being without fear, Meet another human being without desire? Because as long as you want something, you have a price. As long as you want something, your love is conditional. And if we're talking about sharing stuff, what we're working towards is the unconditional sharing of food, love, energy, awareness. Not, I will give you my love if you will be nice to me, or if you will give me food or if you will love me. But it's yours. It's ours. Recently, the last case of smallpox was wiped out in the world, which is an awesome statement. And the last cases were in Bangladesh and India of this strain of smallpox for which you've been vaccinated. Most of you and the group that was working for the World Health Organization to finish off the smallpox had maps on their walls in their office in New Delhi, pinpointing what villages still had smallpox in them. And their technique was to go into a village with lots of doctors from Sweden and Russia and India and all kinds of international teams and attendants in jeeps and. And inoculate everybody, vaccinate everybody, and just watch until the thing got controlled. Because if they didn't, if somebody from that village went to a railroad station, station, in which there were 500 people, and walk through the station, all 500 people of those people could be infected, and they'd take it back to 500 villages, and the whole thing would start all over you. And one of our friends, a Dr. Larry Brilliant, who was very beautiful guy, who was part of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and politically very active, went to Cuba at the time when it was a no, no. Larry found himself at the direction of our shared guru as part of the World Health Organization team. And they came to a village in which it was the religious belief of the villagers that smallpox was a gift from God and that to vaccinate was going against the will of God. And Larry was faced with this predicament. As a Western doctor. He understood that if this one village didn't get vaccinated, where smallpox was, it was one of the last few villages, smallpox would not be wiped out in the world. And all you had to do in India was look around to see all the people pockmarked and blind from smallpox, to feel that you wanted to do everything within your power to stop that. And yet he was trained in the Berkeley Freedom Movement, which said every human being has a right to live their life as they choose. And this was a tricky matter. And he found himself part of a midnight raid on this village, armed with needles. And they came to a hut that belonged to the head tribesman who had barricaded himself and his wife and children inside the hut. And they had to break down the door, wrestle the head man to the ground, and vaccinate him. In wrestling the wife to the ground, she bit the doctor. Finally, the head man and the wife and all the children were vaccinated. All the villagers ringed the hut, watching to see what the outcome would. And when the vaccination was complete of that family, there was this tense silence. And the head tribesman walked outside to his little dry, scabby little plot in which there was hardly anything growing. And there was one loki, one squash that was noticeable there. And he took the squash and he picked it it, and he carried it in, and he handed it to the Indian doctor who was in charge. And Larry's mind was blown. And he said to the translator, would you find out why he did that? So the tribesman, the head of the tribe, was asked that and he said it was our belief that smallpox was from God and that to annihilate it is adharmic, going against the Dharma. We therefore defended with all of our strength what we considered to be Dharma. You come from a different culture. You know God in your way. From your point of view, it was dharma to stop smallpox. You were doing your dharma. We were doing our dharma. There were many of you. There were few of us. We lost no blame. Now you are a gift. You are a guest in my home. I am sorry I cannot offer you more. Okay. Now you and I have got to deal with the complexity of that story in our daily lives all the time. Each of us listening to hear what we hear, the truth to be. There was a time when Mahatma Gandhi was leading the satyagraha, the march that was out to protest the English in India. And he started a march, and many poor people left their jobs to follow him. And he started the thing, and then he stopped it because it didn't feel right. The lieutenants came to him. They said, mahatmaji, you can't do this. I mean, these people are counting on you. You can't stop the march. And Gandhi said, my commitment is to truth. I'm only a human. I don't know all the truth. My understanding of truth changes from day to day, but my commitment is to truth, not to consistency. A lot of us have to expect that what we see as dharma today we may not see as dharma tomorrow. And we've got to be willing to risk the consequences of people seeing us as inconsistent and irresponsible. And all of it, we are coming out from under incredible moral suppression that comes out of a Victorian mentality and ethics that said it all had to be one way to be good. And if it wasn't good, you couldn't get to God. But something happened to all of us in which we touched something in our beings where we were no longer dependent on the mediation of a church or of somebody else who knew or of a book even. We started to trust our own hearts. And it gets very scary because there's no rule book for enlightenment that you can hang onto. It's so easy to say, the Bible says this. This book says this. Don't do it. You're bad. That isn't what our hearts are telling us, though. We're faced with a very interesting predicament. I just saw RA recently, a magazine called New Times, which just went defunct after doing an issue about me. I don't think there was cause and effect. The last issue Was titled Decadence America's Choice. And it concerned the sadomasochistic movements, the perfume called opium, conspicuous consumption, cocaine, rip offs, Watergate, all of the delicious little aspects of our culture. And I can see in it every righteous bone in my body slave saying, well, we are certainly going to hell on a rail. But there's something else in me that says, uh, that isn't quite right. We are just burning out a lot of stuff very fast and it's scaring the hell out of us. A couple of weeks ago there was an issue of Newsweek with Lauren Bacall on the COVID And it was concerning the new rage of Hollywood stars telling all. And Newsweek said in it there is this narcissistic process going on in the culture in which everybody's talking about themselves and their intimate details of their lives. I read this with particular interest since I'm a professional intimate revealer. And the article went on to say, it's become chick to tell everything. It has become in bad taste to have a private life. You don't say to somebody, you don't tell, you don't not tell anything. You tell everything. Newsweek was looking at it as, isn't this terrible? Look at this kind of People magazine kind of gossipy mentality that everybody's getting stuck in, getting rushes off, knowing what kind of sheets Joan Crawford slept on, you know, and who she, how many times she beat up her kids. But what it felt to me was that we are learning how and we crave to stand naked before God. We wish to be what we are and say instead of look how nice I look in my virgin white, we want to say, I am what I am, God, here I am. Take it or leave it. This is what you get. And there is a huge sigh of relief in some of us when we can finally just be, not be good, just be, just allow it for a moment. Allow it for a moment. We're all learning how to make the differentiation between like with anger, acknowledging that we feel anger and that we feel lust and we feel fear and we feel agitation and we feel doubtful and acting upon it. We understand that actions that come out of desire create karma. It's as simple as that. But the denial of the desires is an action which also creates karma. And we are approaching the place where we can say, yes, I've got all this stuff just like everybody else does, and here I am. We are beginning to realize that there is joy in being human. We were so busy trying to become gods that we push away our humanity. And it is only in our humanity that we are God. Until you hear who you are, how you are manifesting what your incarnation is, until I hear it in myself, we are not free. We are still pushing and shoving and grabbing with our minds out of fear. Is this too heavy, or are you with it? What determines one's actions as we become more conscious, seems to be those actions which alleviate the suffering of all beings. Once you figure out what you're doing here on Earth, there's really not much else you can do over. Mahatma Gandhi's at the place where his ashes are. I guess there's a sign, one of his quotations. I don't have it exactly, but it's something like, remember the poorest, humblest man you have ever seen, the most needful person, and consider whether or not your next act will be of any benefit to that person. You ready for that criterion? You ready for that? See, what I figured out? I always got wondering why I came down all the time. You must have worried about that, too. I mean, the usual thing is, how do you get high? But then we all got very good, good at that. I mean, I'm talking to masters here. I don't doubt that for a second. But the question of why you come down is kind of interesting, because if you didn't come down, you wouldn't have to go up. You understand that? You could just be. You could transcend. Up and down. You could say, down, up. Ah. So, like, wow, dig this depression. Pretty heavy, man. Don't think I'll survive this one. Ooh, I'm scared. Ooh, terrible depression. I may never get out of this one. I mean, after you've gone up and down a couple of thousand times, you know that every down's followed by an up, and every up's followed by a down. And you may have to drop a body in the process, but that's. What the hell. I mean, there's no rush. We're all here for a long time. But I noticed that when. When I would, quote, get high, meaning I would enter into planes of consciousness other than the ones my parents told me There would be a plane where I would look at another human being and I would see that behind all of the stuff of individual differences, behind your body and behind your personality and behind your astrology and behind all those individual difference networks. If I look through the grid, the grid of individual differences, I saw you in there, and you were just like me. I'd say, are you in there? You in there? And you'd say, if you were stoned Too. Yeah, you in there. It was like this incredible secret. We were far out. How did you get into that one? I remember once I went to the Newport Jazz Festival. And we were. We. I was with Maynard Ferguson and Tim Leary and various. And Charlie Mingus and a whole lot of interesting people. And we had this little bottle of white things. We didn't quite know what they were. We had never taken them before. And so we took them and they didn't have any effect. So took some more. And then I was left with a bottle. And I just figured they're not affecting. So I kept taking these things. And about a week later, I was still. But at any rate, that night, I was walking around the outside of this place where the festival was. And there was one of these tarpaulin walls. And I was backstage with the band and all. And then I walked around the outer edge of this backstage. And then I found a peephole. And I looked through the peephole and there was a guy looking through the peephole the other way, see? And he said, you want to get in? See, that's sort of how you feel when you look at somebody and you see they're coming from a different. You know, from where they are. That's in. So that's all about that story. That's it. So you look at this other person and you realize there's another being just like you in the universe. Now, if you go one more flip of your television receiver, see, there's a little dial that most of you don't notice. It's right by the side of your left eye. And you just turn it and you look. And then instead of seeing another being just like you, you just see yourself looking at yourself, looking at yourself, looking at yourself. You see, because there's really only one awareness in this whole game. This whole thing is a hype. We are all in drag. You understand that? There's only one of us talking to itself. And we've just said, what do you say? Let's make believe we're an audience and we're a lecturer. Just for fun. What do you want to do tonight? Okay. God saying to himself, see, God's sitting in his armchair, in her armchair with her pipe. And she says, let's make believe I'm the many. Because the many and the one are the same thing. They just depends on which way you flip to look. Okay? So you look and you see there's only one of us, right? There is no them anymore. There's only us. There's not even us. There's only. I. There's only is. If you by any chance should flip the dial once more, if you can get your hand up there, then there isn't even that. Then there's just, ah. Then it all turns in on itself and form and formless blub. Okay, okay. So now here's the predicament. You see, if you've looked through those that eye and you've seen that there is only one of us, that one of us includes all of us. It includes a child in Biafra. It includes a somebody that is bend over your hoe and keep working. It includes the guy that's yelling at him. See, it includes. It includes. It includes. It includes. And how would you live if you lived in that truth? Because when the chemical wears off or you get up from meditation and you start to quote re enter, you come down into a plane to the extent that you're still going up and coming, coming down, you come down into a plane where other people are, him, her, them. To the extent that you are holding on to something of mine that keeps somebody else them, you are denying the reality that you were in a couple of minutes ago. And I looked about and I saw how much of my daily life turned off what I already knew to be true because I couldn't bear to live with what I understood. And I looked at my van and I look at my hi fi set, and I look at my stuff, and I look at my guru who had a blanket and a water pot, and I look at my stuff and I think, is it worth it? Is my holding onto this stuff what's causing me to come down all the time? Have these possessions got me so deep? I remember somebody coming up to me after a lecture and saying, I understood what you said perfectly. I'm going to go home and sell all my antiques. And I remember my answer was, if you really understood what I said, you wouldn't have to, because it has nothing to do with whether you have stuff or not. It has to do with whether you're attached to the stuff or not, whether that attachment makes you vulnerable to seeing other people as objects. I meet people who have a great deal of money. There's karma connected with that. And they have the responsibility of using that money intelligently to relieve suffering in the universe. If they just walk away from their money, that isn't doing that isn't getting rid of their karma. That's just getting rid of their money. It's hiding from their karma. You got to look at what your situation is in this Life right now, with all of your stuff, everything given, you've got to be quiet enough to be in the moment, which includes all of it. It includes who you are, who your parents were, your environment, your economy, the technology, the ecological situation, the future, the lack of the future, all the myths you've heard, the condition of your body, the lights up here. All of it at this moment, yes, this is it. Within all of this is the actual message of the next moment. It's not a message you will understand with your intellect, because it is a gestalt message, and you will only understand it with your intuitive mind, not your intellect. So at some point, you have to quiet down your mind to the point where you are not caught in your thoughts. The thinking mind is an exquisite servant and a lousy master, because in the quietness of mind, you are aware of this plane and this plane and this plane and this plane and this plane. And what a free being is, is a being who is living on all planes simultaneously. No longer getting up and coming down. No more sequences. No more there and here. Nowhere to stand at the beginning. When we break out of the atmosphere, like when you shoot the rocket out into the atmosphere through the Van Allen belts and all that, you need a lot of juice, and you've got to grab onto methods, and you're going from here to there, and you get there and you say, I'm here and you're here in relation to there. And a lot of us get stuck at that point because once we go into another planet, there's so much juice in it, because each new plane of consciousness has more energy connected with it and more power. And you wanted power. You felt impotent and inadequate. Wow. Try spiritual power. It's like premium gasoline, only better. I mean, you can read minds and auras and you can know things and you can. You know. And you find you have power over other people. And the yogic prescriptions are always advising you, throw it back in the pot, baby, don't get caught. Don't get caught. And you say, oh, I'm only going to use it for righteous, which means for what I want. It's. One man's righteousness is another woman's tyranny. To the extent that you can hear Christ's saying, had ye but faith, you could move mountains. One day there was a little. There was a family up in the mountains in Nanital, in the Himalayas. And my guru was passing in the street, and the little girl in the family ran outside. It was just suppertime. And she said, oh, Maharaji, which is a common name used for saints in India. She said, oh, Maharaj Ji, come to our house. Come to our house. And her father called out to him, don't bother him. Don't bother him. We were with him before. The father is the. Was at the time the superintendent of prisons. He and his wife were extremely devotional people. Very pure, very deeply devoted to God. Maharaj ji said to the little girl, come, we'll go to your house. Come on, everybody. And he brought with him 20 people. They all crowded into the house. Maharaj ji said, ma. He said to the wife, we're all hungry. Feed us. She had prepared the meal for four people, two children, a husband and herself. There was a small pot of subji of vegetables. The shops were all closed down below in the marketplace. There was not enough food in the house to feed those people. Her husband went out into the kitchen, and Maharaj ji was yelling, feed us and hurry up. The husband said to the wife, what are we going to do? She said, maharaj will take care of it. She said, just keep the COVID on this pot and take that big serving spoon and don't look inside. Just go out and give everybody all the food they want. The man took the pot out and he said to each person, here's some subji. Do you want more? And some said, yes. And he reached in and he ladled another ladle out. And all 20 people ate their fill. When the wife told me this story, the husband told me this story. The wife was hiding sort of in the other room. She was a very shy woman. And the husband turned to the wife and he says, show him. And the wife went into the cupboard and she brought out the pot. It says, a little pot with a cover. You know, when I play with a story like that, you know, I kind of wonder about how the game really works, don't you? The game of hunger and starvation and feeding and faith and manna from heaven and connectedness. I keep feeling that the game is different than my mind can yet comprehend, but that I'm on the right track. When I keep quieting my mind and opening my heart and just serving and feeding and doing what I can, it feels like I'm going in the right direction, although I know there's still another level at which it all flips in. I don't know how you feel, but that's the kind of hit I get. At one point, Maharaj ji was sitting with a group of people, and he said, somebody's coming. And they said, who's that? And Just then a man came in and Maharaj looked at him and he said, no, I won't go. I know your employer is sick and I know he's called for me, but I won't go. And they said, but he's an old devotee, Maharaj. And he says, no, I won't go. And everybody insisted. Maharaj finally picked up a banana and he handed the banana to the person and he said, here, take this banana, give it to him, he'll be all right now. Fruit from the hand of the guru in India. I mean, you can take a 70 year old couple and give, give them a mango from the guru and say, here, and they'll have babies nine months later. So they rushed home with a banana and they mashed it up and they fed it to the man and he took the last bite of it and he died. You understand the game. It's pretty interesting, isn't it? You think the guru's just an old fool or do you think he maybe knows something others that I don't know. I mean, I live in a world in which much more is possible than meets the eyes. And in that realm of possibility, all I can do do is keep my mind quiet and my heart open and do what I can to end suffering. I don't know what else to do. And be very patient. Very patient. This podcast is brought to you by the Love Serve Remember foundation and ram dass.org we appreciate you listening and we appreciate all the support that you've given us. Please continue that support and donate@ramdas.org we can then continue to share what Ramdas has been sharing for all of these years. Thank you.

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