Ep. 304 – The Wisdom of the Universe

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Dverbo.com/trust for details. How do you listen that clearly to another human being? You listen when the projecting, judging mind starts to quiet down, when the intellectual, analytic thinking mind starts to quiet down. When you no longer identify with those qualities of mind and you merely rest in your awareness, wanting nothing, then you begin to hear.

Welcome to another Here and Now with Ram Dass. This is episode 304, The Wisdom of the Universe. And this talk is from a retreat at the Embassy Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1980. And Ram Dass opens by speaking to a room in the City of Angels about how we aren't who we think we are and what it means to accept our humanity in order to fully awaken. He shares a story about how to listen clearly to another human being and explores how our desires color everything. And this is only part 1 of the talk. Check back soon for the second half. Quickly, before we begin, if you are in or near New York City on June 6th, please come be a part of something truly special. The Love Serve Remember Foundation is bringing community together for a Day in the Heart at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrews on the Upper West Side. There will be workshops with Sharon Salzberg and Krishna Das, a screening of the film Brilliant Disguise, and of course in the evening, beautiful kirtan with Krishna Das and his band. It's a full day of music and community, and every ticket directly supports Love Serve Remember Foundation in continuing to bring you the teachings of Ram Dass. Check it out, ramdass.org/events. And with that, here is Ram Dass, here and now.

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If this is the City of Angels, then you must all be angels. So I reflected on what it is one would say to a gathering of angels. Of an evening about spiritual matters. It says that the Buddha, between 12 and 4 in the morning, would teach on other realms, other Buddha lands. So there's no reason for me to assume I'm on the physical plane here. I spoke in North Carolina recently, and a poet wrote a poem about the evening, and he described the whole building lifting off the ground, the ripping of cords, the smelling of burning electrical wires, the look of surprise as people looked up from the street. And then as the evening ended, the whole place settled down and everybody walked out as if nothing had happened. See, you don't think you're angels, but that's your problem. You see who you think you are. You aren't either. It's interesting to get into your head to reflect on the issue of somebody saying to you, you are not who you think you are. And say, who do I think I am? And then any answer isn't who you are, okay? It's who you also are, or relatively are, relatively really are. But in absolute truth, you aren't who you think you are. Hmm. It's interesting to finally realize that you really don't have to be anybody to function quite well. You know how you drive a car and you are— most of you drive cars and you make these incredible decisions about centrifugal and centripetal force and speed and local and whether police are in view and, you know, and the sound of the engine and when to shift and oh my God. And you usually are thinking about something else. That's all done on base brain. Isn't that incredible? I mean, that's mind-boggling right there. So why do you assume what you think about couldn't be on base brain too? And if so, what would you be left to think about? Maybe nothing. It's interesting to be in the middle of action and have an empty mind. Nothing's happening at all. Speaking's happening. Evening. Embassy Auditorium. Coming, going, listening, speaking. Nothing. Just here, just hanging out. Let's play lecture tonight. What do you say? You be the audience and I'll be the lecturer.

Okay.

And we'll make believe you want to know and that I know. Okay. We can play the game of lecture As long as you're a good sport, because I won't play with you unless you're a good sport. And what is a good sport? A good sport is if you are playing tennis and you and I are competing, as long as we remember we collaborated to compete, we're living on two planes simultaneously. That's good sport. So good sport is you can be an audience as long as you don't take yourself too seriously and realize that behind lecturer and audience, here we are. And you know everything I know. It just doesn't happen to be your business to know. You know it, and it is mine. It's just showbiz. It's just another part of the dance. You busy playing? Who are you this time? Lady Macbeth? No, I'm a responsible member of the community this time. Wow.

Far out.

That's an interesting one. Is it fun? It's useful, right? Okay, well, if that's the best you can do, that's all right. And who are you? I'm just getting what I can. Right. Is that an interesting one? Oh yeah. I hear 10,000 more of them right behind it too. Each lifetime we're living out another drama. Far out. When you visualize the experiences you have each day, like the movie theaters that have sound system, quadraphonic sound and vision all around the sides. And a train comes or things come and they go, a pack of wild buffalo come and then they split and they go around you and they just experience this going by you and disappearing into the distance. And if you see them just coming and going like that, just experiences, and you don't get caught in the identification and the reactivity, the whole perception of it shifts. Just all looks differently. It looks more like Herman Hesse says in Journey to the East when Leo says— H.H. says to Leo— H.H. is kind of a stuffed shirt. He says to Leo, You don't mean to say that life is just a game, do you? Leo said, that's exactly what I mean to say. Life is just a game, an exquisite game. And that doesn't mean that in a pejorative sense.

Not at all.

I would imagine that if you were angels, I would probably say practically the same thing to you, because angels are having an incarnation and they don't know necessarily know much more than human beings know. And many of them are busy thinking they're angels, just like you are busy thinking you're humans. It's interesting. A lot of people say somebody spoke from the other world to them and they gave them an instruction, and they come and they say, should I follow the instruction? Well, just because somebody doesn't have a body doesn't mean they're a hell of a lot wiser than people that do. You could have some very, very well-meaning person who dies and decides to help humanity, but they know just what they knew when they were a well-meaning human. Now they're a well-meaning ghost. And they come through somebody. And because we're not used to talking with people that don't have bodies, we juice up what they say because we think they're closer, because we think having a body makes you further away from God, which is totally ridiculous. I mean, the minute you buy the school you're in and accept that you are in a human incarnation and accept your humanness fully, you are right with God at that moment. Far out. Because for years I was— well, Alan Watts said it beautifully. One night we were in somewhat drunken revelry at a Benedictine monastery, and Alan said to me, Ram Dass, he spoke clearly even when he was drunk. He said, Ram Dass, he said, your problem is that you're too attached to emptiness. And he turned out to be right. By the way, I mean, I really heard the message since then. And what does it mean to accept your humanity in order to get to God or to become free or to become awake? Or why would an awakened person start to live life more and more fully. And yet, and yet, as Don Juan says, you do it as if it matters, but you know it doesn't. And yet, in every experience that goes by you all day, is something that is absolutely optimally perfect as a device for your awakening. If your awareness is at the point of evolution where you want to use that, where you're ready to use that, and if you want to use the experience for something else, you'll get that. Hmm. It's interesting that every single moment is a moment that's available for flipping the game around, for awakening out of the dream. I mean, I give lectures on how to be in prison, in solitary confinement, and awaken. How to be in a relationship and use the relationship as a vehicle to awaken. And then we have a big project called the Dying Project, which is if you got to die anyway, come die with us. I mean, we're— it sounds like Forest Lawn. Yeah, we don't really say that. We say if you're going to die, Use your death as a vehicle to awaken. I mean, why not? It's one of the most absolutely exquisite opportunities, and none too soon. I mean, because the Eastern traditions almost universally teach, and even the Middle Eastern traditions place some emphasis on this at times, that the moment of death It's very, very good to be very clear and very centered and very present and very much willing and ready to meet the stuff that comes so that it doesn't all blow you away and just get caught in unconsciousness. It's like taking a huge acid trip, but if you weren't ready for it, it can get you nervous. See, suddenly the Bardo are coming at you. Yeah. Now, ah, and you got to be able to say, uh-huh, right. Ah, so namaste. And boom, see you later. I'm headed for the light. But death is such a heavy drama. I mean, you may not get center stage for a love affair, but you'll get it when you're going to die. You know, everybody bows to your trip. Poor dear. It's incredible romanticism. It's real melodrama. I often go into a room where somebody is dying and I So I talk to them and I say, I say, excuse me, I see you're busy dying. I'll come back later. Because who you are, I just would like to tell you, even though you won't believe me, who you are doesn't die. Just who you think you are dies. Very funny how it works. After you get all finished dying, you're going to be right here. You won't have this particular body, but you'll be here and you'll say, oh God, if I'd only known that. How do I know all that? I don't. It's as good a myth as any. People say I sound like Lazarus risen from the dead when I do my dying lecture. Hmm. I'd like to read you a very short article This is an article from a book called Mortal Lessons by Dr. Seltzer, published by Simon Schuster. On the bulletin board in the front hall of the hospital where I work, there appeared an announcement. Yes, she don't. And it read, we'll make rounds at 6:00. On the morning of June 10th. The particulars were then given, followed by a notation: Yeshe Donden is personal physician to the Dalai Lama. Now, I am not so leathery a skeptic that I would knowingly ignore an emissary from the gods. Not only might such sang-froid be inimical to one's earthly well-being, it could take care of eternity as well. Thus, on the morning of June 10th, I joined the clutch of white coats waiting in the small conference room adjacent to the ward selected for the rounds. The air in the room is heavy with ill-concealed dubiety and suspicion of bamboozlement. At precisely 6:00, he materializes, a short, golden, barrelly man dressed in a sleeveless robe of saffron and maroon. His scalp is shaven and the only visible hair is a scanty black line above each hooded eye. He bows in greeting while his young interpreter makes the introduction. Yeshe Donden, we are told, will examine a patient selected by a member of the staff. The diagnosis is as unknown to Yeshe Donden as it is to us. The examination of the patient will take place in our presence, after which we will reconvene in the conference room. Where Yeshi Dandan will discuss the case. We are further informed that for the past 2 hours, Yeshi Dandan has purified himself by bathing, fasting, and prayer. I, having breakfasted well, performed only the most desultory of ablutions and given no thought at all to my soul, glanced furtively at my fellows. Suddenly we seem a soiled, uncouth lot. The patient has been awakened early and told that she was to be examined by a foreign doctor, and she'd been asked to produce a fresh specimen of urine. So when we enter her room, the woman shows no surprise. She has long ago taken on that mixture of compliance and resignation that is the face of chronic illness. This was to be but another in an endless series of tests and examinations. Yes, she died in steps to the bedside while the rest stand apart watching for a long time. He gazes at the woman, favoring no part of her body with his eyes, but seeming to fix his glance at a place just above her supine form. I too study her. No physical sign nor obvious symptom gives a clue to the nature of her disease. At last he takes her hand, raising it in both of his own. Now he bends over the bed in a kind of crouching stance, his head drawn down into the collar of his robe. His eyes are closed as he feels for her pulse. In a moment, he's found the spot. And for the next half hour, he remains thus suspended above the patient like some exotic golden bird with folded wings, holding the pulse of the woman beneath his fingers, cradling her hand in his. All the power of the man seems to have been drawn down into this one purpose. It is palpitation of the pulse raised to the state of ritual. From the foot of the bed where I stand, it is as though he and the patient have entered a special place of isolation, of apartness, about which a vacancy hovers and across which no violation is possible. After a moment, the woman rests back upon her pillow. From time to time, she raises her head to look at the strange figure above her, then sinks back once more. I cannot see their hands joined in a correspondence that is exclusive, intimate, his fingertips receiving the voice of her sick body through the rhythm and throb she offers at her wrists. All at once, I am envious. Not of him, not of Yeshe Dondon for his gift of beauty and holiness, but of her. I want to be held like that, touched, so received. And I know that I, who have palpitated 100,000 pulses, have not felt a single one. At last, Yeshe Dandan straightens, gently places the woman's hand upon the bed and steps back. The interpreter produces a small wooden bowl and two sticks. Yeshe Dandan pours a portion of the urine specimen into the bowl, whips the liquid with the two sticks. This he does for several minutes until a foam is raised. Then, bowing above the bowl, he inhales the odor three times. He sets down the bowl and turns to leave. All this while he has not uttered a single word. As he nears the door, the woman raises her head and calls out to him in a voice at once urgent and serene. Thank you, Doctor, she says, and touches with her other hand the place he had held on her wrist as though to recapture something that had visited there. Yeshe Donden turns back for a moment to gaze at her, then steps into the corridor. Rounds are at an end. We are seated once more in the conference room. Yeshe Donden speaks now for the first time in soft Tibetan sounds that I have never heard before. He has written— he has barely begun when the young interpreter begins to translate. The two voices continue in tandem, a bilingual fugue. The one chasing the other. It is like the chanting of monks. He speaks of winds coursing through the body of the woman, currents that break against barriers, eddying. These vortices are in her blood, he says, the last spendings of an imperfect heart between the chambers of her heart, long, long before she was born. A wind had come and blown open a deep gate that must never be opened. Through it charged the full waters of her river as the mountain stream cascades in the springtime, battering, knocking loose the land and flooding her breath. Thus he speaks and is silent. May we now have the diagnosis of Professor Asks? The host of these rounds, the man who knows the answers. Congenital heart disease, he says. Intraventricular septal defect with resultant heart failure. A gateway in the heart, I think, that must not be opened. Through it charge the full waters that flood her breath. So here then is the doctor listening to the sounds of the body to which the rest of us are deaf. He is more than doctor. He is priest. Now and then it happens as I make my own rounds that I hear the sounds of his voice. Like an ancient Buddhist prayer, its meaning long since forgotten, only the music remaining. Then a jubilation possesses me and I feel myself touched by something divine. How do you listen that clearly to another human being? You listen when the projecting, judging mind starts to quiet down, when the intellectual, analytic thinking mind starts to quiet down, when you no longer identify with those qualities of mind. And you merely rest in your awareness, wanting nothing, then you begin to hear.

Wanting nothing.

The Bhagavad Gita says, do what you do But be not attached to the fruits of the action. You do it, you do it as an impeccable warrior, but how it comes out— Don Juan says you act as if it matters, but you know that it doesn't. Because if everything in your life had come out the way you expected it to, your life wouldn't be nearly as interesting as it's turned out to be. What? I mean, there is no way 20 years ago that I could have predicted what I am now. That guy would have had this guy locked up immediately. I remember visiting my brother, who at the time was in a schizophrenic psychotic episode, whatever that means, that— and he was Christ, or he thought he was Christ at that moment. And he and I and his psychiatrist met in the mental hospital because the psychiatrist wouldn't let him see anybody without the psychiatrist being present. And my brother, who was way out there, and I, I came in from India and I was wearing a dress and beads, and psychiatrist was wearing a white coat and had a clipboard. My brother was wearing a suit and a tie. My brother says, I don't understand. I'm the only one that looks sane in this room, and I'm the one that's locked up. I mean, I just don't understand. I— what's going on? To which I remember, as I said, you think you're Christ? He says, yes, yes, Richard, I'm Christ. I said, well, I'm Christ too. He says, no, you don't understand. I said, that's why they lock you up. The minute you tell someone else you're not Christ, Watch it. You can be whoever you want as long as you don't lay a trip on anyone else about who they are. But Leonard and I were discussing whether or not the psychiatrist would ever know he was God.

Yeah.

Or whether he was going to spend the whole life busy thinking it was the psychiatrist. Psychiatrist was writing all this down. It was a beautiful moment, I must say. It was a Ah, it was really hard for psychiatrists to unlock the door and let me out. I want you to know, I'm not— See, as long as you are identified with any of your desires, that completely colors everything you see. You know yourself if you're horny, and you're driving down Sunset Boulevard, it's really hard to look at the bookstores. I mean, most of the bookstores or a few of the bookstores. I don't know what's happened in Los Angeles. I should have picked something else. Let me try something else. The restaurants. Okay. Your desire is affect what you see. And when you are just identified with your desire, you cannot hear anything but that which is related to the fulfillment of that desire. That's all you hear. And out of the infinite possibilities in the universe, you place the grid on— only those things will come through this matrix which will fulfill that desire or give me information about the optimum chances for fulfillment. Now, what? So what would you have to do to listen? Do you get rid of the desires? No, obviously not, because you're a human being and you took a human incarnation. And human incarnations have with them, in case you didn't know, they have lust and greed, hostility and ill will, agitation, sloth and torpor and doubt. See, that's who you are. That's the package you bought into because you needed to do that. It doesn't mean you have to get lost in it, but to be able to listen doesn't mean you stop it either. You merely break the identification between your awareness and those desires. Denial? No, they're right here. Pain? Sure, it hurts like hell. Bliss? Wow.

Yeah.

Boredom? Of course.

All of it's right here. And behind it all Ah, here we are. I do an exercise in which usually people face each other.

They look into each other's eyes and we go through different identities that you see in another person.

And then I tell a story about seeking a guru and finding that there is a realized being in a mountain cave, and you make a long journey and you finally find the cave. Come up to the cave. You've washed in the river. You've brought fruit and flowers.

This is a journey you've come halfway around the world for. And you come up and in the cave a man sits and he motions for you to come in.

You come in and you offer your fruit and flowers and you sit down and you're sitting opposite a pure viewing screen, somebody who's clear. And what do you see? Why you seek the guru is to seek a pure mirror that is wiped clear of the dust and veil of attachment.

And then you see clearly who you are. And what you see in the mirror is your own projections, because that's all there is. It's like the monk who can read the student's mind. And the student says to the monk, how is it we can— you can always read my mind? The monk says, there's nothing to it. He says, you come into the room and you are in the room together. And I hear somebody thinking and I know it's not me. See, but when we meet such a being, we usually can't believe the possibility that that person isn't attached. So we look for clay feet. We become experts in finding the clay feet, the imperfections in other human beings to reassure ourselves they're just like us. It's a story told by a doctor about meeting my guru, Maharaj. My wife had met Maharaj and had come to get me in America and bring me back to meet him. When we first went to see Maharaj, I was put off by what I saw. All these crazy Westerners wearing white clothes and hanging around this fat old man in a blanket. More than anything else, I hated seeing Westerners touch his feet. On my first day there, he totally ignored me. After the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh day, during which he also ignored me, I began to grow very upset. I felt no love for him. In fact, I felt nothing. I decided that my wife had been captured by some crazy cult. By the end of the week, I was ready to leave. We were staying at the hotel up in Nainital, and on the 8th day I told my wife that I wasn't feeling well. I spent the day walking around the lake thinking that if my wife was so involved in something that was clearly not for me, it must mean that our marriage was at an end. I looked at the flowers, the mountains, and the reflections in the lake. But nothing could dispel my depression. And then I did something I had really never done in my adult life. I prayed. I asked God, what am I doing here? Who is this man? These people are crazy. I don't belong here. Just then I remembered the phrase, had ye but faith, ye would not need miracles. Okay, God, I don't have any faith. Send me a miracle. I kept looking for a rainbow, but nothing happened. So I decided to leave the next day. The next morning, we took a taxi down to Kenshi, to the temple, to say goodbye. Although I didn't like Maharaj, I thought I'd just be very honest and have it out with him. We got to Kenshi before anyone else was there, and we sat in front of his tucket, his wooden bed on the porch. Maharaj Ji had not yet come out from inside the room. There was some fruit on the tucket and one of the apples had fallen on the ground. So I bent over to pick it up. Just then Maharaj Ji came out of his room and stepped on my hand, pinning me to the ground. So here I was on my knees touching his foot. In that position I detested. How ludicrous. He looked down at me and he asked, where were you yesterday? Then he asked, were you at the lake? He said lake in English. When he said the word lake to me, I began to get this strange feeling at the base of my spine. My whole body tingled. It felt very strange.

What were you doing at the lake?

I began to feel very tight.

Were you horseback riding?

No.

Were you boating?

No. Did you go swimming? The lake's polluted. Nobody ever swims there. No.

Then he leaned over and spoke quietly. 'Were you talking to God?

Did you ask for something?' When he did that, I fell apart and started to cry like a baby. He pulled me over and started pulling my beard, repeating, 'Did you ask for something? Did you ask for something?' That really felt like my initiation. By then, others had arrived and they were around me caressing me. And I feel— I realized that almost everyone there had gone through some experience like that. A trivial question such as, "Were you at the lake yesterday?" which had no meaning to anyone else, shattered my perception of reality. That was my welcome. After that, I just wanted to rub his feet. You can see that miracles are really related to doubt, which is one of the parts of the human condition, to breaking through doubt. And everybody will let go of their doubts when something overrides their cognitive structure of reality. Okay, now it's easy to imagine sitting before a guru who is all clear and wise and miraculous and loving and all. But here is the predicament. Now turn the story around and for just a moment, close your eyes and imagine now that you are the one sitting in the cave and that this other being has come to sit before you to see clearly.

And what are you going to offer that being? Imagine that such a being is sitting before you. A seeker, man, woman, boy, girl, looking into your eyes at this moment, no matter how much you're stuck with all your stuff, the purity of that person seeking draws you out beyond who you think you are. So at this moment, just start to let go of orientation thoughts.

Forget the fact that we're in the Embassy Auditorium.

May have forgotten that already. Just start to let go of the coordinates of time and space.

Forget 1980. Forget your physical body.

Just let it sit there. I will describe who you really are when you are finished being who you think you are. And as I describe each thing, put it on like a cloak.

Let yourself feel your way into it.

You are a being of equanimity, Quietness, presence. If you feel agitated, just take a deep breath and breathe it, breathe it out through the middle of your chest and just let all the tension go and then become peaceful. You are a being of wisdom, not of knowledge. It's not what you know, you know. It is that you are quiet enough so that in the way that rivers and trees and rocks and the moon are all statements of the wisdom of the universe, so your actions, your heart, your mind are all the wisdom made manifest. In the beginning is the word. See all of the storyline of your past and future as just a storyline. Not my storyline, another storyline, very much like a jacket or a sweater that one might put on and take off. Feel your interconnectedness with the universe. Experience the sounds in the auditorium. The sounds of the city outside, all of the physical plane stuff is all within you. Just start to expand outward, become more and more vast so that my voice is coming from inside you rather than outside you. Get so vast that there is only one of us. And as you, as the Ancient One, look within yourself and see the law unfolding, the natural laws of the universe, the play, the dance, all within yourself. You rest in clear, present, aware Truth, beauty, love, it's all the same right here. And resting here, needing to do nothing, yet nothing is left undone. You are ready to look into the eyes of the person who seeks from you. For each of our eyes is the window to the soul, and the soul is the doorway to the One, and the One is the entrance to that which is beyond the beyond. And each of us exists on all these planes of reality. There is only one of us, and there are many of us. Can you imagine remaining in this space of quiet, clear wisdom, truth, love? Joy, rapture, emptiness, incorporating all polarities such as good and evil into yourself. Can you imagine what it would be like to walk out of the cave, down the hill, back into the life you are living, that you live today and you will live tomorrow, but doing it from this space. Such a being residing so in their own self can truly, as the Dalai Lama's physician, listen. And because in this state there is nothing that you want, how can any of your actions be other than the voice of the Dharma? How could it possibly be?

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