Ep. 307 – Being in Other Planes of Reality

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates, national average 12-month savings of $197 by new customers surveyed who save with Progressive between October 2024 and September 2025. Potential savings will vary. So what Emmanuel did was he turned my head around so that I started to see that getting high wasn't what it was about. It was becoming free. And free meant standing nowhere, and nowhere— standing nowhere meant being comfortable everywhere. And being comfortable everywhere meant opening to all of this and seeing this is God too, and seeing the Beloved on this plane as well as everywhere else.

Welcome to Here and Now with Ram Dass, Episode 307: Being in Other Planes of Reality. So it's February 1989 at the LA Whole Life Expo. It's teachers, healers, scientists, a lot of people coming together trying to figure out how to live. Of course, Ram Dass was there, and he opens, surprisingly, with kidney stones. Most people, when they feel pain, they want it to stop. But Ram Dass, he's delighted because he wants to watch his consciousness and what it does under pressure. He taps into these different planes of consciousness, and he helps us remember that we're so much more than who we think we are. And we also have to live here in our humanity because that is where the real juice is. So he tells us some of the classic stories, but they're so poignant because it's illustrating this idea of there is nowhere to stand. Yes, you are humanity. Yes, you are divinity. You are both. And Maybe that's why we loved him so much is because he embodied both so brilliantly. And how many times has Ram Dass helped you laugh at your own predicament, not take yourself so seriously, have compassion for yourself, recognize you're more than who you think you are, the ability to hold the paradox? If you've ever been touched by him, this is your moment. So many people come to Ram Dass through the podcast, and they say it changes their lives. And this year, the Be Here Now Network It turns 10 in June, and it's 10 years totally free, no paywall. And so we're raising funds to help preserve this archive for the next generation so people can continue to find Ram Dass and be touched. So every dollar now through June 30th is matched up to $50,000. So take 5 minutes, go to the website, donate, even if it's $5, it makes a huge difference. If everyone did it, it would really help support us now and into the future. Go to beherenownetwork.com/10years. That's beherenownetwork.com/10years. And with that, here is Ram Dass.

This is Ram Dass, and the show is called Here and Now with Ram Dass. Tim Leary has been trying to convince me that this is the center of the universe, Los Angeles. And but he looks at the world in terms of we've just arrived at the information age when I think it just left. Because when you know everything, it still isn't enough. But actually, you and I are passing through ages so fast. I mean, just a little while ago, we were all ensconced in the Industrial Age. And now we're in the information age, and I can feel whatever this represents is something else. Again, this has got a lot of information being passed, as you can see in the lobby, but it's a lot more than that. It's almost like we're trying to speak about the unspeakable. We're trying to use concepts, try to get hold of what we know to be true that isn't really knowable. It's just Be able. And we keep sharing notes and seeing where we are. It's very heady stuff. I don't mean heady in the intellectual stuff sense, but heady in the champagne bubbly sense, because we taste in something that changes in our relationship to time and space. We sense a taste of freedom. I mean, even with the world as it is, we sense a taste of freedom, freedom in our beings, freedom not to be afraid. I mean, I never even considered not being afraid for the first 50 years of my life. I mean, you always had to be afraid of something. The other day I passed a kidney stone. Well, this is a 57-year-old, gently decaying body. I mean, it's quite beautiful. I report that the bladder and the kidneys are well, and the gallbladder, and there was a there was a good amount of pain in a kidney stone finding its way down your penis and out, grinding away in your kidneys. And I was— yeah, and vomiting and holding my side and bending with pain. And I was delighted. I mean, it was really weird. Because everybody around me was freaking out. Oh my God. So, and I was just, my, this is really pain. Now I can relate to pain, you know? Hi. I mean, Stephen Levine has been writing these pain meditations for years, and I've never had anything really good to use it on. And it was incredible. I just kind of softened and got to know it and realized it was part of me. And we just talked together and we related until we got really comfortable. All the time from the outside, it looked absolutely ghastly. And when it was over and I have the stone on my puja table now, Along with my dog-eared picture of Casper Weinberger. I realized what a teaching that stone was for me. And one of the things it taught me was, huh, I don't know quite how to say it. That sounds humble enough. It taught me that I was farther out than I thought I was, that I was— my consciousness didn't really flicker in the midst of that pain. I think it gets interesting to watch your own consciousness flicker, to see what hooks you. I mean, all the desires and all the fears are going, hey, hey, come here for a minute. I'm real. See? And the little ones we catch immediately. We see through them right away. But the big ones, they really get us. Like, I'm good. That's a great one. Righteousness is an incredible place to stand. But the thing in the spiritual journey is there is no way to stand and to understand what it means to not stand anywhere. We play a lot with planes of reality because this group especially realizes the authenticity of many planes of reality. And you can hear very clearly You can imagine William James saying this at Harvard. I mean, what he had to put up with. I can vouch for that. When he said, our normal waking consciousness is but one type of consciousness, while all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie other types of realities. We can spend our entire lives without knowing of their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus and there they all are in their completeness. Whatever they are, it behooves us not to close our accounts prematurely with reality. That's pretty far out. That's right on, too. And what we've seen is that these other planes of reality, which are very real when you're in them, they're as real as this one is, have as much authenticity as this normal waking consciousness in the Hilton. But you and I bought into this one so thick and heavy because everybody that taught us had bought in. It's a conspiracy to make a plane real. That's what taking birth on a plane is about. It's entering into a conspiracy to close off the other planes of reality to make this one real. So we enter into this conspiracy And then we're standing in this plane and then we get high, which means we go into another plane of consciousness. Some of us do it, who knows how. Some of us do it through cooking a bouillabaisse. Some of us do it through sex, through surfing, through meditation, through drugs, through whatever way. You all by now know my story, but I can't resist telling it because it's so sweet. And for some of you, it's just a goal. You got to throw in one golden oldie. It was in the early '70s when all my audiences were white and everybody smiled and they were all between 15 and 25 and they all had flowers and stuff and they all had those smiles. And, and there was this woman in the front row. She was about 70, and she had on a hat with strawberries and cherries, plastic strawberries and cherries. And she had on a veil and she was wearing a print dress and she had a black patent leather bag and responsible looking Oxfords. And here I was meeting with the Explorers Club, you know, I mean, it's like we've all been to the North Pole and I can't figure out what she's doing there. She's not an acid head. I mean, I just can tell, you know, she's just something unless she's got an incredible cover. So, well, I don't want to digress too many times or I'll lose it. But I was speaking in France at the— I'll come back to the woman. I was speaking in France at the American Cathedral there. And I was up in the balcony watching the people come in, and I saw this very old man, very bent over, almost bent double, and a tall woman with a black veil and a black outfit and black stockings. And she was leading this man down the aisle. And it took maybe 10 minutes to walk down the aisle. The pain was so much for this man. And I thought, what? Why would he come to hear me when he has to go through that? What an extraordinary situation this is. He was just absolutely blowing my mind. So I went downstairs and when I saw what row he went into and I went down to say hello and thank him and, and it turned out it was a mime. So I didn't know who this woman was. You see, she might have been a plant. But so I told these far-out stories and about planes I'd gone to, and I'd look over and she'd be going like this, you see. And I think, how does she know? I mean, so I tell a more extraordinarily far-out story and she'd go like this. So I thought she had a problem with her neck. I mean, I entertained a number of— I tried rationally to deal with this phenomenon. Finally, at the end of the evening, I smiled at her and she came up to me and I said— she said, thank you so much. She said, well, everything you said is just the way I understand the universe to be. And I said, how do you know? What have you done that has brought you to that level of consciousness? How do you know that? And she leaned forward very conspiratorially and she said, I crochet. See, at that moment I knew the game was further out than I thought it was. So we start out very committed to this plane and then we awaken, meaning we recognize that other planes, information from other planes, which we've been having all along, but most of us have treated it like static, you know, like I was out of my mind or, you know, things like that. I lost it. Maybe just found it. Tim was right about that. You got to go out of your mind to use— you got to go out of your mind, use your head. It's just it was culturally a political statement. But it is true that you have to transcend your thinking mind to get into the next planes, not into the next planes, but into the farthest out planes, because the thinking mind always thinks about things. So it's always thinking about objects. So you're always one thought away from where the action is. As long as you think you're the thinker. Cogito ergo sum. So first, when we go out to these planes, we go out and we say, wow, yeah, or whatever, because some of them are very— some of them are— we look at these planes and they kind of— and then we rush back here to this plane which we have mixed feelings about because it seems kind of imprisoning. Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff, the Russian philosopher, he had such beautiful imagery around this. He said, if you would escape from prison, meaning the prison of this plane of reality, the first thing you must realize is you're in prison. If you think you're free, no escape is possible. Is that a far-out thought? The first thing you have to realize is that this is only part of it. And so the awakening is out, but then you come back here. And even somebody as far out as Carl Jung describes in his Dreams, Memories, whatever that book was, he said he went into these very far-out realms and he said, I was so happy to get back to my study. I thought about— there's nowhere to stand, Carl. It's just another study. I remember going into a motel room in somewhere on this plane, if that helps locate it. It might have been Idaho. Idaho.. And I went into this motel room and I was on tour and my base camp was somewhere, Boston or New Mexico or somewhere. And I thought, two more weeks and I can go home. I was sitting in this, I don't know, Ramada Inn or something, number 6 or in, and it was very plastic and I was waiting to go home. And then I thought, you know, that's absurd. If I'm a wandering sadhu and I'm on the road all the time, if I'm always living in relation to somewhere, there's always a little element of me that's suffering, that I'm not home. So I walk back out the door and I slam the door. I walk down the corridor, I turn back and I walk back to the door and I open the door. I yelled, I'm home. With all the feeling you use. I'm home, you know. Then I came in and I set up my puja on the coffee table and I was home. I figured I might as well be home here, because if not here, where? If not now, when? I mean, if we aren't straight with each other now, when are we going to start? In therapy? Oh boy, I've done in the information age and now I'll be careful. I have no friends left. Is this too irrational? Do you want me to be more linear? So what happens is you go, you taste these planes and then you come home, but there's nowhere to be home to. So as you start to get more comfortable in these other planes of reality, like first when you look at another person and you keep looking at them, especially if you focus like I do exercise with people where you focus on the point between the eyes, you don't look at the person. It's like a meditation, but you focus on the point. And if you do that and you just sit with a person within a very short time, their face starts to change and you begin to see all the faces in the universe in one face. And if you keep looking, the face disappears and you're seeing nothing. Most people at that point blink because to see nothing with their eyes open is more than they bargained for. They wanted to have a rush. But it's like the— it's like the story of the pig and the chicken who were walking down the street and they're hungry and they come to a restaurant and they say, let's have breakfast. And as they're entering, there's a sign that says ham and eggs. And the pig says, you're not getting me in there. The chicken says, oh, come on, we can have bagels and cream cheese. And the pig says, sure, it's fine with you. From you, they only want a contribution. From me, they want total commitment. And most of us just want to make a contribution. We want to— we don't want to go— we don't want to— Gandhi has a great line. He says, God demands nothing less than complete self-surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. And when a person thus loses him or herself, he immediately finds himself in the service of all that lives. It becomes her delight and recreation. She is a new person, never weary of spending herself in the service of God's creation. That's total commitment. I was in Thailand and I was staying with this woman, Molly Whitehouse, who had Her husband had been the ambassador to Thailand from the United States, and then he died and a new ambassador came in. But she loved Thailand and she stayed on and she loved people and they were always sleeping on her floor and hanging out. She was always helping the downtrodden. Lovely woman. And she said, Ram Dass, I want you to meet this monk. And when I really feel somebody is very clear and they say, I want you to do something, it's like, I want you to— when somebody that you know says, I want you to see a movie, You'll go see it because they said it. So she— we drove down to see this monk in his monastery. And the really the thing that got me most was that she said at the monastery that he runs, they cure drug addicts, heroin and opium addicts. And she said the program lasts 10 days and it costs $15. And 70% of the people who go there get free of drugs. Now, I understand the drug world of the United States and the ways that addicts are dealt with. And I know that with heroin and opium, you don't expect to do it in 10 days for $15. So we drove down and she told me the story. She said this man had been a narc for the Thai government. A narcotics agent, excuse me. And he had an aunt who was a Buddhist saint, whatever that means. And she said to him once, why are you doing what you're doing? Why don't you help people? You're going to hurt people doing what you do. And he says, I don't know how to do it any different. She says, well, you purify yourself and I'll help you. So he resigned from government service And he became a Theravada Buddhist monk. Theravada Buddhist monks have 228 no-nos. I mean, they have carried renunciation to a fine art. You can't sit on a soft bed, you can't sing, you can't eat afternoon, you can't, etc. And he was so gung-ho, he added 10 more. And then she gave him a brew, an herbal brew, a diuretic. And he started this place and people would come and for 10 days, 3 times a day, they drink this stuff out of a pail. And then the next pail is passed and they vomit into it and do it around a circle and they have sweats. So they have all the things that you'd have at a place. I mean, diuretics and sweats and so on. And when I met him at first, they took me through and there were the first dayers and the second dayers. The first dayers look like out-and-out junkies. I mean, like in opium dens, skin and bones. And they're from Europe and Asia. Second dayers look still that way, but by the sixth day they begin to come around. By the eighth day they look pretty good. They're walking around. Tenth day they leave. So I said to him, How do you do this? And I said to him, could anybody but you do this? He said, perhaps. I said, could I? It's not a bad thing if you can do that. He looked me up and down, and with great dubiousness he said, perhaps. And then, as if he was giving me a little preliminary exam, which I have yet to understand, by the way. He said, supposing— he said, you had a blanket and I came along and offered you another blanket. It was very cold up in the mountains. Would you accept it? I mean, this just came out of nowhere. So, I mean, every— I'm trying to think of, you know, I'm trying to be a good Jewish boy, you know. What does he expect me to say? You know, how do I get an A? You know? You always revert to type under pressure. So I said, no, I have a blanket. I don't need your blanket. He said, very good. So, but I leave my blanket anyway. And you go out in your blanket to pee and it rains and you come back and your blanket's wet. Will you use my blanket? So I said, of course I'll use your blanket. Your blanket's dry. My blanket's wet. He says, no, no, no, I don't know why not. And that was the end because I failed the exam after the second question. You know, I don't— I don't know what the third question is. And he's died. Took the third question with him to the grave. But what I realized that what I was seeing, he says, we just tell the people, you'll be here for 10 days and you will be free when you leave and you don't have to be addicted anymore. You can never come back here again. What I realized after I'd been with him a little bit was that, that his his mind, not his intellect, but his mind was stronger than their addiction. And so that when he said that, that was truth, and that truth was more powerful than their addiction. And I realized that he had said that because he was the cure. He wasn't just giving the cure. He had surrendered into the thing itself. He was the thing. And all the renunciation, the purification had just kind of honed down. He had watched his own attachments and kept letting go and letting go and letting go. And even the attachment to himself, getting the rush from doing good. Is that too far out? Can you hear that? The issue of dualism, the issue of staying on the edge where you're It's like the way a bhakti, a devotional yogi, always wants to stay just before merging. It's like extending the foreplay indefinitely, because at the moment of orgasm, dualism disappears. And he died into his path. And I came back and I looked around for— I went to— I looked at all these friends who have dedicated their lives to helping addicts. But they were all doing it. I mean, not 9 to 5. Some of them were doing it every waking moment, but they were still busy being somebody doing something. And the Bhagavad Gita says, be not identified with being the actor. And then it says, be not attached to the fruits of the action. And then go forward and do it. It's what Krishna says to Arjuna when he tells him to go fight. He says, don't think you're doing it anyway. You're just a pawn in a game. Don't, don't build your ego so big. And you do the best you can. And what'll happen will happen. It's got to do with more than just your doing stuff. So relax. Just do it as It's what's called doing your dharma. You do it impeccably. You become an impeccable peace here. You lead your life impeccably, but without attachment or clinging. You die into your form because you're not attached to it. And I saw that he had done that, and I couldn't find anybody else to send him for training. I didn't find anybody that wanted to die into just becoming the instrument of healing. Everyone wanted to be a healer. It's like all the years you're trying to make the spiritual journey go faster, and then it starts to go so fast, just out of, you know, you want to hold on to the rush a little while longer. You want to enjoy dualism just a little bit more, because when dualism ends, there goes the enjoyer. Now you're just the enjoyment. So with relationships— before I do that, let me just finish this image about the planes, because I think it's helpful. I keep finding it useful to start to get comfortable with nowhere to stand. You've had this as your base camp. You go into these other planes and then you come back and you go in and you come back and you go in and you start to get comfortable being in other planes of reality and functioning here. At first you lose your ground. I mean, you take people like Ramana Maharshi or Ananda Maimon. When they went into these other planes, they lost it on this plane. I mean, they were— we would put them away. In as psychotic in India, like Meher Baba treated them as mahants, as God intoxicants, because they were being beings that got so infatuated with the— with these other planes. Remember Aldous Huxley saying, we like diamonds so much on this plane because of jewels, because they remind us of the pebbles on other planes. And we get so infatuated with them, some of us lose our ground. And it's interesting, over the years I found the audiences— it's usually— it used to be that I used to say, you know, let go, dance, come on up, come on up for air, come on out and play. Then everybody was playing and I kept saying, learn your zip code, get a job, for God's sakes, get your act together. What's happened to me in the past few years is that I have gotten so— my faith in the reality of other planes of existence has become so strong that I trust risking being a human. To make that clear, when I first tasted that there were planes in which we are divine and we are free and we are one and we are one family and we are souls and we are mythic, astral, archetypal entities and we are, etc. When I tasted those, I treated this plane as shit, sort of. I mean, this was like an error, you know, because I went into the renunciate mode. The renunciate mode makes— it says you're so hooked on this plane, give this one— give up your attachment to this one so you can know the other planes. But the problem is that when you try to give it up, it sticks. And you end up with what I call the horny celibate syndrome. It's like, like I haven't smoked in 4 months, 3 hours and 2 minutes. You know, you're going to die of nonsmoking. So for a long time, all of my desires felt like errors, because when I was in these other planes, I tasted how much at home I felt and how true it was and how much I was a being of the spirit, a child of God. But my friend Emmanuel— no, some of you have read Emmanuel's book. My friend Emmanuel, who's, who's a— is channeled through Pat Rhodagast. Emmanuel is a disembodied entity, or he's, he's in another body on another plane. He's not on this plane. And I said to Emmanuel, he's great. I mean, he's got a— he's light, he's playful, he's not heavy, he's not righteous. He's just nice. He's— when I said to him, what shall I tell people about death? He said, Ram Dass, tell them it's absolutely safe. I mean, that's one of the highest lines I've ever heard from anybody, you know, and it would take somebody like him to say it, you know. Most of us are just whistling in the dark. If we said that he knows he did it, we did too, but we're busy denying it. Not this audience. I forget who I'm talking to. So I said to Emmanuel, Emmanuel, what am I doing here on Earth? I mean, who made this mistake? You know, what is— what's happening? And he said, Ram Dass, you're in school. Why don't you try taking the curriculum? Why don't you try being human? See, I never thought of that. It's far out. See, I spent all those years trying to be divine. And the past few years, I've gotten many, many letters from people say, thank you for being so human. Isn't that bizarre? You spend 25 years trying to become divine and you get letters thanking you for being human. I mean, it's— but what he did was he he turned my head just enough so that I started to see that when I pushed away anything like form, like gross form or form on this plane in time and space, when I pushed away anything, it had me. That not liking something is much as an attachment as wanting something, clinging and aversion. And then once I realized that I didn't want to be high, I wanted to be free. Free meant not pushing anything away. Because if you're free, like people say to me, I get so high in Colorado, you know, like, so, well, what about New York City? Oh, geez. What should I do for my spiritual path? Go live in New York City. See, it's true. As you want to get high, everything that doesn't get you high, you avoid. Brings me down. I used to go home and visit the family. Within 20 minutes, my father would say something like, "Got a job?" I'd say, God, they bring me down. Pretty soon you got a whole list of things you can't do because it brings you down, you know, and you're like some back in the suit, you know, some back the tailor. Do you all know the story? Oh, see, a man goes to a tailor. He's made some money and he goes to the best tailor in the village and he says, I want the best suit you can make. And The suit is made and he comes in for the fitting and he puts on the suit and one sleeve is about 6 inches longer than the other. And he said, "Zumback, I don't mean to complain, but could you make the sleeves the same length?" Zumback is affronted. "My good man, there's nothing wrong with the suit. It's the way you're standing." And he pushes his shoulder down. 'til the suit fits perfectly, sleeves are just right. And then he looks in the mirror and there's this bundle of material around the neck and he says, "Zumbach, my wife hates it when there's this material. Could you take this out?" Zumbach said, "There's nothing wrong with the suit. It's the way you are standing." And he pushes his head down. So now he looks in the mirror and the suit fits perfectly. So he leaves in his new suit and he goes to the subway and he gets on the subway standing perfectly. And somebody comes up to him and says, "What a beautiful suit. I bet Zumbach the tailor made that suit." And this guy said, "How did you know?" And he said, "Because only somebody as skilled as Zumbach could fit somebody as crippled as you so well." And in a way, a lot of us in our spiritual journey wore Zumbach's suit. No, just like that. And we got so— I can't do this, can't do that. And you just scrunched who you were in order to become who you thought you ought to be. Somebody said to me once, I'm tired of being shitted upon. Boy, I'm tired too, I'll tell you. So what Emmanuel did was he turned my head around so that I started to see that getting high wasn't what it was about. It was becoming free. And free meant standing nowhere. And nowhere— standing nowhere meant being comfortable everywhere. And being comfortable everywhere meant opening to all of this and seeing this is God too, and seeing the beloved on this plane as well as everywhere else. And I saw that as my faith in these other planes got stronger, I was willing to climb into my feelings on this plane more deeply. And own my humanity much more deeply because I wasn't afraid of it. I wasn't afraid I would lose God by owning my humanity, even though it takes me right to the edge of my clingings of mind, right to the edge of my aversions and attractions. And that's why when I have a kidney stone or when I'm in a relationship or when things get going, get tough,, it gets exciting because the only thing that catches you is where your clingings are. New York is no different from a cave in the Himalayas, or L.A. is no different from, from the temple that I lived in, in India. The only difference is what it awakens in you. If there's nothing you want, there's no difference. But each environment fans certain seeds that Ramakrishna describes as sitting uncooked inside yourself. And the fanning comes along and you say, I want that. And you say, damn the city. But it's you. It's not the city. The city is just being the city. What are you badmouthing it for? It's just doing its thing.

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