Ep. 309 – Playing Your Part

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Each of us has very fragile and delicate egos. And they have so preoccupied our consciousnesses. But I want to keep affirming for you that more than your specialness, more significant still is the way in which you are unique as part of a totality. I really see us all as having work on Earth that's equally important. We just have different parts to play.

Welcome back to Ram Dass Here and Now. This is Episode 309: Playing Your Part. So this talk comes from a retreat Ram Dass gave at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, on June 21st, 1986. And Omega Institute and Ram Dass, they go way back. He taught there for years, and he called it two institutions in one because not only are the participants on a path of awakening, but the staff is as well. And the whole spirit runs through this episode. So Ram Dass starts, he includes that classic bus driver story, how a driver who showed up fully for every passenger might have done more good than the Buddha in a lifetime of teaching. And it's a reminder that how we are being matters more than what we believe. And from there, he gets into the idea that we're all playing a part on some stage, and the quieter we get, the more clearly we can hear what part is actually ours, authentically ours. 40 years later, none of this wisdom has aged out. We're still scrolling past 10 causes before breakfast, still watching good people leave jobs and relationships. Because the structures eat them alive. And Ram Dass hands us perennial wisdom that helps us find our way through. It's fitting that this was recorded at Omega because they are also bringing us today's episode. They have been bringing teachers and seekers together in the Hudson Valley for almost 50 years, and so highly encourage you to check them out. Go to eOmega—that's the letter E, omega.org and see what's on the horizon. And with that, here's Ram Dass live from Omega, 1986, Here and Now.

This is Ram Dass, and the show is called Here and Now with Ram Dass. I'm a little overwhelmed by the beauty of this moment, softness of the day, and the coming together of a group of beings who are exploring their own beings and reaching to understand the truths of our existence and open to the love. I think this is one of the moments when I sense what Omega is about. Because the fact that it has created the space in which we can be together in this celebration and this acknowledgement and this effort and this journey. It's interesting because that, um, When you look at recognition as being the reward for your work, I certainly get a lot of recognition, tremendous amount of recognition, but I see, as sweet as that is, that it isn't really the essence of the matter for me. I think much dearer to my heart and much more feeding to my spirit is feeling like I'm part of— I'm part of a process of Huh. Of light, of Dharma, of opening of all of us. Yesterday when I was meeting with the staff of Omega, we were talking about one of the people who, who does the room service was talking about cleaning a sink. Now those people are clean, they leave, and then the other people, people come, the guests, and they don't know somebody clean. They don't think about that. There's no recognition in that level. And yet available to that person is the same thing that most turns me on, which is feeling part of an organism that is healing. It's healing myself. It's healing the people I make contact with. It's healing. It's healing. It's healing the, the universe of forms. Each of us has very fragile and delicate egos. And they have so preoccupied our consciousnesses. But I want to keep affirming for you that more than your specialness, more significant still is the way in which you are unique as part of a totality. I really see us all as having work on Earth that's equally important. We just have different parts to play. You look at your life, whichever life it is. I always remember this bus driver on Third Avenue. This was a time in 1969, I believe, when I was giving my first series of lectures at the Sculptor Studio after I came back from India. Some of you were even there, and I was living in an apartment down in the middle of town, and I'd go uptown every day at the same time. And it turned out I got the same bus driver every day. And it was rush hour, and I would get onto this huge box that was being moved through this incredible snarl of traffic, and I would meet this being who, just in the way he handled the bus in the way he recognized each person that got on the bus, in the way he remained so cool through it all. People tired from the work of the day. I think that everybody that got on that bus could be touched by that man. And many were, because you could feel the lightness on the bus. And I thought about each of those people then going home to be with partners or be with family or be alone. And I thought about the tiny pebble that that bus driver was, dropped into the ocean of consciousness and going out and out and out and out and out. It's interesting to think of where would Buddha come if Buddha were going to— that bus driver makes contact with more people than Buddha made in his whole lifetime. I think that our culture focuses so much on specialness, on being somebody. That we often have veiled from us the preciousness of the other parts of our being that aren't third chakra. And I go from little microcosms to big macrocosms. I mean, I think of the Omega staff as one family, and then I think of all of us gathered on this land who are all together out of some reaching and some yearning, staff and participants as a family. And then I think of all the groups we are part of as the extended family. And then we share consciousness in nation-states, and that's another family. And we're part of an ecosystem, still another family. In each of these, we have a unique role to play. When Paul spoke yesterday and he talked about our social action and our— that call to be counted as a voice in shaping the policies that affect the well-being of all human beings. The quieter I get, the more I hear The appropriateness of playing a part on each of the stages doesn't have to be a big part, doesn't have to be an out front part. It just has to be a part that when an issue comes, a letter to a senator doesn't have to be answered or acknowledged. It can come back, dear Mr. Doss, it's okay. It's not an ego trip. It's just being part of the human condition. It's a little check written. It's tithing of my money. It's when my cousin calls and says they're upset, my seeing it because I'm part of that family. And when somebody with AIDS calls, I see them because I'm part of that family. And then there's the Hindu temple, and I feel part of that family. And this year I'm going to speak at the 92nd Street Y with Salman Shakhtar because I'm a Jew, I'm part of that family. And I go to Nepal to work with the blind and help in the Seva Foundation because I feel part of that family. And in each one, listening, listening to hear what part do you play. You need this? Sure. You need that? Okay. Not so busy defining yourself. I do this. This is who I am. My major concern is Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. I'm not interested in anything else. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. You can't turn off all the rest of your incarnation. There are stages and there are cycles in the whole process, so that sometimes you turn inward and that's what the work is for the moment, and you have to pull back. And then other times you go out and you spread yourself, and then it's too thin. You've lost too much because you haven't got yet the resources to let go and to do it without attachment, and you get depleted, and then you pull back in, and you spiral through the process of life. Listening, listening, because part of what your responsibility is, is to maintaining that, that light. That little light. I think the concept of networking is a very rich and important concept for us because it's undercut a lot of what was vertical, hierarchical, better than, more important than kind of structures. It's a little ponderous at times to have to listen to all those stupid people when I definitely know best. But some of those stupid people remind me of things I forget all the time, and the richness of being reminded is so incredible. It's so painful to be reminded and so wonderful. Some of you, I think, were at a lecture I gave in New York City once, uh, just a few years ago, I think, at the, um, Julia Richman. I gave a series, and in one lecture I was kind of tight, and I came out and I had prepared sort of routines to start the day because I usually have a few routines in case I'm really not in the mood to lecture, since everybody came and I'm there and something's going to happen. So I say, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the incarnation of something, you know. And I started to tell a story. And some of you may remember a fellow up in the balcony screamed out, Ram Dass, my heart's hurting, my heart hurts. Now there's a way of dealing with that when you're a speaker. You can make that into a heckler. And the audience will turn on the person. But I realize, just like when a baby cries in a hall, that if a heart hurts, we all hurt. And when he said that, there was a moment of, oh, because he caught me with my ego up. And then there's that painful, deep breath. And then saying, if your heart hurts, all of our hearts hurt. Let's all start breathing through our heart. And his one statement took the whole lecture out about 10 levels, and the rest of the evening was just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. And it wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been. And I didn't want to hear him say it. A few years back, I was in Hawaii on tour, and I had received an invitation. I was visiting different islands, and I received an invitation from, uh, Kauai, I guess, or Kona, somewhere. Kauai. They said, we're a small meditation group. Would you come over and visit with us? I thought, well, I've never been to that island, so why don't I accept? So I wrote back and I said yes, and they decided they would meet me at the plane with nothing more knowledge than that. I just arrived. I was met by 3 people in a big truck. 4 of us got into the front seat of the truck and we started driving. Within a very few minutes, the whole thing began to feel very strange to me. They were being very silent, prodding, listening, but not in a spacious way, in a kind of a therapeutic way. But I kind of put it aside, saying they just probably are anxious meeting me, you know. And we ended up up in the hills at a coffee plantation, an ex-coffee plantation. I guess it was still running that way. I didn't know who they were. And they showed me a beautiful room that would be my room and they told me to take a rest. And then after the rest, I was walking around, I'd meet these people and they'd all be very silent as they looked at me. And I couldn't— it all started to have kind of a surrealistic quality. And I came to the head man's office or room who was a doctor, and I walked in and we sat down and he looked at me and he went, "Aba ba ba ba ba ba." So I thought about it and I, I decided that, you know, he might have a nervous manner of speech, so I had to be very careful. So I just smiled and he went, "Aba ba ba ba ba ba." Now, I had talked to him before. I knew this wasn't his natural way of speaking, so I figured the best thing to calm a savage beast is Om. So I went, Om. And he went, Om, Om, Om, Om, Om, Om. So then I realized what our game was. We were going to create a language together. So we went, Om, Om, Om, Om, Om. He was happy and we played together for a while and then Beautiful people brought big pineapple floats of fruit and stuff, and we ate. And there was a— one of the walls was a curtain, and we ate in the gentle breezes. It was a lovely evening looking out over a valley. It was very soft and very sweet. We had a very friendly time. And then he said, well, maybe it's time to meet the group. I said, all right. And so he pulled the curtain back and there was the group. And there was about 30 people and they all waited for me to do something and I didn't quite know what to do. So I thought, well, it's a meditation group, so I will talk about— so I started to talk and tell charming stories, as is my wont, about— and about 15 minutes in Somebody yelled, Ram Dass, why aren't you like your book? Why aren't you like Be Here Now? Be Here Now really touched me. What's wrong? I said, well, I didn't think anything was wrong. And I went on talking and another girl from the back yells, Ram Dass, my heart doesn't feel good here. What's wrong? And I said, well, I don't think anything's wrong. And pretty soon they were all coming at me.. And I became very defensive. I'm saying there's nothing wrong. I came here to teach meditation and I'm teaching. And this went on for almost 3 hours and I wouldn't give in. I was so defended, so defensive. And around midnight, the— this doctor who was sitting back watching this whole thing said, well, I think we've gone as far as we can go tonight. Why don't we start at 7 in the morning? Now I'm trapped up in a thing up in the mountains. They got the only car. Otherwise I would have said, gee, I have an important engagement. I'd really love— this is a rich experience and thank you so much. But I mean, I would have been somewhere else, you know. Mm. But they took me to my bedroom and I got into bed and I thought, you know, I really hate these people. But, you know, they're right. They are absolutely right. I am defended. I'm protecting myself. I'm frightened. And they're really coming at me. And it was terribly painful. Because they had said, you know, you come to us as great teacher. And then I came in and then they were just cutting me to shreds. And what would do, they would embrace each other and they go, oh, and I didn't understand what that was doing. But they had one room they all lived in. About 30 of them lived in one big room. And I heard coming out of that room, and I didn't know what was going on. And my curiosity was incredible. I mean, I imagined incredible orgies and stuff with, oh, you know, animal things. And, you know, next morning at 7, we reconvened. I said, I'd like to tell you all that last night I think you were right, and I have I think I really need help in opening myself, and I appreciate your offer, and I'd like your help. And so they started questioning me about my life and about my intimate details. I just opened and I shared everything, everything, everything. And they were saying things that were just twisting my head this way and that. And finally they got me down on the ground holding my fist, crying and having a roughly a rebirthing experience. And then all 40 of them, or 35 of them, were on me with their hands all over my body. And I was crying and snot was pouring out of my nose. And it was a very dramatic thing. And I was— and I felt very refreshed and released and open. But it took 30 of them to do it. But, you know, and it was against my will. Which is a little violent, but it was incredibly good. It's interesting, we often push against experiences from which we can grow immensely. We want them, but we don't want them because we feel a little secure where we are. I mean, when I go into a meditation course in the old days, I go with just a little trepidation. For fear it would work. Each time I take acid, there was always that little bit of fear and then this giant fear as it would all dissolve and then the surrender again. My old friend Tim Leary used to say, each time I die so hard, each time And yet the secret of being born again is dying. It's again and again letting go of who you think you are to become who in fact you are. And each time you let go of your somebody-ness, you can hear more clearly your everybody-ness, or your your part in the everybody-ness of it all. More and more, you just want to play your part. It's nothing special. It's just nothing special anymore. I don't want to take all our time from questions. I just got carried away with my introductory remarks. Oh boy, I'm very untrustworthy. Uh, okay, consider that all irrelevant. We're going to, uh, do questions and answers this morning for a while. Uh, yes. Question is about the significance of— significance of dreams. What I experience dreams doing for me is reminding me continually that I am functioning and at work on many levels of existence in my being, that there's work going on for me on other planes at the same time as this plane. And there is a method of extricating yourself from an identification with this plane of mind and matter that uses dreams as a way of getting in touch with the third chakra, with your mythic or your archetypal identities. That's why the Jungians use dreams so much, for example. Then there is a way in which working with the astral plane and the dreams and such are ways of loosening the hold of this plane so that you can identify that you also have an identity on this other plane. But ultimately you got to let go of that one because that's just more stuff too. Dreams are just more stuff. And, um, they— for some people, they are a method for loosening the hold on other stuff. And it's like they say, you use a thorn to pick a thorn out of your foot, and then you throw both thorns away. Questions? Um, he's talking about that kind of tension that's created where you sort of want to go on with your inner work and you sort of want to throw over some of the stuff you've got in the world, and yet there's a commitment and there's a reward and there's responsibilities. And you— how do you deal with that tension. It's like a re-entry problem. There is no form to freedom. Freedom is in every form. And in a way, you look at what is available to you, what your existing responsibilities— like a woman comes up and says, if I only didn't have my kids, I could get enlightened. You can imagine it's just like saying, if I was only standing there, it would be all right, but I'm standing here, so it's not all right. That holy if-only place. If only. And actually, what you got is what is your curriculum. It's what has been designed by you for your value., and you end up consuming what you do into yourself so that you do it without attachment and you keep doing it and doing it until you're done. Now, it is also true that I've been talking about the spiral, that there are times, for example, in Seva, we do this cataract surgery in Nepal and India.. And very often expatriate Western ophthalmologists say they would like to go to Nepal to do some surgery because you can do 100 cataract surgeries in 2, 3 days in India, in Nepal, while you might do those in a year or 2 years here. And they like operating because they're trained that way and they want that experience. And they— but they say, look, I have a practice, I have I have partners, I have expectations. I can't afford to go. Here's somebody that's making probably $150,000, $200,000 a year, has an ex— has Porsches and fancy homes and happy kids and says, I can't afford to take 3 months to go. And then you suspect that they can't afford not to go. And some of them then do the wrenching and the needing and finding a young ophthalmologist to fill in while they're gone, who they're afraid will take over their practice, of course. And they go off and they come back and they are a different person for having been there. And it's put their whole life back in a different perspective, because when you live in a third world country for even a little while, it changes the meaning of everything in the West. But the wrenching is very, very hard. So it isn't a simple game of stay in the thing you're doing. It's the best thing. You've got to start to trust your heart and know when you're getting a growing payoff, when the stuff that's catching you, you can transform, and when you can't. There are very subtle toxicities about any path. You can become a very good meditator and finally you're not getting anywhere near enlightenment. You're just a very good meditator. Every method is a trap, and the game is to use it and then hopefully it self-destructs if it's a powerful enough method. But most methods can be socialized. Most of us that took acid the first time we took acid were blown away. By the 100th time we took acid, we knew just how to do it without blowing ourselves away. And then we had socialized acid. And you say, what do you got that's stronger? And it's not so much stronger, it's different. So that there is a lot to be said for the shifting of orientation of life in during life without being so committed to a single track at the same moment. For example, I was so used to from the '60s in a kind of a hit-and-run philosophy, run it up the flagpole, pardon the horror of this image, and see who salutes it. Or, you know, it's, it's that kind of have an idea, see if it's timely, and if it isn't timely, forget about it. And I was always starting things and stopping them and saying, well, I'm just a little Johnny Appleseed of New Age ideas. I just feed it into the culture and then I go on and I have no organization. I'm very light and playful. Then I found myself in the Save Our Foundation. I found myself working among people who were public health people who took on projects. I mean, taking on getting rid of preventable and curable blindness in the country of Nepal, which was— well, we'll— well, we'll clean that up in 5 years. At the end of 5 years, we are— haven't yet caught up with the numbers of new cases every year. In other words, we're losing ground at the end of 5 years instead of having done the job. And we're just about to turn it around. And I look and I say, well, how long is this going to take? And then I see that place in me that can handle a patient, responsible, persistent, commitment. Look at me, I'm not married. I got no heavy responsibilities. I just float around. I got no responsibilities. Is it I don't have any because it's my karma or because it's my neurosis? Or is my neurosis my karma? Obviously. And I suddenly find myself in an organization where I am committed to a process that's going to go on because I see that's where my work is. That's where I've got to do some growing. What you do is you look for the places that catch you, you move towards them, see how much of that you can transform. And then if after a while you feel like you're losing ground and you can't transform it, it's all right. You shift ground and do something else for a while. Better to come back and fight another day than try to just keep beating against something where you don't feel you're growing. Sir, how do you prevent detachment from turning into laziness? Probably by asking that question. Yeah. See, you notice yourself. What the— the intro— the most interesting thing is to notice how slithery your own mind is. See, that's why I meditate, because I have become such an appreciator of how slimy my mind is, how it can rationalize anything to be something else. And yet every time I come back to zero and then look again, I see it writ large how it's doing it. And as I see how it's doing it, I also see that I am yearning for truth. I am yearning to be in love. I am yearning to merge.. And I feel that yearning pulling me to confront that stuff in myself. And I don't think detachment— you've got to be careful that detachment or non-attachment in the spiritual sense, it does not mean dissociation. It does not mean I don't give a damn. It means I give a damn and also I don't give a damn. It's interesting. I used to say to people when I was busy cultivating non-attachment, I would say to them, you know, I love you, but I don't care if I never see you again. And people took offense. They said, that's a very callous and hard thing to say. And then I realized that they were right, that I was not open. My heart wasn't— I wasn't— I was too frightened of my own humanity. Yet I was too frightened of the place in me that I did want to see them again. And I— the truth is, of course I want to see you again. And I also don't care if I don't see you again. But that balance is very important. And that isn't the detachment. That's that cold, indifferent detachment. And you know it in yourself and you just got to keep playing and tuning and working to cultivate the balance. Once you understand it, the thing is that if you go to someplace and you say, oh, I'm standing in a very high spiritual place, intellectually it makes sense. But in your gut it doesn't feel like you are flowing and liquid and free and open and creative and tender and compassionate, you know something's wrong. And then you start to hunt around to see what's wrong. I mean, I really see spiritual practice as a hunt-and-peck operation and as a bootstraps operation. Unless you have somebody that comes up and says, your problem is zilch, is this, do this. But most of us don't have that. We have to tune, but inside we do know. Yes, she's asking the question about how you deal with the pain of people you love who are not realizing that there is a path or that they're working or that there is any joy in life because they're so caught in their suffering in their models of life and things like that. Is that the question? The recognition for me that, that there is— that when I look at the world, there is a cross-section of evolution and that some of the people I am looking at as I walk down the street are very, very young beings in a spiritual sense. They are taking birth. I'm now talking reincarnation. They're taking birth at a very early stage of the game and they are so caught in their desires all the way from their baby. Gimme, putting it in the mouth and all, all the way through life of more is better. Give me, give me, give me, and don't let me die. I want to live older and older. I want more and more and I want to take it with me. You have that all the way as you walk down the street to meeting very, very old souls who are, who take birth consciously and remain conscious throughout their birth or fall asleep for a very brief time in early childhood and then wake up again like a Ramana Maharshi who at 17 years old became fully enlightened without any spiritual practices at all and was one of the greatest spiritual teachers and guides from then on for the next 40 years. Now, the thing that's hard for us to realize is that that cross-section of evolution exists in a family as well, and that you can have brothers and sisters, some of whom are very, very evolved and some of whom aren't. And just in the way that you wouldn't say that somebody that is 20 is better than somebody that's 10, you just say they are older., and you'd expect different things from them and be around them in a different way than you would. You wouldn't talk particularly about sexual desire to a 9-year-old who might not have a fully— full understanding of what that's about. You might talk about that to a 14-year-old, and you don't feel sad for the 9-year-old because you understand it's part of a process. At the same moment, sometimes with your child, you would love to be able to share the intimacy of your being, but you realize the child hasn't expanded to the point where you can do that. And there is a pain of cut-offness that we can't share this experience together. Now, when you're dealing with a partner in which you met the partner under one kind of desire that brought you together, and then as time goes on, those desire systems change because all things change. And then you find that one person is— you're growing ahead and the other person isn't in the same way. Your paths are starting to diverge. Then you have an interesting choice. And which choice you make from a spiritual point of view doesn't matter. From a psychological point of view, as you all know, it makes a hell of a lot of difference. From a spiritual point of view, it doesn't matter. Because if you stay with that person, then working with them to get free in the presence of someone who doesn't— isn't satsang, isn't sangha, isn't this community with you— that is your— that's the work you're doing on yourself. On the other hand, you can leave that person and find somebody who's ready to grow with you, and then you have satsang, and that's helpful. At any choice point, whichever way you go, remember the choice you didn't make is still with you. Well, it means if you're deciding, should I marry or not marry, the part of you that doesn't want to marry, you carry into marriage, and the part of you that did want to marry, you carry through your singleness. You just appreciate it. You just appreciate it. Let me just see if I finish with this one. It is very painful at first to recognize that there are people who may be even older than you and your family or your children or something who are not interested in the things that are just opening and that seem so beautiful. But you learn after the first blush of awakening, that you don't run down the street screaming and forcing other people to awaken. There is a moral responsibility to allow people— it's a very bizarre statement— you have a moral responsibility to leave people alone to suffer the way they choose. All you can do is create an environment for them where if they don't want to suffer, they can come up for air. But you can't force another human being not to suffer. And that's a great wisdom, especially for you helping professionals who really want to take away everybody's suffering. And for parents— oh, and for parents, believe me. Yes, sir. First question is, how do you deal with bringing spiritual truths into a bureaucratic structure that really isn't interested or open to these things and frightened of them. I remember a young fellow who flipped out when he was in a Zen monastery in California. He ended up in a mental hospital under his folks' control in Ohio, and they let him out for the weekend to go home to visit his family. And one day he said something to me over the phone. He called me every week and he said something over the phone that was very poignant. He said, When I try— his was a Jewish family. He said, when I try to talk to my mother about Buddha, she's not the least bit interested. But when I'm the Buddha, it's fine. I think that's what I'm trying to say, is that when Gandhi said, my life is my message, that's what it's about, that the metaphors you're going to find for expressing the spirit are what are appropriate to the situation you have at hand. You don't have to impose your metaphors on somebody else. Every human being has a yearning and has a connection, although they may have a lot of fear. And you can't force— it's the same one as this one— you cannot force a person to awaken that isn't ready to. What you can do is take on as your work being so in the spirit yourself that it draws like, like flies to sugar. I mean, you know, bees to flowers or whatever the image is. It draws just by the quality of your joy, the quality of your lightness, the quality of the way you do very mundane tasks, the quality of the nothing specialness of you. Those qualities, those qualities draw people at the level, not conceptual, If you try to get them to let go of certain concepts to exchange others, they'll resist. They'll stick in their heels and resist and get rid of you. Okay, that's, that's the answer to the first one. So the work is on yourself. And those are interesting environments to work in that are, that are hostile environments to your conceptual understanding of your own spiritual traditions and condition, because they force you to get beyond concept into spirit. Right. So they're very useful, extremely useful. The next question is burning out in institutional structures like, like government bureaucracy. I guess you will burn out for all the reasons everybody can get burned out, which is identification with thinking you're doing something, attachment to the fruits of your acts. Trying to change things. I'm talking about trying to change them, not talking about changing things. I mean, some of the people that are instruments of the most change in the system, they have an agenda to change things, but their identity is just with the present moment and they are right here. And because they are so right here, everything changes around them. I think that the minute you pit yourself against the system and identify with being in opposition, burnout is very, very close down the road. And yet learning how to oppose somebody, to say no to somebody, and yet not to close your heart and to stay present and to stay equanimous— what an art. And in that art, you don't burn out. Quench. And who you see when you're coming in, if you see a bureaucracy and if you see people that are frightened psychological entities, I suspect that's the world you're going to live in. If you see souls who are taking an incarnation and are struggling through their stuff, that may be the world you'll live in too. I mean, one of the great teachings for me and for some of us in Hinduism has been the Ramayana. In the Ramayana, Ram is God and he's married to Sita, and Sita is stolen away by Ravana. And Ravana is the bad guy, and Ravana is the absolute most powerful. He's like Nixon. He has a lot of qualities of Nixon— ego, slithery, power, lots of power. He had Nixon at his height. And there's a little footnote in one of the volumes of one of the versions of the Ramayana that describes the fact that Ravana is actually an extremely high being who took birth as a demon in order to go through this, to be killed by Ram. And if he got killed by God, that would liberate him. And that was his route through, and that he was going to be this thing because if he wasn't this thing, how would the story unfold? Now you say, oh wow, that's pretty heady stuff, you know. It's the same thing when I was at a Benedictine monastery and Father Demasius up here in Pine City— is that called New York? Um, he called me in and he said, I've got just one question. He said, what do you think was the meaning of the kiss between Judas and Jesus? And we entertained the possibility that this was a conspiracy between two beings to live out a drama, and everybody had to play their part because it was just another soul. I mean, I hate to say it, but Hitler was just another soul. I wouldn't like to be Hitler. It was a heavy incarnation, and it's hard to feel compassion for someone who felt so little compassion. That's what strains our compassion. But I think it's who you see you're working with and what you see the system is, that is whether it'll change. If you see it as a system you have to change or a system that's strangling you, it'll burn you out. If you flip levels so that you just happen to be going to this place where you do these things. I watch people in India, in the bureaucracy, where all day long they go in and they sit 10 hours a day with a little quill pen at a ledger writing all day in this bureaucracy you couldn't believe. I mean, there's no bureaucracy in the West like India because the computer is just being recognized as existing. So it's all done with dirty, dusty ledgers and quill pens. Then, oh boy, and you walk in, you stand 3 days in one line. You know, to be told you're in the wrong line. And it's amazing people don't burn out. It's amazing because you burn out and then what are you going to do? You're still there. See, burnout is interesting because you don't deal with it. You don't confront the burnout as long as you think you got a choice. The minute you realize that that burnout is teaching you something about the way you're perceiving or doing your task, That's what it's telling you. Forget about them. They're just doing their trip. You don't have to change anybody. You just change you and they'll change if they're going to change.

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