SENTIENT TIMES August/September 2003

Interview with Ram Dass

By John Darling

This telephone interview took place on July 21, 2003, prior to respected sage, author, lecturer and spiritual teacher Ram Dass’ presentation on August 2, 2003, at Crater High School in Central Point, Oregon.

What to you plan to say in your lecture here?
How one spiritualizes one’s life. A lot of people are expressing anxiety these days. It’s wrong, well, not wrong, but they experience their lives on the wrong plane, the plane in which they undergo suffering.

What plane is that?
We are three-plane beings: one, the ego, two, the soul and three, the third plane, what the Quakers call the still, small voice of God within. Hindus call it atman. It’s the mystical part of us. It’s the way we know the Universe subjectively, rather than objectively.

What does being on the third plane do for us?
It allows us to be a witness of the suffering, though we still will suffer. You start as an ego, which means you are attached to your incarnation. The soul which comes into the incarnation goes from incarnation to incarnation. The death of an incarnation is not such a big deal as our ego thinks it is. I’d rather identify with my soul.

Do you teach your audience or give the techniques for this?
My lectures are question-and-answer periods. I’d rather the audience initiate the topics. I present myself as RAM—rent a mouth. They rent my mouth, to respond to questions by reciting information we all know. About number three.

What are your thoughts on aging and death now that you have come back from your stroke six years ago and are 72?
The age stage is awesome.

I should look forward to it?
You should. (Laughs) You can shift from ego to soul-perception. The changes are awesome—changes in friends, changes in body, changes in mind. It brings you as close to God as you can get in this lifetime. For me, I spend my waking hours in timeless states, spaceless states. That’s really pretty good. You can go in and out of planes of consciousness and you can stack them like baklava—some nutty, some flaky, some sticky. (Laughs)

Is it like a window on the third plane?
Yes. It happens after realization.

What is realization?
That your awareness is connected with all and everything … and nothing. It’s Bud-dha, Christ, Mohammed, Moses and my guru. They have a perspective about life from number three.

I understand most questions of you are about relationships and people’s search for love and their suffering in that experience.
Yes. The strings between souls is love. You can go the love ladder as bhakti (loving service done to please God, rather than for self gratification), with attachment at the beginning and then go to love of the One. You become love. It’s like you get into a bath tub of love with another person. In the bath tub, the two of you are “in” love. It takes a lot of surrender.

To God or to the relationship?
To the situation of the relationship. It’s like a corporation. People get together to form an entity. I see the love relationship, the marriage as a triangle. The two bottom points are the two partners. The third one is God consciousness. The two get close to each other as the peak of the triangle comes near and they merge with one another in God. That’s love.

Most people probably don’t know that or do it.
(Very long laughter.)

What’s your take on the world situation now after all the big changes of the last two years?
I’d like to say we’re headed for a change in government, with Dennis Kucinich as president. But I wouldn’t bet on it. What we’ve got is untrammeled greed, greed, greed. Greed is overwhelming our com-passion. The times when government becomes uncompassionate, our human hearts hurt. The war in Iraq is a hurt in our compassionate hearts.

Do you think that, as a human species, we’re “getting it” and evolving in any significant way?
Yes. We’re getting to the point where computer and television are not sufficient for our needs for communication. We need communication with our hearts and that is really a heart to heart deal. I see the human heart as the basic instrument for social change. Dennis Kucinich and I, we shared hearts.

How did you two connect?
The core, the consciousness, the com-passion. We met twice. My heart met a human being. Which is very unusual when you meet a politician. (Laughs) I’d like my heart to be represented in the government.

As you look at the global stage now, what do you see as the big dangers we face?
I’d say the environment is number one. We have to stem the effects of what’s happening to the environment, like global warming. The paranoia. We distrust those we call “them” and that’s rife and stems from our president. This country is mobilized only when we have a good enemy, like the drug war, the cancer war, the cigarette war.

As you grow older now, how do you face death? What do you feel?
I feel wonder. I’m here. Looking around and seeing the One manifesting. Looking at people and seeing God manifested. I’m not on the production line of society. I’m not writing books. I’m doing them. It feels like a very great privilege to not be in the work force.

How is your health and strength now?
I travel almost all the time. The wheel chair doesn’t go a lot of places, like many hotel rooms. I get a kick out of it all, the effect of my stroke on my arms and legs. I don’t mind. It would be good to heal all this, though. I do have a chair everywhere I go.

You seem completely lucid as ever.
Every now and then, my memory is hazy. It absolutely delights me, because there’s a Buddhist story about that: speak not of the past, anticipate not the future, then you will dwell in the … I can’t remember it. (Laughs) Too many people think and spend time in the past and future and they’re both just thoughts.

You mean they’re not real?
That’s right.

What do you think about what you wrote in “Be Here Now” (his million seller 1971 book).
I’m still here.

Is there anything you would add to the book now?
I’d have to add: cultivate the faith that there are other planes than that which you deal with here. That faith allows you to experience the grace of your life.

What does grace mean to you?
It’s like—to perceive your life as graceful, as a thing given to you from the One. My grace comes from my guru. He’s dead but he’s in my consciousness. It’s that you think, that you feel, that your own life is spiritually blessed.

Tickets for the August 2nd presentation can be reserved at (541) 734-8581 or bought at Village Books & Great Earth Vitamins in Medford; Soundpeace & Music Coop in Ashland; Book Stop in Grants Pass. $20/advance; $25/at the door.

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