After a several weeks hiatus, our book club met again to kick off our summer discussion series. It’s late so that’s gonna be the intro today.

—david/gonzo

Book: Be Here Now by Ram Dass

We started out, by way of introduction, sharing how familiar we each were with Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert) and his teachings. Everyone had at least a little exposure to him, either through me previously, through snippets of his teachings that have been set to music, or just seeing quotes and passages shared online by people and organizations that fall in the broad spiritual/new age category.  

My introduction to Ram Dass, or at least the one that “took,” came through Alan Watts. At the end of my first plant medicine journey, a musical track came on that had some spoken words set to music. I’d just had a profound experience that I knew I didn’t fully grasp, and these words felt like maybe they were somehow related to helping me gain more understanding. I made a point to remember enough of the words and ideas to be able to search it up later, which I did. And it was this passage: 

“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”

After that first journey, I found myself so hungry for ideas that felt expansive; that could put some of the ways I was feeling and thinking into a context that felt supportive. I read quite a few essays and a couple books by Alan Watts, and somewhere in one of those, or in the process of looking, I saw a mention of Ram Dass. After my first taste of his teachings, I dove in headfirst. Since hundreds of hours of his talks have been made into podcasts, it was easy to immerse myself in his work. Not to mention the many books as well. Ram Dass felt like someone who was well acquainted and fully immersed in the Thinking world of Western thought, having risen up the ranks of academia in the psychology/social science realm, but then found the Something he’d been missing, and that changed the trajectory of his life. His ideas and understanding felt like a bridge over the chasm between Western rationalism and Eastern mysticism, which I was so appreciative of, as I didn’t know that I was going to find ideas that felt like home in the schools of thought I already had some familiarity with. 

The more I listened to and read Ram Dass, though, what appealed to me was the way he spoke about love. Not falling in love or being loving to others, but an idea of becoming love, existing in love, occupying the space of love so that you look out from love and see everyone through that lens. I’d had my own experience earlier that summer being in what I called “the flow of love,” and felt like there wasn’t anything more exquisite than this. And Ram Dass seemed to know about it, and maybe he knew the key to getting back there, and staying there.

Section 1 of Be Here Now is an autobiographical sketch written by Ram Dass, covering the key parts of the first forty years of his life. This section is titled “Journey: The Transformation: Dr. Richard Alpert, Ph.D into Baba Ram Dass.”

“Before March 6th, which was the day i took Psilocybin, one of the psychedelics, I felt something was wrong in my world, but I couldn't label it in any way so as to get hold of it. I felt that the theories I was teaching in psychology didn’t make it, that the psychologists didn’t really have a grasp of the human condition, and that the theories I was teaching, which were theories of achievement and anxiety and defense mechanisms and so on, weren’t getting to the crux of the matter.”

“Something was wrong. And the something wrong was that I just didn’t know, though I kept feeling all along the way that somebody else must known even though I didn’t. The nature of life was a mystery to me. All the stuff I was teaching was just like little molecular bits of stuff but they didn’t add up to a feeling anything like wisdom. I was just getting more and more knowledgeable. And I was getting very good and bouncing three knowledge balls at once. I could sit in a doctoral exam, ask very sophisticated questions and look terribly wise. It was a hustle.” 

He tells about his early encounters with Timothy Leary, who eventually introduces him to psilocybin, and shares details about his first “trip.” 

“I had just found that “i”, that scanning device–that point–that essence–that place beyond. A place where “I” existed independent of social and physical identity. That which was I was beyond LIfe and Death. And something else–that “I” Knew–it really Knew. It was wise, rather than just knowledgeable. It was a voice inside that spoke truth. I recognized it, was one with it, and felt as if my entire life of looking to the outside world for reassurance–David Reisman’s other-directed being, was over. Now I need only look within to that place where I Knew.”

After having this experience, which was so outside his realm of understanding, he shared it with others, and they sought for understanding or frameworks that would help them make sense of it. Eventually their unconventional research got them fired from Harvard, so they continued journeying and exploring on their own, with others. But no matter what they tried, they always had to leave the “magic place,” (my words, not his), and after a few years of experimenting with different settings and various psychedelics, Richard Alpert found himself in a pretty depressed and hopeless place. That’s when the opportunity to go to India with an American called Bhagwan Das. 

“Now here was this young fellow and again, I had the feeling i had met somebody who “Knew.” I don’t know how to describe this to you, except that I was deep in my despair; I had gone through game, after game, after game, first being a professor at Harvard, then being a psychedelic spokesman, and still people were constantly looking into my eyes, lik “Do you know?” Just that subtle little look, and I was constantly looking into their eyes–”Do you know?” And there we were, “Do you?” “Do you?” “Maybe he…””Do you…?” And there was always that feeling that everybody was very close and we all knew we knew, but nobody quite knew. I don’t know how to describe it, other than that.  And I met this guy and there was no doubt in my mind. It was just like meeting a rock. It was just solid, all the way through. Everywhere I pressed, there he was!”

Alpert’s time with Bhagwan Das was very instructive. Alpert would seek to engage him with stories from his past, and he’d say “Don’t think about the past. Just be here now.” He’s ask questions about some upcoming aspect of the trip, and get the response “Don’t think about the future. Just be here now.” Complaints about various pains or ailments would be met with, “Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.” 

Eventually, after weeks of travel, Bhagwan Das said he needed to go see his guru, and Alpert didn’t know what to make of that. When they finally arrived, Bhagwan Das goes running up the hill and throws himself on the ground at the guru’s feet. Alpert is kind of curious but also annoyed with the whole thing. Later, after having some food, they came back to the guru. And Alpert has the experience that will change the trajectory of his life. 

His mother had passed away the previous January from a spleen illness. The night before, he’d been out under the stars thinking of his mother and just feeling a lovely and profound connection with her. Back in the presence of the guru, whom his followers called Maharaji, Alpert was asked to come sit near him. 

M: You were out under the stars last night.

RA: Um-hum.

M: You were thinking about your mother. 

RA: Yes. (Wow, I thought, that’s pretty good. I never mentioned that to anybody.)

M: She died last year.

RA: Um-hum.

M: She got very big in the stomach before she died.

RA: [Pause] Yes.

M: [leans back, closes eyes] Spleen. She died of spleen.

Well, what happend to me at that moment, I can’t really put into words. He looked at me in a certain way at that moment, and two thighs happened–it seemed simultaneous. They do not seem like cause and effect. 

The first thing that happened was that my mind raced faster and faster to try to get leverage–to get a hold on what he had just done. I went through every super CIA paranoia I’ve ever had…None of it would jell.”

He also ran through the possibilities that he was hallucinating the whole thing, as he had had that experience using LSD before. 

“But neither of these categories applied in this situation, and my mind went faster and faster and then I felt like what happens when a computer is fed an insoluble problem; the bell rings the the red light goes on and the machine stops. And my mind just gave up. It burned out its circuitry…its zeal to have an explanation. I needed something to get closure at the rational level and there wasn’t anything. There just wasn’t a place I could hide in my head about this. 

And at the same moment, I felt this extremely violent pain in my chest and a tremendous wrenching feeling and I started to cry. And I cried and I cried and I cried. And I wasn't happy and I wasn't sad. It was not that kind of crying. The only thing I could say was it felt like I was home. Like the journey was over. Like I had finished.”

He finishes out Section 1 by sharing more details of his time in India, learning from those around Maharaji.  Eventually he came back to America and started sharing some of the ideas that he’d learned. The bulk of the book Be Here Now is from a series of lectures he gave while in New York in 1969. 

Something that stood out to group members was the way that Ram Dass describes this life-changing encounter with Maharaji. I know for me, when I first read about his experience, I felt like I could imagine how people might have felt in the presence of Jesus. Feeling a profound sense of love like that, that sense of coming home, would have the potential to change everything. It made sense to me to think of people changing their whole lives in order to follow someone in whose presence that feeling was possible. 

But another point brought up was how beautiful it is to imagine becoming a person so capable of love. Bringing that unconditionally loving energy to those you come in contact with, especially the people closest to you. What a beautiful gift to cultivate. 

After finishing up our discussion of Section 1, we dove into Section 2, aka “The Weird Part” of the Book. One group member shared that she was a little weirded out when she unpacked her book, but she showed it to her daughter, an artist, who was absolutely delighted. Another said how they felt like reading the book, because of the odd text formatting and the fact that the illustrations are sometimes odd and maybe even off-putting, was kind of a meditative practice of its own. One group member opened to page 22 and said, “You see it too, right?”

“Penises?”

“Yeah, penises. I mean, it kind of goes along with the text, I guess…THAT URGE, THAT DESIRE, THAT UNFULFILLED THING.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be penises. There’s some boobs later on in the book.”

Someone else commented on the illustration on page 26, an interesting half-skeleton/half muscled human form connected via an arm to the reversed image. 

“It’s like the book is trying to get you into that meditative, journey space. I’ve never seen anything else like it.” 

You can’t just skim through this section or speed read it, like you might have done with Section 1. The different font, page color and texture, and illustrations all invite you to look closer and maybe relax some judgment about what you’ll find.  The fact that this section has the opposite orientation from the other sections requires that you rotate the book out of normal orientation.  It’s really a book that calls you to hold it in your hands, and invites you to shift, even if just a little, out of your regular, everyday way of viewing things.

-Mindy

NEAT!

Stuff we think is neat enough to share! (David⚡️ & Mindy✨)

• Turns out when your phone dies, you can’t activate Spotify on your iPad without verifying from your phone, which has really been harshin’ my vibe the past few days! I did discover this song this week, before my phone died: Sun Children by Nickodemus. Seems especially appropriate for the week of the Summer Solstice! ☀️✨

• A friend recommended two albums for my flight, I’ve been in an album mood for a couple months) and when I first listened to Hi Viz it was not the vibe for my flight BUT it turns out it was exactly what I needed on a long drive back from Phoenix.⚡️

SOMETHING TO TRY

I haven’t made a new years resolution since I was very young. But this year, inspired by the work Mindy and I have been doing to improve our relationship and relating to each other I vowed to work on relating to the beliefs of others, especially when those others are named Mindy. I’ll definitely write more about this as I am able to articulate it but I thought I’d share the little helpful mappings that are starting to take root in me that provide a bridge to beliefs that felt so alien to me that I just couldn’t relate:

1. It can be helpful for me to see a belief systems as mnemonic device to hold onto complex ideas. For example Chakras is a helpful mapping of the different kinds of energies/emotional states we all experience.

2. It can be powerful to find the compassion that is available in different framings. For example reincarnation can help relax the harshest judgment of others by extending to them a compassionate view that we’ve all been there (or at least that we’ll probably all be there at some point).

Try those on. See how they fit.

—david

PARTING

WORDS

PIC

That’s all for this week! If you’re into this, share this newsletter with all your friends. Connecting with new subscribers is magical! 🧚🏻‍♀️

DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice.