RAM DAS, NEE RICHARD ALPERT, <

Condensed from the S.F. Oracle I realized a deeper contentment than I had ever realized When you’re starting spiritual work, it’s a good thing Richard Alpert, recently reborn as Ram in my life, and once I knew I could be that content with to hang around with a spiritual community, with other Das, has always been one of The Beautiful People, that little, then it was all right to go back to my fath­ people that are doin’ the thing. Because if you hang out both in the social and the psychic sense. Born er’s estate and drive his Cadillac and ail that because with people who are seeking enlightenment, when you with a silver shovel in his mouth, he nevertheless man­ there was no anxiety in me that, Man, this might be all get caught, they don’t reinforce it as much, while all your aged to swallow and digest the fruits of a prosperous and taken away! friends who aren’t seeking enlightenment but mightlike to proper Bostonian Jewish heritage. He played the role The concept of Drop-Out is a key issue, but it’s an be, every time you slip they’re happy.. .because it reas­ Professor of Psychology at Harvard, a young man still internal dropping out. And that’s why it’s a much more sures them. That’s the most insidious point, you see. attached to toys; sports cars, boats, airplanes and motor­ heretical or, ah, powerful concept than external dropping Like my father calls me Rum Dum, and my oldest brother cycles. He had Dr. Tim Leary for a colleague and a out, because external dropping out merely creates another who’s a stockbroker calls me Rammed Ass (laughter), and drinking partner before the two graduated to a more re­ polarization in the society, and it’s kind of easy to fight that’s cool, because that amount of gross put-down of my warding turn-on; magic mushrooms, marijuana, psilo- with the dragons out there. It’s much harder to fight with game is helpful to me, because it’s not insidious, it’s sybin and lysergic acid. the dragons inside (laughter), and the real work is the not subtle at all. Alpert is probably best known for his experiments work in one’s head, because when one is in a different I only wear the beard and the holy clothes to protect with these mind-expanding drugs. The chances are (per­ place in one’s head, then all the stimuli don’t work. It’s haps unfortunately) he will be remembered as one of the myself. From myself. Because when you come on like just like looking at money. Do you see a dollar bill and this, people don’t respond to you in the way they would Inner (“In") Group who turned on the hearts and heads of get like into that thing or a thousand dollar bill and get respond if you were wearing Western clothes, and an entire generation, pointing out a path of self-aware­ into that thing or do you see it as like Green Energy? I need this new response to work with, whether they see ness. As Richard Alpert, he may always be associated It’s like when I lecture, there are people that look up me as a Holy Man or they see me as an ambiguous stim­ with the psychedelic circus act of Alpert/Leary which ex­ at me with this love and awe and all that and I go through ploded to top billing in the mind-wars way back in the ulus. It’s a protective coloring. Chameleon-like. (Softly) this whole trip. This is the hardest work I do. How do you So you want me to be Ram Das? Who do you want me to be? early 1960s. deal with those issues of ego-enhancement that’s coming As a mental-acrobatic team, Alpert and Leary not through somebody else’s eyes? And the work is to see ORACLE; You mentioned a guru and a teacher. They’re only turned thousands of heart/heads on, but inward as the cosmic humor of it, you know, and I constantly refer well. Now as Ram Das, the straight-man of the cosmic- separate people? in the lectures to Central Casting having cast me as some­ RAM DAS; Yeah. . , ”< comedy routine, The Dynamite Duo who caused more in­ one left over from Christmas, aSantaClaus, a Holy Man, ner riots than ten thousand comic books (think of the kar­ in order to protect myself, really, from my deviousness, ma!), has moved into realms which paradoxically are ORACLE; How does that work? because I have many seeds that aren’t cooked, and Pm RAM DAS; The teacher points the way. The guru beckons. both higher and deeper than the psychic plane to seek right at-the edge, and I’m pushing. It’s exciting.. .like enlightenment. The drug experience afforded glimpses, The teacher’s a very high being; he’s got many powers. riding a very high wave all the time. I mean, when I’m He’s very beautiful. He’s a sadhu. ..he’s a brahmin. He brief awakenings, but one could not stay high perpetu­ playing with fame...I know I can feel it, I can feel the ally. Eventually the traveler came down despite the knows it all. He writes everything.. .he gives me all my pull in me. I go home to my father who’s spent his whole instructions.. .he’s like a complimentary to the guru in the dosage or the quality of the ingested chemicals and or­ life seeking fame, and he says, “How are you doing? Did ganic hallucinogens. sense that he’s the active arm of the guru. He DOES. He they like you? Did you get a good press?” And you know, manifests. Not knowing at the time that everything he sought— he’s feeding in that whole thing, and I’m just doing my The guru merely sits. And sort of blows your mind. a spiritual overhaul with regular tune-ups, the guidance mantra.. .ferociously. The guru doesn’t really teach you much. He doesn’t give of a guru, insight leading finally to Wisdom—could be you methodology. He just gives you a presence that is so attained without really going anywhere (geographically overwhelming.. .but then you can’t maintain it unless you speaking), Alpert set off for the never-never land of lost have some kind of discipline. horizons, the inscrutable, illusive and exotic Orient in a friend’s Land Rover. His "Journey to the East,” his ex­ ORACLE; You talked about giani and bakti classifications, cursion to find Rene Daumal’s “Mount Analogue” was paid perhaps there are others. How did you find that situation for by his girlfriend. Equipped with tape-recorded music, in India? bottled mineral water, and a small pharmacy of LSD, the RAM DAS; Well, the interesting thing is, up until the mo­ Land Rover rolled through the Middle East, the spiritual ment I met the guru, I was most attracted by giani yoga, journey obscured and at times illuminated by cloud-fumes and the moment I met him, the feeling of release was fan­ of hash. When he felt particularly spiritual, Alpert would tastic, and it was a very bakti sect, and I realized that switch the tape-deck from Vivaldi to Indian ragas and re­ I’m a very bakti guy. I lead with my heart all the time. I fill his pipe. The windows of the soul were foggy... was always a phony scholar in the old days when I was a At first, the “Holy Men” that Alpert met in India were Harvard professor. That was all just fear. And when I phony. He says that he would not have recognized a real could lead with my heart I just got so high, when I finally guru if he had tripped over one. But then it finally hap­ found a vehicle. At first the Hindu thing offended me.. .it pened; he met a man who seemed to KNOW, a young Amer­ was so gauche, I mean, it was so maudlin and heavy and ican giant with shoulder-length surfer-blond hair. The emotional.. .and once I allowed it to enter, it just got so Land Rover was left behind. The $7000 vehicle was more beautiful. a hindrance than an asset in the comparative “backward­ ness” and poverty of India (the spiritual advancements ORACLE; Would you please define samadhi? I know it’s and wealth notwithstanding), for it identified the seeker as a contradiction... Just Another Rich American to be hustled or deified. So RAM DAS; (Pause. Nervous giggle.) Though it cannot be Alpert with his new friend as spiritual guide set off upon defined, I will... «A God defined is aGod confined.” That barefeet in the guise (or disguise) of Holy Man, one of the which can’t be said can’t be whistled either. However... Chosen Few From Central Casting/his bread upon the samadhi is a state you enter into when you transcend your waters, spendthrift saint, prodigal prodigy, playboyphil- senses and your thought. At that point you go through a osopher, psychologist-professor, big-time spender who doorway, if you can imagine adoorway, and then there are had nearly burnt out the divine and delicate mecha­ eight or nine stages of samadhi. And the first stages you nism of the nervous system while burning the hash-pipe get into are experiencing waves and waves of bliss, and at both ends, throwing it all away for higher stakes as then.. .Buddhism calls it the Four Absorption; ah, the San­ Buddha and Saint Francis did. skrit/Hindu literature talks about the seven locas or levels The young friend led him to the backhills, inform­ and planes and so on. And each one you experience, you ally introducing Alpert to his guru, Maharaji. Alpert’s give it up and go on. Each one has a correlate in every di­ mind was read and subsequently blown. The rest of this mension of what’s called the subtle senses. That is, nad encounter is best left for Alpert (renamed Ram Das by yoga, the yoga of sound. I do a thing where you put in ear the guru) to describe in lecture and in interview. plugs, you listen to nine inner sounds...and there are sounds like the veena, the sounds of flutes, the sound of the ocean as in a conch shell. You leave a time/space locus at ORACLE; We asked you before we left yesterday if you that point. Not in the lowest levels of samadhi, but the would define a Holy Man. I would like you to do that again. higher levels. RAM DAS; A Holy Man is a renunciate. That is, he has renounced worldly things in search of God. That’s what he’s about. When I was coming back to America, my teach­ ORACLE; You say you go beyond thought. Does that mean er said, “You will do your sogana in America—" meaning you no longer have experience of the intellectual plane pursue your spiritual path—and I said, “Well, what does j?or that period of time? Is the subtle body the psychic that include?” And he said, “Everything you do.” It’s plane? Do you go beyond that? just like talking to you. If I’m not keeping my mantra RAM DAS: You go through it and you get it into a subtle going, not keeping myself centered, and I see this is form, and then finally that quiets, and then you go beyond another dream sequence we’re running up, I get caught in that. the melodrama, and in that sense, this is as much apart of the work as if I’m sitting in front of the puja table doing breathing and meditation. It gets very hard when ORACLE; Is it the state you call satori? you’re out in the. market place, because there are so RAM DAS; Yeah. many subtle forces that keep saying, “Come on back into' just doing it for sensual gratification.. .the subtle sphere ORACLE; And is it experienced often? ...that’s Babylon.” And that’s the work, you see, to do RAM DAS; Yeah. it and still NOT do it, ’cause you can keep yourself in a temple, very pure, then it’s like the monk who lives in ORACLE; I mean, when one speaks of satori, one thinks of a temple for fifteen years, gets so holy, has thousands an occasional zap. Like zazen... of followers, comes into the market place and someone RAM DAS; Right. Concentrate on Mu and keep going, then jostles him, and he turns around angrily, and he realizes BANG! (Snaps fingers) William James was right. Other like fifteen years have been blown. states of consciousness are discontinuous.. .our normal waking consciousness. Now you’re here. ..now you’re not. ORACLE; Is it possible to be an inward drop-out and to And after a long time, you stay in another consciousness renounce, and yet still live in the midst of materialism? .. .then from that place you can keep a foot in the door, To be a millionaire and still be aholy man, for instance? back in this one. But if you’re living in this one, you gotta RAM DAS; A man came up to me after one of my lectures do something to get through that place each time, ? cause and said, “I was so impressed, I’m going to go home and there’s some imperfection or impurity that keeps you in sell all my antiques.” And I said, “Well, then you’re not one receiving frequency.. .it just gets easier and easier as impressed enough. If you finish with it, then it doesn’t you get purer and purer.. .there are less things holding matter whether you have it or not.” The statement is; you back, and finally you get like Ramakrishna.. .he did You’ve got to give it up to have it all. In other words, that thing like, “Where’s my tobacco?” And they said, “You you BE it all. Then you use whatever there is to use, don’t smoke.” And he said, “I have to want something.” whatever is necessary to use. But you don’tfeel attached Most of the time I just stay around the doorway. I get to it, like you don’t feel anxiety about the loss of it. Once right to the edge of the doorway and I flicker in and out. you can say, “One to me is fame and shame,” you can right at that place, and I see how much work has to be play with fame. Once you say, “One to me is loss and done...and there’s no rush...and it’s not in time, so gain,” then you can possess, because you’re doing it there’s nothing to do but what Pm doing, and Pve been without attachment. I was so happy in India. I was walking catapulted out of Heaven so many times.. .there’s no barefoot with my shoulder bag and sleeping on the ground, sense in rushing back in there, you know, because I know and eating like very simple stuff, and I was so content. they’re gonna throw me out... )N THE ROAD PAST ACID TO YOGA

ORACLE; What does your guru or the teacher do to give cast it in clay. Then you’ve finished your trip. The you the strength to go through this ego reacting and using Living Spirit is what the issue is. I don’t present my all of its devious ways of playing tricks on you and putting trip as a model for anybody else to follow.. .that’s the thing...that was part of fhe take Tim did the other night yuu into psychic states that are unpleasant? RAM DAS: You know, like walking through the snow bare­ ...I’m modeling, you know...but I don’t feel that...I foot in the winter to bathe at four in the morning, sitting don’t think hardly anybody wants to go on my trip, which huddled in a blanket and eating cold rice.. .that gave me is cool. I think all we are doing is defining a place and a fantastic energy. I was silent—that was the next thing, faith and then each person can find his own method. and I was alone most of the time. Before I was always into seduction and power...and ORACLE; How was your general evening with Tim? the constant sexual ejaculating was pranic expenditure, RAM DAS; Beautiful. He looks ten years younger than he and that was all turned off, so suddenly there was a fan­ looked two years ago. And we had avery beautiful evening tastic amount of energy, and all I was told to do was sit together. We danced around a number of delicate issues, .. .see, there wasn’t anything to do, everything was taken and kept our heads above water through it all, and came care of, food was brought to me each day, all I had to do out with great love and honor for one another. It was del­ was get up, take abath, go to the toilet.. .firewood was cut. icate because there was so much karma we had created, you know, and I told himwhatlhad been saying about him ORACLE; Well, you know, like here that condition doesn’t publicly; He is a great visionary—he is not a realized exist...and even if you renounce those things over which being. you can have immediate control.. .there’s that kind of drain. ..in the spiritual discipline. As you advance spirit­ ORACLE; What was his response to that? ually, you’re murdering the ego. RAM DAS; He smiled. RAM DAS: And it struggles like hell. ORACLE; What does he say about you publicly? ORACLE: But it plays funny tricks on you. RAM DAS; Well, in general, what he feels is that I have RAM DAS; Of course it does, and the only thing that gives not finished with my sexual trip. I came out of a very you the leverage is faith, the awareness that there is active homosexual tradition for a number of years, and something else in you, something that’s being born. And then I went through psychoanalysis, and then I decided to that’s what the guru gives you is faith. And that’s the only become what you call bisexual. I did it for years and I real thing I have to communicate to anybody else. There’s never sort of finished it, and what happened was, I just a point, even when you’re living in the middle of San Fran­ kind of got bored with the whole business, instead of cisco, that you see what the game is, you see what has to Allen Ginsberg’s trip which just gets more blatant... be done, and there’s really nothing else to do. You start to I just pushed it aside and went on and what I’m saying is, redesign your life. Like I said to my teacher, “So many I haven’t cured my neurosis, I just got bored with it, and people are coming, what am I going to do?” He said, K3et that’s why my trip, which is brama-chari, is very suit­ up earlier.” Getting up at four in the morning means I able to my particular scene, because I see the finiteness don’t get pulled into the evening thing so much. Which is of where I can get with my sexual trip at this point, which where all those desires and all THOSE things are fanned says nothing about whatitwillbelikea year from now, or and flamed. I mean, lean just drive through San Francisco two years from now or three years from now. What at 10 or 11 at night and I can feel the force of those sen­ happens now is I can look into most people’s eyes and I sual desires, everybody’s eyes,everybody’s bodies mov­ can feel like I am locked in sexual union with them all ing, everybody’s looking for that (snap, snap) gratification the time, women and men. But part of that is that I tell again from the outside world. Well, I just cut that whole everybody exactly where it’s all at, I’m acknowledging field out. what my particular status is at the moment, and that’s a Like last night here I was in San Francisco, with all very delicate issue. That was his major work with me kinds of groovy friends and great scenes to go to, and at that evening, trying to proselytize me...He had at the 7 o’clock I lay down and went to sleep. house my old girlfriend, Caroline, the blonde.. .the whole You can live in a city and it doesn’t matter, because scene...we had two couples, a room set aside, and I you create your own environment. I’ve said to everybody, dug it all...it was an exquisite interchange...and we “Why don’t you have a puja table in your home, a place loved each other very much, and he kept putting forth where you can cool it out, get a perspective, where you his position, and I said, “Yeah, I agree, I just helped my only have holy books and spiritualized beings, not books father get married, Pve just been baptizing children and on How To Do It, but the Word of a guy who has done it, consecrating homes.. .1 love it all, it’s all beautiful, sure, you see?” Those are the guys you hang out with. When I man...go, go, go on your trip!” have my scene, I put up a couple of Bloomingdale prints for $3.99 and I put up pictures of Ramakrishna and Buddha and Christ and Meher Baba, and I honor them and I love ORACLE; What’s your sign? x them which is in me, and I live in that universe, then all the rest of my world is this dream I’m going through, this RAM DAS; Aries karmic unfolding.. .“What’s on page 23?” ORACLE; He said, ah, Taurus through Libra are drug­ taking signs, and the other half is ultimately people ORACLE; What was your impression, spiritually, coming who become other things.. .which includes you. That was back to America after spending this time in India? OK. ..I was able to go along with that, but then he said, in RAM DAS; Well, in India I was frightened of coming back essence, when you find a spiritual teacher and you’re to America because of what I knew would be so much turning all of your energies into you own being, then it worldly stimulation. I don’t feel any longer that this is becomes an autoerotic trip. In other words, if you’re my home or that’s my home...home is in here, a cave not making it with a chick or a guy, it’s masturbation. inside. There is no America, and there is no Vietnam, RAM DAS: He kept doing that, he kept talking about “auto- and there is no India. I see those now as states of mind. erotic,” and I kept saying, “That’s good language; now we could also call it THAT, see?” The whole thing is wheth­ ORACLE; I was interested in your remarks in this lecture er you profane it or make it sacred... see, Freud pro­ before. There was someone in the audience asking about faned it all. ..he took the relationship between mother and protest and especially violent protest. child and made it profane. In India, what they say of Freud RAM DAS; When you can protest without attachment, you is, “He sufferedfrom adiseaseof theheart called Passion can protest. Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, “He that ...” Because there are three levels at which the sexual thinks there is a slayer and a slain, knows not me.” It’s relationship can go on; one is the interpersonal, social so beautiful that the answer to any human dilemma is Work one, John and Mary; one is yin-yang, which is still self- On Yourself. It’s like saying to a psycho-therapist, “You other, it’s still subject-object; and then you go beyond want to cure your patients? Work on yourself.” How few that into the place where WE ARE, and then when we are are ready to hear that one! one consciousness, then our bodies will do what our bodies The funny thing about the acid community that is do. Now in fact when you go beyond to that one place, then into protesting is that they haven’t finished the work on you are in harmony with the universe; at that point it is themselves enough because only when you can say, “One generally aheterosexual trip.. .the homosexual one is less to me is life and death” canyouprotest against Vietnam who can understand it and see how it all is and see what in harmony with the universe, see, and it just falls away and against nerve gas and all this stuff. Because otherwise process is going on. at that point from being in this third place. Unless you’re you’re attached, you’re doing it out of fear, and everything doing it from the third place, like it’s lust. Making it that is done out of fear is always impure. ORACLE; I’ve heard that perhaps Meher Baba didn’t with somebody in the West is still subject-object; you recognize other spiritual teachers, and secondly he first get turned on lustfully; then you use it to get to a claimed to be above them. higher place. You’ve got to come down to go up is what it RAM DAS; My dealings with Meher Baba are purely spir­ is. While there is aplacewhereyoufind your partner and ORACLE; You spoke earlier of higher beings. Who are itual. I’ve had LSD and had Darshan with Meher Baba; you experience this place, where you become aconscious- they? therefore all the rest of it, as far as I’m concerned is ness with two bodies. And then the bodies create the ener­ RAM DAS; (Long pause) They are, ah, individual entities irrelevant. gy which keeps feeding up into this place, and when you who have uniqueness, who are what you call astral beings. finally have finished with all of your head trips, your con­ They may or may not be manifest in physical form. And cepts about sex in the profane sense, which are tremen­ there are beings who do not live in time and space, who dously overlearned in the West, then you can meet a per­ are cognizant of the physical universe, and who have some ORACLE; Actually, on the spiritual level, I suppose there’s no strain. I’m only asking because, even some of son and you can go to this place, with their eyes, and you what you would call “responsibility”.. .on the cosmic can be there with whatever meditative device you can use. scheme of things. In other words, they have some karmic the movements here, some of the New Age things.. .they may be getting factional. “Our teacher is THE teacher.” And from this place then the sexual part of it is a natural interplay with the physical universe. Since they don’t live and beautiful process.. .in harmony. in time and space,that means they are everywhere at once. RAM DAS; See, what happens is, each scene gets a little further than the last one, and then they solidify. The So all you’ve got to do is make yourself ready, and there But you don’tstartfrom an isolated place. You use the they are. You don’t have to go to any physical place to minute they solidify, then forget it. 'Because they immed­ iately get into vested interest, the moment they have a vehicle. And that’s the business of waiting until it’s sacred meet them. They are always right where you are when until you do it, rather than doing it as a profane thing. And you’re READY to meet them. They are neither benevolent formal institution of any kind. Like the rock and roll groups, as long as they’re not making it, they’re wide Allen Ginsberg’s take is still profane. All Hook at is the nor malevolent. They don’t care...I mean, they see how 7,000 year old tradition that Pm coming out of, in which it all is. It’s just karmic working-out. The larger forces open and pure. The moment they get a recording con­ tract, baby, forget it. That’s the end of that group... Buddha and all of these beings who saw how it was, were like floods, devastations, the breaking of the fault, the saying the same thing.. .that desire is what creates suf­ Vietnam wars, are done at an understanding level, much they can’t risk their investment. And Tim (Leary) said to me the other night, “One of the most important things fering. Instead of fanning the thing, you’ve got to do some­ greater than ours, because we’re still too caught in it. thing to transform it into something sacred, like you have When I lectured in Berkeley, I had everything I could do to we learned was—you’ve got to keep listening to people younger than yourself.” The highest beings I meet are to do with eating and shitting and showering and talking... keep my center, because I couldn’t find another being in if it’s not all sacred twenty-four hours a day, forget it. Berkeley whose consciousness wasn’t caught by the vio­ like 12 to 15 years old...Yet you’re always going to see these vested interest games happening along the way. You can’t afford it. I can’t afford sex at this moment be­ lence. . .1 lectured the day of the (Rector) shooting cause I can’t get through the sexual act without losing .. .and the helicopters were going overhead, and I Some of my most beautiful friends look like concrete to me now. They got caught in the take and they’re like contact with the other partner, whether it be man or wo­ was watching this all as if Ihad walked into the middle of a man or myself, because the models were learned under cinerama shooting, you know, a stage location in which statues. They’re' still alive, but it’s not quite alive, ’cause they’re not working on themselves. The minute high-drive, and high-drive learning is the hardest to ex­ they were running this drama, like a South American re­ tinguish. Psychology works too, you know. volution. It’s only someone who’s completely free of it you say, “Well, OK, Pm finished..." cast that one...