In this powerful lecture on responding to suffering, Ram Dass draws on the wisdom of the Buddha, Trungpa Rinpoche, and Wavy Gravy, and offers his insight into the secret of compassion.  

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This episode of Here and Now comes from a lecture Ram Dass gave at the Omega Institute on June 28th, 1983. 

• Ram Dass talks about how suffering is everywhere. He examines the different kinds of reactions to it, including denial, pity, cynicism, or trying to “do something about it.”
• Ram Dass invokes the wisdom of the Buddha and Wavy Gravy to provide a path for us to open to suffering, and offers some insight into the secret of compassion.
• After a brief review of the Four Noble Truths, Ram Dass explores the concept of being nobody. He discusses the predicament of identifying with anything in form and how we aren’t who we think we are. We exist behind form.
• In the final part of the talk, Ram Dass introduces the rascally Trungpa Rinpoche, sharing stories of their early meetings. He recalls a dialogue between Trungpa and Wavy about responding to suffering and how they were representing two parts of the same dance.

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About Ram Dass:

Ram Dass’s spirit has been a guiding light for generations, carrying millions along on the journey. Ram Dass teaches that through the Bhakti practice of unconditional love, we can all connect with our true nature. Through these teachings, Ram Dass has shared a little piece of his guru, Maharaj-ji, with all who have listened to him.

“Because part of the secret of compassion is being able to embrace darkness into light. It’s being able to embrace suffering into yourself. It’s being able to acknowledge and allow. And then, the impeccable warrior hears what to do about it.” – Ram Dass

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In this often fierce talk from Ram Dass, he reflects on the pull of God versus the pull of humanity and how we can find the balance between keeping one eye on God and one eye on the world.  

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This episode of Here and Now comes from a talk Ram Dass gave in Florida in 1975. 

• Ram Dass describes how, through practice, we can come to a point where we have a choice between fully merging back into God or returning into form. “That moment,” he says, “You have choice. Choice to give up the form, go into the formless. Or, choice to play in the formless, but come back into the form.”
• Why would we come back into form? Ram Dass talks about seeing the perfection of the universe, including all of the suffering, but also playing your part as an instrument of the Dharma. “You are a statement that will enlighten those who are ready to be enlightened. That is your only function, it’s the only reason you’re on Earth.”
• Ram Dass explores how true service arises not from the desire to help, but the desire to find freedom for ourselves and others. He talks about how the spiritual path requires balancing the pull of God and the pull of humanity; to recognize the perfection of the cosmic dance and the reality of human suffering. 

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“You get so fascinated with God, with enlightenment, with the wisdom of the ages. And in your zeal to do that, it’s very easy to forget. To forget humanity. To forget politics. To forget human concerns. To overlook the daily stuff around you.” – Ram Dass

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Speaking across the decades from the 1970s to the 2010s, Ram Dass shares his wisdom on the importance of resting in awareness. 

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This episode of Here and Now is a compilation of Ram Dass discussing the concept of resting in awareness throughout the decades. 

• We begin in Washington, D.C., in 1976, with Ram Dass exploring being in harmony with the Tao, the Way of things, and how awareness and love are really the same thing. “When you are aware without clinging,” he says, ‘And in harmony with all of the forces, you are no longer in time.” 
• We move on to 1985, with Ram Dass meditating on the qualities of awareness. These are qualities such as spaciousness, equanimity, and love. He encourages us to become instruments of light, love, and presence. “Just allow your awareness to expand, to embrace everything you hear or feel or think.” 
• The next stop is the Virgin Islands in 1995, with Ram Dass comparing awareness to the sky. The clouds in the sky are simply the passing phenomena of life. “Your whole concept of who you think you are,” he says, “All the stuff of ‘me’ is all the cloud. And the cloud is being appreciated or embraced or carried by the sky. The sky is just awareness.” 
• Finally, we end in Maui in 2016, when Ram Dass had learned how to completely rest in his loving awareness. He guides a meditation to connect us to the space of loving awareness, where we can all go for a swim in the ocean of love. 

You can support this podcast, listen to episodes AD-FREE, and receive regular guided meditations from Ram Dass & Friends on our Patreon. Sign up for a free 7-day trial: patreon.com/RamDassPodcast

About Ram Dass:

Ram Dass’s spirit has been a guiding light for generations, carrying millions along on the journey. Ram Dass teaches that through the Bhakti practice of unconditional love, we can all connect with our true nature. Through these teachings, Ram Dass has shared a little piece of his guru, Maharaj-ji, with all who have listened to him. Learn more about Ram Dass, his teachings, and more at ramdass.org.

“I would say my life is about awareness. And becoming or being aware. Because becoming’s already a trip in the cloud. ‘I’m getting aware.’ It’s another one. ‘I’m washing dishes, now I’m getting aware.’ It’s just another trip, it’s another thing you’re doing. So, I’d say my life is resting in awareness. And into the awareness come phenomena.” – Ram Dass

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In this recording from 1979, Ram Dass gives a talk at a benefit for a food bank, emphasizing that every human being has a right to be fed. 

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This episode of Here and Now is from a talk Ram Dass gave at a benefit event for a food bank in Santa Cruz, California, in February 1979. 

• Ram Dass begins by repeating some of the words his guru passed on to him about the importance of food and making sure people are fed. He talks about how we need to rethink the way we approach the issue of food in our culture.
• Ram Das explores the paradox of suffering: On one level, it stinks, and on another level, it’s all perfect. But it’s very hard not to close our hearts to the tremendous suffering around us. 
• Sharing stories about his friends and his guru, Ram Dass talks about awakening to a place beyond “us” and “them,” a place where we’re all One. 
• Ram Dass emphasizes the importance of quieting our minds and opening our hearts. “I kinda wonder about how the game really works,” he says. “Don’t you? The game of hunger and starvation and feeding and faith and manna from heaven and connectedness. I keep feeling that the game is different than my mind can yet comprehend, but that I’m on the right track when I keep quieting my mind and opening my heart and just serving and feeding and doing what I can.” 

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“And all I remember was my guru saying every human being has a right to be fed. A right. A right to food. He said even if it’s the worst thief in the world, he has a right to food. That food is not a bargaining tool of power; food is a basic, shared manifestation of God. And somehow, the haves and have-nots lose sight of that very easily. We can bargain about television sets. We can bargain about automobiles. But we can bargain about food.” – Ram Dass

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In this recording from a 1992 retreat, Ram Dass talks about dealing with change, using the stuff of your daily life to get free, and how your karma defines your dharma. 

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This episode of Here and Now is from a talk Ram Dass gave during a retreat at the Omega Foundation in 1992. 

• Beginning with quotes from the great poets Kabir and Rumi, Ram Dass talks about how you start to work with each thing in your life as a method, as a practice. What you’ve got in life becomes what you work with, so your karma defines your dharma.
• Ram Dass brings up the constant changes we’re dealing with in terms of ecology, politics, and how living in “interesting times” can be seen as a blessing instead of a curse. “In dealing with these changes that are going down,” he says, “part of the real art is to look at what is changing and see how your identification with that which changes is creating so much fear in you that you’re pushing against change.”
• Continuing with his exploration of change, Ram Dass brings aging and death into the mix. He digs into dealing with changes to the body as we age, and how his work with people who are dying is really work on himself. “For me,” he says, “each act becomes part of the awakening.” 

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“And what you do is you just start flipping and taking what you’re given and start to work with it. In other words, your karma defines your dharma. That means what you got is what you work with. I mean, like, my baldness is my karma. I mean, it’s my genetics, it’s everything. Now, it becomes my dharma. Now, I can use it in order to become free of being bald, or being not bald, or whatever.” – Ram Dass

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In this recording from 1978, Ram Dass reads stories about his guru, Maharaj-ji, and his many miracles. We invite you to set aside your analytical mind and simply enjoy these miracles of love. 

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This episode of Here and Now is from a recording of Ram Dass at the Lama Foundation in June of 1978. Here, he reads stories from the manuscript of Miracle of Love, which would be published about a year later. 

• Ram Dass begins by reading one of his own stories about Maharaj-ji, which involves a dead bird coming back to life. This was one of many experiences that overwhelmed Ram Dass’ analytical mind.
• Next, Ram Dass reads a series of stories from some of Maharaj-ji’s oldest devotees. He dealt with each person in a unique fashion and would often touch places of the deepest love within people. 
• Ram Dass slips in a story about another great Indian saint, Ramana Maharshi. He then turns back to Maharaj-ji stories, focusing on miracles around food. Maharaj-ji said, “We have an inner thirst for food. We don’t know of it. Even if you don’t feel you could eat, your soul has a thirst for food.”

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“You see why it’s peculiar to live in a culture like India, where all of these events are sort of like everyday occurrences. In the villages we live in, in the mountains, every family has dozens of these stories, and they just sit by the fire of the evening telling them. To come back to the West, where these stories are thought to be ‘miracles,’ is very confusing sometimes, difficult to integrate.” – Ram Dass

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Speaking across the decades from the 1960s to the 2010s, Ram Dass shares his thoughts on the feeling of love and the path of the heart.

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This episode of Here and Now is a compilation of Ram Dass speaking about love and the path of the heart across the decades:

• We begin in 1969, with Ram Dass talking about Maher Baba, whom he calls the personification of pure love. He describes a particularly powerful LSD trip where he gained insight into the true nature of love. He says, “I now conceive of the fact that falling in love means like falling into a bathtub of love.”
• We move on to 1979, with Ram Dass addressing the Christian Community of San Francisco. He describes the different stages of falling in love and talks about the devotional nature of the path of the heart. “And that’s one of your predicaments,” he says, “that when you really fall in love, it just opens and opens and opens, and you just don’t know where to hold on anymore.” 
• The next stop is 1986, with Ram Dass touching on conditional love and the deprivation model we’ve been working with all our lives. He digs deeper into the different stages of love and talks about the need to give up the deprivation model. He says, “You change from the deprivation model to the model where there’s an abundance of [love].” 
• We fast forward to the 1990s, with Ram Dass reading from the I Ching about the path of love and the path of the heart. He talks about how we are hungry ghosts who get addicted to the method of love, but all methods are traps. “And yet,” he says, “the bizarre thing about methods is they don’t work unless you get trapped.”
• Finally, we end in 2017, with Ram Dass telling a delicious story about loving everything, including a rug with spots on it. He talks about how judgment is in the mind, but love is in the heart. “I don’t judge,” he says. “But if I do judge, I love it.”

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“Now, if you look at in the sense that, in the usual way of, ‘I fell in love with this person, there’s another way of seeing that, which is this person is a stimulus, is something in the world that was just right in a key sense to release us into the place in ourselves where we are love. And we say, as a result, ‘I am in love with you.’ Another way of saying it is, ‘You turn me on to the place in myself where I am love, where I can’t get to without you.’ Now we’re talking about you being my connection to that place in myself where I am love, where I can’t get without you. And then I want to hold on to my connection, just as any good junkie would like to do.” – Ram Dass

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Speaking at a MAPS conference in the early 1990s, Ram Dass looks back at some of the benefits and mistakes of the work he and Timothy Leary did with psychedelics in the 1960s. 

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This episode of Here and Now comes from a talk Ram Dass gave at a MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) conference in the early 1990s. It immediately followed a talk given by Timothy Leary. 

• Ram Dass reflects on the funny position he’s in between his desire for this gathering of MAPS to put on a good face and be responsible researchers, and his feeling that what has happened is far more profound than that. “What we are doing now,” he says, “is trying to find a way to bring more people along through trying to legitimize our game in society. But the underground process in which psychedelics have continued to be used in the society and have come into mainstream consciousness, that goes on independent of whether we lose or win on the front we’re talking about in research.”
• Ram Dass speaks to some of the benefits that came out of the pioneering research into psychedelics he conducted with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the 1960s. This includes therapeutic possibilities, opening people up to wisdom from the East, and shifting our perception of reality.
• Ram Dass finishes by talking about some of the mistakes they made along the way, including how they got too involved with the revolutionary aspects of psychedelics rather than the evolutionary elements. But ultimately, the genie is already out of the bottle when it comes to psychedelics. “Truth cannot be repressed,” says Ram Dass. “It cannot be legislated out of existence. Psychedelics are a healthy pseudopod of society, and they have to be honored. And they will be honored.” 
• This episode closes with a live performance of "Sit Around The Fire" performed by East Forest at the 2023 LSRF Ram Dass Legacy Retreat. This soundscape interweaves wisdom from Ram Dass around identity, inner work and interconnection. "Sit Around The Fire" was composed by East Forest and Jon Hopkins for the album Music For Psychedelic Therapy.

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“I think we got a little confused about evolution and revolution. I think we played with the revolutionary aspects of psychedelics, when to me, the far more interesting issue is the evolutionary aspects. I think that had we been more evolved in our wisdom, and not feeling we were inventing the wheel all over again, we would have had an appreciation of what the fears were of the society and how to work with those fears rather than just pitting ourselves against them. I don’t think the way we did it was the only way it could’ve been done.” – Ram Dass

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Speaking through the decades, from the 1960s to the 2010s, Ram Dass shares his thoughts on Satsang, the community of seekers who come together in the pursuit of truth. 

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This episode of Here and Now is a compilation of Ram Dass discussing community and Satsang across the decades. 

• We begin in 1969, with Ram Dass exploring the power of the spiritual community, Satsang, as a protective and nurturing presence for those on the path. He shares how Satsang serves as a reference group without a physical form. “The universe that is Satsang,” he says, “is an inner universe, not an outer universe.”
• We move on to 1975, with Ram Dass reflecting on how the cultural despair of the 60s led people to band together out of a sense of spiritual need or purpose. He reflects on how these “spiritual reference groups” exist over time and space in all directions. “One begins to recognize members of one’s group quite independent of geography and quite independent of time.” 
• The next stop is 1986, with Ram Dass noting a growing maturity in the spiritual seekers he gathers with on his lecture tours. He discusses the various paths that bring people together in community and how we reassure each other through our presence for one another. “By reflecting back and forth between our hearts,” he says, “we strengthen our connection.”
• We fast forward to 1994, with Ram Dass discussing how the spiritual community is a mutual space for growth. He cautions that unless we meet in the deeper place of our beings together, the acts we do with one another will involve violence and exacerbate suffering. “Our art form is to cultivate this space and recognize that we are meeting in it, and share the essence of space behind the form.” 
• Finally, we end in 2017, with a conversation between Ram Dass, Raghu Markus, and Rameshwar Das about how the deeply familial nature of Satsang is rooted in love and truth. They share stories about Ram Dass’ guru brother, KK Sah, and the early days of Satsang in the West.

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Sponsors of this Episode:

Ram Dass Here & Now is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/ramdass and get on your way to being your best self.

This show is also sponsored by Magic Mind, a matcha-based energy shot infused with nootropics and adaptogens designed to crush procrastination, brain fog, & fatigue. Get 60% off your first subscription to Magic Mind with our link: magicmind.com/ramdassmf

Reunion is offering $250 off any stay to the Love, Serve, Remember community. Simply use the code “BeHere250” when booking. Disconnect from the world so you can reconnect with yourself at Reunion. Hotel | www.reunionhotelandwellness.com Retreats | www.reunionexperience.org

“It’s just us humans together in the shelter of each other. This is what Satsang, or Sangha, is. This is it. This is the community of beings who are acknowledging that dual intention: You work on yourself as an offering to others, you work on others as a way of working on yourself. Circle’s complete. And everything is part of that circle. All of it.” – Ram Dass

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In this interview from 1977, Ram Dass shares his views on psychedelics and how they can provide a free slate to experience the innocence of consciousness once again. 

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This episode of Here and Now is from an interview with Ram Dass conducted by New Dimensions Radio in 1977, shortly after Ram Dass participated in a conference called “LSD – A Generation Later.” 

• The interview begins with Ram Dass discussing the happenings at the conference and his interactions with other psychedelic luminaries, including Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Albert Hofmann. 
• Ram Dass explores the culture surrounding LSD in 1977, and how he has no desire to legislate how other people live their lives. He shares his guru’s instructions for using the “yogi medicine” and talks about whether or not it’s important to have a guide for psychedelic experiences.
• Finally, Ram Dass cautions that “getting high and seeing” is only one part of the process of change, and there are inner processes necessary to bring about change in life. He discusses the cultural evolution brought about by psychedelics and the shifts in consciousness he sees taking place. 

The Ram Dass community gathers regularly to engage in meaningful discussions about the podcast. We invite you to join us and share your curiosities, insights, and wisdom. Sign up for the General Fellowship to receive event invitations directly in your inbox.

Sponsors of this Episode:

This show is sponsored by Magic Mind, a matcha-based energy shot infused with nootropics and adaptogens designed to crush procrastination, brain fog, & fatigue. Check out their new Maxx & Free energy shots and get 60% off your subscription with our code RAMDASS60 at magicmind.com/ramdassmf

Ram Dass Here & Now is also brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/ramdass and get on your way to being your best self.

Reunion is offering $250 off any stay to the Love, Serve, Remember community. Simply use the code BeHere250 when booking. Disconnect from the world so you can reconnect with yourself at Reunion. Hotel | www.reunionhotelandwellness.com Retreats | www.reunionexperience.org

“If you have a guide, you’re calm, and you really want to explore your inner being, I still see LSD as an incredible vehicle for overriding your habitual response patterns, your habits of thought, and giving you a free slate to experience your innocence of consciousness once again.” – Ram Dass

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