Dan Ellsberg tries scare tactics to get Ram Dass to take social action. Ram Dass says –“In fact nuclear weaponry are out of balance with the way of things - The Dao - so you don’t have to cajole or coerce people into acting. You can’t milk it through fear. You can just trust people’s gut. They will react through their own intuitive sense of being in tune with the way.”

“Quiet mind-open heart- we do what we can to relieve suffering” - Ram Dass

“It’s the freedom of consciousness that hears the impeccable act that brings about the healing of the planet and all it’s people so that you are an instrument for the relief of suffering; Even though at another level you can see that suffering is part of the nature of things. And the perfection is that we act to relieve the suffering while acknowledging that both the act and the suffering are part of one mosaic.” - Ram Dass

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In this wide ranging interview by Radio For Peace, Ram Dass talks about satsang/community and how it can uplift us as well as become a trap.

“The possibility is there in spiritual community to die into the truth. But people die very hard and as a result fall back on structures that can enhance separateness.”

There is pressure in satsang to conform to the median and that pressure to conform can get individuals calcified. Institutions that are optimum for the spirit are totallt creative and imaginative. We are in the process of dissolving and being creative every moment.”

Ram Dass also talks about belief and faith- “Faith is an aspect of the nature of being. Belief won’t help you when you are facing death.”

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In this podcast, Mickey Lemle, filmmaker and director of the Ram Dass documentary Fierce Grace, talks with Ram Dass about the power of storytelling.

Writing sometimes doesn’t allow spiritual concepts to come across fully. Storytelling can convey the direct human experience of spirituality in a more personal and immediate way.

Join Ram Dass and Mickey Lemle as they relive their stories together.

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Surya Das joins Ram Dass for a puja side chat at Ram Dass' home on Maui. Surya Das is a bhakta as well as an American Lama. They explore questions like, "What is our true sadhana (spiritual practice)?" - "Are we egos or dharma masters? Or are we simply two brothers on the path to the Guru's feet?" Ram Dass talks about doing practices consciously, giving the example of yoga, where each pose is "shaking hands with God." Surya Das asks, "What keeps us from remembering God in each moment of our lives?"

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How far do you have to go to get through the layers of psychology, of defenses, of personalities in order to get to the root of a being, behind those veils where the spark is - the overriding faith in reality beyond the senses.

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We are both separate and one. Creator and created. The question is, “Can we allow for free will and at the same time acknowledge that everything is determined?” The trick is to neither identify nor deny either of them.

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The confusion of the paradox you find yourself in is that you are in an incarnation that’s totally dedicated to the preservation of it’s own separateness, and at the same time you are awakening to the realization that the entire domain of separateness is but another illusion. So you find yourself marching in the opposite direction of everything you've learned, against everything your body is telling you, against all of the deepest structures of the ego.

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Forms are created and exist and disappear into the formless. Methods are the ship crossing the ocean of existence. You entrap yourself in them in order to burn out karma that keeps you from being free. You know that the method works when it self-destructs.

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As long as you perceive love as a verb, you are thinking of another person as a separate object to give love to. When we are truly in love, we are in a simple state of “being” love. As an incarnation, you have to understand what it means to live outside of time and space. You have to understand what it means to see a continuing process of which a human birth is but one very minor segment…

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We can be the biggest somebody in the world when we have no attachment, but we have to start from somewhere, we can’t start out being nobody. The force of “somebody-ness” that develops the survival mechanisms (social, physical, etc.) is our starting point. It is in the freedom of non-clinging to models about self and other that you begin to tune to and hear the way of things, called the Dao or the Divine Law. When you respect that tuning in yourself, actions that flow from you start to become dharmic. They are acts that release beings from suffering and do not perpetuate the illusion of separate self.

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