In the last six years Ram Dass has shifted his models of communication. It is now through digital media and the internet that he spends most of his time teaching and sharing.

At the beginning of his journey when “Be Here Now” was published, radio was a big part of how people discovered Ram Dass. I was the program director of a free-form rock radio station in Montreal Quebec when I met Ram Dass and was transformed by his story, his honesty, his wisdom and his humor. After interviewing him at the station we began to broadcast his recorded lectures alongside Dylan, Hendrix and The Dead.

This podcast is a product of that time – when we were mixing Ram Dass’ story of transformation with music and DJ interludes. It’s also a reflection of my journey to the East- my tracking Ram Dass down in India and following him to the foothills of the Himalayas which lead to my encounter with Neem Karoli Baba.

When Ram Dass came back after first meeting his Guru he was told not to mention him at all when he got back to America. But that’s all Ram Dass did when he came back home. The models may have shifted for Ram Dass, but his desire to share the wisdom he has gathered over the years has remained.

Raghu Markus, Host of Ram Dass Here and Now

Original Article

• Some people came with an objective or an attachment. One very rich woman came to Maharaj-ji with a big box of sweets for Maharaj-ji. She wanted to take the sweets for herself and her friends outside. She held out the box to Maharaj-ji so that when he touched it the sweets would become prasad. Maharaj-ji took the box and the woman would not let go. She held on and tried to pull them away from Maharaj-ji. But he pulled them back and then the woman pulled again. This happened again. Back and forth. Then Maharaj-ji pulled so hard that He got the box away from the woman. Then Maharaj-ji said, “You can go now.” The woman was so sad. Maharaj-ji started to distribute the sweets, but Usha said,”Maharaj-ji, You can’t do this. This woman will have a heat attack before she leaves and who will pick up her body?” So Maharaj-ji and Usha watched as the woman left the ashram and walked to her car. When she got in the car and had driven away, only then did Maharaj-ji distribute the prasad.They laughed and laughed.

• Some young people were at Kainchi Ashram fooling around and talking loudly about their own things and interests… their own business. Maharaj-ji stormed out of His room yelling at them and chased them right out of the ashram. They ran out of the ashram and Maharaj-ji ran right after them yelling all the while. Even right across the bridge, He chased them. Maharaj-ji said the ashram is not a place for the worldly thoughts. That the ashram was a place where your heart and your thoughts were able to become one. That to go and stay at an ashram for a year was a way to ‘recharge you batteries’ and that after that you could go back into the world and do your work again, in the right way. This is why Maharaj-ji had many rules and inforced these rules very strongly.

Original Article

I have never had the pleasure of meeting Ram Dass in person. When I was 13, my parents sent me to yoga and meditation classes because they thought I had insomnia and it would help. (What they didn’t know was that I was desperately bored in school and reading science fiction books by flashlight all night!) But the classes took, and I started reading more about the traditions surrounding meditation and yoga. My father, a Unitarian Universalist minister, had an extensive library on world religions and various philosophical/spiritual traditions, so I had a lot to read in my own attic on the ranks of utility shelving that housed the thousands of books in my dad’s library!

I also started sitting in satsang with the devotees of Maharajji, in Montpelier, VT (almost all of whom were associated with the UU church!). I never took this group very seriously, as I found more centeredness in my yoga/meditation teacher, and my modern dance teacher. The satsang was practicing in near isolation, and with not much experience.

My father had a copy of Be Here Now on his desk in his office, and I picked it up one day. I was very arts-oriented, as well as heavily into the sciences and social sciences. The story of Ram Dass, and the nearly animated book, resonated with me. I remember thinking it was pretty wild that my dad had this book living on his desk in the white-clapboard fussy New England church. I approached the book different ways at different times, working my way through it, puzzling through particular bits, showing pieces off to friends and asking their thoughts, using it for “bibliomancy” (opening to a random page, and assuming that’s your lesson for the moment).

Many miles passed, 33 years along. I have studied with the Kagyu Buddhists and many other groups. I have been a yoga therapist and helped people who experimented with things they couldn’t handle, like taking kundalini yoga classes thinking they were like aerobics (context-less and without possible disruptive consequences), I have danced with neo-pagans, and studied Ken Wilber, but mostly I’ve been engaged for 30 years in helping at the intersection of computer technology and social issues, as a profession and a jnana path of sorts.

Recently, an old friend said he thought that of all the people he’d ever spoken to, Ram Dass would perhaps best understand the work I am doing now. I’ve recently started a company that helps people get some of the benefits of meditation through a computer game environment. The day after that, I ran into Ram Dass’s Twitter account (very funky). Today, at a used bookstore, I ran into an old copy of Be Here Now, a bit dog-eared, and it followed me home. I’ve started to re-read the book. Amazing how different a book it is at 50 than at 17, yet very fresh and fun! I thought, someone should do a flash animation of this book, and animate it as I have always seen it in my mind’s eye, cascading and dancing on the page. Maybe they already have? So I plugged in “ram dass be here now multimedia” into Google—and here I am! The modern version of bibliomancy: plug a search into Google and assume that the page that comes up is your lesson for the day. ;)

Excerpt from Remarkable Encounters with Ram Dass Enhanced Ebook – now available on iBooks, Kindle and  Nook.

Original Article

Just a few weeks before the construction of the house started, Baba arrived. Since the old lady had gone away, the atmosphere was peaceful. Ma and Maushi Ma had already become very close to him. For them, Babaji was a very wise and dear member of their household. His talks with them would always be intimate and affectionate.

Ma and Maushi Ma and Didi were deeply religious and became close with Baba from the first day he came. He actually began asking about each and every detail of the family and advising them. My mother and auntie would discuss even the minor things of the household with him and he would solve all their problems, family or financial or material. He could be so very affectionate, behaving just like a son to his mother. “Ma, bring me food … I am feeling hungry. Kamala, please scratch my back.”

Babaji at first called me by my name, Sudhir, or just “Profes­sor.” It was in 1961 that one day he started calling meDada [elder brother]. Others followed, but not my Ma and Maushi Ma. He asked them why they called me by name and not Dada. When they said that a son is not addressed so, he said, “When he is my Dada, he is your Dada also.”

One day I was alone with him and he asked me, “Your friends are not coming now. They must be warning you about the danger of coming under the influence of a baba and being close with him. They love you and therefore they warn you for your own good. Am I wrong?” I had no reply to give. He was right.

I was rather an outsider at the beginning, and I was not psychologically or mentally prepared for the difficulties and disturbances his coming created. I was quite interested in social and cultural life, going to the pictures, making friends, addressing various kinds of cultural gatherings, meetings, debates, and I had a very large circle of friends. They would come and gather together just like members of the family. Now when Babaji began coming, there was no place for them to come and sit. Also, many of my friends did not like the idea. “Oh, you have become the victim of some baba!” When his visits contin­ued, they would say I was wasting my time. In spite of all their solicitations, I could not change my new way of living. I was losing my interest in my old life, but I could not think that Babaji had anything to do with it. For me it was just like dry leaves falling from the tree, without anybody’s hand behind it.

Excerpt from By His Grace

by Dada Mukerjee

Original Article

It was 1970 in Washington, D.C. When friends played a tape recorded lecture in which Ram Dass described his journey to India and his transformation from Harvard professor to intrepid explorer of the mind to spiritual seeker and discoverer in terms, tenor and language that confirmed tenets i knew to be true, but had never heard anyone utter so convincingly.

The words were bright and clear, without artifice or guile, delivered free of personality through the heart of a being whose life had been profoundly opened to a mystic reality.

The words gave certainty to ideals long taught and believed but infrequently seen in a post-war western culture dominated by conspicuous consumption and separation from its underlying unity. They offered the possibility of attaining those ideals. They gave impetus to the search for realizing them.

After reading Ram Dass’s book, Be Here Now, and the cookbook for a sacred life it contained, the path had become clear and the effort worthwhile. And so I embarked. I left an impending career in law in abeyance, to be resumed in a few years but from a much different perspective.

Later, after many months of meditation and yoga practice, I learned that Ram Dass was speaking one evening at a nearby university. As Is entered the auditorium there on the stage was a chair, a floral arrangement and a color photograph of Maharajji large enough for anyone to see his beaming presence from any place in the audience. The lecture was moving, almost as if Maharajji was delivering the meta-message through Ram Dass.

And after it ended, way beyond the scheduled time, many people lingered to hear more, myself included, but mostly to stay in the presence of that moment. Upon taking leave and thanking him, the same light emanating from Maharajji’s picture could be seen radiating from Ram Dass in a most impersonal yet transcendent manner that made his words seem superfluous. That was my first meeting in person with Ram Dass.

Many months later I saw him at the Lama Foundation after a retreat in which I had been advised to set out for India. I told him that story and asked what he thought of this advice. His reply was wise. I was exactly where I needed to be for the next step in the journey. After a lengthy pause in which he undoubtedly could see the disappointment in my face, he suggested that if I happened to find myself in India that summer I should seek out S.L. Sah and tell him that Ram Dass sent me.

So that’s what I did. And three weeks later I found myself facing Maharajji. It was like looking at the sun. Here was the source of what we all came to understand as the unconditional love that had transformed Ram Dass. And there I remained for months in a timeless state of bliss and discovery, and in the profound experience of being always in Maharajji’s presence.

All this is because of Ram Dass.

Excerpt from Remarkable Encounters with Ram Dass Enhanced Ebook – now available on iBooks, Kindle and Nook.

Original Article

Once Maharajji had gone from Allahabad to Jagganath Puri with some of the devotees. I could not go because I had to run the household. At about four o’clock one afternoon I was relaxing, my mother and auntie were resting in their room, when I heard some noise from behind the house. Some children were shouting, “Baba, Baba, let us have the flute!”

A man’s voice came, saying, “I am hungry, give me some food.”

I looked out and saw that many children were surrounding a tall fellow with long hair, wearing a long coat. He had a brass flute in his hand. Seeing me, he said, “I am hungry.”

He came and sat just before the door and I went to get some chapatis and dal. I brought them and said, “These are not fresh, they were cooked at noon, but eat them and after that you can have some sweets.”

He would not lift his head, just looked down and said, “Araharki dal, araharki dal. I have not eaten araharki dal for so many years.”

I remembered that Maharajji had brought some sweets from Vrindaban, saying, “This is Biharaji [Krishna] prasad.” I brought some to the man. When he had finished and was getting up, I said, “Wash your mouth, wash your mouth,” as there was dal on his beard. But he would not, and when I insisted he only washed his flute. When he was leaving I said, “Baba, you can come whenever you like. If I am not at home, my mother and auntie will welcome you.”

He said, “I have been searching long for the house where bhakti [devotion] and Lakshmi live.”

During all this, Ashoka had been standing nearby. Just like a statue. Later she related that while recently in Delhi, she and a friend had gone out in a car with Maharajji. They had stopped at the house of a very wealthy man and Maharajji had gone inside, telling them to wait at the gate. While they were waiting, a man came who looked exactly like this man, except instead of a flute he carried a big stick. He said he was very hungry and asked for food, but the gatekeeper would not let him in. He said, “I have come to the house of the richest man in the city and I must return disappointed.”

Two days after that, Maharajji returned. He said to me, “Biharaji gave you darshan.” When the story was narrated, Jivanti Ma asked me, “Dada, on what day did that person come who ate the araharki dal?” I said it was Thursday. Then she said, “We were in Jagganath Puri then and Maharajji had already taken his food. Suddenly at about four o’clock he said, ‘I shall eat chapati and araharki dal.’ He does not eat araharki dal, you know that, he always eats mung dal. So we were rather surprised. Didi said, ‘This is not the time for your food, you have eaten already. Besides, you do not eat araharki dal.’ But Babaji kept saying, ‘I am hungry and you do not give me food.’ So we had to go and get araharki dal to cook for him. That was the same time you were feeding araharki dal to that man with the flute in Allahabad.”

Excerpt from By His Grace: A Devotee’s Story

by Dada Mukerjee

Original Article

Question:  How can I judge myself less harshly and appreciate myself more?

Ram Dass:  I think that part of it is observing oneself more impersonally.  I often use this image, which I think I have used already, but let me say it again.  That when you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees.  And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever.  And you look at the tree and you allow it.  You appreciate it.  You see why it is the way it is.  You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way.  And you don’t get all emotional about it.  You just allow it.  You appreciate the tree.  The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.  And you are constantly saying “You’re too this, or I’m too this.”  That judging mind comes in.  And so I practice turning people into trees.  Which means appreciating them just the way they are.  And, there was a period of time where I used to have a picture of myself on my puja table.  Later I had Caspar Weinberger, but earlier on I had me.  And people would come and say “My God, what an ego this guy has got.  He has got his own picture on his puja table.”   But really, what it was, was a chance for me to practice opening my heart to myself.  And to appreciate the predicament I am in.  I mean I could see the whole incarnation.  If I am quiet enough, I can see his story line.   I mean history is his story.  Or herstory.  And herstory is just the story line of our predicament.   And it’s finding a place from in yourself where you see the unfolding of law.  Dad did this; Mother did this; economics did this; education did this; opportunity did this; drugs did this; Maharajji did this.

All of this cause and effect, previous incarnations.  All of this is just an unfolding of a story line.  A drama.  The Ram Dass story.  There he is.  How will it come out?  How did it come out?  And you are just sort of watching this story unfold.  It has nothing to do with me.  Because I’m not that.  That’s just a set of phenomena happening.  And when you look at yourself as a set of phenomena, what is to judge?   I mean is that flower less than that?  It’s just different than that.  And you begin to appreciate your uniqueness without it being better or worse.  It’s just different.  And cultivating an appreciation of uniqueness, rather than preference, is a very good one.  It’s just when you get inside identification with your personality that you get into the judging mode, because then you are part of that lawful unfolding.  You are not stepping outside of it at all.  The witness or the spacious awareness is outside of it.  It is another contextual framework.

As you are more quiet inside so that you notice and you can see your own thoughts a little more clearly, you will see your father’s voice and your mother’s voice and all your education principles voices inside your head constantly saying things to you.  And you will see that — what Freud calls  the Super Ego.  You will see that that judge is inside.  And you keep giving it power by identifying with it.  And you feel yourself at war with yourself.  That there is a part of you that is doing it, and there is a part of you that is judging what you are doing.  And as you are quieter, you see the dynamics between the Super Ego, the Id, the ego.  And you see it all as just phenomena.  Because they are phenomena.   As a psychologist, I can study those phenomena in another person; why not study it in myself?   And part of what drugs did for me, and then mediation did for me, and all the spiritual things is it helps me stand back and get outside of it.  To see it for what it is.   As just stuff — phenomena.

Original Article

So I started out on the New York thruway. I was just galumphing along in such a high state that I was hanging out with various forms of the Divine. I was doing my mantra, which I usually am doing one way or another, to remember that this isn’t the only game in town. So I’m holding onto the steering wheel and I’m keeping enough consciousness to keep the car on the road. At another part I’m singing to Krishna, who is blue, is radiant, plays the flute, is the seducer of the Beloved, all of whom we are, back into the merging with God, back into the formless. I am in ecstasy hanging out with blue Krishna, driving along the New York freeway, when I noticed in my rear view mirror a blue flashing light.

Now, there is enough of me down, so I knew it was a state trooper. I pulled over the car, and this man got out of the car and he came up to the window. I opened the window and he said, “may I see your license and registration?” I was in such a state that when I looked at him, I saw that it was Krishna who had come to give me darshan. How would Krishna come in 1970? Why not as a state trooper? Christ came as a carpenter.

So Krishna comes up and asks for my license. He can have anything, he can have my life. All he wants is my license and registration. So I give him my license and registration, and it’s like throwing flowers at the feet of God. I am looking at him with absolute love.

So he goes back to the car and he calls home. Then he comes back and he walks around the car and he says, “what’s in that box on the seat?” I said, “they’re mints, would you like one?” He said, “well the problem is you were driving too slow on the freeway, and you’ll have to drive off the freeway if you’re going to drive this slowly.” I said, “yes, absolutely.”  I’m just looking at him with such love.

Now, if you put yourself in the role of a state trooper, how often do you suppose they are looked at with unconditional love? Especially when they’re in their uniform. So after he had finished all the deliberations, he didn’t want to leave. But he had run out of state trooper-ness. So he stood there a minute, and then he said, “great car you’ve got here!” That allowed me to get out. And we could kick and spit and hit the fenders and say, they don’t make `em now like they used to, and tell old car stories. Then we ran out of that. I could feel he still didn’t want to leave. I mean, why would you want to leave if you’re being unconditionally loved? Where are you going to go? You’ve already got what you wanted. What are you going to do? That takes care of your power needs, all of it.

So finally he runs out, he knows he’s got to come clean that he’s Krishna, so he says, “be gone with you,” which isn’t state trooper talk, but what the hell. As I get into the car and I start to drive away, he’s standing by his cruiser and I look in the mirror and he’s waving at me. Now you tell me, do you think that was a state trooper, or was that Krishna? I don’t know.

Original Article