All language subtitles for Becoming.Nobody.2019.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

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Okay. We're gonna do this song.
Now, uh...

Even if you don't sing,
it's okay. You're gonna sing.

It's got three words to it

and I'll sing the song now.
Listen, so you don't screw up.

We're gonna do it in six parts,
but we gotta learn it first.
Ready?

♪ Jubilate Deo ♪

♪ Jubilate Deo ♪

♪ Allelulia ♪

♪ Allelulia ♪

We're gonna take it
a little higher.

♪ Jubilate Deo ♪

♪ Jubilate Deo ♪

♪ Allelulia ♪

♪ Allelulia ♪

You get... You're good.

Okay. Now we're gonna do it
in six parts.

Now, and it gets
really far out.

All right. You ready?
One, two, three,

four, five, six.

Here we go.

For 25 years now,

I have been huffing and
puffing and trying to get enlightened as hard as I could.

I have fasted, and prayed,

mantra-ed, pilgrimaged,

sat before my guru,

done all-night thises
and thats,

meditated with real meditators.

I mean,
I really put my time in,
so to speak.

And two things have been
surprising to me.

One is, a year ago,
I met one of my old
Harvard colleagues,

and after a few minutes
he said, "You know, Dick,

"you haven't changed a bit."

And the other
interesting one is that

many of us have been through

so many stages of this journey at this point.

We're all still
relative beginners, but...

And see all these lines
like we're at the beginning,

or there's a path,

or we're near the end.

These are all
astral storylines.

How do we know who we are?

We might be one breath away
from enlightenment,

or death, or who knows?

The uncertainty is great.

It just keeps it wide open.

Twenty years ago
when I first met you,

was a retreat in England,
in an old boarding school

in '94.

And I think you were interested
in why someone so young

was on the retreat.

And I said,
"I think I've come
all this way

"for you to tell me
that I'm a good son."

And you just smiled at me,
and you looked, and you went,

"Well, are you?"

What'd you come here for, then?

I came here to say,
"Thank you. I love you."

Okay.

I told you, and to get the keys
to the executive washroom
of spirituality.

When I was born,

I donned a spacesuit
for living on this plane.

It was this body,

this is my spacesuit,

and it had
a steering mechanism,
my prefrontal lobes,

and all the brain motors,

coordinating stuff.

And just like those,

Rusty Schweickart
and the others that
go to the moon,

they wear their uniforms
and they learn
how to grab things,

and lift things.

So I did that

and I learned
my prehensile capacity.

And I got rewarded.
You get little stars,

and kisses, and all kinds of
things when you learn how
to use your spacesuit.

And you get really good at it.

You get so good
at using your spacesuit,

that you can't differentiate
yourself from your
spacesuit anymore.

And everybody comes up
and says, "What a nice suit."

And you're constantly looking
into other people's eyes

to find out if you're really
wearing a nice spacesuit.

It's what I call
"Somebody Training."

When you're born, you go into Somebody Training,

'cause your parents know
who they are

and they're gonna
make you somebody, too.

My parents were very intent
on making me somebody.

And they wanted me to achieve,

be responsible, be healthy,

be successful,
bring pride to them,

and if it didn't interfere
with any of those,

I should be happy.

The problem that
I experienced, though,

was the suit
that I was wearing.

It was like you're in
one of these suits
that doesn't quite fit,

and you're
a little uncomfortable,

and you're constantly trying
to readjust yourself.

But everybody kept saying,

"Beautiful suit.
Really impressive suit.

"You must be very happy."

But I wasn't.

Now, if everybody,
you look into their eyes,

and they tell you you're happy, and you're not,

because the suit
feels so weird,

what do you conclude?

I felt, when everybody said what a nice suit I was wearing,

that I must be sick.

So I went to an analyst.

Now, he was wearing
another kind of
weird suit, see?

And what he did was,
he said that for a pittance,

he would teach me
how to wear his suit
instead of my suit.

So I learned
how to wear his suit

which had even more
status connect.

I mean, more people said,
"Beautiful suit."

And I really
wasn't very happy
in that suit either.

And you walk down the street

and you're somebody, you say.
You know who you are.

You dress like somebody, your face looks like somebody,

everything is somebody.

Everybody is reinforcing their structure of the universe

over and over again

and they meet like
two huge things meeting.

"This is who I am,
this is who you are."

We enter in these conspiracies.

I'll make believe you are
who you think you are,

if you make believe...

...I am who I think I am.

We just kind of
bump against each other.

You can see them in everybody.

I mean, everybody's busy
being somebody.

Now, in our culture
we've been trained

for individual differences
to stand out.

So you look at each person
and immediate hit is,

brighter, dumber, older,
younger, richer, poorer,

and we make all these
dimensional distinctions,

put them in categories
and treat them that way.

And we get so that
we only see others
as separate from ourselves

in the ways in which
they're separate.

And one of
the dramatic characteristics
of the psychedelic experience

is being with another person

and suddenly seeing the ways
in which they are like you,

not different from you.

In the '60s...

On March 6th, 1961,
to be exact,

Timothy Leary
gave me psilocybin

and it changed my life.

It changed my life
in the sense

that it undercut
the models I had

of who I thought I was.

All the socialization
and child development

that had left me with
a very strong somebodiness,

it cut that out.

And, of course,
there was fear in losing
that familiar identity.

But there was always
also wonder because
I touched a place in myself.

It was behind
all my social roles.

And it was...

It was a presence.

Instead of being good

or this or that,
or achiever, or anything,

I experienced a place in myself
where I just say, "I am."

Not "I am this" or "I am that,"
just "I am."

And I think it preoccupied me
because it felt like
it was my true being.

And I felt like I was gypped.
I was gyping myself
not to have access to that.

So I did
what many others of you
did and other people did

was I tried
every chemical possibility

to try to stabilize that state.

I mean, if you took this
and then followed it with this

and you did it
under these conditions
with this person,

reading this book
from the Tibetan this...

...you did it after fasting
for so many days

and standing on your left foot.
It would work, see.

And I still came down,

and I kept coming down and
coming down and coming down
for about seven years

through hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of explorations.

And then, I went to India
and I met Maharajji, my guru,

and I met a being
who didn't come down.

What I experienced
at that time
of meeting that man,

in fact, within those first
few minutes of meeting,

was the experience
of surrender,
which was no surrender.

In other words,
I didn't begrudgingly
give up my ego.

It was as if I came home
to the place where
I no longer needed it.

They took over
my complete life
at that point.

I didn't leave
that temple again

except to go to Delhi once
for seven months.

They took over my food,
my clothing, my training,
everything.

Never anybody asked or said.

It was all done from then on
from inside.

I learned about what inside education is about.

And this man was at the place

where there was
no other person
you were giving up to.

And everything I did
from then on was done
with absolute joy.

There was no thing
they could ask of me
that was too hard.

It was austerities
that were not austere,

because I was living
almost within this man.

For the first time
I understood what the concept
of a guru was about.

See, a guru is your doorway
to God, your doorway
to the beyond.

A guru is
not just a groovy teacher.

You know, it's not a pundit.

It's not just a wise man
who can teach you things.

A guru is a spiritual vehicle,

an entranceway.

He's a pure mirror.
He isn't anybody at all.

I think that the spiritual trip
in... At this moment

is not necessarily
a cave in the Himalayas,

but it's in relation
to the technology
that's existing.

It's in relation to
where we're at.

It's in relation to
issues like pollution,

and political interests, and
activism, and stuff like that.

I think that's all part
of one package now.

The game is to
be where you are,
be it honestly

and as consciously
as you know how.

When we were
all with Maharajji,
I decided, well...

He keeps saying
"Tell the truth
and don't get angry,"

but the truth is I am angry.

And I've spent
so long being phony
like I love everyone.

See, all the time
my heart is full of anger.

"Oh, you're around us."
"Oh, yes, I love you."

And all the time I'm thinking,
"Oh, I wish..."

And that hypocrisy
was driving me up the walls.

And I thought,
"Gee, he said to
tell the truth.

"I think, for a change,
I'll tell the truth."

So people would
come into my room,

and I would say, "Get the hell
out of this room, you...

"You're too nice.
You nauseate me."

You said something
that I would love you to
tell me about,

about Maharajji saying,
"Give up your anger.

"Don't work on your anger.

"Don't work it through
and find out the root."

He just said, "Give it up."

Yeah, he did say it that way.

"Give up your anger."

Working it through

is making them...

Making them something.

-The belief that...
-Belief.

I'm righteous. I'm...

Like, I have a right to be mad.

That's not good.

I keep Maharajji

as a constant companion,

so I get mad

and I check in with him.

And he...

Although, he doesn't
make me feel better.

He just points it out.

My Maharajji in my head is more
like a psychiatric nurse.

If I don't get
what I want,

that's as interesting as if
I get it, it turns out.

Did you ever notice that?

All this, "I need you."

Well, you're
not getting me.

"Whoa! Ahhh!" You know?

Isn't that interesting?
And then, you grow from that.

When you begin to realize
suffering is great,

you can't believe it.

You think you're cheating.

It doesn't mean
having no preferences,

it means not being attached
to your preferences.

That's the one.
If you don't get
what you want,

you don't get
what you want.
How interesting.

Because the interesting process is the transformation.

not getting what you want
all the time.

When I got out
of my somebodiness,
which was very cramped,

I mean, it was
like a prison to me.

I didn't want to
go back to prison.

It's like you go out
and you smell the air,

and then they say, "Okay, chemical's wearing off,

"back into prison,"
and you don't want to go.

You say, "No, no,"
but you go anyway.

And you go back into your suit and you feel weird again.

Now, 'cause you know
that isn't who you are,

but you're caught in it.

So that starts
quite a journey,

because my object was
to get out of my suit.

It was to get out
of my physical
psychological identity

which felt extremely limited.

And I would get incredibly
free and high and clear
and in love.

Like, I'd go to India
and I'd sit in the temple
or in meditation,

and I would get so high.

Light was pouring
out of my head.

I was some combination of
the pure mind of the Buddha
and the heart of the Christ,

which, for a Jewish boy,
is not bad.

You know,
and I was really like...

I'd be out there,
you know, and I'd come
back to the States,

and I'd go
to visit the family.

And my father would say
a simple thing like,

"You got a job,"
and I'd crash.

And I'd say,
"Can't go home,
brings me down."

I began to have
a whole list of things
that brought me down.

Cities brought me down.

Money brought me down.

Politics brought me down.

But the only thing
that brings you down
is your own mind.

It's not the city. The city's just citying itself.

It's being essence city.
What are you getting
so upset about?

It's your reaction to the city that's what's doing it to you.

And I found myself,
interestingly, wearing
a new kind of a suit.

It was like,
"I'm very high.
Don't get near me."

Now, because I had
felt so trapped

by my body and my personality
and was so unhappy
in all of that,

my job, it seemed, was to push away those things.

And I tried
a number of techniques
like renunciation.

I figured if I just renounced
all of it enough,

it would go away.

All I did was
end up a horny celibate.

It's like giving up smoking.

Like, "I haven't smoked
in four years, two months,
three days, and 22 minutes."

A person'll die
from non-smoking.

It didn't work.

Because if you push
something away,
it's still got you.

You're busy not doing it.

Every time you push
anything away,
it's still there.

The pile under the rug
gets very big.

So, it gets so
that your downs

are actually far out
without being masochistic.

Your downs turn out
to be more interesting
than your highs after a while,

because they're showing you
where you aren't.

Like, I get into a depression,
you see.

Well, I got angry tonight.
I was fascinated by that.

Far out.

Look at how I came in being
a holy man, I lost my cool.

Far out.

Isn't that great?

It's fascinating.
You go out into the woods
to look at trees.

You don't say
that pinon isn't as good

as that redwood. You say,
"Ah, a pinon. Ah, a redwood."

You see a gnarled tree
and you say,
"Look at the beauty of that."

You see a straight tree
and you say,
"Look at the beauty."

You come back with humans,
you never do that.

"If she were only a little...
If she could only...

"I like them best
when they're..."

Instead of, "Look at that.
An absolute essence
slimy liar."

Somebody says something
and it hurts you,

and then you feel hurt.

They did what they did
because that's what they did.

That's their problem.

You reacted
the way you reacted

because that's the way
you reacted.
That's your problem.

To interpret that your feeling is their problem

is when you start to feel
you have to tell them

that you were hurt
by what they said.

The other thing is
if I'm hurt
by what you say,

that's something
for me to work with.

I acknowledge it
and then I work with it.

I don't have to get them
to not do the thing,

because they're just being
like a tree, they're just
phenomena happening.

It is said
in the spiritual literature

that righteousness
and being right

is one of the last gates
to the inner temple.

It's one of the last
obstacles to getting
in the inner temple.

And that one of the problems
of spiritual work

is ending up
being a good yogi.

You are a really good yogi.

You know all the slokas,
shlokas,

you know all the positions.

You do it all perfectly right.

You are really righteous and
good, but you're not free.

And it's called
the golden chain,

the chain or righteousness.

When you want to become free,

then your righteousness
and your anger

are much less interesting
than they used to be.

You less feel comfortable
just sitting
in your righteousness

than you do in throwing it
back into the pot in order to
become free.

Years back when I started to do
this meditation 12 years ago,

I could go off
and I could have
a six-hour fantasy,

a six-hour sexual fantasy.

Sitting in Burma
all by myself in a cell.

I mean, and it was
just with great detail

and the subtleties
of the rustle
of silk and all the...

You know, every little thing

and the smells,
and the images,
and the shadows,

And I just...
What was the rush?
I wasn't going anywhere.

You know,
I had weeks to meditate,

and I looked like
I was meditating all the time,

and then nobody knew,
you know.

I would have these
six-hour things, you know.

It was like having an orgy.

Or I'd plan when I became
famous, you know,
I mean, I'd have those things.

When I became
like the Buddha,
what would I do?

I'd have long fantasies of
what I would be
and how compassionate I'd be.

Oh, God.

To the extent that we went
into somebody training,

we work out of a sort of
a deprivation model,

the feeling
like we're starving

and we don't have enough
and we want more. All right?

So let's take
love relationships.
That's a good one.

You fall in love with someone.

That person awakens in you

or allows you to
touch the place in you
where you are love.

So you say, "I am in love."

And because that person
did it for you,

you say,
"I am in love with you."

So you say to your connection, "Let's build a nest."

And where will you be
next Tuesday and for every
Tuesday from here on out?

And where were you
last night and who are you
thinking about now?

And you get terribly
frightened that you're
gonna lose your connection.

Because if you lose
your connection,

you won't feel that feeling
any longer, which you're
very hooked on.

You begin to open
to that place in yourself
where you are love,

which is the same as the one
that's called awareness.

It's the same thing.

It's a feeling
where you are one
with the universe

and you're liquid and flowing
with everything around you.

Now you are experiencing
"In love."

And after a while you say,

"Well, I'm going down
to the store to get some tofu
and veggie burgers..."

...and you're
at the checkout counter.

You're still in love, you see.

You're in this place 'cause
you're resting in it now,

and you look into the eyes
of the checkout person,

and there it is again.

Problem.

Mmm-hmm.

Well, now what are you
gonna do? Are you gonna
look at anybody else?

It's gonna get complicated.

You better start
wearing glasses
with mirrors facing inward,

because you gotta
start a commune.

I mean, what you're gonna do
sooner or later

is you're going to have to
let go of the model

of deprivation that
you've been functioning under.

Because as you start to
rest in this other space
of your being,

you're gonna find
this peculiar feeling

that you're gonna start to be
in love with everybody.

You obviously
can't collect them all.

And you get to the point where
you can walk down the street

and look at somebody
and love them like you've
never loved anybody before,

and you don't have to
do a thing about it.

At first, you can't believe it,
you see,

and you just want to save them
in case you want them later,
so you say...

...like, "Who are you?"
My name's Dick.

"Hi, let's have dinner.
Well, gee, oh, God,
I hate to leave you, but I..."

Then later you just go
and you go down the street
and you go, "Hi,"

or "Ooh," or "Do you feel
what I feel?"

And after a while
you just walk

down the street
and you look at your lovers,

and you don't have to do
anything about it 'cause
you're not gonna run out.

I just notice in the landscape
of looking at someone,
the topography.

The bit that I notice
is the unloved bit.

Not the confidence.

That's your psychological...

I go for their soul.

I see that unloved
and all of personality...

I dabbled in that
once upon a time.

People are so much more
than their personalities.

So much more.

So much more.

As you extricate yourself
from your somebodiness,

from your thoughts
which are things,

from your body which is
things or stuff,

who you are has no time,
has no space.

I always think coming to Earth,
if this was one big
training simulation

or a fairground ride
from birth to death...

-Yes.
-You have to
take a forgetting pill

that makes you think
you're an individual.

That's right. Yes, yes.

And it makes you
think death is probably the end

or leaves it to
those two things.

You've gotta live through it.

That's the learning.

You'll live through it.

Somebody says,
"If you identify with a soul,

"how can you do things?"

And you say, "Well,

"humans can do two planes
at once."

And you're much more fun

doing the things,

watching yourself do things.

So you're the human doing it,

and the witness soul
watching it and not judging?

-Yes.
-Not finding it
especially dramatic.

Yes, yes.

There's big drama here.

-You watch the melodrama.
-Yeah.

"Whoa, he's going to..."

I watch Jamie.

Sometimes I think I've got
charge of this human
called Jamie.

And I watch
some of the things he says
or does it's like, "Oh!"

There's sometimes
when even the soul has to
look away and go, "Whoa!"

Yeah, that's what happens
with Ram Dass.

It slowly has been
dawning on me
over the past eight, 10 years

that the game
wasn't to be high,
the game was to be free.

And the free meant you couldn't push anything away

and you couldn't
grab at anything.

There was nowhere to stand,

and there was
nowhere not to stand.

And that all the things
I'd pushed away,

I was going to
have to take the curriculum
sooner or later.

That turned around the direction of my life a lot.

It's interesting, when you
want to get high,
suffering is a real drag,

and you want to
avoid suffering
as hard as you can.

When you want to be free,

you begin to hear
the teachings of the Buddha

about the cause of suffering being the clinging of the mind.

And when something
creates suffering in you,
you don't go asking for it

unless you're really advanced, I guess, but...

When the suffering
comes down the pike,

you don't turn away from it,

because you know
that the only reason
you're suffering

is it's telling you
something about the clinging
of your own mind.

And it's being
offered to you as a gift.

It's interesting,
but as long as you identify
with your personality,

things that get you uptight
are your enemies.

The minute you identify
with your awareness,

then the things
that get you uptight

show you where your awareness
has still sticky fingers.

Most of us in the mind,
because your mind
deals with polarities,

you feel that if you're happy, you're not sad.

And you want to be happy,

so you push away that
which makes you sad.

But if you are
going to be free,

there's nothing you can turn
away from or turn off.

Like, if you live fully
in this moment,

does this moment
include that baby

that's taking its last breath
from starvation?

Yeah.

So are you sad? Yes.

Does it include the baby
taking its first breath

as it comes out of
its mother's womb?

And the joy of the beginning?

Yes, so you're happy.

If you are the fullness
of the moment,

all of if, these are
all your voices.

If you and I are to be free,
there is nothing
we can push away.

I wake up in the morning,

before I even remember
who I am,
something's wrong.

I'm sort of feeling
that pressure on my chest,

and I think I kind of
drop into some...

Before I even start thinking,
I want to put my hand here,

before I start attaching
that funny feeling

to "Oh, no,
what's the bank balance?"

or "Have I prepared
for Ram Dass?"

You know, before I even let
the feeling reach a thought,

I want to meet it
at the feeling before it can
start causing trouble.

Your body
reacts to the thought.

But it's happening
in a lump in my body,

so something needs to be
dissolved there.

I see.

And not just by thinking,
"Oh, that's just anger."

That doesn't stop
all the chemicals
and accumulation of blech.

That chemical is up here.

You don't think it's worth
dissolving in the body?

Yeah, it's all up here.

It's not here. Not here.

But the body holds it
as sensation, no?

All here.

Like, the other night
I was in Des Moines, Iowa,

So I came to the hall
and everybody was,
"Ram Dass..."

I was "Yes, yes,"
and I was smiling,
being Ram Dass.

You know, that's a nice role.

And I was being sweet
and loving,

and every evening
I always ask for
a mini boom microphone.

That's one of these things.

'Cause when you're
sitting cross-legged
and you have a straight mic,

you got to spend
the whole evening
leaning forward like that.

So I asked for this,

and I walked into the hall
and there was
a straight microphone.

And I was all smiling,
and I suddenly said,
"What's that?"

And the woman, who was
the manager of the hall said,

"Well, that's the only
microphone we had."

And I said,
"Well, we advised you
we needed..."

And I started to get
into this curmudgeonly...
Ooh, yuck.

And I broke up completely.

I mean, I just saw myself
get completely ugly,

and I broke up, because
what I saw was

that my guru had come in drag
as a microphone...

...to say, "Oh, you think
you're so high and mighty,"
you know.

"Try this one on for size."

If this were around here
could you hear me?

Can you hear me
better this way?

I was afraid of that.

Okay.

What I usually do
when I don't assume this will
be any different is, um,

share notes
of what's been happening.

Um, I always talk about myself,
it turns out,

but those of you that know,
know that it isn't really me,
it's us.

And I just use myself
as a case study that I know
better than I know

everybody else's case study.

Because what awes me is how
parallel our journeys are,

and how much when
I'm going through something,

and I think, "Boy, this is
really leading-edge stuff..."

...I meet somebody
and they say,

"Gee, that's just
what's been happening to me."

Now, let's sit up in here.
Let's all sit together.

Now, in the course
of the years,

I've developed a lot of
very strange friends.

And one of them is
a being named Emmanuel.

And Emmanuel is interesting
because Emmanuel doesn't
have a body.

He's a being
on another plane,

and I know
some of you here have

a difficult time accepting
my friend Emmanuel.

I mean, you'd accept
any of my other friends
but somehow...

You say you have
no prejudices about color,

sex, religion.

But bodies...
Somehow somebody
doesn't have a body,

you immediately don't know
that you want to accept them.

But I feel that's your problem,
'cause he's my friend,

and, uh...

The way I figure it is
I'll take my teachings
anywhere I can get 'em.

Okay? I don't care
whether you got a body
or which kind it is,

if you got a teaching,
I want it.

And Emmanuel said to me
when I said to Emmanuel,

"What work do I
have to do now?"

He said, "Ram Dass,
you're in a school. Why don't
you try taking the curriculum?"

He said,
"You took a human birth,
you're so busy being holy.

"Why don't you
try being human?"

Funny, I'd never
thought of that.
Isn't that far out?

'Cause somehow being human
was less than perfect.

Even though
I intellectually knew

that form is no other than
formless and formless is
no other than form,

and I knew that
the manifestation was
God-made manifest,

everything was perfect
out there except me.

But original sin was gonna have
a last stronghold right here.

I remember being drunk with
Alan Watson at a Benedictine
monastery one night.

If you can
handle that image, and...

Alan said,

"You know,
the trouble with you, Dick..."

And you know
you're gonna get real truth

at a moment like that.

It's like 3:00 in the morning.

"...is you're
too attached to emptiness."

If there's one addiction
that outlasts all the others,

it's the addiction to be free.

It's the addiction to
come up for air,

to live in the light,
to live with love,

to be spacious, to be present,
to be "Ah."

'Cause you can see
that it could be fun,
but you're not having it.

And you feel screwed
and why should you be screwed?

I mean, it's just a shift of
your head you gotta go through.

So, you get greedy,
so you start to look
for the methods,

and you try to...

You fit them in and take
more time to do it, see.

When I went to
my guru in India,
and I said to him,

"Uh, Maharajji,
how do I get free?"

He said, "Feed people."

I said, "Feed people?"

I mean, you don't expect...
You go all the way
to the Himalayas.

You know, and you sit at
the feet of the guru,

and you expect him to say,

"Come into this cave
and I will give you
the word..."

You know,
and you will sit quietly

and then you will go through
and you'll be free.

He says, "Feed people."

So I tried a different tact.
"Maharajji, how do you
get enlightened?"

He said, "Serve people."

Well, I heard him say it,

but I figured, you know,
"What does he know?"

He's just considering me
kind of a low-life, you know.

I mean, he's not
taking me seriously
as a spiritual seeker,

'cause the serious guys
meditate.

You understand?

I find it humorous
to see myself

trip up or something.

Or I see myself

wanting something or...

Like, some days,

my aches and pains are
so, so gorgeous.

Then I complain.

Then I love it.
Me complaining?

"My God! Is that you?"
I mean, "Is that you?"

Are you still doing that?

-You're still here.
-Yeah, still here.

This is where I feel
there's confusion sometimes
about this mind,

a lot of these
spiritual paths or...

It's all about
"We've gotta control the mind.

"We've gotta
transcend the mind. We've gotta
unclutter the mind."

-All kinds of the mind...
-That's true.

Well, maybe.

I think you'll find my theory

a little bit
more advanced, Ram Dass,
if you just listen.

I haven't got
just one mind in here,
I've got a committee.

I've got numerous people
in here immediately available.

I've got the eternal pessimist

always ready to
paint how black
this is gonna go.

-Yeah.
-I've got a raging sex maniac.

I've got a vengeful murderer

who wants to kill anybody,
I don't know, driving
too slowly in front of me.

The victim who's constantly
looking at everything
as a persecution.

The mind is just
thoughts and thoughts.

The river of thoughts.

Sex maniac, da-da-da-da-da.

But they're still thoughts,

and we're talking about
thoughts, not the content
of thoughts.

You ever have an experience
where you're feeling
less than that,

and you're like,
"Maharajji, hello?
Where are you?"

Yes, yes.

Yes, many times.

Look at all the great saints,
they're all as neurotic
as anybody else.

It's just that
it's kind of irrelevant.

And, so, you don't have to
change your neuroses,

you just stop
identifying with them.

And you just make friends
with them when they
come by for tea.

A lot of people respond to
that uncertainty and anxiety

with fear,

and the way they
dissipate their fear,
there's various strategies.

One strategy is to
just buy more stuff

to get more pleasure now
'cause it's all gonna
be gone soon.

That's one thing.
That's the material strategy.

There is another alternative,
which is,

to feel that you will
reduce the fear if you
align yourself with good

as opposed to evil.

In other words,
it's in the world
of good and evil.

And if you are
part of the elect
or part of the good guys,

and you push away
the bad guys,

somehow you will be
protected from the uncertainties of the world.

People grab on
to a belief system,

which makes them feel
that they are in the right,

and it reduces
some of their anxiety.

In order to hold onto that,

they have got to convince
themselves that other people
are not in the right.

They've got to
polarize the world.

And they create a lot of
"ours is the only way,

"and if you don't do it,
you're missing it
and you're wrong."

What you have to have
is just a lot of compassion

for the stages
other people are in.

Hello.

I've got
a great idea.

And I would say
that souls are neither
good nor evil.

That actions are good and evil, motivation is good and evil,

that the personalities
can be good or evil,

but that the essence of a being is neither good nor evil,

it just is,

and it has heavy stuff to
work out and good stuff
to work out.

And you begin to look at
human beings as having
very dark karma at times,

very heavy stuff
they're carrying with them

that makes them project
into the world

in a way that creates immense
suffering for other people.

And there's a point in
your being where you feel
this incredible compassion

for the horror of that
predicament, for that being.

The minute you identify them
with the acts that are
creating the suffering,

you lock them in
to continuing to be
who they are

with your mind.

So, the art is to see actions
as evil, but not beings.

You climb a mountain,
you follow a path,

you do any of the methods
that you are attracted to.

For example,
quieting your mind,

or opening your heart.

Like meditating or singing
or going to church,

or service or whatever,

or pitting the mind
against the mind through
Zen koans, or whatever.

All of it will push you
and push you,

but sooner or later, you'll get
trapped by your methods,

and they'll keep you asleep,
and you'll become
a good meditator.

Or, you know, "I love Christ,"
but it'll be a sleep
kind of statement.

And then you'll have to
let go of that one too.

But all of these are useful
techniques to keep working,

and you've got to hear
what your own technique is.

The first thing is,
not to be bugged about
going back to sleep.

Just to experience
that it was grace

that that death allowed you
to waken for a moment.

Because the minute you try to
grab on to the memory of
what it was,

you're just holding on
to an old dead butterfly.

So, you go back to sleep
and then you wake up again.

The fact that you're even
asking that question,

is the awakening process
at work.

You have to stand back
one step further
and see your whole life,

the awakening
and the going to sleep,
all as awakening.

Just get into
a bigger time span,

and you'll be able to
allow the dance to go on,
up and down, up and down.

This idea that
there's no self,

I just want to bust it, because

while I'm Jamie,
there's a self.

I mean, yes, in the great
oneness of everything,

I'm sure there's no self,
and it evaporates.

But just for this theme park,

just for this 70, 80 years,
whatever, birth to death thing,

you have to have a self.

The whole point is to
do the self-game.

So, to come here and have
everyone going,

"There is no self.
It's all an illusion.
There is no self,"

it's like paying money to
go and see a great
special effects movie,

like Avatar,

and someone sitting
next to you, going,

"They're not really blue.
That's just make-up."

It's like,
"Look, I just paid my money
to see this show,

why are you telling me
there's no self?"

"I know there's really no self,
but let me enjoy the self-game
as a self."

Why come here to do a self,

and spend the whole time saying
"I'm not a self?"

Yeah. Yeah.

No, there's a way
of saying that differently.

The soul comes
to the incarnation

to learn something,

and you'll learn best
by involving yourself

in the way... In the game.

Lovingly watching oneself,

humorously.

Humor and love.

Yeah.

Humor and love.

When I do
all the things
that I do every day,

all of it is the stuff I use
to work on myself,

in order to increase
the equanimity and to
increase the compassion.

It all is exercise. Your entire life is curriculum.

Everything you've got
right on your plate,

is where the stuff
for your enlightenment is.

It's breathtaking when
you stand back and see
the beauty of that design.

And you appreciate
the perfection of
the unfolding of it all,

including the suffering.

But if you just do that,
which you do up here
with your third eye,

your heart,

which is your emotional heart,
your human,

says, "What kind of
an insensitive, callous person
are you?"

'Cause if you're only up here,

somebody trips in front of you
and you say, "Karma."

But if you're just down here,

you look around
and the suffering stinks,

and you try to
do something about it,

but it is so immense,
the amount of suffering,

that you go to
fill the dike there,
and it's leaking there,

and you go to fill it there
and it's leaking there.

And where are you gonna do it?
What you gonna do it?

You're on the good guy
mailing list just like I am.
You know.

Which one do you
write your check to?

But when I come down
into my human heart,

it would hurt so bad.

Because the more you open up to
the suffering of the universe,

the easiest way to handle it,
is to go up.

It's much harder to stay down
and stay open.

It's excruciatingly painful.

And this is a kind of
a rule of the game,
of spiritual practice,

is the learning to trust
one's own intuitive heart.

Learning to trust
another way of knowing,

other than the rational
analytic process,

that you start to respond
to something in you that knows,

even though who
you think you are
doesn't know it knows.

It turned out
intuition is perhaps
where our salvation lies,

where thinking is apparently
where our destruction lies.

We've thought our way
into this peculiar situation

where we're alienated
from the Earth
and from each other,

and caught in greed,
which is a product of the mind.

And each of us must be true
to ourselves to hear what is
our unique way through,

because if you get phony holy,

it ends up kicking you
in the butt.

You've got to
stay true to yourself.

And as Trungpa Rinpoche said
in his rascally way,

he said,
"Enlightenment is the ego's
ultimate disappointment."

And that's the predicament.

You see the fact
that your spiritual journey

is an entirely different
ballgame than the one
you thought you were on.

It's a different path
than you thought you were on.

And it's very hard
to make that transition.

A lot of people don't want to.

They want to take the power
from their spiritual work,

and make their life nice.

And there is a grief

when who you thought you were
starts to disappear.

You can imagine
a picture frame

in which there is a painting
of a gray cloud.

But the painter
made the cloud bigger
than the frame that he had.

Or she had.

So, what they did was they cut a little off the edge

and they just
put it in the frame.

And so all there is,
is gray cloudness.

'Cause there's no edge anymore to the clouds,

so all you have is
gray in a frame.

And you look at it
and you say,
"What's that?"

But if you used
either a little bigger frame

or painted
a little smaller cloud,

you'd see that there's
a little blue sky around
the edge of the cloud,

and you say, "Oh, a cloud.
What do you know?

"All the time I thought
the universe was gray."

The cloud is the grief,
the cloud is the self-pity,

the cloud are the models,

and that little blue sky
becomes the space.

And the meditative techniques
are designed to give you
that space.

And the minute there's
that spaciousness,

ah, it's just another cloud.

You know what
clouds do in the sky?
They come, and they go.

And then, there comes a period,

where you've just
gone through enough,

and a space starts to...
That little blue sky
starts to develop,

and if you have
a meditative awareness,

or just that appreciation,

you start to identify
with the blue sky
instead of the cloud.

You flicker, at first.

And then you start to release.

And then comes the time,

when you start to realize

you'd rather be vulnerable
and be hurt

than be living dead,
in the "dead-dead" sense,

not in the "living" sense.

And you can't afford it,

and you start to open again
and the whole cycle
starts again.

Until finally,

you start to fall in love
with love.

When you take off your mask,

it's easier for everybody else
to take off theirs.

Yeah, I want to be
a walking permission slip...

-Yeah.
-...of mask removal.

Yeah.

But our cultures are
so mask-driven.

Imagine what an office would be
like with no masks.

That's the irony about masks.

I've had a fascination
with masks

-since first hanging out
with you.
-Yeah.

The irony is
that we wear a mask

because the people around
will only love us
if we wear this mask.

But the crazy thing
about that is

we don't really wanna
hang out with people

-that only want the masks worn.
-I know.

So, we're exhausting ourselves,

wearing a mask for people we
don't wanna hang out with.

That's exactly right.

That's exactly right.

We take off the mask

-and some will go...
-Yep.

...but the people
that will be left are
the people that love us

and really wanna
hang out with us.

That's beautiful.
That's just right.

Just right.

Everybody's playing
with their stories

of who they think they are.

It's more fun to just

witness it all,

to be the environment
in which this is happening.

We're living in a time where

it is now beginning
to be acceptable

to consider the possibility
that people actually die.

Usually, in our culture,
it has been put behind doors,
behind sheets, behind...

You don't talk to the children
about it

you don't show anybody, um...

We surround people
that are dying

with a certain
kind of falseness that comes
out of our own fear.

When my mother,
my natural mother was dying,

and I'd watch people
come into the room,

all the relatives and doctors
and nurses saying

"You're looking better,
you're doing well,"

and then they go out
of the room and say,
"She won't live the week."

And I thought
how bizarre that
a human being's going through

one of the most profound
transitions in their life,

and they're surrounded
completely by deception.

Can you hear
the pain of that?

That nobody could be straight
with them because
everybody was too frightened.

Even the rabbi,
all of them, everybody.

Everybody.

And for me, who has
grown up in that culture,

it was quite an experience
when I started to
live in India,

where when somebody dies,

they are put on a pallet
and then carried
through the streets

to the burning grounds.

And the death is public,
for everybody to see.

The body is right there.
It's not in a box,
it's not hidden.

Most people are dying at home,

so that most people,
as they grow up,

have been in the presence
of someone dying.

While in our culture,
an amazing number of people,

even at middle age, have never been in the presence of someone dying.

They have walked away from it
and hidden from it.

"Dear friend, please know
as you pass by,

"as you are now,
so once was I,

"as I am now, so you will be,

"prepare yourself
to follow me."

And we are preparing ourselves.

I'm one of the strange people

that absolutely delights
and enjoys being with people
as they're dying.

In fact, it is such
an incredible grace for me,

that in the morning when I know
I'm going to be
with such a person,

I get absolutely thrilled
in my body, in my being.

Because I know I'm going to
have an opportunity

to be in the presence of truth.

While I wouldn't lay suffering
on anybody,

I have sat with people
that are suffering incredibly,

with various kinds of
cancer and other kinds of
physical conditions.

And I will tell you that
I have watched people with egos

that are like cinder blocks,

they're so heavy and thick,

and busy with themselves,

and their self-pity
and their anger and their...

And I have watched
the suffering eat away,
and eat away,

and eat away, and eat away.

And then I've watched...
It's like the shell cracks,

and it's like
the spirit is born.

And I see them
often very close to death

and they are... They're like
great, wise spiritual beings.

And I didn't think there was
a chance of a snowball in hell

that person was ever
going to come up for air,

spiritually, in this lifetime.

Doctors are eager to
take away people's pain.

But from a spiritual
point of view,

I look and I see the way in
which pain deepens compassion
and pain awakens.

What am I to do?

Are doctors evil?

Are they good?

Don't you think they should
ask the patient,

"Do you want to
get rid of your pain?"

These are all
very interesting issues

about how you help
without getting caught
in being a helper,

and seeing the other person
as somebody that needs help,

and still helping them.

And when I said to Emmanuel,

"Emmanuel, I deal a lot

"with the fear of dying
in this culture, and death.

"What should I tell people?"

And he said, "Ram Dass,

"tell them that death is
absolutely safe."

Now, just put those two things
together and realize
what a far-out line that is.

"Death is absolutely safe."

And then he added
one more image.

He said, "It's like
taking off a tight shoe."

Okay? Can you hear that one?

"Like taking off a tight shoe."

Now, just imagine that
you as spirit or awareness,

have contained yourself
in an incarnation,

or contained it in a conceptual
model of who you are

and on a storyline,

and then at some point,

you dissolve out of that,
you break out of that,

and there is this
incredible release quality.

Now, I came into the room,

and Jinny had cancer
of the cervix.

Very painful.

She was writhing in pain.

It was a collaborative process
with the doctor,
and she and Laura,

all deciding about
pain medicine and how long
she'd live and things...

And I came in and I sat down,

and she usually would fight me
tooth and nail,

'cause she was
very much of an intellectual,

but she was so weak this time,
she was just writhing
on the bed...

So, I sat down next to the bed
and I just did this meditation,

the Buddhist meditation
that is done in cemeteries.

Usually, they have
a bloated corpse
or a fly-infested corpse,

or a skeleton to meditate upon.

In this case, I just had this
decaying body before me,

and I just sat,
allowing it to exist.

Watching all my emotional
reactions to it,

just allowing it to exist.

And I became so peaceful
and the room was so clear,

it was a purple-ey light
in the room.

And she turned to me,
all the time her body is
writhing in pain,

and she says to me,

"I've never felt so much
ecstasy in my life.

"I wouldn't rather be anywhere
else than here at this moment."

And she sits up
and she is radiant.

And she comes over and
she starts to stroke my face,

as if she is looking
at a human being,

this phenomenon of a body,

and she's tenderly stroking it.

And I stoke her face.

And then she comes up
and she kisses me,

and I kiss her,

and we hold each other.

And it's a moment
that is absolutely perfect
in its presence.

I mean, even the little tiny
thought forms in my head,

like, "Well, this is the next
thing to necrophilia,"

you know.

And, "Do you know
her husband is downstairs?"

and, "Quakers,
what will they think of this?"

And you know,
all those little niggly-piggly
things in my head,

were just like little lights
around the edge.

They didn't have much juice
to them, you know,

because the whole thing
was just what it was.

It was absolutely perfect.

And then she lay back
on the pillow,

and we held hands
for about 10 to 15 minutes,

and I said, "Well, Jinny,
you understand everything I do,

"there's no more sense
wasting time. See you around.

"Namaste. Namaste."

And I left. And she...

I flew down to New York
that night.

The next morning at 7:00
I got a call, she died
during the night.

The more you are aware of
the spiritual nature of life,

the more you see
the moment of death

as a moment for release,

for taking off the tight shoe.

And the artform in dying

is that,
at the moment of death,

you are neither
grabbing at life

nor pushing it away.

You're neither
pushing nor pulling.

It's the attraction
and aversion

that keeps you
holding to form.

So, to prepare
for the moment of death,

when the processes
that go on in consciousness

are a dissolving of boundaries,

a speeding up of awareness,

an opening and expanding,

to be in that process

where you don't go, "No,"
and grab hold,

one prepares.

One prepares
for the moment of death.

Sometimes, seeking in itself
is just an expression
of "lack."

Yeah.

"Expression of lack."

An abundance of lack.

It's so abundant.

"Abundance of lack."

His Royal Majesty,
The Abundance of Lack.

"Abundance of lack."

If you had a little
television receiver channel

right here,
next to your eyes,

what you're finding,
what we're talking about,

is planes of consciousness,

or channels
on a television set.

And most of us,
most of the time
in this culture,

act as if we have
a one or two-channel set,

we don't have cable.

And today,
we're talking about cable.

We're talking about

acknowledging all these
other channels that are
floating around in the room,

but we're not picking them up

because we don't know
how to tune our receiver.

That's basically
what this is about.

So, on the first channel,

when you look at
another human being,

you see old, young,
dark, light,

fat, thin, et cetera.

You see physical body.

And if you're obsessed
with your physical body,

that's what you see
when you look in the world,

other people's physical bodies.

That's the channel you're on.

If you flip one channel,

then you're in
the psycho-social realm.

You see power and you see
happiness and sadness,

and neurosis, and...

It's the therapy channel.

It's the... And it's
the social role channel.

It's where there are
mothers and truck drivers,
and all lawyers,

and all the different roles
and identities,

all the social stuff.

That's all the channel,
and that says the world turns,

and it's a never-ending
source of fascination.

I mean, it just goes on
and on and on and on.

Most people are happy
with channel two.

That's... Yeah.

In channel one and two,

about 98% of the people
you've ever known

are busy with those
two channels all the time.

If you flip
to the next channel,

you go behind all those
individual differences

and you just see another soul
just like you,

that has all that packaging,

that's different than you,

but is just another being
just like you.

That's when you say,
"Are you in there?

"I'm in here.
How'd you get in that one?"

Now, our predicament is,

that as long as
you're on channel one and two,

you are afraid of death.

And as long as you identify
with that which dies,

there is always fear of death,

because it's the fear
of cessation of existence.

Until you are rooted in these
other levels of reality,

that gives you
a perspective about death

that allows you to see death

as a transformation of things
which change.

Is there still an excitement
about it, about death?

I'm excited about
what happens after death.

I'm not excited about death.

In your language,
my incarnation

has been using
your incarnation

for certain things.

Like, the first time I met you,

I had probably realized that

I wasn't gonna get the male
transmission from my father,

I realized that I didn't wanna
take my leave of you

so abruptly,

as it had been with my dad.

I am a projection of you.

And that projection
you don't wanna lose.

Whether it's a father figure
or a spiritual blah, blah.

I see you
as a spiritual entity,

and you, you see yourself

as a... Oh...

You're a great son.

I saw your soul.

It's beautiful.

The rest of you, eh, but...

I hang out

with my family,

the family of saints

and, uh, these guys

and girls.

And you're one of them.

You're one of them.
See, you don't see that.

You don't see that.

I'm talking about
the places you get to

where you start to become

able to live your life

in a way that is harmonious

with what you know
on all these other planes.

You literally die into service.

You die into the plane of
reality where you see

that a starving person,
or a dying person,

or a hungry person,
or a frightened person,

is you.

It's not her or him or them.

You die in your separateness.

The whole trip of
"What's good for me? What do
I want? What do I need?

"What do I want?"

just becomes less interesting.

And at that moment,
that's where the power is.

That's where the power is
that changes the universe.

When you can
make yourself into zero,

then your power
is unbelievable.

You are an irresistible force,

where there is no high
and there's no low,

and there's no judgments
and there's no opinions,

there's no good
and there's no bad,

you merely are part of it.

The signs are now here.

Don't get lost in the detail.

Let your awareness go free.

Just recognize
what an adventure
this transformation is.

The appreciation of death
and the spiritual journey
after death

is the prerequisite
for living life joyfully now.

Death does not have to be
treated as an enemy

for you to delight in life.

Keeping death present
in your consciousness,

as one of
the greatest mysteries,

and as the moment of
incredible transformation,

imbues this moment

with added richness and energy
that otherwise is used up
in denial.

I encourage you

to make peace with death,

to see it as
the culminating adventure

of this adventure called life.

It is not an error,
it is not a failure,

it is taking off
a tight shoe,

which you have worn well.

"But those that find the way
in the morning

"can gladly die
in the evening,"

it is said
in the mystical literature.

So, I encourage you,

to explore and find in
your being that part of you

that is on those
other channels,

so that when
on channels one and two,

the "world turn" series
comes to its final chapters,

you won't be caught
in feeling loss,

but rather, the adventure.

Because, from where
I'm sitting,

life on this plane of reality,

because I live in the world of
reincarnation, of karma, of...

Life on this plane

is like being
in the fourth grade.

You took birth here because
you had certain work to do,

that involves
the suffering you do,

the kinds of situations
you found yourself in...

This is your curriculum,
it's not an error.

Where you are now,
with all your neuroses
and your problem,

you're sitting in
just the right place.

Imagine that.

Imagine that.
Nobody made an error.

And all that stuff in you
of saying, "If only...
If only I could be..."

No, this is it,
including the "if only."

It's perfect.

And then, at the time
you graduate,

and somebody says,
"Oh, but he died so young."

So, if you graduate
from fourth grade early,

big deal, wonderful.

Don't get so caught
in worshipping life
that you lose the balance

that realizing that the spirit,
it says,

"Live life fully and richly
as a partner with God,"

and at the same moment,

don't be afraid
of the next thing.

Go towards it with openness
and with love,

and not with forbidding.

"The way that is understood
in the morning,

"one can gladly die
in the evening."

Just for a moment,
sit quietly now.

And just be with what is.

If you're hot, be hot.

If your behind hurts,
let it hurt.

If you're emotionally open, let
yourself be emotionally open.

If you're closed, be closed.

If you're bored, be bored.
If you're stimulated,
be stimulated.

If you're hungry, be hungry.

Just let it all be.

Ah, life. Ah, death.

Ah, coming,

ah, going.

Ah, joy,

ah, sadness.

All of it.

All of it.

Waves that come back
into the vast ocean.

When you know
that quality of your being,

the ocean,

the sky,

the awareness,

then you're free.

And being free,

you can dance
the dance of life,

and the dance of death.

May all beings
in this very life

be free.

I've got one delicious sign.

I tell this every lecture,
'cause it's such
a delicious image.

It's at a time when everybody
that came into my audience

was always the same age
and they all dressed
a certain way.

They all wore white
and had smiles

and had flowers and were...

You know, they were...

"We love everybody."

You know, they were
real repressed anger, so...

Um...

This one night,
they were all there smiling,

and I was, uh... I assumed
everybody had had acid,

and we were all just...

I was talking far-out talk,
you know.

And there was a woman
sitting down at the front

who was about 70.

And she had a hat on

with oranges and cherries
and things.

And she had a black patent
leather bag and a print dress,

and responsible Oxfords.

I think I've conveyed
the type.

And she was sitting there and
I'd say these outrageous things

and she'd go like this,
you see.

And I think,
"How does she know?"

You know, this is
not an acid-head.

I mean, I just...
And I kept looking at her

and I'd say more
outrageous things and look,

and she'd go like this,
you know.

So, at the end of the lecture,
I kind of smiled her up.

She came up and she said,
"Oh, thank you."

She said, "Everything you said
just made perfect sense

"and was just so clear."

I said, "How do you
know all that?

"What do you do
that gets you

"into the position
of consciousness

"that you know all this?"

She leaned forth very
conspiratorially and she said,

"I crochet."

I am loving awareness.

I am loving awareness.

I am loving awareness.

Loving awareness

is a name for a soul

which you really are,

leads you to love everything

you are aware of.

The sky,

the room,

your body,

other people.

I am loving awareness.

I am loving awareness.

I am loving awareness.