Social Action - Ram Dass Full Lecture 1980

last year I was teaching at the abod of Sufi um ashram in U made out of an Old Shaker Village in New York state and after I finished teaching there were about 500 people for the weekend the sufis invited me to meet with them for the evening and uh it was going to be a Frank and open discussion in which they told me that um really I should get on with it that I had been teaching second grade just about long enough but we must accept our Dharma joyfully and if I am to be an

eternal second grade teacher so be it just to even know of the concept of Dharma is such incredible Grace it blows me away and I don't really care what part I play to tell you the truth every now and then I try to conceive of what this is about and there are so many scenarios you can run off but everyone that you think is the one that brought you here let that go and just think of all the rest that are available we are these beings from you know we we agreed we'd all meet you

remember oh you may not Jesus I keep remembering I'm supposed to start slow there is a Chinese curse that says may you be born in an interesting time and I think you can almost get the gist of it immediately because we are in fascinating times as Walter kronite points out every night his rather D way and uh the bringing together of the spirit and daily life or figuring out how to deal with interesting times it's much of my business each day and I assume it's much of your business as well because um in my sequence

and I I will say at the outset the one term I may have mentioned this last time and then I won't say it again okay because between each month I've given maybe 15 lectures or eight lectures and they all turn into a wash of images and I come here and I really don't have any sequence in in a fine sense of knowing I didn't tell you this last time but uh realize how many times I have to hear all these things and you'll find out that the oldies are the goodies and it's okay okay so

just relax and don't say I heard that before you should organize his there may be a subtle difference that you'll just be too gross to notice so but after the 60s when uh we had charts on the bulletin board at um Harvard and uh later at other places um showing when everybody was going to get enlightened and um but then we all kept coming down and then it got interesting to figure out why you come down and it turns out you come down because of your attachments so your clinging or your karma and all of

us we learning through Better Living Through Chemistry or diet or fasting or breathing or running or jumping or cooking or whatever to um go out and play in the um in uh what a friend of mine calls la la land or uh other PLS of Consciousness the reason it's called La La Land is because most people lose their ground they just get so hooked on the higher energy and these other planes and for me um I really felt if I gave up money and stopped driving and stopped wearing glasses and ate uh just fruit and

vegetables and didn't see many people and kept quiet most of the time I would probably stay in a state that would just flicker on Earth I just touched down to go to the toilet or you know just check in now and then for some very but the generally and I could be a luminous light so for some years I kept trying to do that I'd live in a cabin on the woods I'd really struggle and I'd hate people when they came to see me but I kept hearing uh maharaji my Guru saying um when I'd

say ra maharaji how can I know God or how can I raise Kundalini he'd say serve people or feed people or like that and um see what I was caught in was the polarity that occurred in the late 60s between the political activists and the spiritual Seekers and um I remember sitting in the temple in India in 6 eight winter getting clippings from Alan Ginsburg about various political activist things he was chanting m in the middle of a park and police were beating on him and and I was sitting by a stream wrapped in my

blanket in a quiet Himalayan Temple eating one meal a day and taking bats in the river and uh being on silence working with a chalkboard doing ha yoga and a lot of pranayama and reading the babad Gita and the Bible that winter and I remember here I was reading the Gita which was about a battle and I thought gee uh there's Alan Ginsburg out on the front lines and what am I doing I'm coping out I mean I should be there where the action is I should be doing it what am I doing sitting in

this Temple sitting with my mind with my Neurosis with my you know wild thoughts and Fantasies and then in the course of the morning it flicked around and I entertained the possibility because of the way the Gita is written and the chapter I was reading that day I entertained the possibility that maybe I was on the front line and that Alan Ginsburg was in the rest camp and in a way that polarization really caught me as numerous other polarizations have caught me and still do and in the late 60s it was very clearly the activists

who was saying get off your asses and get to work and the spiritual people who was saying you are also angry in the way you're doing your activism you're just creating more of the stuff you're trying to get rid of and why don't you work on yourselves around uh early middle 70s I began to realize something wrong really wrong there were a lot of forces saying to me you're missing something about the game Alan Watts had really uh said it to me quite distinctly some years earlier in the 60s one night where we were sitting

drunkenly in a Benedictine Monastery around 2: in the morning in his room he said dick your problem is that you're too attached to emptiness and those of you that have read the third Chinese patriarch know it's it says do not be attached to Enlightenment uh or and there's constantly that uh reminder not to be stuck that way he says don't you see that when you look at the physical plane if you turn a microscope and tune in you will see that when it's aut of focus it's all a homogeneous field but when it comes into

Focus you see man woman stage picture you're seeing God made manifest why aren't you enjoying it well um being a kind of protestant ethic Jew I couldn't conceive of enjoying it but at least I might acknowledge it you know I mean that's about as far as I could consider going then I had this conversation with Emanuel did I tell you about Emanuel last time H yes and Emmanuel um who is this disembodied being uh who um H I hang out with a little through a woman who speaks who through whom he speaks and he said

to me ramas you're uh you ought to get on with the classroom you're in which you took a human Incarnation try being human and I suddenly it started to dawn on me that perhaps the reason that I was seeming to be plateauing and not experiencing the transformation as I had been experiencing in previous years was that I was pushing away the very stuff of which my Incarnation was made which was part of the totality and since God is all if I pushed away that chunk of it I was always going to have that attachment of

rejecting my humanness see maharaji didn't help me any he kept screwing me up I mean that was his way of teaching um he said ramas should be alone he shouldn't see people he should eat alone you know and he'd build me up like that I think gee I must really be somebody you know I mean I got to be this special he should have his own dishes and implements wow man this is heavy stuff you so I went back to the hotel we were all staying at and I put a sign up in the door

do not disturb you know like a sort of Yogi at higher work type thing and uh that that night um two of the satang had a terrible fight a married couple Mohan and Rada had a terrible fight all during the night the next day they went to we all were at M with maharaji at the temple and he called them up and he said uh what happened last night and they said we had a terrible fight well what did you do well we didn't do anything we just fought well did you go and see ramas

no he had a sign saying do not disturb oh and he looked at me with disgust so it sort of wasn't clear which way to play it so being um realizing that uh what I started to figure out what does it mean to honor your Incarnation properly I mean I had already been working with my father and uh my family and uh I had a whole set of things down like keep your ZIP code remember your zip code and I was paying my taxes and um but it wasn't fully doing it I could see that

and when people would say to me um what are you doing about ecology I'd say we each have our own Dharma and each person we must play our parts we can't all do all of it this is my part but then I began to think about the possibility we all do have to do all of it that if I'm going to honor my Incarnation I have to honor whatever it means to be part of an ecosystem I have to honor whatever it means to be part of a uh a country to be part of a

religion to be part of a community to have a sexual identity to have a family identity and um but I I know one of the pitfalls that we Western intellectuals have well I have it I don't know about you but the minute I think of how it ought to be I immediately try to make it that way and it misses the mark do you understand what I'm saying it's sort of you what I call Head trip your way into it and you're doing it because you think you ought to do it or because you've thought

about it but it hasn't really happened to you and I've fallen into that trap so many times it's like um intellectually if I give up sex I will get to God I'm going to be celibate so I'm stuck with this thought now I announce I'm celibate and then I'm stuck with this thought and all it is is a thought it didn't come out of my being and all I am is a horny cel it now that's process two you understand I mean I really want to point out to you that once you have a spiritual

perspective everything in your life is the process of the spiritual unfolding every time you go down or up or Plateau or anything and the experience of oh my god I've fallen off the path is just more of it just another one that's an interesting process place in in the journey really feel it I've fallen off the pl God I've fallen off the path Jesus there's no hope I had it I used to have it I used to get these Visions this thing but I've fallen off the it's just more process you know okay great you

fallen off the path and here we are are you here I'm here well now what are we going to do we falling off the path now what I mean the game is Just much more interesting than just high as trunk barache says it isn't all just spiritual materialism so because I was smarter than to just jump in with my intellect I thought I just wait for things to happen that would pull me in I just be tuned to them I just start open to the possibility that I had honor Incarnation instead of calling up um

you know Jane Fonda and saying where do I sign up or something like that so it just turned out that I was touring and with uh ji and with a group of people and we ended up in Boulder Colorado the day of the Rocky Flats demonstration the first Rocky Flats and people said ramdas you're coming to town would you come to the Rocky Flats demonstration I thought well there's the first one there's one right there it's a real live one you know I mean I I I'm not in favor of nuclear energy but I'm really

embarrassed about it you see because I was an activist back in the 50s late 40s you know at college and stuff and during those days the excitement of peaceful use of nuclear energy was going to free us from ever having any energy needs get in the universe and I was really pushing to get it in sooner I was a good guy then just like I'm a good guy now okay and there's a lesson in that of course I mean that you can uh make mistakes and as Gandhi said my commitment is to truth not to

consistency so when it doesn't feel right you just say hey I blew it which I do all the time people say oh God ramas blew it Jesus how can you trust anybody that blows it then some people say gez maybe we can really trust him I mean if the United States just said to Iran you know in the way we backed the Sha's regime we really blew it do you realize how different this game would be now but you know there's just no there's no wisdom in our diplomacy we're just really caught in ego tripping

in power and pride and insecurity and the bad guys and the good guys and it's all a lot of it's a media [Music] event see the Iranian students really spiritual up leveled us I mean I I shouldn't use this as a political platform but why not because it's all part of the same dance because if you can hear that I can play with it and yet not get lost it might help I mean I realize that for us to treat the Iranians and the Russians the same was silly I mean the Iranians were saying look

we're doing this because of the Quran we've always had the corner on spiritual righteousness what right do they have they must be them they're just bad people the fact that we use the embassy as a spy center has nothing to do with the fact that they kept our people that's really bad we're good we were spying to preserve democracy you and I are in very delicate position here I want you to know as spiritually Awakening beings I don't dig not honoring the embassy freedoms and turning the uh turning your head away from the world Court

which is supposedly the highest thing that human intellect has ever done which is a set of laws for the world to live by I don't dig walking away from it but I do think it has been prostituted badly and I'm not upset when it gets shaken around a little bit when somebody has the hutzpah because they're so old they're going to die anyway you know to say screw the world Court we're going to throw all the liquor from the Hilton into the alley because Western with Western technology and Western thinking and Western materialism has gone

a loss of connection to God and as far as we're concerned that is like that's not the way to go see and actually Gandhi did with his spinning wheel and his techniques what Ma did with isolation of his country what Kum is trying to do with law which is protect a certain set of values from Western influence among other things I mean there's economic considerations too but the media just tends to look at the economic and political considerations they miss some of the other issues because when you live in a a place like India or

in a place like Bali or in a place like China or you live in places where you feel a connection to the universe that you don't necessarily feel in our culture for all of its nahas so when I got to Boulder they called me up and they said that um that they were going to have a meditation at the Rocky Flats Retreat that Alan Ginsburg had set up but he wasn't going to be there when I join them and I said I'd love to and um somewhere and we wrote a statement to be read because

we were all going to be silent just sitting on our zafus and um how does people know why you're doing it so we had to write something to tell them we'd sit for 20 minutes then walk and it was raining and we would sit and I sat there listening to all the lectures and I would hear all these incredible facts about nuclear fallout and what it was doing to children and so on and I could hear in the tone of each speaker's voice how much they were romanticizing it all to treat the audience as objects

to be emotionally manipulated and how much they were sharing Consciousness with fellow human beings with whom they're saying look this is the way it is and you and I got to get on with it right because the oldfashioned style is the emotional rhetoric that fires up the audience kill you know serve you know you know and Consciousness says look it's heavy and this is the way it is and we've got to do it and I trust that you will do what you got to do because you're as conscious as I am why should I tell

you and I really think we're ready for that kind of thing and what blew my mind was that there was a lot of that at Rock Ro Flats Rocky Flats was a combination of a political statement against nuclear energy and a be we are meditating here today because we feel that a quiet mind and an open heart are the optimum conditions for social change we have no enemies either here at Rocky Flats or anywhere we are all part of the same organism strong ring in our own ways to maintain the health and unity of the

whole it is the nature of our beings as individuals that defines the quality and the power of the statement by focusing on each breath we are affirming the Dignity of life in the simplest way possible we extend our compassion to those everywhere who live in fear of nuclear Annihilation may we all experience Clarity of mind and learn to share it constructively with each other and that was a beautiful moment well there have been a lot more the most recent one was that I was with Wavy Gravy in New Hampshire during the primaries uh pressing the

campaign of our candidate nobody for president our candidate's record speaks for itself Mr gravy told a scattering of passers by that's how it was by the way nobody solved the problems of the poor nobody brought about racial Justice nobody made a fear distribution of income nobody [Applause] cares so I went along because wavy is somebody I love and Revere is a magnificent clown he he spends a few days a week at the leukemia water of the children's hospital as a clown and he just everything he does he does with great Beauty and just great wisdom

he's a clown in the deepest sense of the term so I thought I'd Apprentice to Wavy I mean you can't really do it but uh I found myself sitting at a table in uh Durham New Hampshire selling buttons and bumper stickers the button said apathy sucks and the bumper sticker said get the us out of North [Applause] America and you know people would come up and they'd say Romos oh how wonderful to se you and then they just buy whatever it was because I was selling it you know and then they'd look down sort of

uncomfortably and then put it quickly into their you know shoulder bags or whatever ever and I got a chance to stand at the uh Runway where the Republican at the Republican caucus where all the Republican candidates walked in from their cars into the high school and they walked down this Runway where the lights were really brilliant and they had all because of what happened to Nixon in the running against they were all made up to the hilt you know they don't dare go out of their hotel room without thick pancake makeup on for fear the

television cameras will show them looking Haggard and they came down looking like mannequins I mean Ronald and Nancy were unbelievable I mean they they just came through like that you know and I thought is that what power does wow I mean how would would you like to be vying to be president of a diminishing economy and a diminishing political power block my God I mean that's really masochism and you can see what happens to the Presidents the before and after shots are great they look like the the reverse of the elixir of life you know

they've been having blood taken out of them by each day I qu but I used to sit in the temple you see reading pan jali's asanga yoga which told about miracles thinking when I do this breath and my throat opens it says then you will have the power to enter into anyone's mind said it right there and I mean it was a schloka so I'm sitting there and I'm thinking well now what will I do when I get that one see I thought I should do good with it well I'm a little concerned about lynen

Johnson's mind so I will get down to Washington and he'll be sitting in his study and I'll just enter into his mind see it said when you did another breathing you could appear visibly to anybody so I was going to do that one and I would just appear in his study and he'd say what are you doing here and I'd say he'd say I'm going to push the button call the Secret Service and I'd say you do that and I won't appear and they'll think you're crazy I've come to help you and then I would

give him a cosmic perspective you know I mean there's no sense you might as well help help your side then I thought well what we need to do is have the leaders of each country up level and go to the we got to invest the United Nations I mean we can't keep making it impotent we've got to Juice It Up So Lyndon Johnson will go as our representative to the United Nations that'll force all the other presidents and so on we'll really juice up getting rid of kind of these ego extensions that are called nationalism

so now we're sitting around the UN table and I decided I'll make myself everybody's mind I mean you can do it as much as you want so I'll be talking to myself literally you know well by the time I had done about a six-hour fantasy I had so screwed up the world because I would have just made peace and I'd forget about the economics some minor thing like that you know now it is interesting that there are beings on this planet and there are beings other than on this planet who have much clearer Consciousness than

anybody in any political Arena or any of us probably certainly than me and they are totally in tune with all of this scene and they understand and they have the powers to change it they do have those Powers pot and jolly isn't talking through his uh beard and yet it is just the way it is if you accept that it's kind of perplexing isn't it I mean don't they give a damn or maybe it's the way it's supposed to be I mean it's just a creepy possibility I was at a lecture last year when it

gave when the lecture gave a list he was an anthropologist he was talking about major changes in cultures and he says usually A Change Is preceded by the alienation of the individual mental illness in the society going up violent crimes going up sexual Hedonism going up religious cultism going going up and economic inflation so from an anthropological point of view it's clear what's happening to us just before I forget I want to complete the Wavy Gravy part of it that as I sat there at that table selling buttons and stickers I thought this isn't really

really my way you know it's cool and I love it and I honor wavy and I really want to support his doing it and he now is going to probably go to Thailand to be a clown for the kids in the camps and uh he's arranging benefits for the sa foundation and all kinds of good things but I realized that I I'll tell tell you when I realized that Paul uh wavy was going down to the Caribbean and Paul Gorman from WBAI in New York said he wanted to do a an on radio a live

interview about nobody for president would I sit in for wavy so I mean it's one thing to be marching in a parade or we were like in Wisconsin wavy had nobody in the back of a pinto in the parade because nobody in his right mind would be in the back of a pinto see and you can see that humor is an really incredible process for upleveling or for awakening people I mean if you look just compare nobody for president with all the other candidates and you will see that there is a qualitative difference yeah maybe

it is my bag I didn't realiz I see warming to my topic tonight I didn't expect to do that see because when Paul interviewed me I realized that I wasn't going to be able to get away with just nobody cares nobody knows the truth about chap aidic nobody you know all of these routines that ravy was using so I had to get heavy because I'm the heavy part you know so I had the list nobody looks beyond politics to people nobody will tell it like it is nobody is ready to uplevel nationalism into humanitarianism nobody

admits errors nobody is interested in reducing the gap between rich and poor Nations out of compassion rather than out of fear nobody is free of international paranoia nobody cares to see that every human being has a right to be fed and should be fed first you know that in order to feed water house and educate and I assume cloth although that wasn't on the list originally all of the people that needed in the world it would roughly cost1 17 billion doar a year which is a lot of money it is exactly what the world spends

on arms every two weeks that's who we are mean this is this is just U I'm just holding up a mirror saying this is who we are just let's appreciate who we are because it's our Collective paranoia that's doing that nobody is demanding the media assume responsibility commensurate with their power nobody is reducing bureaucracy nobody's calling industry on the carpet for toxic wastes no one is respecting the agent no one is investigating investing in a Grassroots Communications Network to decentralize power nobody really thinks small is beautiful nobody espouses the politics of love and forgiveness nobody

sees worldly power as secondary to spiritual power nobody honors the basic instit tion the individual human heart see and I I did that but I saw that um that the really essence of the nobody campaign was in the humor and The Awakening people getting them to just think about what candidates really represent I this is a part of it and I think it's useful but the essence of that particular form it had its form had its form what's going on today that you and I are facing you can write whatever scenario you want and you

and I are buying in usually to one or two major scenarios and sometimes with flipping during one day between one and the other let me quickly give you scenario one scenario one the Aquarian age is upon us this is the Golden Age human consciousness is rising to the point where compassion is finally breaking through the media travel have all cut down our concepts of time and space to the point where we are beginning beginning to truly experience the Brotherhood of humanity it's all happening slowly but happening the polls have shown that Americans are beginning to

desire simpler Lifestyles which also goes with higher Consciousness tofu is appearing in the supermarkets there are major breakthroughs in DNA research that may change the whole feeding picture in the world do you know that every two seconds somebody dies of malnutrition you know that I mean somebody like one of us you ready to die you pick your second 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 four three four two two three four there went four of us they like no it's not us it's them it's okay it's them it's

those third world thems it's cool but now can you imagine a DNA breakthrough for example just a simple one like the fact that the seed of the cotton cotton seed you know that little furry thing the seed in isn't edible by a single acid stomach like us so it's given to cattle or it's boiled up and made cotton seed oil out of and you know all the countries that graze cotton to like India and they don't eat the seeds well it turns out you can play with the DNA code very simply because why it isn't

edible is because of a little thing that appears on it that was probably functional in the uh Pine age or something like that and now it it's linked to a certain uh to a uh to one Gene and now you can manipulate it and get that Gene turned around and that thing doesn't come through and the cotton seeds edible realize what that does to hunger in the world so when you hang out with people who are into technology they have this is the model this is the m this is the scenario it's all cool we

really you got to believe there's plenty of energy it's only a question of being smart enough to figure out how to get it in fact there's enough energy and there's enough Transportation but we can't figure out how to get the money to the people to buy it there's no purchasing power where it's needed that's what technology tells me part of the new age myth the East and West are coming together the incredible spaciousness Clarity quietness peace of the East is merging with the Exquisite material technology and appreciation of the physical plane of the West and

out of it is coming not only holography and Kuran photography and on and on and on but a a new kind of spiritual awareness that brings things together so it doesn't end up like India where every where large segments are starving while the spiritual domain is uh is practiced by some and ignoring the economic physical plan it looks in this positive scenario it looks very much like nuclear energy is going to dry up of itself just because of its economic burdens it looks like uh the pressure came from other than just activists although that pushed

the button to make it so expensive so that all seems to be happening that's part of this positive scenario there's obviously a Reawakening of religion look at all the the Christians have their own television station there are 40 million people in America doing something or other spiritually and there's a lot doing Eastern meditations and there's a lot doing stuff this is all pretty good we are going through some Growing Pains what did you expect when a new age came came that the birth wouldn't be a little painful little bloody around the edges but the baby

is coming through healthy and there is all like what happened in Marin County when they ran out of water everybody's Consciousness went up and so it'll be as the stuff hits the fan for us and it's all part of The Grand Design that's the that's one scenario it's a pretty good scenario you can breathe a sigh of relief with it let us just reflect a moment on scenario 2 scenario two we are in the cuga this is the age when truth is lost when deception rains Allah things like Watergate the bull has no feet on

the ground in the Hindu mythology the feet of truth it's the age when all connection to the spirit is lost morality goes by the wayside the family unit dissolve we in California now statistically are a serially monogamous Society over 50% of the marriages end in divorce and over 80% of the divorcees Remar so there it is that's who we are now it's a hard one to keep the family unit together violence and rape and lack of respect for property is way up the henis and the use of cocaine and other related kinds of experiential drugs

is at the point where one feels very much like the Roman Empire Revisited we laugh hysterically at the joy we're having as the world Burns we have been called the narcissistic people we are so busy preining before a mirror and working on ourselves and worshiping ourselves we've lost it we have no compassion left we have a very deep fear a feeling of impending doom and the fear is so deep that we tend to buy any belief system with Incredible fanaticism and try to press it on other people people so there is incredible prati and almost

and lack of respect for one another the rate of entropy is staggering at this moment the way in which we are using up non-renewable resources and moving disequilibrium into balance or into no energy potential entropy is upon us and it's just becoming all too OB obvious very quickly not only in the usual energy things but in a lot of the metals we work with and so on we are just and let alone our air and our water and our forests we are absolutely unconscious and just destroying the very chance of survival Alan Ginsburg came to

me from a meeting in New Jersey and he said well I've just been at a meeting about toxic waste and I want you to know rum dust it already happened G and I had a moment thinking gee isn't this interesting now it's a new one now it's already happened we don't have to worry about will it happen it has already happened we can now all get ready to die which is great for my dying project we have punk rock and all of its implications and part of punk rock's very complex by the way but one

of the things it does represent at or at one level it represents is a repudiation of the entire spiritual consciousness movement of the 60s saying oh that's a Croc I mean all you've got to do is go to a Beer Parlor around any college these days and say uh you really growing from your experiences of being related to the wise people that came out of the 60s and early' 70s and you should hear the answers I mean if you ask it even more subtle than that of course say what do you think about the 60s

ah nothing happened there a lot of creeps you know nuts part of the sa Foundation was trying to collect money at an Arbor Michigan at a football game for Cambodia and people were yelling at the guys that were collecting the money ah bomb them screw them screw the cambodians that's us it's part of this scenario and that we are in a swirl of paranoia that gets worse and worse and even our boy scout leader Jimmy who generally tries to be good is caught in the military power complex finally and he's you do this or except

it doesn't really work because France says well now we ought to think twice about these you know it's far out it's incredible incredible process and that's paranoia and fear leads to Authority so we will very very possibly elect Ronald Reagan and we will out of our desire to hold on to the standard of living we're familiar with we will give up civil liberties left and right and impose all kinds of authoritarian structures on the society to try to hold on to how we thought it was that's all part of this second scenario now each of

those scenarios I think is real to you it is to me and I certainly can get into it but I also am aware that they are both just scenarios I've got another one for you just to throw into the pot see in the cosmos beings are working through millions of incarnations I mean you remember that story about how many Buddhist said if you imagine uh a mountain the length that a bullock walks in a day which is six something or others but figure a couple six miles it's six miles long by six miles wide by

six miles high it's a real mountain mountain you know rock and every hundred years a bird flies over it with a silk scarf in its beak and runs the scarf across the top of the mountain in the length of time it takes the silk scarf to wear away the mountain that's how long you and I have been doing it gives you some perspective about this one doesn't it geez I don't think I can make my appointment wow time's a funny thing huh we've been doing it again and again and again and again now imagine see

there are all beings I'm just giving you a scenario now it's not true all these beings are at different levels of the game some of them just got got out they just got in a human form for the first time others have been through about 40,000 times and you learn something each time or you work out Karma whatever you want to call it so now any place everybody's tuned there's a great big computer system everybody knows what's going on and there is there are moments where it's really good for doing certain work to be at

a certain place it's like on Tuesday in uh in the year xd4 uh it would be good to be at at this place because anybody there is going to get enlightened so the really high beings who pick up on that and they're ready they go and be there let's assume we all found out that if we took birth at this time we would all simultaneously be enlightened through a bomb a large mushroom cloud a large white light and we would all be free just take that scenario for a second you and I are these incarnates

now we are inuman births so that has in it the mystery that we got to have an illusion you can't you got to get caught in the illusion so you can't know this by the way only at the moment it happens when you say oh wow this is what it was about well thank God it's over that's ni you got to go through the whole suffering thing you got to go through the father why have you forsaken me the whole trip but what a precious moment to be born you want that scenario the other scenario

is it's just another time and we are doing our work and it goes on and on and on and on and on and it'll muddle along and some people will die and some will live and you know like an old car that just sort of goes along an old Volkswagen mic what you and I are reflecting about is how one lives within scenarios without getting caught in them if any of you are feeling fear about about the future how silly how absolutely silly that's not going to help the future it's not helping the present it's

not a functional thing at all if you're feeling hope for the future how absolutely silly it's not going to help it's just going to take you from this moment Paul Brunton said to Raman Mahari in India will Mahar will ramano Mahari will he Express an opinion about the future of the world as we are living in critical times we're always living in critical times these were the critical times probably in the 50s you're pretty critical not as critical as these times and ramano Mahari said why trouble yourself about the future you don't even know about

the present take care of the present the future will take care of itself as you are so is the world without understanding yourself what is the use of trying to understand the world this is a question that Seekers after truth need not consider people waste their energies over all such questions first find out the truth behind yourself then you will be in a better position to understand the truth behind the world of which you are a part it's so clear that the obvious Optimum strategy if the world is going to end in a minute or

if it's going to end in 10 billion years is to be clear conscious present and here I mean all of the training you and I will be talking about when we talk about dying has to do with coming to the moment of death and being so here that you are not pulled or pushed or frightened or grabbing or hold holding you just right here and then here and then here and then here and in that sense life and death and living and dying are exactly the same thing and the optimum strategy for you to be

totally processing everything and be in harmony with the da is to be in the moment to be with the moment fully which includes the past and the future it doesn't negate it it's all in here I know that in two days or three days or two days I'll be in Iowa City speaking at this time and the next night in Omaha Nebraska I know that that's part of the future but at this moment I'm right here that's also here too but I'm not busy not being here because of that the present you and I are

living in a time where change is obviously happening the style of our lives in our lifetimes is going to change our political role in the world is going to change our chances of surviving survival are changing who our friends and enemies are is changing whether you can get in a car and take a Sunday drive is changing whether you can have on your table the foods that Fascinate You When you go to the supermarket is changing when I walk down in the alley of a supermarket I used to get my appetite used to get greater

and greater and I want this and I want this now I lose all my appetite cuz I can't the prices of whims are beyond my tolerance and I notice my diet getting simpler and I'm not suffering it's great and there's the key right in there not to assume that every time it changes it's worse that far out I mean that's part of my tradition my family tradition if it changes it's going to be worse we've always done it this way we've always had pot roast on Sunday all I can tell you is working with people

that have terminal illness that as each of their techniques for controlling the universe Falls away they awaken a little bit more potentially they can use it they can get caught in oh my God I can't any longer walk to the bathroom and they can be busy being somebody who's not walking to the bathroom can you imagine that who are you well yesterday I could walk to the bathroom but today I can't heavy isn't it see you don't want to laugh but it's funny it's one of those things but the fact is yeah I was with

this fellow and I don't know whether I told this um from that was dying of um he had Hodgkins disease and he was in the final stages of it and he had he had had chemotherapy and he had a wig and he was a pusher in San Francisco and he decided he was going to die by oding on heroin and taking LSD and he came to me to discuss it consult that seemed reasonable to me and um so we went for a ride and we went for a ride up on Route One over in Marin

and he I had a rental car and he said um could I drive it'll probably be my last time and he was about 22 you know what it is like for 22y old to drive mean I know it was like when I was 22 to drive so I said of course so he started a drive but the problem was he didn't have the strength to turn the wheel and on one you know it really uh does require that particular skill and I would find us headed for the ocean and I'd reach over and turn the

wheel and finally I said look just cuz you're going to die doesn't mean I have to die we've got to recognize that who you were a few days ago you aren't now now you're somebody that rides you don't drive so Let It Go Lightly that's the way it is I'll drive so I drove and he rode and at first he felt sad and then we worked with the sadness till he let it go and we were just with the beauty of route one and we were just being together in the love of and our shared

presence and it was enough the minute he let go of the model the model what was was what was creating the suffering not the existential situation and as the change hits in economics in politics in Social relations in all of it you and I may find ourselves eating out of a tin can meeting next time maybe next time within the next month maybe you and I may find ourselves under a girder of a bridge sharing a can of something cooked over a a a little fire of trash we found and I'll look at you and

I'll say are you here I'm here far out here we are well this is sure a change you'll probably say isn't that terrible isn't it terrible God I've lost so much well you can hang on to that as long as you want but we have a new existential moment how you deal with change which is Absolut absolutely inherent in all forms is what is the issue of suffering it all changes the minute you have a model of how it is you stop the change you fix it there a beautiful change story that Larry brilliant tells

Larry's the um Founding Father of the SAA foundation and he was involved in the small pox eradication program in India and um Larry was a political activist doctor in Berkeley in the 60s and he's very committed to each person has their right to do it the way they want but he found himself part of the World Health Organization team to eradicate small poox which causes pox and blindness and death to countless people and it's spread in such a way that you've got to isolate each village where it is and inoculate everybody and then just keep

getting Village by Village by Village and they got it down in Indian Bangladesh to a very few Villages but in one of these Villages it was the religious belief of the people that small pox was the gift of God and to stop it was against the will of God now here's Larry in a peculiar position because he's Pro vaccination if they don't vaccinate this village where there is small Park somebody from this Village could go to a railway station interact with 500 people in within the course of about 2 minutes in India all of whom

will go back to 500 different Villages and there we go again so Larry found himself part of a midnight raid on this village with vaccination needles in hand and they came to the the hut that belonged to the head of the village this old man and his wife and child and they broke down the door of the Hut which was barricaded and they wrestled the old man to the ground and vaccinated him while all the town's people stood around waiting to see the outcome of this and then they wrestled the wife to the ground and

she bit the doctor and blood flowed and finally they vaccinated the child and the whole vaccination drama was over and everything stopped and everybody stood up and then the old man turned and he walked out to his little garden which was very dry but there was one Loki there was one squash there and he took the squash and he brought it in and he handed it to the Indian Indian Doctor Who was the head of the vaccination team who also had been bitten by his wife he handed in the squash and Larry couldn't understand what

had happened and so he asked what had happened and the man said he said it is our belief that small pox is the gift of God and to eradicate it is wrong it is my Dharma to act in in harmony with my beliefs so I had to protect me and my people from vaccination you come from a different place it is your understanding that it is God's wish that small pox be eradicated you were doing your Dharma there are many of you there are few of us for us to be defeated is no shame now

you are a guest in my home I'm sorry I don't have more to offer you okay now there is a statement of Dharma there's a statement of change there's a statement of conscious living with change hold on tightly Let Go Lightly hold on tightly let go light so how do I serve I keep listening get a call would you be at Earth Day you happen to be in Boulder Colorado in Longmont Colorado on Saturday Sunday would you be there for Peace Day well I was going to be in town on Sunday sure it's just unfolding

It's Just Happening the participation is happening the heart gets pulled this way and that the thing I have to watch for is righteousness I said to an audience the other night in Santa Cruz where I was doing a benefit for Cambodia I said I really feel like I'm ripping this scene off I'm getting such a dose of righteous Merit look how good I am I'm doing a Cambodian relief benefit there's an interesting line in patang that says no giving and no receiving it's in the purifications the Yama nonkilling non-stealing non- Ling nonsexual misconduct non giving

wow non giving and receiving isn't to give good to give is good to be busy being The Giver is a drag because if you're busy being The Giver then the other person you force them into the role of object of being the receiver while if you happen to be that part of us which is giving and then there is that part of us which is receiving ah how different how different when you do social action out of intellectual ought you are caught in the righteousness game when you keep de deepening your emptiness and the openness

of your heart and your quietness and your spaciousness and your love and just keep deepening these The Compassion keeps deepening and the actions come not out of guilt or fear or ought or should but they just come out of it's obvious because that's who we are if I am taking care of a baby and the baby falls and hits its head I pick it up and comfort it I didn't have to decide should I or ought I if I stick my hand on a hot stove and it starts to burn I take it off I

don't have to decide the ically whether I should well finally the Cambodian mouth is the hot is the finger on the on the fire and you're doing it not because you're a good guy you're doing it because obviously this is who we are and that's the Awakening Consciousness that's the compassion that's coming out of Awakening Consciousness that's what's kind of fun I met with a group in the sa Foundation where we had our board meeting and here were people from World Health organiz ation communicable disease thing in Atlanta Wavy Gravy I mean muga people and

people with briefcases and neck ties and a whole you know and we all looked at each other like what are we doing here my God Locked In the Backwoods of an Arbor Michigan for three days a woman opthal Opthalmic surgeon from you know with a sort of a that kind of person with the journals and the what is what is your belief system I said I don't have any belief system it's just all true so there was a few days of delicacy but then came the recognition which was an incredible mind blower for me that

across all these differences there was a reason we were all together and that was because we were all tuned to the Fulfillment it gave to our beings as just beings to be involved in this serving sharing process with other human beings and none of nobody in the group was busy being a good guy we were all almost guilty we were having so much fun in service there was a very beautiful Saint in India named sari Maharaj in the kiman Hills and he had a devotee who was dying and they brought the devotee to see sari

mahaj and in those days they brought him in a um a little um basket with h four guys carrying it miles and they brought it in and mahaj Maharaj grew SAR Maraj said take him to the river and bathe them and the man had drunk one drop of milk a day now for six weeks and they couldn't bathe him because his skin was so D they said maraji the river's cold and he'll die bath them bath them and he went and he cooked a big greasy thing of potatoes and then he brought they brought washed

him and they brought him up and he forced the potatoes into the guy's mouth and the guy lived to have four more children and you know it's one of those stories okay I'm just telling you who sari Maharaj is so uh um one day sari Maharaj um is with a devotee and he says to him he had a very uh Fierce disposition SAR Mar he said to this devotee here are two potatoes take these down to the river and eat them both those are the instructions from the guru so the devote has been a devote

for years so he rushes down to the river and he starts to eat the potatoes and he's eating the first potato and this beggar comes along sadu maybe very poor hungry looking fellow and he says mahat he says you have two potatoes I have none I'm so hungry would you give me one of your potatoes so what could the guy do he gave him the potato and then he came back up the hill and as he was climbing the hill and came towards the cave where sari Maharaj was which was out of sight of the

river sari Maharaj came out screaming you fool you idiot I told you to eat both potatoes well I guess it just wasn't in your destiny the resolution is that that man became a leading judge his children all married well had health had wonderful children and did well in business that was all the first potato now those kind of stories are real stinkers aren't they because all you and I all want to be the person that gives away the second potato see I feel every time I get a letter would you appear here would you do

this somebody calls I my child is dying would you talk to me would you would you would you could you would you could you please would you could you how do you say no that's the second potato of course of course of course of course of course now if I can really hear what maharaji is saying how do I know God feed people and serve people and I can flip it so that every one of those is merely service to bring me to God not merely but is service to bring me to God I'm home

free but if I can't convert it all and it starts to weigh on me and I think oh my God I can't answer another phone call then maybe what I've got to do is stop giving away the potatoes for a while and only I know that's why when I meet somebody else who isn't busy out protesting and somebody who is out protesting I really can't judge one versus the other so obvious that each of us can only convert that amount of fire like in the story of the ramayana SAA Ram's wife Rah is God and

Sitta is God's wife and Sia has been stolen away by Raven who's the bad guy Rin has taken her off to an island called Lanka Sri Lanka and he's been with her for quite a while and he's quite a ladies man CU he's got 20 heads or 10 heads and 20 arms you can make a lot of love with 20 arms and when he's finally when SAA is finally rescued from ravana and brought back Rah isn't so sure she's been true to him and some of the people are questioning it and she says if there

is any doubt of my Purity let me walk through fire and if I'm impure I'll be burned up in those days they did those things because that was a different Yuga and Faith was much stronger then so everybody could be a firew walker if you were pure enough so they built a big fire in the middle of the square and everybody gathered and she got on and stood in the middle of the fire and not even the Hem of her sari was burned because when you've got pure gold and you run it through fire nothing

happens because it's already all the fire the fire is done it's purified all the stuff out of it the dross is gun but when you are attached still to the dross the fire burns and it really hurts if I am busy being somebody who's doing something that means I'm still attached to my ego doing something that next telephone call can hurt because it can be the straw that breaks the camel's back on the other hand if I merely am and there is answering the phone and serving and helping and being and quiet and I'm quiet

in the midst of it it is all just more and more stuff and I am sitting quietly and getting deeper and quieter and more present as death life fear hope sexual desire all of these just keep coming coming coming coming as they do for you as well as for me until we are just right here all the time heart open mind quiet not sitting like a zombie not imitating Buddha or Christ or anybody but being fully in our Incarnation so while this being is sitting here you are mowing the lawn protesting collecting the bottles eating

the curry playing with the kids making love being tired being angry being hurt Desiring loneliness jealousy fear guilt greed pain Joy innocence corruption cynicism and here we are and with your many arms you're doing all of this while the heart is right here and the mind is right here and it's all happening within the spaciousness that is is The Quiet Mind ah now I have a car and I can go places ah my car just blew up now I can't go any place a so AO and there is a way of acting in which you

work from a quietness that is listening all the time so you're Act come out of this just quiet listening place the best story I know about that is um the cutting up of the ox Prince w wh's Cook was cutting up an ox out went a hand down went a shoulder he planted a foot he pressed with a knee the ox fell apart with a whisper the bright Cleaver murmured Like A Gentle Wind rhythm timing like a sacred dance like the Maly Grove like ancient harmonies good work the prince exclaimed your method is faultless Method

said the cook laying aside his Cleaver what I follow is the da beyond all methods when I first began to cut up oxen I would see before me the whole Ox all in one Mass after three years I no longer saw this Mass I saw the distinctions now I see nothing with the eye my whole being apprehends my senses are idle the spirit free to work without plan follows its own Instinct Guided by natural line by the secret opening the hidden space the cleaver Finds Its Own Way I cut through no joint Cho no bone

a good cook needs a new Chopper once a year he cuts a a poor cook needs one every month he hacks I have used the same Cleaver in 19 years it has cut up a thousand oxen its Edge is as Keen as if newly sharpened there are spaces in the joints the blade is thin and Keen when this thinness finds that space there is all the room you need it goes like a breeze hence I have this Cleaver 19 years as if newly sharpened true there are sometimes tough joints I feel them coming I slow

down I watch closely hold back barely move the blade and wh the part Falls away Landing like a clot of Earth then I withdraw the blade I stand still and let the joy of the work sink in I clean clean the blade and put it away Prince Juan wh said this is it my cook has shown me how I ought to live my entire life you are ready for change because change is all there is and you have no models to which you are attached as to how it is you have models but you hold

them tightly and Let Go Lightly you listen to he what your dharmic part is in the play and you honor every part of your Incarnation as impeccably as you know how you don't get lost in the many and forget the one you don't get lost in the one and forget the many and you do it all lightly knowing it's just one scenario or another and here we are in Journey to the east Herman H's Leo says to HH the heavy HH says it's not you don't think it's all a game do you Leo is just

what it is a beautiful Exquisite game Walter kronite may have lost the game but you don't have to it's easy to get caught thinking you're the thimble or the top hat on the Monopoly board but behind it all here we are and in this here we are there is no fear there is no hope there are no emotions and there's no emptiness there is neither form nor lack of form it just is and it's all coming out of this this Exquisite form fear anger hope desire love and we play in it all we are it's

all the Delight to be in it deny nothing get caught in nothing so simple