My life has unfolded in chapters and in one of those chapters (2009-2010) I was fortunate to spend several months at the side of the wonderful being known as Ram Dass.
MY TRIBUTE TO RAM DASS
My core belief about people has always been that, underneath our acculturated exterior, our essential nature is the same. We see others as alien because we don’t know ourselves well enough to find their behaviours in ourselves. Spending time with people from different backgrounds has always helped me to connect more deeply with my humanity.
As I’ve spent much of my life living in contrasting cultures, I expect that to half of my friends this will sound like another day at the park while to the other half it will sound like complete insanity. But then again, part of my life’s mission is to share things that I learned by crossing over these lines. For that reason, this tribute is written more for the second group. This is something that I went far from home for and returned with for those who haven’t went on their journey yet or who may not have the opportunity to.
The thing that I usually don’t like about eulogies is that they are often more about the person giving them than about the person who they are for. Do we ever truly know someone or do we only know who they were to us? The deceased may have been a father to one but a son to another, a friend to another, and an enemy to another. Who are they outside of those roles? Well, in this tribute I will intentionally ignore this pet peeve as I write about my experience of Ram Dass. It will, without a doubt, be much more about me than about him. In this case, that is intentional and I would even say that Ram Dass would appreciate being used for personal reflection. After all, part of the genius of RD was his ability to reflect us back to ourselves and turn us towards the divine.
Back in the 90’s I’m a freshman at college. I’m feeling out of place, disconnected. In fact, I had felt that way for as long as I could remember. I felt as if I was playing a role but not fully engaged in life. Is it possible to be born into the wrong culture? Amidst all of the duty, routine, and obligation I stumbled upon something that spoke to me: Chinese kung fu movies.
One image that I remember was from Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon.” At some point in the film he is trapped by the evil boss in a small room with no windows and no doors. He instantly knew that there was no way out of the room. His response was to calmly sit down, crossing his legs. There was no wild yelling or pounding. Not motivated by fear or impatience, he simply accepted his fate and let the boss make his next move. Like water, he took the path of least resistance. This struck me because at that time in my life I didn’t understand the root motivations of the people around me. They seemed to be for the most part inconsistent and not consciously decided. This level of awareness and efficiency struck me as a very appealing way to be.
I suddenly had a direction to explore. I read everything I could find about these traditions and I found teachers to study with. A university class on Chinese Medicine connected me with healers and martial artists who were steeped in these traditions. Thus began a long learning and exploring process.
I became particularly engaged with one teacher. He was supposedly a Daoist recluse from the mountains of northern China. He must have weighed no more than 100 pounds but when we played push hands(the tai chi way of sparring) he could effortlessly push me around into submission. Through his art, he expressed the economy of motion and attunement to subtlety that so appealed to me.
I had made plans to do an extended work exchange at his temple in a remote area in China. I would do manual labor in exchange for kung fu, tai chi, and chi gong instruction. Getting ready to live out what was probably a common fantasy for American kids post- Karate Kid.
I was practicing intensively in preparation for my trip to China. 10 days before I'm set to leave, the phone rings. I hear in extremely broken English:
“Hi Matt, It’s —— from the Temple of ——, I just wanted to let you know that things have changed.
We need you to pay tuition in addition to your work exchange here. It will be about $1000 a month. Also, we don’t have a room for you at this time so you will have to sleep outdoors for the first month or 6 weeks. It will likely be snowy, but no worries! The master will teach you Dragon Breathing which will keep you warm at night.”
My limited budget and my even more limited faith in my ability to learn “Dragon Breathing” were deal breakers for me. My kung-fu dream was gone just like that! In retrospect, I’m not sure whether it was a scam or just a test to see how committed I was. Regardless, I needed a new plan. As fate would have it, that same day a young woman that I knew dropped a flyer on my desk. She told me that she was going to spend 3 months at this retreat center in the mountains of….Massachusettes. They had beds to sleep in and a roof overhead, and they would pay me to work there while I received instruction in yoga, eastern philosophy, and other related practices. I immediately applied and was accepted.
Now the yoga tradition that I was jumping into was coming from Hinduism from India as opposed to what I was initially drawn to: Buddhism and Taoism from China. But traditional yoga teachers from India seemed to be easier to find than traditional kung fu teachers from China as many of the Chinese teachers were purged or exiled during China’s cultural revolution.
The practitioners of the kind of yoga I was studying could be described as “go with the flow,” gentle self-acceptance, relational people as opposed to the kung fu traditions that I had studied whose practitioners were more austere, disciplined, and solitary. Think LA vs New York City(horrible generalization, I know.) It was not exactly what I wanted but being that it was a fully immersive program centered on spiritual living and practice it ticked a bunch of boxes and I considered myself lucky.
My first encounter with Ram Dass was when I read his classic book “Be Here Now.” It was sort of a manual for this type of spiritual living. Its earthy illustrations and free-form text invited the reader to see their own self as infinite and inexorably linked to the divine. I read about Ram Dass’ extraordinary story about meeting the Indian saint Neem Karoli Baba and transforming himself from Richard Alpert - Harvard professor into Ram Dass - spiritual guru.
Meanwhile, at the yoga center, immersed in these practices I felt my previously starving mind, body, and soul being fed. Meditation and yoga each morning and afternoon and a yoga philosophy class each evening. Even our job was considered part of our spiritual practice. Chopping vegetables became a meditation and any talking during our work was centered around our practices. I knew that I wasn’t exactly on the right path being in the yoga world but I was serious about it and I continued to progress receiving intensive training and eventually getting my teaching certification.
Being that this was the biggest yoga center in the United States, people came from all over the world to practice there. We would share stories over chamomile tea in the dining hall and then they would return to their respective corners of the world. Among them was a glowing free-spirited woman from Maui(gratitude to you always k). She ended up returning to Maui where she became Ram Dass’ personal chef. His health had weakened since he had a stroke in the late 90’s. They were looking for a “monkish” person who knew who was familiar with Ram Dass’ work to provide some additional help. She recommended me for the job and connected me with Dassi Ma - Ram Dass’s most devoted caretaker. After an interview and an offer, I said yes immediately. Now, to me, this was the top link of the chain of the path I had started on. Albeit, the wrong path.
Ram Dass was an embodiment of this Yogic Hindu spirituality and he was surrounded by a vibrant, creative community filled with artists and also substances that helped with spiritual realization like LSD and “magic” mushrooms.
(In a divine act of balance, seated next to me on my flight to Maui was the famed martial artist and author of many books on the internal martial arts Bruce Kumar Frantzis. He would be teaching Wu style tai chi there for the next several months. I studied with him throughout my stay.)
Although I was an employee of his, I did have the thought that Ram Dass would be at least in part be a teacher to me and I attempted to learn from him. I read the interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita that he recommended and asked him questions as I read. At breakfast we would gaze at the picture of his guru Neem Karoli Baba and I would inquire about him. I did my best to do everything I could to be helpful to him and to make his life easier. This included taking him to the beach, doing the technical parts of his webcasts, and sometimes gardening, fixing toilets and showers.
There is too much to say about my time in Maui for this small tribute but here are a few of the more striking experiences that I can tell you about:
The first time I’d ever felt truly comfortable
I was outside in the gardens outside Ram Dass’ home and I felt a level of relaxed that I hadn’t even come close to experiencing previously. I noted that it was the first time I felt truly comfortable. I don’t know about you and how comfortable you feel on a given day but for me there was never total comfort. I always felt either slightly or overwhelmingly in the wrong place so this was monumental for me. What made me feel so comfortable was the realization that “these people here, they respect the spirit.” They understand and give credence to the spiritual nature of man. Before I had never felt truly “seen.” Or rather, I felt seen only as an object - A body and a story. When you see your spiritual nature, you see your story and body as a costume. A role that you play in the world but not who you truly are. The feeling that it was ok to be who I truly was allowed me to relax in a way I never was able to before. I stood in one place on the earth for maybe an hour feeling completely connected, comfortable, and present.
Doing “Drugs”
Being a child during the height of Nancy Reagans failed “Just Say No” anti-drug movement had me associating all drug use with satanic rituals and self-destruction. Since college I’d heard enough productive and inspiring members of society share their “drug” experiences effectively deprogramming me and my mind became open to them. The first and only time I used LSD, I went to Spago at the Four Seasons with Ram Dass and some of his lovely friends in Maui. Seated at the next table was SNL alum and one of my favorite comedians, David Spade. I ended up practicing tai chi in the bathroom(not a euphemism.) But that’s neither here nor there.
LSD seemed to be a bit synthetic for my taste while “Magic” Mushrooms had an organic gentleness to them. I made it a weekly ritual to meditate in the garden and take a low dose of magic mushrooms. I would make a list of questions that I had about life and then try to answer them in the state of heightened awareness that psilocybin(the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) would bring. I would also practice tai chi.
One particular time I took a higher dose and was heading outside to do my usual tai chi routine but was interrupted by a loud voice from within say “put your body somewhere comfortable, I want to show you something.” Now you may think of hearing a voice from within and think that’s a figure of speech. This was literally a loud voice that said exactly this. I went back to my quarters and laid down in bed and waited. Above me I saw these ethereal playful yet taunting beings who told me to come up with them. I felt my spirit/energy/life force/self - whatever you want to call it - leave my body through my third eye(a point between and above your eyes pointed to as a center of spiritual energy in yogic philosophy) towards these beings. Once again, for people unfamiliar with these kind of experiences this is literal. It happened as clearly as I am typing on this computer. The thought occurred to me “oh, this is death. This is what dying is. My soul is leaving my body.” It felt very pleasant and I was very interested to see where I would go but I had a hesitation. It seemed that I was leaving my body and my body would basically be left dead. I thought a newspaper headline saying “guy dies from taking drugs in Maui” would be particularly upsetting to my mother so I quickly tried to shake off the whole experience and I walked upstairs to the kitchen where Ram Dass was. I told him about the experience: I said “these beings want me to leave my body to go with them but I don’t want to die. Will I die if I go with them?” He said “no, you won’t die if you go with them. It is safe to go with them.” I mean, at that time, who else could I have asked that question to and got an immediate and clear answer that I could trust? Ram Dass and his spiritual colleagues were well known to have used these substances hundreds of times for spiritual realization. This man had seen it all and immediately knew about the beings that I was talking about. I went back to my quarters and luckily my invitation was still intact. I left my body and I went up with them. They took me to see the “gears of life.” It was a timeless and infinite realm where the machinery that manufactured our reality existed. I could see that everything was connected and was, in fact, one thing. These gears were behind all of creation. There was a bliss in this realm and a sense of perfection of being everything. After this period of timelessness I was returned back to my body where the beings began to show me the obstacles that existed between me and experiencing this perfection. I felt a hot white laser like light focused on the top of my head. As this light moved down my body, I revisited every trauma that I had ever experienced. For example, It slowly went down to my face. Suddenly I was myself as a child strapped down on a dentist chair having oral surgery. I saw the overhead light and felt the fear and pain. The laser light moved down to my heart where I reexperienced all of the difficult emotions that I’d felt in my life all combine in one powerful conglomerate. Eventually my personal traumas combined with the traumas of the world. When the light continued to move down to my solar plexus I suddenly experienced the pain that my grandparents felt being in Europe during World War II. That pain morphed into the pain of all wars in human history and I felt myself back in the Dark Ages. The pain was far too great so I forced myself out of bed thinking “that’s enough for now.”
When I came upstairs after these experiences I sat in a big cushy chair across from Ram Dass who was uniquely keyed into what I was experiencing. He said “Isn’t it beautiful?” as he pointed around the room but was actually signaling the whole universe. In that moment, something clicked for me. I saw the beauty of everything and how it was all part of this universal dance of oneness that we are participants in. I realized that we were truly spiritual beings having a human experience. Many of the wisdom teachings say “look within” for the answers and for perfection. Most of my meditation practice up to this point was eyes closed. I had associated the darkness and quiet of meditation with peace and the outside world with chaos and discord. After this experience I experienced the non-separation of true spiritual living. His gesture was enough to show me that when we see clearly, everything is sacred, everything is beautiful. (* I ended up writing a song about this experience which is linked below)
Go to India
When I was getting ready to leave Maui, Ram Dass, with a twinkle in his eye gave me a scroll neatly tied with a ribbon. He told me that if I present this at the gate of the ashram in Kainchi, India I would be granted admission and will be able to meet with Siddhi Ma who is the oldest living disciple of his guru Neem Karoli Baba. When I told others in the community that I could meet with Siddhi Ma they fiercely encouraged me to go saying “when you see her you will know exactly what to do.” Of course I couldn’t turn this down. Now this REALLY was the top of the chain. When I arrived in Mumbai I took a 12 hour journey North along the narrow cliff-side roads of the Himalayan mountains. After a long involuntary contemplation of death I got to the gates of the ashram where I presented my scroll to the gatekeeper. I told them that Ram Dass had sent me to meet with Siddhi Ma. “No problem, we simply request that you spend 9 hours a day praying with us over the next 7 days before you see her.” I still have the prayer book that we used. After 7 particularly long days I was led to Siddhis Ma’s chambers for our much anticipated meeting. She had a sweet and grandmotherly presence. She told me “You are protected and you will live a long life” and before I knew it, I was being ushered out of her quarters. I told the staff “I think I did it wrong. May I have another meeting?” They agreed to this but asked that I spend a week among the 7th-12th century temples in the sacred town of Jageshwar. At some time in the past, a tourist had left a guitar in town but no one who lived in town knew how to play it - but I'll spare you the story of how, for a brief time, I was the Dave Matthews of Jageshwar. I can’t tell you everything that happened that week but suffice to say that in America we don’t have anything from the 7th-12th century and there is a profound power to that kind of history and tradition that remains very much alive.
After an eventful week I returned to the ashram. This time I had a list of questions prepared for Siddhi Ma. I went down the list and she answered my questions with short and simple answers. Once again the meeting had ended right after it started and I was left in the same place that I had started. Meanwhile, other friends from Ram Dass’ community in Hawaii had come recently and had been given Sanskrit names and a place in the lineage in their meetings. Of course, I can’t say that I was too surprised or disappointed as I knew that I was never truly part of that lineage. I had gone to the top of the chain and there was no place left to go. The lesson was clear. And although there was no big bang, it was exactly what I needed.
Leaving other peoples worlds to start my own
One thing had been true about my life since graduating college. I lived as a visitor in other peoples worlds. Before working for Ram Dass I had worked for and with a series of bands, singers, cruise ships, retreat centers, and spiritual leaders where all I had to do was show up and every aspect of my life was taken care of. Most of them took care of my food, transportation, instant social life, and our day to day was paid for and my paychecks went right to the bank. In my travels I spent time with people who lived completely “off the grid” in the Hawaiian rainforests, billionaires, spiritual leaders, tech startup pioneers, and musical legends. These are people and things that I can’t unsee or un-experience. It was time for me to return and to take the experiences that I had and live them out in my own way. I had what seemed to be a great life without having to create anything and without having to assert myself or be who I was. To be fully empowered I had to create my own world instead of being an auxiliary character in someone else's. For me, it was the end of an era.
A few months ago I moved back to the town that I grew up in but because of my journey and my time with Ram Dass my perspective has completely transformed. But I am far from alone in this.
Ram Dass inspired many to go on their own journey of meaning and finding a new sense of self. Ram Dass was once removed from his post as a Harvard University psychology professor for facilitating psychedelic experiments with the graduate students. His collaborator in these experiments, Timothy Leary, was rumored to have said “I learned more about psychology from a few hours on psychedelic mushrooms than in all of my academic studies.” Ram Dass lectured on the benefits of these substances which have been misunderstood and vilified due to their misuse and abuse. Ironically, only now are psychedelics nearing FDA approval as an effective treatment for conditions like PTSD, anxiety, and depression. Ram Dass transcended boundaries as he was born Jewish yet he found his home with a Hindu Guru and shared teachings from Buddhist, Sufi, and Christian traditions. And right up to when he left his body, he led retreats where a new generation of creatives and seekers continue to be inspired and energized by him. Ram Dass was at the center of a cultural turning that during the 1960’s showed many people a new reflection of their timeless true nature beyond ego. He taught us the value of acting with a bigger picture in mind instead of our small and perpetually unsatisfied egos. The ripples from this movement have passed through the culture and through me and they continue to inform everything that I do. Thank you Ram Dass for being that symbol for so many of us. And thank you personally for allowing me into your wonderful world. It has changed mine.