The Wisdom of Ram Dass Is Now Online: Stream 150 of His Enlightened Spiritual Talks as Free Podcasts

[littlemissmartypants]

The Wisdom of Ram Dass Is Now Online: Stream 150 of His Enlightened Spiritual Talks as Free Podcasts

in Podcasts, Religion | September 4th, 2019

“Over the course of his life, it would appear that Ram Dass has led two vastly different lives,” writes Katie Serena in an All That’s Interesting profile of the man formerly known as Richard Alpert. By embodying two distinct, but equally influential, beings in one lifetime, he has also embodied the fusion, and division, of two significant cultural inheritances from the 60s: the psychedelic drug culture and the hippie syncretism of Eastern religion Christianity, Yoga, etc.

These strains did not always come together in the healthiest of ways. But Ram Dass is a unique individual. As Alpert, the Massachusetts-born Harvard psychology professor, he began controlled experiments with LSD at Harvard with Timothy Leary.

When both were dismissed, they continued their famous sessions in Millbrook, New York, from 1963 to 1967, in essence creating the laboratory conditions for the counterculture, in research that has since been validated once again as holding keys that might unlock depression, anxiety, and addiction.

https://art19.com/shows/ram-dass-here-and-now/episodes/08ca8009-fdef-4980-9c1c-6f330a075f83/embed?theme=light-gray-blue%22

Then, Alpert travelled to India in 1967 with a friend who called himself “Bhagavan Das,” beginning an epic spiritual journey that rivals the legends of the Buddha, as he describes it in the trailer below for the new documentary Becoming Nobody. He transformed from the infamous Richard Alpert to the soon-to-be-world-famous Ram Dass (which means "servant of god'), a guide for Western seekers who encourages people not to leave it all behind and do as he did, but to find their path in the middle of whatever lives they happen to be living.

Much more at the link.

http://m.newslocker.com/en-us/news/culture-and-media/the-wisdom-of-ram-dass-is-now-online-stream-150-of-his-enlightened-spiritual-talks-as-free-podcasts/view/

[dawg day]

1. I went to one of his talks when I was in college

My roommate was into his message.
I'm pretty shallow. I remember being most impressed that he kept the lotus position for an hour on that hard stage.

[Newest Reality]

2. Thanks!

Namaste!

Tashi Delek!

[littlemissmartypants]

3. Namaste! 😍❤

[marble falls]

4. My new copy of Be Here Now will be here today or tomorrow.

[littlemissmartypants]

5. Awesome! ❤

[Voltaire2]

9. Shouldn't it be there now?

[marble falls]

11. It should be but that's neither here nor now.

[Bretton Garcia]

6. I got his buddy Tim Leary to lecture at my college

I noted to him at the lecture that most of the ideas he claimed to learn from acid, were already in some books he had published before his trips.

Oddly, Leary gradually agreed. And denounced LSD for a few years.

As for any remainder? It goes to confirm that religion, drugs, and hallucinations, are often related.

I took some drugs while in college. But I don't advocate or romanticize them. And have my own theories on why they seem profound.

[littlemissmartypants]

8. Very cool! Where were you?

William James speaks to the notion of religious experiences as tied to insanity. I say one person's insanity may be another's religious experience. Joseph Smith and his 'visions' also support this notion, imo.

[Newest Reality]

12. Even deeper yet...

There have been the comparisons of ordinary life itself as being an illusion: Maya and its play Lela. We speak of reality as if it is something real, even when we may mean actuality, or what really is. The Hindu analogy about the illusion of this reality is the rope that is mistaken for a snake in a dimly lit room. When you see the rope, where is the snake?

That has a basis in the transient nature of things and when one gives more attention to that, things are in a constant state of flux, so on what do we base the concreteness itself? From the foundational aspect of physical science, to decay and the entropy of things, to our ordinary daily experience, everything changes and so, in that case, and without necessarily resorting to a baseless relativism, just what is really real in that case? You could even question the basis of materialism by pointing out that it is a metaphysical realism.

Then there are the eight classical similes of Buddhism in relation to reality, (which should be considered in terms of view, i.e., perspective) it is like:


A dream: like a dream, objects perceived with the five senses are not there, but they appear through delusion
A magical illusion: like a magic illusion, things are made to appear due to the temporary coming together of causes and conditions
A hallucination or trompe-l'oeil: like a hallucination, things appear, yet there is nothing there
A mirage: like a mirage, things appear, but they are not real
An echo: like an echo, things can be perceived, but there is nothing there, either inside or outside
A city of gandharvas: like a city of gandharvas, there is neither a dwelling nor anyone to dwell
A reflection: like a reflection, things appear, but have no reality of their own
An apparition (S. nirmita; T. sprul pa): like an apparition, there are different types of appearances, but they are not really there

In that case, there are various modes of experience based on comparison and discernment. And you could easily call this all as form of hallucination when seen from the view of clarity and insight. Some of the hallucinations are deemed true, others false. Some are "sane" and others madness. What was common or sane centuries ago, might not seem so now.

I would also note that you can go into the analysis of this in more depth, both conceptually and in meditation, which is what some Eastern philosophy actually does, and so, it often transcends our ideas about religion and spirituality and becomes more about realizing the direct nature of reality, or, Self.

I find it interesting when people subscribe to some idea of normalcy as mental health, when it is not only rare to find that in practice, but looking around these days, what is really all that sane about modern life? In fact, concerning normal, it is just a consensual agreement or an average, and not something real or tangible in any other sense. I would make a counter to James Randi's million-dollar challenge as to proof of the abnormal as, I will give anybody who can show me the proof of anything that is actually normal one-million.

And I am not putting down people with mental illness, but isn't it about being able to cope? I would say, no matter how severe, it is mental distress and the incapacity to interface with the mass hallucination that is the point and that would transform the stigma about not so normal mental states and experiences. And that comes back to the prejudice about the many kinds of thought forms that the mind can experience and conjure up in relation to accepted ideas and modalities that are even sometimes a matter of fashion or passing fads.

Of course, it makes sense that the bastions of sanity who define it would also have a vested interest in maintaining their agreed upon definitions in order to preserve them and, of course, for ulterior motives, power, etc. There are many incentives and you can find illustrations of that. To stray too far from those "norms" then places you in a predefined category that is then termed a pathology.

In the East at some points, when people had a breakdown it was considered a "spiritual journey" and they were cared for in ashrams, for instance. A different culture at a different time with a different view. And as far as the wheel of samsara goes, from Buddhism, it is safe to say that the human world, by comparison to recognition of nature, is a collective madhouse and history seems to indicate that for the most part.

Oops...that was a tangent! Woah!

[Bretton Garcia]

14. I studied many things in college, including religion

Last edited Fri Sep 6, 2019, 06:48 AM - Edit history (1)

But I favor the rational study of it.

No doubt it is partly true that our normal superficial experience of the world is often mistaken, subjective. But Hinduism say, never really used that and other insights, to develop enormously useful science and technology as well as the rational west. To see reasonably firm realities behind delusions.

So we invited/paid for Leary to come to Bowling Green Ohio. I knew he was vaguely spiritual, but also had some academic chops from Harvard. And at his lecture we all had a very good conversation with him on that, sometime in the late 1980s.

[guillaumeb]

7. Recommended.

I must confess that I have never read or listened to anything by Ram Dass, but I will.

[trotsky]

10. You recommend it without even knowing what he said?

[guillaumeb]

13. Did you condemn what the Pope said about climate chamge? eom

[Bretton Garcia]

15. We might thank the pope for embracing science; combatting climate change

But at the same time worry about the constant sins and evils in religion, and the church. Which always threaten to undo any isolated good things.

And we note that it is science that is good here; and that religion is only good when it gracefully gives way to science.

[guillaumeb]

18. Yes, we might thank the Pope. eom

[trotsky]

16. The pope is a hypocrite.

He speaks about doing things to combat climate change, but he won't change a teaching of his church that exacerbates the problem.

Pretty desperate you needed to change the subject to the topic of a totally different thread. Remember this the next time you start blabbering about "whataboutism" as merely being an attempt to change the subject.

[guillaumeb]

19. In a truly ironic twist,

it was actually you who pivoted to contraception. Perhaps you might want to reread that definition.

[trotsky]

20. Umm, not sure how to explain this to you...

but you changed the subject to the pope and climate change, and human population is part of that conversation.

Once again we see you hold everyone else to a different standard than yourself. No wonder you struggle to be taken seriously.

[Act_of_Reparation]

17. Hippie found God in a mushroom patch.

There. I just saved you several days of reading.