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An Evening with Ram Dass and Gelek Rinpoche, Presented by Jewel HeartThe Spiritual Traveler
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 I
happened to see an advertisement for this event at the Jewel Heart
Store, in Ann Arbor, only a few days before it was to take place, and
asked the girl at the counter if any tickets were still available.
"Twelve dollars for the talk,
and a hundred dollars for the reception afterward," she replied.
"I'd like to do an article on
it," I said. "Is it possible to get a pass to the reception?"
She gave me the name of
someone else to contact, and, after being steered through the proper
channels, I was delighted to receive a free ticket for front seating,
as well as for the reception.
It was a Friday
evening. The Power Center stage was decorated with three
impressive Tibetan Buddhist wall hangings suspended from tall metal
stands. In front of these was a small table with a brightly
colored flower arrangement, a microphone, and single, leather
chair. I wondered, since the event was billed as a
conversation between two people, why there was only one
chair. I received my answer as soon as the speakers were
introduced and Gelek Rinpoche emerged, with Ram Dass accompanying him
in a wheelchair. Ram Dass was heavy-set, with long white
hair, a white moustache and dark glasses. He was dressed as
if for a walk in the woods, in brown courderoys, casual hiking shoes,
and a windbreaker. Rinpoche, a short, jovial, and energetic
figure, with nut-brown skin and short-cropped black hair, was dressed
in similarly casual Western attire of a predominantly mocha hue.
Ram Dass needed no
introduction for this audience. The life of the former
Harvard professor of psychology, Richard Alpert-collaborator with
Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, and Allen Ginsburg, author
of Be Here Now
and many other books-had assumed the stature of myth in American
culture. Gelek Rinpoche was a far less familiar figure to
most, despite his impressive credentials as a spiritual
leader. With his high, singsong voice, he acted mainly as a
foil for Ram Dass, gently cajoling the latter to share with the rapt
audience fragments of his dramatic life.
 "I'm
a strokee," Ram Dass began haltingly. "It means that I'm in
a wheelchair, but it also means that I forget words, which makes it
very hard to lecture. And if I forget the word, there are
periods of long silence. Now, you can use the silences…
Don't use them to wonder if he's going to get the word," he
interjected, jokingly, speaking of himself momentarily in the third
person. "There's a way of surfing the silence, the outside
silence… So why don't you join me, and surf right into the deepest
space within you, which is silent awareness…"
The simplicity of his words
and the humanity of his condition immediately touched
me. Closing my eyes, I felt myself going deeper and deeper
into the heart center, feeling the love within. I was so
happy with the silence that I really didn't want either of the speakers
to talk. I would have preferred them to simply remain on the
stage in silent contemplation.
Eventually, however, Ram Dass
picked up the thread of his life experience, and began to talk more
easily:
"Mushrooms and LSD showed me
another reality than the one I had been taught was the true reality,"
he said. "Aldous Huxley gave Tim Leary and me the Tibetan
Book of the Dead. And we used that to model the psychedelic
experiences. Here I was having these experiences that were
at the edge of ecstasy. And they were something so real for
me… And I said then that they were like home…
"Aldous handed me this book,
and right in the middle of the book was a description of the acid trip
I had the previous Saturday… And I started to read the Tibetan
literature and the Hindu literature, and they were like maps of my
consciousness... Here we were using these chemicals, these plants, and
we really didn't know what to do with them… I was a
psychologist. The drugs, the mushrooms, the LSD experiences
didn't correspond to Western psychology. If I took a 'trip'
on Saturday, and then gave a lecture on Monday to my psychology class,
the most important thing was what happened to me on Saturday, and yet
it was not my role to give that to my students…
"It was in the late
'60s. They were laying my mother's stone at the
cemetery. I had been in India… I came there dressed in a
potato sack, with a beard, long hair, and beads…lots of
beads. My father was on the board of his
temple. The rabbi had never seen someone who looked like
this. So after the ceremony, the rabbi took me by the elbow
and propelled me forward. He said, 'What have you been
doing?' So I proceeded to tell him about my trip to India,
and my guru, and miracles…all that sort of thing. We were
leaning against two tombstones. Then he said, 'I went to
theological school, and I was reading the Bible. I had taken
two No-Doz tablets, the book fell away, and the scene was
there. I was in the middle of it. I was right
there…'
 "I
said, 'You must have shared this with your congregation.' He
said, 'No. I've never told anyone but you. I
didn't tell my wife. I didn't tell
anybody. That's a mystical experience, and I am a priest of
a folk religion…'
"So, here the man's role forced him to skirt his mystical experience
with his congregation… I was born a Jew, a conservative
Jew. But I never, ever felt that teaching gave me any
purchase on my spirituality…
"After the mushrooms and the LSD, I tried to figure out what was going
on with my consciousness. So I went to the East because I
felt if they had these maps, they must have readers of the maps, and
some of these must be true. So I went to India…
"My guru was the first person
I had met who unconditionally loved me, because he recognized my Soul,
and didn't recognize that I was a professor, and all of that stuff… And
he believed in reincarnation. That meant that I couldn't NOT
believe in reincarnation…
"My life had taken a
turn. I was going along the high road of the Western
academic business. When I went to see my guru, I stood back
from the rest of the people who were around him the whole
time. And I thought to myself, 'I'm not going to touch his
feet, because I don't touch people's feet. And not two days
later, I was angling for his foot… I was jealous of people who had his
foot. I wormed my way to the front row, and I put my hand
out…and he pulled his foot back under the blanket. And it
started a whole thing… I don't know what happened in me that impelled
me towards Spirit… Tim Leary was charismatic, but he never felt the
same push…
"From the time I met my guru, Maharaji, I felt that he was blessing
me. He showered grace on me, because my sadhana, my
spiritual path, was through the guru's blessing. When I was
driving down the street and would find a parking space, I would think,
'Aha, he's watching over me.' That was the level of grace on
which I was focused.
 "Then
I had the stroke, and I said, 'My guru must be looking the other way,
because…this is grace?' But it was a spiritual path from the
time I got the stroke for about two months after
that. 'Maharaji's grace… Stroke… Maharaji's grace…
Stroke. I put these two things together.
"I was so used to having
Maharaji's grace. Everybody around me was thinking, 'Isn't
that terrible… Ram Dass has had a stroke.' Stroke… Grace…
Stroke… Grace… Stroke…
"There was a period of about
two weeks when I felt a flickering of my faith. That was a
very cold period. That lack of faith was terrible for
me. Then I started to put the two together. The
stroke made me much more silent. Silence is space for
God. But I ended up calling it terrible grace. I
would say 'He is wielding his terrible grace…'
"By thinking of it that way, there was room in my consciousness for my
guru, Maharaji. And he became my companion. He
died a long time ago, but he was an imaginary companion-a wise,
compassionate, loving, humorous, rascally companion. That
companion helped me deal with the stroke. Now I go to stroke
conventions. The stroke has put me in touch with those
people. And those people need my faith…
"I was writing a book on
aging. And my editor said, 'This is shallow'. I
was 65, and I figured "I'm feeling age, but I'm not really an aged
person. She must be right.' And I thought, 'What
can I do that will put me in the position of an old person in this
culture?' And just then the stroke occurred. I
was taking care of my father, who was 90. All of a sudden, I
looked at my hand. It was his hand. I was walking
like him. He would sink slowly down in his chair, and he
would say, "Ahh… There we are!"
"When I was in Nepal, an
American sat down at our table at a restaurant in
Katmandu. He was going to walk through India and visit
Buddhist temples. And I said to myself, 'I'm going to go
with this guy and walk through India.' It was dark out, and
the stars were so close. My mother had just
died. And I thought about her. I had a new Land
Rover, and the guy said, 'Wouldn't it be nice if I could go and see my
guru in this Land Rover. His guru would have connections for
him to get a visa, since he wanted to stay in India. I was
so Buddhist then. He was going to see a Hindu. To
me, Hindus-all they were was day-glo paint and stuff. I felt
like I'd been hijacked. I didn't want to go. I
didn't want to go…
 "We
arrived, and he greeted his guru. I was standing
back. I didn't want to have anything to do with
it. This old man who was his guru looked at me and said,
'You came in an expensive car.' I said,
'Yes.' 'Will you give it to me?' he asked. I had
seen fund-raising before, but this was ridiculous. And this
young fellow was looking at his guru and said, 'If you want it, you can
have it.' And I was steaming…
"The guru sent us out to get some food, and then he brought us back and
sat down. Then he said, 'You were walking under the
stars. You were thinking of your mother.' I was a
psychologist, and that just blew me away. He busted my
mind. And then my heart…
"I looked right in his eyes, and I realized if he knew that, then he
knew everything. He was looking at me with such love, loving
such as a one as me… And later they said that he had
arranged for the whole meeting. He had sent the young man to
get me. He had arranged it all…"
Ram Dass ended his remarks at
this point. There followed a number of questions from the
audience. A young man asked if it was necessary to have a
guru. "There are only so many gurus," he
observed. How could there be enough to go
around? Both Ram Dass and Gelek Rinpoche were very
diplomatic on this issue. "The guru is only one path," Ram
Dass replied. "And there are so many paths." At
the same time, Ram Dass admitted that he was saying this with
trepidation.
I felt strongly that both Ram Dass and Gelek Rinpoche were being
diplomatic. I could understand that they would not wish to
imply that those people who did not have a guru were not on a genuine
spiritual path. And yet what other conclusion could one draw
from listening to Ram Dass's life story?
It also seemed to me that there were many assumptions behind the
questioner's feeling that there were not enough gurus to go
around. Perhaps there were more gurus in the world than he
assumed there were. Or maybe some gurus were able to serve
large numbers of people, rather than merely a handful. And
then, how many genuine spiritual seekers were there in the
world? Certainly not everyone was meant to find a spiritual
path in this lifetime.
 It
occurred to me that I might ask Ram Dass whether he felt it was
necessary to have a living guru. Clearly, he still felt an
attachment to his own guru, who had passed on many years
ago. He used the memory of his guru as an imaginary
companion. But I wondered if an attachment to a departed
master could take the place of a living Master…
It also occurred to me that I might ask Ram Dass if he was a guru
himself, but that seemed a tactless question to ask.
Then I put the two questions together. If Ram Dass were a
guru himself, he would have no further need of a living Master…
After the talk, I loitered in the reception area. There was
an expensive buffet. They wheeled Ram Dass in and placed him
in the center of the room. Most of the people continued
chatting amongst themselves or helping themselves to the
buffet. Only a few stood waiting to talk to Ram
Dass. I was the last in line behind three or four
others.
When my turn finally came, I approached Ram Dass, gently took hold of
his left hand, and looked into his eyes. It was like looking
into the eyes of another Soul, pure and simple. They were
simply two magnetic orbs that held my gaze. I couldn't break
that gaze or avert my eyes. It would have been like turning
down a beautiful woman's invitation to dance. The smile on
Ram Dass's face broadened, and suddenly he sighed
deeply. The exhalation of his breath reminded me of the
Hindu belief that all Creation was accomplished merely with the
exhalation of God's breath…
It was immediately clear to me from gazing into his eyes that Ram Dass
was his guru's successor. Whether or not he chose to
acknowledge it, his guru had placed this mantle upon his
shoulders. Not only had Ram Dass's stroke mirrored his
guru's grace, but also his guru's grace had hit him like a
stroke. It had been bestowed upon him in no less of an
abrupt and incomprehensible manner. I thought of the
puzzlement, the bewilderment that Ram Dass expressed about the fact
that he had turned to the spiritual path, while his colleagues, such as
Timothy Leary, had not. But no matter how much he might
wonder at the fact that this state of consciousness had been bestowed
upon him, it was a fact.
"The ego thinks it makes
choices," Ram Dass had said, in answer to a question from the audience,
earlier. Whether Ram Dass had made a choice, or simply
accepted a fate that was laid out for him, his was now the bearer of
the same love his guru had bestowed upon him. He was the
prisoner of that love, and the bestower of that love. This
was his sadhana, his spiritual path, the labor of his life, and the fruit. |
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Date Submitted:
1/2/04 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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