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Saturday, January 01, 2022

My Guru; Ram Dass

Disclaimer: In my Journey to self Awareness in this incarnation, as a part of my waking, the first person I was led to, who introduced me to this whole gig I now find myself in was Richard Alpert. My Guru, Ram Dass. I am not a believer or proponent of psychedelics, for the record. As did Maharaji Neem Karoli Baba, I believe that we can achieve enlightenment without resorting to chemical means.

Richard Alpert / Ram Dass


Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, a prominent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr. Timothy Leary. He continued his psychedelic research until that fateful Eastern trip in 1967, when he traveled to India. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means “servant of God.” Everything changed then – his intense dharmic life started, and he became a pivotal influence on a culture that has reverberated with the words “Be Here Now” ever since. Ram Dass’ spirit has been a guiding light for three generations, carrying along millions on the journey, helping to free them from their bonds as he works through his own.

Since 1968, Ram Dass has pursued a panoramic array of spiritual methods and practices from potent ancient wisdom traditions, including bhakti or devotional yoga focused on the Hindu deity Hanuman; Buddhist meditation in the Theravadin, Mahayana Tibetan, and Zen Buddhist schools, and Sufi and Jewish mystical studies. Perhaps most significantly, his practice of karma yoga or spiritual service has opened up millions of other souls to their deep, yet individuated spiritual practice and path. Ram Dass continues to uphold the boddhisatva ideal for others through his compassionate sharing of true knowledge and vision. His unique skill in getting people to cut through and feel divine love without dogma is still a positive influence on many people from all over the planet.

In 1961, while at Harvard, explorations of human consciousness led him, in collaboration with Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, and Allen Ginsberg, to pursue intensive research with psilocybin, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals. Out of this research came two books: The Psychedelic Experience (co-authored with Leary and Metzner, and based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, published by University Books); and LSD (with Sidney Cohen and Lawrence Schiller, published by New American Library). Because of the highly controversial nature of their research, Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary became personae non-grata and were dismissed from Harvard in 1963. Tim Leary and Alpert then went to Mexico, ate mushrooms, and went from being academics to counter-culture icons, legends in their own time, and young at that. For Ram Dass psychedelic work turned out to be a prelude to the mystical country of the spirit and the source of consciousness itself. Mind expansion via chemical substances became a catalyst for the spiritual seeking. This naturally led him eastward to the traditional headwater of mystical rivers, India. Once there, a series of seeming coincidences led him to Neem Karoli Baba and the transformation from Richard Alpert to Ram Dass.

In 1974, Ram Dass created the Hanuman Foundation, a non-profit foundation meant to embody the spirit of service inspired his Guru. The Hanuman Foundation developed the Prison-Ashram Project, directed by Bo and Sita Lozoff, which helped prison inmates grow spiritually during their incarceration and the Dying Project, conceived with Stephen Levine, which helped many bring awareness and compassion to the encounter with death. Also as part of the Hanuman Foundation, Dale Borglum founded and directed the Dying Center in Santa Fe, the first residential facility in the United States whose purpose was to support conscious dying. The Prison-Ashram Project, now called the Human Kindness Foundation, continues under Sita Lozoff in North Carolina and the Living/Dying Project, now a separate non-profit headed by Dale Borglum in the Bay Area, provides support for transforming the encounter with life-threatening illness into an opportunity for spiritual awakening.

Be Here Now, Ram Dass’s monumentally influential and seminal work, still stands as the highly readable centerpiece of Western articulation of Eastern philosophy, and how to live joyously a hundred percent of the time in the present, luminous or mundane. Be Here Now continues to be the instruction manual of choice for generations of spiritual seekers. Forty years later, it’s still part of the timeless present. Being here now is still being here now.

Ram Dass was a co-founder and advisory board member of the Seva Foundation (“seva” means “spiritual service” in Sanskrit), an international service organization. Seva supports programs designed to help wipe out curable blindness in India and Nepal, restore the agricultural life of impoverished villagers in Guatemala, assist in primary health care for American Indians, and to bring attention to the issues of homelessness and environmental degradation in the United States, along with other nations.

In 1996, Ram Dass began a talk radio program called “Here and Now with Ram Dass.” Seven pilot programs were aired in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, and Ram Dass planned to launch the show on a nationwide basis the following year, but it was not to be. On February 19th 1997, Ram Dass suffered a near-fatal stroke, which left him paralyzed on the right side of his body and expressive aphasia limiting his ability to speak, along with other challenging ailments. Though the radio show did not last, his Here and Now podcast (over 100 episodes) lives on today at Ram Dass’ Be Here Now Network.

The after-effects of the stroke once again changed his life, but he was able to resume teaching, writing and sharing his heart. In 2004, following a life-threatening infection, Ram Dass was forced to curtail travel and focus on recovering his health.

Ram Dass moved to Maui in 2004, and began hosting personal and public retreats and events for spiritual seekers, continuing his long-standing legacy of sharing his heart and life with anyone who wanted to access his teachings and his heart. He accessed people through weekly Skype sessions and through a vast library of his teachings hosted on RamDass.org and through social media, books, online courses and podcasts. 


For all Ram's Books and teachings, please visit Ram Dass BOOKS AND MEDIA

My Favorite Ram Dass 
THE VEIL


REINCARNATION, THE LAW OF ONE & BEING A (SOUL) HAVING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE

BEING FREE TOGETHER  

BHAKTI: DEVOTION AND THE GURU

THE MIRACLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

BEYOND SUCCESS

FIERCE GRACE

BECOMING NOBODY


Q'uo Channeling: February 20, 2016 (including the original video.)

Channeling disclaimer: 
This telepathic channeling has been taken from transcriptions of the weekly study and meditation meetings of the Rock Creek Research & Development Laboratories and L/L Research. It is offered in the hope that it may be useful to you. As the Confederation entities always make a point of saying, please use your discrimination and judgment in assessing this material. If something rings true to you, fine. If something does not resonate, please leave it behind, for neither we nor those of the Confederation would wish to be a stumbling block for any.




"Our question today has to do with the Creator’s will and individual free will. How do we reconcile the idea that we are individual portions of the Creator, imbued with free will when, as crystallized beings of positive polarity, we are said to be performing the Creator’s will? (Jim channeling)
[New Speaker]Q’uo

I am Q’uo, and we greet you in love and in light this day. As always, it is our great honor and privilege to be able to join your circle of seeking. We thank you for inviting our presence. We would, as always, ask that you use your discrimination for each word that we speak so that we may speak freely without worry that we shall infringe upon your free will, for indeed free will is that which we are here to discuss today, and we wish that your free will remain intact.

As you consider the concept of the One Creator, before creation was begun, before it was, you have neither light nor dark, shape nor shadow, time or space, you have infinity. This infinity is all that there is—there is nothing else.

Within this infinity—a vastness in every respect that you could consider describing infinity—there is somehow that first movement into a state of beingness which you could describe as being aware. This infinity then has begun to differentiate itself in a manner which is beyond understanding.

However, it is impressed upon us by our teachers that this infinity became aware of what you would call a desire, or a will. A concept was born then, that became what you would call a paradox or a distortion; a movement away from the completely unified nature of intelligent infinity. This concept of the will, that is exercised freely, then became interested in what it would be like to become more than it was. This was a contemplation of self; a determination by an intelligence within this infinity that there could be more than there was at this moment; that there could be an exploration of the nature of this infinity that is aware, that has a will, and may exercise it freely.

Thus, there was the creation of what you would call the one infinite creation; a reflection of the Creator, and yet different from the Creator in that there was many, an infinity of many; because of the Creator’s ability to consider the many, and to create the many, and to imbue each portion of the many with the same will, freely given and able to be freely exercised; that each portion of this Infinite Creator, this intelligent infinity, thus the creation, in its most primal form, was born; so that throughout what you would call the infinity of universes or creations, there were those entities that reflected the nature of the Creator.

These entities were what you would call stars or Logoi. Each Logos then had the ability to reflect the Creator’s infinite nature, and to pursue an investigation of the nature of the Creator as being infinite, as being intelligent, and as exercising that intelligence to discover more about itself—more than it was.

Each Logos then was also free in a similar fashion to create further extensions of the nature of intelligent infinity, and further extensions of each Logos’ self. The quality of being contained the unity of all within each portion of itself, so that throughout this infinite universe of Logoi there continued the exercise of free will to discover more and more the nature of the one creation, so that each Logos was able to create about it the equivalent or analog of itself in the form of what you would call planets revolving about each Logos in a certain circumscribed orbit—or relationship to the Logos and to each other planet, and in a less discernable fashion to all other Logoi and planets, and indeed the One Infinite Creator, or intelligent infinity, for we are still in an unified creation.

Further individualization of creation occurred. There were, upon each planetary sphere, the entities of earth, wind, fire and water, imbued with similar consciousness of self and the accompanying freedom of will. These being foundation characteristics of each portion of the one creation in its individualization to what you would call smaller and smaller reproductions of intelligent infinity. Thus, the process of evolution began to take place as the consciousness of the smallest amount of earth, wind, fire and water began to teach each other how to become sea, river, mountain, land, air that blows and burns incandescently in an untimed or timeless state. Thus the creation has begun, and within this creation, then, there is the movement of consciousness along an upward spiraling line of light from one level of vibration to the next.

At this time we would transfer this contact to the one known as Steve. We are those of Q’uo.

(Steve channeling)

I am Q’uo and am with this instrument. We would begin our communication through this instrument by asking this instrument and those here in attendance to place themselves within this upwardly spiraling light and to ask themselves who it is that is the one thus spiraling, and also to whom the spiral tends or goes.

My friends, the answer to the question in both instances is that it is you. It is you whose seeking enlivens the spiral with its livingness, its intention, its desire; and it is you who receives this intention, this desire as a gift. It is the gift of that which you call life, it is the gift of that primal movement which, coming through you, has its origin at a point beyond you, and has its destination at a point that also seems to be beyond you.

But you are constituted, both as whence and whither, within this bifurcated beyond. So it is true to say that you are both the created and the Creator. It is true to say that as the created you bear that which is your own, and if you wish you may call this your will. But it is also true that as the Creator you participate in that unlimited condition we have referred to as infinity, and infinity has to it intrinsically no limit that one would call a specific will. Yet, will that constitutes itself in the vast complexity of the creation, and that sees itself in distinction from other wills beyond count, wants always something more, wants always something unified, wants always something beyond limit, beyond count: wants infinity.

The point of difficulty for creatures aspiring to advance along the line of spiritual evolution is the question of discernment in which a determination must be made concerning: what of the desire to evolve belongs to mere creatureliness, the mere circumstances of the seeking of the individual, and what belongs to that which calls to the seeking creature, that which calls forth from the seeking creature, that which will fulfill the terms of the seeking.

Now, to put the matter in this way seems at first glance to be not very helpful because one does, after all, want to seek better, and one cannot begin to conceive what “seeking better” would be without a clearer conception of the criteria according to which better may be discriminated from worse. That would seem to imply a judgment about what is worse, and dependent upon that judgment a conception of what might be, by contrast, the better. Lacking any clear conception of what the better would be, one is merely left with a sense of the inadequacy of the present state of one’s being. Thus, the great spiritual aspiration continues and, my friends, we would say that it continues well beyond the level of third-density seeking into fourth, into fifth, into sixth, and, we are increasingly aware, beyond.

One does not have a perfectly clear conception of the destination of spiritual seeking. And lacking that one cannot say what it would mean to satisfy the criterion of clarity in seeking such that one could put a concept to the notion of what the Creator’s will in itself might be.

However, when you reflect upon all those many desires you have experienced in your lives, and when you have come to realize that desire upon desire has issued in more desire and more desire yet—and in such a way that it sometimes becomes clear to you that there is within the life of desire a distinction that emerges, cloudy at first but clearer as it goes, that some desires are more capable of eloquently expressing your beingness, more capable of finding pathways to creative expressions of that beingness—you can feel the beingness you are learning to express is less and less limited, more and more inclusive. You can begin to think of a trajectory of seeking that allows the will you are learning to channel from those root sources of your being to find a home or a destination that seems to converge with more eloquent expressions of what it means to be will.

And one finds joy when will learns to converge with other strands of will it finds in its immediate proximity. And one finds in this joy that one is spurred on to higher and higher aspiration. At some point it becomes possible to think a thought that seems to suggest a will that would embrace all possible wills: that is a thought, we would suggest to you, that one may call the Creator’s will, or, if you prefer, creative will itself, or perfect creativity in will.

And so one may then reflect back on all of the loose strands of willing—all of the stray and often lost desires that collectively mark out the life experience as you live it in this particular opportunity for living that has been afforded you in the incarnation—and you may give to yourself the gift of realizing that there is unity possible.

There is, my friends, in desire itself, a nisus 1, or an instinctual striving for unity. Love may enjoy the name of this unity at the point at which desire has found its direction. In many cases it would seem as if this direction takes the form of a specific object of that love, takes the form of the beloved. There are many things to love, and it is easy for the soul which is learning to find its way, to flit from flower to flower, so to speak, somewhat harder to discover that there is within a single flower enough reflection of the infinite to occupy a lifetime. One looks into the eyes of the beloved and what does one see but the Creator looking back at one. When the Creator looks back at the creature, the creature may begin to look creatively back at the Creator.

My friends, we would suggest to you that this is the golden moment. To the best of our ability to state the matter, this is the purpose of the creation: that the Creator be given the opportunity to gaze upon itself from a point of view that seems to be not originally present to the self. There is in this thought a depth that we have not plumbed, but there is in this thought a profundity that we have found most inspiring. Therefore, we will say to you that the question that you have posed today is one which is inexhaustible and which must be seen as relevant to the mystery to its very core.

The will of the Creator, the will of the creature, are, from the standpoint of the creation, ultimately not just two, but one; not just one, but two. We are aware that this is likely to be not a completely satisfactory answer, but we are also aware that when it comes to explaining the mystery of the creation, no answer can be completely satisfactory.

We are those of Q’uo and we would return to the one known as Jim in order to further address any queries that may remain upon the minds of those here. Adonai, my friends, Adonai.

(Jim channeling)

I am Q’uo and am with this instrument once again. We thank the one known as Steve for his fine service this afternoon and we would ask those gathered here if there might be a further query to which we might speak.
[New Speaker]Gary

Q’uo, you said of infinity that it discerned a concept which included the notion that there was more than it was, or that it could explore more than it was, and that it could engage in a contemplation of self. Thus was born through free will the creation.

A metaphor struck me that might help this situation make sense to our third-density minds and I would like you to comment on that metaphor. It’s almost as if creation is a daydream, or an act of imagination in the mind, so to speak, of infinity. Not precisely imagination or daydream as we might perceive it, but a self-animated daydream where each part within the daydream is invested with free will to choose its manner of exploration of many-ness, and its manner of awakening from the daydream to the truth.

In other words infinity initiates the daydream, and the daydream itself runs its own show, with each of its parts ending the daydream when it is ready and able to do so. Maybe similar to authors who write fiction where their characters kind of come alive and take on their own personality and their own course within the imagination of the author writing the fiction. Can you comment on this metaphor?
[New Speaker]Q’uo

I am Q’uo and we can, my brother, and would be glad to do so. We find it is an apt metaphor that indeed the creation can be seen as a kind of dream. However, it is not that which fades or dissolves with the coming of the day and the night in the cycles of both. For there is within all the creation—whether the entities of which we speak are large, such as the Logoi; smaller, such as yourselves; or even microscopic in your reality—each energy essence has not only free will, but has a duration of, shall we say, time through which the energy it has been invested with may be expended upon its own particular journey of seeking the One Creator from which it sprang.

Thus, each portion of the infinite creation moves in a cyclical fashion, a kind of rhythm, if you will, so that there is the ability and opportunity to expend the given energies in the process of expressing its own individuality, and then in blending that individuality ultimately with the One Creator once again, so that it is offered the opportunity to exercise its free will in any fashion which it chooses.

However, it is also the case that as an infinity of expressions are created by the infinity of entities in the creation, there is a pattern that is traveled through the densities so that when the spirit complex is added to the mind and the body in the third density experience, it is at this point that what you have called the giving up of the freewill of the small self to do the will of the Creator becomes a possibility.

And each entity which moves beyond the third density has, in some fashion, made this, shall we call it a trade, or an exchange, or an amplification, or a differentiation of the individual will given to it by the One Creator to once again then travel back to the Creator in a fashion which could be seen as an exercise of the will of the Creator.

Paradoxically, is there any other will to exercise? Thus all does begin and end in mystery.

Is there a further query, my brother?
[New Speaker]Gary

That was excellent, thank you, there is a further query, probably one of the single-most impossible questions to answer, and that’s the question of why.

There is this infinity which can’t be defined because it is everything, there is nothing outside of this infinity against which to compare it. This infinity discerns a concept and decides to create this vast illusion—intricate beyond our understanding, with its own internal systems and rules and illusions of space and time and entities, and yet it is an illusion; the infinity is [in actuality] whole, complete and perfect. It cannot be enhanced; it cannot be diminished; yet it creates this dream.

Mystics say of the reason for the dream is that it is sort of play, or pretend, even. Ra says that the Creator desires to know itself. Can we plumb any more deeply into the why of creation?
[New Speaker]Q’uo

I am Q’uo and am aware of your query, my brother, and we appreciate the thoughtfulness which has gone into it, for you are, indeed, delving deeply into the very fiber of the One Creator, and the creation. We would take somewhat of a small issue with you, however, in that when the creation was made, it was made in order that the Creator could know itself, could have an enjoyment in doing such, being playful as it is, but also with the hope that it could be enhanced, for this is the great desire of the free will within the Creator and within all of its portion in the Infinite creation. It wishes to know what free will can be able to produce, shall we say, by each of the portions it has created.

How can it become more differentiated when free will is given to an infinite array of entities? For if there were no creation, and only the intelligent infinity remained, and it was unwilling to do more than be, perhaps it would be infinitely bored. But, being playful and curious and intelligent, the One Creator made that which we call the infinite creation in order that there might be, as you say, the Maya, the game, the play; and in this play, all would be actors upon the stage at all times, and there would be many storylines, many experiences beyond imagination; and thus the Creator would learn, being the curious being as it is.

Is there a further query to which we may speak, my brother?
[New Speaker]Gary

When one attempts to think about intelligent infinity, there aren’t really positive concepts that can be applied; one runs up [against] the need to speak in negative terms about intelligent infinity. Intelligent infinity has no space to it, it is nowhere; it has no time to it, it is not young or old, it is no when; has no boundaries, it has no limits; it has no beginning, no end; it has no qualities; it has no subject and object. There is thusly no way to know it, for to know something is to compare it against something else. 2

Is there anything meaningful that can be said about what this thing, this intelligent infinity, is; what it was doing, so to speak, prior to its discerning of a concept of free will?
[New Speaker]Q’uo

I am Q’uo and am aware of your query, my brother. It is true, as you say, that the Creator, the One intelligent infinity has none of those qualities, but, paradoxically, it is also true that it has all of those qualities, for it creates them, and what was it doing before it created them? Nothing but being.

Is there a further query, my brother?
[New Speaker]Gary

A final query, Q’uo. This has been most illuminating, thank you. About being, you said: “What was it doing? It was being.”

Of what Ra calls intelligent infinity, mystics say that it is the I AM, and that is really all that can [ultimately] be said about it: it is is-ness, it is being-ness. Is there anything more meaningful that might be said about what beingness and isness is?
[New Speaker]Q’uo

I am Q’uo, my brother, and we would suggest that each entity, be it the mystic or the simple seeker within third density that has yet to expand its mind to include such queries of which you ask, may at some point approach an understanding of the One Infinite Creator. At some point, each individualized portion of creation shall experience the sacrament of the fully experienced presence of the One Infinite Creator and then shall be able to answer all of these questions for itself. That is the mysterious journey upon which each of you, and all entities, are engaged at all times, whether consciously or subconsciously. This is the play, this is the game, this is the one seeking the One through infinity and finding the One within the self.

Is there a final query at this time?
[New Speaker]Gary

Q’uo, I will take this opportunity then and ask: is it possible that the intelligent infinity may end, or conclude this particular experiment that started with three distortions—free will, love and light—and move on, so to speak, to a new experiment with new distortions that may be beyond any possible conceptualization of our minds?
[New Speaker]Q’uo

I am Q’uo and am aware of your query, my brother. Indeed, there are portions of the One Creator, various Logoi throughout the Infinite creation which, as the various densities or octave of densities condense into what you would call the “black hole” have done just as you have supposed would be possible, and further creations differing from your own are in motion, shall we say, at this time, and are enough at variance from what you’ve experienced that the intellect and the imagination would be staggered at their experience.

We thank each entity here within this circle for partaking in this wonderfully robust and exciting series of queries and questioning, and sharing and extending the self beyond the normal limits which has occurred this afternoon. We are most grateful to you for requesting our presence. We find these times of joining our energies with yours to be most exhilarating and meaningful for us, for this is our way of being of service to the One Creator in each of you.

At this time, we shall take our leave of this instrument. We greet each of you in the love and in the light of the One Infinite Creator. Adonai, my friends, Adonai Vasu Borragus.