Rest in the Timeless - Ram Dass 1992

Riding the Waves of Change

• Ram Dass uses surfing as a metaphor for navigating life’s unpredictable and powerful changes. The key is learning to respect and align with these waves rather than being overwhelmed by them.

• Different cultures experience these waves differently. For example, post-oppression Czechoslovakia is embracing individualism, while in the U.S., rampant individualism has led to alienation and a renewed turn toward community.

Global Cultural and Environmental Challenges

• Western philosophies—especially free enterprise, materialism, competition, profit motive, and anthropocentrism—have been exported globally, often creating suffering and cultural homogenization.

• Examples include Guatemalan refugees entranced by consumer advertising despite hardship, and remote Polynesian islanders absorbing foreign TV shows irrelevant to their reality.

Environmental and Social Crises
Ram Dass enumerates urgent global issues:

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a great Delight to introduce uh ramdas to you um he is one of the most uh outstanding figures one of a handful of people who is a a ring leader and adventurer and sharer of Consciousness in the movement of Awakening in America and in the west uh in a spiritual fashion for the last several decades after his uh departure from the the role of Professor of psychology either I would say an Ascension from that role even though he was uh asked to leave um he began uh a a journey um as a leader of the movement of uh re Research into

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psychedelics in human consciousness um both at Harvard itself and at ha Ashbury um and then traveled on to India to meet a guru and do years since that time of very deep practice in Hindu and Buddhist traditions and always in doing so he has brought his humanness to these adventures and returned back with the stories for us uh to know and to participate and to invite us into these Adventures of Consciousness he reminds me of the uh words of Mahatma Gandhi who spoke he said Gandhi said I have only three

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enemies my favorite enemy the one most easily influenced for the better is the entire British Empire my second enemy the Indian people is far more difficult but my most formidable opponent is a man named mandes K Gandhi with him I seem to have very little influence rhas has gone on adventures inwardly and outwardly to Asia and and uh spiritual Retreats and back again in every form of spiritual practice in the west transformed himself brought back the stories of his own difficulties and learnings and lessons in the most human

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way um and in that fashion become a gift every time he presents to those who listen at the same time he has also been deeply involved in the work of service uh working to found the sa Foundation that uh is uh whose work is to end blindness in Nepal he works with the homeless in the streets of the cities of North America Works in a project with the Guatemalan Indian refugees and in all of these he plays with the great vision of how to bring spiritual practice alive in our own bodies and hearts and Minds in this time his most

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important gift perhaps is his heart and the ability to speak to people and embrace them and invite us all to inspire us to join him in this journey of Consciousness in the heart so I'm pleased to welcome ramdas this evening good evening I'll start slowly because and remind me if I lose that thank you Jack I didn't know you thought all that about me most of the time he said most of the time he said I uh I first want to express very deep appreciation to Stan and Christina gra I think that they're bringing us together

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in this lovely city for this sacred purpose is a um it's a great gift it's Grace and uh I feel like I'm part of Stan's integration of his past in his present and I'm part happy to be part of that so thank you Stan and Christina I was in Prague last year and for the first time and I was so fed by the sense of um expanding potential that I felt uh standing on the bridge or being in the gardens or walking in the square and and uh I went home from that very fed very fed and when Stan called

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about this conference I uh I said yes before I even knew what he wanted because if we could do it in Prague he had me I titled this lecture uh riding the waves of change because um in the past year or so I've taken up surfing and um uh in surfing I actually use a boogie board which is a shorter board and everybody out there is 20 years old and then there's me and uh but I've learned the relationship between uh me and the wave and I've learned to have a healthy respect for it and I realize the bigger the waves

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the more you have to f find just the right way to be in relation to the wave so that it doesn't do you in and that seemed an appropriate parallel to the world at this moment and our predicament we are enjoying the last decade of the Millennium in a way none of us ever expected I use the word enjoying guardedly because actually it's scaring the hell out of most of us because the changes that are occurring are so vast and rapid and unpredictable and on the edge of chaos and there is a sense of

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inevitability about these changes it's interesting to talk to an audience that is so heterogeneous in the cultures from which you come because different cultures are riding different parts of the wave so that here in Czechoslovakia where there has been so much oppression the wave is the breaking out and the individual coming forth and the joy of individualism in my country in the United States individualism has been run right into the ground it's been run into total alienation and it's been run to the

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point where we are just at the turning point where we recognize that when we threw out our web our Network our community in the Zeal to be more individual we threw out something we really needed for the sustenance of our hearts and so now we turn towards Community both of us here in Czechoslovakia and the United States are experiencing extraordinary change but they are at that level anyway going in very different directions but there are also and more profoundly I think than these pendulum swings there are big waves that embrace

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all of us and one of the um waves I'm so aware of is the way in which my country and the other highly industrialized nations are exporting a whole philosophy and mythology into the world the um free enterprise is obviously inspiring but along with it Go a whole set of conditions and one of it is the need to create markets and I I'm very aware for example I work with Guatemalan refugees in Mexico we have three refugee camps these are refugees who fled Guatemala after violence incredible violence and we were these people are

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living very much like slaves in the sugar cane plantation and one of the camps did not have electricity yet at the stage when I went to visit one of them we had already succeeded there was electricity and water in it and the third one had also electricity and water when I went to the first camp where there was no electricity the people were very quiet very connected to the Earth as Sunset came somewhat depressed OB obviously away from their Homeland living with great hardship I went to the second camp and

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there was light and there were children playing and there was a different spirit I went to the third camp and when we drove in nobody met us surprised us we found them all in a room looking at a television set and they were looking at a television set that was showing a advertisement for a kind of fashion soap here a Mayan villagers who have fled the violence in their country have barely enough to eat and when we walked in they couldn't even turn to acknowledge us they were so transfixed in absorbing the

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desirability of that bathroom soap and you knew that you were part of creating suffering right at that moment part of the creation of Desire systems and recently this year I was in the maresa islands in the South Pacific in an island in French Polynesia 6 M by 9 miles 12200 people who diet is fruit and wild pig and fish most of them over 80% have never been off the island and when I came into one of the buildings there was the television on which had just come in the past few years and there was a Los Angeles police

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show there was not a policeman on this island and I realized the depth of what was happening through the information age in terms of homogenizing a culture a world part of the dysfunctional mythology that is rampant in my country is one I've mentioned this focus on individuality then there's the focus on the material that is more is better whatever you've got if you have more it'll be better you'll be really happy when you have more then there's competition the idea that survival of

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the fittest is really the only law that's worth attending to then we have the profit motive that the prime Criterion of happiness is an increase in the gross national product and finally we have anthropocentrism that humans are where it's at and they control all of it animals the Earth all of it to I can't quite express to you how far I feel the whole process is gone I have one little story um I had a friend in Washington his name was Milton fredman now there is another Milton fredman who is an

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economist and my friend Milton fredman was a speech writer at one point in the White House and one day he received a telephone call caller said is this Milton fredman and he said yes the caller said I represent a church in California and we have a large Surplus in our accounts of money and we wonder if you could suggest how we should invest it to which my friend replied have you considered giving it to the poor to which the man on the phone replied is this the real Milton fredman to which to which my friend

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replied is this the real Church now the Litany of um of things that are changing so fast and we've been talking about them even for the past last day already but and let me just run through the list so you just let me punctuate each one by silence and not talk about it since you probably know about it as well as I do let me just mention it and just stay open to each one shrinking rainforests global warming thinning of the ozone layer contamination of the groundwaters of the land masses contamination of the

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oceans and the fish in the ocean increased air pollution and the resultant uh respiratory illnesses the inability to find a safe way to dispose of nuclear waste an extraordinary population explosion an increasing polarization between the poor and the rich with a smaller and smaller percentage being the Haves and a larger and larger percentage being the hav knots increased hunger and famine in the world increased number of refugees in the world who are fleeing economic political or ecological conditions increased inner city

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[Music] violence deepening racism and ethnic tension dramatically increased use of drugs such as cocaine crack and heroin an AIDS epidemic that is still being denied by most of the world and at which at this moment in many countries in Africa onethird of the pregnant women are HIV [Music] positive multinational businesses that are now the most powerful social institutions that have no moral and ethical responsibilities to anybody but to their shareholders those are the negative ones that I could

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think of I'm sure you could add president Havel in a um a letter that appeared in the oped section of the New York Times in May said the first Global Technical civilization has reached the limits of its potential the point Beyond which the abyss begins he talks about the history of all of this rooted in reverence for the rational mind from the Renaissance to socialism from positive ISM to scientism from the Industrial Revolution to the information revolution a Dawning recognition that this world of

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depersonalized objectivity is not our Salvation just to balance these dark lists just let me add the positive ones the end of the Cold War the breakdown of the wall the end of the Communist Dominion the lessening of nuclear tensions dramatically changed the growing environmental awareness despite the United States position in Rio the changing role of women technological leaps in life expectancy in ability to extend life expectancy ease of living unfortunately it's still for the few I've just had a dramatic

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example of the way technology is improving life I work with um the SAA Foundation which works with the blind in Nepal and India and we are involved in perhaps in helping the nepes become self-sufficient in iare and the Indians to do the same and to deal with Incredible backlogs in Nepal when we started working there were 200,000 people who were blind because of cataract which required an operation that took 4 minutes and at that time cost $5 in which the lens is cut the opaque lens is taken out

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the corny is stitched up and then the person is given these thick glasses and when they were blind in a very poor country they suddenly can see we started that in 1980 we built eyeglass factories we had eye camps we built hospitals we trained help the nepales become opthalmologists a whole system beautiful beautiful 12 years we've been at it similarly in India in Southern India now in the United States on the other hand when you get a cataract operation they cut cornea take out the lens and they put in a little plastic

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lens and they sew it up and you have 2020 Vision perfect vision no glasses to break no thick glasses that you can hardly see through that keep getting dirty in the fields none of that but only the rich people get those poor people get the thick glasses they go to work in the fields the glasses break the glasses get covered with the flax and the seed from the wheat the intraocular lens as it's called costs in the United States about $250 for an opthalmologist to get it the operation costs about

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$1,500 this past year we along with Arend I Hospital in India built an intraocular lens Factory in South India India that produces those same lenses to the same quality as the United States for $5 a lens right that means because it offended our sense of decency that the rich people should get the lenses and the poor people shouldn't and we will work that so that just as we work the hospitals in India and Nepal so that 70% of the patients are given everything free and it's covered by the

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ability to pay of the other 30% and they get better cabins in changing conditions as dramatic as these are how are you and I to respond I think most of us are appreciative that something's called for in us but we aren't quite able to figure out how to do it or what to do or how much to [Music] do many of us save our cans and bottles for recycling but is that really going to be enough many of us want to want to change but we don't yet want to change like I have a car it's an 18-year-old car and it was given to me

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by my stepmother before she died I love the car it's a nice car it also contaminates the universe now I'm a conscious fellow I speak about pollution what should I do I still have the car I don't want to have the car but I don't want to not have it either you may not be in those predicaments I find myself in them certain changes we can make easily because we see that we don't really give up anything and we get something in return but there are deeper changes kind that David stendel was

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talking about this morning he talked about crises where you come to you come to something that doesn't work anymore those are the ones that are interesting about how we deal with those changes most people in response to intense changing conditions get frightened and when they get frightened they do a lot of interesting things first of all they hold on tighter to what they have they start to Res change they go into denial to make believe nothing's happening I do all these things too they try tokenism like bottles and

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cans as things get worse they go into depression despair anger these are the sequences that people go through as they start to deal with ch conditions that are changing when they get frightened and what happens to a large number of us is we get more conservative there is an increase in fundamentalism in Ultra nationalism in ethnic Prejudice in VI ultimately in violence in order to hold on to what you have and if you look at the have and the Have Nots of the world you see it incredible destabilizing condition in which at some

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point the have knots no longer say it's wonderful that you have it we'll wait for the trickle they say enough already and then something changes we can feel the breath on our necks we can feel the imminence of profound changes in all of our Lives we can't even begin to imagine them the question I ask you is where can you and I stand in relation to those changes in such a way that we can not be instruments of exacerbating the problem but rather could be instruments for transforming a transformative process

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that is gentle that is loving that is [Applause] compassionate some changes it's just simply enough to give people information and to the extent that there's no much pressure on them they will change for example in New Mexico in the United States the government has built a huge $800 million hole in the ground to put nuclear waste but the problem is it hasn't successfully met environmental safety standards but there is tremendous pressure to get rid of the waste it's like you being

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constipated and there's only a certain amount you can take so the government was trying to make believe everything was all right and they were overriding the environmental safety concerns so my colleague ji and they were going to transport the nuclear Wass through all the main highways through from all the different places in Washington state and Savannah and so on so he stood on a corner in Santa Fe with a sign and it just said during rush hour just one person and he said imagine a nuclear

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accident here just one person stood there photographer from the paper took a picture went on the front page people started to gather pretty soon hundreds of people were involved pretty soon every business had a sign saying stop whip the waste experimental project and until environmental standards are met and the government in Congress was stopped cold everybody said aren't we wonderful might and good and right one then the government said look if we stop whip you're going to lose 2,000 jobs in a depressed

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economy now it's a whole different ball game now it's a battle of Goods against Goods so you see that information was sufficient until people's economics were on the line then it was a whole different ball game now um for the kinds of changes that are required of us not only do we have to change our behaviors but we have to go deeper than that David B said a change of meaning is required to change the world's politics economics and Society this change of meaning must begin with the

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individual it was the same topic to which David stendel spoke this morning I would like to propose that whether or not you are part of the problem or part of the solution depends upon who you think you are let me spell it out when I when I say the question who do I think I am I'm reminded of this story of Nas Ruden the Sufi um crazy man Mystic I got this story from Jack cornfield one and the Sufi nus Ruden goes into a bank and he's very disreputable he to cash a check and the teller says studies the

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check he says the check looks fine and then he looks at Miss Ruden who looks terribly disreputable and he said uh but uh do you have identification so NZ Ruden reaches into his pocket and he pulls out a mirror and he says yep that's me who you and I think we are is that sort of yep that's me but it Bears a little more interesting examination until 1961 I was quite certain that who I was was who my parents had told me I was I was somebody I was Richard I was good I was an achiever I had another of other

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characteristics in other words I was identified with my personality I was also a professor I was a chist I was a pilot and I enjoyed all those identities as well in 1961 I took psilocybin the psilocybe mushroom and to put it very simply I found out I wasn't who I thought I was that who I was was much more interesting than who I thought I was and I would say that for the past 30 years I have been growing into what I learned that first experience what I learned I could convey to you through uh an image that I've

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used often which is that of television channels since most of you are familiar with television television receiver dial selector right here next to your eyes set it on channel one and you look at me and what do you see you see an attractive elderly gentleman you see a physical entity when that was my primary identification when that's who I thought I was was my body As I Grew bald I grew a long piece of hair that I wound over here because the image of me bald was unacceptable because my identification

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with having hair was so powerful that I had to be aware of the where the wind was all the time and sort of now let's switch to channel two now you look up here and what do you see you see a warm vibrant uh intelligent sensitive um lecturer um mild manic depressive um and so on in other words you see my psychosocial identity right that's my ramus and and you and I have many roles within those particular theater pieces um you don't keep one rle if you're a truck driver and you're in

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bed you don't say I'm a truck driver you are called upon to fulfill other role most of us have a lot of horizontal costume changes we go through every day now let's switch the dial the next one this is now right now starts where the psilocybon kicks in okay the first two everybody's got that's what you would train to and that's all real and you would train so well into those first two that you would train to ignore all the information from everything else in other words all the

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rest of the channels were treated as static and you had a receiver which received two channels that's what you got in this karmic deal now let's shift to channel three you look up here and you see an Aries you see an archetypal figure you see a Mythic [Music] identity you see a Seeker after truth whatever those are you see the bigger than life scenarios which are all the part of our uniqueness as individuals it's called the as Asal plan in one system now I have a just a lovely story

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to share with you about the astral plan after I had been in India for some time I came back to the United States and I was practicing because once you understand what you're trying to do you're trying to live to learn to open to these different channels and integrate them so I was spending a lot of time in those days on the astral planes and at one point I had an old old car that I was driving across the United States and I was sitting in the front seat that was a very heavy old limousine and I was driving on the New

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York throughway and I was doing um a mantra with my beads and I was saying the names of God different names of God and I'd spend a day on each name you know each name they're all the same name it's just different strokes for different folks and so one day I was working with Krishna this particular day and Krishna is blue he's always characterized as a blue being playing a flu so I was doing Krishna Krishna Krishna har Krishna har Krishna Krishna I was going along about 40 m an hour one leg tucked under me and

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I was this going to be a twoe trip across the United States and I suddenly was aware in my rearview mirror of a blue flashing light so I I knew I mean I hadn't lost the other two channels so I knew it was a State Trooper a policeman and I pulled over and he came up to me and I rolled down my window and he said may I see your license and registration please now if you've been singing to Krishna for about 10 hours and he's blue and a blue light flashes and then this being comes to your

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window I mean he not only could have had my license and registration he could have my life I mean this is like I mean you know Christ came as a carpenter how would they come now as a state trooper why not you know so he took my license and he checked the car and he called home and he did whatever policemen do and then he came up and he said you're going too slowly and um you'll have to drive on an ancillary Road another road now at this point I'm just looking at him with so much love because I'm having Daran of God I

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mean who he thinks he is is his problem it turns out that State Police very rarely are loved that way at least when they're in their uniforms okay so now he's got the problem that he's finished our business but he doesn't want to go away so he says nice car you have here which allows us to talk some more and finally he says after we he's run out of topics he now either has to admit that he's Krishna but if he wants to carry the charade all the way that's up to him and

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he says be gone with you which is not really stay true talk and he walks back to his car and as I drive away I look in my mirror and he's waving at me now you tell me who was that all right let's turn the dial one more now we tune into what the Christians call a soul you look into somebody's eyes and you see another being looking out at you are you in there I'm in here how did you get into that one and you see this soul that has been incarnated into a body a personality a whole psychosocial trip an astralite

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identity but it's another Soul just like you here we are you here I'm here it's far out great trip isn't it wow you come to Earth often now that's an interesting one because that one ceases to be quite as solid it gets more because they're you're used to focusing on people in terms of their individual differences and now you're seeing that it's another being just like you it has a different karmic DNA code but it's basically just like you and the the communication between

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Souls is not really at the level of conceptual intellect so much I'd like to share one of my favorite alltime stories just to convey the feeling of that plan I was invited by John and Tony Lily to swim with their Dolphins Joe and Rosie who were at a um tank in Redwood City California and a friend of mine and I came on a very cold gray day to these huge tanks in which these Dolphins were swimming my friend got into the water I my bathing suit on I was shaking with cold and in my mind was going through

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thoughts like what am I doing here why am I supposed to want to be swimming with dolphins right this is absurd I'm too old for this however everybody is standing around so I go I get into the holding tank and start to tread water now uh Everybody is watching around the tank to see how ramas is with the dolphins so whatever I might be feeling inside I'm smiling the first thing that happens is the dolphins go by me very fast and very close and they're considerably bigger than I expected they'd

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be after some time one of the Dolphins Rosie hovered I guess you'd call it right here and I thought what am I supposed to do now and a desire arose in me to touch the dolphin so I reached out and I touched the dolphin now I I know it's a mammal but in my because it's got a tail and all it's a fish and when you touch fish they swim away so I touched the dolphin and she didn't move and my mind said what I want to touch it again so I touched it again and ran my hand down and it was this silky

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silky skin it was almost all water it's just absolutely delicious and she didn't move and at that moment I became aware that she knew I was touching her and she was right there and that she and I were in this relationship and I knew that she wasn't thinking I'm a dolphin I'll let him touch me and at the moment of this awareness of her presence where I was running my hand gently down her back I let go of the analytic processes for a moment and I went into just a kind of an open

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ecstasy the minute I experienced the first moment of ecstasy Rosie flipped her body till she was upright in front of me and came towards me and I found myself holding her kissing her on the mouth and saying oh Rosie oh Rosie at this point Rosie started to insinuate herself into my body and I began to become aroused now everybody is watching what's going to happen with uses so I am smiling but I am thinking is this legal shortly after that she came around and came in under my arm and I held her

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Fin and she went down and I let go quickly so I wouldn't hurt her and then she came back in under my arm and I did that again and it's my hand slipped off and once again she came under my arm and what I wanted to do was put my hand around her belly and hold on but I didn't want to hurt her finally I did that and she started to swim wildly and I thought oh I'm disturbing her I'll let go and I floated to the surface and she immediately came in under my arm so I felt I was being

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trained so I just grabbed her around and we started to swim wildly through the tank after about 40 seconds the thought occurred to me Rosie you're a dolphin I am a human I need air the minute that thought occurred Rosie brought me to the surface immediately and I took a breath of air and then we continued our swim and for the next 30 minutes she brought me to the surface every time I needed Air at one point when she came to the surface usually we come up and I take in a big breath of air and then we go down

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again but people were taking pictures of ramas with a dolphin and I began to ham it up a bit um you know and at this point Rosie went down and I had no breath and I said well Rosie this is it between us at which point she came right back back up again just maybe 3 seconds at the end of 35 minutes or so I was so cold I was shaking but I couldn't stop the Ecstasy was so great and she shook me off and she went and got Joe and they both nosed me over the holding platform and forced me out of the

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tank now to me that's a story in which Rosie and I met at a place of intuitive heart connection that had in it a great deal of wisdom and it was when I let go of my analytic process for a moment that the connection was made um I just came across this article it said out of the tragedy and misery of the devastating cyclone in banglades came this story State Minister for the environment abdulal Al Naman told reporters that a dolphin took hold of a baby who had been swept out to sea at the Village of yukia by a tidal wave

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during the height of the April 29 Cyclone the baby was delivered back to shore 18 miles from yukia where people took the child from the Dolphin's mouth and took it to a district hospital where the infant was said to be recuperating isn't it fun now those are just I mean extreme examples of meeting another soul let's ship the channel just once more and now what you're looking at is yourself looking at yourself looking at yourself there's only one of it that if you extricate your

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awareness from your identification with channels 1 through 4 all that's left of you is is and is and is is just is you don't have more is than I have you don't even have a different is than I have call it awareness call it God call it presence call it whatever you want what things you could call it is love zen master yasutani said our true nature is beyond all categories whatever you can conceive or imagine is but a fragment of yourself hence the real you cannot be found through logical

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analysis deduction or intellect ual analysis or even endless Imagining the quality of that plane of reality if you would call it that and this is just a metaphorical system is that it has no time and no space in it it has no form in it and yet it is as much who you are as every other channel as you pull your awareness back from time so that you see time as a river moving and yet you rest in that which is timeless TS Elliot says we cannot stick to the moving finger of time on the surface of the sphere but must descend into the still

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point of the Turning world all of those PLS and many more but those are the crudest description all became apparent to me in that moment in 1961 although I didn't even know I knew them and since that all of my spiritual practices have been an attempt to open back up to the fullness of my being it's not like these higher ples of Consciousness weren't there all along I had just been trained to not know them those of you that have raised babies often see in the baby a spaciousness of awareness that then starts to get lost

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as the child gets socialized into somebody because we go into somebody training in my work with the dying which is something that I do a great deal of is sitting with dying people as they're dying what I find is that my work on myself in that process to constantly keep the spaces open of all these channels simultaneously allows me to see before me a person who has AIDS and is dying that's channel one and two usually but it it also allows me to see another Soul who is going through a journey

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different than my own and when we can meet in that place the person's fear that came from identifying with their bodies is alleviated in some degree because they recognize another part of themselves that has nothing to do with birth and death to me that is a treasure that one shares through one's being when Mahatma Gandhi was asked for a message to take back to a village he scribbled the train was moving out of the station and he scribbled on a paper bag my life is my message what you and I offer to the

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world and to each other is what we are and as human beings what we are is so much more vast than what we allow ourselves to be when I was a psychologist I had major neurosis [Music] major my analyst thought I was too sick to function these Neurosis were the kind that would appear as dark beings and they would possess me they would take me over against my will because I was good for example one of these was lust and I could be this beautiful spiritual being and through a concatenation of conditions something would come along

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that would call that neurotic characteristic of lust forth and it would slowly possess me and I would find myself saying wouldn't you like to come up and see my holy pictures and I was a Paul somebody recognize it as a result of the spiritual work of 30 years more and more I find that my what were once these monstrous Neurosis have turned into these small little Schoo like animals that when they come along I say oh I I haven't seen you in ever so long come in and have tea and I now see my neurotic

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personality characteristics as my style I had another interesting um moment about this business of holding tightly to any definition of a person my father was a very successful and um strong man I have 14 minutes and uh he um got very old and I uh spent many years taking care of my father until he died and as he got near 90 he started to get very quiet inside and since I was working on myself I just started to meet him on different planes than I had met him before and we would hang out as these old souls

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holding hands looking at the sunset prior to this time my father was an extremely active person and he and I only met through doing things and he always was very interactive so one man who had had a difficult time with my father came to visit and he came in and he said to my father Hi how are you doing and my father just smiled at him and this fellow walked out of the room and he said that's stinker he still won't talk to [Music] me then my aunt who loved my father deeply came to see him and she said George how are you

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and my father just smiled at her and she said oh what have they done to you where have you gone and she was miserable and it struck me as interesting that the fellow and my aunt were both miserable because my father wasn't who they thought he was and my father and I were both in ecstasy together because we had just moved into another way of being and what I've learned in being with other people is to not expect anybody to be anywhere other than where they want to be that's their karma but create an environment with

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one's mind so that another person can acknowledge all of their being through mirroring through your mind if they are ready and want to do so now I want to just use my last few minutes in presenting the heavier part of the problem I was with a an uh e thought ecologist John seed from Australia I was interviewing him for a television show and John was telling me about the rate at which the rainforests were being destroyed and the immensity of the whole thing that was happening and I said to him well where are we in all this

01:06:51
John he said the inertia is so so great now that to save us would take a miracle you know i' never heard it said so baldly we don't say this to each other I said that's pretty intense John John said well you know he said after all we were the ones that came up out of the ocean onto land you know we have quite a few miracles in our history don't underestimate [Music] us but what he made me realize was that all the time that I am sitting with somebody who's dying how about acknowledging the

01:07:50
possibility that I'm sitting at the death of my own civilization [Music] ation how do I react with denial with depression is it a a possibility that I can't let into my Consciousness WIA says that one that one is able to contain death the whole of death can hold it in one's heart gentle and not refuse to go on living is inexpressible I want us just to consider the POS possibility that until you and I have opened to the imminence of Our Own Death either personally or culturally we are being motivated by a

01:09:13
behavior of avoidance that is distorting the truth that we see and that if you are going to be a true instrument of the alleviation of suffering in the world you have to be able to look at suffering with open eyes with all of your stuff with your fear and all of it it says truth Waits For Eyes unclouded by [Music] longing if you and I are to be those people that can in the midst of change that seems almost chaotic have equinity have love have compassion and be impeccable in our actions because we

01:10:13
are quiet enough to hear our unique dharmic role if you and I are to be those people there is nothing that we must a that we can afford to avoid we must look directly with unblinking eyes at what is our vulnerability will come through our Distortion of perception when you have cultivated and balance the PLS of Consciousness so that that part of you that is not in time and space that is not born that does not die the formless out of which the form arises when you are resting in that equally as much as you are resting in

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your bodies and your personalities then you are able to handle the changes of your body and your personality because you are also resting in that which does not change if you are only identified with that which changes your fear about change is too great for you to be the optimum responder to bring about [Music] healing from the plane of Souls from the plane of awareness you look at the dance of life and you see it as a lawful unfolding including the suffering and the chaos and the changes and you say a

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so it is what it is even as at the level of social personality and at the level of body you are frightened and in pain and scared and [Music] empathetic when I reach out to a Guatemalan or a Nepali or Indian or an American Indian or whoever that that is suffering only at one plane is nice ramdas reaching out to help helpless person at another place it's no different than if this hand were in difficulty and this hand pulled it out it is me helping myself whose suffering is it Anyway first it's their suffering and

01:13:10
I'm helping then at another level it's our suffering because we're interconnected and then at another level it's my suffering because there's only one of it and pull back one more and there isn't suffering there's suffering and there's no suffering what is required to come into balance in these levels of consciousness is the ability to keep surrendering who you think you are into who you truly are [Music] and surrender is not seems like a big deal when you think what you're holding

01:14:01
on to is important later it will seem silly there's a story of a pig and a chicken going down the street and they are hungry and they see a restaurant that serves breakfast and they go up to the door and on the door is a sign ham and egg and the pig says I think I won't go in there and the chicken says why not and the pig says well for you it's easy from you they only want a contribution from me they want it all you and I are being called upon to offer it all into the truth of our being

01:14:58
this is the work that you and I must do we don't even really have that much choice because to the extent that you would relieve suffering you must find a way to be free of suffering in yourself lest your suffering compound the suffering of others you can't wait till you're free of suffering to help others so that you make the helping of others part of your practice to become free of suffering and you work for others as a way of working on yourself you work on yourself as a way of working on

01:15:42
others president Havel said who but politicians should lead the way for this except for he and the do Lama I find very few politicians I would expect to lead the way here now I think it is going to be the international ITA that will lead the way but for that to happen you can't just talk transpersonal talk you have to become transpersonal so I invite you to join me in the merry dance of perhaps sitting at your own death doing it with lightness with joy and as Brother David said this morning the austrians say it's hopeless

01:16:58
but not serious to look and keep death on your left shoulder to look and see the possibility it might all end and then from the quietness of your mind and heart to allow the compassion and appropriate action to arise out of you so that your action relieves suffering and that everybody you meet feels your passion and at the same moment your equinity your joy and at the same moment the way in which you bear everybody's suffering this is what you and I are called upon to do I can't think of a more interesting

01:17:51
curriculum can I do jubilate for 2 minutes or okay we're going to end with a song because David stas did one this morning a chant we're going to do a six part round you can learn it very quickly it's got only three words to it the first word is jubilate or jubilate means Jubilation the second word is deo which means whatever you'd like it to mean the third word is Allelujah which means Allelujah it's ah Allelujah okay and it goes like [Music] this [Music] huuah that's all there is to it okay now

01:18:50
we'll go really slow through it until you get it cuz it's [Music] easy [Music] hallelu repeat [Music] hallelu okay again with a little more firmness now [Music] J [Music] hallelu [Music] hallelu now we'll just pick the beat up and the energy a little bit all right and it's got to be a little sharper and clearer right here we [Music] go hallelu hallelu just once more crisper then you'll really have it just crisp [Music] so hallelu you've got it I think you've got it now um we'll divide in half and

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practice we're going to do it six parts but we'll start with [Music] [Music] two [Music] hallelujah hallelujah now [Music] ju [Music] hallelu [Music] Hallelujah hallelu hallelu [Music] great okay we're all set now all right we're going to divide across the middle of the hall here so uh this part here will be one and this part in here will be two and this part will be three and that part back there is four and that part back there is five and that part over there is six now a six would never be confused with a

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five everybody knows exactly who they are so it's 1 2 3 4 five six now you're going to sing your own part and I'd like to tell you that if you make a mistake it ruins it for all of us so while I don't want you to be nervous we will just practice once more till we have it just together once Je [Music] Hallelujah hallelu here we [Music] go [Music] hallelu hallelu [Music] hallel hallel [Music] hallelujah [Music] hallelu thank you than