Living Yoga

The Value of Yoga in Today's Life

Swami Satchidananda, Sant Keshavadas, Rabbi Joseph Gelberman, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Ram Dass, Br. David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B.

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367026097
• eBook ISBN: 9780429676963
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

The talks presented in this volume, first published in 1977, were originally delivered during a retreat in New York, in which speakers from a variety of spiritual traditions were represented. It aims to show the value of yoga in everyday life, and its relation to many other religions and philosophies.

Ninth Day

Honoring Siva

Ram Dass

So far on the retreat there have been, among the guest speakers, a Hindu singer and saint, who is also a married man; an American who, though raised a Christian, has become a Hindu and a renunciate; a Rabbi with a background in pshychotherapy, and another Rabbi whose songs and stories come directly from the heart. It has been not only a mixture of different traditions and temperaments; each of the speakers himself has had a unique blend of unexpected features.

The same is true of the present speaker: Ram Dass. Certainly he has a background none of the other speakers have, and one which many retreatants identify with. Probably it would be best to say, not that he represents a religious tradition, but rather a secular tradition, a background independent of all the faiths represented here. And this too was part of the ecumenism of the retreat – that spiritual life is truly universal, embracing not only all faiths, but also those who do not identify with any particular faith.

Ram Dass of course used to be Dr. Richard Alpert. He had been an academician and a psychologist, a colleague of Dr. Timothy Leary at Havard University. That period of his life could be called his first “incarnation.” The second came when, along with Leary, he began experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, first within the academic context and then (when expelled by Harvard) independently. This period is interwoven with the whole period of the 1960’s, a period of massive experimentation, mostly (but not entirely) on the part of youth, with drugs of all kinds – but particularly with drugs which seemed to promise to open up new areas and levels of consciousness.

For many, this experimentation was really a search for spiritual reality, and like many Ram Dass became more and more aware that this was the real quest. He himself has written about his own odyssey in his book Be Here Now, in which he came to his third (and present) incarnation as the result of a trip to India. It was there that he met Maharaji, who became his spiritual teacher or guru, and upon his return to the West he himself became a transmitter of those teachings.

Ram Dass (as he is now called) has been teaching in America off and on since his return from India in 1970. He still has much of the appearance that one associates with the 1960’s: long hair, colorful clothing, and mellow vibes. He speaks in the language of the youth or counter culture, a language that is a mixture of words that come from East and West, a language that draws upon words from drug experience, Hindu mythology and philosophy, Western science and music. As a result of all this, many people find him an ideal conveyor of yogic teachings, spoken in a language they can understand and identify with, and with an unmistakably American point of view. For unlike Swami Nirmalananda, who became a Sannyasi and a renunciate, Ram Dass has returned to this country to develop a purely American brand of Eastern teaching. In both you see the mixture of East and West, in different ways and in different proportions; both seem to be providing a living synthesis between East and West, which is what ecumenism, on its largest scale, is all about.

In his talk, Ram Dass goes over much of the ground of his recent history, describing the evolution in his own attitude and understanding of Yoga and spirituality. In particular, he relates his own shift from a preoccupation with Raja and Jnana Yoga (the Yogas of meditation and analysis), which he had always assumed were the “higher” Yogas, to an appreciation and practice of Karma and Bhakti Yoga (the Yogas of selfless action and devotion). As many newcomers to Yoga share Ram Dass’s earlier prejudices, his description of his change in attitude was really a valuable sharing by a man who considers himself to be more our “older brother” than a guru or “father.”

Namaste. Just our being together here is such grace. So much blessing for one birth. Last evening, Hari described how, as Larry, despite a sore leg from a fall during a morning ritual under LSD, and despite the subway ride, and despite the fact that nobody would join him to go, he still found himself going to hear Swami Satchidananda in New York City, and he said, “He was already working on me – that he could overcome my tamasic nature to get me to go through all that to get to him.” Certainly we cannot believe any less of this moment, that forces are afoot in every one of our lives that bring us here. It is not by chance that we happen to meet. It is interesting to examine that “chance occurrence,” because it’s certainly easy at the moment when it’s all beautiful to say, “What grace, what a blessing. Certainly the guru is smiling upon me, to have allowed me to have satsang again.” The reason it’s worth examining is to see that the concept of an over-riding plan can become such a dominant theme in our consciousness, that when the drama changes, when the melodrama gets heavy, when you’ve just fallen from the tree, you can equally say, “What grace. Oh, thank you.”

Swami Ramdas is reported to have said, when he had been thrown out of a temple one night and had to sleep by the riverbank where the mosquitos were particularly fierce and thus he couldn’t sleep at all, “Thank you, Ram, for coming in the form of mosquitos to keep me awake so I could remember You.” In the Ramayana, in the Tulsidas version, there are two places where Ram makes it very clear that unless one honors Siva one cannot come to Ram. Now Ram is an incarnation of Vishnu, generally connected with the preserving and maintaining and very loving and supportive forces of the world. Siva, on the other hand, is often associated with the chaotic or destructive or unpredictable or what are often called the malevolent forces in the world. Ram says, “Unless you honor Siva, you cannot come to Me.”

There’s a temple right at the very tip of India. It’s where Ram did puja to Siva before going across to Ceylon, to Sri Lanka, to rescue Sita, His wife. It’s interesting to reflect on what it means to honor Siva. It’s so easy when you get high in a situation, whether it’s satsang, meditation, or whatever, and you say, “Oh, I feel the presence. I am being given grace.” But what about when you’re despairing and you don’t feel the presence? Do you think that that’s any less grace?

Last night Hari said one thing which I guess I disagree with, a sort of attitude which he reflected. He said he guessed he was doing Karma Yoga a lot because he was too gross to do any other form of Yoga. Now I must say that I shared that opinion about Karma Yoga. When I went to India the last time, in 1970, I went in order to meditate – in order to “get holy.” I had been lecturing and teaching in America and doing whatever my hypocritical poor light would allow, and my own hypocrisy overwhelmed me and it drove me back to the feet of my guru. I was just drunk for satsang. I just needed it, I was hooked, I needed to get back to my connection. And my plan was to check in with him, get his blessing, and then go to a cave which he would bless me to do – this was my mind – and there I would sit and I would meet Babaji and I would meet Buddha and I would meet Christ and I would hang out with the astral team, and they would give me all the secrets and maybe I’d go north to the edge of Tibet and I would get some deep teachings from the Tibetans. And I would take deep meditation practices on various visualization exercises. I might even be walled into a building for three years, three months, three weeks, three days, three hours, three minutes and three seconds. I thought, “Now when I come to America the next time, boy is it going to be different. I’m not just going to be a phony Yogi, I’m going to be the real thing.” And I went with the group that was together at that time. I went to Bodh Gaya, where Buddha got enlightened. It seemed like a good place to start because, you see, I couldn’t find my guru – he was off being “irresponsible” somewhere, as he is wont to do!

So I went to Bodh Gaya and there was a meditation teacher there who was teaching Southern Buddhist meditation. So we all enrolled in these 10-day courses and we took a series of them. It was very intense and very austere. We learned how to cheat and how to cut corners but it still was pretty fierce. And there was no doubt that some headway was made in that meditation. But after about four of the courses I could see that the slippage was increasing considerably, and that the thing that was missing was that my heart was very dry in that situation. I couldn’t open my heart. And just at that time I was invited to Sivaratri with Swami Muktananda in Delhi and I thought, “Wow, a good Siva festival. That will really get me moving again.” But I didn’t want to just walk out of the meditation, ’cause I felt, “Now that’s kind of a cop-out. Here I came to meditate and I’m walking out to go dance and sing like any sloppy Bhakti would do.” So I entered into an arrangement with the meditation teacher; I found out where he would be up in the mountains for the summer for the monsoons, and we went and made a survey. We went up there in advance and found another house that would hold three people and we rented it, fixed up the house, put a new roof on it, new water system, got the house all ready, and I arranged that when he went off for the summer, three of us would go and we would be with him, and we would get all this intense training in meditation. So I thought, “Well, as long as I organized for it and prepared for it, now I can go dance and sing. I can do my sort of sloppy stuff now, ’cause I’m really going to do the work later.”

Well, on the way to Sivaratri it turned out that we met Maharaji, my guru, and in my puffed-up pride, I said to him – you know, like the good little boy reporting his work – I said, “I’ve arranged for this teacher, and this house, and I’m going to meditate,” and I told him this whole story with a question mark at the end, like, “Aren’t I good?” or “Isn’t that wonderful?” or “Isn’t this just what you want?” And his answer was, “If you desire it.” (laughter) Well, that left me hanging. Cause what he was saying was, “If you want to go ego-tripping, go ego-trip.” Now, I couldn’t understand that. What self-respecting guru would say that meditating was ego-tripping?

That seemed like the height of profanity, yogic profanity. So I thought, “Well, he’s just a silly old man, and he doesn’t really understand, and maybe he’s saying something much more profound that I’ll understand only later, after I’ve meditated. So I’m going to do it anyway.” I said, humbly. (laughter)

So when the time arrived, I went up there. I was so happy to get this place, because up until then, everywhere I had gone, there were always Westerners. After all, you don’t go to India to hang out with Westerners, Western consciousness. And I was always hanging around Westerners, who were looking to me for something or other – which seemed absurd. I mean, they go to the well to drink, and then they’re looking to polluted water they brought from the city. It’s so bizarre. But there’s a certain culture shock in India, and it’s nice to have something to cling to, and I was sort of it. So, I went to the mountains, and I was so happy, I was finally away from all of “them,” and that draggy feeling of having to be with them, and answer, and deal with that stuff all day. And I put away all the musical instruments, and all the Bhakti schmaltz, and I was going to settle down for serious business that was going to bring me to God.

Got the set of the mind?

Well, when I arrived there, within about two or three days, Westerners, other than the three people who had been invited, started to trickle in. First three, then five, eight, then eleven, till there were about twenty others. And I said, “What are you doing here?” because I thought we were hiding out, and we had kept it really secret, and they all said, “Well, Maharaji sent us. He said, ‘Go be with Ram Dass.’” (laughter) So we took over a hotel in the town. But I stayed up in the house, with the group up there, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with the people down there. I said, “Look, if you’re in the town, that’s up to you; I’ll come down and visit every week but that’s all. I don’t want anything to do with any of you. I’m here for serious business.” Well, then another week went by, and the teacher didn’t show up. And a letter comes from him, saying, “Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, I will not be able to come this summer.” Now I could see whose big hand was behind that! (laughter) There wasn’t any doubt about that. So we arranged to take over the Gandhi Ashram in the town. We all moved in and we ended up having an ashram for the summer. We all disciplined ourselves. We read the Ramayana and fasted and meditated and lived in silence. We had a very profound, good summer together. It was a very beautiful, holy place.

And now the next component in that training program that is in answer to Hari’s point last night, is that when I got to India this last time, when I was with my guru, he said, “Who’d you like to see while you’re in India?”

“Well, I’d like to see Anandamayi Ma, the Mother. To have the darshan of the Mother, wow, wow.”

He said, “That’s good, who else?”

And I said, “I don’t want to see anybody else, just you.”

So he said to me, “See Lama Govinda.”

“Lama Govinda?” I said. “I’ve already seen Lama Govinda. He’s a very nice man. He’s a good German scholar. He’s a wonderful Lama, and that’s lovely, but you know ...”

But he said, “See Lama Govinda!”

So that was that. I kept stalling, but then I heard that Lama Govinda was going to be leaving for Dallas, so I went over to visit him.

Just to put a little flesh on the bones – just to give you a little feeling for the Divine Play in the whole dance – let me tell you the story in the rich way rather than the bare bones way. Because the means and the end are one. So there’s no conclusion to anything I say. It’s just like hamburger, it just keeps coming out. We had included a picture of my guru and Lama Govinda in Be Here Now, and also in the picture was Li Gotama, Lama Govinda’s shakti, his wife. She had taken the picture on an automatic camera. And we had cut her off in the one we had used in the book, and since we were not acknowledging anybody’s contributions in the book, we didn’t acknowledge that she had taken the picture. And since all her pictures had stamped on the back of them – taken by Li Gotama – we knew she might have a slight investment in this matter. And I expected to get a little flack from her about this when I should see her. Now there was an additional matter – that Lama Govinda had written a letter to an editor of Newsweek in Chicago who had photostated it and sent it on to me, in which he said, “These Westerners go to India and they take the first guru that comes along, they’re so hot to get a guru. Take Dick Alpert, he went and he got hooked up with the second-rate mind reader ...” So now, I figured, if Li Gotama gives me any trouble about the picture I will discuss second-rate mind readers, but otherwise I won’t do it.

So I’m not going to just start out. I have a little thing in storage. All loving, you understand. All yogic love – it’s just the social dance. So the time came for taking pictures, which it does at most of Lama Govinda’s scenes and I said, “Well, I’ll stay inside, you go ahead.” And Li Gotami says, “No, you’ve got to be in the picture too. I’m going to get back at you for ...” And I thought, “Uh-oh, she just did it.” So as we were standing, posing for the picture, Lama Govinda and I, with some other people, I turned to him and said, “Do you really think he’s a second-rate mind reader?” That’s all. And I just looked right at him. Well, he went through the change and realized that he had just been had. And he lit up and we looked at each other with total love. We had just broken through all the formalities and from then on our relationship was totally joyful.

So that evening the three of us sat together after the other guests had left and his mind was beautiful. It was like an exquisite crystal – like a beautiful jewel – very clear mind. He represented to me the kind of meditative Jnana Yoga – the intellect and meditation aspects of Yoga – which to me have always been the manly, tough forms of Yoga, as opposed to the Bhakti and Karma things which are what you do if you can’t do anything else – if your mind is too gross to do anything else. So I said to him, “Lama Govinda, what is it you want me to do? Do you want to me go and study, do visualizations? What is it you’d like? Maharaji sent me to you. He must have sent me to you for a teaching. I now take you as my teacher. Tell me what to do next. I can go on with my Southern Buddhist meditation. Or go into Northern Buddhism. I’ve been very interested in the Ningma Pa. And I can go on with my Padma Sambhava mantram, or what do you suggest?” I sat as a seeker.

And he said, “No, you don’t understand at all. I’ve looked at your book and all that. Your path is the path of the heart. Your heart is opening. It’s all happening to you. You don’t have to do anything.”

He said that and I wouldn’t hear it. I said, “Oh, I know all that, but tell me – what should I do?” Because you certainly couldn’t assume that you don’t do anything. You know?

And he said, “No, you don’t understand. You’re doing your path already.”

Now, coming from him, it was incredible. It’s one thing if a Bhakti says, “Oh, go be Bhakti.” You say, sure, he’s protecting his own investment. But when Lama Govinda says that, he’s got to go against everything he ever talks about. So, in a way, it was incredible that Maharaji would send me to Lama Govinda to get him to tell me that my Yoga was Bhakti. So I began to reassess Bhakti Yoga. It took on a new dimension for me now. It was going to be made respectable.

So later, when I was sitting with Maharaji, I would say to him things like, “Urn, Maharaji, um, how do you awaken kundalini?” I mean, just a question in the passing of the day. And he’d say, “Feed everybody.” Feed everybody? I’m ready fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Introduction to the Series
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• First Day
• Second Day
• Third Day
• Fourth Day
• Fifth Day
• Sixth Day
• Seventh Day
• Eighth Day
• Ninth Day
• Tenth Day
• Glossary