In this recording from a 1992 retreat, Ram Dass talks about dealing with change, using the stuff of your daily life to get free, and how your karma defines your dharma.

You can support this podcast, listen to episodes AD-FREE, and receive regular guided meditations from Ram Dass & Friends on our Patreon. Sign up for a free 7-day trial: patreon.com/RamDassPodcast

Ram Dass Here & Now is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/ramdass and get on your way to being your best self.

This episode of Here and Now is from a talk Ram Dass gave during a retreat at the Omega Foundation in 1992.

• Beginning with quotes from the great poets Kabir and Rumi, Ram Dass talks about how you start to work with each thing in your life as a method, as a practice. What you’ve got in life becomes what you work with, so your karma defines your dharma.
• Ram Dass brings up the constant changes we’re dealing with in terms of ecology, politics, and how living in “interesting times” can be seen as a blessing instead of a curse. “In dealing with these changes that are going down,” he says, “part of the real art is to look at what is changing and see how your identification with that which changes is creating so much fear in you that you’re pushing against change.”
• Continuing with his exploration of change, Ram Dass brings aging and death into the mix. He digs into dealing with changes to the body as we age, and how his work with people who are dying is really work on himself. “For me,” he says, “each act becomes part of the awakening.”

The Ram Dass community gathers regularly to engage in meaningful discussions about the podcast. We invite you to join us and share your curiosities, insights, and wisdom. Sign up for the General Fellowship to receive event invitations directly in your inbox.

“And what you do is you just start flipping and taking what you’re given and start to work with it. In other words, your karma defines your dharma. That means what you got is what you work with. I mean, like, my baldness is my karma. I mean, it’s my genetics, it’s everything. Now, it becomes my dharma. Now, I can use it in order to become free of being bald, or being not bald, or whatever.” – Ram Dass

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this recording from 1978, Ram Dass reads stories about his guru, Maharaj-ji, and his many miracles. We invite you to set aside your analytical mind and simply enjoy these miracles of love.

You can support this podcast, listen to episodes AD-FREE, and receive regular guided meditations from Ram Dass & Friends on our Patreon. Sign up for a free 7-day trial: patreon.com/RamDassPodcast

This episode of Here and Now is from a recording of Ram Dass at the Lama Foundation in June of 1978. Here, he reads stories from the manuscript of Miracle of Love, which would be published about a year later.

• Ram Dass begins by reading one of his own stories about Maharaj-ji, which involves a dead bird coming back to life. This was one of many experiences that overwhelmed Ram Dass’ analytical mind.
• Next, Ram Dass reads a series of stories from some of Maharaj-ji’s oldest devotees. He dealt with each person in a unique fashion and would often touch places of the deepest love within people.
• Ram Dass slips in a story about another great Indian saint, Ramana Maharshi. He then turns back to Maharaj-ji stories, focusing on miracles around food. Maharaj-ji said, “We have an inner thirst for food. We don’t know of it. Even if you don’t feel you could eat, your soul has a thirst for food.”

The Ram Dass community gathers regularly to engage in meaningful discussions about the podcast. We invite you to join us and share your curiosities, insights, and wisdom. Sign up for the General Fellowship to receive event invitations directly in your inbox.

Sponsors of this Episode:

Ram Dass Here & Now is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/ramdass and get on your way to being your best self.

This show is also sponsored by Magic Mind, a matcha-based energy shot infused with nootropics and adaptogens designed to crush procrastination, brain fog, & fatigue. Get 60% off your first subscription to Magic Mind with our link: magicmind.com/ramdassmf

“You see why it’s peculiar to live in a culture like India, where all of these events are sort of like everyday occurrences. In the villages we live in, in the mountains, every family has dozens of these stories, and they just sit by the fire of the evening telling them. To come back to the West, where these stories are thought to be ‘miracles,’ is very confusing sometimes, difficult to integrate.” – Ram Dass

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaking across the decades from the 1960s to the 2010s, Ram Dass shares his thoughts on the feeling of love and the path of the heart.

Ram Dass Here & Now is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/ramdass and get on your way to being your best self.

This episode of Here and Now is a compilation of Ram Dass speaking about love and the path of the heart across the decades:

• We begin in 1969, with Ram Dass talking about Maher Baba, whom he calls the personification of pure love. He describes a particularly powerful LSD trip where he gained insight into the true nature of love. He says, “I now conceive of the fact that falling in love means like falling into a bathtub of love.”
• We move on to 1979, with Ram Dass addressing the Christian Community of San Francisco. He describes the different stages of falling in love and talks about the devotional nature of the path of the heart. “And that’s one of your predicaments,” he says, “that when you really fall in love, it just opens and opens and opens, and you just don’t know where to hold on anymore.”
• The next stop is 1986, with Ram Dass touching on conditional love and the deprivation model we’ve been working with all our lives. He digs deeper into the different stages of love and talks about the need to give up the deprivation model. He says, “You change from the deprivation model to the model where there’s an abundance of [love].”
• We fast forward to the 1990s, with Ram Dass reading from the I Ching about the path of love and the path of the heart. He talks about how we are hungry ghosts who get addicted to the method of love, but all methods are traps. “And yet,” he says, “the bizarre thing about methods is they don’t work unless you get trapped.”
• Finally, we end in 2017, with Ram Dass telling a delicious story about loving everything, including a rug with spots on it. He talks about how judgment is in the mind, but love is in the heart. “I don’t judge,” he says. “But if I do judge, I love it.”

The Ram Dass community gathers regularly to engage in meaningful discussions about the podcast. We invite you to join us and share your curiosities, insights, and wisdom. Sign up for the General Fellowship to receive event invitations directly in your inbox.

“Now, if you look at in the sense that, in the usual way of, ‘I fell in love with this person, there’s another way of seeing that, which is this person is a stimulus, is something in the world that was just right in a key sense to release us into the place in ourselves where we are love. And we say, as a result, ‘I am in love with you.’ Another way of saying it is, ‘You turn me on to the place in myself where I am love, where I can’t get to without you.’ Now we’re talking about you being my connection to that place in myself where I am love, where I can’t get without you. And then I want to hold on to my connection, just as any good junkie would like to do.” – Ram Dass

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.