The Game Of Awakening

So what I see is our predicament, our position is: that we understand that everybody has to go or nobody goes. We don’t want to start a polarization again. And yet it is very evident to me that there is a shift in collective consciousness—which you could call a new paradigm or a new way of perceiving reality. And it means that people are starting to meet, whether you want to call it by whatever level on other states of consciousness or as soul to soul. Are you here? I’m here. And, in a way, the technology of the Information Age just speeds up the whole process. Because virtual reality and this reality all become just two realities after a while.

So now I see in the culture is a ripeness for starting to live from more than one level of consciousness. And what I saw was that as I extricated myself more and more and kept working through the boundaries of my consciousness, the way I saw you changed. I went from seeing you on channel one and two and then I kept going and going and going. But I looked at you, and at first I saw you as her or him or them. And then I looked at you and I saw that we were all interdependent—interbeing, as Thích Nhất Hạnh talks about it. And I said, “You are us. We are us.”

And then, flipping the consciousness once more, I look and I see you are me. And then I see that any suffering you have is like a splinter in one hand. And I pull it out with the other finger, and this hand doesn’t say to this hand, “Thank you.” It could, but it doesn’t usually. Because they both recognize they are part of one thing. That’s compassion. See, compassion comes when it’s your suffering. It’s not their suffering. Kindness comes with their suffering—and righteousness, and guilt, and pity, and all the rest of it. But the compassion where you go from “I do a compassionate thing” to “I’m a compassionate person” to—and this is where the emptiness comes in, where that going from soul into awareness comes that ultimate dying—then, at that point, compassion is. Suffering is and compassion is, and there’s nothing personal about it.

It’s interesting. People come up and say, “Thank you for… blah.” I feel like saying, “I’ll tell him if I see him.” You know? It’s interesting. You must have the same predicament. Every human being does. You are walking through a web of projections of other people’s minds as to who you are and who they are, and they are trying to get you to reassure them that their costume is on straight. So you see me as who I think I am, and I’ll try to see you as who you think you are, and we’ll make believe this is real so we won’t frighten ourselves.

When you wake up into soul awareness, you look and you see people coming along deeply mired in their identity with who they think they are—with their role, with their personality, with their needs, fears, hopes, joys, da, da, da, da. And you play with them in the world they live in, but you’re also available if they’d like to say, “Ha, ha, ha! Doin’ well, aren’t I?” See? It’s interesting whether your consciousness allows other human beings to come out and play. You can go into a city and say, “Oh, there’s nobody here that’s spiritual.” All you’re doing is mirroring your own consciousness. When you’re spiritual, it’s all spiritual. When you’re resting in soul, what you see is souls in drag. And you enjoy it. You enjoy the dance. You appreciate the beauty of the manifestation. You look at your own aging as a set of events that are going to be all your curriculum for becoming more conscious. And as you become more conscious, and live less in time, and are more aware, at least in balance to the amount that’s busy aging and losing and everything. Then the fear changes, and then a whole other dimension (which you could call love) is free to come in.

Aging can be an absolute groove in this society, as it is in other societies. It’s too bad we should lose it. And it’s going to be a lot of us that are going to help make that different, I think. And as we do, so will all of the social institutions of which we are a part change. 

I was talking to a friend who works in the White House, and I said, “Is there anybody in the White House that’s reflective? Is there anybody that’s contemplative?” I mean, I wasn’t looking for a job, but I was, is there… I mean, usually kings have wise persons around them who don’t have any line role, they’re just there to keep the vision, to keep the integration going. And the guy said, “What are you, out of your mind?” He said, “This is like being in a Vietnam foxhole.” He said, “It’s hardly a time to meditate.” I dispute that, but that’s alright.

But I would say that—in watching the recent debates between frick and frack—that the plane of consciousness that politics has been played out is basically over. It’s basically over. People see through it too much. That’s why nobody votes. And that’s a very interesting moment, isn’t it? I find it interesting. I find it interesting that the culture is becoming so obsessed with death, with assisted suicide and Dr. Kavorkian, with suicide, with capital punishment, with abortion, with violence in the streets, murders, the O.J. Simpson trial. It’s an interesting moment when the games that we have been playing about death aren’t working so well.

What I have seen in this approaching millennium is that I just as soon use the thing of what is going to change. There was a moment I had with John Seed, the deep ecologist—beautiful man who’s done a lot. He’s an Australian. And I said to him, “John, you know so much about the world and the trees. What’s going to happen? Is it too late?” He said, “Yes, Ram Dass. It’s too late. The inertia of the destruction of the rainforest, the balance of values is too one-sided. It’s like beings rushing towards the edge of a cliff.” So we were quiet as I pondered that nice new information. And then he said to me, almost under his breath, “It would take a miracle.” I said, “Aha! What kind of a miracle?” He says, “Well, don’t underestimate us. We came up out of the water onto land.” “Aha, that kind of a miracle.”

I’ll tell you what the miracle is. The miracle is the miracle of consciousness. We have finished our reductio ad absurdum of consciousness into being something of the brain. We have opened to the possibility that there are other frequencies we exist on, there are other identities we have; that we are much richer as those beings that stand between earth and heaven than we give ourselves credit for. And the minute the setting changes enough, then everybody begins to recognize it, because everybody has in us all of the clues we need to acknowledge these planes of existence, were we not busy denying them. In other words, you see yourself as ego, soul, awareness. And as you begin to awaken into soul, you see how much the ego has been denying your own beauty and ignored so much information. And then you get to rest in soul, and then you start to feel the yearning to merge with God. The poetry of Kabir and Rumi and Hafez.

So you and I are here on Earth. The basic game is 'The Game Of Awakening'. The basic game is the game of becoming a free awareness. Because that free awareness is capable of being an instrument for the freedom of others.

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 worked through his own.

https://drive.google.com/file/ram_dass.mp4