tapes

This series, recorded during Ram Dass' 1989 summer retreats, has been one of the Tape Library's most popular offerings. Each tape is focused on Ram Dass' replies to.

The world of dualism is only one of the planes on which our consciousness exists. At the 1994 Marin workshop, Ram Dass spoke about the archetypal, astral and awareness planes which lie outside our normal waking consciousness.
"To 'be here now','" he said, "means to be here at every plane.

The 1999 retreat at Omega Institute was a rich smorgasbord of spiritual traditions, and offered an unusual opportunity to see Ram Dass' teachings reflected against the many paths and lineages represented by the other teachers.

The retreat at Breitenbush opened a very deep heart-space. Every afternoon there were talks and stories, questions and answers ... and every evening there were more stories and wonderful kirtan. The retreat also offered rich opportunities for exploring the silence and looking within; what that awakened was reflected in the deeply reflective nature of the dialog between Ram Dass and the participants.

This remarkable collection of tapes by Ram Dass was recorded at a workshop at the opening of Naropa Institute in the summer of 1974. It represents Ram Dass' core teaching on the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism's essence spiritual texts.

There is a perfection in our pridicament," Ram Dass says - In the way we chose our life circumstances to fulfill the Soul's curriculum.

In a program he gave just a few days before his stroke, Ram Dass talked about reawakening to the spiritual dimensions of our lives.

In this lecture at Naropa Institute, Ram Dass gave a clear articulation of the path of Bhakti Yoga - the yoga of devotion.

What is the process of aging all about? Perhaps it offers us an opportunity to re-balance what we've lost by being so buzy living out our outer journeys.

Caught in a cultural conspiracy to define ourselves only as separate entities, we ignore the messages coming to us from the other planes of our being. The challenge is to have a foot in both worlds, so we can be here but not be caught here.

A major misconception about spiritual practices is that they're supposed to get rid of the ego. Not so, Ram Dass says - the ego is our software for functioning on this plane; our purpose is only to free ourselves from thinking that that's all we are. But trust your heart, he says, because the beauty of a true spiritual journey is that it keeps unfolding from the inside.

Responding to a comment by one of the participants at a 1993 "Wisdom Heart" retreat, Ram Dass gave this lecture entitled, "If I were to Teach the Advanced Course."

In this wide ranging lecture, Ram Dass explores where "the gift of expanding consciousness" is taking us in terms of the way we lead our lives.

"Letting go of your individuality is meeting the Infinite," Ram Dass said. He talked about the practice of guru kripa, and about devotion as a way to approach the infinite through the doorway of the heart.

Maharajji once told Ram Dass..."You must speak only about God."

In the years since, RamI Dass tells us, he has been trying to find the many different ways of fulfilling those instructions.

Who you are was never born and will never die. Can you imagine really knowing that? What a difference it would make!

"As the blossom falls away when the fruit grow," the old self gradually vanishes. The cycles of reincarnation bring us back again.

Do we really want our lives to be transformed? Transformation is hard -- it involves change, and change is unpredictable.

In a program he gave just a few days before his stroke, Ram Dass talked about reawakening to the spiritual dimensions of our lives.

This album brings together four favorite Ram Dass tapes:
Being Free Together ... Since you and I spend so much time on relationships, wouldn't it be nice to turn them into a yoga for getting free?

There's our analytical mind... and then there's our intuitive heart. The mind is the instrument of our separateness, and the heart is the experience of our oneness - and Ram Dass reminds us that peace comes from balancing these two parts of our being.

At a conference on Integrating Ancient Healing and Modern Medicine, Ram Dass addressed an audience of physicians, nurses, and other health professionals.

Ram Dass reflects about the AIDS epidemic and the way it draws us to the very edge of the mystery of life and death.

Ram Dass responds to questions about the way we can manifest right livelihood in our lives, and "use our outer work as inner work."

In a day-long program sponsored by Interface Foundation, Ram Dass talked about our aspirations to awaken, and about our methods for re-experiencing the awareness of our unity.

Ram Dass says that in the '60's, mushrooms and Maharajji gave him the experience of multiple planes of awareness.

In a lecture to the Shivas Irons Society, Ram Dass talks about his experiences with golf as a spiritual practice for cultivating the Witness and coming into the present moment.

The soul enters the ego "like it's taking a ride at an amusement park," Ram Dass says. But then the enticements of the incarnation trap the soul in ego, and we forget the purpose of the trip.

We love novelty. We're fascinated by that which changes. But when the changes start happening to who we think we are - to our bodies, to our personalities, and to our thinking minds - our fascination turns to fear.

Is aging a loss? Or is it an opportunity to explore a new way of being, with ourselves and the world? There is a "curriculum of aging" that doesn't treat it as either an error or a problem.

Ram Dass speaks of aging as an invitation to savor life's experiences more deeply, to "turn them 'round in the light" and appreciate their profound beauty and mystery.

"A sage is one who has opened the gifts of love and death," Ram Dass says. Because aging is "the whitewater rapids of consciousness," we need to balance our doing with quietness if we're going to hear what the age-stage is all about.

For the second year, Ram Dass and Krishna Das presented an evening at the Inner Directions Conference. Krishna Das led the heart-opening Mahamantra chant and Jai Bhagawan. Ram Dass talked about facing our fears of aging and dying, and said, "I'm scared too!" But he said that there are pathways--things like kirtan and satsang--that can help to take us beyond our fears. This talk is a well developed exploration of Ram Dass' thinking about the relationship between ego and soul, and about the deeper implications of taking a Soul's view of the world of form.

This lecture is a gentle, reflective statement about the nature of living and dying which places aging and death into the context of nature's flow of the seasons.

"How do you meet someone behind the changing?" Change. The life of an individual, of a society, of a planet is a story of constant change. "But what if the changes get to be too great?" Ram Dass asks.

Ram Dass examines his spiritual path from a particularly philosphical perspective, contrasting the early renunciate path of avoiding life with the more Tantric approach of moving toward our stuck places and bringing awareness to them.

In 1979, Ram Dass was part of a two week long retreat on death and dying held in Yucca Valley, California. Near the end of the retreat, Ram Dass gave this lecture about the unfolding of the spiritual journey.

As the retreat drew to a close and participants prepared to return to their daily lives, Ram Dass reflected with them about the process through which spiritual practice allow us to dance in life without becoming entrapped by it.

This program is compiled from questions about spiritual practice and daily life:
-Can we have a direct experience of God's presence?

At first, we use such things as spiritual retreats to protect our practices. But as we go along, our yearning to be done with it leads us to transform more and more of our experiences into opportunities for spiritual practice.

For most of us, love seems a particularly joyful path to God, one that allows us to bring the sweetness of the human heart into the spiritual journey.

If we adopt the Soul's perspective on our incarnation, we start to see our lives as an inner dialog between Ego, Soul, and Awareness.

"We're a party of souls. We're meeting through our psyches and our personalities but behind them, we're laughing."