ALL I CAN DO IS WORK ON MYSELF

David: In your experience this time, what’s the most important thing that you can do?

Ram Dass: I can use every experience of my life as a vehicle for working on myself, to extricate myself from the attachments of mind so that I can be a statement of peace, of presence, of love, of clarity, so that all my manifestations heal. And all I can do is work on myself.

And sometimes I work on myself through being in the world, and sometimes I work on myself through pulling back. Like I’ve been on the road now for seems like millions of years, but like last year, I was giving a lecture in a city every other night for six or eight months. And it’s incredibly grueling until you just surrender into it and you just using it as a set of experiences. Somebody worships you, ah so. Somebody puts you down, ah so. You just keep absorbing it into your being. And now I’m pulling back, and I’m going to go off to India and I’m going to sit in meditation, under meditation masters for a period of time, and I’m going to deepen my concentration and deepen the quietness of my mind. The game is to quiet the mind, open the heart, keep the energies moving. And do what you can to relieve suffering. I don’t know what else to do, I’m just passing the time.

I mean, it’s all cosmic play. I really experience being aligned with God at play. It feels to me, as Herman Hess has said it through Leo and during the East says it’s all a game with beautiful game. It’s just very scary to think of it as a game. It doesn’t mean game in the sense of trivial, it means game in the sense of exquisiteness of form. And if anything, I am an appreciator of the beauties of God’s manifestation. I’m just, just delighted. I mean, I’m just awed by it all, including the chaos. And that’s why the 80s is so exciting, because they’re just full of this stuff that you can grow through, optimum conditions for growth. You can either get burned out or freaked, or you can grow. You have that choice. The soul grows, the personality gets burned out. That’s what’s happened. You can’t ride through this one and your personality, it’s too heavy. But the soul is delighting because this is soul food. The 80s are soul food, no doubt.