THE DOLPHIN STORY

Ram Dass: Just a couple of stories. As Jackie said, I’ve been open to teachings because I realized that what I have to offer into the pot, what the seed I have to offer is me. And so, I can’t do anything else but work on myself to become a statement of planetary consciousness, to become a statement of all that. And I take my teachings wherever I get them. I’ve been taking them from you for three or four days. And they’re tough, some of them. And I’d like to tell you about two of my teachers, just for a moment. And these teachers are named Joe and Rosie. And they are two bottlenose dolphins.

I don’t know how many of you have ever wanted to swim with the dolphin, but it’s sort of the hip thing to want to swim with the dolphins. And I wanted to swim with the dolphin. And I have these friends, John, and Tony Lily who work with dolphins. And they asked me if I’d like to swim with Joe and Rosie. So, I found myself in a cold grade day, south of San Francisco, in a bathing suit by a huge tank in which Joe and Rosie were. And I was with a friend who was already in the tank. And I got out of the holding platform which was down in the water where I was standing. And it was cold, and everybody was around, and I thought what am I doing in this situation?

I mean, I’m too old to be doing this, you know? Somebody young should be swimming with the dolphins. So, I got off, so I was paddling in the water. And all the time, everybody’s watching to see what Ram Doss is going to do with the Dolphins. So, whatever I do, I’ve got a smile. I know that. And the first thing that happens is that Joe and Rosie make two passes by me. Very, very close. And they are very big. And I am in their territory. And desperately my mind is trying to think, what do you do with a dolphin? Now, like here a dolphin. You know, suddenly I was trying to remember all my old dolphin stories about what to do. My rational mind was desperately trying to deal with this situation.

At this point, Joe came over and he opened his mouth and he put it around my wrist. And he closed his mouth. And every Jaws fantasy I ever had ran through my mind, the hand dripping down to the ground. And he very gently pulled me out into the middle of the tank. So that I could play with them. Now, there’s nothing in my models of reality that has fish taking you by the wrist to pull you out of the middle of the tank, which just isn’t. And what Joe in effect did was he blew my mind. I saw that my rational mind wasn’t just up to the predicament. And at that moment, my heart opened. And I went into a place of my intuitive being. I just gave up trying to figure it out. I just started to trust. I might as well. I had no choice anyway. And Rosie started to hover right here.

And so I reached out to touch her, and I assumed when I touched her she’d swim away. I mean, I couldn’t imagine that she would let me touch her. And I touched her, and she stayed there. And she was so soft and so delicate and so sweet to the touch that my heart opened even wider, and I started to have an ecstasy experience—ecstatic, going out of the static. I just started to liquify and two within 20 seconds Rosie was upright with her belly pressed against me. I had my arms around her. She had her fins around me. And I was kissing her on the mouth.

And I looked around all the people watching, and I thought, what was happening? You know? I mean, it was happening. I thought, do you think this is appropriate or this condition? I mean across species, is this like, you know it’s a, must be a name for this. And at that point, Rosie swam around, and she came under my arm, and I thought, what I’d like to do is swim with Rosie—you know, the Flipper fantasy. So I took her back fin, very gently; didn’t want to break it. So I took a gentle hold and she swam down and my hand came off and I floated back up. So I held it again and I went down, fell off and came back and realized that wasn’t going to work. And I was going to have to take her around the belly, along with taking the upper fin. And I thought, that’s rather presumptuous. I mean, when you’ve just been making love to somebody to just grab them, you know, that seems to go swimming.

So I did it very gently and she went down. And she started to move very fast, and I thought, oh I’m really bugging her, and I let go. And I came back to the surface, and she immediately came back under my arm again. She was sort of waiting for me to let my mind shut up and just trust the process. And have fun and enjoy. I was so busy. What should I do? I mustn’t do this. I, you know, I was in nuts. And finally, I said, okay Rosie, here we go. And I grabbed hold, and we started to do this wild dance around the pool. It was better than you can imagine. And at some point, I thought—I thought—well, Rosie’s all well and good for you. You’re a dolphin, but I gotta come up and breathe. At which moment, just the thought was manifest and Rosie came to the surface and waited for me to get a breath and then went down again. And this happened maybe four or five times—till I came to trust it. I knew that the minute I needed a breath, Rosie would come up. I didn’t have to signal her anything, I just had a feeling.

So one time when I came up, the group on the side were taking pictures, photographs. And I got into sort of hamming it up—Ram Dass with the dolphins, you know? I was like feeling my number. And at this point, Rosie went back down. And I hadn’t gotten a breath. And I thought, well Rosie, this is where we part company. And just with the thought, Rosie came to the surface again, within 10 seconds for me to get a break.

And after about 40 minutes, I was tired. But I didn’t want to admit it, you know because I want to be, you know? This is a 1931 model, and I didn’t really want to, you know, identify with it. I was kind of shaking and all. And then I thought, and she touched me, Rosie came to the surface, shook me off, went around, picked up Joe, they both stuck their noses in my belly and pushed me over the edge of the tank, forced me out and wouldn’t let me back in for the rest of the afternoon. That’s my story.