Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, yet less attached to it.
Ram Dass
Sometimes I look at what I call " my life" and wonder what it is all about; why it was the way it was with all its challenges up to this point; why things turn out the way they do; why it is the way it is now. I wonder who I am and why I am here. You know? I have always had this questioning in the back of my mind since I could remember and it is that questioning that has led me here to this path I seem to be on now, to the practice that has become more important than anything else to me. It has led me to this blog, this moment, and to doing what I am doing now...writing about it.
Not this Body/ Not this Mind
I do a meditation every morning and part of that meditation is reminding myself that I am not this body and not this mind ( this psyche, this self concept, these feelings, thoughts and beliefs). I have progressed far enough to know that much anyway. I somehow see and understand what Ram Dass discovered and taught :
I am going through a set of experiences which is called "living life" and these experiences have a certain function . These experiences if used consciously and intentionally by me are vehicles through which I can awaken to who I am in truth.
This path of awakening to truth is not about advancing farther on the horizontal line of existence ...not at all. It is about transecting that line and going vertically deeper. It is all about going deeper with our perceptions.
The Levels of Perception
Ram Dass brilliantly shows how we advance deeper into truth , into seeing and understanding who we are at the deepest level by understanding what we see when we look at other humans through six levels of perception.
First level of perception: On this superficial level we look at another human being and see only the separate physical body (man, woman, old, young, fat, pretty etc)
Second level of perception: Here we step deeper into seeing beyond form to the psychology in another human being or self. Many ppl live on this level and are totally preoccupied with their own psychology, mental illnesses, emotions, anxieties and fears, thoughts and beliefs etc . They tend to see this psychology or psyche as the "real me" and the body as just the carrier of that.
Third Level of perception: Here Ram Dass describes the astral level...where we go beyond body and mind to see what the other is in terms of astrology. ( Of course, this lecture was in the late sixties where astrology was a big part of the new emerging culture. It is also a big part, or was, of Indian tradition. I don't understand it enough to comment.)
Forth level of perception: At this level we go deeper beyond body, psyche, astral sign, to see the being looking back at us. We see another being exactly like us at this level. We see the "soul". Less focused is based on individuality and more on similarity. We see that: All the individual differences is the stuff in which this being is encased....
Fifth level of perception: What we see, at this level of depth, when we look into someone else's eyes we see the One Self: see yourself looking at yourself looking at yourself. Ram Dass goes on to say we can see that, There is one awareness in a multiplicity of form.
Sixth and deepest level of perception, : Is what Buddhists call the void or "shunyata"
I disappear and you disappear...and we are dealing with what the Buddhist call "void"or in the New Testament "before the word"... before the vibratory uniqueness...or why God is unable to be spelled in the Hebrew religion. It is unspeakable, unknowable, unseeable, ...and inconceivable...
Who are you?
So the question remains, "Who are you? Who am I?" To understand taht answer we need to go beyond surface identity. This is what ram Dass has to say about it:
....the deeper we go the more profound the identity
I am the void who manifests as the one who becomes the many who has a unique set of factors to work out through a unique astral, psychological, and physical body.
Understanding who we truly are means looking into two concepts we may have been conditioned to reject or be overly identified with.
Reincarnation and Karma?
I have taken a body to do certain work and when I am finished that work I will drop that body
He, of course, includes two ideations which are still often viewed as "woo-woo"in the west: reincarnation and karma. They are considered to be "taboo" subjects for many Christians. We have to remember though, that they were not always taboo. The teachings on reincarnation and karma have been removed from the bible and Christian teachings roughly between the first council of Nicaea in 325 AD and the second council of Nicea in 787 AD because they didn't make the church a workable situation. Belief in reincarnation and karma would make every human being their own priest, giving them a direct relationship with God. The church did not want that.
Time?
As long as we are dealing with the body, with your personality, with your soul we are dealing in time. Time passes, things change...but in the One...there is no time anymore. Time is relative...now we are dealing with a place, where you know yourself as taht, you just are....you are going nowhere and you are coming from nowhere.
your going and coming is nowhere but where you are...as taught by zen masters
The question then arises, what would life be like if we perceived it at the deepest level of our being?
Imagine what it would be like to see your life as so functional to your awakening and your death equally so the whole business becomes merely a process of growth, and awakening, and opening and deepening and clearing, and shifting channels. There is no problem about transitioning...no problem with holding on out of fear. It is just opening
Wow ! That was some pretty profound teaching for one day...at least it was for me. What do you think?
All is well.
Ram Dass/ After Skool (Sept 27, 2021) The Freedom of Being Nobody-Ram Dass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWJXdr0mQ0s&t=363s
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