The Only Dance There Is (Ram Dass)

The story of Ram Dass (formerly Dr. Richard Alpert) is a tragic one to some, and a testimony of the exquisite beauty, unpredictability and serendipity of life. After having received his doctoral degree, Richard Alpert was offered a prestigious post at Harvard University, where he eventually held appointments in four departments—the Social Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service where he was a therapist. After some years of research and teaching, he met with Dr. Timothy Leary, who introduced him to LSD and it's effects on consciousness. Intrigued, they began conducting experiments on the psychotropic, administering the drug to individuals in double blind studies, and gradually began to draw a great deal of media attention to their work. The work placed the psychology department at Harvard and the University as a whole in an unfavorable light, and they were pressured by the conservative right to terminate the research. Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were subsequently dismissed from Harvard in 1963, and here began a new chapter in psychedelic research and consciousness exploration.

The depth of insights offered by this man are truly phenomenal. He moves along his descriptions of consciousness, experience, and phenomena so fluidly and effortlessly, that one wonders where it is all coming from. In fact, he often says, that "he" isn't speaking, but that there "is" simply speaking. That there is a certain stepping aside of the egoic self so that truth can flow according to the circumstances and needs of the moment.

Ram Dass makes some important allusions to spirituality and its relation to entheogens, particularly LSD, in its ability to give individuals a brief taste of what's possible. He draws a great deal from his own experiences, but makes it very clear that these are only temporary states, and once one comes down from the experience, one is left with the dilemma of how to proceed. One has been metaphorically admitted to the "wedding banquet," but cannot stay. And this is the essence of esoteric Eastern spirituality, to enter into these expanded states of awareness, and there remain, through a gradual process of mind development, and consciousness unfolding. However, the use of entheogens can be useful for many as a kind of initiation or periodic pointer, alerting one to the possibility of what's available to human consciousness. This is particularly apropos for the West, where philosophical materialism makes it extremely difficult to accept something unless there is strong material or experimental evidence.

Ram Dass describes many of his experiences in detail, often times leaving the reader in a state of amazement and perhaps disbelief if s/he has never encountered such possibilities of experience before. But for the initiated, the territory covered is at least partially familiar. He does a wonderful job of connecting the various maps from different traditions, and presenting how they are all similar, and what it is they are accomplishing. He takes examples of some common practices, and examines the purpose and effects of these practices on consciousness. As things become clearer, one begins to develop an appreciation of the esoteric traditions in many cultures. At the very least, one begins to see the value of reproducible verifiable experiments on oneself. One begins to see oneself in the role of the consummate scientist, where one's entire being becomes a laboratory for experimentation.

The book originates from the recording of a series of talks given at the Menninger Foundation in 1970, and Spring Grove Hospital in 1972. The content can best be summarized by providing a topical list of the various ideas covered. There is simply too much breadth, and depth of insight to do justice in the form of a conventional summary of main ideas. However, the golden thread that unites all topics is clearly to do with consciousness expansion. Ram Dass really gets to the crux of issues, and most importantly, communicates them in a very accessible, low key, informal style, that makes for extremely entertaining reading. A series of section subtitles follows.

Part 1: The Path of Consciousness, The Four Component Design of Ashram, Consciousness as Freedom from Attachment, Higher Consciousness as State of Unity, Mantra, The Mandala Process, The Eternal Present, LSD, The "Book", Psychotherapy as a Path, Game Theory, Guide of Consciousness Journeys, Simple Rule of the Game, Chakra Centers, Levels of Consciousness, Krishna, Ram Story, The Issue of Social Responsibility, Increasing the Amount of Consciousness, Interchange of Methods, Modification of Group Consciousness, The Problem of the Experimenter, Limitations of Knowing, Evolving Consciousness

Part 2: Meher Baba and Bhakti Yoga, Edgar Cayce and Two States of Consciousness, Fear and Higher States of Consciousness, Love as a State of Being, The I Ching, Diet and Food, Perceptual Vantage Points and Psychosis, Another Karmic Relationship, Compassion without Pity, Attractions and Dangers of Powers, Need for a Guru, Gnostic Intermediary, The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chakras, Optimum Being, Transmutation of Energy, Centering, Distinctions Between English and Sanskrit, One-Pointedness of Mind, Teachers as Conveyors of the Universe

Part 3: "Miracle Stories", Nirvana, "Eastern" and "Western" Models of Man, Raising the Kundalini, Maharaj-ji. The Planes of Consciousness, Lawfulness of the Universe

Part 4: Karma and Reincarnation, Attachment, How Do We Know?, Deepest Desires Connected with Survival and Reproduction, Other Forms of Life, Comprehension, Desires, Beyond Dualism

Ram Dass, psychonaut extraordinaire, has given an incredible account of human potential and possibility. With his explorations of mind and consciousness, he has journeyed where few others have gone. And from these panoramic vistas and dizzying heights, he relates back to us that this exploration is truly the only dance there is.

The Doors of Perception (Aldous Huxley)

In this famous essay, Aldous Huxley describes his experience of swallowing four-tenths of a gram of mescalin that would influence a generation's perception of life. His descriptions of external phenomena are immensely rich and detailed, filled with depth and vitality. It is as if everything in his new world comes alive. He makes the statement of "seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation—the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence." Huxley makes extraordinarily profound descriptions of the various contents of his experience while on the drug, including his perception of common things such as flowers, fabrics, furniture, painting, color, music, poetry, space, and time. In particular, he makes a very insightful point with regard to the essential function of art, and the poet-artist's uniqueness not consisting in the visionary quality itself but,

solely in his ability to render, in words or [...] in line and color, some hint at least of a not excessively uncommon experience. The untalented visionary may perceive an inner reality no less tremendous, beautiful and significant than the world beheld by Blake; but he lacks altogether the ability to express in literary or plastic symbols, what he has seen.

In preparation for the description of his peak experience, Huxley neatly addresses the issue of how the mind and sensory apparatus function, quoting an eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad,

[...] that we should do well to consider much more seriously [...] the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.

And so, with this protective and eliminative function now largely removed, Huxley is confronted by a chair that he perceives as the chair of the Last Judgment, and finds himself on the brink of panic:

This, I suddenly felt, was going too far. Too far, even though the going was into intenser beauty, deeper significance. The fear, as I analyze it in retrospect was of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear. The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the 'Mysterium tremendum.' In theological language, this fear is due to the incompatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God. Following Boehme and William Law, we may say that, by unregenerate souls, the divine Light at its full blaze can be apprehended only as a burning purgatorial fire. An almost identical doctrine is to be found in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, where the departed soul is described as shrinking in agony from the Pure Light of the Void, and even from the lesser tempered Lights, in order to rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as a beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of unmitigated Reality—anything!

Huxley then goes on to describe the profound affinity of the mystic and the schizophrenic. The primary difference between the two being, the mystic has learned how to swim in the waters of the unconscious, whereas the schizophrenic has not. As Huxley puts it,

The schizophrenic is a soul not merely unregenerate, but desperately sick into the bargain. His sickness consists in the inability to take refuge from inner and outer reality (as the sane person habitually does) in the homemade universe of common sense—the strictly human world of useful notions, shared symbols, and socially acceptable conventions. The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unajavascript:void(0)ble to shut off the experience of a reality which he cannot explain away because it is the most stubborn of primary facts, and which, because it never permits him to look at the world with merely human eyes, scares him into interpreting its unremitting strangeness, its burning intensity of significance, as the manifestations of human or even cosmic malevolence, calling for the most desperate countermeasures, from murderous violence at one end of the scale to catatonia, or psychological suicide, at the other. And once embarked upon the downward, the infernal road, one would never be able to stop. That, now, was only too obvious.

     "If you started in the wrong way," I said in answer to the investigator's questions, "everything that happened would be proof of the conspiracy against you. It would all be self-validating. You couldn't draw a breath without knowing it was part of the plot."
     "So you think you know where madness lies?"
     My answer was a convinced and heartfelt, "Yes."
     "And you couldn't control it?"
     "No I couldn't control it. If one began with fear and hate as the major premise, one would have to go on to the conclusion."
     "Would you be able," my wife asked, "to fix your attention on what The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the Clear Light?"
     I was doubtful.
     "Would it keep the evil away, if you could hold it? Or would you not be able to hold it?"
     I considered the question for some time. "Perhaps," I answered at last, "perhaps I could—but only if there were somebody there to tell me about the Clear Light. One couldn't do it by oneself. That's the point, I suppose, of the Tibetan ritual—someone sitting there all the time and telling you what's what."

Huxley describes through direct personal experience the world of the schizophrenic, and goes on to prescribe methods he believes would be particularly helpful in dealing with the states encountered. These are in principle the same methods employed by the Buddhist monks of Tibet described in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It essentially requires the psychiatrist to assure the patient day and night, even while they sleep, that "in spite of all the terror, all the bewilderment and confusion, the ultimate Reality remains unshakably itself and is of the same substance as the inner light of even the most cruelly tormented mind." He indicates the use of public address systems, and pillow speakers, for example, to keep the patients constantly reminded of these primordial facts, walking them through the turbulent waters of their unconscious.

Moving towards societal implications, Huxley speaks to the possible uses of a mescalin-like psychoactive as an innocuous aid for the initiation of the masses into self-transcendent experience—a temporary release from selfhood—which in present times are sought ineffectively in so many ways to the detriment of the individual and society. A kind of "gratuitous grace" available for those who wish it,

[...] To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large...

And finally, Huxley presents a pertinent critique of our education system, indicating that it places far too much emphasis on book knowledge and little if any on knowledge obtained through direct perception. And for those learned individuals who have climbed the heights of this system, the "Angels" described by Blake as those who "have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise, doing so from an insolent confidence sprouting from systematic reasoning," Huxley describes a more realistic scenario, a less exclusively verbal system of education, where every Angel would be permitted, urged, and even compelled to take an occasional trip through some chemical Door of the Wall to the other side. To what end?

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

The Psychedelic Experience (Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert)

A remarkable book that demystifies, clarifies, and engenders depth of understanding into the nature of human consciousness. This book is intended as a kind of road map for the experiences surrounding ego-death and rebirth. It has little to do with physical dying except that, according to Tibetan tradition, ego-death and rebirth also occur at physiological death. The purpose of working to experience these states is to gain understanding into the nature of consciousness through direct personal experience, and ultimately to liberate oneself from the confines of ordinary ego-consciousness.

This book not only has the effect of demystifying the Tibetan traditions, but also all religious traditions by placing them within the realm of consciousness expansion experiences. Religion becomes consciousness expansion with the individual selecting which religious or psychological model or metaphor is to be overlaid in an attempt to explain the experiences and draw a degree of coherency to them. The title of the book stresses the psychedelic nature of experience, but this book could just as easily been titled, "The Religious Experience," or "The Consciousness Expansion Experience."

It is the intent of the original Bardo Thodol, upon which this book is based, to light a pathway towards the exceedingly difficult task of permanent ego-death, otherwise known as 'liberation.' The use of psychedelics is only one way to bootstrap the process that temporarily plunges one's ego-consciousness into expanded or ego-loss states. Having entered the ego-loss state, the instructions contained in this book then act as guide to help prolong the experience and ease the inevitable return to more ordinary states of awareness or ego-consciousness. The whole process promises to intimately familiarize the voyager with the varieties of experience attendant after ego-loss or temporary ego-death. As the ego begins to reassert itself, experience then moves out of the transcendent and into the hallucinatory, and finally into the game-playing, re-entry and ego-rebirth stages. Recognition of the entire process in the midst of experience is key.

It may be worthwhile for the reader to make comparisons with the accounts of other documented psychedelic experiences (Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, et al.), in addition to the non-psychedelic experiences described by the famous twentieth century psychologist William James in his work entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience.

The book has a section dedicated to the review of commentaries for the original translation of the Bardo Thodol (translated by W. Y. Evans-Wentz) by Carl G. Jung, and Lama Anagarika Govinda. The book is organized into the following sections:

I. General Introduction
II. The Tibetan Book of the Dead
・First Bardo: The Period of Ego-Loss or Non-Game Ecstasy (Chikai Bardo)
・Second Bardo: The Period of Hallucinations (Chonyid Bardo)
・Third Bardo: The Period of Re-Entry (Sidpa Bardo)
III. Some Technical Comments about Psychedelic Sessions
IV. Instructions for use During a Psychedelic Session

—

DEDICATION EXCERPT:

This version of The Tibetan Book of the Dead is dedicated to

Aldous Huxley

July 26, 1894 – November 22, 1963 with profound admiration and gratitude.

"If you started in the wrong way," I said in answer to the investigator's questions, "everything that happened would be a proof of the conspiracy against you. It would all be self-validating. You couldn't draw a breath without knowing it was part of the plot."
"So you think you know where madness lies?"
My answer was a convinced and heartfelt, "Yes."
"And you couldn't control it?"
"No I couldn't control it. If one began with fear and hate as the major premise, one would have to go on to the conclusion."
"Would you be able," my wife asked, "to fix your attention on what The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the Clear Light?"
I was doubtful.
"Would it keep the evil away, if you could hold it? Or would you not be able to hold it?"
I considered the question for some time. "Perhaps," I answered at last, "perhaps I could – but only if there were somebody there to tell me about the Clear Light. One couldn't do it by oneself. That's the point, I suppose, of the Tibetan ritual – somebody sitting there all the time and telling you what's what."

(Doors of Perception, 57-58)