Be Here Now

by Ram Dass

Survival, sex, power, and compassionate oneness with other beings all bid as motivators of your perceptions and behaviors.

These three chakras are the focal points for most of the energy presently used by man in his worldly endeavors. These three chakras are primarily concerned with the use of energy for the maintenance and enhancement of the ego. It is only when we arrive at the fourth chakra, the heart chakra, that we enter into a realm which starts to transcend the ego. This fourth chakra is primarily concerned with compassion. The fifth is concerned with the seeking of God. The sixth (located between the eyebrows) is concerned with wisdom (the third eye); and the seventh, with full enlightenment or union.

If you were to follow the instruction of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, you would “do whatever you do, but consecrate the fruit of your actions to me.” Every act you perform, all day every day, would be done as an offering to Krishna. If we recall that Krishna is synonymous with Love, with Highest Consciousness, with the Eternal Witness, with the Spirit . . . and that He is actually our innermost Self, then we can understand that by consecrating an act, we are indeed offering our every action into the service of higher consciousness. Our every act becomes an act of waking up.

In order to perform karma yoga, there is a simple general principle to keep in mind: bring a third component into every action. If, for example, you are digging a ditch, there is you who is digging the ditch, and the ditch which is being dug. Now add a third focus: say, a disinterested person who is seeing you dig the ditch. Now run the entire action through his head while you are digging. It’s as simple as that. Through this method you would ultimately free yourself from identifying with him who is digging the ditch. You would merely see a ditch being dug.

The third eye

“The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature, then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance.”

BLBL

Now tune in on any inner sound in your head that you can find. Narrow in on that sound until it is the dominant sound you are attending to. Let all other sounds and thoughts pass by. As you allow that sound to more and more fill your consciousness, you will ultimately merge with that sound so that you do not hear it any longer. At that point you will start to hear another sound. Now tune in on the new sound and repeat the process.

Then you say, “I am not the five organs of motion: the arms, the legs, the tongue, the sphincter, the genitals.” As you say each of these, experience your “I” as separate from that part of the body.

If you have carried out the above instructions exactly, the only thing that is left are your thoughts. And, thus, the final step is to say “I am not these thoughts.” Now the exquisite difficulty at this point is that the thought of “I” which you originally placed in the middle of your head is also (and specifically) a thought which you are not. So even the thought of “I” must go . . . It’s a little like climbing out on the farthest branch of a tree and then cutting off the branch. “The inert body does not say ‘I.’ Reality-Consciousness does not emerge. Between the two, and limited to the measure of the body, something emerges as ‘I.’

“Allegiance to the void implies denial of its Voidness The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the further from it you go. Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. Return to the root and you will find the meaning Pursue the light, and you lose its source. Look inward and in a flash you will conquer the apparent and the void.

if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share its dignity.

BlBL

The “pros” of psychedelics are as follows: 1. For a person deeply attached to any finite reality which he takes to be absolute, the psychedelics can, under proper conditions, help him to break out of the imprisoning model created by his own mind.

This experience will be temporary, for you are merely overriding the desires which feed the habits in the first place.

BLBL

As you begin to calm your mind through meditation or mantra, you become increasingly aware of the forces acting upon you—forces within as well as outside your body. Previously you sought continuous stimulation but now you gravitate towards situations in which there is less and less stimulation.

Meditation helps you remain in the Eternal Present where no-thing is happening . . . and it helps you serve lovingly with total involvement and with no attachment.

See in the dying person only that which is eternal.