The last time I spoke to Ram Dass, during the active period of our work together, was in July or August 1976. In one powerful session back in January of that year, he—or the Love he carried, so thinly veiled—had removed the life-killing shame that had come to the surface on my eight acid trips and pretty much destroyed me in my early twenties.
For the six months after our initial meeting, Ram Dass was like a father to me. He stayed by me via phone and mail and two more visits. He helped me get strong and ground my new way of being in my daily life.
I phoned him one afternoon in July, as I did every couple of weeks. I said, “Hi, Ram Dass, it’s Max!”
He said, “You sound STRONG!”
“I FEEL strong!” I replied, happily.
Then he segued to this question: “Do you know that I’m leaving soon to go back to India?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that,” I said, realizing he was telling me our time together, the way it had been for half a year, was at an end.
“Are you gonna miss me?” he asked.
I thought for a few seconds, and then boldly replied, “No!”
We both broke up laughing. The Love we shared wasn’t going anywhere!
“Relieve suffering wherever you can”
Our relationship had been such that I didn’t only feel I was “with him” during our phone conversations, although of course, I was grateful for the incredible fortune of having so much personal time with him.
After all, I was just a guy who had reached out in suffering… a guy whom Ram Dass, at least per the common idiom, “didn’t know from Adam.”* I’d been the recipient of more love, I felt certain, than many people receive in their whole lives! My life has been unbelievably fortunate.
I think the very last thing Ram Dass said to me on that phone call was, “Relieve suffering wherever you can.” We’re given this Love in order to share it. Not because we’re “special.” (As it says in the New Testament, “God is no respecter of persons.”) We’re all special! Due to karma from our own past ignorant actions, we may sometimes suffer, but that’s not who we are.
Ram Dass came into my life by Divine Grace, I’m sure, for a particular purpose. Nothing is too good or too much for us, when our time has come for Love.
I had already become a devotee of Meher Baba, five years before my time with Ram Dass. I feel, having had more than 40 years to contemplate all this, that I was sent to Ram Dass to receive a specific kind of needed help.
My traumas and shame involved matters of sexuality, and Ram Dass was not the least bit threatened by the “stuff” I had to tell! Whatever I would say, no matter how kinky, in revealing my shame-laden secrets, he would just reply, “Aaaaah. What else?” And after a while, instead of that, he just started replying, “I love you!” or “You’re BEAUTIFUL!” He was rewarding me for my honesty, instead of for being conventionally “acceptable.”
After not too many rounds of my confessional, I was empty, and HAD no more secrets. He and I were just two rays of the Sun!
Love and serve God in everyone
I don’t know all the secrets of the Universe or the ways God works. But my “stuff” has never come back again to strangle the wellsprings of my life!
Ram Dass always supported and encouraged my relationship with Meher Baba. He and I last spoke three years ago. One of the things I remember him saying then was, “America doesn’t understand you and I, with our spiritual method of ‘Guru-Kripa’ (Grace of the Guru).”
Our paths centred on two different spiritual figures, but each of them told us, “Love and serve God in everyone!”
Because of Ram Dass being God’s helper in unblocking me when I had the crying need, so many years ago, I’m able to continue with that effort now. Ram Dass is no longer here physically, but will always be a part of me—and of course, of so, so many others!
*A Note in the Mail
In the winter of 1975, I had felt I was heading toward suicide. I didn’t know anyone in the Meher Baba world who could help me with my sexual shame that I couldn’t even talk about! I had written a short note to Ram Dass, saying something like, “Is there such a thing as eternal damnation, because I feel my soul is ruined!”
A couple of weeks later, I received a little blue envelope with the return address of the Hanuman Foundation, which I knew was Ram Dass’ ad hoc group for his work. I had sent my note to New Hampshire, where I believed Ram Dass lived on his father’s estate. But the return address of the note I got… well, it was from Riverside Drive in New York City… which happened to be the street I’d been born on!
I opened the envelope and read the delicate blue cursive, written on a page from a small notepad:
Dear Max,
Your soul is not ruined, and there is no damage to your thought or feeling whatever. Psychologically, you may be a mess, but spiritually you are beautiful and are going to God.
In order to go to God, you have to get all the shit inside you opened up. Why not come to NYC and visit with me? It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, for starters.
If you can’t come to New York, write me in detail about your scene and we’ll work by letter. Just stay totally open and honest and trusting.
God loves you and will show you as soon as you begin to love yourself.
Blessings surround you. Accept your own beauty.
Ram Dass
For the first time, I felt a dim possibility that I now had a fighting chance. As things transpired, it turned out that Ram Dass was giving a talk in Oklahoma City a few weeks later, and I flew there, only 300 miles (about 483 kilometres) from where I was in St. Louis, to meet him. And on January 17, 1976, the morning after his talk at the Civic Center there, I kept the “appointment” I”d made to see him in his room at the Downtowner Motel, and as a result, have been able to live a full and sometimes inspired life for the past four decades.
Many years later, I learned for certain that what I had heard as a rumor about something Meher Baba had said regarding Ram Dass, was true. Having corresponded with Ram Dass, who in the 1960’s had written him questions about the nature of psychedelics, and later tried to visit him in India, Meher Baba had told some close disciples, “Richard [Richard Alpert, Ram Dass’ given name] is Mine.” (Not meaning that possessively, of course, but speaking as a voice of Higher Self.)
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image 1: Wikimedia Commons (words and border added to original); image 3: Wikimedia Commons
