The flipping of the channels is a pretty classic Ram Dass lesson. It’s kinda like his “intro to relative reality,” a fun approach to the ways in which our experiences are shaped by our desires and identities. In this particular lecture from 1976, there is a chunk missing: he skips the second and the third channel, where he discusses our psychological and astral identities. I’ve superimposed a couple lines from a different lecture to make up for the gap. This part is italicized.
In spite of the missing sections, I’ve decided to use this specific video for a couple of reasons: one, he’s being particularly cute with his description of being on the physical plane (I DO have a funny looking nose, and have spent quite a bit of time on the funny looking nose plane of reality…) and two, I love this footage. There are some great shots of the audience where you really get a sense of the widespread love for Ram Dass. The auditorium is filled with a vast sea of devoted students from all walks of life: a few in bohemian all-white outfits, a messy looking acid head, a lady with grey hair and a smart pink suit, all listening intently, quietly flipping past their physical appearance to that last channel in which we’re all one.
— Aidan Gould, Content Creator, Love Serve Remember Foundation // RamDass.org
We are collectively in training to become wise persons. A wisdom that is going to be reflected in our beings. Our actions are going to reflect the shifts in consciousness that we are about at this moment.
Now, actually, who you are has another level of significance that some of you will find difficult to hear. Others will hear it comfortably. And it concerns issues of reincarnation and karma of who you are.
See, at one level, you think you are somebody sitting in North Miami Beach High School. And you think you are a man or a woman or a boy or a girl or some mixture.
But you have so many levels of identity. Why do you pick that particular reality to cling to?
Because it’s being fed by your senses and by your thinking mind. Until your eye be single, until you only see with the third eye, you are hooked on these eyes, these ears, this nose, this mouth, this skin, these thoughts. And that creates this reality. And they’re all tuned with a certain frequency. And on that frequency, you are sitting in North Miami Beach High School. But who I see you to be is, for the most part, very different than who you think you are.
I’ve been through this example many times. Many of you have heard the example, but it’s such a vivid image that we can repeat it and work with it. It’s a good one. It’s the one of the flipping of the switch by the eyes, your perceptual apparatus, your receiving set.
See if you tune into a channel, let’s say channel two on your television set, your eyes, what you see when you look out at the world is the physical reality. You see man, woman, big, little, old, young, dark, light, bald, hairy, developed, undeveloped, mole, bent nose, this, that, whatever. If you’re preoccupied with that in yourself, that’s what you see in everybody else.
If you think you’ve got a funny looking nose, what you notice when you walk down the street is everybody’s nose. It’s bizarre, right?
If you think you don’t have the right clothes, all you notice are people’s clothes. The physical reality.
If you are horny, what you notice in all people are who’s makeable, who is a competitor with you for who is makeable, and who is irrelevant.
And that’s the reality. That’s what you see. That’s watching all the girls go by on the street corner. Or the boys go by in this magazine.
Flip to the next channel, now you’ve entered into the psychological domain, and you look at everybody as happy, sad, righteous, lazy, etc. And you could call yourself a manic depressive, and you could say, “I wish I was as happy as everybody else.” or “I’m a young woman looking into the future.” or “I’m a Mother.” That’s a social-psychological role. “I’m a good citizen.” or “I don’t care about anything.” “I’m seeking God.” That’s a nice one but these are all psychological.
Try the next channel. Now you look out at the world, and there are twelve categories, “Ah, you’re a Leo, I’d know you anywhere.” “I’m an Aries, that explains it.” Thus far all these channels have all been the game of individual differences. How are you different from me?
One more. Flip.
Now, when you look at another person, what you see is as if two mirrors were placed facing each other with nothing in between. You see itself looking at itself, looking at itself, looking at itself infinitely, for you have moved to the plane of the ancient one. Of the one where there’s only one of us here.
In that reality, there is one of us here talking to itself. We are making believe we are the many. We are playing as if we’re many so we can play out this dance. We are all in drag because when you rip off the mask, there’s only one of it. And I am talking to myself.
Now, the minute you left the psychological, the minute you left that second channel and went to the astral plane, you immediately left North Miami Beach High School.
Which of these realities is you? Who are you? Who do you think you are?
Just to complete the game, we’ll just go one more. One more flip. You disappear, I disappear. The television receiver disappeared. We have just entered into the formless. The Void. Not nothing. That’s something.
These are all relative realities. Physical, psychological, astral, soul, One. All of those are relative realities in form. They are all relatively real. No one of them is absolutely real. If you try to stand in one of them, you’re going to have to deny all the rest of them.
— Ram Dass, 1987
Published by the Love Serve Remember Foundation, the nonprofit caretaker of Ram Dass’s teachings since 2010. Learn more at RamDass.org or join our virtual community and archive at Inneracademy.ramdass.org.
