Meeting the Guru

Ram Dass recounts the story of meeting his guru for the first time, which caused his rational mind to malfunction like a computer that’s been fed an unsolvable problem.

There are so, so many Ram Dass stories I’m excited to share with everyone. There are astral hangouts with state troopers. There are mystical discoveries via the methodology of crochet. There’s naked frisbee on the beach…

But at the root of everything is Ram Dass’s relationship with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba. So I thought it would be fun to share this clip of Ram Dass telling the story of meeting his guru for the first time. It’s a story I’ve heard countless times, as have many of you, I’m sure. But every time I listen to it, I’m struck by how it feels both mythic and intimate at the same time.

So, I hope you all enjoy this quick trip down memory lane. And I hope everyone gets a taste of that feeling that Ram Dass talks about of being home. Ultimately, I think that’s what we’re all looking for as we walk down this path of the spirit.

– Noah Markus, Archivist, Love Serve Remember Foundation

Ram Dass:

So we got out of the car at the temple, and Bhagavan Das asked, “Where’s the guru?” And they said, “The guru is up in the hills, up in that hill over there, around the hill.” And Bhagwan Das goes off at a lope, but all the way up into the hills, tears are streaming down his cheeks. And I know that we’re getting close to something very powerful, but I don’t know what it is.

And I’m very bugged about the car, and I’m sulking in the corner. And, you know, I’ve been smoking too much hashish. So I had stopped a few days before, but I was having the down effect one has after having a smoke for a long time.

We rush up the hill. I’m rushing behind him, trying to keep up with him, and I’m being ignored by everybody. And I’m just in terrible shape, really stumbling up this path. And we come out into this field. It’s a beautiful, sunny day overlooking a valley. And there’s an old man sitting there with a blanket wrapped around him. Around him are probably eight or 10 Hindu people sitting there.

And we rush over, and Bhagavan Das does danda pranam, a full pranam out flat on his stomach, before this man. And he’s crying, and the man’s patting him on the head, and it’s some kind of joyous reunion. And I’m standing by, you know, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to touch this guy’s feet? I don’t know what to do. I’ve never seen a guru before.

Thus far, all I had met in India were pundits. I met many wise men, many men who knew the Upanishads and who quoted Ramakrishna and told me about Ramana Maharshi. But I didn’t meet Ramana Maharshi, and I didn’t meet Ramakrishna, or their spirits, and I didn’t meet anybody like them. So I had never met one of these real ones.

And I assumed if he was crying this much, it must be somebody. But I was too angry to even care, to tell you the truth. And after a few minutes, this man looked up, and he looked at me. He smiled, and he said in Hindi to Bhagavan Das, “Have you a picture of me?”

Bhagavan Das says, “Yes.”

He says, “Give it to him.”

Bhagavan Das said, “Alright, I will.”

Then he looked at me and said, “You came in a big automobile.”

I said, “Yeah.”

“You’ll give it to me?”

That really blew my mind. I mean, you know, I wished I could have, but, you know, so I said, “Well, it’s not mine to give.”

“You get me one like it?”

So I thought, my God, I just got here, and he’s hustling me. I mean, what kind of a thing is this, you know? What have I done to deserve this? Am I that bad a person that I’ve got to be subjected, you know? And I was, boy, was I self-pitying and paranoid.

All the time, he’s laughing. He’s laughing, he’s putting me on. But I don’t know that. “Costs a lot of money.” He says, “You make a lot of money in the United States?”

I said, “I used to.”

“You’ll get me a car like that? It rides nice, huh?” Just coming on to me something fierce, right? And I’m really angry, but I’m suppressing it and answering pleasantly. And everybody’s smiling at me, and I’m smiling at everybody.

Then he says, “Take them for food.” And they take us to a room and they give us a big feast. These beautiful sadhus bring us food, food that the women bring to the guru each day as an offering. And we eat.

And then a few minutes later… Bhagavan Das and I are together all the time, and he’s the only one I’ve come with, and this is way up in the remote mountains, no electricity up here, nothing going, you know, very remote… A few minutes later, I get called back to the guru and go back to him. And he looks directly at me, right in my eyes, and he said, “You were out under the stars last night?”

“Acha, yes.”

“You were thinking about your mother?”

“Acha”

He leaned back. And then he said, “She died last year?”

“Acha.”

“She got very big in the stomach before she died. She died of spleen.” He didn’t ask. He said, “She died of spleen.”

And he looked at me with a twinkle at that point. Now, the only way I can describe what happened to me at that moment is to compare my rational mind to a computer that has been fed an insoluble problem. The computer runs through all of the alternative resolutions of this problem that are in the storage units, and it runs off each of them in sequence.

And I thought, Well, does he have a telephone? Did Bhagavan Das go away from me for a moment? Bhagwan Das doesn’t even know my mother’s dead… how is he going to? Because he wasn’t interested in my past. He doesn’t know that. I’ve never said anything to him about it.

Was he reading my mind? Was I thinking about it at this moment? What would that mean? You know? And I went through… but I wasn’t even thinking about it. I had even forgotten what she died of. I mean, the spleen, I hadn’t even remembered the term for the organ.

So the computer went and went and went. And then, as computers do when it finishes its analysis through the storage unit, a little red light goes on, and a bell rings, and it stops. And that is literally what happened to my rational mind at that point.

I realized I had just been overwhelmed. I mean, I, ego, Richard Alpert, had just been beaten. You know, there was nowhere to hide. I wasn’t high, so I couldn’t say this was a drug hallucination. There was a guy doing this thing right to me, right then, right through my gross senses.

And at that moment, when that computer stopped, it was like a very severe pain in my heart. It was like a really wrenching feeling. And I started to cry. I wasn’t crying because I was sad, and I wasn’t crying because I was happy. The closest way I could describe it: maybe I was crying because I was home. I mean, because, yeah, right. Wow! That kind of feeling. Like, I didn’t have to do it anymore; it was all okay.

But I kept crying and crying and crying, and they carted me off to another temple to rest for the night. Now I had no trouble at all touching his feet. You know, whoever he was.

Well, that night in the temple, I was very confused. I would cry a lot, and I was confused. I mean, that was just my state; it was confusion. But I really felt like I had arrived somewhere. I mean, I felt this feeling that this man knew what was inside of me completely. I just understood that he was part of me. I felt completely safe.

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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.