Namaste!



A brief note about Oprah's first session with Eckhart Tolle...

Some of you have already heard me talk about this, namely Eckhart's "confiding" (in front of at least 700,000 viewers) to Oprah that he has taken acid -- just to see how it compared to the awakening experience he had about a decade ago. In short, he remarked that LSD felt "violent" to him, and that his own experience was "much better." I guess you might say LSD induced a "rude awakening" in him, as opposed to his own more "natural awakening."

I also had an awakening experience which was not drug induced, and it led me to the path I'm on. And along the way I've had a number of little "satori" experiences -- openings, epiphanies, that came about naturally and organically. In short, I would have to say that I, too, was able to grow spiritually without the use of drugs.

That said, I also want to say that it's not for me to judge anyone else's path, what the universe brings an individual's way to help them to grow. For some people, entheogens (what used to be called psychedelics -- "entheogens" means "God-inducing") provide an opening to the spiritual dimension that they otherwise might not have had. It certainly did it for many people in the sixties, and although some were permanently damaged by their experiences, many others were greatly helped.

Some of you may know of Ram Dass (aka Richard Alpert) who worked with Timothy Leary at Harvard in the 50s and 60s before both of them were kicked out for experimenting with what were then called "psychedelics." Well, Richard Alpert went on to take some 300+ LSD trips (probably more like close to 4-500, actually) over the course of the 60s, before he went to India and learned from his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, that one does not necessarily need to ingest drugs to reach higher levels of consciousness. At that point, when he had returned from India, Ram Dass wrote Be Here Now, which influenced a lot of people, especially in regard to getting off of drugs.

So I recommend reading Be Here Now, if you have the chance, but until then, I've selected a few videos that you will definitely find interesting. They're not too long. One is from Ram Dass in the 60s (when he was still Richard Alpert); one from the 70s, after returning from India; and one from the 80s -- a more mature Ram Dass looking back on his journey. And I leave it to you to look for videos of Ram Dass from the 90s and today. You'll see that even with taking all of those acid trips, Ram Dass remained remarkably lucid, always the speaker par excellence. Anyway, here they are...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hW6Dm_m5t4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfl-ySSARx8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao7o7evbE24

OM SHANTI, Alan




"So let us go forward, quietly,
each on his own path, forever
making for the light."

VINCENT VAN GOGH