Despite the disorder often typical of one whose speech centers have been affected by stroke, Ram Dass continues to give interviews, lead classes and retreats and, on occasion, to appear onstage.

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TMA: Ram Dass, it's great to speak with you again. I'm looking at your website at the page describing the "Here We All Are" lecture recorded in the summer of '69. As I think back to the early '70s, when I would meet somebody and have an opportunity to look at what books they had, I would look for three books. I'd look for the first Castaneda book The Teachings of Don Juan: The Yaqui Way of Knowledge, I'd look for Robert Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body and, of course, along with the other two would be Be Here Now. What an amazing 30 years it has been.

RD: It came out in a big box when it was first published, then the book came out in '71.

TMA: I remember hearing about the box.

RD: It was a beautiful box. We gave it away free.

TMA: How times have changed.

RD: Oh yes.

(laughter)

TMA: But that big blue book with the Be Here Now ... Now Be Here in a circle was really quite a signature of the times.

RD: It used to be found in every backpack.

TMA: I carried it around with me along with the other two books that I mentioned. Isn't it amazing, the explosion of this type of material? There was so little to pick from in those days. What a revelation it was to find the Theosophical material not long after.

RD: Yes. That goes way back.

TMA: In the early 70s who knew that stuff existed?

RD: Who knew. It was really psychedelics that started the culture on that track, I think.

TMA: Well, I confess that I was there for that.

RD: I confess I was too ...(chuckles)

TMA: There would be little point in denying it now, huh?

RD: (laughs) Yeah.

TMA: We were all very shocked at your stroke in 1997, and are very pleased you are making your recovery. What's the experience been like for you?

RD: It awakened me, and I think it was grace, because it tuned me back to God in a way that " Before the stroke, I was feeling like I had a graced life, but the stroke sort of " it was the end of the grace. I got down, had depression after the stroke. It was a dark period, and that dark period gave impetus to my spiritual work because in a way the stroke undermined my feeling of grace and that really started me thinking about the grace in my life. The stroke would be Fierce Grace.

TMA: I understood it to be a serious stroke. How debilitated were you?

RD: Well, the right leg and the right arm are still not usable. And then there is aphasia. You don't remember words. Like your word closet isn't functioning. You can think of the concepts but you can't clothe them in words. One of the therapies for aphasia is giving speeches.

TMA: How did it affect your sense of self? Did you still feel completely you, or did you have some sense of loss of the self, of memory?

RD: Well, there is loss of memory, yes. But the self, the roles, the societal roles ... I started out with the role, like, how can I help? You know, in the past, I was a very independent person. Since the stroke, I have to have people get me out of bed and I have to be dependent.

TMA: You've had to submit to pretty much constant attendants?

RD: Yes.

TMA: I imagine that would be a difficult adjustment.

RD: Not difficult, just adjustment, just change. The role I have post stroke is a new one and it has new information. For example, I wrote the book, How Can I Help? and now it would be nice to write a book, How Can You Help Me? It's just two different scenes, there is one person helping and there is one person getting helped and I wanted to be both of them. I found that they both have, spiritually, a heart-to-heart resuscitation if it's a good spiritual contact.

TMA: It's making me think of breath. You were breathing out, and now you've had to breathe in.

RD: That's right, yes. So, after the depression, I spent a tremendous amount of time looking at the stroke for its grace. I used to have grace ... you know, could I have a parking space in front of the bank, and then a car would pull out, you know, it would be grace, ha ha. But then when I got the stroke, I got that blue thing to go on the mirror of my car and anywhere I go, there are parking spaces, so that's a kind of grace.

TMA: I think that you're talking about something that runs considerably deeper than that.

RD: I am. Ha, ha! I'm glad you drew it. Yup, deeper indeed, deeper indeed.

TMA: Please just take your time and say what you want to say. Don't worry about how long this is taking. It's completely understandable and we want to know what you have to say at this point after what you've been through.

One of the things that has always stuck

out in my mind is how profound your teachings have been and yet, how self-effacing you've always been. You did a lecture tour--sometime in the 80s--that I loved the title of. It was Nothing New from Nobody Special.

RD: I lecture from my own experience and my own life. The stroke has really given me an insight into suffering and illness and death. It has made me focus on those issues now. Those had been my interests in the past but I guess it's now more immediate.

TMA: In the years prior to the stroke you did a lot of work with the sick and the dying. Now the stroke has given you a taste of the other side of that.

RD: Yes, and I think it's because I've been so positive about the stroke—that has brought lots of people to me who are suffering and who want to know how to suffer positively.

TMA: How do you answer that?

RD: My guru once said there was a girl standing in front of him, an Indian girl, and she said: "I have so much suffering in my life," and it was so poignant the way she said it. He looked up, and he said, "I have some suffering. Suffering in my life brings me closer to God." That statement is so close to " We go into these incarnations, I keep wondering why, and the why is that we have to learn how to suffer and we have to learn how to love. Those are the things that we learn in incarnations. Just learning suffering, suffering reflects attachment, so as we lift those attachments, we get closer to God.

TMA: Would you say then that the speed and articulateness that you had was an attachment, and that you're learning by having to adjust to the speed at which you're able to communicate now?

RD: Yes. Because at first you're embarrassed and then you're bumbly and then you finally " At the beginning of speaking after the stroke, I would feel that the audience was having a hard time with the silences, then as I looked, they were saying things like, "The silence makes us meditate about what you say." And then I thought, "Gee, that's a good thing; the silence takes them into the silence deep in their heart." All of that is grace as a result of the stroke.

TMA: The person is called upon to be more present and to listen more carefully.

RD: That's right, they have to go inside themselves. And that is really kind of graceful, you know, for a speech.

TMA: Is the thought process as quick as it ever was?

RD: Yes.

TMA: So that must have been a real trial for you " Because if the thought is there just as quick and as glib as ever, and yet bringing it out"

RD: In my first trip to India, one of my teachers, Hari Das, taught me how to speak using a chalkboard. It was wonderful. You could say a thing using five words instead of 20. Your mind got simple.

TMA: A Meher Baba kind of thing.

RD: Yes. That's what I find with my brain now.

TMA: I see the similarity there. How much of a recovery are you expecting to have?

RD: I don't expect anything because I think this is just fine. I would just as soon for the rest of this incarnation ... have all of these stroke manifestations. There is a differentiation between healing and curing. I'm not going to get cured. I'm not going to be what I was 10 years ago, but I will be healed, healed meaning bringing me to God. That's what I'm going to count on. I'm now much more identifying with awareness.

TMA: I understand what you're saying. A cousin of mine recently died from colon cancer and he was in tremendous spirits all the way through. He really was an example of how sometimes healing doesn't mean surviving.

RD: Yes. I teach a course here in the San Francisco area at the Zen hospice. There are a lot of us teaching. Teaching them first of all not to be afraid of things about death. When you are sitting by the bedside, you leave plenty of space for the dying person to do their death their own way. In that space, you're the witness of the death, because you're neutral, neither pushing for them getting better or pushing that they get death.

TMA: Is there anything that you would like to say now about the current reality in the world, the way things are? Perhaps your thoughts on 9/11?

RD: Well, 9/11. I got woke up with my stroke, I was stroked by God, and I wakened. I think that 9/11 stroked humanity. It's not just this culture, but all of humanity. Because, I've noticed that people speak more about who's up there. Fundamental questions, what are we doing here, and so on. That stuff never appeared on television or the radio or magazines but after 9/11, those topics are often discussed.

TMA: It has caused the mainstream consciousness to examine life in new ways.

RD: And examine death, and examine security, and examine security vs. justice.

TMA: How do you see it all shaking out?

RD: Well, I think we aren't going to be the empire that we anticipated. "We, the United States." I think this will mature the dialogue of man. More people will turn to their inner counsel. That's what will happen.

TMA: We're at a very interesting point in recorded human history. When in history, for instance, would a country like Israel not just simply conquer the region, and impose its will? When in history would the United States along with the rest of the developed world not simply conquer the rest of the world and impose its will? At any time in the past, if a country had the means, it used them. And now it's unthinkable.

RD: Because communication has improved tremendously. We all know so much. In the past you could do something, and not mention it. Great Britain did a huge number of things.

TMA: Without a second thought they created a global empire. Without even considering whether they should or should not. And now when you have a country like Israel in its region, and the U.S. in the rest of the world with the means, we don't. I find that just a remarkable development.

RD: Yes.

TMA: There has been such a shift in humanity that it's just such an interesting time to be alive.

RD: Yes. I used to think that it was much more exciting in the 60s. But I now know that this is much more exciting because this is more sandpaper to get us to get our act together. In the 60s we were very naïve. Now we are so much more aware.

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Ram Dass was born in 1931 as Richard Alpert, studied psychology at Stanford University, and served on the faculties of Stanford and Harvard University. In the early 1960s, Alpert, along with Timothy Leary, conducted the now-famous Harvard research experiments on altered states of consciousness. He journeyed to India in 1967, where he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass and the directions to serve spiritual seekers in the West. His first book, Be Here Now, has sold more than 2 million copies. He helped develop the Living-Dying Project, the Prison-Ashram Project, and the Seva Foundation, an international public health and social justice organization.

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