Letter from Ram Dass in April 1970
This is the letter we received from Ram Dass in April of 1970. Forrest and Scott are my brothers.
Ram Dass first lists a few places he had lived, a few places we had lived, and then postulates that the whole time we had also been in each other’s hearts.
The next line is profound in a way that moves me every time I read it. He says “we are all The Family” – all members of the same group, the same tribe, that there is only one community. “Every time we go behind the veil of differences in time and space” – if we can transcend for just a moment the confines of our 3 dimensional existence, and glimpse for even a second those higher realms where infinity and eternity are absolutes and tangible, “who do we meet but OURSELF” – one identity, one all encompassing persona. Not ourselves – plural, but ourself, singular. “HANGING OUT ALL OVER.” Just being, just hanging out in this here and in this now.
“As we dance around the globe of light” – as our path through time and space unfold, and our footsteps take us forward towards whatever destiny awaits us in the next moment and the here and now that follow it – “may we never thirst.” That expression is used in the science fiction book Stranger in a Strange Land as a way of one ‘water brother’ telling another ‘water brother’ that the hope is only good things will happen.
On the backside of this amazing letter he wrote a postscript note about planning to travel back to India in June. “The cycles – outward action (karma yoga) and then turning within to secure one’s rest in the light… until at last… in and out are one.” What he is saying to me with this line about the cycles is that people have to have a balance between the ‘go, go, go get things done’ mode and the ‘sit quietly and rest’ in the inner peace of the Oneness mode. That the goal is to do it all, and perceive it all, as arising from the same source. The One.
In the fall of 1969 we moved to the tiny, tiny town of Eureka, Nevada, population 400. My mother, Marge, had been experiencing health problems living in the smog in Los Angeles. Also, she wanted to make a career change, from working as a research librarian in the aerospace industry to being a high school teacher. In California at that time you had to have 2 years practice teaching to be a public school teacher. Marge did not have the luxury to take 2 years off from providing for her family to ‘practice’ teaching. She found out that in these little bitty almost ghost towns out in the middle of nowhere they don’t care if you have had practice teaching. As long as you have the correct degree, they will hire you.
As a sophomore in the school district in Santa Monica where we lived near Los Angeles, I had attended a high school that had three thousand students in 3 grades. The next year, as a junior in high school in Eureka, Nevada, there were 80 students in six different grades. And Marge was my math teacher. In the fall of 1970 we moved to the very small town of Joseph, Oregon near the corner where Oregon meets Washington and Idaho. That town had 800 people in it. In that small town, Marge was my chemistry teacher. After that year Marge had her 2 years ‘practice’ teaching in and was hired by the school district in Sacramento, our home town.
Joseph, OR is where we were living when we got the box set From Bindu to Ojas and started listening to the album that came with it. We learned the different mantras and chanting that Ram Dass describes and gave examples of. Living in these extremely rural areas made getting these letters from Ram Dass, and that album where we could hear him, all that more significant to my mother and I. Marge wrote to the Lama Foundation to tell them how wonderful the box set was and how much it meant to us at that time. The link to that letter is next:
We get our copy of the box set From Bindu to Ojas in 1970
We received our copy of the box set From Bindu to Ojas in the winter of 1970 – 71. It came with an album, some posters and some additional pamphlets. Marge eventually turned our copy into a wall hanging. She punched a hole at the top of each page and reinforced it with stiff paper. That way she could hang the whole book on her wall and still be able to turn the pages from time to time. This book hung on her wall for over three decades.
My friend Jon Seskevich has written up the whole history of the creation of this box set. If you follow this link to his site you can read all about how this manuscript originated, was created and distributed. https://jonvasu.com/from-bindu-to-ojas/
Because this original manuscript is over 11 inches on each side, the details of the artwork are much more clear than in the version that was produced in the book Be Here Now. Here are some high resolution pictures of some of that amazing artwork. The first one shows where Ram Dass autographed our copy of From Bindu to Ojas to us with “What a dance. What a tribe. In love, Ram Dass”
We recive our copy of the six albulm set Love Serve Remember in 1973
“LOVE SERVE REMEMBER was a boxed set of 6 LPs that ZBS produced with Ram Dass in 1973. It contains phone calls, Ram Dass reading from the Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen, The Gospel According to John, the Ramayana, and music. The phone calls are especially moving. They were recorded at WBAI in New York City”
Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen, Verses of the Faith Mind is a 6th century manuscript that attempts to explain how to understand, perceive and transcend all dualities. The first line is one I have quoted often – “The Great Way is not difficult for one who holds no preferences.” The ‘Great Way’ is the path to enlightenment. My ‘preferences’ are my many judgments about what is good or bad, right or wrong and so on. The more attached I am to my preferences, the less I am on that path to enlightenment.
When I first heard the album track where Ram Dass recites this manuscript in 1973 I was 20 years old. Ever since then I have returned from time to time to listen to or read this profound prose. It helps me understand and remember that it is not what happens to me in life that causes me to be happy or sad, it is my thinking about what happens.
The desire for transcendence is self nurturing. We get a glimpse, it goes away, and we get a glimpse again. Until, as Ram Dass said in one of his letters to us, “the coming and going are one.” One of the lines in this 6th century prose states that in order to become enlightened, one must give up all desires, even the desire to be enlightened. For a time in my 20’s I told people about this line, and about how that was easy thing to do, so “I guess I am enlightened then.” LOL.
This link is to the Love Serve Remember Foundation page where the transcription of this ancient, timeless, instructive manuscript is and where one can hear Ram Dass read it: https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-reads-the-third-chinese-patriarch/
The Love Serve Remember Foundation offers this entire 6 album set with the original liner notes as a digital download for the same price it was as vinyl records in 1973 – four dollars. At this link: https://shop.ramdass.org/products/love-serve-remember-set-audio-download
Letters from Ram Dass to Marge in August and October of 1974
In this July, 1974 letter to Ram Dass, Marge mentions that Tim Scully is going to be released on bail. Tim is someone Ram Dass knew who had been arrested for manufacturing LSD. She tells him that I’m doing well (1973 was a very difficult year for me). She adds a little note that is her humorous take on the name of the Love Serve Remember 6 album set.
In August, 1975 Ram Dass replies: Welcome OM (home) to Tim and much love to you, Nancy, Storm and everyone. Much beauty comes from, and through, you.
After 5 week in Boulder with 800 students I am retiring to the farm in N.H. for at least 6 months to watch the leaves change, the snow come, and God laugh.
Shanti Ram Dass
In October, 1974 Ram Dass writes: If you have an extra copy of Tim’s tape i would like to hear it. Oh the wildness of Swa’s dance.
Happy to hear Stormy is doing well.
I don’t know any scientology people. I have enough mashugana people in my own family. Love, Ram Dass
Two letters from Ram Dass in late 1974 in response to my mothers concerns for the safety of Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary had a very illustrious, colorful and very public career from the late 50s clear through the seventies as a spokesperson for the wonders of the use of LSD as a means to experience a spiritual awakening. Prior to 1967, Richard Alpert was Timothy Leary’s cohort, companion and co-promoter of using LSD, in the proper set and setting, as a chemically induced spiritual awakening. Once Richard Alpert went to India in 1967 and came back as Ram Dass, their paths diverged fairly completely.
Marge and Jean had met Timothy Leary at the October 1964 seminar at Esalen Institute, described in the first page of this section. Jean in particular, and Marge to a certain extent, continued to be acquaintances of Timothy Leary, for over a decade. Jean was the administrator of the West Coast Division of the Timothy Leary Defense Fund that was created after Timothy Leary was sentenced to 30 years in prison on March 11, 1966 in Texas for the possession of one joint of marijuana.
In going over these next letters from Marge to Ram Dass, and his replies to her, I had difficulty putting the events they mention into a timeline that corresponds to what is known about these events. Marge seems to have told Ram Dass several times that she thinks Timothy Leary is in danger. His answers to her are words of reassurance. I am providing here only that part of the letters from Marge to Ram Dass that pertain to what he wrote back to her.
In this letter to Ram Dass in September of 1973, Marge describes how she and Jean are demonstrating Tim Scully’s Brainwave Analyzer. And how Jean is measuring the brain waves of “mystic, psychic and ESP people” in her work on a PhD “on ESP”. She lists what she says is a good reading list: Ram Dass, Metzner, Leary, Ornstein, Tao, Sufi and Zen books. Then she says that she sent Timothy Leary, who is “surrounded by the gray Granite of Folsom,” a letter, but it came back opened and marked ‘not allowed.’
In his next letter below from Marge to Ram Dass in May of 1974, she tells him that she enjoyed his recent outdoor lecture in Davis. She implies that she thought it was important that during that lecture he mentioned ”our friends in jail” nearby need our love and support, referring to Timothy Leary. Then she shares a message to him from Timothy Leary. One that Jean got when Jean visited Timothy Leary in Vacaville State Prison – “If you put your whole mind to it” he could be out of jail in a few months.
It is beyond the scope of this part of my sharing about our relationship with Ram Dass to go into enough detail about Timothy Leary to put these few letters between Marge and Ram Dass in an accurate chronological order. They are presented here in more of a narrative order. Timothy Leary is mentioned in them as being in Folsom Prison, then being visited in Vacaville prison, and then being missing in action. I would refer the interested reader wanting to know more about the timing of these events to that section of his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary#Legal_troubles
Margie – There is activity in many places to ascertain Tim’s whereabouts and health.
I too hope we shall all laugh about our own folly in doubting the old magus. Maybe!
I’d love a picture if you have one of Tim and me in denims.
Shanti Ram Dass
Marge
Allen Ginsberg and I have been in touch with all lawyers invloved and are financing writ of habeas corpus for Timothy via Boston lawyer Harvey Silverglate.
Love to family. Ram Dass
We meet in God’s light.
I am in bliss much and feel God’s breath and now sense out of nonsense and light out of darkness and love and caring (a la Wavy) everywhere.
Maharaj-ji guiding me closely.
This mention by Ram Dass of Wavy Gravy makes this the perfect place for the poem that Wavy Gravy wrote for Ram Dass that circulated in social media not long after Ram Dass made his transition in December of 2019:
A poem from Wavy Gravy to Ram Dass after Ram Dass made his transition
