Polishing the Mirror: How to live from your spiritual heart - Rameshwar Das (Ram Dass)
My first read from Rameshwar Dass or Ram Dass or Richard Alpert who was a well known American spiritual teacher and born out of the hippie movement of the 1960s. He recently passed away in 2019 leaving a big legacy behind him in the western spiritual world. Ram Dass was a disciple of Neem Karoli Baba also known as Maharaj ji to his followers. Ironically, Neem Karoli Baba became more famous outside India because of his high profile followers like Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, Larry Brilliant, Steve Jobs, Baba Hari Das (Mount Madonna Hanuman Center, Gilroy) and many others.
Why of all the gurus - Neem Karoli Baba got famous with so many westerners, it’s always a big mystery. My theory is that the general western population, who is curious about eastern tenets, has always been so small that they stick to the community which is more mature and widespread. It so happened that Ram Dass and Krishna Das ended up coming in touch with Neem Karoli Baba in the 1960s and that opened an easy safe trustworthy path for many other future followers to tread upon.
It’s fascinating to see so many non Indian men and women getting attracted to tenets of Eastern philosophy. It’s perplexing to find such deep interest in only a certain subset of the population. This set of population has a higher level of curiosity than average and has a propensity to experiment more with their freedom. They are the ones who would be more nomadic, indulge in psychedelic drugs, live in less defined sexual boundaries, and be more open to experience ideas that were not imposed on them in their childhood. This set of people also like to delve deeper at the metaphysical level and try to understand the meaning of life in a more comprehensive way. While there may never be one answer to the question around the meaning of life, it so happens that Eastern tenets have thought more so on these topics and the philosophy seems to have matured over time. It could be because the region houses one of the oldest civilizations and when a civilization has seen so many cycles of life and death then automatically the approach to life becomes more holistic.
One may think, why do we need a set of beliefs and these faiths to lead our life? We are born with so much diversity around us that our mind continues to shape up in our own unique ways. We need some day to day flow or energy to carry on with the engine of our life. When we are a child and more vulnerable, our parents and our ecosystem provide that fuel and energy. When we grow up and are more independent, we ourselves choose the faiths and belief systems. These faiths or belief systems that we adopt then end up providing that fuel which powers this energy of life.
I believe no one philosophy fits the entire human race. Some philosophies are more inclusive than others. Ironically, a reality of the times we live in, philosophies fight against each other for their survival and try to prove their superiority over the others. And followers of these philosophies resort to all kinds of techniques to impose these ideas on others. Some resort to violence. Some target the vulnerabilities of individuals to win them over. Some use money to spread their cause. Others may be more top down and use the state sponsorship to propagate. While this obsession may be borne out of the love to share what they believe in or an evolutionary coping mechanism to belong somewhere, whatever be the case, as long as humans inhabit this planet, it seems they will always resort to such actions. We can just hope that we as human race still find more peaceful ways of having a dialogue with each other and not get obsessed about it.
