Ram Dass:

Hello Everybody! Namaste! You are having a wonderful time in Southern California and I am having a wonderful time in Maui. We are together with this technology.

Sridhar:

Welcome Ram Dass. We want to extend a loving, welcome and appreciation to you here at Bhakti Fest. Since you don’t travel any more we will enjoy your wisdom with this exclusive Bhakti Fest interview. Thank you so much.

There’s so much overload in society today. Whenever we see the news, and see all the disasters and wars and epidemics, how can we be better prepared spiritually and psychologically to handle whatever comes?

Ram Dass:

All that is the drama of culture. Unless you can stand back inside yourself and unless you can watch the melodrama of your life, you get caught. It’s like, you’re a soul and you delved into this incarnation, which includes all of the karma that you’ve created. The strategy is to remain a soul and not get caught in your incarnation.

Things in our environment are sad or happy, and will go in and out, in and out, but we are trying to get a center, working from our big Self, our large Self, in which we can witness the drama of the incarnation.

Sridhar:

What is your current feeling on mind-altering substances and how they relate to the spiritual path?

Ram Dass:

Well, I did mind-altering substances and I know that they took me from psychology to Maharajji. They helped me understand levels of consciousness.

If I hadn’t had psychedelics, I would have gone to India and just turned my nose up, because I was so busy being a social scientist. These planes of consciousness, which I now live in, these soul planes, and spiritual planes, I would have had no time for them.

I say to people when they say that they are going to use psychedelics, I say, look for a guide, someone that