Ram Dass, 3/16/1970 – Arlington Street Church, Boston, MA

The Rebirth of a Moment

What do you think God is?

Well, I’ll tell you what I think God is. I’ve been thinking about it. Ram Kir, the Indian mystic, says “A God defined is a God confined.” “What can’t be said, can’t be said and it can’t be whistled about either.” He also said “I am without form, without limit, beyond time, beyond space. I am in everything. Everything is in me. I am the bliss of the universe. Everywhere I am. I am sat, chit, ananda, absolute existence, absolute knowledge, absolute wisdom.” He’s a straight cat who’s just telling us how it is.

Christ says “He that is born of the flesh is flesh and he that is born of the spirit is spirit.” And then he cautions “Lest ye be born again you do not enter the kingdom of heaven.” And when he says “I and my father are one.” and when he says “He that loveth mother and father, child, more than me cannot follow me.” He’s just telling us just exactly how it is. He’s talking about higher consciousness; he’s telling us who we really are. He’s telling us what it means when you start to be born again, when you suddenly start to have faith in another possibility. Now what is that called, what is the other possibility? It’s just a vibrational rate. It’s like you’re born with a pre-fixed setting on your television set to channel nine and you never even knew there was a channel seven, channel five, four, two. So everybody that comes along and says “Were you tuned into channel seven last night?” You look at them with a certain pity. Don’t they know there’s only channel nine? Don’t they know how it really is? And then something happens, and it touches a place in you that’s been there all the time and it’s as if you wake for a moment from a long sleep and you say “Oh! Wow! So that’s how it is!”

– Ram Dass, 3/16/1970 – Arlington Street Church, Boston, MA