Ram Dass

On Desire Falling Away (Part One)

Posted March 17, 2016



In the course of my own journey, I have seen a clear sequence. This sequence has run over 30 years.

If nothing else, I’ve learned patience and to stop counting how soon I’d get enlightened. I used to expect it would be any day. Then I thought it would be any lifetime. Now I no longer know whether I’m enlightened or not, and I don’t care because the process goes on inevitably and irrevocably. But the sequence is clear.

At first when I tasted of the possibility that the universe was not as I thought it was, that I was not who I thought I was, I craved to enter into the realms of consciousness where there was a broader terrain. And I was drawn very powerfully to paths that had a renunciation base. These paths were based on the understanding that the pulls of the world were so strong that it was necessary to extricate oneself from these pulls by pushing away. The seduction of the gratification of desires was so powerful that one couldn’t do one’s work in the presence of these desires.

So I did indeed push those things away and entered into practices that were done alone or in an ashram setting. And indeed, I did open up to other planes of consciousness and dwelled in them more and more of the time. The predicament was that, though I was often in ecstasy and bliss, I had a fear and an aversion to the worldly part of myself. I felt that my sexual desires and my desires for worldly pleasures and for comfort were clearly obstacles.

By being in an ashram in India these energies seemed to be almost totally absent. There was no advertising that tried to awaken the desires in me. I was not dealing with people who saw the world through the eyes of worldly concerns. And everybody around me was in the same situation. Most of them were more evolved than I was, so there was a tremendous support system for doing this inner work. But the pulls in me were still there, although very latent.

I recall in the winter of 1968 in India that the desire to be stimulated by worldly things was still very powerful. I was living in this tiny temple that had only two other people in it. It was very, very cold.

It was up in the Himalayas, and every day a bus went by that could take you to a larger city, that then you could take another bus to New Delhi. And from Delhi you could get an airplane to New York. When I was really terribly desirous I would take out my airplane ticket and I would stand at the window and watch the bus come and hold on to my ticket and imagine that I had written a note saying that I must leave.

Then I would have a fantasy of all the things I would do once I got back to New York; the restaurants I’d go to, the stimulation I would have, the sexual gratification, the moving about. After an hour or two I would be exhausted and I would think to myself, “Where I would really like to be is in a little temple in the Himalayas.” And then I would take the ticket, put it away and make my evening tea.

After some time I saw that the desires hadn’t really fallen away. They had just become more subtle. And they were more like what is called uncooked seeds waiting to sprout when the opportunity would arise. If you don’t want a seed to sprout you must heat it over flame, but the flame of my practice had not destroyed the seeds of my desires. So I labeled myself as a horny celibate; I was busy not having sex. That’s not the same as if it had fallen away.



-Ram Dass



Look for part two next week!