Ram Dass: Balance

The Balance of a Perfected Being


“The heart of a saint is like butter, but it’s not, because it melts for the sufferings of others, not only its own…” – Maharajji

We have been through thousands and thousands of incarnations. Our predicament of course, is that the veil surrounds us and we don’t know who we are.

Not only who we are in the sense that we are one with God, but who we are in terms of our reincarnations. Saints however, have full knowledge of who they are on every plane: historically, in terms of reincarnations, in this incarnation, and in the sense of the Absolute. There are many lokas (realms) that are hierarchically ordered in terms of the rarefied nature of the vibration, and there are many saints who are almost perfected. They are very high and very pure and very good. They work on many lokas but some of them have not dealt with the final stages. This does not mean they are not great teachers for us, but that they have not yet finished their work. For the ultimate work is not only the merging of Shiva and Shakti but the merged Shiva and Shakti going into God. And many beings have never taken that last step.

A fully realized being such as Maharaj-ji has many forms and has an identity on every vibrational level.

When we meet such a being, they may talk to us, and at first we may think it’s Maharaj-ji, and then realize we have been talking to Shiva. Or we may have been talking to Hanuman… Because from this Being, within this being, these are all part of the uniqueness of that particular entity, and they float in and out of these planes, like a balloon floats through various layers of atmospheric density.

So Maharaj-ji can recite the name Ram, which is the name of the Absolute, not to bring him there, but to keep him down, to push himself into the physical form. And he can be sitting as Maharaj-ji on his wooden table at Kainchi, talking to you; and then the experience of the pain in a being that comes into his consciousness, whether near or far physically, could be so great that it would push him up into another identity that was in a more rarefied space. For such beings raised of Shakti, and for many reasons they keep going up and down.

They rise, first, because there is a continuous pull to merge with God.

Such a being also rises to avoid the pain that exists on the denser planes. A being sacrificing himself for the perfection of truth in others takes an incredible karma from others, which may be in the form of actual physical suffering. This suffering which could be in the form of a heart attack or cancer, can be passed through them, though not without incredible pain. So they rise to a higher plane of their identity, guiding their bodies through the suffering, but remaining in clear consciousness.

So, Jesus was both the one who was suffering (“Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?”) and the perfectly conscious Christ (“Now the work is completed.”) Such a being moves in and out of these levels with total freedom. If they have arrived at their perfection through careful and conscious guidance; not in a fashion that has gone against God’s will, then they retain perfect control on all planes. If their awakening has been uneven, they often lose what is called their ‘ground’ that is, they lose their connection on the physical plane. They have a very hard time staying down. For example, Ramakrishna calling for something to smoke, saying, “I need to smoke something or I’ll leave.” He had to struggle to stay on the physical plane.

Even some of these beings who stay on the physical plane can’t experience anything through their senses. Some of them have no sense of smell, or taste, or feel. Let alone that their minds are, ‘blown,’ they’re not thinking anything. Though they’re in their bodies they’re not really living on the physical plane, because they lost that in the process of getting out.

The perfected being of course, the truly perfected being, has full consciousness of every plane simultaneously.

The game is, when such a being embodies, to constantly remain close to the total merging, in the raw, cold truth; and simultaneously keep the heart wide open. The most powerful image of that is the bleeding heart of Jesus; of the blood upon the snow, the blood of the heart on the icy white clear snow of truth. It’s the balance of caring and truth.

There are many great masters, great teachers, from whom one can get pure truth but no caring. There are many very high beings who care deeply for the suffering of all sentient beings, but avert their eyes from the coldest truth. The perfected being sits torn at every moment by the icy cold truth of the perfect indifference of God, and the bleeding heart of caring for all the suffering of all beings. To keep that balance one can neither stay too high nor too low. One is constantly going up and down, replenishing and coming back in. If you get too lost in the plains you miss the mountain peaks, if you get too lost in the mountain peaks, you don’t care.

Beings such as Maharaj-ji spend their nights in samadhi (union with the divine) going up into the cold mountain peaks. On the way they do incredible work on other planes for thousands and thousands of beings with their thought forms. But then there would be some point during each night when they would go into the cold place, and make a vow to merge into God for a moment and then return. Just as you set an internal alarm clock to awaken at a certain time, and you do awaken, so they make a vow; ‘I will merge with God, but I will come back.’

Each morning they are reborn again, making the sacrifice anew, all over again. Beings who make that journey each day bring to us the purest transmission of the Absolute. For they are always just a breath away from that merging.



-Ram Dass