I was standing in front of a theater to see a dirty movie in Chicago. It was called Throat and had gotten rave reviews in New York, and I was in Chicago for something or other, and I looked in the paper, and there was Throat and I thought, “I’ll see what sex movies are like these days,” for many reasons.
So, I was standing in line with my five dollars, and I started to talk with the guy in front of me and as we are talking about these movies along the street comes this young hippie.
He walks up to me and says, “Baba Ram Dass!” – and what I’m trying to do is hide my five dollars – “Baba Ram Dass, the gods have been so kind as to allow me to meet you here!” There is kindness, I tell you. Then this kid kind of looks around and as the line moves ahead, I move with it. He sees that I’m in line for this movie and so his eyes go up, and he sees what the movie is, and I tell you, the look on his face was exquisite.
I mean, it was just like, “You betrayer,” you know. It was just horror. Stark horror.
Interestingly, the trip of the spirit doesn’t seem to have anything to do with holiness.
You don’t have to take on any stance. It was right for me to be in line with my five dollars, because that’s just the way it was, and that’s what I am. That’s what I was working with in the moment, what I am working through at this moment. That’s where the desire was.
You don’t rip away desires. You can’t push them away and you can’t seduce them away and you can’t give them up. Nor can you embrace them. You just stay there in relation to them, and slowly the amount of time you get lost into them gets less and less and less. They’re still there, but more and more here you are. And when you try to run them through, unfortunately, here you are still.
-Ram Dass, 1972
