This article is from a Ram Dass lecture that took place in 1976. It can be argued that much of the “upleveling” of spiritual consciousness described here is still taking place in the West. Like many of Ram Dass’ words, this description of the spiritual state of the U.S. applies just as much to current beliefs as it did over thirty years ago.
There’s a tremendously delicate predicament with the scene in America now. Historically we have to go back to the opening of the sixties, the opening of consciousness that made many hundreds of thousands of people realize suddenly that there is something else. We were looking for new models then, and we bought them as fast as we could. We imported them as fast as we could, and the imports were somewhat second rate, most of them, because we didn’t know enough. We couldn’t discriminate yet. We couldn’t get the pure thing because we were going in too grossly to grab at whatever we could get.
