In this talk from 1969, Ram Dass shares several meditation methods to help go behind the rational mind to the next state of consciousness.
Step on to the path with the Ram Dass Guided Meditation Library
Keep It Light
Raghu Markus introduces this talk from March of 1969, right after Ram Dass had returned from India for the first time. Raghu tells a story from his time in India when he and several other Westerners tried to impress their guru, Maharajji, by showing what they had learned at a Vipassana meditation course. In the end, Maharajji always kept it light with the Westerners.
“God knows what any of us were doing at the time, but it wasn’t meditating, I’ll tell you that.” – Raghu Markus
One-Pointedness of Mind (8:32)
Ram Dass leads a brief meditation centered around feeling the rising and falling of the abdomen. He talks about developing one-pointedness of mind, which is the first stage of going behind the rational mind to the next state of consciousness. He describes another meditation method involving a candle flame, which is designed to help extricate your awareness from the time-space locus.
“All you have to do for the next three minutes is attend to your abdomen, that’s all you’ve got to do. You don’t have to listen to the sounds outside, you don’t have to think about your body, you don’t have to do anything. Just put it all in neutral.” – Ram Dass
I Am Not the Body (22:05)
Ram Dass explores a meditation method from Ramana Maharshi which uses the mind to go beyond the mind. This is an advanced meditation, and it takes a power of thought which can be difficult to develop. But if you can go behind the ‘I’ thought, it is the first level of Samadhi.
“What the game now is, is to separate awareness from the ear hearing the clock tick. That is, first you make the clock [an] object, then you make the ear hearing the clock [an] object, so that you have done voluntarily what before you know you can do because you’ve all done it involuntarily.” – Ram Dass
Raghu Markus and David Silver explore the teachings of Ramana Maharshi on Mindrolling Ep. 291
