Bhakti Fest, Joshua Tree (Sept. 15-17)

Bhakti Fest, Joshua Tree, CA, Sept. 15, 2023 | Afton Tickets; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

THE YOGA & CONSCIOUS MUSIC EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME IS BACK.

After a three-year hiatus Bhakti Fest is making its long-awaited return. The revival of a premiere 3-day Yoga & Conscious Music Festival, offering music all day, a wide variety of yoga, breathwork, sound healings, spiritual and wellness workshops in a magical high-desert setting (Joshua Tree Lake and Campground).

There will be much to do and see at Bhakti Fest, including an incredible line-up of amazing conscious musicians on multiple stages, premiere yoga classes, and a wide variety of spiritual and wellness workshops.

Favorite artists and yoga teachers will be returning, plus plenty of fresh faces. Enjoy an expanded KidsLand experience, beautiful art installations and live art, sound healings, bodywork in the healing sanctuary, a large array of amazing artisan vendors, and more.

Bhakti Fest features festival favorites such as Krishna Das, plus other beloved artists including Michael Franti, Ayla Nereo, Sol Rising, MC YOGI, Satsang, Ragunath, DJ Drez and Marti Nikko, Govind Das and Jacqueline Michelle, Kirtaniyas, and many more.

Practice with the world’s top yoga teachers and spiritual leaders such as Shiva Rea, Kia Miller, Andrew Sealy, Sujala Roy, Yogrishi Vishvketu, Michael Brian Baker, Jai Dev Singh, Kristin Olson, and many more to be announced.

• (Visit Bhaktifest.com for the full line-up coming soon). Bhakti Fest is a family-friendly, drug and alcohol-free event, and the programs are accessible to all levels.

Festival passes include everything excluding pre- and post-Fest intensives. These intensives take place on Thursday Sept. 14th and Monday Sept. 18th and require a separate ticket. A full festival pass is required to purchase the intensives.

Kids? Children under age 5 are free. The Bhakti Fest Kid Land is full of fun for the entire family.

Senior, local, veteran, and student discounts are also available. Reach out to info@bhaktifest.com for more information.

Accommodations include camping, RV camping with and without hookups, cozy trailers, and glamping yurts. It’s a powerful experience to camp under the stars of the high desert. But for those who enjoy more creature comforts, there are many local hotels, AirBnBs, and unique vacation home rentals available in the area.

For those who choose to camp, please bring own camping gear. Or purchase camping and RV's without hookups on the Afton Tickets website. For all other options, learn more here.

Please do not bring alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to this event. Note that tickets are non-refundable. Those one have purchased tickets and are unable to attend are welcome to transfer the ticket to someone else to sell or give the ticket away.

Join this heart-centered community for its 12th year of BHAKTI FEST.

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TO USE A PROMO CODE: Click the ticket link, just below the Event Title in the top left corner. See a link that says ENTER PROMO CODE. Click link and enter code.

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• Bhakti Fest: Joshua Tree, California - September 15th, 2023 | Afton Tickets

Learning from Ram "Be Here Now" Dass

Harvard's Dr. Richard Alpert became Ram Dass

Ram Dass -- though he has since passed away -- has been a pivotal influence on American culture for three generations. Every year, for the past ten years, Bhakti Fest Executive Producer Sridhar Silberfein has had the honor to meet with Ram Dass for a very special and intimate Bhakti Fest exclusive interview. Hear the most recent interview and the wisdom he has to share with bhaktas.

Ram Dass: Break Cycle of Addiction (audio)

Ram Dass; After Skool, May 23, 2023 (YouTube.com); edited by Wisdom Quarterly

Break the Cycle of Addiction: Ram Dass

Neem Karoli Baba reads about himself in Be Here Now

(After Skool) The Love Serve Remember Foundation (LSRF) is dedicated to preserving and continuing the teachings of an Indian guru and his famous American disciple.

[Love and sexually abusive Guru] Neem Karoli Baba [aka Ram or "God"] and Ram Dass ["God's Servant/Slave," formerly Harvard Prof. Richard Alpert].

Ram Dass got older and wiser.

The foundation facilitates the continuation of these teachings through online courses, blog content, films, podcasts, social network channels, and collaborative projects with conscious artists and musicians.

To learn more or support, please visit ramdass.org.

ABOUT: Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert, April 6, 1931–Dec. 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was a psychologist, American academic, spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, entheogen user [most notably LSD], and writer.

Be Here Now

Earliest book cover of Ram Dass' Be Here Now

His bestselling 1971 book Be Here Now, which has been described by multiple reviewers as "seminal" [full of semen carrying seeds that germinate or spawn further generations of influence], helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West.

He authored or co-authored a dozen more books on spirituality over the next four decades, including Grist for the Mill (1977), How Can I Help? (1985), and Polishing the Mirror (2013).

Ram Dass was personally and professionally associated with Prof. Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s.

Miracle of Love (compiled by Ram Dass)

Then known as Dr. Richard Alpert, he conducted research with Leary on the therapeutic effects of entheogenic/psychedelic drugs.

In addition, Dr. Alpert assisted Harvard Divinity School graduate student Walter Pahnke in his 1962 "Good Friday Experiment" with theology students, the first controlled, double-blind study of entheogenic drugs and the mystical experience.

While not outlawed at the time, their research was controversial and led to Prof. Leary's and Prof. Alpert's dismissal from Harvard in 1963.

Romantic Western female hippie disciples couldn't get enough of Love Guru Neem Karoli Baba

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Young Neem Karoli Baba was hot.

In 1967, Alpert traveled to India and became a disciple of Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the spiritual name "Ram Dass," meaning "Slave of Ram," but usually rendered as simply "Servant of God" for Western audiences.

In the coming years, he founded the charitable organizations Seva ["Selfless Service"] Foundation and Hanuman [the monkey headed deity] Foundation. He traveled extensively giving talks and retreats and holding fundraisers for charitable causes in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

In 1997, he had a massive stroke, which left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia, which made it very difficult for him to talk.

It's not how you look. It's how you love others.

He eventually grew to interpret this event as an act of grace, learning to speak again and continuing to teach and write books.

After becoming seriously ill during a trip to India in 2004, he gave up traveling and moved to the island of Maui in Hawaii, where he hosted annual retreats with other spiritual teachers [like awakened Buddhist teachers Trudy Goodman and Jack Kornfield, whom he married] until his death in 2019.

Alan Watts + Ram Dass: Spiritual Pendulum

Baba Ram Dass, premiered 4/12/23; Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Ram Dass x Alan Watts: The Spiritual Pendulum

(Baba Ram Dass) The Love Serve Remember Foundation, along with friends at the Alan Watts Organization (alanwatts.org, alanwatts.com), have curated a special offering, featuring words of wisdom from Ram Dass and legendary contemporary spiritual entertainer/teacher of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and Mahayana-Hinduism Alan Watts.

(0:00) What Is Reality? Challenging the pervasive myth that we are small separate selves individualized within our bodies, Alan Watts proposes the idea that we are far beyond the concepts we define ourselves as. Describing how we stretch all the way back to the big-bang, and far beyond our current state of being, Alan cuts through society’s hypnotizing illusion of separation, inviting us into an awareness of the eternal Universe as our true being.

(6:14) True Identity Peering through the cracks of the conceptual models of who we think we are, Ram Dass illuminates the ever-present unity that lays behind the diversity of separation. Ram Dass lifts the veil from our identity as a separate being, showcasing instead the compassionate interdependence encased within our identification with the unity of all things.

(12:16) Do You Do It? Harkening examples from Hinduism, Christianity, and Taoism, Alan Watts elucidates – through the lens of ‘self’ and ‘other’ – the intrinsic power encased within authentic trust and surrender. Alan plays with the idea of truly letting go of control and power; imploring that true surrender to the Universe brings about the nondual realization of Oneness.

(19:36) Truth and Trust Outlining the process of "God, away-from-God, and coming-back-to-God," as our current predicament as incarnate beings on Earth, Ram Dass expresses how–at a certain point of realization–we can’t help but to begin to steer our lives in the direction of awakening.

(19:36) Non-Action and Wu Wei Exploring the wisdom behind non-action, Alan Watts interprets the Taoist concept of ‘Wu Wei’ – which he defines as “the principle of not forcing in anything that you do.” Illustrating that non-action is not to be confused with passivity, he explores the subtle nuance of acting without being the actor, falling into natural flow with ‘The Way of things.’

(33:28) Embracing Our Humanity Contemplating juicy lessons from his disembodied friend, Emmanuel, Ram Dass shares the wisdom encased in truly embracing our own humanity. Expounding the pitfalls of pushing away our incarnation’s individuality by ferociously grabbing for the spirit, he shares Emmanuel’s now-infamous antidote of, “You’re in school; why don’t you take the curriculum?”

(44:05) Meditation Explicating the process and implications of meditation, Alan Watts highlights a methodology for becoming ‘interiorly silent and ceasing from the interminable chatter’ of the compulsively thinking mind. Describing the meditative process of moving behind thoughts and symbols to cultivate a direct relationship with reality, Alan surmises that the purpose of life is a song and dance from the heart in the ever-changing immediate present moment of existence.

(50:34) Faith Illuminating the dichotomy between going-up and coming-down, Ram Dass digs into the swinging spiritual pendulum of finding deep peace in meditation, juxtaposed with the reality of dealing with our ‘stuff’ in the world. Honoring our incarnations yet viewing the visceral swings of life simply as kaleidoscopic patterns of energy, Ram Dass invites us to play within the binary processes of forgetting and remembering, of getting lost and awakening.

Listen to the original Be Here Now Network podcast episode with introduction from Raghu Markus, "Ram Dass – Here and Now – Ep 175 – Ram Dass x Alan Watts: From Separation to Unity, Intuition and Trust'" beherenownetwork.com/ram-dass... or • Ram Dass – Here a...

Discover more from The Alan Watts Foundation at alanwatts.org

The Love Serve Remember Foundation is dedicated to preserving and continuing the teachings of Ram Dass and his guru, Neem Karoli Baba. Find out more at ramdass.org. Instagram: instagram.com/babaramdass TikTok: tiktok.com/@ramdassofficial

Support offering more content like this: igfn.us/form/dHI2oA or text YouTube to 91999

Be Here Now: Psychedelics to Service

From Psychedelics to Service with Ram Dass | Here and Now Podcast, Ep. 216

(Be Here Now Network) Premiered Dec. 27, 2022. Ram Dass Here and Now: Ram Dass (Harvard's Dr. Richard Alpert) explores how his psychedelic "awakening" and quest to always stay "high" on a path to take the curriculum of being human and use service as a means to get free.

[The Ram ("God") Ram Dass was a dass ("slave" or "servant") to was defamed sex scandal Indian guru Neem Karoli Baba.]

To be part of the discussion about this episode of Here and Now, join the Ram Dass Fellowship virtual meetup on January 3rd at 8:00 pm EST. Sign up for the General Fellowship group to receive more information.

• 00:00 - A Psychedelic Awakening
• 15:00 - Take the Curriculum
• 27:00 - A Path to Service

“That’s the major issue of awakening: You take what was absolutely real and flip it so you see it’s relatively real. And that there are other places you can go that are just as real.” – Ram Dass

• From Psychedelics to Service with Ram Dass – Here and Now Podcast Ep. 216 – beherenownetwork.com/ram-dass...

Make sure to catch every single video podcast from the Be Here Now Network. Click to Subscribe: @beherenownetwork. Follow: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Be Here Now Network podcasts, courses, and articles to help everyone live a life in balance. Heart-centered wisdom from Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Krishna Das, and many more! Get a free guided meditation from Sharon Salzberg when first signing up: beherenownetwork.com.

Sit-Heads Meditation Club, NY: ONLINE (1/26)

Jon Krop (Sit-Heads Meditation Club, NY); Ananda (Dharma B Med, LA), Wisdom Quarterly

Jon Krop

Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023, is the next meeting of the Sit-Heads Meditation Club to sit and chat about practice, starting at 7:00 pm ET. Here's the join link, which will be sent out again by email on Thursday.

P.S. If you enjoy the group, consider supporting on Patreon, which helps cover the cost of the website, software, and other Sit-Heads-related expenses. Thanks.

What else is going on?

• Mondays, 7:30-9:00 pm ET (online): Sit-Heads Book Club. The current book being read is: Be Here Now by Ram Dass. The group sits for 30 minutes then discusses the book. It's a very fun discussion. Here is the Zoom link.
• Add to Google Calendar here.
• Impromptu Group Sits (online) Throughout the day, sit-heads are having impromptu group sits in a shared video room that's always open. Folks announce their sits in the online group chat so others can join. On that note, there is an ongoing Online Group Chat, which can be joined here. It is used to talk about practice, share fun and interesting resources, and stay connected with each other.

Sit-Heads Meditation Club

157 13th Street (outside Manhattan)

Brooklyn, New York 11215

Dharma Buddhist Meditation

Pacific Coast Highway (@ Topanga Cyn)

Malibu, California 90265

Rescuing farm animals: The sad Ram saved

Lonely ram had no friends for 10 years. This woman gave him a family.

(GeoBeats Animals) Nov. 15, 2022. Lonely ram had no friends for 10 years. This woman gave him a family. Check out Huxley's story: instagram.com/uncleneilsh... #bekind #animals

Salzberg, Boorstein, Kornfield, and Goldstein

"Insight Bay Area" (spiritrock.org); Amber Larson, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

ONLINE: Monday Night Dharma Talk & Meditation Jack Kornfield & Friends

Thursdays in Metta May: Orienting Ourselves: Conversations with Founding Teachers with Sharon Salzberg, Sylvia Boorstein, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Michelle Latvala (calendar).

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Ram Dass: Jack Kornfield 💗 Trudy Goodman

Rebirth in Egypt: Nephilim, Ramses (video)

Viper TV - FILMS, 1/7/20; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

The Ancient Egyptians speak of Nephilim meeting Ramses. Pharaoh Sa-Nakht may have been a giant (Nephilim), new study suggests. Unfolding discoveries reported in America and other parts of the world have revealed a lost legacy of a race (or races) of giants who are now slowly starting to be included in the historical and archaeological record. Subscribe

Rebirth in Ancient Egypt: Book of the Dead

Section of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Book of Coming Forth by Day or Book of Emerging Forth into the Light) written on papyrus, showing the Weighing of the Heart in the Duat (Underworld), where Anubis is seen on the far right. The scales are shown with the feather balance, and Ammit awaits hearts that she must devour. The presence of Osiris at the gateway to the paradise of Aaru dates the papyrus to a late tradition of the myth (wiki).

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Duat ("do-aht," Tuat, Tuaut, or Akert, Amenthes, Amenti, or Neter-khertet) is the Realm of the Dead in ancient Egyptian mythology. It has been represented in hieroglyphs as a star-in-circle: 𓇽.

The Egyptian god Osiris was believed to be the lord of the underworld [like the Buddhist afterlife "god" Yama]. He was the first mummy, as depicted in the Osiris myth, and he personified rebirth and life after death.

The underworld was also the residence of various other gods along with Osiris. The Duat was the region through which the sun god Ra traveled from west to east each night, and it was where he battled Apophis (Apep), who embodied the primordial chaos the sun had to defeat in order to rise each morning and restore order to the earth.

Visitors set up an earth colony.

It was also the place where people's "souls" [rebirth continuum, gandhabba, continuation of the impersonal process of consciousness and the reappearance of the other ancillary aggregates clung to as a "self"] went after death for judgement, though that was not the full extent of the afterlife (Faulkner, p. 143).

Burial chambers formed touching-points between the mundane world and the Duat, and the ꜣḫ ("akh") "the effectiveness of the dead," could use tombs to travel back and forth from the Duat (Pinch, pp. 33-35).

Why do we feel it "natural" to follow tall people? Might remnant memories of their offspring, hybrids, were children of severe rulers that demanded to be obeyed (ancient-origins.net).

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Each night through the Duat the sun god Ra travelled, signifying revivification [rebirth, re-becoming, reappearance] as the main goal of the dead. Ra travelled under the world upon his Atet barge from west to east. He was transformed from its aged Atum form into Khepri, the new dawning sun.

The dead king, worshipped as a god, was also central to the mythology surrounding the concept of Duat, often depicted as being one with Ra (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome Weigal, A Guide to the Antiquities of Upper Egypt from Abydos to the Sudan Frontier, Taylor & Francis, p. 199). More

• The Shroud of Turin: Jesus' bloodstained burial cloth or a fascinating forgery?
• What makes Spartan women so different from other ancients?
• Exploring the little known history of Celtic warriors in Egypt
• Aboriginal Australians lose land rights to coal mine
• Bloodsucking Baobhan Sith, "Satan," and Dracula all have their origins in Sumerian vampires
• Kidd Mine Ontario: The world's oldest pool of water

Remembering Ram Dass (Insight LA)

Trudy Goodman (insightLA); Ninad Music; Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Ram Dass wrote Be Here Now and Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying.

Hey, man, be here now. Then go.

In Ram Dass’s room this past Sunday [Dec. 22, 2019], amidst quiet chanting and harmonium, with his devoted companion Dassima and caregivers nearby, Ram Dass took two deep breaths and was gone from his body.

• Ram Dass dead at 88

In the days that have followed in his household, there is nowhere he is not. Maybe you, too, can find him as you open your heart.

I’m grateful for the silent retreats I took in the little cottage next to Ram Dass’s house. He would be wheeled over in his chair every couple days, and I would make tea for him. Sometimes, we’d sit together for hours.

Years ago, I poured out my distress about a rough patch we were going through at InsightLA and Ram Dass listened intently. He smiled sagely, said one word, “attachment” -- and my upset faded. His capacity for detachment [letting go] was one of his superpowers. When detachment is enfolded in attentive presence and unconditional love, this is wisdom.

Ram Dass (left) as I marry Jack Kornfield.

His house on Maui was a temple, an ashram. This summer I spent many happy days there. Like many beings, I just loved being around him. In his presence, everyone felt loved and accepted [as he had felt from his guru, Maharaji]. After his big stroke in 1997, Ram Dass learned how to transmute his pain into quiet presence, yours and mine, and radiate love -- a blanket of love he would wrap around the whole cosmos as he meditated.

Still Here (Ram Dass)

He said, “We have to get out of our minds, our thinking minds. I’ll tell you how I do it: by using a mantra, a phrase: ‘I am loving awareness.’ Loving awareness is a name for what you really are. Doing this leads you to love everything you are aware of – the sky, the room, your body, other people. I ride the mantra into my heart. And in my heart I see a doorway to the next plane so that I am loving awareness everywhere. I am loving awareness. I am loving awareness....”

During this past year, it often seemed that Ram Dass both was and wasn’t with us as he sat in his wheelchair or his big armchair. He was with his guru Maharaji whose love always sustained and inspired him. We hung out where all there is to do is sit in silence, tasting pure love -- nothing to do but look at the Hawaiian sky, admire the clouds, enjoy the soaring birds and ocean in the distance over the papaya trees, watch time pass in full consciousness of oneness, nowhere else to be.

After he died, I felt his spirit soar and was in complete joy with and for him, imagining him unencumbered by his body, free. I heard the words he would call out during his community swims in the ocean, “Oh Boy Oh Boy Oh Boy.” His spirit seems to dance, walk on water, make love with the cosmos, “Oh Joy Oh Joy Oh Joy.”

The jewel is in the lotus as is the precious...

Today sadness spills into my being like last night’s rainwater flooding the sidewalk where we live. Ram Dass passed away on the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, the first night of [this year's] Hanukkah. Although he famously said he was “only Jewish on his parents’ side,” I will always think of his radiant love when we light that first candle celebrating light coming into the world as miracle.

Just as we trust that sunlit days will lengthen after the winter solstice, in his books and podcasts, Ram Dass reminds each one of us to trust that we can dissolve the illusion of separation and fall into love. He is still teaching.

InsightLA.org Founder Trudy Goodman

Touch your heart gently, and whisper to yourself with each intimate breath, “I am loving awareness.”

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

LOVE, TRUDY GOODMAN

Founder of InsightLA.org

Was Here When: Ram Dass dead at 88

Andrew Limbong, All Things Considered obituary (National Public Radio, NPR.org, December 23, 2019); Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Ram Dass (formerly Harvard's Dr. Richard Alpert) alive and well in Hawaii for Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman's wedding. Ram Dass was alert and active but slow with a speech impediment due to a stroke. He was helpful to the Buddhist organization and founder of insightLA.org.

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Ram Dass, spiritual teacher and psychedelics pioneer, dies at 88

Ram Dass, 1st Unitarian Church, SF, 1970 (Altman/Ochs)

The spiritual leader and author [of Be Here Now] Ram Dass ["Servant of the God Ram"] has died at the age of 88. He was an icon of the psychedelic [entheogen] drug movement of the '60s and '70s, as well as a champion of a mindful philosophy.

According to his official Instagram account, he died Sunday at his home in Maui, Hawaii. He was born Richard Alpert to a Jewish family in Boston. His landmark 1971 [Buddhist, Hindu, Eastern Philosophy] book, Be Here Now, opens with his origin story:

He was a successful, if anxious, professor in Harvard's Psychology Department. Feeling a certain malaise about his middle-class existence, he began experimenting with psychedelic drugs with his colleague Timothy Leary.

Important books on the topic of entheogens

"A deep calm pervaded my being," Ram Dass wrote. "Then I saw a figure standing about 8 feet away, where a moment before there had been none. I peered into the semi-darkness and recognized none other than myself, in cap and gown and hood, as a professor. It was as if that part of me, which was Harvard professor, had separated or disassociated itself from me."

He and Leary started studying LSD and its effects — research that garnered them a reputation and a large following. It also led to them getting fired.

Ram Dass at home in 1998 (Susan Rajan/AP)

Alpert and Leary continued their research at a mansion in Millbrook, N.Y., where the two solidified themselves as counterculture icons until the pair had a falling out.

Alpert then traveled to India in 1967 and met a Hindu mystic named Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass — meaning "servant of God."

Ram Dass returned to the United States dressed in white robes and sporting a long beard. He toured the country lecturing about mindfulness and spirituality. He wrote books that helped popularize New Age thinking.

Be Here Now the classic book

He also started foundations and charities that helped incarcerated people, blind people and, especially, the dying. He helped create The Living/Dying Project, which was devoted to helping people die consciously.

As his stature grew, he became increasingly uncomfortable as the object of a cult of personality. He told WHYY's Fresh Air in 1990 that his aesthetics — the beard and beads and robes — made it difficult for people to connect to him. So he ditched them.

"It turns off a lot of people that could be people with whom I could share a shared awareness or awakening, or our social concerns or our ecological concerns," Ram Dass said. More

Ram Dass loves you: Be Here Now

Dr. Richard Alpert (RamDass.org); Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"No Death No Fear" FREE to stream until June 15, 2018 at ramdass.org.