The Antibody Network ·The Clearing
Reading 3 of 5 The Turn

Just love everyone

Richard Alpert, credentialed to the top of the Western mind, is looked at once and becomes Ram Dass.

The reading — Ram Dass, Be Here Now (1971); Becoming Nobody (documentary, 2019)

Ram Dass and the Turn

Here I was, a Harvard professor, exploring the edges of human consciousness, having published, having achieved, having all the things the culture told me would make me happy. And I was desperately, painfully unhappy. I had been to my analyst for fifteen years. I had taken every drug. I had every credential the West can issue. And none of it had touched what was underneath.

Then Maharaj-ji looked at me, and I felt the love of my mother, who had died, and he said things about my life he could not possibly have known, and I cried for two days. And what he said to me, finally, was: just love everyone and tell the truth.

That was the turn. Not because anything happened to me, but because I saw what had always been there.

Perennial 1971 CE Open this teaching on the Map →
The framing

And what he said to me, finally, was: just love everyone and tell the truth.

Richard Alpert had every credential the culture could issue: Harvard, publication, the edge of consciousness research, fifteen years of analysis, every drug. And he was, in his own words, desperately unhappy. Then an old man in a blanket in the Himalayas looked at him, said things about his life that he could not have known, and Alpert cried for two days.

Notice what the turn consisted of. Not a doctrine. Not a technique. He was loved, unmistakably, by someone who had no reason to, and the love was the argument. Then the instruction, which is the whole of this course in seven words: just love everyone and tell the truth. Ram Dass spent the next fifty years trying to do it, and said near the end that he was still practising. Read the passage for the last line especially. Nothing happened to him. He saw what had always been there.

Carry with you
Who did you tell the truth to today, and did you manage to love them while you did it?