AI Summary
5 min readIn 1976, Ram Dass told a retreat audience about a time he tried to beat the rush hour crowd down a New York City subway staircase. He reached the bottom only to find a barrier. He turned back up, but the five o'clock rush had started. A wave of commuters was coming down, and he could not fight it. All he could do was hold the railing to keep from being swept back under. Only after a few hundred people started coming up against the flow did the power structure shift, and he could climb out. He used that image as a map for the spiritual predicament: you sense something others do not, and the force of the society coming at you is so strong that holding the rail is an achievement. The point was not to judge the crowd but to get a fix on where you are.
The chakra map of incarnation
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:01) **Episode Introduction and Sponsor Message** - The episode opens with an ad for a meditation teacher training talk, followed by the episode title and host framing the lecture from a 1976 retreat at Roger Williams University.
- 2 (05:38) **The Subway Staircase Metaphor** - Ram Dass opens with a vivid story about trying to go up a crowded subway staircase against a descending tide of commuters, using it as a metaphor for the spiritual path.
- 3 (09:02) **The Leading Edge and Mass Movements** - Ram Dass reflects on his own tendency to be against the flow, and warns that mass movements about consciousness are not necessarily about liberation.
- 4 (11:00) **The Physical Plane and Why Beings Incarnate** - Ram Dass explains that the physical plane is a specific environment for beings with certain karmic predispositions (samskaras), and that most entities in the cosmos are not incarnate here.
- 5 (13:58) **The Chakra System as a Map of Reality** - Ram Dass introduces the seven chakras along the spine (sushumna), explaining that each has its own color, sound, vibratory rate, and psychological dynamics.
- 6 (17:08) **Freud, Adler, and Jung as Chakra Perspectives** - Ram Dass maps psychological theories onto chakras to show how each defines a different reality.
- 7 (20:22) **Who Incarnates on the Physical Plane** - Ram Dass says that primarily first, second, and third chakra beings are born here—those concerned with survival, gratification, and power/control as a separate entity.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Take a trip up and down the subway stairs with Ram Dass as he explores the seven chakras, why this moment in history is ripe for fourth chakra work, and how he escaped the mainline reality trip.
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This episode is supported by Omega Institute. Like the Be Here Now Network, Omega believes that personal transformation can change the world—one heart at a time. Discover immersive retreats, workshops, and gatherings in New York's Hudson Valley. Learn more: eomega.org
This episode of Here and Now is from a retreat at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, in June 1976. Check back soon for the conclusion of this talk.
- Ram Dass begins with a story of how a trip to the subway provided him with a useful metaphor for the spiritual path. He explores the seven chakras to help us understand who incarnates on this physical plane.
- Ram Dass digs into why primarily first, second, and third chakra people incarnate onto this plane. He talks about why the conditions that exist in society at this moment make it appropriate for beings with fourth chakra work to take birth.
- Ram Dass talks about escaping from the mainline reality trip and how the age of technology impacted people’s perception of reality. He touches on rebellion, revolution, evolution, and the state of the mystical experience in America.
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“My experience was primarily that I was on the mainline of reality, and that there were all these kind of weird trips on either side, but that I, as a super scientist, rational mind, power, control, house full of antiques, my airplane, my motorcycle, gratification, more and more sex, more better food, more power, more intellect, I was doing the mainline reality trip. And I was hired to tell everybody e
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