AI Summary
5 min read“I don’t second guess God.” Ram Dass spoke those words in Yonkers, New York, on September 29, 2001—eighteen days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. He was seventy years old, five years into recovery from a stroke that had left him with spasticity, aphasia, and a body that no longer obeyed his will. The stroke had been traumatic. It had also, he said, forced him to shift his perception from ego to soul. In this raw, intimate talk, he offers a three-plane model of human consciousness and wrestles with how to hold both the horror and the grace of a moment that shattered a culture’s sense of safety.
The three-plane model: Ego, soul, and the One
Ram Dass presents a framework he assembled from perennial philosophy and Buddhism. Human beings, he says, exist on three planes simultaneously. The first is the ego—the personality, the identity attached to a particular incarnation, with its hundreds of motivations, its likes and dislikes, its fear of death. The second plane is the soul, which persists across lifetimes, carrying karma from past lives and this one. The soul has only one motive: “to meld with the beloved, with the One.” The third plane he calls “number three”—the silent awareness that is not individual but universal. In Hinduism, he notes, this is the Atman; in Quaker tradition, the still small voice of God. “Your awareness is part of number three,” he says. “Nu
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Introduction and Context** - The host sets the stage for a talk recorded in Yonkers, NY on September 29, 2001, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, noting that Ram Dass was still recovering from a stroke that had radically changed his life five years earlier.
- 2 (04:30) **Ram Dass Begins: The Stroke as "Tough Grace"** - Ram Dass describes his experience of having a stroke five years prior, framing it as a spiritual trauma that forced a shift in perception.
- 3 (11:23) **The Three-Plane Model of Being** - Ram Dass presents his own synthesized model of human existence, drawn from perennial philosophy and Buddhism, consisting of three planes: ego, soul, and the third plane (the One).
- 4 (16:04) **The Source of Awareness and the Cultural "Stroke" of 9/11** - Ram Dass connects his personal model to the collective trauma of September 11th, suggesting the culture itself received a "stroke" that can lead to grace.
- 5 (20:06) **Sitting with the Dying: From Roles to Soul Friends** - Ram Dass shares his experience of sitting with dying people, illustrating the shift from seeing roles to seeing souls.
- 6 (25:44) **The Practice of Silence and a Question on Souls** - Ram Dass shifts to a practice of silence, citing Ramana Maharshi's teaching that "silence is for deepening," and invites questions.
- 7 (30:17) **Love and Suffering: The Guru's Teaching** - A questioner asks about the relationship between love and suffering, noting that Ram Dass said the soul learns about both.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
In this unique talk given in New York just weeks after the events of 9/11, Ram Dass speaks about his stroke, the fierce grace of suffering, and getting in touch with our soul perception.
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A note from the archivist: Please be warned that this content may be upsetting for some listeners due to the nature of the events of 9/11 and some of the raw emotions expressed in this recording. Our intent with releasing this talk is not to open up old wounds and rehash the trauma of that day, but rather to share Ram Dass’s unique perspective on the nature of suffering and the grace that can come with it. – Noah Markus, Archivist, Love Serve Remember Foundation
This episode of Here and Now is from a talk given in Yonkers, New York, on September 29th, 2001.
- Ram Dass begins by talking about the trauma of his stroke, the toll it took on his body, and how it was spiritually disappointing at first. But he started to find grace in the stroke, including how it helped him see himself as a soul and get in tune with his soul perception.
- Ram Dass explores how we are three-plane beings: ego, soul, and the One. He talks about how his trauma helped push him into other planes of consciousness, and wonders whether the events of 9/11 could do the same for our culture.
- Ram Dass takes questions from the audience. He talks more about identifying with the soul plane, his guru's unconditional love, and the fierce grace of suffering. An audience member wraps things up with a raw, powerful statement on how she’s processing the events of September 11th.
“Soul perception is sort of watching it all happen. So I began to be a watcher. I watched him, who had the stroke. I was watching the stroke melodrama. And I noticed that the stroke had pushed me, my consciousness, to the Witness. That’s pretty graceful.” – Ram Dass
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