Ram Dass

The passing of a great man. We will miss him dearly!

Ram Dass passed just yesterday, at the age of 88 years of age. He was someone the world knew as the author of the book “Be Here Now” and a number of other best selling books on Spirituality and Human Relations & Growth. He was a being who walked his talk and really lived in the truth of his teachings.

I met him back in 1999 when I was first beginning my work with Krishna Das. As you may know, Krishna Das and Ram Dass were dear friends all the way back to the 1970’s when they were spending time in India with their teacher, Neem Karoli Baba.

Some of the first workshops I was blessed to share with Ram Dass & Krishna Das were at a beautiful retreat center in Oregon called Breitenbush Hotsprings. Ram Dass, Krishna Das and I would spend a week together with a large group of attendees enjoying intimate lectures, kirtans and ceremonies and of course the steam and hot baths. That is where I met my close friend and student Jon Crane, who also experienced life changing inspiration during those retreats, as many of us did. What a dream, and a luxury to have that kind of focused time together. We did that every year for several years in a row before Ram Dass made his move to live and stay on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. There on Maui, we did many retreats and public lectures and met many wonderful people including my friend Mike Crall, who later helped promote many Classical Indian & World music concerts.

With the blessings of Krishna Das and all our adventures, I was able to enjoy many quiet moments with Ram Dass over the years, sitting together in silence or simple conversation. He was of course a man who had so much to say and share, but at the same time, he deeply enjoyed just sitting in silence and feeling the space around and within us. His love of music and kirtan was also immense. I loved watching him during the kirtan events, he seemed to always be swimming in a world of music.

I remember sharing dreams with him on several occasions. One dream in particular, which I had in the early 1990’s, he said was very significant because it demonstrated the many ways his teacher, Neem Karoli Baba, guided people to find their way… And indeed Ram Dass was right, Neem Karoli Baba appears in this dream as the “chai guy”
Actually, this dream helped bring Krishna Das and I together back in 1999. But before meeting Krishna Das, in the few years following this dream, I was on fire to find out who this “chai guy” was and actually had private meetings with all the musicians I could find who were alive, and in that dream. I asked Zakir Hussain, Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Sultan Khan & Shivkumar Sharma, who might this person be, but no one could be sure of who it was. So for some years I simply let it be a very interesting, mysterious dream. Here is a snap shot of the dream:

“ I was walking along a dirt path up in the mountains on a lovely day and came across a cottage nestled in the Aspen trees. Around the cottage was a short, white picket fence (only 2 feet high or so), and standing in the yard was the great maestro Aladdin Khansahib (father of Ali Akbar Khan and teacher to Ravi Shankar). He called me and asked me to come into the house. So I stepped over the fence and walked with him into the house. Inside was a circle of great musicians sitting in chairs and talking about music. (Zakir Hussain, Alla Rakha, Mian Kader Baksh, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Shivkumar Sharma, Sultan Khan, Ram Narayan, Bundu Khan and about 12 other senior musicians who I did not recognize. (by the way, most of the named musicians were no longer alive at this point). So Zakir looked at me and signaled me to come over and sit behind him on the floor. So for some time, I listened to the sharing of stories and musical thoughts when suddenly an old man bust from the kitchen who was bald and wearing a red & black checkered blanket. He was saying things that I did not understand but clearly, all the musicians in the room listened to him with respect and I thought to myself, wow, I wonder who this guy is! I felt that this man must be a great musician. All of a sudden, the man yelled out the word “CHAI” and disappeared into the kitchen again. That is when Zakir said to me, ‘Go on and help him out.” So I got up and went into the kitchen which was very tiny and there was no place to stand around, so I jumped up and sat on the counter and watched him. He was like a storm, spinning around, spices flying in the air, milk boiling, steam filling the room with a deep delicious aroma. And I realized that not only was this man in full meditation with his eyes rolled back into his head, but he was more than a normal human being, something was supernatural about him. And just when I thought to myself what a wonderful blessing it was to be alone in the kitchen with this supernatural CHAI whirlwind,,, he swooped around right in my face, nose to nose, his eyes now fixed to mine and said, PRACTICE - ALL OF LIFE IS PRACTICE!!!!!!! And then just as fast, he spun around and continued making chai.”
Then I woke up.

Well, in 1999, when I was first introduced to Krishna Das. I believe it was following our first gig in Boulder that he was giving me a ride in his car and as we drove, I noticed a photo that he had put on the dash of the car. Oh my God, it was a photo of the man from my dream!!! I said, “Stop the car” and we pulled over to the side of the road and I told him my dream. And then, to make things even more intense, Krishna Das, as I told him my dream, became as still as a mountain with eyes as wide as the moon and then said, “I also had a dream, long ago” He said that in his dream, he was walking through a mountain forest on a dirt path on a sunny day and came across a cottage in an Aspen grove surrounded by a small white picket fence (about 2 feet high) and standing in the yard was Aladdin Khansahib who was waving him to come into the house…

Well,,, when Krishna Das shared that dream with me, that was it, so to speak, and from that time onward we toured the world and shared the practice of kirtan with hundreds of thousands of people. Krishna Das and I are still close friends and may one day do more together, but for today, I join with him and so many others in remembering and celebrating the life of Ram Dass. I bet he and his teacher are busy making chai right now!!!

Thank you from all of our hearts to his - and in his own words, we can save the world with “Heart to Heart Resuscitation”. We thank you Ram Dass for all you have given, and will continue to give this world.
Much love and kindness to you and yours,
Ty