RAM DASS – A cultural icon from the 60’s with Timothy Leary at Harvard to his stature today as one of the preeminent spiritual teachers in the West- his seminal spiritual text “Be Here Now” has sold over three million copies.

 Currently residing in Maui Ram Dass has recently introduced a new Web site ramdass.org which is a vehicle for his archival media as well as his current teachings, which are presented via the site as live streaming talks and interviews.

 This album represents a full circle for me.  In the 60's when Tim Leary and I began exploring inner space with psychedelics the music was always a groove that we could follow, a route to take us higher.  Music was at the forefront of the expansion of consciousness and the counter culture. 

 A lot of the musicians of the time were preoccupied with getting high.  There was a group consciousness that evolved in some of those performances with musicians like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and others, that was transcendent and brought a sense of unity and a feeling of deep love and joy.  Some got caught up in that constant search for higher highs or got seduced by those ecstatic moments, but the highs didn’t last.

 Eventually when I made it to India and met my guru, Neem Karoli Baba, I was introduced to other kinds of ecstatic music, exquisite Indian ragas and the simplicity of chanting the Names of God over and over.  There, too, music and sound were an integral part of the journey.  I began to understand the spiritual power of mantra from this ancient Sanskrit language that had been developed by sages from bij, or seed, syllables that vibrate in harmony with the cosmos, names that really name those states of being.  You aren’t using that kind of music to get high.  The music itself is the high and you just become it, like a surfer becoming one with the wave. 

 From my guru I began to understand the possibility of liberation, of getting free instead of just getting high.  Cultures like India have been using music for millennia to express divinity and devotion to a Beloved that takes you out of your ego into your soul, into the bigger Self, the Atmān.  Mantras are words or Names, and while words are just birds passing through the clouds of consciousness, they can take you into those trance-figurations where it all comes together.

 This collaboration produced by Down-under DJ and mixmaster Kriece makes this blend of music and spirituality available to a new generation.  Kriece has brought together the influences of world music, chanting, electronics and spoken word.  I am honored he has used words that I spoke, though it is only us talking to ourSelf.  This is the mixdown of mantra and electronica merging into One Love.  As my guru said to me, “Enjoy it all!”

ramdass.org