by Pete Holmes
The rest of the day was delightfully uneventful. I laid on the couch. I sat on the bed. I meditated, flipped through some books, and just marveled at how little I wanted to look at my phone, or my computer, or anything. I stared transfixed at a gecko stalking its prey, camouflaged on the back of a palm tree—a casual and slow happening to me, but a real-life Godzilla movie to the ants. I enjoyed this minidrama as much as I had enjoyed binging The Great British Bake Off, which is saying a lot.
Around seven thirty the sun went down, and me with it. Like a preschooler or a farmer, I went to bed as soon as it was dark. Pleasantly tired, and already syncing to the rhythms of the earth like a real flower child, I felt like I had as a kid: I was eager to rest, and curious what my dreams might be.
AROUND FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING, I SPRUNG UP, wide awake. In the pitch-black room, Dassi Ma’s warning about bugs seemed so much more important, but I managed to brave it barefoot to the lamp, then to the kitchen. As I boiled some rice, I couldn’t remember why I was nervous.
Then I remembered: Today is the day. I’m gonna sit with the big guy.
I lit candles and tried to meditate, but I felt like a kid on Christmas morning waiting for the sun to peek into my window, signaling that it was time to wake the family up for presents. My mind was restless and excited. Finally, late morning, after waiting what felt like an entire day already, Dassi Ma came by and announced, somewhat ceremoniously through the screen door, “Ram Dass is ready for you.”
Gulp.
As we walked, I quietly tried to surrender any last remaining ideas of impressing Ram Dass with the perfect question, like a fan at Comic-Con thinking he might leave the Q&A having made friends with Dr. Who, or the idea that I might wow RD with a truly incredible amount of openness. Good grief, I thought, and gave up. Climbing the short wooden stairs paralleling a wheelchair ramp to Ram Dass’s room, I tried to expect nothing.
THE FEELING I GOT WALKING IN TO MEET WITH RAM Dass was similar to the feeling you’d get walking into a cathedral, but I was barefoot, and the room itself was modest. It was quiet and spacious, overlooking an immense green landscape that ran out to the ocean. There were bookshelves—I spotted a few books that were old and disintegrating, as if hand-delivered by Indiana Jones—and there was another puja table covered in statues and photographs. I thought I saw some medical equipment, maybe a massage table, but my focus was locked on the back of a cloth recliner, where Ram Dass sat in a purple T-shirt, his thin legs covered in plaid blankets, facing the large windows. As we neared his periphery, he smiled at me like I was an old friend who’d come to visit.
I lit up inside.
He gestured for me to sit down, which I did, in a straight-backed chair facing him, and Dassi Ma left the room. The door clicked closed, and we were alone. He looked at me, and with the warmth of his smile my nervousness dissolved and instantly we were just two pals hanging out.
Unsurprisingly, he was in no rush.
“How are you?” I asked. He responded by gesturing to where we were, letting the richness of the moment and the beauty of our surroundings answer for him. I nodded.
He quickly got right to the heart of the matter.
“Do you see yourself as a soul?” Ram Dass asked.
I was excited, as I had already given this one a lot of thought and really wanted to nail it.
“Yes,” I said quickly; then, as to not seem too soul cocky, I added, “That’s the work.”
Ram Dass beamed at this idea, smiling as if I’d just told him great news. He turned his head away, the way you might break eye contact to savor a feeling privately. It was at this point that I started to notice that the words of our conversation weren’t the foreground of what was happening. They were just sort of the music behind dinner. It was the silence between our words—just as it had been when I first heard him speak live. The room was getting saturated in a feeling, as if a subwoofer was playing a steady, low bass note, comfortably vibrating the air, which at this point felt more like gelatin.
It’s hard to put into words, but I started to feel sort of underwater. And as I stared at Ram Dass, his face—I don’t know how else to put this—started to change. It was gentle, not jarring, and it felt familiar, probably because it felt exactly like I was on mushrooms. A low dose, but, you know, enough to keep you from driving. He was just sort of shifting, blurring from one Ram Dass to another.
I stared in amazement as I caught a glimpse of ’60s hippie Ram Dass—the classic—which would then slide into ’90s Ram Dass, the one with the tasteful mustache. Then, a pop of little Richie Alpert, about five years old. Then, now; then, older than now. Trying to make sense of it, my mind called up a lecture by Alan Watts or Terence McKenna—or maybe it was Ram Dass—about how psychedelics can show us how we don’t see what’s real, but rather the projections of our minds filtered through our desires. And now, it was happening—perceptively—to me in real time.
Whatever was happening to me seemed to be happening to Ram Dass, too. He was looking right at me but seemed to be seeing much more than a doughy Lithuanian in Lululemon pants. He was beaming, the way I imagine astronauts stare at the cosmos, repeating under his breath, almost inaudibly, “Wow, wow, wow.”
“Soul,” he eventually said, pointing to his eye. “To soul,” he said, pointing to mine.
We stared in silence, the patterns of the pink-and-blue blanket behind his head jumping occasionally onto his face and back, the energy of a playful third, unseen Thing filling the room. Sometimes he looked scary, like a body about to die, or just a single eye floating in a mass of skin, and at one point he looked exactly like my father, jarring me both with the accuracy of the hallucination and its psychological obviousness. There he was, my spiritual father figure wearing the face of my actual father. I shook my head like Daffy Duck, trying to snap myself out of it.
It’s happening, I thought. All the stories I had heard about sitting with saints that made me envious or skeptical, here I was with him and it was happening to me. Without drugs, without trying, without chanting, without meditating, I felt that love those people felt when Ram Dass spoke in the ’60s, or when they flew to India to sit with his guru. The radio was older, but the song was still coming through: it was absolute, trippy love.
Ram Dass had driven me to Detroit.
“Grace,” he said, breaking the silence of our shared experience. “This is grace.”
I felt locked in, and I didn’t want to ruin it, but there was one question I really wanted to ask. I had been planning on waiting until our third meeting, if I was going to ask at all, just in case it got awkward, the way you’re supposed to wait until a plane starts to land before you start making small talk with your neighbor. But the moment felt right, so I went for it.
“Ram Dass,” I said. “Are you my guru?”
Still beaming love, he shook his head and explained to me that what I was feeling coming from him wasn’t him. It was from his guru.
That can’t be right, I thought. I’m feeling it, too. Maharaj-ji was his guy. I didn’t come all the way here to steal his guy. That was all too precious. I protested and told him how it seemed like so many people were claiming Maharaj-ji as their guru, and how it all seemed so convenient, that their guru was the famous guru, the name-brand guru. I mean, what are the chances that your guru is the one from Be Here Now? Like how people who claim to have had pastlife experiences are always saying they were Cleopatra, or Napoleon, never just some dude named Kyle who smokes menthols and shovels poop at the zoo.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m worried it’s just my ego that wants to have the same guru as you.”
Ram Dass tapped his chest, then extended his hand toward me. “I’ll lend him to you,” he said.
My heart softened, and it felt like we were sitting in a hot tub filled with bliss. By this point we had stopped talking about Maharaj-ji in favor of simply feeling him. Tears ran down my face.
After a few minutes, I managed to say, “I thought I had missed him.”
> Ram Dass knew who I meant. He smiled wide.
“You didn’t,” Ram Dass replied. “You didn’t.”
I FLOATED BACK TO THE GUESTHOUSE FEELING AS though I were wearing a snowsuit filled with calm joy. It was the same house, but looked completely different. Something had opened in me, and the photos of Maharaj-ji no longer looked like pictures of someone else’s guru and started to look like my own, like family. Each photo now felt like a space heater pointed directly at my chest. It was incredible. If that was the only time I got to spend with Ram Dass, I thought, that would be okay. I saw the man, I felt the love, I got some answers. I sort of felt done.
The next morning, I went for a walk with Dassi Ma, and as we stopped to feed a neighbor’s horse a few handfuls of grass, I told her about my first visit with Ram Dass and how his face had changed into my father’s. She smiled and said, “Yeah, he does that with me, too.”
I was proud of myself. I mean, I was really doing it! It had been three days barely seeing another person and I was just killing it. No TV, no phone. And I had gone through about eight sticks of incense. Shit! I was a real Spiritual Guy.
I spent the rest of the morning patting myself on the back, wondering how I might tell the tale of my important victory to my friends back home, when that afternoon, staring out the window on the couch, my Buddha-like equanimity made way for another swelling emotion: I got blindingly horny. I don’t mean a little horny, I mean seriously horny, like the kid in high school who jerked off on the bike path horny. I felt the same way I did when I was a teenager walking home from school, trying to remember why I was in a good mood, then remembering it was because when I got home I could masturbate. That horny.
Trying hard to suppress my carnal desires, I stopped feeling proud of myself in favor of just staring out the window and weighing the pros and cons of jerking off. Just get it over with, I’d think. You poop in the bathroom. Is this any worse than poop? And then, No. This is holy ground. And there’s way too many framed pictures I’ll have to turn around first.
It was like a hostage negotiation. Horny Pete, bug eyed and shaky, had a gun to Spiritual Pete’s head, and if we just gave him a quick lesbian pillow fight video and two minutes, he’d let the hostage go.
I couldn’t—the password for the Wi-Fi was “Maharaj-ji,” for fuck’s sake. I couldn’t have wet pink butts streaming through the same bandwidth Ram Dass got his Netflix on. I’d go for a walk or a swim, then beat myself up for wasting so much time in such a special place thinking about such a bullshit conundrum.
MY SECOND VISIT WITH RAM DASS WAS STILL BEAUTIFUL and transcendent, but occasionally, as with mosquitoes at a picnic, I would have to swat away the urge to think about sex. Sitting with him, chatting about Hanuman, my mind wandered to the time I was in seventh grade and tried to use my amateur understanding of yoga poses to take myself to third base. I sort of understood how that Pete felt. And at that moment, Ram Dass broke the silence and asked, “What were you thinking about just then?”
Hoo boy.
“I’ve been really horny,” I said. I let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s weird that something so small can disrupt the whole system.”
Ram Dass nodded, and I knew he knew what I meant. This was, after all, the man who tells the story I love about being recognized as a spiritual hippie leader while in line at a ’70s porno theater. I continued: “For me, sex is like being a werewolf. Most of the time, it doesn’t have any power over me. Then, all of a sudden, it’s a full moon and I wake up in the neighbor’s chicken coop covered in blood and feathers.”
Ram Dass laughed, and I made a mental note to try that bit onstage.
“I don’t even like masturbating,” I said. “I just hate being horny!”
I was embarrassed, but Ram Dass never seemed awkward or unsettled. He took his time, then simply said, “If you masturbate, or don’t,” and shrugged. He looked me deep in the eye and said, “I love you unconditionally.” I could tell this was more than an “I love you, man.” He was speaking from someplace deeper, not just as himself. He was speaking as the big “I.” He told me to love my darkness. I laughed.
“People laugh when I tell them to love their black thoughts,” Ram Dass went on, “but I love them. I love my anger.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. I didn’t love how I was feeling; in fact, I hated how I was feeling. But it had been two hours and we were out of time.
I GOT BACK TO MY ROOM, FEELING THE LOVE BUZZ underneath the embarrassment of my admission, and I was determined to steer my retreat back onto its righteous course. Our meeting carried me through the night, blissful and thoughtless, with no flashes of boobs jiggling when I closed my eyes, and I decided, relieved it was over, to set an alarm so I could get up early, hike, and watch the sunrise. Getting out of bed when it was still dark sounded terrible, but it was time to get serious, and I was done fucking around.
I woke up at four, before my alarm. The peepers were blaring outside and I grabbed my phone to use as a flashlight. It was pitch black and cloudy. Making my way outside, I tried my best not to think of The Blair Witch Project as I traveled down the long, straight road, the sky dark, my little iPhone flash bouncing with my steps.
I turned off the main road and ducked into a hole in the overgrowth Dassi Ma had shown me the day before, a long tunnel with an overpass of arching palm leaves leading toward the ocean like a pipeline. I felt like an explorer entering a cave with a flickering torch, holding one hand in front of my face to keep spiderwebs out of my mouth, my feet crunching on the dead palm branches below.
Eventually the sky opened and I reached the lookout. I stepped my feet sideways down the steep dirt path, sat cross-legged on the cold, dewy stone at the base, and let out a deep exhale. The ocean and the sky were sewn together, still dark and one thing. I could see the silhouettes of trees growing out of the cliff at impossible angles. I could hear the wind working its way through the tall grass behind me. I closed my eyes and began to chant. Look at you, I thought. You’re being really spiritual!
AS THE SUN ROSE, EVERY CLOUD IN THE SKY LOOKED like tits—big tits. And then, delicious, round asses. Cocks, balls; then a fluffy, orange-tinted sixty-nine.
I tried to get my mind straight, but above me hung heavenly graphic stills of celestial pornography, thrusting and gyrating in the breeze, mocking my attempts to run from them. The more I tried to force my mind back toward the spirit, toward what I was supposed to be doing, the more the clouds put on a show, a gentle Hawaiian breeze sending a cloud penis into an enormous airborne tittyfuck. Cloud cocks were shooting clouds of ejaculate over great, fluffy clouds of ass.
“Fuck it,” I said out loud, trading Sanskrit for English, and I got out of there before the sun had even reached full circle. I was determined to just get this stupid fucking problem over with. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t meditate. I couldn’t enjoy a gorgeous sunrise, for fuck’s sake. I was going to put an end to this and toss my werewolf a pork chop.
It was light out now, and as I walked—briskly, with purpose, passing the horses without feeding them—I mapped out my game plan. I don’t have to do it in the holy house, I thought. That would be weird. Oh! Maybe I could go to like an hourly hotel. Or, wait! The car! Is that crazy? The car’s not holy. I got the insurance!
Before I got to the guesthouse, I had it all figured out: I was going to do it in the windowless bathroom, quickly flush the aftermath, and immediately jump in the shower, after which I would open up both doors of the house to get a little airflow going, then promptly burn multiple, simultaneous sticks of incense and re-holify the space.
God, I hate telling you this. I’m almost forty. But I felt like I was fifteen again, back in my father’s garage, ceremoniously covering the Playboy calendar in motor oil and burning tissues on the roof.
Back at the guesthouse, I quickly lay down on the couch to catch my breath and consider my strategy one last time. I looked around at the puja table, and the holy books, the statues and the photographs of sai
nts. My eyes raised to the photo of Maharaj-ji hanging large, almost life size, above the altar. I expected to see judgment on his face—weirder things had happened that week—or disappointment, or some other negative projection. But he still looked warm to me.
“This is so stupid,” I said out loud. “I could use a little help.”
It was the closest I had come to a prayer since that afternoon in the woods with Kurt. I let my eyes close for a second—more out of exhaustion than meditation—and lying quietly, I started to notice something. Inside me, behind everything that I thought was happening, I found a little pocket of the love I had felt when I sat with Ram Dass. I was surprised it was still there. A little safe space, like a tent, filled with the same buzzing, beautiful frequency we had created when we sat together. Quiet, cozy, and secure, like a shelter from the downpour of my paranoia.
I could still hear my thoughts—my lust, my anger, and my doubt—but from inside the heart tent, I suddenly felt safe to sit back, smile, and just try to love them. Not for any reason my brain could understand. The quality of this love was different. It wasn’t a rationalization as to why I should love my thoughts—I love how virile you are!—it just was. This wasn’t thinking about love, this just was love.
I welcomed it in.
I let it shine over everything, my embarrassment and my anger. It hit everything I felt with “yes” instead of “no.” I started to feel spacious and separate from my mind, the volume of my thoughts dropping to the background. I was just watching. Not uninvolved or detached, but with compassion. I was actively, recklessly, irrationally loving everything. I felt unalone, like I was right next to Ram Dass, hanging out again with his guru—perhaps even our guru—the big love pointed right at me, hitting every dark corner as indiscriminately as the sun.
I was experiencing unconditional love. It wasn’t a thought, or a feeling, it was a place, a place filled with the good stuff, the stuff I had spent my whole life looking for from other people. Not that lousy, low-grade conditional shit people give out and take away based on their mood or your behavior. This was top shelf. And here I was just giving it to myself. Not in the way I had been planning to do on the walk home, but still. I was loving myself.
