The Only Dance There Is is a compiled transcription of two lectures Ram Dass gave to a room of psychotherapists in the early 1970s; the first lecture at the Menninger Foundation in 1970, and the second at the Spring Grove Hospital in 1972. Seeing as Ram Dass was a trained Harvard professor and psychiatrist before he transformed into a yogi, he was in the fortunate position of having two perceptual vantage points to overlook the whole thing. His clear insight into the Western approach to solving man’s spiritual problems through psychology, and his new understanding into the Eastern approach through yoga and meditation allowed him the opportunity to act as a solid concrete bridge between the worlds of East and West. Prior to Ram Dass bridges existed, but they were of the old and fragile, made of rope variety, which were rarely crossed out of fear of the bridge collapsing and you falling into the abyss below. Because of this the game at that point was very polarised – us vs them, hippies vs police, East vs West, and so on.
In these lectures Ram Dass attempted to share the Indian’s non-dualistic outlook on life, called Advaita Vedanta, to an audience very much attached to the separation of all living things. Ram Dass eloquently shared what he had learnt in India, and what he had given up in Harvard, by comparing the comparatively new Western psychology to the 10,000 year old Eastern method of Yoga. For example, he discusses in detail the Hindu chakra system and how it closely resembles psychological systems for understanding human motivation – an area that Ram Dass happened to specialise in when he was a psychiatrist by the name of Dr. Richard Alpert. The 1970 Menninger lecture occurred at the same time that ‘Be Here Now‘ was being written and a year before its release to the public, the lecture displays Ram Dass in the flush of discovery of a method infinitely times more fulfilling than anything he had encountered or studied in the West, including psychology and psychedelics. And here he was, delivering this news from a far away land to his old colleagues and suit wearing brothers of psychotherapy – the result is this book, a bottomless pot of honey.
“Psychotherapy is just as high as the psychotherapist. If your psychotherapist happened to be Buddha, you would get enlightened in the process, see… you will get as free of your particular role-attachments as the psychiatrist is free of his… I really see therapy, in terms of personality, as body and repair work. But it has nothing to do with essence. Essence means that the therapist has to know who he or she is. A therapist who thinks he is a therapist can only create a patient who thinks he is a patient. A therapist who thinks he is a personality can merely exchange one personality package for another personality package. He can’t even imagine that there is a way of being that has nothing to do with personality.”
The transcript for the Menninger lecture not only made it into this book, but was also published into the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. I have the complete audio recording of the lecture and have uploaded it to the web, if you would like to listen to it then you can download it here.
The second lecture, from 1972, exhibits a different approach as Ram Dass has had some time to let his spiritual discovery sit and res. This one is just as fascinating as the previous lecture, but unfortunately I do not have an audio recording of it. In ‘The Only Dance There Is’ the two lectures are woven together seamlessly in order to retain their magic and substance, but within a new framework that allows the two lectures to complement each other and to flow more naturally. The lectures are split up and grouped categorically so that a heading such as ‘Karma and Reincarnation’ will appear above lecture excerpts that relate to that particular subject. No words are altered, only the order has been modified, and yet it flows so well that as you read it you will never guess that one page is from an entirely different lecture than the next.
This book is perfect for anyone living in Western society who is not finding answers to the many questions that the soul seeks. It is a spiritual reservoir overflowing with perennial wisdom that anyone on the path may drink from. This book is also perfect for those who really want to know what the hell ‘it’ is all about, but can’t get a straight answer from anyone who follows a spiritual path: eg `I can’t tell you because you wouldn’t understand’. While Ram Dass acknowledges that there is a big difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something through experience, he still takes down the veil for a moment and allows anyone who is curious enough to take a peek at the dance that is occurring behind the otherwise closed curtains. He tells it as it is and invites you to scoff with disbelief or marvel with wonder. As he repeats countlessly he has no vested interest in whether or not you believe him, as the ego that thrives on such trivial matters has been replaced by a free-floating consciousness no longer bound by thoughts and expectations.
I’m not going to tell you to go out of your way and buy this book, because if you have read this far you will no doubt be able to make that decision for yourself. And only you can make the decision of wanting to read a book such as this. I will warn you: the contents of this book are really far out and may not be for everyone, but then again, it might be just what you’ve been looking for all this time.