| Title | : | Grist for the Mill |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0890874999 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780890874998 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1976 |
As Ram Dass puts it, "When the faith is strong enough it is sufficient just to be. It’s a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It’s a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification."
Grist for the Mill Reviews
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Truly one of the great spiritual voices of the past 50 years, Ram Dass, shares some of his life experiences, anecdotes and beliefs in this enlightening and powerful book. Very little is mentioned from his years as a Harvard professor or his earlier life as Dr. Richard Alpert, the primary focus of the book is the transmission of his experiences to assist the reader in their journey towards awareness/enlightenment. The information that is shared with the reader is merely meant to be a tool, the road on which we travel, as we develop our own inner awareness. Ram Dass has a very compassionate and empowering style that seems largely devoid of ego: he truly seems to have selfless intention in sharing this information.
If you are sincerely interested in becoming more enlightened/aware this book would very likely contain information that will benefit you on your journey. Certainly there are the enlightened few, those that have mastered this journey, and I imagine that those individuals would already be familiar with some, much, or even all of the information contained in this book; however, I also believe that if you are here reading this review then chances are you have yet to reach perfect “being –ness” and thus could benefit from these words. Although this book has not been in print for many years, used copies can be found quite readily. -
One of my favorite 4 Ram Dass books....the other three being Be Here Now, the Only Dance There Is, and Journey of Awakening.
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have been studying the writings/teachings of ram dass for the past few months since experiencing one of the worst chronic illness experiences of my life - i came to find ram dass through exploring the ideas of grace and transmuting suffering. i have always felt a strong drawing towards his way of expressing specific ideas, mainly how to engage fully in the dance of life while also navigating our way along the spiritual path. i found myself in tears reading his writings on dying, that really felt like a consciousness shift for myself.
in particular, i have found his discussion of finding one's particular dharma according to the life you're living at the moment most helpful in orienting myself on this path - you CAN be a 'neurotic' messy being and, if you offer that to God fully, find your way there.
“If we follow our heart, there is nothing to fear. As long as our actions are based on our pure seeking for God, we are safe. And any time we are unsure or frightened about our situation, there’s a beautiful and very powerful mantra—“The power of God is within me. The grace of God surrounds me”—which we can repeat to ourselves. It will protect us. Grace will surround us like a gentle force field. Through an open heart, one hears the universe.”
however, reading this was one of the first times i really saw ram dass not just as a spiritual guide but as a fully-formed, human man who came from a specific background and was raised in a specific historical moment. i really struggled to reconcile his teachings overall and the very hard line he sets down on abortion in the early pages of the book - specifically, referring to it as a type of killing with 'relatively light karma' attached. it is definitely beyond the remit of this review to get into the spiritual argument about that, but that passage stood in sharp contrast to the tone of the rest of the book. it was a short passage but one that danced on the border of dealing in control of another's will and fundamentally, the right to choose one's path. i understand his position changed over the years about this viewpoint certainly suggested to me a separateness that 'awakening to oneness' is meant to overcome. for the first time i could see ram dass as a man who was born in a very different historical time, when the common wisdom on women's rights and capabilities as humans was very different.
as well, i think he never fully addresses the questions of political inequality, though the inklings he sets down on the contradictions between accepting what comes and being active in service to others are certainly good starting points for anyone approaching the question from spiritual position.
overall, this was a more challenging view of ram dass for me but a worthwhile one and I'm very glad to have read it. i recommend it to everyone else on this path... so that's everyone really. -
Gonna pass on this one. It's a lot of rambling nonsense that doesn't really mean anything, which I could suffer through for a book club, but he lost me when he said marriage should only be for increasing your closeness to god and that only unenlightened people have abortions (direct quote: "unconscious people who don't understand get abortions"). What the fuck, man.
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I won this on good reads.
This book is an update of lectures given around the early 70's. For me it was a return to the roots of my spiritual quest. Basically, advice on connecting to the oneness. Well worth reading. -
You have to love Ram Dass.
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what a good way to end the year :)
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"I'd rather now just talk about how it is when you are free to play with God for the rest of your life..." (59) I think Ram Dass is better listened to than read. He was an important translater of Eastern thought through Western eyes back in the 60s-70s, and his messages are still relevant and important. He's not my number one, but I liked hearing his voice and angle. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book.
Personally relevant:
"This trip is based on.. a very simple concept. Totaly honesty with yourself, total honesty. If you make a mistake, admit it and get on with it. Don't cover your errors. The whole spiritual journey is a continuous falling on your face. And you get up and brush yourself off, and you get on with it. If you were perfect you wouldn't even go on a journey." (32) The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out your reactivity (93), and "...what we owe each other is to get cooked." (63)
"Ulimately you understand... that the only reason you stay in form is to alleviate suffering to bring others to the light. 57
Socially relevant:
"There are a thousand and one ways in which man is injust to fellow man. Which will you work to change? Which is your particular dharmic path? And as you work to alleviate suffering will you be careful that the way in which you do it doesn't create more suffering in the long run? Be conscious.." (95)
"Most Western acticists want freedoms they can see and measure, the external freedoms. But somebody who is seeing clearly, I think, can recognize that even when you get all the external freedoms, which may people in society actually have, you are still not free. That's what spiritaulity addresses itself to, the matter ot inner, or internal freedom." (106)
"It seems a lot of revolutionary tactics in this country have won the battle but lost the war (108)... that's why the nature of the consciousness of the revolutionary determines whether the revolution ultimately liberates or entraps those it was meant to aid. (109) Everytime you're busy struggling against something, you're reinforcing its reality."
World view encapsulated:
"The end of suffering is full awareness. And person can only help another become aware when that person is aware. (96) Just do whatever you're doing in a way that increases the connection of humanity, the awareness of the interrelatedness of tall things (106) Phoniness is the worst part of spiritual life. People trying to be something. (111) As you work on yourself through your daily life, more and more you see your own reactions to hing around you as sort of mechanical rip-offs. (115) Fill your mind with the stuff the liberates you, and clean up your own game."
"I can't think of anything nicer than to be an indsturment of the flow of the universe." (120) -
”You have all the time in the world, but don’t waste a moment.”
Every page of this masterpiece is imbued with the wisdom only a rare being like Ram Dass could put to words. He draws us in with his humble, hippy vernacular and immediately proves that he knows exactly what we’re going through and what we’re looking for. He’s been there and done that a million times over, and he’s come out the other side. This book is truly a guidebook for liberation, and it has become part of my personal scripture shelf. What follows are my cliff notes, followed by a few personal contentions.
Every experience is fuel for our awakening.
”Everything that’s happening to you is part of your work on yourself.”
”The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out our reactivity…”
”Our whole incarnation is the teaching.”
”Only when we are lost in our ego do we damn our suffering. When we are souls yearning to be free, we use our suffering, and we use our pleasure. We use it all to get to God, to get liberated.”
”It’s where our heads are at in every act we perform that determines whether that act liberates or entraps us and everybody around us.”
Liberation from suffering is a transformation of identity.
”The “we” that we thought we were turns out to be a conditioned, mechanical process of body and thought, and the “we” who we really are goes back into the Void, the flow, the Dharma itself.”
”Enlightenment is not an achievement; enlightenment is a transformation of being. And the achiever goes as well as the achievement.”
”Our thinking mind becomes our servant rather than our master.”
”[We] go beyond polarity, beyond pleasure and pain, and awaken out of the illusion of our separateness.”
”[It’s total orgasm,] that moment of perfect flow, in which all separateness has disappeared, is the moment when we are home again, when we know where we belong, when we have returned into the One, when all of the tension that is created by the separateness has, for a moment, dissipated.”
”Moment to moment, it’s a new mind. No personal history. We just keep giving up our storylines.”
Desperation is required.
”We realize that everything we think we can do to create perfection isn’t going to be enough, that who we are and who we think we are is where the problem lies. It leads to a deep despair that seems to be a necessary condition for us to awaken at that moment.”
”It requires a desire to become free of the kinds of clinging and attachment that keep distorting and narrowing our vision.”
”Just at the moment when the despair is greatest, when we reach up, the grace descends, and we experience the [insight] that it all isn’t in fact the way we thought it was.”
”We recognize the bizarre phenomenon that suffering is grace.”
Reason can’t take us there.
”It’s a journey out of time, leaving behind every model we have had of who we think we are.”
”Only when we transcend our logical analytic mind can we even enter the gate.”
”The rational model is a finite subsystem and the law of the universe is infinite.”
”This knowledge can only be known by transforming ourselves into the knowledge itself.”
”All concepts, all models, all molds, all programs in our heads, are limiting conditions.”
We learn to submit to the flow of Being.
”[We become] part of the process, in the same way as a tree or a brook or wheat is part of the process.”
”We have to listen to hear what our trip through is, moment by moment, choice by choice. Is this one getting me closer or isn’t it?”
”We are bringing our external world genuinely and honestly into harmony with our inner perceptions.”
”We work for the perfect balance of the different planes.”
”We start to develop the capacity to look up and to look down at the same moment. To look in and to look out.”
”Consume the emotions into the flow, the flow of all forms of life, until you are just flowing in and out.”
And love is part of it. Because love is awareness.
”The natural state of the mind is pure love, which is not other than pure awareness.”
”What is common to all of our forms is choiceless awareness, is pure love, is flow and harmony in the universe, the absence of clinging, spaciousness.”
Critiques (based on my personal point of view)
Ram Dass places a lot of emphasis on the perfect, self-determined design of the cosmos. But if we know anything about our divine nature, we know it’s creative. And if we know anything about the quantum floor of our reality, we know it is dynamic. Why would we assume that the tapestry of the cosmos is complete, that the artist is just touring the work? Wouldn’t an artist be adding details along the way, expanding the canvas, layering meaning and complexity, getting “lost” in the flow? Maybe that’s what we are—extensions of the divine artist flowing through the work. Our lives are brush strokes of the One, and we live at the end of the paintbrush, witnessing the act of creation from the tapestry level, where the paint meets the fibers.
He also speaks at length about karma. Karma is a very prominent subject in Hinduism and Buddhism — both of Ram Dass’ primary vehicles to truth. So karma is part of his lineage, part of his tradition. And just as with any tradition, it contains wisdom passed down through the generations, but I think it also contains the baggage of countless misunderstandings. Millennia of misunderstandings.
Causality is the natural law for this reality, yes. But many believers in karma do not think of it as mere causality, they think it has something to do with making life fair. They think it means “evil” will be punished. But this concept ignores the relativity of everything. Evil, like good, is just a relativistic label. What is good for predator is evil for prey, and we are both. Here on the stormy surface of consciousness, our scattered identities will not find fairness. It is only upon integration that we realize we're all one. From my perspective, any expansion of karma beyond mere causality is just an example of confirmation bias — we believe in karma because we want to believe life is fair.
But life doesn’t cater to our simian preference for fairness. It is shaking us, screaming, “Wake up!” And we just lie here, asleep, complaining that the dream is shaking. -
Not for newbies like me. I'm here because Duncan Trussell, a comedian I like, said "Grist for the Mill" was one of his favorite books, but I think this is a book for people already indoctrinated into whatever lifestyle Ram Dass is talking about. I think it's Buddhism? I don't know. I feel like I turned on the TV in the middle of an old movie in a different language. I read the whole thing, but don't know what it is I read. There were, however, a couple of moments where I thought I got it, hence the two stars. Maybe someday I'll return to this, older and wiser, and really eat up what he's dishing out.
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Little let down by this one. I thought this pales in comparison to ‘Polishing the Mirror.’ This very much reminded me of ‘Be Here Now’ in that it is so all over the place and vague. I’ll always be an RD guy but this was a minor let down.
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SO AWESOME SO FAR. Deep thoughts and lots of in-your-face GET YOUR LIFE INTO A BETTER POSITION thought reinforcements. GREAT stuff!
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Another great book by Ram Dass
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Listened to this while painting walls. Nice focus and thoughts.
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Excellent read.
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This one deserves 6 stars. Just wonderful.
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https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/gr...
...we gather to remind one another who we are. What we’re looking for is who is looking; it’s happening all around us, and we are what’s happening. So that next time we sit waiting for something to begin, we realize that there is nothing that needs to begin, for the beginning, the middle, and the end are already who we are…though we gather as a group and listen to one another, each of us is in a unique predicament, and that we must listen to our own hearts to hear what we need; we can’t imitate anybody else’s journey…
After a few decades of avoiding Ram Dass, staying out of touch with him, I came back. He was always a wise man, interesting, and he generally made sense. Of late, I have again begun practicing some of his methods and have reconsidered many of his concepts and beliefs. One of them, letting go, was something I became intimately aware of beginning in 1986 when I was wrestling with the ravages of my own personal demons being fed by my disease with alcohol. Thirty-five years later I am still sober and work daily at getting at what makes me tick. It is hard and hellish, this personal road, and sometimes lonely, but definitely worth the journey.
...When we don’t get so lost in our melodramas, we stop creating more karma for ourselves. Letting go is the act of purification…
Ain’t it the truth. For years I struggled living and existing in a world of lazy workers, bad drivers, selfish retailers, greedy executives, shitty products, disposable houses, and dishonest politicians. For a short period of a few months I took a prescribed antidepressant to help keep my hateful feelings at bay. The problem I found with this medicine was that my mind never stopped its hating and severe judgments against the world I inhabited. I quit ingesting a drug that made me feel better but failed to quiet my mind. I knew I had to again change my thinking, accept things as they are, and change what I could on the outside. A year or so ago I did begin using CBD and THC to help in my physical pain and personal journey. There are days I forget to use them.
...The only preparation for death, it turns out, is the moment-to-moment life process. When you live in the present now, and then this present, when the moment of death comes, you are not living in the future or in the past. The freaky thing about death is the anticipatory fear of it. But you can’t tell someone else to live in the present moment unless you yourself are…
My thirty-nine year old step-daughter recently died from a terrible cancer she fought and suffered with for almost five years. She, along with her devoted husband, were fortunate to have made a trip to Hawaii to have a face to face encounter with Ram Dass. Not too long ago, you know, Ram Dass died, and I know his passing took its toll on this young woman as well. But the teachings, examples, and the spirit of Ram Dass lives on.
...The offering up or the cleaning is called purification.It exists in every religion. In Raja Yoga these are the yamas, or it’s the various vows we take in Buddhism, or the abstinences and commandments in Christianity and Judaism. These are done out of what is called “discriminative awareness.” That is, we understand that we are entities passing through a life in which the entire life drama is a curriculum for our awakening. We see that the life experience is a vehicle for coming to God, for becoming conscious, for becoming liberated. And we understand that ultimately that’s what we’re doing here…
It is my current understanding that we are all on personal journeys, some of us more evolved than others, some in fact Neanderthal which still scares the hell out of me. Our political climate is unsettling, the earth’s climate is in crisis, and innocent creatures of the land, air, and sea are facing extreme dangers. What better time to revisit and get reacquainted with one of our greatest contemporary teachers. This is a book to be held and revisited from time to time. And no time better than the present.
...every time we’re busy struggling against something, we’re reinforcing its reality... -
Breathtakingly profound, and perfectly simple and concise. Ram Dass illustrates the core concepts of his spiritual practice and theories on reality, love, God, and life with some charming anecdotes sprinkled throughout along with practical instructions for a beginner practitioner.
This was my first encounter with Ram Dass, and doubtless it will not be my last. Few have the ability to express existential musings in such a clear, digestible manner, much less with the degree of playfulness Ram Dass brings to the conversations. This small but potent book contains surprise humor tucked within its pages, alongside humble confessions, and thankfully lacking the stuffy pretense of so many New Age authors that take themselves too seriously. I imagine I will be returning to this book often, as it seems the type that resonates differently with age and experience. -
This was fun. I’m a beginner to meditation and have good sense of the Yoga Sutra and the path to enlightenment. Ram is super advanced and has experienced many different realities / consciousness over his lifetime and provided some great insights and observations about his awareness and what he has learned. He cover topics like: the journey, rules of the game, levels of reality, lineage, dying, methods and God. I really enjoyed reading his perspective and being able to learn from his accumulated wisdom. I’ll have to read this again in a short time to reaffirm the concepts into my everyday practice. He closes the book with “all I really want to do is become free.”
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A review of a book about deepening one's spirituality is bound to say as much, or more, about the reviewer than the book. Let me just say thatI found a ton of useful information in this book and marked a lot of it in yellow, so reviewing it will be easy and hopefully keep me in tune with my goals.
I began reading this book almost a year ago and barely understood a word. A week or so ago I picked it up again and found it to be rich in lucid advice and stories. If you are already interested in Eastern religions you already realize that simply reading a book won't get you where you want to go, but it can throw a lot of light on the way. This book burned brightly for me. -
This was my first dive into the spirituality and philosophy of Ram Dass. I think most of the text is adapted from transcriptions from speeches that he gave throughout his life. The idea that it's all grist for the mill is repeated throughout the book. As I understand it, the idea is that all your life experiences are grist for the mill of your spiritual journey. One of my favorite quotes from the book is something about how you can become enlightened by any life experience, e.g., eating pizza, buying groceries, whatever.
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This is 5 stars *if* you are into Ram Dass and his style of sharing knowledge. This book came across my path while I was going through emotional ground that was brand new to me, and Ram Dass helped me to make sense of it all. I especially appreciate how he weaves his personal anecdotes with ancient teachings, and at the same time relates it to someone who is anywhere along a similar path. It's one that doesn't necessarily need to be read all at once.
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I was confused and lost for about the first third of the book, but then it started to open up to me, though the author would probably say I opened up to it.
This is a very different look at spirituality that was fun to explore. It's interesting and there are some great quotes, but there were also places where I disagree and times it felt very much a product of its time.
INot one I would recommend to the average person exploring faith. -
Some, if not, most, of this book went over my head, but I think that's more on me.
Taking an idea that I've learned from this book:
This book is most likely often on a different plane of reality; its a very good environment that reflects and allows the reader to grow.
I have no doubt I'll read this book again at some point, and when I do, I'll probably get more and more out of it. As for right now, even though most of it went over my head, the sections that didn’t were truly life-giving. -
This book is a collection of lectures reformatted into chapter form. It is my introduction to Ram Das. I had some idea of his influence in society during the late 70's but this informed my ignorance and mis-information from the lens in which I had been taught. He really is a transcendent soul taught in the language franca, so to speak. Somewhat a modern day Paul (without all the sturm and drang of Saul). I enjoyed it and I am grateful it fell into my path.
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This book is grace, calling us back home and re-calibrating us with Spirit- spacious, present, eternally here.
“If I can just love you because here we are, then you are free to grow as you need to grow, because none of it’s going to change my feeling of love.”
“There’s nowhere you have to go to work on yourself other than where you are at this moment, and everything that’s happening to you is part of your work on yourself.” -
Synopsis: Everything in life, the good and the bad alike, can be used as Grist for the Mill. In other words, every moment of life is the perfect opportunity to become more 'awake' or 'alive' spiritually.
Even in a secular sense, if you replace spirituality with happiness, it seems the sentiment holds true.
Our happiness is not dependent on external factors, but the inner 'world' which experiences it. Or, it's not what happens to you in life, it's how you react.
Happy reading! :)
