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Back to the Forum Archives People who read my essays may notice that many of them are about my own personal experience. Examples of this tendency are the essays on my dealings with bullies, fools, and crooks of one form or another. The most recent of these are about my medical experiences in my knee replacement surgery. That was an educational experience which provided me with material for two essays. In fact, I have learned to treat all of my personal experiences, good and bad, as writing material, "Grist for the Mill" so to speak. I italicize those words because there is a book by that title. It was written by a guy who called himself Ram Dass. Literally translated from the Indian language, that means Servant of God. Pretty heavy stuff. I read the book many years ago when I was messing around in Eastern religious philosophies. Just recently my hospital experience caused me to recall reading it. When I did, I reread it to make sure I remembered it correctly. It turns out I did remember the premise quite well. The premise of the tome is that all of our life experience can be a learning experience and therapeutic at the same time. Everything is "Grist for the Mill." Over time, I have found that premise to be very true. One result is, I tend to think of every event in my life as subject material for my writing. I get good input. I get lumps. Bad things happen. It's all grist for the mill. It's something to write about. No matter how bad the experience was, I can get some payback by writing about it. There is another more subtle point about this idea of payback. It involves a conclusion I have gradually come to over time. That is the rather remarkable realization that every person who tried to hurt me actually made me stronger instead. This was in all cases that I remember. This is also true of people who hurt me inadvertently. Whether I was simply in the way and got run over or I got hit by a blow not meant for me I got stronger. Simply by rising above it and living through it, I got stronger. Holy mackerel! I believe that is a profound insight. Just the same, please be assured that I have no intention of thanking those adversaries who messed with me. An important thing you should notice is you do not have to be an Eastern religion nut to understand the point of this book. The concept is really about therapy not religion. The author, Ram Dass, wrapped it around his religious focus because of his particular mind set. He related everything back to his personal religious philosophy. As far as I am able to discern, his philosophy was a blend of the major Eastern philosophies. Those are Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen, liberally sprinkled with Confucianism. Regardless of that bias, parts of this book are very profound. To find those parts, you really must read through a great deal of unsupportable religious nonsense. For sure, what is nonsense and what is profound will depend on your own religious perspective. The important thing I get from the book is about therapy in general. That is that anything can be therapeutic if we accept it in that spirit. This is not a new concept. We probably all realize it. We can take any event in our life and use it as a springboard for personal growth. We can get stronger and wiser if we so choose. It's really up to us. That is the whole point. It is really up to us. About the author of this book, Ram Dass is an interesting study in contrasts. A shallow person might look at his life experience as an inconsistent mess. I would rather prefer his view of it as a series of reincarnations. However we look at it, he has been-there-done-that in many different ways. Along the way he has written a number of books about his life and about the Eastern religious experience. He has also lectured extensively and made numerous tapes of his thoughts and philosophy. So far as I can tell by listening to him and reading him, he started out as a rather ordinary high achiever son of a wealthy businessman. As Richard Alpert, he received a degree in psychology and ended up teaching at Harvard University. Not bad! There he became associated with Timothy Leary and some profound changes occurred in his life. After experimenting with LSD, both he and Leary were booted out of Harvard. Although Leary continued his experiments with and championing of psychedelics Alpert went on a religious kick. He traveled to India where he found a Guru who was called Maharaj-ji. This guru renamed Albert, calling him Ram Dass. Ran Dass continued in his studies of Eastern Religions and ended up back in the United States as a teacher lecturer. Disavowing the drug scene he began to advocate a more traditional approach to the religious experiences through meditation and it associate disciplines. He became, in fact, a spokesman for the new age movement in America. That is how he came to write this book, "Grist for the Mill." A few years ago, Ram Dass suffered a massive stroke. After that, I lost track of him, but I suspect he has passed out of this particular life. Whether or not he will reincarnate in our space time corner of the universe, again, I have no idea. It would be interesting. If I see it happen, I will treat it as "Grist for the Mill" and write about it. For those interested, this is the last address I have for the organization that distributes his stuff. Hanuman Foundation Tape Library
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