Jul 21, 2025 · 46 min · 12 segments
In this recording from 1978, Ram Dass reads stories about his guru, Maharaj-ji, and his many miracles. We invite you to set aside your analytical mind and simply enjoy these miracles of love. You…
The expression on the man's face suggested that he was experiencing waves of rapture.
And as I watched him out of the corner of my eye, I felt jealous.
We sat next to each other, cross-legged, before a large, heavy wooden table, which was about chest high.
The man, a principal of a school in the vicinity, was probably in his late fifties.
He was dressed in a heavy woolen suit with socks.
His shoes had been left outside the door of the temple.
A tie, a muffler, and in the fashion common to the men of the hill country in this late November, a woolen hat.
Before us, sitting on the table, cross-legged, was another man of indeterminate age, well-wrapped in a bright plaid blanket, so that only his head showed above the blanket and a bare foot stuck out beneath.
It was this foot that was the source of both the rapture and the jealousy.
For the first man was massaging the foot with great tenderness and love.
And I was yearning to be in his place.
Unlike my neighbor, I was dressed in a white woolen alfie, which is cut like a knee-length potato sack, open at the bottom with holes for arms and head.
Under this was a loincloth called a longoti.
My feet were bare and heavily calloused, and like the man sitting before us, I too wore a plaid blanket.
How bizarre to find myself in this unlikely costume, sitting in a tiny Hindu temple halfway around the world, jealous because I could not rub an old man's foot.
As I reflected on this strange turn of events, the man on the table would talk now to one and now to another of the twenty or so people gathered in a small room at the back of the temple compound.
He spoke in Hindi, which I did not understand, but he seemed to be asking one a question, scolding another, joking with a third, and giving instructions to a fourth.
And in the midst of these conversations, I saw him move ever so slightly, and his other foot appeared beneath the blanket, just by me.
Though I suspected that only people who had been around him for some time were allowed to massage his feet, and I was the newest comer, I decided I couldn't be faulted for trying.
So slowly hands went up and touched the foot and began to massage.
But instead of waves of bliss, my mind was full of the sharp edges of doubt and confusion as to whether I should use my fingertips or my palms.
Just as suddenly as the foot appeared, it was withdrawn back under the blanket.
My mind was filled with self-recrimination about my own impurity.
You all recognize that one? But the familiar thoughts of guilt were interrupted by a commotion at the back of the room.
A man had entered who, in the West, I might have considered, in my role as a professional psychologist, a psychotic.
The expression on the man's face suggested that he was experiencing waves of rapture.
And as I watched him out of the corner of my eye, I felt jealous.
We sat next to each other, cross-legged, before a large, heavy wooden table, which was about chest high.
The man, a principal of a school in the vicinity, was probably in his late fifties.
He was dressed in a heavy woolen suit with socks.
His shoes had been left outside the door of the temple.
A tie, a muffler, and in the fashion common to the men of the hill country in this late November, a woolen hat.
Before us, sitting on the table, cross-legged, was another man of indeterminate age, well-wrapped in a bright plaid blanket, so that only his head showed above the blanket and a bare foot stuck out beneath.
It was this foot that was the source of both the rapture and the jealousy.
For the first man was massaging the foot with great tenderness and love.
And I was yearning to be in his place.
Unlike my neighbor, I was dressed in a white woolen alfie, which is cut like a knee-length potato sack, open at the bottom with holes for arms and head.
Under this was a loincloth called a longoti.
My feet were bare and heavily calloused, and like the man sitting before us, I too wore a plaid blanket.
How bizarre to find myself in this unlikely costume, sitting in a tiny Hindu temple halfway around the world, jealous because I could not rub an old man's foot.
As I reflected on this strange turn of events, the man on the table would talk now to one and now to another of the twenty or so people gathered in a small room at the back of the temple compound.
He spoke in Hindi, which I did not understand, but he seemed to be asking one a question, scolding another, joking with a third, and giving instructions to a fourth.
And in the midst of these conversations, I saw him move ever so slightly, and his other foot appeared beneath the blanket, just by me.
Though I suspected that only people who had been around him for some time were allowed to massage his feet, and I was the newest comer, I decided I couldn't be faulted for trying.
So slowly hands went up and touched the foot and began to massage.
But instead of waves of bliss, my mind was full of the sharp edges of doubt and confusion as to whether I should use my fingertips or my palms.
Just as suddenly as the foot appeared, it was withdrawn back under the blanket.
My mind was filled with self-recrimination about my own impurity.
You all recognize that one? But the familiar thoughts of guilt were interrupted by a commotion at the back of the room.
A man had entered who, in the West, I might have considered, in my role as a professional psychologist, a psychotic.
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