I was just remembering a scene from Ram Das’ Be Here Now. I don’t know if I’ve remembered it correctly since I haven’t read the book in over 20 years.

I think most people who quote the title of that book as if it were a prescription for living haven’t read it… but that’s besides the point, which relates to my memory:

In this scene, Ram Das has just come back from India where he had spent time with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and was fully engaged in his “japa” practice — repeating a mantra over and over and over and over. Mr. Das (or does he prefer the more hairdresserly Mr. Ram?) recounted (rather, I’m recounting him recounting) being in the car with his father and all that was happening is his mind was the mantra, over and over. All thoughts were subsumed by the mantra. He could barely hear his father through the mantra. And he was blissed out as he rode the waves that the mantra created in his mind.

I was recalling this story because for the last few hours I’ve had the exact same experience!

Every thought, feeling, sensation, experience has merely been taken over by, eaten by, swallowed whole by the musical sound resonating and reverberating through my mind.

Vacuuming becomes the sound.

Talking with people who came to buy my inversion table and gravity boots (thank you Craigslist) becomes the sound.

Eating is like eating the sound.

No thing happens in my mind that doesn’t feel equal to the sound… of ABBA’s Dancing Queen (thank you Meryl Streep in Mama Mia).

I’m not dancing around the living room like Meryl on her Greek Isle, but the rapture is no less technicolor.

Seriously, without the idea that “I have a song stuck in my head, especially a bubble-gum 70’s song that I wish would leave,” how is this any different than repeating some collection of Sanskrit syllables? (Can syllables actually be Sanskrit?)

Quoting one of the advanced spiritual teachings from my Swedish guru group, “With a bit of rock music, everything is fine…”