It was the summer of ‘74, and spiritual teacher Ram Dass was invited to teach at the opening of a new school in Boulder that combined Western academics with Eastern spirituality. The psychedelic sage spent the summer living out of a school bus in the deserts of California and New Mexico preparing for his inaugural lecture on the ancient Indian text, the Bhagavad Gita. As he immersed himself in the book’s teachings, he found an unexpected group of students to practice his inaugural lecture on- a family of jackrabbits.


Photo by Karen Roper, courtesy Naropa University
 

Little did Ram Dass (or the jackrabbits) know, this was just the beginning of the academic study of yoga at Naropa University. The Bhagavad Gita, commonly called the Gita, contains one of the earliest definitions of yoga and illustrates the path of yoga as a battlefield. 

The Gita is the story of Prince Arjuna and Krishna, Arjuna’s charioteer.  Arjuna is faced with the dilemma of fighting a war against his own family members and sits in his chariot before the battle begins, unsure what to do. Time stops, and Krishna reveals himself as a manifestation of the divine. They enter a mystical space where Krishna speaks with Arjuna about the battle and shares his advice.

During Dass’s course on the Gita, he compared Arjuna’s battlefield experience to the first time he took psilocybin mushrooms. Dass was in Dr. Timothy Leary’s living room, and during the trip, he entered a liminal space and awoke to the emptiness of the social roles he had been playing and the superficial culture he grew up in. After sharing this story, Dass then asked his students to  “uncover the parallel experiences” in their own lives to effectively empathize with Arjuna.

Dass’s course also drew upon other Indian concepts and practices from outside the Gita. Students were encouraged to create their own altar of worship, and they practiced chanting, which often culminated in freeform dancing. They were led into practices of postural yoga, and Dass personally gave each student a pouch with beads to make their own japamālā or string of beads for repeating a mantra. 


Photo by Karen Roper, courtesy Naropa University
 

Since that first summer course, the study of yoga and Indian spirituality at Naropa has only continued to expand and develop. And while the mystical spirit of that first Naropa summer carries on, classes today have evolved.

Today, students in Naropa’s Master of Arts in Religious Studies: Yoga Studies are taught to unpack the way yoga developed within the modern world while also returning to the wisdom encapsulated in ancient texts like the Gita. They learn to critically engage with issues that arise in spiritual communities such as authenticity, appropriation, and power; and they are introduced to a vast repository of teachings on yoga, including texts that have yet to be translated into English.

 

Learn more about what it means to become a scholar/practitioner, and if you continue to find yourself curious enough, we welcome you to come join us. We’ll be here carrying on the legacy of Ram Dass and a family of jackrabbits.

 


Photo by Karen Roper, courtesy Naropa University
 

Photo Credit: Sofia Drobinskaya