Becoming Nobody

Jamie Catto, USA, 2019, 81 min.

“When I was born, I donned a space suit for living on this planet. It was this body, this nice spacesuit, and it had a steering mechanism, my prefrontal lobes and all the brain motors coordinating stuff. . . . You get so good at using your spacesuit that you can’t differentiate yourself from your spacesuit anymore. . . . It’s what I call somebody training.”

—Ram Dass

Both playful and profound, this film is a portal to and portrayal of Ram Dass’s life and teachings.

In Becoming Nobody, historic clips of Ram Dass balance an engaging conversation with director Jamie Catto. The film captures a loving man full of joy, wit, honesty, and wisdom, at ease in conversation while sharing his considerable pains and pleasures. The life experiences that have freed him from the attachments of his “Somebodyness” have transformed him into the radiant soul who now inspires a new generation. In watching Ram Dass’s unconventional journey unfold, we may come to understand how our own roles and disguises become increasingly burdensome.

The screening will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with film producer Raghu Markus, Sharon Salzberg, and David Silver.

About the Speakers

Sharon Salzberg, cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, has guided meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. Sharon’s latest book is Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection. She is a weekly columnist for On Being, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, and the author of several other books including the New York Times best-seller Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, and Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Sharon has been a regular participant in the Rubin’s many on-stage conversations.

Raghu Markus spent two years in India with Maharaj-ji and Ram Dass. He has been involved in music and transformational media since the early 1970s, when he was program director of CKGM-FM in Montreal. In 1974 he collaborated with Ram Dass on the box set Love Serve Remember. In 1990, he launched Triloka Records and Karuna Music in Los Angeles, California. Triloka established itself as a critical leader in the development of world music and for 17 years was home to such artists as Krishna Das, Hugh Masekela, Walela, and Jai Uttal.

He produced transformational media projects that featured Ram Dass, Deepak Chopra, and Les Nubians. He is the executive Director of the Love Serve Remember Foundation. In 2016, he co-founded the Be Here Now Podcast Network, where he hosts Here & Now with Ram Dass as well as his own Mindrolling podcast.

David Silver’s #1 charting MGM/UA/Warners film, The Compleat Beatles, is a critically acclaimed biopic movie about history’s most famous band. The term “rockumentary” was first applied to this two-hour movie.

In 2008/09, David worked as Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee’s historical consultant on his Universal/Focus Features movie, Taking Woodstock, released in August 2009.

David Silver has produced, directed, or written films with The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, Liberace, Bonnie Raitt, Krishna Das, Spalding Gray and many others.

As a Senior Vice President at both Warner Brothers and Polygram/Mercury Records, he created dozens of CDs and movies.

From 2007 to the present, he wrote and directed a series of full-length videos featuring Ram Dass, Deepak Chopra, Sharon Salzberg, and many other teachers and co-founded the highly respected yoga, mindfulness, and just-about-anything chat Mindrolling Podcast. He is currently finishing his memoir and is in post-production on a new documentary about Saivite master K.C. Tewari, a close devotee of Neem Karoli Baba.