Since Trump’s rise to the presidency, a story has been circulating in social media of a man in India named Bussa Krishna who literally worships Trump, and performs aarti (devotional worship) to him every morning. While it’s usually told as a humorous and surreal oddity, it reminds me of another story related by one of our most beloved teachers of Yoga and Indian spirituality in the West, Ram Dass.

Ram Dass, for those who aren’t familiar, is a psychologist turned yogi and spiritual teacher. After venturing to India in the 1960s seeking answers to his questions about psychedelics and having many extraordinary experiences there, he became a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba and brought what he had learned back to the West in a witty, humorous, and succinct style that has touched many lives.

The story to which I’m referring is one where Ram Dass described a practice he engaged in of placing a person he most hated on his Puja table, or home altar, alongside all of the other saints and gurus he most revered. The reason for doing so is that according to Yogic and Vedantic philosophy, all is one. Therefore, every person is ultimately another manifestation of the divine, although they may be particularly nasty manifestations. Nevertheless, to view them as separate and somehow removed from the divine Reality is a mistake, and an obstacle to be overcome.

In this case, the person Ram Dass placed on his puja table was a politician named Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. While I don’t recall him going into detail about why Caspar in particular got under his skin, it’s not difficult to imagine why a hippie yogi might hate a Reagan crony. As the story was oft told, Ram Dass would go through his morning ritual, saying good morning to each saint with great love, and then finally would coldly and begrudgingly say, “G’morning Caspar.”

It’s a lot funnier when Ram Dass tells it, I recommend his podcast on the Be Here Now Network. 

The reason this story is so relevant is because it represents a lesson we all have before us, and the need for it has never been clearer than at this very moment in time. I think it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that Trump is the single most reviled and divisive president in all of American history, with the possible exception of Nixon. That makes him Caspar Weinberger on steroids x1,000. That means that, just like Ram Dass unable to say “good morning” with love even to a picture, we all have our work cut out for us.

So, how does one put Trump on the puja table? How can we be expected to see God in someone who seems to many of us to be the furthest thing from a divine incarnation? It helps to start with the basics.

According to the Vedas and Upanishads, the source of all the teachings of Yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism, there is only one ultimate Reality, which they call Brahman, but we can call God for convenience. However, this is quite a different concept of God from the one we are accustomed to in the West; this is definitely not the guy on the throne who supposedly loves you, but will also burn you forever if you don’t do what he wants.

You can think of the Vedantic conception of God as the singular consciousness within which the multifaceted dream of all Creation is unfolding. This means that you are one of those dreams, as is everyone and everything, everywhere, forever, because that’s all there is: God’s one infinite consciousness, and the myriad finite or limited dreams which arise within it.

So, everything that is a thing of any kind, from quarks to humans, galaxies, and whatever spirit worlds may be beyond, is a dream being experienced by the one and only thing that is not a thing, infinite consciousness, or God. 

Not only that, but every individual consciousness is actually that same God consciousness, at it’s deepest root. A helpful metaphor might be to imagine God being like a Light that is the most fundamental Reality behind everything, and the dream of Maya being like a blanket with many holes that is thrown over the Light. Each of the holes in the blanket, while appearing to be separate lights, are actually merely the One Light shining out from beneath.

Thus, all individual consciousnesses or souls are the singular infinite consciousness clad in the blanket of space and time, the fabric of the dream, making One Light appear to be fragmented into separate points of light, while in reality it is still whole, merely partially concealed. From the outside of the blanket, it seems to be many; from beneath the blanket, it becomes obvious it is One. In a sense, both are true, it’s just a matter of perspective.

Once accepted, one unavoidable conclusion from this understanding is that even the most contemptible people and events are ultimately mere dreams, as well. They are darker dreams, some of them nightmares and villains surely, but fundamentally the same dream-stuff as every other, and being dreamed by the same God. Their goodness or badness are merely qualities of the dream, but the dreamer is beyond and behind all of them.

In other words, what looks out from behind Ghandi’s eyes, from behind Hitler’s eyes, and from behind your eyes at this very moment is fundamentally the same, on some level. Carefully here: they are not the same mind, and not the same body, but the bedrock-level witness, consciousness itself, is singular and universal. There is only One gazing out through all eyes upon it’s dream of Creation, however contorted and noxious some of it’s dream-shells become. Only One Light shining out through the many holes in the blanket.

It’s certainly easier to see God in those we love. In fact, that’s almost the definition of what it means to love someone: it’s easy to feel our unity with them, whether they be romantic partners, children, family, or great teachers and saints. Usually, these are the types of people or deities we put on the altar, because it creates an anchor in our lives where it’s easy to see God in human forms we can relate to, to connect to that ultimate Reality. This is a useful practice, to help us get firmly established in spiritual life.

However, this is not where our true work lies, it’s just how we get our footing. The true challenge is to expand our sphere of reverence to those beings in which it’s more difficult to see divinity, and ultimately to those in whom it’s most difficult of all. This is exactly what Ram Dass was doing, by adding Caspar Weinberger to his Puja table.

You might be asking yourself, why? Why do I need to see God in Trump? The answer also comes to us from the Vedic traditions, which is that our reactiveness and inability to see the divine in everything and everyone is a part of why we continue to be trapped in suffering here in this world, and also why we continue all of the cycles which make the world a much worse place than it needs to be. Attachment to some dreams and aversion to others is what keeps us on the carousel of reincarnation, and fighting over who gets to ride which painted pony.

In other words, being caught up in our illusory separateness from anything, including Trump, brings us down both literally and figuratively. It keeps us not only in a state of anger and disconnection from spirit, but also more lost in the delusion of the dream, more bound to it, forgetful of our true nature, and further from the goal of liberation. It keeps us stuck, individually and collectively.

What happens when we truly see God in Trump?

For one thing, we can expand the sphere of our compassion not just for Trump, but for everyone he represents, everyone we may find intolerable because of their lack of sensitivity, openness, compassion, sophistication, and wisdom. The gulf between us is not a true chasm of difference, but one of unwillingness to see our commonality, to truly see those we disagree with soul-to-soul, independent of all the friction between our somewhat dissimilar dream shells.

That, my friends, is critical if we are to overcome what currently faces us. As Einstein said, problems can never be truly solved from the level of consciousness at which they were created, and the wall-building mentality in us will not fix the wall-building mentality in them. Hate will never solve the tangled web of problems Trump represents, only Love and Truth can do that.