2021; 405 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genres : Biographies & Memoirs; Philosophy;
Meditation. Overall Rating: 9½*/10.
Back in my college days, there
was a “way cool” book that all the hip students were reading. It was titled Be
Here Now, by a guy named Ram Dass. Okay, that wasn’t his real name, his birth name was Richard Alpert, and he was
a Harvard Professor of Psychology.
Be Here Now was an easy
book to read. It had lots of drawings
and the text was compact. In a nutshell,
it urged the target audience, Westerners, to travel to India, to practice Meditation, and to lose your sense of attachment to Self.
Being
Ram Dass is a memoir of that Self named Ram Dass, nee Richard Alpert.
What’s To Like...
After a Foreword and an Introduction, both of
which are worth reading, Being Ram Dass is
divided into six sections, namely:
Part 1: Learning and Unlearning (14 chapters)
Growing up, Academics, Psychedelics
Part 2: Pilgrim of the Heart (8 chapters)
Travels to India; Meditations
and Pure Love
Part 3: Service Center (6 chapters)
Seeing God in Others
Part 4: The Wheel Turns (5 chapters)
Growing Older
Part 5: Ocean View (3 chapters)
Final Thoughts
The Next Chapter: Ram Dass Here/Not Here (6 pages)
An Epilogue by a Friend
Richard Alpert/Ram Dass’s life
is presented chronologically—he grew up in a well-to-do family, attended Tufts
University, got a PhD in Psychology, and became a professor at Harvard. He met Timothy Leary, got turned on to LSD,
and spearheaded a Harvard-sponsored research project to see if taking
psychedelics could enable convicts to turn from their criminal ways. Which got him fired from Harvard, something
that hadn’t happened since Ralph Waldo Emerson taught there in the 1800s.
I loved his “warts and all” approach to writing this
memoir. Enlightened gurus are common in
India, and jealousies between them sometimes arise. A mystic’s diet is quite austere, so Ram Dass
and friends would occasionally sneak into town to munch on M&Ms. Becoming One with God does not preclude
making out in the backseat of a car. And
while Love is all you need, once in a while a hit of acid or psilocybin is a
fun excursion.
The main message, of course, is
that if you give yourself totally to an enlightened guru, he will teach you to
love everyone unreservedly, render service to mankind, and become One with the
Cosmos by shedding all of your earthly attachments.
There is a lot of
name-dropping, which is not a criticism. A few of the celebrities
who came to see, hear, talk with, and/or assist Ram Dass include: Aldous Huxley, Maynard Ferguson, Charles Mingus, Ken
Kesey, Timothy Leary, Wavy Gravy, Steve Jobs, Michael Crichton, George
Harrison, Jerry Rubin, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Stokely Carmichael,
and Robert Redford. I’m in awe.
Late in life, Ram Dass suffers
a stroke, which leaves him unable to speak, unable to write, and
wheelchair-bound. It was touching to
read how he dealt with this, and battled through depression and a lot of physical therapy to finally accept
this. For enlightened beings, Birth and
Death are not starting and ending points; they are two depots in a cosmic
journey propelled by Reincarnation.
Kewlest New Word ...
Pellucid (adj.)
: translucently clear
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.8*/5, based on 1,039 ratings
and 96 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.57*/5,
based on 1,747
ratings and 184 reviews.
Excerpts...
Wavy Gravy helped keep things light with a
pair of tacky clown glasses with Groucho Marx eyebrows. If anyone uttered the word “serious”, also
known as “the S word,” the meeting came to a complete stop while the offender
donned the funny glasses. We avoided
taking ourselves too seriously, even as we addressed deep suffering. (Wavy and his wife, Jahanara, named their son
Howdy Do-Good Gravy, although as soon as he was old enough, he changed it to
Jordan.) (pg. 293)
From a Hindu perspective, you are born into
what you need to deal with, your karmic predicament. If you try to push anything away, whatever it
is, the reaction against it creates more attachment, just like getting pulled
into it. It’s got your mind. It was no accident that I was born into a
Jewish family, and I finally was able to appreciate its mark on me. Only when you honor your karma fully can you
begin to be free. (pg.
330)
“If a pickpocket
comes to see a saint, all he sees are his pockets.” (pg. 182)
There’s only a smattering of
profanity in Being Ram Dass; just 11
instances in the whole book. Most of it
was direct quotes of others, but frankly, I was surprised there was any at
all. I didn’t note any typos.
If you’re homophobic, be aware
that Richard Alpert was bisexual. He
doesn’t make a big deal of this in his memoir, but he doesn’t try to hide it
either. He worries that it will hinder
his quest for Enlightenment, and is blown away that his guru Maharaj-ji,
accepts him as he is.
The only nit I have to pick concerns
the criticism Ram Dass’s Harvard colleagues had with his (and Timothy Leary’s) tests, results, and evaluations of the psychedelics-for-inmates investigation. Ram Dass felt their criteria was too objective and scientific-oriented, and not humanistic-oriented and subjective enough. I found their criticisms valid, but hey, I’m
a scientist, so that's not surprising.
For me, Being Ram Dass was a thought-provoking, fascinating memoir.
Ram Dass was born in 1931, and died in 2019, which puts him a generation
older than me. But a lot of his
experiences and insights resonated, and it was interesting to read a memoir
where Eastern mysticism is a central theme, yet the text never becomes
preachy. We can debate the theological
validity of Ram Dass’s spiritual beliefs, but we can’t dismiss the huge positive
effect they had on his life.
9½ Stars. One last thing. At one point, late in his life, Ram Dass relates a bad trip he experienced with a hallucinogen called “toad slime”. He records that he took “a big hit” which induced a ”brief, intense trip” where he “turned into a large black woman surrounded by beings who were children, all suffering, hungry, frightened, sick.” Wowza!
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