Be Here Now
Find Peace in the Now
byRam Dass
Book Edition Details
Summary
In the heart of India's spiritual tapestry, one man's profound awakening unfolds—a journey not just of discovery but of transformation. "Be Here Now" transcends mere storytelling, offering a beacon of insight for seekers everywhere. This enhanced edition enriches the narrative with guided video meditations and an intimate look into Ram Dass' luminous spiritual voyage. As you turn the pages, practical wisdom intertwines with personal revelation, inviting you to explore your own path to enlightenment. Accompanied by a preview of Ram Dass' next work, "Be Love Now," this edition bridges the past and future, promising an experience that resonates beyond the book itself. Prepare to be captivated, challenged, and changed.
Introduction
In the early 1960s, a brilliant Harvard psychology professor named Richard Alpert seemed to have everything the American dream promised: tenure at a prestigious university, research grants, expensive cars, and social status. Yet beneath this façade of success lay a profound emptiness that would eventually lead him on one of the most remarkable spiritual transformations of the 20th century. His journey from the sterile corridors of academia to the dusty ashrams of India represents not just a personal metamorphosis, but a bridge between Eastern spirituality and Western consciousness that would influence millions. Through his story, we witness the universal human quest for meaning beyond material achievement, the courage required to abandon everything familiar in pursuit of truth, and the profound impact that unconditional love can have on the human soul. His transformation from Dr. Richard Alpert into Ram Dass illuminates the eternal questions that haunt every seeking heart: Who am I beyond my roles and achievements? What is the nature of consciousness itself? How can we transcend the limitations of the ego to touch something infinite within ourselves?
The Academic Success and Existential Crisis
By 1961, Richard Alpert had reached the pinnacle of academic success. At Harvard University, he held appointments in four departments simultaneously, commanded substantial research contracts, and enjoyed all the trappings of material prosperity. His Cambridge apartment overflowed with antiques, his garage housed a Mercedes-Benz and a Triumph motorcycle, and his weekends were spent scuba diving in the Caribbean. To any outside observer, he embodied the American ideal of the successful intellectual. Yet beneath this carefully constructed exterior, Alpert harbored a growing sense of intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy. Despite years of psychoanalysis costing tens of thousands of dollars, despite his expertise in human motivation and Freudian theory, he felt like a fraud. His lectures were brilliant compilations of other people's ideas, delivered with authority but lacking genuine wisdom. The theories he taught seemed to capture only fragments of human experience, never adding up to anything resembling true understanding. The academic world that had rewarded him so handsomely began to feel like an elaborate game where everyone played their roles perfectly but nothing meaningful ever occurred. Students dutifully transcribed his words and regurgitated them on examinations, but no real learning seemed to happen. His colleagues, despite their impressive credentials, appeared as lost and unfulfilled as he was. The very success that society celebrated felt hollow and meaningless. This existential crisis deepened when Alpert recognized that his entire professional identity was built on a foundation of borrowed knowledge rather than lived truth. He possessed intellectual brilliance but lacked wisdom, academic credentials but not genuine insight into the human condition. The disparity between his external achievements and internal emptiness became increasingly unbearable, setting the stage for the dramatic transformation that would soon unfold.
Psychedelic Awakening and the Search for Truth
The trajectory of Alpert's life changed dramatically in March 1961 when he first encountered psilocybin, one of the consciousness-expanding substances that would soon revolutionize his understanding of reality. That initial experience shattered every assumption he had held about the nature of consciousness, identity, and the universe itself. As the drug took effect, he watched in amazement as all his familiar identities—professor, lover, achiever—seemed to separate from his essential being and stand before him like discarded costumes. The most profound moment came when even his basic identity as "Richard Alpert" began to dissolve, leaving him in a state of panic as his very sense of self seemed to evaporate. Yet in that terrifying moment of ego dissolution, a quiet voice within asked, "But who's minding the store?" This simple question revealed the presence of an witnessing consciousness that remained unchanged even as everything else disappeared—a pure awareness that existed independent of all roles, achievements, and even life itself. This revelation launched Alpert and his colleague Timothy Leary into systematic exploration of consciousness through psychedelic substances. They conducted hundreds of sessions with volunteers from all walks of life, carefully documenting the experiences and developing maps of consciousness that challenged every conventional understanding of human psychology. Their research revealed consistent patterns of transcendent experience that had been described by mystics throughout history but had never been accessible to scientific investigation. However, the more deeply Alpert explored these altered states, the more frustrated he became with their temporary nature. No matter how profound the experience or how transformative the insights, he invariably "came down" to ordinary consciousness, often feeling more spiritually bereft than before. After hundreds of sessions and years of experimentation, he realized that chemistry alone could not provide the lasting transformation he sought. The substances had shown him the territory, but they could not provide a permanent residence in those elevated states of consciousness.
Meeting the Guru: Transformation Through Unconditional Love
In 1967, feeling spiritually bankrupt despite years of psychedelic exploration, Alpert embarked on what he thought would be his final quest for meaning—a journey to India in search of someone who might understand the nature of the consciousness states he had glimpsed. Traveling with a wealthy young seeker in a Land Rover, he spent months visiting ashrams and meeting various holy men, offering them LSD to see if they could explain its mysteries. The responses were consistently disappointing: headaches, mild interest, or requests for more of the substance. Just as despair was overwhelming him in Kathmandu, he encountered a tall, blonde American sadhu who radiated an unmistakable presence of knowing. This young man, who called himself Bhagavan Das, agreed to take Alpert deeper into India to meet his guru. After weeks of traveling together, during which Alpert's Western conditioning was systematically stripped away through poverty, silence, and surrender, they arrived at a small temple in the Himalayan foothills where an elderly man sat wrapped in a plaid blanket. The meeting that followed defied every rational framework Alpert possessed. The old man—known as Neem Karoli Baba or Maharaj-ji—immediately demonstrated impossible knowledge of Alpert's most intimate thoughts and experiences, including details about his mother's recent death that no one else could have known. But more transformative than this display of supernatural knowing was the ocean of unconditional love that emanated from this simple being. For the first time in his adult life, Alpert felt completely known and completely loved simultaneously. Every shameful secret, every neurotic pattern, every failure and inadequacy was transparent to this man, yet the love flowing from him never wavered. In that love, Alpert experienced a forgiveness and acceptance so profound that his entire sense of identity collapsed and reformed around this new understanding of what it meant to be human. The brilliant Harvard professor dissolved, and something new began to emerge—a being capable of loving without condition, of serving without attachment, of existing in the eternal present moment.
The Path of the Heart: Teaching Love and Consciousness
The transformation that began in that Himalayan temple continued to unfold over the years that followed. Alpert, now given the name Ram Dass ("servant of God"), returned to America with a message that transcended the intellectual frameworks of his academic past. His teaching centered not on concepts or techniques, but on the direct transmission of love and the invitation to recognize one's true nature as consciousness itself. Unlike his former lectures filled with borrowed theories, Ram Dass now spoke from direct experience of the states he described. His talks became opportunities for collective meditation, spaces where audiences could taste the same love and presence that had transformed him. He taught that the spiritual journey was not about acquiring new knowledge or achieving special states, but about remembering what we already are beneath the layers of conditioning and identity. Central to his teaching was the understanding that love and awareness are not separate phenomena but two aspects of the same divine reality. Through practices like "I am loving awareness," he guided seekers to identify not with their thoughts and emotions, but with the consciousness that witnesses all experience. This shift in identification from the ego to the soul naturally gives birth to unconditional love, not as an emotion to be cultivated, but as the very nature of our deepest being. Ram Dass consistently emphasized that the guru is not ultimately an external figure but the awakened consciousness within each person. His relationship with Maharaj-ji served as a doorway to recognizing this inner teacher, this place of pure love and wisdom that exists in every human heart. Through service, devotion, and the continuous practice of seeing the divine in all beings, he demonstrated how the spiritual path transforms not only the individual but creates ripples of healing and awakening throughout the world.
Summary
The spiritual odyssey of Ram Dass reveals that the ultimate journey is not outward to exotic lands or upward to transcendent states, but inward to the love and awareness that constitute our essential nature. His transformation from a successful but spiritually empty Harvard professor to a beacon of unconditional love demonstrates that no achievement or acquisition can fill the longing of the soul for its source. His life teaches us that true fulfillment comes not from what we accomplish or possess, but from how deeply we can love and how completely we can surrender to the divine presence that lives within us and all beings. For anyone feeling the stirrings of spiritual hunger or questioning the meaning beneath society's definitions of success, Ram Dass's journey offers both inspiration and practical guidance for the pathless path to the heart of reality itself.
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