Accessories

Still current
Remember, Be Here Now is a wonderful book, still current today--to be read slowly. We used it in a study group as well.

Cracks Through Reality
Back in 2005, I came across this book via a friend who had recently and unexpectedly passed away. Her own family wasn't very close with her and gave us, her group of spiritual friends, the reigns in commemorating her life. One of the things we did was hold a memorial service and give away all her books to anyone who wanted them. Out of the hundreds that were on the tables, this book -without reading any excerpts from it- caught my attention, and I took it home with me. Little did I know how truly life-altering all these events were at the time.

When I read this book, it started out like any other... a story of the relevant parts of Richard's life preceeding his trip to Inida. That itself was fascinating to me, as I enjoyed reading about his LSD trips and spiritual meanderings. But nothing had prepared me for the experience of reading the comic book like center pages of this book. I found my sense of reality cracked and shattered by what I read there. For weeks, I could not feel connected to the illusions I'd never even questioned previously. Everything changed; I saw what lies beneath and the stupidity of this life I was living. Nothing made sense anymore; except what I'd been exposed to by this cracking up of my existence.

This book forever changed the direction of my life. I was what I termed "spiritual but not religous" before that, but even that illusion was shown to be superficial. It was not long, a year or so more, before I came across a mystic of our own times. And I didn't even have to travel to India to find him. When the student is ready, the teach always comes.

A Must Read
I was so happy to find this book online as it is very difficult to find in a bookstore. Re-reading it, I found Be Here Now just as inspiring as the first time I came across this piece of spiritual literature. A life-changing read!

Ram Dass in Hawaii
In the 70s I remember sitting on my living room floor sharing with my roommates the very colorful Remember, Be Here Now. We were all reading it together. I was puzzled and so were they. We had no context to understand the simplicity of the spirit of the book. It was only as I experienced life and got older that I understood the joy of being in the moment -- of being conscious of real communication and compassion. I would like to think that that was the beginning of my personal path toward becoming a more aware human being and a family therapist. Although the book is from a very different era the messages and philosophies that Ram Dass brought to western society - after his long studies in India - are now so widely accepted and prevalent that they are now even quoted on Oprah!

Recently I had the privilege and pleasure to travel to Haiwaii and meet Ram Dass in person and it made me realize that this book is perhaps more relevant today than it when it was written (or maybe that's just wisdom through age!).

spirit /life learning book from the 60's
Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) did this book right. In a time of soul searching he was an LSD using engineer turned hippie who went to India in search of a Guru. He found a really good one. The book is in 3 parts. The first is Ram Dass's egocentric story of his prespirit life. You can tell the the middle part, the path, was not his by the contrast. The Path is a great explaination of the Hindu world. The third part is a how to and where to go section. I loved this book and gave several as gifts. His future books are not as good and to me even go down from one to the next. He definately shanneled inspiration and tried to reproduce it.