Be Here Now

This book is the closest thing I have to a "Bible". I have bought it 6 times now. Everytime I buy it I eventually end up giving my copy to someone who needs it. I was walking through a busy bookstore one day back in 2010, and I was staring at the Religion & Spirituality section for about 15 minutes not knowing where to begin. Some random guy came up, pulled Be Here Now off the shelf, handed it to me and simply said "This is a good place to start." He walked away and I couldn't find him again looking through the store. Weirdest thing ever. But seriously, this book has blown my mind wide open. There is nothing else like it. The way that Ram Dass marries his illustrations to the text in this flowing piece will keep you reading. He basically combines teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam in such a way that it blows your mind and helps you see how everything is connected. I hope to give 1000 copies of this book away. The world needs it. It's especially great for people like me who can be rather ADHD because it is so illustrative in the main portion. I would recommend it a million times over.

I know it's a cliché, but this book changed my life. I read it in 1973 when I was an angst-ridden twenty-something searching for a spiritual direction. I bought the book because I recognised Dr Richard Alpert from his association with Dr Timothy Leary and was curious to hear his post acid-haze spin on spirituality. What I found in the pages of this book planted the seed of a philosophy which has grown in my own consciousness, becoming the foundation for a spiritual life. The first part of the book deals with Dr Alperts spiritual awakening through the grace of his guru and his subsequent metamorphosis into the disciple called Baba Ram Dass. It is an inspiring tale for those not afflicted by cynical preconceptions and it inspired in me the desire to seek out my own guru. The central portion of the book was perfect for the times, when people who had opened the gates of their perception with the aid of psychotropic substances, were looking for more natural means to help keep them open. Using the words and teachings of many different spiritual masters, from Jesus to Ramakrishna, the book uses psychedelic, cartoon-like images to get the message across. And the message is Be Here Now. When I first meditated on the meaning of this exhortation, ten thousand bells began to ring in my mind. Of course! The past is gone, an illusion which exerts all kinds of negative influences on the human psyche. The future is even more illusory, in that it is so transient. It could be years long, or it could be seconds - who knows? Life can only be truly experienced in the present - in the here and now - and if we are to find peace and spiritual freedom, we must first do away with our attachment to the past and the future. This is the central premise of the books teaching and it is a profoundly important teaching. We live so much of our lives in the past or the future, we forget to experience the joy of the moment and in the third part of the book entitled `Cook-book for a Sacred Life', Ram Dass offers the reader some practical techniques. Meditation, yoga, posture, mantra, recipes - there is everything here for the novice spiritual aspirant wishing to bring a sense of sacred-ness into all aspects of his or her daily life. As a young man seeking spiritual knowledge and a pathway towards salvation, the rituals, techniques and teachings expounded in this book brought a magic to each day and a kind of unseen connection with Ram Dass and his other readers. Be Here Now was a vital component of my spiritual awakening and I would like to address my words to any open-minded person looking to tread the rock-strewn road towards self-knowledge, compassion and spiritual illumination. Read this book now!

I picked up this book about 8 years ago for the first time and as I was reading it I felt as if my mind was being [pulled] in the pages. I have bought it 3 separate times but always feel compelled to give it away to someone who I feel could benefit from the wisdom inside.
This book comes in 3 parts...the first part is an account of the author's pre "Ram Dass" life as a PhD and scholar....then to make a long story short, he did some psychedelic drugs, and discovered that he actually liked what was inside his mind and wanted to try to find a way to live in "the now" without the drug experience attached. His journey took him to finding a guru..interesting stuff but then to my favorite part of the book:
the middle....this is a brown paper rambling section full of rich artwork, roughly drawn cartoons, biblical and buddhist references, and what I found to be great truths....all about what it means to "be here now."
While some of it is overly simplistic, and some of it is gratuitous reference to organized religion, most of it is just an alternative way of thinking about yourself, your problems, lifestyle, and family issues. What I took away from this book was a renewed sense of self awareness and it even made me realize that different is not bad, its just different. I guess I was at the point in time in my life where I needed that insight into my own behaviors and thought processing capabilities. In any event, it OPENED MY EYES!!! It made me look at everything differently, and almost instantaneously changed my perception of the world and others in it.
The third part, which is called something like "cookbook for a sacred life" really gets into the practice of buddhism and meditation, which was not the route I chose to go with my life...but in any case, a great and interesting read for anyone interestied in gaining valuable insight into the mystery of their life and life in general.

Beautiful book. I came across it in a hotel room in New Zealand, thoughtfully provided instead of the usual bible. This book is far more useful and appropriate for contemporary life than any religious text. The format is a little quirky (and some pages hard to read) but I love that it can be opened at any page for thought-provoking content and spiritual advice. Highly recommended for anyone seeking to open their eyes and change perspectives on the world.

This book is a trip! Not what I expected at all. While it can be difficult to read at times there are so many great nuggets that you can sit and chew on. You can't be in a hurry while reading this book. It definitely isn't for everybody. I won't pretend that I understand it all but it is one more step in the journey and will be a continued reference for a long time. Coming from a conservative Christian upbringing (which I appreciate) to where I am now, it is hard to find books and folks who can speak to where I am (which is here I guess 😉), but Ram Dass is great. His book "Walking Each Other Home" brought me to this book and I am grateful for it.

A truly life changing book that I found in a bookshop when I was about 16. Studied it, sometimes with friends, throughout college. This resulted in some really profound and memorable experiences. Gave it away to a friend I thought needed it years ago but she wasn't smart enough to value it unfortunately.
In modern globally conscious society this is a great way to introduce children to spirituality and religion. Ram Dass found a very clever balance of thinking that is really inclusive of most spiritual traditions throughout the world, and that's what I think is the most valuable thing about this book. Sometimes it's Christian, then Buddhist, Sufi, and in the end it's very philosophical. Fools will just look at the pretty pictures, and there a lots of them - super awesome illustrations. But there is real depth here.
Now that I've grown up a whole lot of this book is just silly, but I appreciate how thought provoking it was to me as a kid. At a time when I was too smart for my own good but had nothing really worth thinking about, it was awesome to finally be hit with ideas that would leave me completely confused for hours or days. I owe a lot to this book.
So about a year ago I said screw it, I'd like to send a message of thanks to Mr. Alpert / Ram Dass. I contacted his people, wrote a heartfelt message just saying dude thank you for your awesome book can you please let him know what a great book he created. And I got some PR turd who said if you'd like to speak with the holy Ram Dass you can send a check for like $10,000 for entrance to his spiritual retreat in Hawaii. So yeah, the guy sold out and became an ass, but it happens. Anyway I bought another copy and it's a great coffee table book.

Honestly, if you weren't a love child in the 60's, I'm not sure this will be a life-changing book the way it was when it was produced. It's awkward, hard to read/ingest, etc. There are some really, really good books to help us on our spiritual journey, I want to honor those who do this work, including this one, but your money and time will be better spent elsewhere.

I was really fascinated and pulled in to this book when I was younger, and in fact organized my whole life around it for a year or two. I think there's a lot of wisdom there but it's mixed with a lot of spiritual materialism - constant judging and measuring about how "high" he and other people / gurus are - that I ended up picking up myself from reading. It had me constantly wondering how "far along the path" I was, how I stacked up spiritually compared to others, etc. A lot of bullshit I think, that polluted my thinking for a long time.

I have trouble believing the miracle stories also - if these miracle-manifesting gurus are so ubiquitous in India, as Autobiography of a Yogi and other books would suggest, wouldn't we have had one scientist over the last 100 years investigate and back the stories up experimentally? Wouldn't a guru freely give a demonstration in some controlled environment if these kinds of powers were real and it inspired faith in millions of people and set them on the spiritual path? In the age of cell phone video, wouldn't we have a plethora of hard-to-deny miracles online? Instead the only documented things I find are debunking of these types of psychics and miracle workers, showing how levitation tricks, blowing fire, "conjuring" things, mind reading etc. work.

Not sure what to make of Ram Dass's tales in that regard - perhaps he was in an impressionable state and got taken in by guru parlor tricks and charisma - or perhaps he can rationalize making up such stories for the faith they inspire in people to start them on the spiritual path. I don't know.

A reviewer in this section who gave a one-star rating mentioned that he met Ram Dass's boarding school teacher from his teenage years, who said that at the time Ram Dass was gay and felt forced to hide it, and was ostracized by his fellow classmates, perhaps for the same reason. Ram Dass admitted much later in life his bisexuality with a preference for men. That reviewer's amateur interpretation actually makes some sense to me - "a teen with a secret, lonely and shunned, seeks mass approval later in life, and a solution for stifling his own inner demons".

For as honest and personal as Ram Dass seems to be I find it surprising he makes no mention of his sexuality in his books. It would seem he was editing and filtering himself, maybe out of a desire for public approval, which could provide a motivation beind throwing in a few miracle stories too. Obviously it took the world by storm when he did.

Anyway it all leaves me a little confused. There's no question this book is powerful and profound in many ways, but when I look back on my own experience trying to live by it I don't know if it made me wiser or screwed me up. Maybe a bit of both.

I purchased this book after reading the Walter Issacson biography of Steve Jobs, which stated how impactful the book had been to Jobs. I have to admit I didn't know what to expect, and after receiving the book that notion was reinforced after shuffling through the middle section. I wanted to give it a fair chance anyway so I started to read. The first part of the book tells the story of how Ram Das goes from a Harvard professor to becoming Ram Das and I was immediately sucked into a story that captured my full attention. The second part of the book however really threw me at first. The formatting is odd, and there are parts that are challenging to read as in some places it seems like words are just all over the place and don't really seem to go together (Later I understood that it was derived from pages of his journal, and didn't necessarily have to go together, but could be read as individual pages / notes). In honesty I thought, ok this poor man lost his mind somewhere between the first part and the second part. Being that I had heard so many good things though I continued to read through it. The 3rd section, the Cook Book, immediately captured me again, and as I continued to read I was blown away at how profound it was. So many just pure Gems that I thought wow, this amazing person hasn't lost his mind at all, in fact, he seems to understand, he really gets it, and there were parts that just spoke to me. I actually remember thinking something, then reading about that topic, and then thinking, ok this book is inside my head, It's literally talking about a topic that I was just thinking about. I will read this book again, and again, and I am confident that no matter how many times I read it, I will pull something else out of it each time. Its formatting is a little odd, and if you have flipped through it and thought: "This won't have anything useful in it", I highly encourage you to reconsider. Think of the middle section as a daily read. They are thoughts and deep concepts that can be taken as one-offs for daily reflection, while the Cook Book will give you such depth of knowledge and a peek into his wisdom that it will literally blow your mind!! This book is truly an amazing read!! What a rollercoaster, I don't believe I have ever read anything like it before. Must Read!!

This book was given to me by a coworker who couldn't make heads or tails of it and told me to keep it. I opened it to the first 'brown paper sack' page and started reading and tears came to my eyes and I realized that I was holding something very sacred. I only comprehended about 10% of what was said but I knew in my heart that here were answers to questions I had not even thought about.... yet... Unifying the messages from many traditions, he addresses our lives and minds with knowledge and wisdom like I had never heard before... I had grown up in the Bible belt and thought I knew everything I needed to know about God, good, evil, Jesus, and then I read this and realized that I really knew nothing at all... now 36 years later I am a Buddhapalian (practicing buddhist and Episcopalian) with many years of study in both traditions and as I read it for the umpteenth time I still smile at some new gem that comes out of the page at me and nod my head.... No matter where you are on your spiritual journey, pick this book up and read it... and over time I am sure you will agree that it is an immense sacred gift to us all...