Ram Ram Dass - Being Ram Dass

Dedicated to

MAHARAJ-JI,

remover of darkness

Wrapped in a blanket of this world,
you are a homing beacon of the heart,
one foot in form, one in the formless,
to you its all one.

Your love is like the sun.

T he 14th-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart wrote that if the soul could have known God without the world, God would never have created the world. And oh! What a world She done createthe earth and the stars, astral planes, otters, a little boy in Boston named Richard Alpert. And it was good.

The short version is that he grew up in a rich, uptight Jewish family, extraordinarily gifted academically, tormented and chubby, to become an imposing and articulate man with a wild sense of compassion and humor. He became the water boy to a playful enlightened teacher in India and then brought Eastern truth back to America, where he filled the niche of a spiritual superstar, loved by the multitudes and even finally himself.

Yet he freely admits he never overcame a single one of his many neuroses; thank You, Jesus, because this is why I loved him so muchhe made those familiar struggles with ego and delusion so touching and hilarious that I helplessly fell for him, forty-five years ago, at the age of twenty. I trusted and delighted in him when I first read Be Here Now, and again with every new book. Now, delving into the book you hold in your hands, it all came backthe wisdom, the exciting and calming joy of his company.

Being Ram Dass is the longer, definitive story of his evolution, his journey, his immersion in Maharaj-jis teachings of love, freedom from ego, living in the heart, service as the path to fulfillment. It is radical stuff, this love business, soul and awakening, feeding everyone, Christ consciousness, and where it all beginsbeing here, now, as is. As is!

When I first read his statement in Be Here Now at age twenty, You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You dont have to do anything to earn it, I thought, Wait, what? People seemed to have forgotten to mention this to me when I was growing up, but I instantly, instinctively, trusted this dear neurotic, funny soul.

Love and the transformation from the mind to the vast ocean of consciousness deep inside were always his themes, what the baby chick of soul might discover if she pecked a hole in the eggshell. She might find the truth. The truth was soul, love, breath, God, oneness, life writ large and infinite. One does not pray to have all ones illusions and comforts stripped away, to give up all one has accruedI want my Maypo!even as we Christians live by Saint Lukes words, Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over. Wanting with the expectation of getting was the problem. Kathleen Norris wrote, Prayer is not asking for what you think you want, but asking to be changed in ways you cant imagine, and this happened for Ram Dass when he left for India. What he wanted radically changed.

This is what happened for me when I first read The Only Dance There Is at twenty-one. I found the book by my boyfriends bed after a romantic night with him, although what I didnt know was that the other woman, the one he was falling in love with, had given it to him. My mind was blown by Ram Dasss stories of higher consciousness, love as the only reality, suffering and pain as portals. Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your Transformation. Use it! He made me laugh, and his words filled me with the grace of both satiation and hunger.

Then the boyfriend told me sheepishly that, after a shower, he would be heading over to see her and would be gone all day, and night. I faked nonchalancehey, were all grown-ups hereand kept it together until he closed the bathroom door. Then I fell to pieces in his lovely bed, in his traitorous house, ambushed and rejected.

He left, and I read till early evening. And that was the day my baby chick pecked a hole in the shell of my prison.

Grace always meets us exactly where we are and does not leave us where it found us. I lost the boyfriend but became a serious seeker, the best deal of my life. The message of The Only Dance There Is, and of all his books, was love: he wrote, Love until you and the beloved become one. Love it allthe mess, pain, and suffering, along with the sunsets and the rain, the darkness in your psyche as well as the angelic, Caspar Weinberger as well as a baby, a deer, an orchid. Love the best you can at any moment. Dont harsh yourselfit can be tricky for everyone having this dual citizenship, of the biographical and the divine. Youre not alone; we are in this together, connected, all one.

It was all grist for the mill of awakening, toward union with eternal.

We all have our favorite lines from his earlier workYou need to remember your Buddha nature and your social security number is mine, along with Were all just walking each other home. And one need not go any further than Be Here Now to have a lifetime owners manual for the soul.

But he adds dozens more amazing lines and thoughts in this new book, as he takes us through each chapter of his life in words that manage to be profound and welcoming, familiar and new, mind-blowing and simple: Nowadays the mantra I give everyone is I Am Loving Awareness, which is my own simple practice. The love is bhakti, the awareness is Buddhism: awareness and love, wisdom and compassion, formless and form, consciousness and love. Ram Dass taught it with feeling and charm, the esoteric and private, accessible to lifelong devotees or regular old grown-ups who might not actively be in the market for wonder. He helps us get back what we had as children: awe, curiosity, now-ness. My young Sunday school kids feel it when we study nautilus shells and when they roll down grassy hills. They know it when the rains come and the grass turns green again. This is the teaching: Pay attention. Be here now.

If you have followed his life and work for any time at all, you already know the basics of his origin story, but in this book he takes a deeper dive into the details of his family life growing up, his parents, brothers, friends, high school, his guru, his satsang, his lovers, and then in his seventies, a son. Weve read many times of his great academic successes and soul sickness, his acclaimed work as a psychology student, his furtive shame around his sexuality, and thendrum rollmeeting Tim Leary at Harvard. But weve never heard those told in such depth, along with new stories and insight.

Being Ram Dass begins with his love of crazy speed and adrenaline, and this love was the same thing inside that later propelled him to God. Psychology studies as a graduate student gave him the awareness of his shame and fear, his drive for power and achievement, and these gave him the first inklings of soul. The psilocybin experiments with Leary eventually led him to India, where he met his guru, the love of his life, Neem Karoli Baba, his soul mirror. After that, no matter what was going onpersonal turmoil or Vietnam, humiliation or adulationhe knew, I was carrying what felt like a jewel, Maharaj-jis presence and the spiritual path. Love, serve, remember; rinse, repeat.