Ram Dass - Be Here Now

Ram Dass: Love, Serve, Remember

COST DISTRIBUTION

HANUMAN FOUNDATION

A CURRENT NOTE

BE HERE NOW was originally distributed in pamphlet form by Lama Foundation and was subsequently published by Lama Foundation as this book, more than 928,300 copies of which have been distributed by Crown Publishers to date. In the summer of 1977 Lama Foundation decided to give the copyright and half the proceeds from BE HERE NOW to Hanuman Foundation to further distribute the energy generated by this book through the projects of Hanuman Foundation. For this generous sacrifice and gesture of faith, Hanuman Foundation would like to thank Lama Foundation.

Hanuman Foundation, instigated by Ram Dass, was incorporated in California in 1974 as a tax-exempt non-profit corporation to promulgate spiritual well-being among members of the society as a whole through education and service, by spiritual training and by publications and recordings, and to promote the study, practice, and teaching of spiritual knowledge. A newsletter and catalog are sent semi-annually describing the activities of Hanuman Foundation, which include the Prison-Ashram Project, Dying Project, Hanuman Tape Library, Ram Dass lecture tours and retreats, and other tentative projects. If you would like to receive this newsletter please include a first-class stamp with your name and address to Hanuman Foundation, Box 203, 524 San Anselmo Avenue, San Anselmo, CA 94960.

JAI HANUMAN!

DR. RICHARD ALPERT, Ph.D INTO BABA RAM DASS

NAMAST

OUR-STORY

There are three stages in this journey that I have been on! The first, the social science stage; the second, the psychedelic stage; and the third, the yogi stage. They are summatingthat is, each is contributing to the next. Its like the unfolding of a lotus flower. Now, as I look back, I realize that many of the experiences that made little sense to me at the time they occurred were prerequisites for what was to come later. I want to share with you the parts of the internal journey that never get written up in the mass media: Im not interested in the political parts of the story; Im not interested in what you read in the Saturday Evening Post about LSD. This is the story of what goes on inside a human being who is undergoing all these experiences.

SUCCESS

In 1961, the beginning of March, I was at perhaps the highest point of my academic career. I had just returned from being a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley: I had been assured of a permanent post that was being held for me at Harvard, if I got my publications in order. I held appointments in four departments at Harvardthe Social Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service (where I was a therapist); I had research contracts with Yale and Stanford. In a worldly sense, I was making a great income and I was a collector of possessions.

I had an apartment in Cambridge that was filled with antiques and I gave very charming dinner parties. I had a Mercedes-Benz sedan and a Triumph 500 CC motorcycle and a Cessna 172 airplane and an MG sports car and a sailboat and a bicycle. I vacationed in the Caribbean where I did scuba-diving. I was living the way a successful bachelor professor is supposed to live in the American world of he who makes it. I wasnt a genuine scholar, but I had gone through the whole academic trip. I had gotten my Ph.D.; I was writing books. I had research contracts. I taught courses in Human Motivation, Freudian Theory, Child Development. But what all this boils down to is that I was really a very good game player.

My lecture notes were the ideas of other men, subtly presented, and my research was all within the Zeitgeistall that which one was supposed to research about.

In 1955 I had started doing therapy and my first therapy patient had turned me on to pot. I had not smoked regularly after that, but only sporadically, and I was still quite a heavy drinker. But this first patient had friends and they had friends and all of them became my patients. I became a hip therapist, for the hip community at Stanford. When Id go to the parties, theyd all say Here comes the shrink and I would sit in the corner looking superior. In addition, I had spent five years in psychoanalysis at a cool investment of something like $26,000.

Before March 6th, which was the day I took Psylocybin, one of the psychedelics, I felt something was wrong in my world, but I couldnt label it in any way so as to get hold of it. I felt that the theories I was teaching in psychology didnt make it, that the psychologists didnt really have a grasp of the human condition, and that the theories I was teaching, which were theories of achievement and anxiety and defense mechanisms and so on, werent getting to the crux of the matter.

My colleagues and I were 9 to 5 psychologists: we came to work every day and we did our psychology, just like you would do insurance or auto mechanics, and then at 5 we went home and were just as neurotic as we were before we went to work. Somehow, it seemed to me, if all of this theory were right, it should play more intimately into my own life. I understood the requirement of being objective for a scientist, but this is a most naive concept in social sciences as we are finding out. And whatever the psychoanalysis did (and it did many things, Im sure) I still was a neurotic at the end of those five years of psychoanalysis. Even my therapist thought so, because when I stopped analysis to go to Harvard, he said, You are too sick to leave analysis. Those were his final words. But because I had been trained in Freudian theory, I knew his game well enough to enjoy this terribly sophisticated, competitive relationship with my analyst, and I would say to him, Well in Freuds 1906 paper, dont you recall he said this, and when Im saying this you should be interpreting... For this I was paying $20 an hour!

Something was wrong. And the something wrong was that I just didnt know, though I kept feeling all along the way that somebody else must know even though I didnt. The nature of life was a mystery to me. All the stuff I was teaching was just like little molecular bits of stuff but they didnt add up to a feeling anything like wisdom. I was just getting more and more knowledgeable. And I was getting very good at bouncing three knowledge balls at once. I could sit in a doctoral exam, ask very sophisticated questions and look terribly wise. It was a hustle.