A classic exploration of spirituality and consciousness by the former Harvard professor turned drug-fueled, then clean, spiritual seeker, Ram Dass.What a strange book.The first part is Ram Dass' life story.He has trouble relating exactly how his guru changed his life. He also has trouble expressing his life changing spiritual insights.This could perhaps be because of all the LSD he experimented with, but no judgement here.I think Dass could have added another couple hundred pages to the first pa...

The truth is that while the introductory biographical stuff is interesting, and the extensive and somewhat dull guidance at the end is probably useful to people who are less inclined to eye-rolling at some of the content, the real meat of the thing, what people still come to this book for, the fancy-design-groovy-as-hell heart of the book, which I assume is the original pamphlet, is actually worth checking out. Man, it's fun to flip through. And stare at. And it contains some real wisdom that no...

With drugs, particularly pharmaceuticals, being so regularly abused in our culture, it is a salutary exercise to reconsider the sixties, when some psychoactive drugs, used considerately and independently of profit-driven corporations, turned millions towards the serious study of psychology, philosophy and religion. Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary were two prominent examples of this existential turn.Of the two erstwhile Harvard academics, Alpert's is the happier story, Alpert the wiser man. This...

I love this book. You can dismiss it if you want as ex-hippie/druggie New Age blather, but the fact is, this book has some serious wisdom. So get over the stigma and read this book for what it has to say, not the movement you think it represents. The central message of this book resonates powerfully with me. How many of us spend inordinate amounts of time in the past or the future? How much of our day is spent wishing we were somewhere else, doing something else? How many of us live with the ass...

Ram Dass takes the wisdom of the East, and wraps it in a package a Westerner can open. This book had a profound effect on me at a time when I was at a spiritual crossroads... well, maybe the beginning of my spiritual road is more accurate. I was an atheist until about 21. Then I had my gnosis, or series of events that brought me into a direct experience with something larger than me. Call it what you want, the divine plan, the ground of being, the true self, insanity, a hallucination... all of t...

It wouldn't be fair to open this book holding on to any preconceived notions about some "hippie counterculture", you might miss the message. You must be able to accept that a book can be square in shape and that the story can be delivered as art and not only straight lines of text. And to push you just a bit further, you must be comfortable reading most of the book "sideways", not like a "regular" book.. Some of those very things are what I love about Be Here Now, to read it you must truly Be He...

What a doozy of a book! I found it totally by accident. I had no idea it was by Alpert, or rather Baba Ram Dass, colleague of one Timothy Leary whose book Change Your Brain I'd just read months earlier.This is a one-of-a-kind "trip." No, strip back those quotations marks, they dull the effect. This book IS a textual trip. I've never seen another like it. Ram Dass writes a tasty and linear account of his transition from successful doctor Richard Alpert to spiritual explorer Ram Dass. The middle s...

One might say, written by a hippie for a hippie. But hippie or not one will not find the true value of this book without being on a certain stage of a certain journey. The distinction that makes them the same is perhaps that the hippie will mindlessly accept and the anti-hippie will mindlessly dismiss. While those who have partaken of that little drop of poison known as acid, likely know an experience more profound than any combination of books can provide them, and will see the value in heeding...

This is a really cool book. It starts out with a short biography on the writer, then goes into various pictures/templates/designs (or whatever you want to call them). these pictures are very thought provoking and I look at them regularly to help me spark creativity and just to keep me centered in this chaotic world. The pictures are based on Hinduism-Buddhism-Christianity-drugs-sex and psychological principles. The book lastly goes into various exercises your should do daily and other helpful ti...

This book is very deep and profound.Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.I'm glad that I read this book at the lowest point in my life, it really pulled my up and helped me to get a perspective. Reading this book was a whole new experience, the visual explanations provided are deeply impactful and they got stuck in my head and I'd keep them in my head forever.I've always wondered why I'm unable improve certain things in me, like, waking up early, b...

A Roadmap to Where You Are.in 1970, I was trying to figure out who I was. I'd left college, manned the barricades for a while, then built a cabin on a commune. Filled with anxiety about my place in the scary world of the day, I just didn't know what I should do, until a very kind yogi mentioned I should read this book. I read it. I spent weeks thinking about it, and it changed my life. Be Here Now is the erstwhile story of Drs. Timothy Leary and Richard Alperrt's struggle to take meaning from th...

This book helped me a lot. It was one of many that my husband brought home from work and left around the house so someone would find it at just the right time. I'd flipped through it and thought it was just a collection of philosophical sayings in the form of trippy graphics (which it is, mostly.) I noticed a copy at Ashanti's house, which impressed me, but not enough to actually start reading it.One night I was tripping for the last time with my best friend who was about to move to another stat...

There is something about a square book (the shape, not the content, man), printed on paper that is almost as thick as construction paper, with the wackiest insides EVER. And, yes, while we are treated to an overview of Ram Dass' life, and given a primer for becoming practicing Hindus, it is the part in the middle with the mind-melding/melting pen and ink drawings accompanied by words on a page like, "You're standing on a bridge watching yourself go by," that make this book such a trip. Literally...

I am an indian-american who has done extensive reading on ancient indian philosophy, spirituality, and mysticism. I admire the works of many spiritual gurus and authors of all spiritual traditions, both indian and non-indian. A friend of mine gifted me this book. I know Ram Dass has a big following in the west, especially among the baby boomer generation. I see him as espousing the "free sex with reckless abandon" mentality. Unfortunately, I feel he misrepresents and defiles many indian teachi

I bought this book in 1972 (at age 11) to read in secret, then return to the bookstore some days later, for fear of discovery by my fundamentalist Christian father. I was seduced by the woodblock print on grocery-bag colored paper middle section. It left an indelible impression on me--one that would germinate 30 years later in my face-to-face encounter with Bhagavan Das, a much younger version of whom I first encountered in its pages.No other book has done more to support the healthy cross-polle...

This book is was perhaps the beginning of my interest in the eastern/mystical thought where I began to take meditation and Buddhist thought as less an academic study and more of an integration to my action and my belief. This book, like some others I shall review, possess not only the opinions, thought and methodology of one man, but takes the tradition of many religions and 'revealed truths' and quotes them here. I think it is perhaps necessary to the western mind to see that the perceived cont...

I first read this book at 20 years old when I was just barely beginning to realize that my beliefs might be different from those of my parents. So, alas, my review of this book is purely personal in nature. However, I believe this is how Ram Dass would expect his book to be reviewed.Reading "Be Here Now" could only be likened to having the top of my heart ripped out of my chest and shown to me. I felt as though it contained all the beliefs, fears, and questions that I had kept secret for so long...

“To him who has had the experience no explanation is necessary, to him who has not, none is possible.”What I gathered from this book is that all this is, is a predetermined drama — a wheel of birth and death (all our lifetimes) and through stillness, being present in the now, not hurrying or thinking about what’s next, you can reach detachment and start living in the Way. Other than not investing in yourself as a separate entity, the Tao is also about feeling compassionate love towards all other...

This book is the worst of everything wrong with the "new age" movement and its adherents. Coming from an author who claims that LSD crippled him, a physical impossibility, you know that there is going to have to be a total suspension of disbelief to even approach this book. Even with that, this isn't a book. This is a collection of platitudes and mindless drivel that appeals only to the mindless and the stoned. Do not for one second look for an original idea in this piece of trash that is merely...

I'm not comfortable rating this. From somewhere behind that all-too-familiar burnt-out hippie lingo shines moments of verisimilitude, and as much as I'd like to curl a rational upper lip and scoff, a deeply irrational part of me would be disappointed if I did so. I'll say this: it is at times compelling, and at others tedious. But as far as how many "stars" I can give it? That would be missing the point altogether.