Why Ram Dass Is Still Here

Nearly 30 years ago, a peculiar book called "Be Here Now" became the third-ranked best seller in the English language (after Benjamin Spock and the Bible), turning its unknown author, Ram Dass, into a household name among hippies, draft dodgers, psychedelic devotees, and spiritual seekers. The book, which has sold nearly 2 million copies to date, was completely unique, an amateurish, cut-and-paste dharma manifesto for a generation of baby boomers disillusioned by the Vietnam War and the repressive, Ozzie-and-Harriet worldview inherited from the Eisenhower establishment.

The story it told perfectly mirrored the era it sprang from: The scion of a prominent Jewish family in Boston, Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert, had his life turned around when Timothy Leary moved into the office next door and turned him on to LSD. This foray into acid blew Alpert's scientifically trained mind off its hinges and led to his founding, along with Leary, the Harvard Psilocybin Project--the first attempt to induce, quantify, and compare religious experiences, in a laboratory setting--and to becoming the first tenured professor in this century to be ousted by that institution.

Turned on but disillusioned, he wandered through India, underwent mystical initiation with Neem Karoli Baba, and returned home at his guru's instruction (with a new name--Baba Ram Dass--meaning "Servant of God") to write a book and teach what he'd learned to Westerners craving enlightenment. Thus "Be Here Now" was born, transforming its quirky author into one of the foremost spiritual pioneers of the baby-boom generation.

I was a distant, second-generation fan of Ram Dass' work (I was finishing kindergarten the year Alpert was fired from Harvard) when his editor contacted me in autumn 1998 to ask whether I would be interested in helping him finish his book on conscious aging and dying. The previous year, at 67, Ram Dass had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage that placed 9-to-1 odds against his survival; he was confined to a wheelchair, suffered from severe verbal aphasia, and was physically incapable of writing. Without assistance, this manuscript--a message to his now middle-aged followers on how to meet the challenge of growing old awake--would not see the light of day.

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