Be Here Now

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Be Here Now is the record of Richard Alpert's transformation from a Harvard psychologist into the spiritual teacher Ram Dass — and the field manual that introduced a generation of Western readers to the practice of presence, the language of yoga, and the heart of Eastern thought.

Originally distributed as a pamphlet by the Lama Foundation in New Mexico, Be Here Now unfolds in four sections. The first is autobiographical: Richard Alpert's account of his Harvard career, his psychedelic research with Timothy Leary, the spiritual emptiness he could not solve through either, and his journey to India, where he met the guru Neem Karoli Baba and was given the name Ram Dass — "servant of God." The second section, From Bindu to Ojas, is the core teaching: a continuous free-verse meditation on consciousness, presence, and the path, hand-lettered and illustrated across more than a hundred pages. The third is a practical cookbook for sacred life — yoga, pranayama, meditation, dietary guidance, and instruction drawn from many traditions. The fourth is a curated reading list. The whole has remained continuously in print for over fifty years.

Details

• Author: Ram Dass (Richard Alpert)
• Publisher: Crown / Penguin Random House
• Originally published: 1971
• Pages: 416

About the Author

Ram Dass

Born Richard Alpert in 1931, Ram Dass held faculty positions at Stanford and Harvard and conducted early psychedelic research alongside Timothy Leary before traveling to India in 1967, where he met Neem Karoli Baba and received his spiritual name. Over the rest of his life he pursued and shared a wide range of spiritual practices — guru kripa, devotional yoga, karma yoga, multiple forms of meditation, and Sufi and Jewish studies. He founded the Love Serve Remember Foundation and the Hanuman Foundation, co-founded the Seva Foundation and the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram in Taos, New Mexico, and wrote many books including Still Here, Be Love Now, and Polishing the Mirror. After a stroke in 1997, he continued teaching from Maui until his death in December 2019.