Recommended Reading: Ram Dass (Richard Alpert)

Ram Dass, formerly Richard Alpert, was a professor dismissed from Harvard in 1963, along with colleague Timothy Leary, because of his experiments with mind-altering drugs such as LSD. In 1967 he traveled to India, found his guru (Neem Karoli Baba), then returned to North America to share his experience of enlightenment. In 1974, Ram Dass created the Hanuman Foundation, which developed the Prison Ashram Project, designed to help prison inmates grow spiritually during their incarceration, and the Dying Project, conceived as a spiritual support structure for conscious dying. He is a co-founder and advisory board member of the Seva Foundation, an international service organization, and he also works with the Social Venture Network, an organization of businesses seeking to bring social consciousness to business practices.

Be Here Now. ISBN: 0517543052

The message in Ram Dass’s first book on returning from India is profoundly simple but enormously difficult to live by—“Be here now.” Where are you? Here. What time is it? Now. This book has seen over 35 reprints with more than one million copies sold. Reading it can change your life.

Grist for the Mill. ISBN: 0890874999

This book is full of stories that communicate what it means in daily living to “Be Here Now.” In one story, as Ram Dass is living in India following his spiritual quest, his father calls to inform him that his mother has died. He returns home wearing a robe, long hair and beard, not looking at all like the law student his father remembers from only a year earlier. His father, one of the founders of Brandeis University and former President of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, is so embarrassed that he doesn’t want his friends to see them together. How they relate to each other over the next few days, for example, in the simple act of making raspberry jam, will open your heart.

Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying. ISBN: 1573228710

This is a book on the yoga of aging consciously. In 1997 Ram Dass experienced a stroke that left him with expressive aphasia and partial paralysis. He has learned the hard way that aging can be unkind to the body, but in every situation Dass seeks the opportunity for spiritual growth. He teaches us how to diminish our suffering despite the aches, pains, and limitations that come to us with age by stepping away from the ego-self to embrace the soul-self, where we can witness our thoughts and emotions and evaluate their effects on us. Despite the aftereffects of his stroke, Ram Dass continues a very active teaching and speaking itinerary. No one gets out of life alive. Read this book and enjoy the journey.

The Only Dance There Is. ISBN: 0385084137

This text grew out of the interaction between Ram Dass and the spiritual seekers in attendance at talks he gave at the Menninger Foundation in 1970 and at the Spring Grove Hospital in Maryland in 1972. An excellent guide for understanding the nature of consciousness, the book is full of lessons of wisdom often conveyed in the context of personal stories from his life.

4 Freedoms Relationship Tantra

Al Link and Pala Copeland