A fun for everyone look at how diverse spiritual paths converge. ( )

For a recipe book there sure aren't many recipes. ( )

"....Beloved guru Ram Dass tells the story of his spiritual awakening and gives you the tools to take control of your life in this “counterculture bible” (The New York Times) featuring powerful guidance on yoga, meditation, and finding your true self.

When Be Here Now was first published in 1971, it filled a deep spiritual emptiness, launched the ongoing mindfulness revolution, and established Ram Dass as perhaps the preeminent seeker of the twentieth century.

Just ten years earlier, he was known as Professor Richard Alpert. He held appointments in four departments at Harvard University. He published books, drove a Mercedes and regularly vacationed in the Caribbean. By most societal standards, he had achieved great success. . . . And yet he couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing.

Psilocybin and LSD changed that. During a period of experimentation, Alpert peeled away each layer of his identity, disassociating from himself as a professor, a social cosmopolite, and lastly, as a physical being. Fear turned into exaltation upon the realization that at his truest, he was just his inner-self: a luminous being that he could trust indefinitely and love infinitely.

And thus, a spiritual journey commenced. Alpert headed to India where his guru renamed him Baba Ram Dass—“servant of God.” He was introduced to mindful breathing exercises, hatha yoga, and Eastern philosophy. If he found himself reminiscing or planning, he was reminded to “Be Here Now.” He started upon the path of enlightenment, and has been journeying along it ever since.
Be Here Now is a vehicle for sharing the true message, and a guide to self-determination...."

If the locus of my being is here/now, where/when/what am I when I'm thinking? Where/when is my mental body, the eidetic experiencer as it travels through mindscapes? What happens when one is off in their thoughts, instead of fully engaged in the physical moment, and what they're thinking/imagining becomes part of the phenomenal world too?

That which is I exists only here, now, as a collision of all the continuum-flows of existence and experience that lead to and from I; a wave interference pattern of the ripples of all space all time. The self in dreams may be of a different cystalline structure, but I have to wait til I'm there, then.

The original book is, of course, a classic; you should read it in some form. I want to offer a few comments about the Kindle edition for those considering what format will work best for them.

The core of the original book is closer to a comic book, or a series of posters, than a traditional book. If you want to experience the book in its original form, there is probably no substitute for a printed copy. But the Kindle version does take a very reasonable approach to dealing with the challenge of reproducing the original artwork: it includes graphics of each page and then, in a separate section, a transcription of the words on those pages. Although placing two graphics on each "page" of the Kindle book makes this a bit awkward to navigate, for some readers this version may be easier to read than the original: the printed book used dark backgrounds in some sections that make the text difficult to decipher, whereas the graphics and transcription in the Kindle version stick to white backgrounds. So, if reading red type against a brown background is not your idea of a good time, try the Kindle version.

The Kindle version does also include two guided meditation videos that may interest some readers. Unfortunately, these do not work in the Kindle Android app; I assume you need to have actual Kindle hardware to use them. In any case, I can't comment on these.

Bottom line: reading the Kindle version is a distinctly different experience of the book, but it's a reasonable choice for many, and possibly of interest even to those of us who already own the book in print. ( )