Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying by Ram Dass

[Bijay Raut]

Amazon.com

After being introduced for a lecture, Ram Dass eschewed the stairs and, from his front row seat, leapt up on to the stage--or tried to, anyway, but age and gravity brought him crashing back to earth. Like other baby boomers, Ram Dass has learned the hard way that aging is unkind to the body. But he has also learned that it can be an opportunity for growth. While others begin to devalue you, you can reconnect with the spiritual, grow into wisdom, and create value for yourself. In
Still Here, Ram Dass offers a philosophy for aging that teaches us how to diminish our suffering despite the aches, pains, and limitations of age. This becomes possible when we step away from the ego-self and into the soul-self, where we can witness our thoughts and emotions and evaluate their effects on us. If aging has brought challenges to Ram Dass, it has also brought him wisdom, which, through his personal anecdotes and stories of others in the struggle against aging, he shares with great generosity. --Brian Bruya

[Josephine]

I love Ram Dass! Be Here Now is one of those books I think everyone should read. It changed my life and it only takes one sitting to really read it all and the rest of your life to read it over and over. I heard he wrote it in one sitting. The illustrations are amazing. He also made a film about recovering from a stroke, but he explained it as his master "stroked" him. Such an inspirational character. He tells a story how he gave an experienced yogi a sheet of acid tabs and the man took them and then just sat there and then said: "this is within you".