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An Unforgettable Moment with Baba Ram Dass
When a Single Flower Falling from the Sky Opens the Floodgates
Be Here Now was the Bible of the 1960’s or, if not the Bible, then at least the Bhagavad Gita — a book that bridged the gap between East and West for an entire generation of long-haired, counter culture, God-seeking souls. And I was one of them.
The author of the book, Baba Ram Dass — the ex-Harvard psychologist and popularizer of LSD — was fast becoming a new kind of spiritual rock star. He had just returned from his pilgrimage to India with a ton of love and something far better than the Holy Grail — the ability to communicate the essence of Eastern wisdom in ways even suburban hippies could understand.
I read his book three times the first month I owned it. I read it twice the second month. So when I heard that he was going to be speaking just a few miles from my abode in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I bought a ticket and went.
The evening was divided into three parts: Part One was a kind of introduction — Ram Dass holding forth in ways even your mother would enjoy. He was charming. He was inspiring. And he made a lot of sense. A hour into his discourse, Ram Dass announced that there was going to be an intermission and that if anyone REALLY needed to leave, now would be a good time. And so…
