RAM DASS, Guru To The Boomers, Still Here After Stroke

An Interview by Beth Witrogen McLeod

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Exactly six years ago, Connie Goldman interviewed Ram Dass, guru to the boomer generation, for Aging Today about his plan to write a book about conscious aging. Then, in 1997, his plans were radically revised by a devastating stroke. Though daunted by aphasia from the stroke that curtailed his ability to communicate, he would not be defeated. This year the book, Still Here, was released. Beth Witrogen McLeod agreed to interview him for us about his unexpected detour along the journey of aging. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book Caregiving: The Spiritual Journey of Love, Loss, and Renewal (New York City: John Wiley and Sons, 1999, recently released in paperback).

It was 1969. I was in my last year of college in the Midwest, and my best friend insisted I spend three hours listening to a three-record set of lectures by Baba Ram Dass, called "Here We All Are." We were spiritual seekers, barely 20 years old, and Ellen had become transformed by the wisdom of this so-called hippie guru. I sat and listened, and also found myself becoming transfixed. This former motivational psychologist turned spiritual teacher proved a gifted storyteller as he explained his quest for inner peace. He give us signposts and goals for living fully in the world without getting caught in its sufferings, and he showed us the grace of the human predicament.

I came across that album recently; on its ragged cover is a rainbow-encircled globe set against a background of stars, along with Eastern mandalas and other brightly colored artwork. It may be a relic, but I am still transfixed by the teachings of Ram Dass. His messages have a quality of timelessness.

He calls himself an uncle to my baby boom generation, but Ram Dass has been much more. Along with the publication in 1971 of Be Here Now, which sold more than two million copies, the man formerly known as Richard Alpert helped usher in the psychedelic movement, bring Eastern religion to the West and raise awareness of service as a spiritual path. With his unique, wildish brand of charisma and humor, he has guided millions through major life passages, proffering wisdom gleaned from both the light and the shadows of humanity. Now, in a fiercely age- and death-denying society, he has taken up the lessons of the second half of life and has challenged us once again to awaken.

Still Here (Riverhead Books, 2000, 209 pages, $22.22) is the outgrowth of what Ram Dass calls being an "advance scout" for the experiences of aging. The book is remarkable as much for how it came into being as for what it says. In February 1997, Ram Dass suffered a paralyzing stroke. Ironically, it occurred while he was contemplating how to finish his book on conscious aging, a book he had researched in part by attending conferences of the American Society on Aging's Forum on Religion, Spirituality and Aging. He was not expected to survive the infarction. All the time spent at the feet of his guru Maharajji, all the psychedelic experiments with Timothy Leary (for which he was thrown out of his professorship at Harvard University in 1963 at age 32), all the years of sitting at the bedside of the dying, all the service organizations created and books written--and still this. Grist for the mill.

This new book is rich with personal stories and advice, but its tone is far more subdued than his earlier works. So is Ram Dass the man. At nearly age 70, though he is vigorous in mind and spirit, his physical nature has taken a huge hit. Although he speaks more fluidly and with fewer pauses than when he first returned to the lecture circuit, the proper word or understanding can still elude him. The author who once wrote a book called How Can I Help, he is now on the receiving end of care, in a wheelchair much of the time since he does not have full use of his right side. He jokes that he should write a new book, How Can You Help Me?

Sitting with me in his wood-paneled office at home in Tiburon, Calif., Ram Dass gazed out to the San Francisco Bay and marveled at the afternoon light filtering through the trees. He rents this ranch-style home and revels in the beauty around him. Flanked by pictures of his guru, Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), and by statuettes of Eastern icons, Ram Dass exuded a passion for life--which is meant to be enjoyed, no matter what.

Embracing Aging

The subtitle of Still Here is Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying. Ram Dass's message is a powerful one, based in his observation that today's culture values technology over community, knowledge over wisdom. "We have a youth culture," he told me, "so therefore it is a culture afraid of change. The problem is a fear of lost power. Power is defined as fame, money, being taken notice of." The very definition of aging, however, is change. The key to doing it consciously, he said, is understanding that aging provides the greatest opportunity to develop inner wisdom, compassion, spiritual insight and balance.

It has not been an easy three years; at first, Ram Dass said, he was angry at his guru for letting this kind of thing happen. "I have had a personal myth that I was being taken care of--up there," he gestured, pointing to the invisible world where Maharajji, his long-deceased guru, abides. "I'd say grace, grace, all grace, but then this thing [the stroke] was so immense that it shook my whole world. You count on the grace of the guru in my spiritual practice; you play with the guru and take what comes."

What came was immense physical and psychological pain. After the stroke Ram Dass suddenly became "old": full of fear, loss, uncertainty, stigma. His self-image of being young and powerful was shattered. He became "a collection of symptoms" as he sank into the belief that he was no longer whole--or spiritual. He said that in his heart he "pleaded with Maharajji. I was feeling coldness instead of presence. Then the coldness made my heart shrivel up." Ram Dass took a long breath, paused in silence, eyes closed in the memory. "Then I started to have this"--he motioned from one side to the other to enhance his meaning--"this grace, and stroke, grace, stroke. I was bringing the two together in the now. They were apart because of my lack of faith."

For Ram Dass, in this moment of recognizing truth, the cerebral hemorrhage became what he calls "heavy grace," a shift to perceiving illness as a blessing rather than as misfortune. He admits in Still Here that he may have brought on the stroke by neglecting to take his blood-pressure medication and by ignoring a one-sided hearing loss a month earlier. As a renunciate, he had given his body negative value. With practice, however, after the stroke he finally experienced detachment--from the pain, from his high-profile roles, from his golf and surfing and cherished MG sportscar.

His healing has come from honoring his body rather than identifying with its pain. "Healing does not mean going back to the way things were, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God," he writes. Ram Dass may or may not walk again; he may or may not have full use of his vocabulary again; but his quest is no longer about achievement, it's about awareness rather than identity--being on two planes of consciousness at the same time, entering the body fully yet remaining grounded in soul.

Liberation as opposed to loss. Love rather than fear. Acceptance rather than suffering. These are some of the hallmarks of aging consciously, which also requires breaking down stereotypes and biases about aging--and about death itself. Ram Dass feels that the older generations are in the vanguard of illuminating what he calls a "social conspiracy" about aging that, for example, perpetuates the strange ideas that dependency is wrong and death is an outrage.

In his own journey of aging, Ram Dass has raised the bar on suffering. If one searches for wholeness and divine union, which is the soul's single purpose, then that quest must include everything; nothing can be pushed away or grasped tightly. In Still Here he writes, "The stroke was unbearable to the Ego, and so it pushed me into the Soul level also . . . and that's grace. From the Soul's perspective it's been a great learning experience. Although I'm more in the spirit now, I'm also more human."

Ram Dass said he has returned from this particular scouting party to announce that spirit is more powerful than the vicissitudes of aging. Faith and love are stronger than change, stronger even than death. Faith, we must ask, in what? His answer is simple: "That the universe is benevolent."

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