Be Love Now (by Ram Dass and Rameshwar Das)
Informative and inspiring. Ram Dass and Rameshwar Das collaborated to share beautiful stories of transforming into a lifestyle of spirituality in Be Love Now. Rameshwar Das opens the book with an introduction detailing his journey to India and meeting their guru, Maharaja-ji. He shared about his relationship with Ram Dass. For the first time, I learned how Ram Dass ended up living in Maui. I had put bits and pieces together over the years from listening to the Here and Now podcast episodes and accounts from others close to Ram Dass, but here I got the full story.
The next chunk of the book focused on Ram Dass’ personal experiences. He accounts in great detail how he ended up in India, his uses of psychedelics, and the relationship with his guru. I admire and respect that Ram Dass has always been transparent about the struggles he encountered with applying the teachings from Maharaja-ji. Ram Dass is a fascinating story teller; at times he seems serious like a teacher and other times he sucks me in with his humor. My favorite part of his spiritual journey is that he wasn’t looking for a guru or to have his life transformed in the manner it was. Everything that occurred in India was unexpected. He talked about returning to the West as Ram Dass. He quickly adopted many followers of his teachings, while his family responded to his changes much differently.
Ram Dass and Rameshwar Das told the life story of Maharaja-ji. Fascinating information about the Indian culture and how he became a guru. The latter portion of the book was a fascinating lesson on Hinduism. It seemed like a history lesson at times, which I was drawn into. I am attracted to the practices of Hinduism and Buddhism based on the teachings of Ram Dass. Learning the history of various gurus and deities, the way Ram Dass and Rameshwar Das explain it through story telling, kept my attention engaged.
Be Love Now is a beautiful book and its contents are perfect. I chose to listen to the audiobook through Apple Books. I liked the voice of narrator Dan Woren and found the listening experience good. My only preference is that Dan Woren would have been educated on the pronunciation of Indian names. He repeatedly mispronounced several names. Most notably, he mispronounced Maharaja-ji’s name, which is written a zillion times in this book! Well…maybe that was my curriculum to work on developing equanimity. HaHa
Feel free to check out my previous blog posts for book reviews and a Ram Dass retreat I attended.
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