Maui Style ❘ LivingMaui Be Here Maui Ram Dass Embodied on Maui at Present By Joseph W. Bean am Dass, earlier known as Baba Ram Dass, and “Maui is said to be a healing place,” I said. “Is it being still earlier as Harvard professor Dr. Richard that for you?” Alpert, has been a name to conjure with in the “It is,” Ram Dass said. “I think it is,” he answered R world of spirituality for 35 years. Although he is sweeping his functional left arm over himself from neck to the author of the classic spiritual guidebook Be Here Now, knee. “Maui is the heart of the world.” it is tempting to think of Ram Dass as somehow belong- “For 20 years,” said Myrna Stone, my editor, “I’ve ing to then and there—to The Sixties, say, and maybe to heard from people that the moment they set foot on Maui, San Francisco or India. In fact, Ram Dass is very much they felt ‘at home.’ Is that what it means to say it is the here—recently settled on Maui—and very much in the heart of the world?” Ram Dass nodded and smiled. “now.” Our talk with him was not an exercise in the Without being asked another question, Ram Dass romance of reminiscence, nor did it revolve around spec- continued to speak. “I began to yearn about Maui—oh, ulation about the future. dear—twenty years ago. I came here… then. I know how Ram Dass, the holy man who gave the Western world good it feels to think, ‘someday, someday….’ And that the most popular and most accessible “translation” of the someday has come, and I have made a pact with myself Eastern understanding of the human spiritual journey, is that I’m not going to fly any more. So, I’m island-bound.” now a confirmed Maui man. When I suggested that once the Superferry is running At a glance, you might be inclined to think of him as he might at least see other islands, he said, “I might.” From wheelchair-bound, but that’s not the real Ram Dass story. his expression and tone, it was perfectly clear he was not He calls himself, “island-bound.” We had been warned that thinking of his non-flying pact that way. It is meant to his physical condition might make it hard for him to talk. make him island-bound and he is glad to have it just that He had a severe stroke in 1997 which left much of the way. right side of his body paralyzed. The stroke also left him “I have loved ones in the Mainland,” he said, “loved with expressive aphasia, a condition that makes normal ones and important things….” When his voice trailed off speech and normal word-use difficult. Often, people suf- this time, it was clearly not stroke-related. It seemed like a fering with this kind of aphasia have trouble coming up step in the reconfirmation of the whole complex of deci- with words, especially nouns and names. We were pre- sions represented by his pact with himself to remain pared for all possibilities. Maybe he’d be unable to speak, island-bound. leaving us with estimated replies to our questions spoken I reminded him that he used to fly planes and that he for him by caretakers or students. Maybe he’d try to had once described himself as “not the kind of pilot I’d speak, then trail off or get lost or give up. want to have taking me up there.” Anything was possible, so it was heartening to see “Yes,” he said, “I used to fly… and I’d look at the beau- Ram Dass rolling himself into the living room of his north tiful clouds, and the instruments didn’t matter.” The shore home. He was just coming in from walking himself sparkling smile that followed convinced me I didn’t need around his house—a major accomplishment, to be sure, to wonder any more whether he was well enough to talk but it did nothing to dim his sincere smile or the light of with us. intelligence in his gaze. Most of all, it was a pleasure to “To speak of suffering can be to name the state and hear Ram Dass speak with clarity of both mind and voice. work of human life, but can you relate your physical suf- There were moments when he paused. They could have fering of recent years to that philosophical view?” I asked. been mistaken for aphasic moments, but they weren’t. “Does painful suffering from moment to moment have Thirty years ago he did the same thing. He stops some- value? How can we see it as other than a limiting afflic- times to consider what he’s saying, to ensure the absolute tion?” appropriateness of a term. “Ahh,” he said, gazing at the ceiling. “My suffering and The degree of his healing was startling, in fact. The Suffering? My suffering is very minor. All it requires 1 real estate maui style real estate maui style 1 Maui Style ❘ LivingMaui “Right. This was grace. It turned my down his own book.’” Then he said life around.” After a moment of rever- that, after giving a lecture series based ie, he added, “You know I wrote a on his time in India, a woman came book called Can I Help You? Now I’m to him, a court stenographer, and the dependent one. Can you help gave him a huge stack of paper. me?” He asked what the paper was, “You said once, some years ago, that and she said, “These are your words.” you couldn’t find the grace in that, in With that stack of paper in the being dependent. Have you found it trunk of his car, Ram Dass went to now?” I asked. Esalen (one of the important centers “Yes. I have. We fulfill roles. I’m the of spiritual exploration in the West at dependent one. They are the helpers. the time) where he was assigned to And we can meet in the soul. The share a cabin. roles don’t matter.” Ram Dass continued the Be Here “In the soul,” I said, “the acts and Now story. “They said, ‘you’re staying roles don’t exist?” with this couple.’” He found himself “Yes,” Ram Dass said. “Souls… housed with a man who was a gar- human beings… when we meet, we dener at Esalen, but otherwise an can reinforce each other’s spiritual author from New York. The man path.” To clarify further, Ram Dass asked what the stack of paper among told us about going to the grocery Ram Dass’s belongings was. He was store, putting his groceries up—“up” told what the stenographer said because he was in his wheelchair—in about the lecture transcripts. front of the clerk. “She’s the clerk. “He marked them,” said Ram That’s her role. I was the customer. Dass, indicating that the man under- Then I looked into her eyes…. lined sections. “And he said, ‘This is Everyone is moving around us. where the juice of it is.’” After a They’re all busy being clerks and cus- moment’s delay, clearly for dramatic tomers, moving around. But, if you effect, Ram Dass added, “That’s the could look at it as a temple, here are brown pages in the book!” The these souls around you going about brown-paper pages of the book—ever their soul business.” He gave us a since the 1971 original edition of Be moment to grasp the implications of Here Now—are truly the “juice” in the book. In those pages, So, Ram Dass called the publisher about having the one his fresh assessment of everyday life. Ram Dass lays out the psycho-spiritual map to the heart of page changed or taken out of the in-progress printing of the A little later, the conversation turned conscious life, the Tao of the New Age, if you will. In those book, but they said it was already too late. They could change (as it had to do) to the book, Be Here pages, frankly, he ignited a passion for awakened living in lit- the next printing, but this one was already being done in New Now. Even though Ram Dass has erally millions of people. Mexico. Changing it on the current printing would mean los- written many books over the past 35 Dr. Larry Brilliant, founder of the SEVA Foundation, once ing a lot of money. years, that one book, published in said (and he wouldn't have said it if it weren’t true), “Be Here Ram Dass went back to Maharajji. He tried to explain that October 1971 still dominates. Ram Now was at one time the best selling book in the English lan- it was too late, promising a change in the next printing. The Dass has paid homage to the original guage except for Ben Spock [Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care] guru said, “Money and truth have nothing to do with one in the titles of later books, tapes and and the Bible.” That was in the 1970s, and it’s still selling another.” videos. Between Be Here Now and strongly today. Then, as it happened, the plates from the original edition the echoes of that title, he wrote Grist After Esalen, Ram Dass went to the Lama Foundation in were being used to make the second printing, and one plate for the Mill and The Only Dance New Mexico, another of the amazing “nodes” in the network was missing, the specific plate that included the “troublesome” page.