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I recommend his "Be Here Now". Such a fine book.

This is sad news, but who knows what is beyond death’s door? He was done of the few who not only sought out Death’s address but also mapped out the neighborhood.

I am having serious relaxation issues also. I'm working a fulltime job and a startup. I have definitely helped me to start running and working out.

If you are at all spiritual, read the book Be Here Now by Baba Ram Dass. It will put things in perspective and calm you down a bit.

Cheers -

I had a friend I was tripping on acid with, back in grad school, and he picked up the Be Here Now book, read the intro and said, "Wait, did he seriously change his name to 'Rammed ass?!'" .. I've always wondered about his intent after that. :-P

As far as the "only while you're meditating" thing, zen meditation is interesting because (based on my limited understanding) zen is really about taking the practice of your meditation and extending that "mindfulness" into the rest of your life. "Zen Mind Beginners Mind" is particularly good if you're interested. Zazen is one form where you are eyes-open.

Be Here Now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book)

The Tao of Pooh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Pooh

Tao Te Ching
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching

https://smile.amazon.com/Be-Here-Now-Ram-Dass/dp/0517543052

- "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass (read once and listened to audiobook twice)

- Flatland by Edwin Abbot Abbot --> read multiple times to understand whats going on in different levels

- Some PG Wodehouse stuff because it ages well (specifically the bibilical references)

- Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie which is absolute verbal wizardry

- Treasure Island by RLS which is a kids favorite for adventurism

The Gospel of Ramana Maharshi is great. I reread it 20 years later and found I still agreed with 90% of it, to my surprise - it's based in what he learnt for himself, mostly, not what he read somewhere/was taught! He's a mid-20th C Hindu guru, widely considered as good as it gets. Gangaji, an American woman, is of his lineage, and has very good bs-free books and videos (some on youtube), which take you straight there...

Be Here Now by Ram Dass, a US Hindu guru, is a great hippie-era introduction to Hindu-based religious practices, also has a lot of quotes from different books and traditions, from which I discovered a lot of great stuff. Some of his other books and recordings of his retreats are gold. A very articulate and thoughtful guy.

Buddhism: I got a lot from the down to earth Thai-forest-monk-style Buddhism of Ajahn Chah's books.

The first philosophy and spiritual books I read, as a teen, were the Chinese classics - Confucius, Mencius, Chuangtzu, Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching). All fascinating, a joy to read, deep. I'm very glad I happened to start there.

Oh but I forgot my favourite (too close to me[0]) - Emerson's Essays, First and Second Series, which I guess is a 'spiritual book'. The first time it was like he'd described a thousand things I'd experienced but thought indescribable. Has had more impact, a better impact, than any other author, provided endless inspiration and...embiggenment. I read in him every day for many years. He's always with me.

[0] "Emerson. – Never have I felt so much at home in a book, and in my home, as – I may not praise it, it is too close to me." - Nietzsche, notes

But this study is something Paula Poundstone would have a field day with. Here’s my interpretation: students who were given the breath-focus-training felt like they got something done for the day and students who weren’t given anything to do didn’t want the day to go to waste so they figured why not, I’ll stuff some ads in envelopes.

Are these studies even meant to be published and taken seriously by the press? Sometimes I think these weak studies are just student projects going through the motions of how you might design an experiment.

[0] https://wikischool.org/_media/be_here_now.pdf

Edit: page 196 of the pdf, page 97 of the book is the dazzling art of the realized being dashing past the pews of a church shouting “listen to those words you’re singing! It’s all true!” - messianic complex

It says throughout their books + literature that the only reason it uses the word "god" sometimes is because it's an already well-known concept of what a 'higher power'.. or 'power/force greater than yourself' can be. That entire concept, and the basis for one of their steps, is essentially getting you to stop trying to control the things in your life that you have absolutely no control over (i.e. I can't control what your response will be so therefor I shouldn't worry about whether or not you understand what I'm trying to convey).

There ARE christian based recovery programs but unless you're already a very STRONG christian I'd stick to any number of organizations like AA or S.M.A.R.T recovery.

Btw there is no section on "what if I don't believe in God" in any AA literature... so i'm confused with why you're making shit up when this guy clearly needs real help & not just your speculation. AA worked for me, S.M.A.R.T recovery worked for a close friend, and I'm sure other programs out there have their success stories too.

Using wikipedia as a source for how someone should treat a medical condition (alcohol withdrawal) is not only misleading but in this case dangerous.

Think of addiction like LSD. For those who have experienced it there is no explanation necessary..for those who haven't there is no explanation possible (loosely paraphrased from "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass).

If you feel that you should switch off - then you probably need to. It won't be instant, but you can relax over a few days and be able to clear your mind when you need to.

Exercise is essential for me. If you live anywhere other than NYC (where I live) then you can probably do yoga - which is the absolute best. You can also run and meditate. After a week or so you'll have more control over your mind.

If you are looking for a cheap shortcut buy and read Be Here Now by Richard Alpert/Baba Ram Dass. I think you have to be under 25 for this to work.

(The question is not exactly directed at you since you seem to naturally have such an interest.)

And the LSD that was carried by Ram Dass was made by Sandoz, arguably the purest LSD that you could ever get.

May be reading Ram Dass' account of the event in _Be Here Now_ will provide some much needed context.

Anthropologists and historians often argue that religion and spirituality - in their purest forms - are actually a coping mechanism that humans evolved into. Think of the hunter gatherer cultures - or even before language was invented. Every moment not spent hunting and gathering and reproducing, they would spend worshiping the sun, or trees, or turtles, anything. An expression of wonder and albeit servitude to the mystery of life. It wasn't until Pharoahs that we started to worship humans (which could be where we screwed up =/ ). Nonetheless, this is how people have made sense of their existence. Still in present days, even absurdists (myself) or atheists/agnostics are just doing their best to apply logic to an existence that doesn't make a lick of sense. We're still searching for a concrete reason for being. I think it's hilariously unlikely, and so amazing that a billion years of wandering stardust turned into an organism that strives to question where it came from. Just wow.

If I could convince you read one book, I would choose "Be Here Now" by Ram Das. It is by no means ordinary english literature - but it's a fantastic journey inside and outside of yourself.

I've read all your comments in this thread, and it sounds like you've spent quite a lot of time in despair - and I want to share my sympathies with you. Love will always be able to bring us out from those dark places. Hey...Obi-Wan Kenobi said so.

In the very first paragraph, the author makes abundantly clear that he experienced a major whoosh while reading one of the greatest American novels and drug sagas of all time.

The "Fear and Loathing" books were only about giant lizards, Richard Nixon, or LSD on the thinnest of surfaces - the author needs to re-read.

> What most drug books don’t do is make the reader, upon closing the book, feel as though he or she really ought to think more seriously about experimenting with drugs.

Really? The Invisible Landscape? Food of the Gods? The Human Encounter With Death? The Doors of Perception? The Spirit Molecule? PIKAL: A Love Story?

What exactly is the author reading? Of all the classic "drug books," the only one I can think of that matches the author's description is Be Here Now, which the author does not mention.

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I'm not sure, after reading this review, whether I'm more or less inclined to read Clune's book - probably less.

In this review, such as it is, Lewis-Kraus makes the (sadly still common) mistake of assuming that the reader has an identical understanding of what a "drug" is, and that the category of "drugs" is well-defined and discrete. Are LSD and heroin in the same category of thing? Is sugar in this same category?

It seems useless in this context to compare a book about the highs of heroin with other books that happen to feature "drugs" in completely different contexts or as metaphorical devices.

Reading this, I learned nothing except that pharmacological contrivances still have a grip on the editorial 'we.'

It's like we need another world war and then another 60's and 70's, but then no 80's to erase all the lessons we learned.

Most people that I know who are in my generation (millennial) are incredibly self-aware and make life choices according to what they want out of life first and foremost. Sadly that often leaves them stuck without the skills to make a significant impact on the world and on the lives of those around them.

The story you heard was likely a retelling of the one Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert -- a colleague of Timothy Leary) wrote about in his enormously popular book Be Here Now about his first meeting with the man who would become his guru, Neem Karoli Baba (aka Maharaji).

I don't have a copy of Be Here Now on me right now, but I watched some interviews with Ram Dass recently (after learning that he'd died in late 2019), and from my memory the story he told goes like this:

When Alpert (who did not yet go by the name of Ram Dass at this point) met Maharaji, the latter asked Alpert for "the medicine", which Alpert interpreted as being LSD. Alpert then gave Maharaji an LSD pill. Maharaji then asked Alpert if it would drive him crazy. Alpert thought about it and said "most probably". Then Maharaji swallowed the pill of LSD. They waited for an hour and nothing happened, and Maharaji asked for another, which he also swallowed, and still nothing happened.

Alpert was tremendously impressed by this (and also by Maharaji referring to the death of Alpert's mother and that she'd died of a "big belly" and mentioning the English word "spleen", when Alpert's mother did in fact die of a rupture of the spleen -- a fact he hadn't told anyone), so he became Maharaji's disciple and took on the name that Maharaji gave to him: Ram Dass.

Decades later, Ram Dass reported that he found out that Maharaji never actually swallowed the LSD, but simply used a magician's move to only make it seem like he swallowed it.

Update: Here's the story: https://www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-gives-maharaji-the-yogi-med...

The chakra model is a common map of these vibrations:

http://www.grdn.cc/energy-slash-quality-slash-organ-slash-ac...

Personally I'm finding some of these levels are achievable without the use of drugs. I used to work with micro-doses of LSD, 1 day dose 10ug / 2 days off, but quickly found I can achieve the states through meditation.

Here's a section from Ram Dass book "Be Here Now". He travels to India seeking answers to what LSD could be all about. He eventually encounters a very advanced yogi:

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He looked at me and extended his hand. So I put into his hand what's called a "White Lightning". This is an LSD pill and this one was from a special batch that had been made specially for me for traveling. And each pill was 305 micrograms, and very pure. Very good acid. Usually you start a man over 60, maybe with 50 to 75 micrograms, very gently, so you won't upset him. 300 of pure acid is a very solid dose.

He looks at the pill and extends his hand further. So I put a second pill - that's 610 micrograms - then a third pill - that's 915 micrograms - into his palm.

That is sizeable for a first dose for anyone!

"Ah-cha."

And he swallow them! I see them go down. There's no doubt. And that little scientist in me says, "This is going to be very interesting!"

All day long I'm there, and every now and then he twinkles at me and nothing - nothing happens! That was his answer to my question. Now you have the data I have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Here_Now_(book)

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The thing about meditation is that it's tough to get past those first few minutes, but when you do, it really helps you feel better.

I learned a lot about the philosophy of meditation from reading books like Be Here Now and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

I haven't had a copy for many years and just ordered one from Amazon because you made me think about it fondly again. I first read it shortly after it was published in '71 and it's time to read it again. :-)

There is a trap in the thinking that it took me a long time to understand. The present is a consequence of past behavior that cannot be safely ignored. The future is a consequence of present behavior and cannot be safely ignored. Discarding that caution brought me a lot of trouble I would have been better off avoiding. This is obvious but excess enthusiasm for mindfulness of the present can easily lead one to places that one wouldn't want to be.

His diet and his refusal of treatment was what killed him.

For some reason I doubt Trebek is the easily-swayed college student Jobs was when the ideas that got him killed overtook him.

It was written during the brief period in Ram Dass' life when he wasn't taking LSD. He returned to the practice shortly thereafter, because he found that he needed the insight to stay on the path he had set for himself.

Also, Neem Karoli Baba never took the LSD; he performed a magician's pass and hid it in his clothing. So all that nonsense about his guru taking 900 mikes and not changing consciousness was just that, nonsense.

NK Baba later ground the LSD up with some holy ash and gave it to his closest disciples, who were blown away by the holiness and power of his darshan, no doubt.

Reference: the interview with Ram Dass in Zig Zag Zen.