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As featured in the Ram Dass documentary film Becoming Nobody, five essential live teaching sessions on audio, presented here in their entirety The game is not about becoming somebody, it’s about becoming nobody. —Ram Dass If you’re a spiritual explorer of any age or tradition, chances are you’ve heard of Ram Dass. This singular luminary began his “somebody training” as Richard Alpert—the 1960’s Harvard-psychologist-turned-hippie who tripped with Timothy Leary, befriended beat poets and Tibetan lamas, found his lifelong guru in India, and wrote the perennial classic Be Here Now. That’s the “somebody” part of his story. But for those who’ve experienced Ram Dass live as he shares his insights and personal journey on the way to becoming nobody—he has been for many the spark that ignited them to the liberating truth of who we really are. This audio collection brings us five essential sessions, featured in the Ram Dass documentary film Becoming Nobody, presented here in their entirety. Each beautifully illuminates a core dimension of Ram Dass’s wisdom. Through teaching stories, true accounts, eye-opening revelations, and his one-of-a-kind sense of humor, this legendary teacher helps show us the way out of the prison of our self-identity—and into the joy of being at once “nobody” and the universal divine at play in the world.

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Sometimes illumination occurs spontaneously or, as Ram Dass experienced, in a heart-wrenching moment of opening. More commonly, it happens when we polish the mirror of the heart with daily practice—and see beyond the illusion of our transient thoughts and emotions to the vast and luminous landscape of our true nature. For five decades, Ram Dass has explored the depths of consciousness and love and brought them to life as service to others. With Polishing the Mirror, he gathers together his essential teachings for living in the eternal present, here and now. Readers will find within these pages a rich combination of perennial wisdom, humor, teaching stories, and detailed guidance on Ram Dass' own spiritual practices, including: Bhakti Yoga—opening our hearts to unconditional love • Practices for living, aging, dying, and embracing the natural flow of life • Karma Yoga—how selfless service can profoundly transform us • Working with fear and suffering as a path to grace and freedom • Step-by-step guidance in devotional chant, meditation and mantra practice, and much more For those new to Ram Dass' teachings, and for those to whom they are old friends, here is this vanguard spiritual explorer's complete guide to discovering who we are and why we are here, and how to become beacons of unconditional love.

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Sometimes illumination occurs spontaneously or, as Ram Dass experienced, in a cosmic moment of the heart opening. More commonly, it happens when we remove the dust from the mirror of our spiritual heart with daily practice—to see beyond the illusion of our transient thoughts and emotions to the vast and luminous landscape of our true nature. For five decades, Ram Dass has explored the depths of consciousness and love and brought back insights as his service to others. With Polishing the Mirror, he gathers together his essential teachings for being and loving, here and now, in the eternal present. For those just starting on the path, this is a primer for living from the spiritual heart. For those already practicing it, is a reference point for daily life in the spirit. In this audiobook, read by coauthor Rameshwar Das, listeners will discover perennial wisdom, humor, teaching stories, and guidance into Ram Dass's own spiritual practices, including: Bhakti Yoga—devotion, opening our hearts to unconditional love • Practices for living, aging, dying, and embracing the natural flow of life • Karma Yoga—transformation through selfless service • Working with fear and suffering as a path to grace and freedom • Step-by-step guidance in devotional chant, meditation, mantra, and more Polishing the Mirror is Ram Dass's invitation to experience who we are and why we are here, and how to become beacons of unconditional love. This unabridged audiobook includes four bonus tracks: Pure Awareness—a guided meditation with Ram Dass • I Am Loving Awareness—a guided meditation with Ram Dass • An Introduction to Vipassana Meditation with Ram Dass • Sita Ram—kirtan chant music with Jai Uttal "This book is a blessing! Simply reading it will open your heart and bring you to mysterious, spacious, loving freedom. Ram Dass is one of the great sages of our time who can make us laugh, cry, and awaken!"—Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart "Ram Dass has been the most influential person in my own spiritual development. I treasure his wisdom as well as his spirit. Let his words in this book enter your soul—for my friend Ram Dass is divine love personified."—Wayne Dyer, author of The Power of Intention

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"Ram Dass—the teacher and writer who's spent over a quarter of a century translating Eastern spirituality in terms that Westerners can understand. His books have sold over 3 million copies."—Los Angeles Times Beginning with his controversial psychedelic research at Harvard in the sixties, the life of Ram Dass has served as an experiment in truth, encompassing paths from both East and West, and shaping the spiritual landscape of America like no other teacher of our time. After three decades, and despite a life-threatening stroke, Ram Dass continues to move us with his example of compassion in action, and the true joy that comes with living in the present. Now, in a unique audio publishing event, the great moments—and great truths—of this important spiritual elder s long career are preserved together for the first time on The Ram Audio Collection. Join the bestselling author of such spiritual classics as Be Here Now and How Can I Help? for three life-changing sessions including: Conscious Aging—Ram Dass calls for us to move beyond our youth-fixated culture, to see that the final years of life are the culmination of our spiritual journey • The Path of Service—In our era of individualism, Ram Dass teaches, the path to internal freedom still begins with external action, in the service of others • Cultivating the Heart of Compassion—Ram Dass shows how to experience your life as a remarkable spiritual curriculum, through trust in your own loving heart

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A Heart-Centered Spiritual Classic for Your Ever-Changing Life The Bhagavad Gita is a gem so precious in India's spiritual treasury that many regard it not as a volume of sacred verse, but as a living manifestation of the Divine. In the summer of 1974, inside a balmy Boulder, Colorado, warehouse that served as the main hall of the fledgling Naropa Institute, some say that a minor miracle occurred: the reawakening of the Gita's living presence, as it unfolded in a series of wisdom teachings led by Ram Dass. With Love, Service, Devotion, and the Ultimate Surrender, you are invited to experience these legendary gatherings. The tale of the warrior Arjuna and his divine friend Krishna serves as metaphor for the recurring dilemmas that we encounter as we spiral into the depths of our spiritual journey. In these sessions, Ram Dass illuminates the Gita’s essential verses with insights spanning many traditions, from Rumi's ecstatic poetry to Basho's koans, from devotional chant to monastic silence, from Sri Ramana's self-inquiry to Saint Paul's devotion to Christ. The destination? A new perspective on the crucial moments of contradiction and questioning that all spiritual seekers must face again and again: If it's all Divine perfection, why bother with the search at all? Is it possible to awaken without a teacher or guru? Why am I experiencing these strange spiritual "gifts”? Will I get lost in their power? If I'm conscious and kind, why not indulge in all of life's pleasures? Since everyone suffers and dies, will my compassion ultimately matter? With irrepressible love and intellect (and a good dose of skillful mischief), this epic meeting with Ram Dass yields new answers with every revisit, like a lifelong friend that comes to meet us at each turning of our journey.Highlights: A 12-hour odyssey with Ram Dass into his timeless Yogas of the Bhagavad Gita Naropa sessionsThree ways to enter the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita • Karma yoga—reincarnation, dharma, service, sadhanas • Jnana yoga—inquiry, the critical mind, the koan • Mind, illusion, and Brahman • Sacrifice and mantra—trappings and benefits of ritual and form • Renunciation and purification—ashtanga yoga, kundalini, the chakras, austerities, the "witness," desire, sexual energy • Devotion and the guru—bhakti ("devotion"), surrender, siddhis ("powers"), Maharajji • Death and dying—What is born, what dies? How do you live in the present moment?

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Professor Richard Alpert's star fell fast. To the dismay of his wealthy Boston family, he got fired from Harvard over experimental use of psychedelics with his psychology students. In 1967, he traveled to India to lick his wounds and find himself. And he did, at Neem Karoli Baba's ashram, in a direct encounter with unconditional, unlimited divine love. He returned to America as Baba Ram Dass, countercultural activist for expanded human consciousness. As a spiritual guide, at the bedside of the dying, and as a stroke survivor, he has always been ahead of his time, pulling the world along behind him. The author of over a dozen books, he now shares for the very first time the full story of how his life of service intersected with an era of profound cultural upheaval. From the details of his groundbreaking research in psychedelics to his bumpy path to becoming a spiritual icon, from his struggles with his sexual identity to what it was like to find out in his late 70s that he was a father and grandfather, Ram Dass traces the pivotal points of his life against the backdrop of a mind opened by drugs, and a heart opened by a guru. Ram Dass brought America yoga, the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy, and a revolution in how we relate to death and dying. He has opened the door to the most important and healthiest conversations about the heart and mind in our culture. With this book, he opens his heart and mind to us.

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More than thirty years ago, an entire generation sought a new way of life, looking for fulfillment and meaning in a way no one had before. Leaving his teaching job at Harvard, Ram Dass embodied the role of spiritual seeker, showing others how to find peace within themselves in one of the greatest spiritual classics of the twentieth century, the two-million-copy bestseller Be Here Now. As many of that generation enter the autumn of their years, the big questions of peace and of purpose have returned demanding answers. And once again, Ram Dass blazes a new trail, inviting all to join him on the next stage of the journey.

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As one of the most respected spiritual explorers of recent times, Ram Dass sparked a revolution with the publication of his 2-million-copy classic, Be Here Now. Since then, he has been a beacon for spiritual seekers worldwide, challenging us to find new sources of meaning and purpose in our lives.Be Love Now is a remarkable blend of autobiography and timeless spiritual insights. From his beginnings as a Harvard psychologist and psychedelic adventurer to his profound encounters with his Indian guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and moving beyond the reawakening brought on by his near-fatal illness, Ram Dass strikes a practical, humorous, soul-stirring chord in today's egotistical and lonely world. While offering us his rich life experiences, he also holds out a timeless, wonderfully universal adventure that will open our hearts and minds.

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BIRTH OF A PSYCHEDELIC CULTURE shines a bright light on the exploratory culture of the time and experiments undertaken by Professors Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and, then-graduate student, Ralph Metzner. Based on a series of recent (2003 to 2005) conversations between the survivors of that distinguished trio, Metzner and Alpert, facilitated by psychiatrist/writer Gary Bravo, the book describes their initial experiments with mind-altering substances while at Harvard. It goes on to cover experiments they conducted after being dismissed from Harvard, their trips to India and their reflections looking back through time at all of the above. It is filled with intriguing photographs marking and illuminating the events brought to life through the text. Experiment advisors, supporters and participants who appear in the pages of this astonishing account include Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Arthur Koestler, William Burroughs and many other well-known personalities from that time period. No understanding of the history of the sixties would be complete without some grasp of the work of Leary, Alpert and Metzner, the backlash to their experiments and the way in which drug use became absorbed into society thereafter. Nor can any diligent attempt to study the spectrum of the human mind exclude what we have learned from them about the impact of psychedelic drugs.

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Perhaps no other teacher has sparked the fires of as many spiritual seekers in the West as Ram Dass. While many know of his transformation from Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert to psychedelic and spiritual icon, Ram Dass tells here for the first time the full arc of his remarkable life. Being Ram Dass begins at the moment he was fired from Harvard for giving drugs to an undergraduate. We then circle back to his privileged youth, education, and the path that led him inexorably away from conventional life and ultimately to his guru, Neem Karoli Baba. Populated by a cast of luminaries ranging from Timothy Leary to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kornfield, Aldous Huxley to Charles Mingus-this intimate memoir chronicles Ram Dass's experience of the cultural and spiritual transformations that resonate with us to this day. Ram Dass's life and work prefigured many current trends: the conscious aging and death movement, the healing potential of psychedelics, the use of meditation and yoga in prisons, the ubiquity of those same practices in the wider culture, and more. Here, with his characteristic mix of earthiness and transcendence, Ram Dass finally tells all.

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We all sit on the edge of a mystery. We have only known this life, so dying scares us-and we are all dying. But what if dying were perfectly safe? What would it look like if you could approach dying with curiosity and love, in service of other beings? Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush began their friendship more than four decades ago at the foot of their guru, Neem Karoli Baba, also known as Maharaj-ji. After impacting millions of people through the years with their teachings, these friends reunited to share an extraordinary dialogue on the dying process-which became the foundation for Walking Each Other Home. In this book, published just a year before Ram Dass passed, readers will learn about: guidelines for being a "loving rock" for the dying, how to grieve fully and authentically, how to transform a fear of death, leaving a spiritual legacy, creating a sacred space for dying, and much more. "Everybody you have ever loved is a part of the fabric of your being now," says Ram Dass. The body may die, but the soul remains. Death is an invitation to a new kind of relationship, in the place where we are all One. Experience a profound exploration by two lifelong friends and spiritual luminaries on what it means to live and die consciously, remember who we really are, and illuminate the path we walk together.

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From Ram Dass, one of America's most beloved spiritual figures and bestselling author of Be Here Now and Be Love Now, comes this timeless classic about the experience of being and the risks and rewards of our spiritual path. Originally published in 1976, Grist for the Mill offers a deep spiritual journey of self-discovery, and a universal understanding of what it means to "be" and to grow as human beings. The book is fully revised with a new introduction. As Ram Dass puts it, "When the faith is strong enough it is sufficient just to be. It's a journey towards simplicity, towards quietness, towards a kind of joy that is not in time. It's a journey that has taken us from primary identification with our body and our psyche, on to an identification with God, and ultimately beyond identification."

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We all sit on the edge of a mystery. We have only known this life, so dying scares us—and we are all dying. But what if dying were perfectly safe? What if you could approach dying with curiosity and love? What if dying were the ultimate spiritual practice? Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying reunites lifelong friends Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush, who speak on the spiritual opportunities in the dying process. They share intimate personal experiences and timeless practices for every aspect of this journey. In this unabridged audiobook, join these teachers as they explore what it means to live and die consciously, remember who we really are, and illuminate the path we walk together. Narrated by Mirabai Bush, with a preface read by Ram Dass. Archival recording of Ram Dass © Love Serve Remember Foundation. Archival recording of John O’Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us (AW01197D).

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