It had been a long time since I had visited with Ram Dass's "Be Here Now."
I found the entire thing posted online for free at this link ---> http://beherenow.dc7.us/
I was twenty years old in 1992. I was in school majoring in Environmental Health Science. I wish I could go back in time and finish that degree. The Universe had different plans for me at the time.
The school I was going to had a large library. I ran across a book one day called "The Psychedelic Experience." I can't remember the exact circumstances on how I came across it, but that work led me to read other works by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (later to become Ram Dass), and Aldous Huxley. There are probably other counter-culture leaders that I looked up at the time, too. I remember doing a lot of reading on psychedelic drugs and psychedelic experiences.
So in February of 1993 I decided to see for myself what these drugs were all about. I had tried LSD in the past, although I was told that the dosage wasn't very strong, and I had also smoked weed on several occasions. But I felt like I had not seen the reality of what psychedelics could do. I knew someone who I thought might have LSD and I contacted him. It turned out that he had just scored an entire sheet of blotter acid. I think it was just a blank white sheet. I don't remember it being printed on or colored. I was told that it was strong and the guy asked me how much I wanted. I took two hits. Little did I know...
A couple of hours into the trip I had a very strong buzz. It was probably the highest I had ever been in my life and I felt wonderful. Then, a little while later, the wheels started to come off the track and I started to tighten up. Paranoia crept into my mind and I entered the realm of the bad trip. In the long run, bad trips can be very productive experiences on your spiritual journey, and this was no ordinary bad trip. It was a bad trip that would last for the next ten years. In western cultures they refer to such people as mentally ill, and I have thought of myself as mentally ill for a long time. But I have a whole new way of looking at the experience now.
Back to 1993. Since I didn't get heaven and ended up in hell, I had to try to find answers to my predicament. That led to a lot of reading in religion. I read the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament. I read about Buddha and Kabbalah. I even read about Anton LaVey and his brand of Santanism. I read a lot of mysticism from all of the world's major religions as well as several philosophers. None of those books helped me at the time. I would come out of them just as confused and depressed as when I entered them. There was one book, though, that made a great impression on me even though I wasn't really able to grasp it's message at the time. That was Be Here Now by Ram Dass. I must have read that thing five times straight. I knew there was something there that I needed to know, but I just couldn't quite get at it.
"But when the King came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment; and he said to him, 'Friend how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the King said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen." -- Jesus
I had been thrown into the outer darkness, and, yes indeed, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Ten years into the bad trip I got psychiatric meds and that brought me fully back into the physical plane of reality. I almost killed myself on three occasions before making it back, but the experience has been very valuable. That might be hard to understand, but if it weren't for all of that I would not be able to appreciate the present moment now.
I recently realized a very important thing about my past, and doing so made me at peace with myself in the moment like I have never been. I still have to struggle to stay here and now, and I might spend a good part of my days lost in the past or the future, but now there is something in me that reminds me to come back to here and now. I used to be petrified with fear of reality. I had a defense mechanism the size of the Great Wall of China. You could see that damn thing from outer space! Now the demolition crew has moved in.
Check out the book if you have never read it or if it's been a long time since you've read it. It is very good. I read it again over the past couple of days, and now I understand a great deal more of it than when I did when I was a kid. Maybe that book has been working on me in some way for the past 23 years.
= new reply since forum marked as read
for my daughter a few weeks ago ...they still stock it at Barnes and Nobles 
if you're ignoring traffic and watching the "keep on truckin'" guy walk across your dashboard, you might be impaired.
