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Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying by Ram Dass
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Ram Dass Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2001-06-01 ISBN: 1573228710 Number of pages: 206 Publisher: Riverhead Books Accessories:
Book Reviews of Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and DyingBook Review: Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying- A Book Rev Summary: 5 Stars
When I picked up the book "Still Here" from a roadside bookstall at MG Road, Bangalore, I was attracted by the title and the face on the front cover that looked very Western and yet carried a Hindu name, Ram Dass. The title raised certain questions in my mind. Why still here? Where was the author before?
This book is about an American Professor who gave up a cosy middle-class life for drugs, regained his paradise lost through a spiritual awakening and lost it again: this time to be wheelchair bound from a massive stroke in 1990. "Still Here" is not an academic work on social gerontology but an account of how one copes with disability and embraces the frailty of ageing. One may well call it a book on spiritual ageing or conscious ageing.
Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert, was a professor of psychology at Harvard. Together with Timothy Leary another psychology professor at the same university he explored human consciousness through the use of LSD and psilocybin ("magic mushrooms"). They promised a new experience for the restless American youth of the 1960s through the free use of drugs. That led many of the youth of that era down the slippery road of LSD tripping. Their book, the "Psychedelic Experience" became a sort of a guide for experiencing such drugs as LSD and psilocybin. In 1963 they were both dismissed from Harvard for the controversial nature of their research.
In 1967 Richard Alpert sought spiritual enlightment and became a disciple of Neem Karoli Maharaja a highly respected yogi who lived in the Himalayas. He went through a spiritual transformation and took on the name RAM DASS or "servant of God" given by his Master. He returned to the United States charged with the desire to do what he could do to alleviate the suffering of his fellow human beings, to "spread the grace around". He set up many helpful projects such as the Prison Ashram Project, Dying Project and Creating Our Future Project. He became an inspiration to a new generation of spiritual seekers and his book, "Be Here Now *", that sold millions of copies, changed the lives of many including prisoners.
Leaving spirituality aside, "Still Here" is a must read for the "young old" who need to face the inevitability of increased frailty as they age even further. Health care providers and social workers engaged in the care of the frail and aged sick, stroke patients, and also those providing hospice care will find it a timeless compendium. Written in a caring and sharing style, the book is easy to read and comprehend. It exudes an honest and unpretentious attempt to reassure that growing old or being afflicted with stroke and becoming wheel-chair bound, is not the end of the world but a new challenge to embrace the changes that are going on within and without us.
It is an inspiring and warm personal account of the physical and psycho-social problems that one has to confront with advancing age or physical disability. He draws immensely from the anecdotal experience of others. Among his "top ten hits" of possible inevitable medical woes are arthritis, insomnia, constipation, high blood pressure, hardening of arteries, blindness, deafness, loss of bowel and bladder control, prostrate cancer, osteoporosis and stroke.
The usual psycho-social aspects are even more difficult to handle: for example, loss of role and meaning and independence. These are accompanied with a sense of powerlessness, depression and fear. With the feeling of powerlessness comes a loss of meaning. As our roles to which we were accustomed change, we "cease to become individuals" and tend to view ourselves as meaningless and a burden to our family and community: the more so when we find ourselves in nursing homes, homes for the aged or a home for the destitute aged. Our lives become deprived of socially activity and our decision making process sadly curtailed.
Ram Dass devotes a whole chapter to coping with his stroke. For some days after the stroke he was just observing, not thinking wide-eyed he was watching "everything that was taking place with a kind of wonderment". As he went through the medical world of doctors and therapists of various disciplines, he observes with affection that "therapists and doctors believe it's their techniques that make the difference, but I've come to realise that it's much more the power of the certainty that counts. It's their heart-to-heart resuscitation".
The message, Ram Dass projects is clear. The problems of ageing need not overwhelm us. We need to embrace them for all the ups and downs as a natural response, and age gracefully with worth and dignity even in a "society that would like to pretend that old people don't exist." In a culture where old people are sometimes treated like yesterday's old computers, the real treasure the old have is wisdom and it cannot be ignored: "wisdom is one of the few things in human life that does not diminish with age."
There is no right or wrong way of growing old, says Ram Dass. If we could have managed to live through marriage, parenthood, work and other areas of social functioning, age should not pose intractable problems. We must, however, accept the futility of our continued attachments to power and other worldly possessions and persuasions. We need to give them up. The pursuit of spirituality can help. As Ram Dass points out, "cures aim at returning our bodies to what they were in the past, healing uses what is present to move us deeply to Soul Awareness, and in some cases, physical improvement".
Ram Dass, past seventy, is still learning the joy in being "STILL HERE".
Summary of Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and DyingMore 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. After being introduced for a lecture, Ram Dass eschewed the stairs and, from his front row seat, leapt up on to the stage--or tried to, anyway, but age and gravity brought him crashing back to earth. Like other baby boomers, Ram Dass has learned the hard way that aging is unkind to the body. But he has also learned that it can be an opportunity for growth. While others begin to devalue you, you can reconnect with the spiritual, grow into wisdom, and create value for yourself. In Still Here, Ram Dass offers a philosophy for aging that teaches us how to diminish our suffering despite the aches, pains, and limitations of age. This becomes possible when we step away from the ego-self and into the soul-self, where we can witness our thoughts and emotions and evaluate their effects on us. If aging has brought challenges to Ram Dass, it has also brought him wisdom, which, through his personal anecdotes and stories of others in the struggle against aging, he shares with great generosity. --Brian Bruya
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