It's Here Now (Are You?): A Spiritual Memoir

by Bhagavan Das

Book Overview

In this inspiring spiritual memoir, Bhagavan Das fulfills his original mission as a messenger of Eastern wisdom and sheds needed light on the new spirituality of the West.

Leaving California at age 18 with $40 and a guitar, Michael Riggs traveled to India, searching for something more than "the American Dream." Once there, he studied with several teachers and lived the austere life of a yogi, eventually falling under the loving blanket of Neem...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767900081
• ISBN13: 9780767900089
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Let him who is without sin...

This is probably not a book that will make much sense to hard-headed "thinking types". But for anyone with a nuanced understanding of religious devotion and yogic experience, it is a great story. It is, in a way, a myth in the un-making. Bhagavan Das, for all his obvious faults, has a most sincere, humorous and profound sense of life. The "holy man" he was once imagined to be (and perhaps, imagined himself to be) is laid to rest in this reminiscence of a life lived intensely, unconventionally and sometimes, in some ways, badly. The subtext of this strange hagiography -- or perhaps, anti-hagiography -- is that sometimes, in order to know God, we have to err extensively in ways that are most human. Such was the case with many great saints-- such as Augustine, or even the Buddha, who was once a hedonistic prince with a harem. This is not to imply that Bhagavan Das is necessarily a saint. However the book contains an implicit message, one that I take to be a very positive: in the midst of life's complications, uncertainties and moral ambiguities, enlightenment sometimes shines through. As Leonard Cohen sang, "There is a crack in everything...that's how the light gets in."

Very Interesting story of an ongoing spiritual search

I was very interested in reading this book especially after reading "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass. I had wondered after reading that book what became of Bhagavan Das. First I will say that Bhagavan Das deserves credit for his honest account of his journey. He certainly paints a picture of himself that I personally did not find too admirable and I give him credit for his honesty. This book has tremendous energy and is very hard to put down. The different experiences he has are described vividly and with focus and emotion. You feel like you are living each sentence with him as he goes through his ever changing situations. Bhagavan Das is constantly caught in a battle between the spirit and the flesh. He's almost analogous to a manic depressive who experiences extreme highs and lows, except in hiscase he goes between extreme devotion and extreme narcissism. I did get very disturbed by his self indulgent behavior, not just in his narcissistic drug, sex and spiritual phases but in the way he abandoned his wives and children so that he could indulge in his spiritual quest. This seemed to be a major cop-out to me. He seemed to run away from his responsibilities in the name of spirituality. Also from a spiritual standpoint he seemed too obsessed with finding spiritual experiences of "bliss" which seemed also a form of escapism. True spirituality (in my opinion and experience)has very little to do with "states" of bliss but rather are found with finding the beauty in life itself in the present moment. All the "spiritual fireworks" he speaks of seem to be no more than a lot of spiritual masturbation. One thing in particular I found particularly disturbing is that after his first wife Bhavani dies from an overdose he doesn't let the reader know what happens to his daughter Soma. He says that his new wife doesn't want to take her in but he doesn't seem to say anything about what he does to take care of her. Not that I need to know his personal business, but he tells you all this stuff and then never explains what happens to this poor child. Rather, he goes off on some Peyote trip and gets into his own selfish headtrip. Anyway, in spite of my personal disgust about much of his behavior, I do think this book is very worthwhile to read. I think he lays it all out there for the reader to make his own decisions about things. While I certainly wouldn't take any spiritual advice from Bhagavan Das because he still seems to be anywhere but "here now", I truly wish him well.

A book of great historical value.

This is a "spiritual memior" which describes Michael Riggs' (Bhagavan Das) spiritual search. His journey reads like a who's who of eastern religion. His Indian Guru was Neem Karoli Baba and his Buddhist guru was Kalu Rinpoche. In his travels he also has met "The Mother" from Sri Aurobindo's lineage, Dilgo Khyentse, Tarthang Tulku, Anandamayi Ma, Suzuki Roshi, Muktananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sai Baba, Swami Prabhupada, Chogyam Trungpa, Alan Watts, Richard Alpert, Alan Ginsberg and many others. It may not be the best writing but it is a great tale. How wonderful to find such an open and honest work. For the seeker it is a tell-all from someone who has followed an extremely devoted path.The book also functions as a glossary of terms. Every time Das uses a new hindu or buddhist term he explains it instead of assuming the reader knows them all.Das also gives a good contrast between the Hindu and the Buddhist practices since he bounced back and forth between the two.

Let Bhagavan Das Take You on a Wonderful Journey of Love

A wonderful spiritual memoir that ranks with Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, with a dash of sixties' psychedelia flavor. It details Bhagavan's journeys through India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, his meeting many Indian and Tibetan saints and teachers, and being embraced by the people who later popularised the Eastern spiritual movement in America; namely Allen Ginsberg, Alan Watts, and Ram Dass. Bhagavan Das was there first - he watched as India and Nepal became overrun with hippies looking for Eastern wisdom after LSD gave them their first hunger for another reality. After Ram Dass published Be Here Now, it set off another influx of Americans going over to India, and helped inspire Bhagavan's rise to fame in the states after coming home from seven years in the East. Now, twenty-six years later, Bhagavan Das puts pen to paper to tell his own story, one that is infinitely deeper and more compelling than the one that was originally told in Be Here Now. It also accurately portrays the hardships and internal divisions one goes through on the path to enlightenment. A worthwhile book, the kind of book I wait years for. Books of this quality, conveying this range and depth of experience, and also being so enjoyable to read, are simply too few and far between. Cherish this one while it's here now. It's one I plan to read over and over, as I have done with W. Somerset Maugham's book about the original Dharma Bum, The Razor's Edge.

Some amazing stories of life on the spiritual trek.

This is a surprisingly charming, engaging and articulate book. I was surprised because I always thought of Bhagavan Das as a "spaced-out" hippie/yogi who probably could not punctuate a sentence or remember his zip code. I was taken in by his wild Rastafarian-gone-to-seed looks. He is out-there, make no mistake about it. But he is also thoughtful, insightful, and mostly guileless. The few follies in the book are self-deceptions, as when he acts out his sexual obsessiveness in ways that are profoundly harmful to the people in his life, while seeing it all as just so much spiritual melodrama. No doubt it is that, but some of it is also boorish sexual misbehavior, and no amount of "up-leveling" the conversation makes any of that go away. But even his foolishness is instructive. He has some amazing stories to tell of life on the spiritual trek. He lived the life of a serious Hindu sadhu in India, and some other, in some ways even more exotic, forms of life in America. This book is mostly story-telling--the most fascinating stories imaginable. These are challenging stories, stories that inspire and that remind us that authentic spirituality has nothing to do with conventional belief systems or other similar mundane matters. Real spirituality is about transcendence, and Bhagavan Das' book gives us a first-person account of what transcendence really looks like. Such books are rare and precious. Even his preachments are few, far between, and usually descriptive of some important truth. This passage captures the spirit of both the story-telling and the sermonizing: "I have done it all. I have done the deepest, most intense spiritual practices. When I was doing my one hundred thousand prostrations at Bodh Gaya, I had my board and I was out there at four in the morning for three hours, one hundred thousand prostrations. . . sixty to seventy thousand prostrations into doing this, I did a prostration, and I completely slide off the board into infinity. I went into this complete realm of golden light and bliss, I saw nothing but golden Buddhas shining a light upon me. And I opened into a whole realm. And then I got up and did the next prostration. . . In a way, that's what life is. Life is like doing prostrations. . .The point I'm getting to is that it takes one hundred thousand prostrations to get one good one." If you need some fuel to start you on your next thousand prostrations, this is a good place to start.