It's Here Now (Are You?)
Bhagavan Das is back. The 1970's guru of egregiousness, who inspired the title of Ram Dass'Be Here Now, has penned a spiritual memoir that is stranger than fiction, farther out than the Oort Cloud. We last saw our hero when he was a spiritual rock star touring the hippie circuit with Allen Ginsberg. Soon thereafter he dropped out of the scene and took a job at a Dodge dealership to support his second family. Peyote beckoned him to the desert, then he raised magic mushrooms, sold encyclopedias to Marines, dabbled in solar power, attended Bible college, and ended up selling overpriced car insurance to poor people--until his latest 18-year-old girlfriend flipped out on acid and ended his career.Bhagavan Das's writing is guileless. He neither boasts nor apologizes. He describes the manic ride he has been on since he left California after high school. For seven years he wandered around India and Nepal, practicing austerities, sitting at the feet of gurus, studying Buddhist scriptures, and getting laid. The common denominator in his pursuits seems to be a search for the ultimate high.  Whether he is kissed on the forehead by a saint, standing at the foot of a 20-foot stone statue of Vishnu, lost in meditation, dropping acid, or being initiated into tantric sex, his descriptions are in the same terms: "mind-blowing," "out-of-body," "ultimate bliss," "beyond the beyond."It's Here Now (Are You?)is an entertaining, vicarious journey through a life that you don't mind visiting, but you wouldn't want to live.--Brian Bruya