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Still Here Now

Embracing Aging

The subtitle of Still Here is Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying. Ram Dass's message is a powerful one, based in his observation that today's culture values technology over community, knowledge over wisdom. "We have a youth culture," he told me, "so therefore it is a culture afraid of change. The problem is a fear of lost power. Power is defined as fame, money, being taken notice of."

The very definition of aging, however, is change. The key to doing it consciously, he said, is understanding that aging provides the greatest opportunity to develop inner wisdom, compassion, spiritual insight and balance. It has not been an easy three years; at first, Ram Dass said, he was angry at his guru for letting this kind of thing happen. "I have had a personal myth that I was being taken care of--up there," he gestured, pointing to the invisible world where Maharajji, his long-deceased guru, abides.

"I'd say grace, grace, all grace, but then this thing [the stroke] was so immense that it shook my whole world. You count on the grace of the guru in my spiritual practice; you play with the guru and take what comes."

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