Not a day goes by without our being called upon to help one another–at home, at work, on the street, on the phone. . . . We do what we can. Yet so much comes up to complicate this natural response: "Will I have what it takes?" "How much is enough?" "How can I deal with suffering?" "And what really helps, anyway?"
About How Can I Help?
How can I Help?
Stories and Reflections on Service
Authors Ram Dass and Paul Gorman
In this practical helper’s companion, the authors explore a path through these confusions, and provide support and inspiration fo us in our efforts as members of the helping professions, as volunteers, as community activists, or simply as friends and family trying to meet each other’s needs. Here too are deeply moving personal accounts: A housewife brings zoo animals to lift the spirits of nursing home residents; a nun tends the wounded on the first night of the Nicaraguan revolution; a police officer talks a desperate father out of leaping from a roof with his child; a nurse allows an infant to spend its last moments of life in her arms rather than on a hospital machine. From many such stories and the authors’ reflections, we can find strength, clarity, and wisdom for those times when we are called on to care for one another. How Can I Help? reminds us just how much we have to give and how doing so can lead to some of the most joyous moments of our lives.
About Ram Dass
Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, an already eminent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr.Timothy Leary. He continued his psychedelic research until that fateful Eastern trip in 1967, when he traveled to India. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharaj-ji. Maharaj-ji gave Ram Dass his name, which means "servant of God." Everything changed then—his intense dharmic life started, and he became a pivotal influence on a culture that has reverberated with the words “Be Here Now” ever since.
Be Here Now, Ram Dass' monumentally influential and seminal work, still stands as the highly readable centerpiece of Western articulation of Eastern philosophy, and how to live joyously 100 percent of the time in the present, luminous or mundane. Be Here Now continues to be the instruction manual of choice for generations of spiritual seekers. Forty years later, it's still part of the timeless present. Being here now is still being here now. Ram Dass now resides on Maui, where he shares satsang, kirtan, and where he can amplify the healing process in the air and waters of Hawaii. His work continues to be a path of teaching and inspiration to so many. Ram Dass's spirit has been a guiding light for three generations, carrying along millions on the journey, helping free them from their bonds as he has worked his way through his own.
About Paul Gorman
Paul Gorman was educated at Yale and Oxford. He has been a program producer and talk show host with WBAI-FM Pacifica Radio, in New York City since 1969. He has worked as staff assistant to a group of Democratic congressmen and as consultant for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He served as Eugene McCarthy's press secretary and speechwriter in the 1968 presidential campaign, and has been an adviser to a number of public officials. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, The City University of New York, Adelphi University, Naropa Institute and Omega Institute. He served as Vice-President for Public Affairs and Advocacy at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. He lives in The Cathedral Close with his wife Enid and daughter Juliet.
