Ram Dass

Ram Dass (born April 6, 1931, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died December 22, 2019, Maui, Hawaii) was an American spiritual leader, psychologist, and writer who was influential in the New Age movement. Born Richard Alpert, he spent much of his early career developing a reputation as an academic psychologist. In the early 1960s, alongside Timothy Leary, he began to research psychedelic substances. He soon became one of their major proponents and grew to be a significant figure in the counterculture and psychedelic movements of the late ’60s. Following a trip to India, where he became a student of Hinduism and was given the name Ram Dass, he proceeded to popularize Eastern and New Age spiritual practices in the West. His influential 1971 book on yoga, meditation, and self-discovery, Be Here Now, has been described as the “counterculture Bible.” Ram Dass continued to teach, write, and hold retreats until his death in 2019.

Early life and education

Richard Alpert was born April 6, 1931, in Boston to Gertrude (née Levin) and George Alpert and was raised in a Jewish household. George Alpert, a successful lawyer, was one of Brandeis University’s founders and was president of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company. The family was wealthy and young. Richard was sent to the private school Williston Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1948. He then attended Tufts University and graduated with a degree in psychology in 1952. Alpert subsequently pursued a master’s degree in psychology at Wesleyan University after which he attended Stanford University’s psychology Ph.D. program, receiving a doctorate in 1957. Alpert then moved back to Massachusetts to teach at Harvard University. It was there that he met fellow psychologist and drug researcher Timothy Leary.

Experiments with psychedelics

While working together at Harvard in the early 1960s, Leary introduced Alpert to psilocybin, the psychoactive principle found in psilocybin mushrooms. Between 1960 and 1962, the pair set up clinical trials in which students were administered psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), or mescaline and then questioned about their experiences in order for the two psychologists to arrive at a better understanding of the drugs’ effects on people. The experiment, after much campus debate, came to an end in 1963 when Leary and Alpert were dismissed by Harvard—Leary for abandoning his teaching duties and Alpert for giving drugs to an undergraduate.

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Determined to continue their studies on psychedelics, Alpert and Leary and a group of their followers moved into a 64-room mansion—which was provided by Peggy Hitchcock, an heir to the Mellon fortune—in Millbrook, New York. The group sometimes included Beat generation poets Jack Keruoac, Allen Ginsberg, and Ken Kesey, psychiatrist R.D. Laing, philosophical writer Alan Watts, and musicians Charles Mingus and Maynard Ferguson, along with many other hip and elite people in New York and intellectuals from the region and around the world. Together they ingested massive amounts of psychedelics. At one point, Alpert and five others locked themselves in a bowling alley and took large doses of LSD every four hours over a two-week period. The six eventually began to notice that the large doses were ineffective. Alpert also began building a tolerance for psychedelics and found that the come-downs after highs were increasingly depressing. Though Alpert and Leary greatly helped to establish the “turn on, tune in, drop out” ethos of the rapidly growing hippie movement, Alpert found himself turning away from psychedelics. Tensions between the two also heightened during this time, particularly over Leary’s concern that Alpert (who was bisexual) was trying to seduce his son.

Indian spirituality

In 1967 Alpert traveled to India, as did many Americans looking for enlightenment in that era. Alpert was influenced in his seeking by popularizers of Asian religions, such as Alan Watts, whom Alpert intended to meet in Japan after visiting India. On a side trip to Nepal, he met fellow American seeker Bhagavan Das, and together they returned to India, where he met Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, called Maharaj-ji by Alpert and other enlightenment seekers.

In his first audience with Neem Karoli Baba, according to Alpert’s telling in his book Be Here Now, the guru somehow intuited that Alpert had been thinking of his mother the previous night and that she had died. Indeed, Alpert’s mother had passed away earlier that year, and the guru further mentioned correctly that she had died due to an illness with her spleen. Per Alpert’s recounting, he had not yet cried over his mother’s death, but at that moment in front of Neem Karoli Baba, he failed to fit the exchange into a rational explanation and his emotions flowed freely. As he later recounted in Be Here Now: “And I cried and I cried and I cried. And I wasn’t happy and I wasn’t sad. It was not that kind of crying. The only thing I could say was it felt like I was home. Like the journey was over. Like I had finished.” This end was Alpert’s new beginning.

Alpert then became a student and follower of Neem Karoli Baba, studying yoga and Hindu philosophical concepts while in India. His guru gave him a new name: Baba Ram Dass—meaning “servant (das) of God (Ram).” (Ram Dass often drops “Baba,” an honorific meaning “father” or “wise one.”) During the course of his studies, the newly dubbed Ram Dass gave his guru a massive dose of LSD but, to his surprise, found it had no effect. At Maharaj-ji’s encouragement, Ram Dass returned to America in 1968, and he returned looking very different from before, with long beard and hair, barefoot, and wearing white robes of a Hindu ascetic sadhu.

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Upon Ram Dass’s return to the United States, he stopped preaching psychedelic awareness and moved into a cabin on his father’s estate in New Hampshire, where others seeking enlightenment would join him in chanting and meditation. He also traveled the country giving lectures known for their wit and wisdom, such as the adage: “Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”

In 1971 Ram Dass’s most famous book, Be Here Now, an influential cult classic of autobiographical reflection and repackaged Eastern spirituality as well as Dass’s own stories, was published. He wrote it while living at the Lama Foundation, an alternative spiritual center near Taos, New Mexico, where community members helped edit the manuscript and designed the final product. (Random House later repackaged it for mass publication.) The book begins with a recounting of Ram Dass’s journey, from his early days as an academic to his embrace of spirituality. The next section, the core book titled “From Bindu to Ojas,” offers numerous tidbits of thoughts and wisdom culled from Hinduism and Buddhism and displayed in striking handwritten and hand-drawn images. A final section provides a manual to achieving yogic spiritual consciousness, and while Hinduism and yoga are the conceptual foundation, the advice and quotes draw on diverse ideas from multiple religions and prominent writers. Be Here Now has sold more than two million copies and is held as one of the defining texts in New Age spirituality. The book has been hailed as influential by the likes of ex-Beatle George Harrison (who used it as a title of a song) and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, among many others.

Later life

In his later years, Ram Dass continued his propagation of spirituality and also became involved in non-spiritual humanitarian causes. In 1978 Ram Dass and Larry Brilliant—who had recently been working with the World Health Organization (WHO) in India—along with hippie activist Wavy Gravy and others founded the Seva Foundation (seva is Sanskrit for “service”). The Seva Foundation provides free and low-cost eye care to people around the world. Ram Dass also helped form the Living/Dying Project in 1981. Influenced by ideas found in the Bardo Thödol (translated into English as the Tibetan Book of the Dead in 1927) and Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962), the Living/Dying Project promotes death as both a conscious act and spiritual awakening. He would later help usher Timothy Leary—with whom he had previously reconciled—through the dying process in 1996.

In the 1980s, Ram Dass shaved his beard and publicly distanced himself from his cultish figure, though he continued to write and lecture. He authored or coauthored 14 books after Be Here Now along with other media presentations such as videos, recordings, documentaries, and a series of more than 100 podcasts. In 1996 Ram Dass was launching a radio show called Here and Now with Ram Dass in Los Angeles and San Francisco, but it was not to be. Early the following year he suffered a major stroke that prevented him from continuing the show. He moved to Maui, Hawaii, in 2004, where he continued to stage lectures and retreats and host online talks and events.