Ram Dass at the Hanuman Temple in Taos, New Mexico, September 2004
Dr. Richard Alpert (born 1933), later known as Baba Ram Dass, was a professor of psychology at Harvard University who became well known for his controversial research program which studied the effects of LSD.
Alpert worked closely with Dr. Timothy Leary at Harvard, where the two conducted many experiments on the effects of LSD. The pair were dismissed from the university in 1963 due to their controversial research. They relocated, and continued their experiments at a private mansion in New York(see LSD).
In 1967, Alpert, who came from a Jewish family, travelled to India, where he became heavily involved in meditative practice and yoga. After meeting and becoming a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba, a Hindu guru in Uttar Pradesh, he changed his name to Ram Dass, meaning servant of God.
Upon his return to the United States, Alpert founded several organizations dedicated to expanding spiritual awareness and promoting spiritual growth. In February 1997, he suffered a stroke which left him with expressive aphasia, but he continues to give lectures at a variety of places.
References
Books by Ram Dass
Be Here Now (1971)
Doing Your Own Being (1973)
The Only Dance There Is (1974)
Grist for the Mill (with Steven Levine) (1977)
Journey of Awakening: A Meditator's Guidebook (1978)
Compassion in Action, with Mirabai Bush (1991)
Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying (2000)
Paths to God:Living The Bhagavad Gita (2004)
External link
Official Ram Dass website (http://www.ramdasstapes.org/)
RichardAlpert (born April 6, 1931), later known as Baba Ram Dass, was a professor of psychology at Harvard University who was originally known for his controversial research program which studied the effects of psilocybin on human subjects, but later became widely recognized as an important spiritual leader of the 20th century.
Alpert was born to a prominent Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts.
His father, George Alpert, was one of Boston's most prominent lawyers as well as a railroad executive and a founder of Brandeis University.
With Harvard colleague Timothy Leary, Alpert was a guiding force in the psychedelic movement of the early 1960s, eventually winning censure and dismissal from the university with Leary as a result of the sheer fervency of their psychedelic zeal--and their practice of doling out psilocybin and LSD to curious undergraduates.
Alpert (He told me that he favors his given name again after nearly a decade and a half on the "holy man circuit" as Ram Dass) was a most engaging subject throughout the interview.
Alpert laughed and admitted that he gets the same sort of treatment from people whenever he implies that some days are good days, yes, even for holy men, and some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.
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