Ram Dass

Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert in 1931 to a Jewish family in Newton, Massachusetts, traveled one of the more unusual roads to spiritual teaching represented in this carousel: from a Stanford-trained clinical psychologist and Harvard professor conducting controversial early research into psychedelic drugs, to a wandering seeker in India, to the author of "Be Here Now," a book that introduced more Western readers to Eastern spirituality in the early 1970s than perhaps any other single text of its era.

Harvard, Timothy Leary, and expulsion

Alpert built a conventional and genuinely impressive early academic career, earning degrees from Tufts, Wesleyan and Stanford before taking a position as an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard, where he began collaborating with fellow psychologist Timothy Leary on research into the therapeutic and consciousness-altering effects of psilocybin and LSD. Their work — including involvement in the controversial 1962 "Good Friday Experiment" examining psychedelics and mystical experience among theology students — proved too disruptive for Harvard's administration, and both Alpert and Leary were dismissed from the university in 1963 amid the escalating controversy surrounding their methods.

Millbrook and the search for something beyond the drug experience

Following their dismissal, Alpert and Leary established a communal research center at the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, continuing to explore altered states of consciousness through what became known as the Castalia Foundation. Despite years of profound psychedelic experiences, Alpert found himself, by his own later account, frequently unhappy and increasingly convinced that chemically induced states, however powerful, were not by themselves delivering the lasting spiritual transformation he was seeking — a dissatisfaction that eventually sent him traveling to India in 1967 in search of something more durable.

Meeting Neem Karoli Baba

In the foothills of the Himalayas, Alpert met an American expatriate seeker, Bhagavan Das, who led him to the wandering Hindu saint Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known to devotees as Maharaj-ji. Their first meeting became one of the most frequently retold episodes in modern spiritual literature: without any prior information having been shared, the smiling guru asked Alpert whether he had been thinking about his mother the previous night, and whether she had died of spleen cancer — an event Alpert had told no one about during his journey. Profoundly shaken by this apparent knowledge, Alpert became Neem Karoli Baba's devoted student, spending months in disciplined silence and yogic training before his guru gave him the name Ram Dass, "servant of God," directing him specifically toward the practices of bhakti (loving devotion), meditation and karma yoga, selfless service.

"Be Here Now" and its cultural impact

Returning to the United States, Ram Dass began teaching what he had learned, and in 1971 published "Be Here Now" through the Lama Foundation — part memoir, part illustrated manual of yoga and meditation practice, written in accessible, engaging language for readers with no prior background in Eastern spiritual traditions. The book sold more than two million copies, remained continuously in print for decades, and became, for a generation of Western seekers coming of age in the countercultural 1960s and 70s, one of the primary entry points into serious engagement with Hindu and Buddhist spiritual practice — a role in popularizing Eastern spirituality in the West comparable in scale to figures such as Paramahansa Yogananda a generation earlier.

A life dedicated to service

Beyond his writing and teaching, Ram Dass built an extensive record of practical humanitarian work, founding the Hanuman Foundation — whose Prison-Ashram Project brought meditation and spiritual practice to incarcerated people — and co-founding the Seva Foundation, which has worked to prevent and treat blindness in developing countries, along with the Lama Foundation and the Neem Karoli Baba Ashram in Taos, New Mexico. After a severe stroke, he spent his remaining years based in Maui, continuing to write, teach and hold retreats until his death on December 22, 2019, having authored numerous further books including "Still Here," "Polishing the Mirror," and "Walking Each Other Home," each continuing to explore themes of presence, service and devotion first introduced to a mass audience nearly five decades earlier.