Though he was having difficulty articulating his thoughts on the day he spoke to me from his home in Maui, his intended meaning was perfectly clear at all times. So long, Richard Alpert hello, Ram Dass.Ī stroke that Ram Dass sustained in 1997 left him with partial paralysis and expressive aphasia, which dramatically limits his ability to access words. The guru’s baffling stunt sent Alpert into a fit of sobbing that lasted for two days. At first mistrustful of the old man in a blanket, he had his mind and heart blown wide open when Maharaj-ji voiced the private contents of Alpert’s psyche, including the circumstances of his mother’s death. As told in the spellbinding “Journey: The Transformation” section of Be Here Now, Richard Alpert first encountered Maharaj-ji while wandering through India in 1967. Ram Dass erupts in laughter at the allusion to his reputedly omniscient guru, Neem Karoli Baba (known to his devotees as Maharaj-ji).
“I can’t hide anything from you this way! This must be how you felt sitting in front of Maharaj-ji!” “I’m used to doing my interviews by phone,” I confess. Under the name of Ram Dass, he has become one of the world’s most beloved spiritual figures.īy way of introduction, I present the holy man with an offering of humor.
SAY ANYTHING QUOTES SOULMAN SERIES
While there, he underwent a series of extraordinary experiences that transformed him into an adherent of bhakti (devotional) yoga. Eventually tiring of his least favorite effect of psychedelic drugs-namely, their tendency to wear off after several hours-he journeyed to India in search of consciousness expansion methods that might yield more lasting results. After he and his comrade Timothy Leary were fired from the Harvard faculty for their controversial research on the effects of the psychoactive compound psilocybin, Alpert played a crucial part in launching the psychedelic revolution of the ’60s. The 82-year-old yogi beaming at me through my computer screen was once a rich, prestigious psychology professor known as Richard Alpert. Hearing its core sentiment echoed in the present moment, I feel as though the writer has just handed me his calling card. That well-loved volume illuminated various principles of Eastern mysticism in a funny, informal style, resonating so deeply with America’s counterculture that at one point, the only metaphysical book outselling it was the Bible. Intentionally or not, the last two words of Ram Dass’ question come off as a reference to his best-known printed work, 1971’s Be Here Now. Some initial audio trouble has just been resolved, and the famed spiritual teacher’s voice has materialized from my laptop, kicking off our Skype session with an unforgettable opening line: Ram Dass has spoken four words to me so far, and the cosmic humor has already begun to flow.
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