Descriptions of practices here are historical and educational, not personal instruction or health advice.
Life
Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert in Boston and became a psychology professor at Harvard. In the early 1960s he and Timothy Leary ran research with psilocybin and LSD, and both were dismissed from Harvard in 1963; this period is part of the history of psychedelic research and is described here as history, not as a recommendation. In 1967 he travelled to India and met the Hindu teacher Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji), who gave him the name Ram Dass, 'servant of God'. Be Here Now (1971), a hand-lettered mix of memoir and devotional teaching, became one of the most widely read spiritual books of its time. He co-founded the Seva Foundation and taught service, devotion (bhakti) and meditation. A severe stroke in 1997 left him with aphasia; he later wrote Still Here about ageing, and spent his last years on Maui.
The system
- Be here now: attention to the present as the ground of spiritual life.
- Bhakti (devotion) and seva (service) as paths, alongside meditation.
- Ageing, illness and dying as part of practice rather than failures.
- 'We're all just walking each other home': compassion as the long-term practice.
Key works
- Be Here Now (1971) Amazon
- Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying (2000) Amazon
- Polishing the Mirror (2013) Amazon
- Walking Each Other Home (2018, with Mirabai Bush) Amazon
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Where to start
- Be Here Now for the classic; Polishing the Mirror is a clearer, more practical later summary.
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