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Ram Dass

Famous Bis

Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert, was an American spiritual teacher, former academic, clinical psychologist, and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India, his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, and for founding the charitable organizations the Seva Foundation and the Hanuman Foundation. 

Perhaps most notable was the work he did with his close friend and associate Timothy Leary, a lecturer in clinical psychology at the university. After returning from a visiting professorship at the University of California, Berkeley in 1961, Alpert devoted himself to joining Leary in experimentation with intensive research into the potentially therapeutic effects of hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals through their Harvard Psilocybin Project. In addition, Alpert assisted Harvard Divinity School graduate student Walter Pahnke in his 1962 “Good Friday Experiment” with theology students, the first controlled, double-blind study of drugs and the mystical experience.[1]

Alpert and Leary co-founded the non-profit International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) in 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in order to carry out studies in the religious use of psychedelic drugs, and were both on the board of directors.

In 1967, Alpert traveled to India where he met and traveled with the American spiritual seeker Bhagavan Das, and ultimately met the man who would become his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, at Kainchi ashram, whom Alpert called “Maharaj-ji”. It was Maharaj-ji who gave Alpert the name “Ram Dass”, which means “servant of God”.[2]

In the 1990s, Ram Dass began to discuss his bisexuality, 

Because I live among so many straight populations, I’ve started to talk more about being bisexual, being involved with men as well as women. Most of the audiences with whom I do that are people who already love me so much they couldn’t care if I turned into a frog.[3]