Ram Dass On Timothy Leary &
Birth of A Psychedelic Culture

Attend a retreat with Ram Dass and friends in Maui this August and December.

Ram Dass was born in 1933 as Richard Alpert, the son of a prominent lawyer, who was on track to become a prominent psychologist and Harvard professor. Alpert's explorations of human consciousness led him to conduct intensive research with LSD (then a legal drug) and other psychedelics in collaboration with colleagues Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and others. Over growing controvery Alpert and Leary left Harvard in 1963 and continued their research independently.

Alpert traveled to India in 1967 where he met his spiritual teacher, Neem Karoli Baba, or as he is better known in the West, Maharaj-ji. Under Maharaj-ji's guidance, Alpert studied yoga and meditation and received the name Ram Dass, or "servant of God." Ram Dass has since developed many projects, most notably the "Living Dying Project," which provides support for the conscious dying, and the Seva Foundation ("service," in Sanskrit), an international organization dedicated to relieving suffering in the world.

An eloquent writer, Ram Dass's most popular book is Be Here Now, which sold over two million copies and became a catch-phrase for the 70's spiritual movement. More recently, in Still Here, Ram Dass made poignant revelations about growing older and overcoming illness. Ram Dass is universally admired for his unflinching honesty, his "fierce grace," in facing adversity. Those who know him best, however, recognize him first and foremost as a dear soul who has learned the secret of manifesting unconditional love. Ram Dass only seems to get better with age! Read on to see how Ram Dass graciously offered me a healing mantra during course of this interview. Then try it for yourself!

—Bart Brodsky 

Bart Brodsky: We talked about 5 years ago following the release of a previous book, Still Here. You wrote about illness and adversity following a stroke. I'm told that you're now walking and swimming. How are you doing?

Ram Dass: I am that! My speech is better. I can walk pretty well. I swim in the pool and I rarely walk with a cane.

BB: I was impressed that your spirit was absolutely undiminished when we last spoke. In fact, it seemed that there was a light that shined through. Do you feel better? The same?

RD: I'll tell you, I think, first of all, I'm pretty content. And this living in Maui and being content and not being in a rush to "get there," I don't do any flying. It's healing.

BB: It sounds like that's a good takeaway for all of us, not to be rushing too much.

RD: Yeah. I'm at least a model for aged people, because I think our aged people do too much of the "comparing" their past with their present. Like they're "retired." Well, I don't think I'm retired. That's something about the past.

BB: You're certainly active! Later we'll talk about your upcoming event in Maui. First, regarding the new book, Birth of A Psychedelic Culture, you and Ralph Metzner have documented your work and your times with Tim Leary in the early 60s. With the perspective of over 40 years now, are there any misconceptions about Tim that you want to clear up, for the record?

RD: The public outrage about drugs! I think Tim was an impressively accurate scientist, and he was compassionate. Then I saw [another] book that came out about Tim, a biography that was very cutting. I think that Tim was a rascal, and rascals are fun. I don't like scoundrels, but I don't mind rascals.

BB: (laughs) To me, the 60s were about freedom, about personal and political experimentation. Do you think that Tim's very public advocacy of psychedelics—his kind of "rascal" nature—in some way diluted the subtler message of raising consciousness and transformation?

RD: Well, I think publicity built that tremendously. I think that Tim was very eager to have everybody have this experience, and we went through scientists and musicians and poets. We were just trying to see what would happen to each person when they designed their own "trip."

BB: And Birth of A Psychedelic Culture reads like a Who's Who of arts and sciences in the 60s.

RD: That's part of it, I think, but we wanted to— people like Aldous [Huxley] wanted to calm Tim down, because he wanted psychedelics to be available [only] to intellectuals. Then there were doctors who wanted it available only to doctors. I think Tim just recognized these plants were placed by God for everybody.

BB: There's a democratic element to consciousness and transformation, don't you think?

RD: Yes. And, you know, there was a side of Tim that was very rebellious against authority.

BB: That was part of the zeitgeist of the 60s.

RD: Well, I didn't participate in it!

BB: (laughs)

RD: These tools were for everybody, including social activists. Again, I don't think the 60s would be the 60s without Tim.

BB: You wrote a very compelling book called Be Here Now. I always resonated with that message. For me it meant, "pay attention," and "stay involved." Was that in any way a reaction or an answer to Tim's slogan, "Turn on, tune in, drop out"?

RD: Well, Be Here Now came out before Tim's slogan. I wanted to get rid of [it] because he was daring the [authorities]. You know, Tim was responsible for the Republican swing after the 60s.

BB: Yes, they used Tim as kind of a whipping boy, "the most dangerous man in America" according to Richard Nixon. Talk about ironies!

(both laugh)

RD: I know it! Look who's talking!

BB: After one of your trips to India you decided that psychedelics weren't enough, and you found deeper answers in a spiritual discipline. I know you've written about it, but can you give us a brief recap here?

RD: I'll tell you. Three years previous to that Tim went to India on his honeymoon and Allen [Ginsberg] went to India, and Ralph went to India. I didn't see anything to it, but I kept looking at the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which Audous had given us, which we then transformed into The Psychedelic Experience.

BB: Yes.

RD: I thought, well, gee, if those people— I got turned on. The way it happened was that Saturday night I had an LSD trip and I couldn't tell anybody because it was so unusual. And the next Tuesday that book came across my desk. And I opened the book and there was the description of "the psychedelic experience." And I realized that we were experiencing the death process. And furthermore, how much [more] the Easterners knew, because they could describe that experience for me that I was experiencing. And Western psychology couldn't do that at all.

BB: The experience of death and rebirth?

RD: Yes. And the Atman. The one in the many. And here we were playing with things that we didn't know psychologically what we were talking about.

BB: Because you didn't have the words or the constructs for them?

RD: Yes. And—if they all wanted to go to India I might as well go. And [entrepreneur] David Padwa invited me to go. And he was going to deliver a Land Rover to Teheran. We were going to go across to India. And I took that trip [to] find out somebody who knew the inner workings of consciousness. And that's when I met my guru. Here I was a Buddhist, an anal retentive Buddhist—

BB: (laughs)

RD: And the whole Hindu thing [to me] was many gods and goddesses, stone images and terrible loud speakers at the temples and calendar art, and I didn't want it. When [California born yogi] Bhagavan Das said he was going to his guru, I went completely against my better judgment. And when I saw the guru I was skeptical. And then he read my mind and then he gave me unconditional love. And that's what knocked me out, because I hadn't gotten unconditional love. My parents loved me for being a good boy. Everybody loved me for their purposes.

BB: Wow! Gotcha!

RD: The interesting thing was, after that meeting, for a couple years, I thought he had read my mind. And that was the way he softened my mind up. And then the love just melted me. And I was supposed to come back to America right after that visit. And six months later I hadn't budged. And I just felt that it was home.

BB: And from what I've seen, you've learned many of these techniques and you can bestow unconditional love to others now.

RD: Well, yes. They all tell me that they receive it—

(both laugh)

BB: I was going to ask you about the modalities you use, but is that even an appropriate question? It's beyond "method," isn't it?

RD: It's beyond method—well, it's changing my identification from the ego to the soul. And then, as I look at people, they all seem like souls to me. And I've changed my identification from my head, the ego, the "thought" of who I am, to the heart, which is really a sort of awareness, loving awareness. And then it's changing from a worldly identification to a spiritual identification.

BB: I feel it powerfully in this conversation, right now. Is this a teachable thing? Can you teach me—or a participant in your workshop—to do this?

RD: Yes. In your heart area, in the middle of the heart area, right in the middle of the chest, you concentrate on that. You repeat the phrase, "I am loving awareness. I am loving awareness. I am loving awareness." You're aware of what your eyes see and what your ears hear, but you're also aware of the steam of thoughts coming out of your mind. And it saves you from identifying with the thoughts. They become objects, not subject.

BB: (pause) You truly do manifest a heart-based, emotion-based therapy. I want to thank you for the time you've taken today. In this brief conversation you've brought me out of my head, into my heart. I'm even breathing differently!

RD: (hearty laugh)

BB: Is there anything that I haven't asked that you'd like to say to your friends and admirers in Northern California?

RD: Tell them, "They are a Soul."

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