Pubdate: Sat, 03 May 2003
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2003, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Elizabeth Bromstein

A LONG, STRANGE TRIP

Baba Ram Dass Helped A Generation Find Enlightenment By Dosing Its Members 
With Hallucinogens And A Live-In-The-Present Philosophy. Now, Writes 
Elizabeth Bromstein, He's Pondering The Uncertainty Of The Future

Mention the name Ram Dass these days and you're likely to be met with a 
blank stare. Some people might pause for a moment and mutter, "Ram Dass . . 
. Ram Dass . . . I know I've heard the name . . ."

You can forgive the look that suggests they're contemplating an acid 
flashback -- Ram Dass's name has been linked with hallucinogenic drugs 
since the 1960s, when he and Timothy Leary conducted their legendary 
mind-expanding tests with Harvard University students and together set the 
wheels in motion for the psychedelic age.

The Jewish academic-turned-mystic-and-guru became the countercultural It 
boy of the late '60s and early '70s after he returned from an 
enlightenment-seeking trip to India and brought back a message about the 
importance of consciously living in the present -- a philosophy that earned 
him the adulation of the love generation. Some time around the onset of 
1980s consumerism, he slipped out of the Zeitgeist. But the man famous for 
his Eastern-based Be Here Now approach is still probing life's mysteries, 
and still aiming to connect with the generation that once adored him.

Today, Ram Dass describes himself as "an uncle" to the boomers. And like 
them, the aging spiritual teacher is increasingly interested in the issues 
that arise as you edge past middle age and head closer toward the end of 
life. "I'm mapping the terrain of aging and death," he says on the phone 
from California, before embarking on a speaking tour that will bring him to 
Toronto tomorrow for a public appearance and screening of a new documentary 
about his life called Fierce Grace by Mickey Lemle.

One of the reasons for Ram Dass's preoccupation with death and aging is 
obvious: He suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage in 1997 that nearly 
killed him.

Six years later, the rehabilitation process still under way, he is confined 
to a wheelchair and suffers from aphasia, an impairment of the ability to 
find words. His mind is clear, but his speech is slow and halting, 
interrupted by long pauses. He describes his head as a "bombed-out dressing 
room," where his concepts become "clothed" in words. The clothes are in the 
closet, but he can't open the door.

It seems a cruel irony that a man who was once known as a brilliant speaker 
and maestro of wordplay is reduced to expressing himself through roundabout 
metaphors and sentences that trail off. But despite his difficulty 
speaking, he comes across on the phone as inexhaustibly patient and focused.

The stroke was a blow to his ego, he says, bringing up a subject that has 
often been central in his work. His 1971 book Be Here Now explored the 
importance of quieting the mind and transcending ego so "you can hear how 
it really is, so when you are with a candle flame you are the candle flame 
and when you are with another being's mind you are the other being's mind. 
When there is a task to do you are the task."

But we all struggle with ego. Even Ram Dass, forever trying to be honest 
about his own shortcomings, has admitted to having a big one. So it was 
only after the stroke happened -- and he was forced to live closer to the 
"soul level" than the "ego level" -- that he finally allowed Mickey Lemle 
to make the film. Mr. Lemle had been after him for a while to make a movie 
documenting his life.

"I figured it's a dharmic film," Ram Dass says. "That's why I did it. It 
was after I got over thinking about this film being about me that I could 
do it. I was just a participant."

So the documentary about Ram Dass is not about Ram Dass?

"No. He transformed me into a saint, and that's Mickey's take on me. It was 
60 hours of film from which this film became an hour and a half. So the 
things that are on the cutting room floor are me."

What's left is a documentation of his recovery process -- with its 
"suffering and pain and death and spirit" -- and some fascinating archival 
footage.

Ram Dass -- whose family name was Richard Alpert -- was born into a wealthy 
Jewish family in 1931. He received an MA from Wesleyan University and a PhD 
from Stanford. In 1958, he scored a position at Harvard, where he began the 
now legendary drug research project with Mr. Leary. The tests mainly 
involved psilocybin (a synthetic version of magic mushrooms), which they 
administered to about 200 people and monitored its effects. "We gave it to 
jazz musicians and physicists and philosophers and ministers and junkies 
and graduate students and social scientists," Ram Dass wrote in Be Here Now.

Interest in hallucinogens began to peak on campus, and students started 
trying to get their hands on the "consciousness-expanding materials" (which 
weren't technically illegal substances at the time). Mr. Leary and Mr. 
Alpert were dismissed from Harvard in 1963, charged with breaching an 
agreement not to administer the drugs to undergraduates.

Undaunted, they set up shop with private funding in a 50-plus room mansion 
in Millbrook, N.Y. Over several years, many Sixties icons came to share in 
the psychedelic experience -- Abbie Hoffman, Aldous Huxley, William 
Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. If you weren't tripping at Millbrook, you were 
nobody.

Mr. Leary continued down the psychedelic path and then onto a technological 
one, eventually adding "cyber guru" to his resume before broadcasting 
moments leading up to his death on the Internet and then having his ashes 
shot out into space alongside those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

Mr. Alpert eventually became disillusioned with psychedelics and in 1967, 
he set out for India. But he has fond memories of his friend, whom he 
describes as his first guru. "He took me from a social scientist into a 
mystic," he says. "We had a lot of fun. We were adventurers. We were, like, 
riding on the African Queen."

He met his second guru, Neem Karoli Baba, in India. At one point during the 
time they spent together, the spiritual leader expressed an interest in 
trying some of the pills his student kept in his backpack. Neem Karoli took 
915 micrograms of LSD, a massive dose for a first-timer, but the drug had 
no effect on him. The feat convinced Mr. Alpert that his guru was already 
living in an expanded state of consciousness and that psychedelics were not 
necessarily the only route to enlightenment.

Mr. Alpert returned from India with the name his guru had given him, Ram 
Dass, or "Student of God." His guru had told him to "serve people" and 
"feed people." Ram Dass would feed their minds and teach compassion. Most 
importantly, he would teach them to "be here now," to live absolutely in 
the present and not get dragged down by memories of the past or fantasies 
of the future.

The book Be Here Now chronicled his transformation from "neurotic Jewish 
overachiever" to spiritual teacher. Some of it may seem inane and silly -- 
your basic Idiot's Guide to Eastern Philosophies -- but the title sold two 
million copies and set hordes of hippies on a new path in search of 
enlightenment. They flocked in droves to be near Ram Dass, camping out at 
his family property in New England.

"Get those hippies off my lawn," his father, George, is seen commanding in 
archival footage in Fierce Grace. But the followers stayed, and George 
eventually warmed to them.

Today, Ram Dass's message is one of awareness and acceptance -- especially 
of suffering. Referring to his own physical condition, he says that it's 
okay that he "was stroked." Suffering should be embraced, he says, since it 
brings us closer to God.

And all suffering, he says, is common suffering. His is no different from 
yours. "When Sept. 11 came, I went to New York and I said, 'This is like my 
stroke. This is fierce grace.'

"If you can, in your perception, deal with dying without negative emotions 
then you can see the grace."

Ram Dass has shown the "grace" over the years by attending to the 
terminally ill and offering spiritual support and care. Through the Hanuman 
Foundation -- which he's a founder of -- he has developed initiatives like 
the Prison Ashram Project, designed to help inmates grow spiritually during 
incarceration, and the Living/Dying Project, conceived as a "spiritual 
support structure for conscious dying" -- the concept of bringing 
consciousness and awareness to death.

He has also published several other books, including Still Here: Embracing 
Aging, Changing and Dying, a guide to facing the autumn years. None has 
generated the same level of sales or attention as Be Here Now did. Gurus 
just don't get the kind of appreciation they used to.

He also co-founded the Seva Foundation, a project to establish sustainable 
eye care programs in developing countries (proceeds from his current tour 
benefit Seva).

Between pursuing these interests and undergoing physical therapy, Ram Dass 
also offers spiritual counsel. He always has been, in some form or another, 
a teacher.

"People consider me a guru," he says, "but I don't know, because a teacher 
points the way, and a guru is the way, so I guess I'm not a guru.

"I'm a teacher."

Elizabeth Bromstein is a Toronto freelance writer.

Lessons from Ram Dass

Be Here Now . . . is a spiritual method. When you are in the moment, the 
moment is -- it's like baklava -- it's got planes of consciousness. Just 
this moment -- this moment. Just take the moment and go into it and you go 
into a place in your own being where you are God.

If you surrender your ego and you're sure you've done it, you can have your 
ego back, because your ego is the plaything of the soul; because the soul 
makes the ego, just as God makes the soul. These three levels are three 
planes of consciousness.

Those of us who are aging have memory problems. But you know what? That's 
just a clue that you don't need that memory any more. Souls don't have 
memories, they live only in the present. Ego is what can't stand a memory 
loss. Soul is only a moment, being in the moment. Keep in the soul, and you 
will meet so many interesting people.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

One time I had the opportunity to visit a mental asylum. I met a patient 
there who told me he was God. I said to him: 'So am I.' He was quite upset 
because he wanted to be the only one.

You see, we all want to be God. But the fact is we all are God.

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

Sources: Pacific Sun, Guerrilla News Network, Prophets Conference Web site
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