5 Ram Dass Sayings That Sum Up the Spiritual Path
He was a great soul who “got it.”
Ram Dass captivated an entire generation of spiritual seekers back in the 1960s and 1970s, a period of intense cultural turbulence. His Be Here Now, published in 1971, is in any conversation of the most influential spiritual books of the past 100 years. It’s a must-read for anybody interested in spiritual growth (here’s the Amazon link.)
Born Richard Alpert in Boston in 1931, he had a privileged upbringing as the son of a railroad president. Academic success led to teaching stints at Stanford and Harvard. It was in the early 1960s at Harvard that Ram Dass famously (infamously?) teamed up with Timothy Leary to study how psychedelic drugs (chiefly psilocybin and LSD) could deepen one’s understanding of consciousness.
India beckons
After becoming disillusioned with Leary’s approach to psychedelics, Ram Dass went to India in search of a greater understanding of his inner world. It was there, in 1967, that he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him the name Ram Dass (meaning ‘servant of Ram,’ a Hindu deity). He devoted the rest of his life to spiritual teachings, dying in 2019 at age 88.
Ram Dass resonated with so many people, especially Americans, because of his highly relatable persona and language…
