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