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| Baba Ram Dass | |
Baba Ram Dass, "who epitomized the 1960s of legend by popularizing psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary, a fellow Harvard academic, before finding spiritual inspiration in India," died December 22, the New York Times reported. He was 88. Born Richard Alpert, he went to India in 1967 and returned "as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru, Ram Dass," who "became a peripatetic lecturer on New Age possibilities and a popular author of more than a dozen inspirational books."
His first title, Be Here Now (1971), was originally issued by the Lama Foundation as loose pages in a box, but its published version went on to sell more than two million copies "and established him as an exuberant exponent of finding salvation through helping others," the Times noted.
By the 1980s, Ram Dass had shaved off his beard but left a neatly trimmed mustache. The Times wrote that he "tried to drop his Indian name--he no longer wanted to be a cult figure--but his publisher vetoed the idea.... He continued to turn out books and recordings, however. He started or helped start foundations to promote his charities, to help prisoners and to spread his message of spiritual equanimity. He made sure his books and tapes were reasonably priced."
His other books include Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying (2000); Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita (2004); Be Love Now: The Path of the Heart (2010) and Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart (2013), both with Rameshwar Das; Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service (1991) and Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying (2018), both with Mirabai Bush.
"As Ram Dass, Alpert spread the word that turning inward was far more powerful than just turning on," the Los Angeles Times wrote. "A nimble communicator who was articulate, funny and self-effacing, he became a central figure in the movement to make Eastern mysticism understandable to Western minds."
"He was the voice for applied spirituality--his life was the model," self-help author Wayne Dyer once said.