16 Health & Science Tuesday, December 24, 2019 Ram Dass, psychedelic drug pioneer, dies at home aged 88 WASHINGTON: Ram Dass, who in the 1960s joined ther with psilocybin, the compound that gives certain hours. “What happened in those three weeks in that Maharaj-ji to “love everyone and tell the truth.” Drugs Timothy Leary in promoting psychedelic drugs as mushrooms hallucinogenic qualities. In his first psy- house no one would ever believe, including us,” he would no longer be a major factor in Ram Dass’ life. the path to inner enlightenment before undergoing a chedelic experience, “the rug crawled and the picture wrote in “Be Here Now,” but they were not able to He wrote about his conversion in “Be Here Now,” spiritual rebirth he spelled out in the influential book smiled, all of which delighted me,” Ram Dass wrote in avoid the inevitable return to reality. which became popular in the 1960s and provided a “Be Here Now,” died at home on Sunday. He was 88 “Be Here Now.” As the hippie movement grew, Ram Dass and road map for the burgeoning New Age movement of years old. Ram Dass and Leary wanted to open the mind to a Leary were among the counterculture luminaries at spirituality. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who used “With tender hearts we share that Ram Dass deeper consciousness and conducted experiments the Human Be-in, a 1967 gathering of some 25,000 LSD in his younger years, said the book “transformed (born Richard Alpert) died peacefully at home in that included giving the drug to “jazz musicians and people in San Francisco where Leary spread his me and many of my friends” and George Harrison Maui on December 22, 2019 surrounded by loved physicists and philosophers and ministers and junkies “turn on, tune in, drop out” credo. Poets such as used the title and general philosophy for one of his ones,” according to his official Instagram account. and graduate students and social scientists.” Ginsberg and Michael McClure, anti-war activists post-Beatles songs. “I was a sort of spiritual uncle to “He was a guide for thousands seeking to discover Afterward, they had them fill out questionnaires about Dick Gregory and Jerry Rubin and rock acts Janis a movement - to a consciousness movement bringing or reclaim their spiritual identity beyond or within their experiences. Joplin, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane also the East and West together,” Ram Dass told the San institutional religion.” Ram Dass said the subjects found bliss, heightened took part. Francisco Chronicle in 2004. The man who would become a serene, smiling physical senses, accelerated thought processes, a Ram Dass spread his interpretation of Eastern phi- forerunner of the New Age movement and play a relaxing of biases and hallucinatory experiences, such Enlightenment in India losophy as an author and lecturer, advising acolytes leading role in bringing Eastern spirituality to the as seeing God. Ram Dass and Leary began including In search for a more permanent enlightenment, lat- to be loving (“we’re all just walking each other home”) West grew up as Richard Alpert in a Jewish family in the hallucinogenic drug LSD, which like psilocybin er that year Ram Dass went to India, as members of and to sublimate the ego for the sake of the soul (“the Newton, Massachusetts. was legal at the time, in their experiments but Harvard the Beatles would in 1968. He found what he was quieter you become, the more you can hear”). In 1978 He considered himself an atheist, and after gradu- was upset that they were using students as subjects looking for in the form of Hindu mystic Neem Karoli Ram Dass co-founded the Seva Foundation, a charity ating from Tufts University and earning a PhD from and fired them in 1963. Baba, also known as Maharaj-ji. Alpert said that to fight blindness and other health problems around Stanford University, was an up-and-coming psychol- The two former professors later moved to a man- through Maharaj-ji he found a spiritual love deeper the world. ogy professor and researcher at Harvard University in sion in Millbrook, New York, made available to them than anything he had experienced. Ram Dass suffered a near-fatal stroke in 1997 the early 1960s. by heirs to the fortune of industrialist Andrew Mellon, Ram Dass had taken a batch of LSD with him to that partially paralyzed him and hampered his Ram Dass would later describe himself at the time and continued their experimentation there. Anti-war India to share with holy men in order to get their speaking ability but left him feeling more compas- as a driven “anxiety-neurotic” who had an abundance protest leader Abbie Hoffman and Beat Generation opinion of it. At Maharaj-ji’s request, Ram Dass gave sionate and humble. In 2007 he moved to Hawaii of knowledge but lacked wisdom. Things began to writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were among him a super-sized dose of LSD but said there was no and used the internet to deliver lectures. In his later change when Leary joined the Harvard faculty and those who dropped in. discernable effect on him, nor was there three years years he focused on aging and dying without fear. the two became close friends. In an effort to avoid the disappointment of “coming later when they repeated the experiment. “(I’m) an uncle to the Baby Boomers, teaching them He had been introduced to marijuana in 1955 by his down” from a drug experience, Ram Dass said he and The guru gave him the name Ram Dass, which about illness and aging,” he told the San Francisco first patient while working as a health services coun- five others locked themselves in a building at the means servant of God, and he returned to the United Chronicle in 2004. “Not to be frightened of aging. selor at Stanford University but Leary took him far- estate for three weeks and took LSD every four States with long hair, a beard and instructions from That it’s OK.” — Reuters