Jump to navigation Jump to search «Richard Alpert» redirects here. American spiritual teacher, former academic and clinical psychologist, and author of many books, including anti gravity yoga northampton seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. Richard Alpert was born to a Jewish family in Newton, Massachusetts.
His father, George Alpert, was a lawyer in Boston. While Alpert did have a bar mitzvah, he was «disappointed by its essential hollowness». Alpert attended the Williston Northampton School, graduating in 1948 as a part of the Cum Laude Association. 1962 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in order to carry out studies in the religious use of psychedelic drugs, and were both on the board of directors.
In 1963 Alpert, Leary, and their followers moved to the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook, New York, after IFIF’s New York City branch director and Mellon fortune heiress Peggy Hitchcock arranged for her brother Billy to rent the estate to IFIF. Alpert and Leary continued on to co-author a book entitled The Psychedelic Experience with Ralph Metzner, based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and it was published in 1964. In 1967 Alpert gave talks at the League for Spiritual Discovery’s center in Greenwich Village. In 1967 Alpert traveled to India where he met and traveled with the American spiritual seeker Bhagavan Das, and ultimately met the man who would become his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, at Kainchi ashram, whom Alpert called «Maharaj-ji».
After Alpert returned to America as Ram Dass, he stayed at the Lama Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, as a guest. During the 1970s, Ram Dass was focused on teaching, writing, and working with foundations. In the early 1970s, Ram Dass taught workshops on conscious aging and dying around the United States. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was one of his students. The Love Serve Remember Foundation was organized to preserve and continue the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba and Ram Dass. Ram Dass also serves on the faculty of the Metta Institute where he provides training on mindful and compassionate care of the dying.
Over the course of his life since the inception of his Hanuman Foundation, Ram Dass has given all of his book royalties and profits from teaching to his foundation and other charitable causes. At 60 years of age, Ram Dass began exploring Judaism seriously for the first time. My belief is that I wasn’t born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that», he says. From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it’s got you. In February 1997, Ram Dass had a stroke that left him with expressive aphasia, which he interprets as an act of grace. Ram Dass’ body can no longer endure the rigors of travel.
He has come to Maui, where I live and write. In 2013, Ram Dass released a memoir and summary of his teaching, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart. In an interview about the book, at age 82, he said that his earlier reflections about facing old age and death now seem naive to him. I’m getting closer to the end. Now, I really am ready to face the music all around me. In the 1990s, Ram Dass discussed his bisexuality while avoiding labels.