Ram Dass & Huston Smith

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One day in Katmandu, Alpert, then thirty-five, met a long-haired beanpole from Laguna Beach, California, named Bhagavan Das. As surfer dued Michael Riggs, he had tasted cosmic consciousness in the early 1960s while floating on the ocean. After high school he traveled to Europe and, having figured out that “it was an inside job, and I needed to find that inner connection,” he hitchhiked to India. He lived in caves, visited ashrams, and went on pilgrimages. One day, in a small temple on the lower slopes of the Himalayas, he met a sadhu who touched him on the head. “It was like he knocked my brains into my heart,” Bhagavan Das would recall. He had found his guru, Neem Karoli Baba.

At the same time, Maharaji, as devoteed called him, was probably in his mid sixties. In his photos he looks like a combination of the bald, grizzled Sean Connery and the Ben Kingsley of Gandhi – wise, kind, somewhat mischievous, and a little on a crusty side. It is said that something during gatherings he would sit in silence, while at others he would pour forth trenchant teaching stories, exaltations of love, goofball gossip, and foul mouthed putdowns. A bhakti yogi, the only sadhana he gave to disciples was devotional chanting and service to others. For those who wanted to learn meditation and other yogic practices he had to referral service of sorts.

Bhagavan Das took his new friend to meet his guru. The highlights of Alpert’s encounter with Neem Karoli Baba are now part of spiritual lore: the aging sadhu who owned nothing blew the mind of the spoiled Ivy Leaguer by knowing things about him he couldn’t possibly have known; the scientist fed the guileless guru a huge dose of LSD and watched incredulously as nothing happened; the ice of scientific skepticism melted in the white heat of unconditional love. Instead of leaving India two days later, as scheduled, he stayed five more months, soaking up his guru’s darshan and learning about Vedanta and Yoga.

He returned to States in 1968, bearded, beaded, berobed, and redubbed Baba Ram Dass. Ram Dass means “servant of God”, and he served God and Guru as a kind of Pied Piper, turning on the turned on generation to an ancient path of liberation, spinning tales, cracking jokes, and expounding Vedanta Yoga at satsangs and retreats. ……………

A Ram Dass road show materialized, complete with tour manager and kirtan band. Part Himalayas, part Harvard Yard, part vaudeville, it was a huge hit, and not just with the hippies. “It was as if the whole culture was waiting to be turned on by the East,” Ram Dass said. His academic credentials made him a perfect crossover figure, especially among psychologists. Despite all the hoopla, or maybe because of it, he made regular visits to his guru for “heart to heart resuscitation.”

In 1971 Ram Dass published the iconic ‘Be Here Now”. It contained an autobiographical overview, a how-to ‘cookbook’ with a variety of yogic practices, cogent quotes from the wisdom traditions, advise for living more consciously in the world, a fourteen page list of recommended books, and the famous brown pages. Read by turning the book sideways, it’s the print equivalent of an extended jazz solo, with the lyrics, so to speak, juiced up of pen-and-ink drawings. To be sur, a lot of hippies took the injunction to “be here now” as an excuse for self-indulgence: if it feels good, do it – now. But many understood what it really was: an invitation to discover eternal, ever-present Being through spiritual practice. The square-shaped book has sold more than two and a half million copies. ~ Pages 225 to 227 (American Veda – Philip Goldberg)