Managed profile Not claimed by Ram Dass

Ram Dass has not joined FLAPSS and has not endorsed it. This page is a reference record assembled from published interviews and public remarks. Every answer below is a direct quotation with the source and date shown next to it.

Is this you, or is something wrong?

RD

Ram Dass

Spiritual teacher and author

United States · 1931–2019

American teacher and writer, born Richard Alpert, who was dismissed from Harvard's psychology faculty in 1963 over the psilocybin research he ran with Timothy Leary, travelled to India, and returned as the author of Be Here Now. He spent decades sitting with the dying and helped found the Living Dying Project. In February 1997 a cerebral haemorrhage left him partly paralysed and aphasic; he lived and taught from a wheelchair for twenty-two more years, and died in Maui in December 2019.

5 answers 0 followers reference

Question What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? Values & belief read 8 other answers →
The stroke cut out a lot of my external trips: my sports car and golf and my cello. This [ points to hand ] is just not much use with a cello, and I was—forced inside, and finding myself living in my inside. And that has made me be part of my soul. And that's perceiving my incarnation from here [ points to heart ], rather than from here [ points to head ]. And since this is words, I start from here, go over there.

Recorded Ross Simonini, The Believer, issue 115, by Skype from Hawaii, 20 November 2017 source ↗

Question What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Time & hindsight read 80 other answers →
Well, I—I've experienced that the stroke was grace. It was grace, for me, to play, to get inside, grace. I was dependent. These are things that I—those, those were graceful things. You know, pushed. And just go inside, to be—you're a quote "author" and it's a cultural thing, that role, to get into your head. But it's a head game. It's a head game. And I wanted to get down to my spiritual identity. And the stroke placed me at the spiritual identity.

Recorded Ross Simonini, The Believer, issue 115, by Skype from Hawaii, 20 November 2017 source ↗

Question What single thing would improve the quality of your life? Daily life read 51 other answers →
This is why I could speak the way I did yesterday. In California, the stroke is incredible grace because it gives me a prescription to buy pot. ... Pot takes away the pain and frees me from spasticity. ... The marijuana gives me soul perspective. It makes the stroke livable.

Recorded Sara Davidson, The New York Times Magazine, at the Hyatt Regency, San Francisco, 21 May 2000 source ↗

Question What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? Failure & regret read 30 other answers →
everyone saw me as a victim of a terrible illness. But what happened to my body was far less frightening than what happened to my soul. The stroke wiped out my faith. It took me so far from my guru that I felt my oxygen cord had been cut. ... I couldn't put the two together. Then I thought, maybe the stroke is a form of grace, and I hunted for that: how could the stroke be seen as grace? ... The stroke was giving me lessons, advanced lessons. ... It brought me into my soul, and that's grace.

Recorded Sara Davidson, Keynote talk at a conference on body and soul, Hyatt Regency, San Francisco, reported in the New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, 21 May 2000 source ↗

Every quotation above is reproduced from the source shown beside it and has not been edited. Ram Dass did not write these answers for FLAPSS. Request a correction or removal.