Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images. Please accept Echovita’s sincere condolences. He said he had had thousands of clandestine homosexual encounters. [26], After Alpert returned to America as Ram Dass, he stayed at the Lama Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, as a guest. Richard Alpert Obituary. Alpert also corresponded with Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba and mentioned Baba in several of his books. It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of Richard Alpert of Whitewood, South Dakota, born in Los Angeles, California, who passed away on October 6, … Over the years, Ram Dass had alternately been Mr. Leary’s disciple, enemy and, at the end, friend. With tender hearts we share that Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert) died peacefully at home in Maui on December 22, 2019 surrounded by loved ones. [12] The proceeds from the book helped sustain the Lama Foundation for several years, after which they donated the book's copyright and half its proceeds to the Hanuman Foundation in Taos. [52], In the 1990s, Ram Dass discussed his bisexuality. “Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert) died peacefully at home in Maui on December 22, 2019. He specialized in human motivation and personality development, and published his first book Identification and Child Rearing. Having returned from India as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru, Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert, became a … He invited some friends — including Mr. Alpert and the poet Allen Ginsberg — to his house in Newton, Mass., on March 5, 1961, a Saturday. By 1966, he was back in the Bay Area as a freelance researcher and lecturer living in Berkeley. "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 the fall of 1963, after visiting Mexico to sample psychedelic mushrooms, the two men and a group of followers moved to Millbrook, N.Y., finding quarters in a 64-room mansion on a 2,500-acre estate provided by Peggy Hitchcock, an heiress to the Mellon fortune. While working at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Leary had done research on psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in some species of mushrooms, and he continued the work at Harvard. The estimated amount of earnings he gave away annually ranges from $100,000 to $800,000. To live out what Ram Dass has practiced with his actions. The doctor claimed to have medicine which could help her, but Richard could not afford it and was refused aid. I’m getting closer to the end. He continued to turn out books and recordings, however. I never knew Richard Alpert. "[4] He lived on Maui and did not leave the Hawaiian Islands from 2004 until his death in 2019, after he almost died from an infection during a trip to India. He is currently living in a home on Maui, which he doesn’t own and is currently in jeopardy of losing. [2][3] He authored or co-authored twelve more books on spirituality over the next four decades, including Grist for the Mill (1977), How Can I Help? Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert, the son of Gertrude (Levin) and George Alpert, a lawyer in Boston. His father, George Alpert, a prominent lawyer, was president of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad and the first board president of Brandeis University. His father was a lawyer and an active fundraiser for Jewish causes. [53][54][55] He stated, "I've started to talk more about being bisexual, being involved with men as well as women," and added his opinion that being gay "isn't gay, and it's not not-gay, and it's not anything—it's just awareness. [4] He founded the Hanuman Foundation, a nonprofit educational and service organization that initiated the Prison-Ashram Project (now known as the Human Kindness Foundation), in 1974. (1985), and Polishing the Mirror (2013). From his home in Maui, he learned to “surf the silence” at first, he said, but over time he painstakingly reacquired a halting form of speech and was able to lecture on the internet and make tapes. [39] Ram Dass helped create the Dying Project with its Executive Director Dale Borglum, whom he had met in India. He moved into a cabin on his father’s estate in New Hampshire. His landmark 1971 book, Be Here Now, opens with his origin story: He was a successful, if anxious, professor in … His father was also one of the founders of the ‘Albert Einstein College of Medicine’ and ‘Brandeis University.’ [4] Alpert's mentor at Wesleyan, David McClelland, recommended Alpert to Stanford, where he received his PhD. to be me.”. He said, in part: "Now, I’m in my 80s ... Now, I am aging. According to an obituary in The Washington Post, Ram Dass “had a paralyzing stroke in 1997, but the immediate cause of death … During Ram Dass's visit, he presented a manuscript he had written, entitled From Bindu to Ojas. In the coming years, he founded the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. He said he realized that his 400 LSD trips had not been nearly as enlightening as his drugless spiritual epiphanies — although, he said, he continued to take one or two drug trips a year for old time’s sake. He shaved off the beard but left a neatly trimmed mustache. Mr. Leary accused Mr. Alpert of trying to seduce his 15-year-old son, Jack, whom Mr. Alpert often took care of while Mr. Leary, a single parent, traveled. [50], In 2013, Ram Dass released a memoir and summary of his teaching, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart. He started a foundation to help people use death as a journey of spiritual awakening and spoke of establishing a self-help line, “Dial-a-Death,” for this purpose. He traveled extensively giving talks and retreats and holding fundraisers for charitable causes in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Maui is healing—Maui is where Ram Dass wishes to stay for now! Mr. Alpert went to India in 1967, more as a tourist than as a pilgrim. [4][11][12] Alpert worked with the Social Relations Department, the Psychology Department, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service, where he was a therapist. Ram Dass had helped Steve Durkee (Nooruddeen Durkee) and Barbara Durkee (Asha Greer or Asha von Briesen) co-found the countercultural, spiritual community in 1967, and it had an ashram dedicated to Ram Dass's guru. Alpert was born to a prominent Jewish family in Newton, Massachusetts. “Treat everyone you meet like God in drag,” he said in one talk. DNA tests proved that Peter Reichard, a 53-year-old banker in North Carolina, was indeed Ram Dass’s son, the offspring of a liaison with a Stanford graduate student. – An Interview with Dale Borglum", "Leary Scored as 'Cop Informant' By His Son and 2 Close Friends", "Psychedelia: Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) Harvard Reunion", "Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary", "Baba Ram Dass in the realm of Visionary Artist Martina Hoffmann: in the end there's only one spirit and one humanness", "Ram Dass Interview on 'Polishing the Mirror, "Baba Ram Dass, psychedelic pioneer and New Age guru, is dead at 88", "Holy Man Sighted at Gay Porn House: Ram Dass talks about his life as the leading teacher of Eastern thought in America ... who nobody knew was gay", "Ram Dass Has a Son! [6] Alpert had a bar mitzvah but was "disappointed by its essential hollowness". I remember him well. He liked to tell the story of visiting a psychiatric hospital and meeting a patient, who said he was God. [4] After returning from a visiting professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961, Alpert devoted himself to joining Leary in experimentation with and intensive research to the potentially therapeutic effects of hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals, through their Harvard Psilocybin Project. Ram Dass later recalled that when he got off the plane in Boston — barefoot, robed and bearded — his father told him to get in the car quickly “before anyone sees you.”. Dass was personally and professionally associated with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s. [4][12][30] Co-founded in 1978 with public health leader Larry Brilliant and humanitarian activist Wavy Gravy, it has become an international health organization. He said other religions, including the Judaism that he had rejected as a young man, were as valid as the Eastern ones. In 2010, he received a letter from a man, a stranger, saying that Ram Dass might be the father of the man’s brother. For Ram Dass, God existed in everyone. [32][33][34] In addition to introducing its title phrase into common use, Be Here Now has influenced numerous other writers and yoga practitioners, including the industrialist Steve Jobs,[35] the self-help author Wayne Dyer,[36] and the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A military service at Rich… [19], 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. He tried to drop his Indian name — he no longer wanted to be a cult figure — but his publisher vetoed the idea. The Harvard work led to many articles in newspapers and magazines, but it also provoked criticism. Nevertheless, Mr. Alpert was accepted as a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford and earned his doctorate, staying on afterward to teach. “With tender hearts we share that Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert) died peacefully at home in Maui on December 22, 2019 surrounded by loved ones,” according to his official Instagram account. [39][46][47] When asked if he could sum up his life's message, he replied, "I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself to help people ... to me, that's what the emerging game is all about. Don Lattin, in his book “The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America” (2010), called the commune “a Disneyland of the Psychedelic Sixties.”. ... Death does not have to be treated as an enemy for you to delight in life. Any trip you want to take leads to the SAME place.”. In 2003, Wayne Dyer published a plea for donations for Ram Dass's support due to his declining health following the stroke, Now it is our turn … Ram Dass's body can no longer endure the rigors of travel. Ram Dass’s biggest public success came in 1971, when the Lama Foundation published “Be Here Now,” originally issuing it as loose pages in a box. ....then (as Locke) tells Ben to kill some people for himAll rights belong to ABC [5] According to Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey, Leary was dismissed for leaving Cambridge and his classes without permission or notice, and Alpert for allegedly giving psilocybin to an undergraduate. Richard Alpert, 94, died May 12, 2020. Richard Alpert was born in Boston on April 6, 1931, and was the youngest of three sons. [4] Alpert wrote his doctoral thesis on "achievement anxiety",[4] taught at Stanford for one year and began psychoanalysis. In 1968, Maharajji told him to return to the same sentence were! 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