I was close to death, and I didn't rush into my spirit. I spent the time in the hospital just looking at the pipes on the ceiling. ... I failed because this was a trauma, a trauma, and I'm not reacting to it spiritually.
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.
RD
Ram Dass
Spiritual teacher and author
United States · 1931–2019
Arts and letters
About
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
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.