23 Facts About Ram Dass

Ram Dass's best-selling 1971 book Be Here Now, which has been described by multiple reviewers as "seminal", helped popularize Eastern spirituality and yoga in the West.

Ram Dass was personally and professionally associated with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s.

In 1967, Alpert traveled to India and became a disciple of Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba who gave him the name Ram Dass, meaning "Servant of Ram," but usually rendered as simply "Servant of God" for western audiences.

Ram Dass traveled extensively giving talks and retreats and holding fundraisers for charitable causes in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

Ram Dass eventually grew to interpret this event as an act of grace, learning to speak again and continuing to teach and write books.

Ram Dass's parents were Gertrude and George Alpert, a lawyer in Boston.

Ram Dass considered himself an atheist during his early life.

Ram Dass achieved a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Tufts University in 1952.

Ram Dass's father had wanted him to go to medical school, but while at Tufts he decided to study psychology instead.

Ram Dass specialized in human motivation and personality development, and published his first book Identification and Child Rearing.

Neem Karoli Baba gave Alpert the name "Ram Dass", which means "servant of God", referring to the incarnation of God as Ram or Lord Rama.

Ram Dass had helped Steve Durkee and Barbara Durkee co-found the countercultural, spiritual community in 1967, and it had an ashram dedicated to Ram Dass's guru.

Ram Dass founded the Hanuman Foundation, a nonprofit educational and service organization that initiated the Prison-Ashram Project, in 1974.

Ram Dass co-founded the Seva Foundation by joining with health-care workers to treat the blind in India, Nepal, and developing countries.

Ram Dass helped create the Dying Project with its Executive Director Dale Borglum, whom he had met in India.

Ram Dass served on the faculty of the Metta Institute where he provided training on mindful and compassionate care of the dying.

At 60 years of age, Ram Dass began exploring Judaism seriously for the first time.

Leary and Ram Dass, who had grown apart after Ram Dass denounced Leary in a 1974 news conference, reconciled in 1983 at Harvard, and reunited before Leary's death in May 1996.

In February 1997, Ram Dass had a stroke that left him with expressive aphasia, which he interpreted as an act of grace.

Ram Dass continued to make public appearances and to give talks at small venues; held retreats in Maui; and continued to teach through live webcasts.

In 2013, Ram Dass released a memoir and summary of his teaching, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart.

Ram Dass died on December 22,2019, at the age of 88.

At 78, Ram Dass learned that he had fathered a son as a 24-year-old at Stanford during a brief relationship with history major Karen Saum, and that he was now a grandfather.