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 simply as "Servant of God" for Western audiences.

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 earned 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 called his new guru "Maharaj-ji", and studied with him the following four years.

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.

In 1978, Ram Dass co-founded the Seva Foundation with public health leader Larry Brilliant and humanitarian activist Wavy Gravy.

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.

Timothy 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.

Ram Dass explored Judaism seriously for the first time when he was 60 years old.

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

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

Ram Dass did not leave the Hawaiian Islands until July 2019, when he attended the consecration of a new Hanuman Mandir in Taos, New Mexico, on July 13,2019, after which he returned to Hawaii and continued to make public appearances and to give talks at small venues; held retreats in Maui; and continued to teach through live webcasts.

Ram Dass died in Maui, 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.