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Ram Dass - World-Renowned Industry Leader
Ram Dass Quick Facts
Main Areas: Spirituality; Hindu and Buddhist Spiritual PracticesBest Sellers: “Be Here Now” (over 1 million copies sold)
Career Focus: Author; Spiritual Figure; Psychologist
Affiliation: The Ram Dass Tape Library Foundation
Ram Dass is a beloved spiritual figure, who teaches and promotes service in ecology, socially-conscious business practices, and care for the dying. Born in 1931, he studied psychology in school, specializing in human motivation and personality development. After receiving an M.A. from Wesleyan and a Ph.D. from Stanford, Dass served on the psychology faculties at Stanford and the University of California.
From 1958 to 1963, Dass taught and did research at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, as well as in Harvard’s Department of Social Relations. In 1961, he explored human consciousness and collaborated with professionals like Timothy Leary to research psilocybin, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals. Because of the controversial nature of this research, Dass was dismissed from Harvard in 1963.
Four years later, Dass traveled to India, where he studied yoga and meditation. There he met his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and received the name Ram Dass, which means “servant of God.” Since 1968, he has pursued a variety of spiritual practices, including guru kripa, devotional yoga focused on the Hindu spiritual figure Hanuman, karma yoga, and Sufi and Jewish studies. His book, Be Here Now, is a great spiritual classic of the 20th century.
Other Programs & Highlights
The Ram Dass Tape Library contains about 1,200 audiotapes of Ram Dass’s lectures, workshops, and retreats recorded over the last four decades. The Ram Dass Tape Library Foundation ensures that his ongoing teachings are recorded and preserved.
Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Ram Dass
• You work on yourself, spiritually, as an offering to your fellow beings. Because, until you have cultivated that quality of peace, love, joy, presence, honesty, and truth, all of your acts are colored by your attachments.
• It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.
• Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.
• The intellect is a beautiful servant but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity.
• You must come to see every human being including yourself, as an incarnation in the body or personality, going through a certain life experience which is functional.
• Being conscious is cutting through your own melodrama and being right here. Exist in no mind, be empty, here now, and trust that as a situation arises, out of you will come what is necessary to deal with that situation, including the use of your intellect when appropriate.
• Your intellect need not be constantly held on to to keep reassuring you that you know where you’re at, out of fear of loss of control.
• If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.
• Ultimately, when you stop identifying so much with your physical body and with your psychological entity, that anxiety starts to disintegrate.
Getting Started With Ram Dass
The best place to get started with Ram Dass is to read his first book, Be Here Now, which has become a classic spiritual guide after being published in 1971. Be Here Now is the book that introduced a generation of Westerners to the teachings of the East. In it, he describes how he went from Harvard professor Richard Alpert (his original name) to Ram Dass, a devotee of Neem Caroli Baba.
Dass takes us on his personal journey that includes the mind-expanding powers of LSD, his trip to India, and his experiences with Neem Caroli Baba. The book is broken up into several sections including “Journey: The Transformation: Dr. Richard Alpert, Ph.D. Into Baba Ram Dass,” “From Bindu to Ojas: The Core Book,” and “The Cookbook for a Sacred Life: A Manual for Conscious Being.”
In “The Cookbook for a Sacred Life,” Dass introduces you to the basics of Hindu religion, in which he presents information on a whole range of concepts and practices having to do with yoga postures, meditation, renunciation, dying, and sexual energy. As for Dass’s other works, I recommend his most up-to-date book, Still Here, in which he shares the new wisdom he has gained through his own aging.
Contacting Ram Dass
ADDRESS: The Ram Dass Tape Library
524 San Anselmo Avenue, #203
San Anselmo, CA 94960
PHONE: (415) 499-8587
WEBSITE: www.ramdasstapes.org
