{"id":111,"date":"2010-12-16T07:29:01","date_gmt":"2010-12-16T07:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mindfulnessmatters\/2010\/12\/teachers-and-talks-ram-dass.html"},"modified":"2010-12-16T07:29:01","modified_gmt":"2010-12-16T07:29:01","slug":"teachers-and-talks-ram-dass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mindfulnessmatters\/2010\/12\/teachers-and-talks-ram-dass.html","title":{"rendered":"Teachers and Talks: Ram Dass"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ram Dass, aka, Richard Alpert, a nice Jewish boy from Brookline Massacusetts becomes the voice of a generation. There are few who have done more to introduce the East to the West. Author of the million copy selling, Be Here Now <\/i>and many other books, including the recently published Be Love Now<\/i>. Ram Dass teaches us how to love with gentleness. <\/p>\n

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As Richard Alpert, he is infamous for being fired from the Harvard psychology, along with Timothy Leary, for liberal experimentation with LSD in the early 1960s. His mind opened by experimentation with psychedelic drugs, he eventually wound up in India studying with the guru Neem Karoli Baba and then returning to America to become a guru himself, donning white robes, beads, and a scraggly grey beard. <\/div>\n
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Ram Dass has always been fresh and honest in his talking and writing. I remember one talk where he confessed to being just as neurotic now thirty years after he started meditating. However, he’d changed his relationship to that neurosis. He invoked the visitation metaphor that now when his demons come to visit he invites them in for tea instead of being overwhelmed by them and pushed around. <\/p>\n
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Some years ago he “suffered” a stroke that left him paralyzed and speech impaired. It described the experience as being “stroked” by god, finding grace in the experience. <\/div>\n
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In this brief video he says, “I”m living in my perception, you’re living in your perception, and we’re both living in god’s perception” pointing to the interconnectedness of everything. <\/div>\n
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