“Scientists, theologians, mystics, swept up in a psychic revolution,” ran a headline in Life.Ĭollege kids, too, were swept up - many of them undergraduates and minors. Their fascination with psychedelics, or drugs that produce hallucination, infected the whole country. What linked them inextricably in the public imagination was their masterminding of the famous psychedelic drugĬolette Dowling, author of “How to Love a Member of the Opposite Sex: A Memoir,” writes about today's cultural scene. Leary was, at least superficially, handsome. Alpert was the tall, gangly one with the razor‐short crew cut and the black‐frame glasses. As if they were a single entity, like Judith Rossner's Siamese twins. In those days, it was as if the two men were attached. Maybe what you remember is Richard-Alpert-and-TimothyLeary. I have looked into the story of Ram Dass‐Richard Alpert because his bizarre personal history is not unrelated to the more orthodox lives of other leaders we have chosen in recent years, and because I think our reasons for continuing to believe in fallen heroes - sometimes against the bitterest odds - tells us something important about who we are. Some of the things he has to say here will no doubt distress these followers. There are still those who out and out worship him, who revere his photographs and bring him flowers. Many thousands, experiencing the chaos, looked to a man they called Baba Ram Dass to tell them what to believe and how to live. It's about his most recent fall.Īs a country, we have been through such ripping change that we are still not sure what happened to us in the 60's, or why, or what it means for us now, in the 70's, and in the future. It's about his being fired from Harvard, in the 60's, for giving hallucinogens to undergraduates and lying to the administration about it, only to rise to a position of near‐sainthood as a guru to the New Age Generation. II is a story that up to now has been told merely in part, and then only in small‐circulation “movement” journals.
The story I am about to tell is of Ram Dass‐Richard Alpert, a man who has been through two different personalities in the last decade, who has been a cultural leader both times around, and who, in spite of blatant errors along the way, seems to be on the verge of stepping out a third time.
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