Books: Being Ram Dass

Ram Dass shares his journey from privileged child to renegade Harvard psychedelics researcher to beloved spiritual icon, set against a backdrop of sweeping cultural change. Perhaps no other teacher has sparked the fires of as many spiritual seekers in the west as Ram Dass. While many know of his transformation from Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert to psychedelic and spiritual icon, Ram Dass tells here for the first time the full arc of his remarkable life. Being Ram Dass begins at the moment he was fired from Harvard for giving drugs to an undergraduate. Populated by a cast of luminaries ranging from Timothy Leary to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Allen Ginsberg to Jack Kornfield, Aldous Huxley to Charles Mingus—this intimate memoir chronicles Ram Dass's experience of the cultural and spiritual transformations that resonate with us to this day.