The transmission
Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert, was a Harvard psychologist who, with Timothy Leary, ran the Harvard Psilocybin Project before both were dismissed in 1963.
Where Leary pushed psychedelics outward into political provocation, Alpert traveled to India, met his guru Neem Karoli Baba, and returned as Ram Dass, channeling the psychedelic insight into a Hindu-inflected devotional spirituality.
His 1971 book Be Here Now became a counterculture bible, translating altered-state realizations into accessible teachings on presence, service, and love that reached far beyond drug users. Ram Dass’s pivotal role in the mind-power lineage is the pivot itself: he turned the psychedelic discovery that consciousness is malleable and that ordinary reality is a constructed “tunnel” toward a sustainable, drug-optional path of meditation and devotion.
He concluded that psychedelics could “show you the room but couldn’t let you stay there,” routing a generation from chemistry toward contemplative practice. This psychedelic-to-meditation pipeline, and his emphasis on present-moment awareness as the gateway to a different experienced reality, deeply shaped the mindfulness, presence, and devotional currents of modern New Age spirituality.
What they gave
“Be Here Now”: Distilled altered-state insight into a mass-accessible teaching of present-moment awareness.
- Psychedelic-to-meditation pivot: Routed the consciousness movement from drugs toward sustainable contemplative practice.
- Devotional bridge: Fused Hindu bhakti with Western seeker culture, shaping New Age spirituality.
- Presence as reality-shift: Framed shifting attention to the now as a way to inhabit a different experienced reality.
In their words
You can’t maintain these new kinds of structures. It takes a while to realize that God can empty garbage.
Instantly, with this recognition, I felt a new kind of calmness — one of a profundity never experienced before.
I have a practice in which I say to myself, I am loving awareness.
This practice of I am loving awareness turns you inward toward the soul. If you dive deep enough into your soul, you will come to God.
As I did spiritual practices, I began to witness my own mind from inside. I was aware of my eyes seeing, aware of feelings in my body.
We all fear suffering. People find the world scary because they become overwhelmed by the suffering around them, their own and everybody else’s.
We’re all just walking each other home.
When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru, speaking to you.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: The Harvard Psilocybin Project; Timothy Leary; Neem Karoli Baba and Hindu bhakti; Aldous Huxley.
- Influenced: 1970s spiritual counterculture; mindfulness and presence movements; the psychedelic-to-meditation pipeline; modern devotional New Age practice.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Be Here Now1971
- Grist for the Mill1977
- Still Here2000