Times Article

[Guest guest]

The Dass Effect

 

After a near-fatal stroke, the spiritual leader Ram Dass is

back -- this time guiding baby boomers to the enlightenment

of age. By SARA DAVIDSON

 

Related Site

Official Ram Dass Site

 

 

full moon was

rising on a

windy winter night

three years ago when

Ram Dass was lying

in bed in San

Anselmo, Calif.,

trying to fix a book

he was writing on

aging and dying. He

was 65, his hair had

turned white and he

had spent hundreds

of hours working

with people who

were severely ill. He

had completed a

draft of the book,

"Still Here" (to be

published by

Riverhead this

month), but on that

same day in 1997, his editor, Amy Hertz, had sent the draft

back to him.

She said it was "too glib -- funny and interesting but not

really getting to

the heart of the matter."

 

As he lay in bed, Ram Dass wrestled with how he might reach

deeper

and make growing old seem visceral and immediate rather than

distant

and speculative. He asked himself what people fear most about

aging:

being sick, mentally impaired, totally dependent, nodding in a

wheelchair.

He closed his eyes and tried to feel how it would be to have a

body that

was failing -- legs that wouldn't move when cued -- and a mind

that

couldn't recall simple facts, when the phone rang. He stood up

to answer

it and his legs gave out from under him. Hours later, he awoke

in

intensive care and found himself paralyzed from a stroke -- an

event that

might be viewed as one of the more extreme examples of

receiving what

you need to complete your book.

 

The doctors said the cerebral hemorrhage had been so massive

that he

probably wouldn't survive. The news was passed from friend to

friend:

"Ram Dass had a stroke. He can't move or speak and may not

live."

 

I had not seen or thought about Ram Dass in many years, but

the news

was jarring. This was the man who, as Richard Alpert, a

professor of

psychology, was fired from Harvard in 1963 for experimenting

with

psychedelic drugs with his colleague, Timothy Leary. This was

the man

who traveled to India and was renamed Ram Dass, servant of

God. His

book,Be Here Now," about his transformation from a "neurotic

Jewish

overachiever" to a white-robed yogi who had found inner peace,

sold

two million copies, struck a chord with legions of baby

boomers and

caused others to gnash their teeth, dismissing his ideas as

pretentious and

silly. People who read the book remember where they were when

they

first saw it or heard him speak. He was, above all, a master

at speaking,

a brilliant teacher and hilarious raconteur who could hold

thousands rapt.

That he couldn't speak, that he had been silenced by illness,

seemed a

cruel and wrenching fate.

 

A week after the stroke, however, Ram

Dass began to recover, and he embarked

on a long course of rehabilitation.

Last fall,

my friend Kathy Goodman, an art dealer

in

New York, asked me to come with her to

see Ram Dass at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. "He's

had a

stroke," I said. "He can't speak well." She shrugged. "Let's

go anyway."

 

By 7 p.m., more than 1,500 people had crowded into the synod

hall of

the cathedral. There was a sprinkling of young people with

pierced

tongues and eyebrows, but the majority were 40 or older:

stockbrokers,

editors, doctors, artists, teachers and record-company

executives. Many

had been out of touch for years, and there was a sense of

nostalgia and

poignancy, as at a reunion.

 

While people milled about the floor, Ram Dass was wheeled into

the hall

through a back door. His face was flushed with color, and he

had pulled

a jaunty baseball cap over his bald crown. He grasped the

handrail,

hoisted himself jerkily up six steps and into a second

wheelchair placed

on stage. The crowd rose and cheered. He motioned with his

left arm for

them to sit. His right side was still paralyzed, and his right

arm hung like a

bird's broken wing. "I want to say something." He opened his

mouth and

stopped, then smiled. "I'm . . . still here."

 

The crowd cheered again.

 

Ram Dass said the stroke had taught him to appreciate silence:

"In my

head there's a dressing room where my concepts become clothed

in

words. But that dressing room has been bombed out. I can have

clear

thoughts but no words for them, so when I speak, you'll see,

every once

in a while . . . silence." He invited the crowd to "play in

the silence" with

him, and for the next three hours, when he fell quiet, a

peacefulness

seemed to descend on the room as people relaxed with him.

 

Ram Dass said that he had spent many years working with the

dying,

sitting at their beds to help them face death without fear.

"I'd always

projected deep thoughts and profound experiences onto these

people,"

he said. But when he suffered the stroke, "they said I was

dying, and I

didn't have any profound spiritual thoughts. I was looking at

the pipes on

the ceiling. And I'm Mr. Spiritual!" The audience laughed.

"What this

showed me was: I still have work to do."

 

had last seen Ram Dass in 1973 when, after reading "Be Here

Now,"

I obtained an assignment to write a profile of him for

Esquire. The

article was rejected -- the editors found Ram Dass's ideas

"incomprehensible" -- and although the article was ultimately

published in

Ramparts, the left-leaning journal, I resolved not to write

further about

this subject. Yet there I was at the Cathedral of St. John the

Divine,

taking notes.

 

What had piqued my interest again was that in the 60's and

70's, Ram

Dass had been the man holding the lantern, marking the path,

first to mind

expansion and rebellion and then to the East. He had thumbed

his nose at

Harvard, given psilocybin to undergraduates and taken the

finest

academic credential one could attain and let it go. Six years

later, in

1969, a portion of the senior class at Harvard walked out on

their

graduation before receiving their diplomas in support of a

student strike

protesting the university's policies.

 

After being dismissed from Harvard -- to

the

chagrin of his father, George, who had

been

president of the New York, New Haven &

Hartford Railroad -- Alpert traveled

through

India until he met his guru, whom he calls

 

Maharajji. Alpert stayed with the guru for

a

year, returned to America as Ram Dass and

began giving talks about the spiritual

path.

During the years when "Be Here Now" was

circulating among people I knew, it seemed

 

that many were "on the path" or seriously

flirting with it. They were learning to

sit on a

meditation cushion or becoming vegetarians

 

and reading Sufi stories and running to

Chinatown for tai chi and to hear a

lecture by

R.D. Laing. As years passed, though, they

began eating meat again, working hard and

raising kids, and Ram Dass seemed to exist

in

a quaint side pocket.

 

During the 80's, when the country was caught up in a fever of

accumulating wealth, when walking out on your Harvard

commencement

would have been seen as an act of lunacy, Ram Dass urged

people to

engage in selfless service. I heard reports that he was

working with the

homeless, setting up a hospice for dying people and helping to

start the

Seva Foundation to treat the blind in third-world countries.

He published

six more books, but for the most part, he was off the cultural

radar

screen until the stroke.

 

He completed "Still Here" at the very moment when aging and

departure

had become a growth subject. "Baby boomers are getting old,"

Ram

Dass says. "Mick Jagger is getting old. I'm learning how to

get old for

them." In the book, he describes growing old as an opportunity

to reach

for wisdom, contentment and a deeper connection to the soul.

He writes

not from theory but from the viewpoint of someone who is

sitting in a

wheelchair and needs a caretaker to help him get out of bed,

wash and

shave, put on his clothes and cut his food.

 

When I flew to San Francisco

to meet with Ram Dass, I

wondered, Hadn't he struggled

with bouts of rage, self-pity,

frustration or despair? He will

never be able to play the cello

again or drive his car or hit a

golf ball. He suffers continual

pain, particularly in his right

arm, and also has high blood

pressure, gout and apnea,

which requires him to sleep

hooked up to a respiratory

machine so that he won't stop breathing. Hasn't he cried out,

as the

respirator beeps and blinks through the night, Why did this

happen?

 

To my surprise, he addressed these questions when he gave the

keynote

talk at a conference on body and soul, organized by the Omega

Institute,

a spiritual retreat center. In the grand ballroom of the Hyatt

Regency in

San Francisco, Ram Dass told 2,000 people that after the

stroke,

"everyone saw me as a victim of a terrible illness. But what

happened to

my body was far less frightening than what happened to my

soul. The

stroke wiped out my faith. It took me so far from my guru that

I felt my

oxygen cord had been cut." Ram Dass's guru died in 1973, but

Ram

Dass maintained through the years that he could still feel his

"closeness."

 

Ram Dass held up his left arm. "Over here, I have my guru.

He's

compassionate, and he promised he would shower me with grace."

Ram

Dass moved his hand to the other side of his body. "And here I

have a

stroke." He sawed his hand from side to side. "Grace . . .

stroke. I

couldn't put the two together. Then I thought, maybe the

stroke is a form

of grace, and I hunted for that: how could the stroke be seen

as grace?"

In the following months, he said, he began to look at the

effects of the

stroke. He had become more humble and more compassionate, he

had

been forced to slow down and he had learned what it was to be

dependent instead of being the one who helps. "The stroke was

giving me

lessons, advanced lessons," he said. "It brought me into my

soul, and

that's grace." He dropped his left hand. "Fierce grace."

 

Later, sitting in his room with his caretaker and secretary,

Ram Dass said

this was the first time he had "dared to speak publicly about

my loss of

faith." He frowned, rubbing his left hand over the stricken

right arm. "My

faith was that my guru was compassionate. God is

compassionate. And I

had a stroke -- something that everyone around me saw as bad:

'Poor

Ram Dass."'

 

Marlene Roeder, who has been Ram Dass's secretary for 11

years, said,

"That's when you told us to remove Maharajji's picture from

your room."

Ram Dass nodded and said, "Because when I looked at the

picture, it

reminded me of what had been shattered."

 

It was Roeder and her friend Jo Anne Baughan who found Ram

Dass on

the floor of his bedroom and camped out in the hospital while

the doctors

were saying he wouldn't live. After a week, one doctor gave

Ram Dass a

test to determine the extent of his aphasia -- the loss of the

power to

access words. The doctor held up a pen. "What do we call

this?" Ram

Dass said, "Pen." The doctor pointed to his wristwatch, and

Ram Dass

said, "Watch." Then the doctor held out his necktie. Ram Dass

stared at

it.

 

"What do we call this?"

 

"Shmatta," Ram Dass said.

 

Roeder and Baughan burst out laughing. Ram Dass had used the

Yiddish

word, suggesting that the necktie was a cheap rag. The doctor

looked

shocked and walked out of the room. "It was so outrageous and

so Ram

Dass," Roeder said. "That was the moment we knew: he's all

there."

 

Ram Dass spent months in therapy -- physical, speech and

aquatic --

learning strategies to communicate and to re-enter the world.

Friends

noticed a marked change in his personality after the stroke.

The

arrogance, the edge, the judgmental waspishness he had

sometimes

displayed were gone. Elizabeth Lesser, a cofounder of Omega,

said: "He

became much sweeter and softer. As a friend, I felt very loved

by him

and understood on a deep level." Dr. Andrew Weil, the advocate

of

natural healing, said: "In the past, I was a little

mistrustful; I wasn't sure I

believed him completely. Now, as a result of the stroke, I

feel he really

does have something to teach us."

 

When Ram Dass was able to speak with his editor, his first

words were,

"I see what you meant about the book being glib." He said the

stroke had

given him "respect for the extreme suffering and vulnerability

that can

come with age." In revising the book, he wanted to show people

how to

use spiritual tools like meditation and staying fully present

in the moment

to ease the suffering. If people find their memories failing,

for example,

Ram Dass says, "It's amazing how little of the past you need

for a present

moment."

 

Ram Dass had introduced many of the spiritual techniques in

"Be Here

Now" when he wrote about detaching from the ego and dwelling

in the

soul. But "Be Here Now" was written in the flush of discovery.

"When I

wrote that book, I thought I could blow down the door with

concepts,"

Ram Dass says. "In 'Still Here,' I bow to the formidable . . .

solidness of

the door." He laughs. "But my spiritual resources are also

more

formidable."

 

Despite the slow speech and poor word retrieval, Ram Dass

still has the

power to amuse and fire a crowd. After he spoke at Omega, the

organizers wanted to whisk him out the back so he wouldn't be

swamped, but he pointed to the lobby. "I want to talk . . .

people."

 

The crowd surrounded his wheelchair, kneeling to hug and thank

him.

Ram Dass smiled and patted his heart. "Boy, oh, boy," one

woman told

him. "I work with stroke survivors, and I want to bring them

the

inspiration you've given me." Ram Dass couldn't speak now;

tears started

from his eyes. A man who was an insurance salesman said,

"Thank you

for always being one step ahead." Ram Dass laughed through the

tears.

"I'm a wheel ahead."

 

he next morning, I visited Ram Dass in his room after his

caretaker

had dressed him in a brown sweater, tan slacks,

rose-colored

socks and scuffed brown shoes. Ram Dass held up a plastic bag

containing medical marijuana. "This is why I could speak the

way I did

yesterday. In California, the stroke is incredible grace

because it gives me

a prescription to buy pot." He took out a joint that had been

rolled for

him. "Pot takes away the pain and frees me from spasticity."

As he

smoked, I watched the fingers of his right fist uncurl and the

hand relax.

"And then there are side benefits." He laughed. "It provides .

.. .

perspective about the illness. The ego's view is, 'Oh, I've

had a stroke,

this is horrible!' But the pot takes you to the soul view

which is. . . ." He

pretended to look down from a distance. "My, what an

interesting

occurrence.' The marijuana gives me soul perspective. It makes

the

stroke livable."

 

I was somewhat startled to hear him speak this way because in

his

lectures he had often told people that once they began to

meditate, they

wouldn't need to use drugs to attain higher states of

consciousness.

 

Ram Dass said he refuses to be held to anything he has said

before. In

"Still Here," he quotes Gandhi as saying that only God has

access to

absolute truth: "My understanding of truth can change from day

to day.

And my commitment must be to truth rather than to

consistency."

 

He is careful not to smoke around other religious teachers

"because it's

not spiritually correct." Deepak Chopra, the author of "How to

Know

God," said in an interview that "recurrent use of psychedelics

is

dangerous" and that it is possible to attain the same shifts

in awareness by

"going into deep meditation."

 

Ram Dass said, "That's true." He held up the bag of marijuana.

"But pot

works faster."

 

This shape-shifting and willingness to break ranks with

colleagues have

long been trademarks of Ram Dass. He appears to be the

spiritually

focused, grace-imbued survivor of a stroke and then, as if

with a turn of

the prism, he is the inveterate tripper. "I'm a mixed

message," he said.

 

After the conference on body and soul, he was driven across

the Bay

Bridge to Berkeley for a friend's party. His caretaker helped

him out of

the car and set up the walker so Ram Dass could negotiate,

painfully

slowly, the two steps up to the front door.

 

Jerry Brown, the mayor of Oakland who was formerly governor of

 

California and also a Jesuit seminarian, headed straight for

Ram Dass. "I

saw you in the 60's in San Francisco," Brown said. "You were

Richard

Alpert, and you held up a little blue pill and said, 'With

this pill, you can

have a vision of Jesus Christ!"'

 

Ram Dass laughed. "Did I say that?"

 

"I don't think I made it up," the mayor responded. "I asked,

'Where do

you get that pill,' and you said, 'Mexico."'

 

Ram Dass wagged a finger at Brown. "If you'd taken it, you

would be a

different person today."

 

Ram Dass spoke about the pull he feels toward silence and

contemplation. "Talking keeps you in your mind," Ram Dass

said.

"Silence is the royal road to God. Silence prepares you for

death."

 

Yet Ram Dass has committed himself to a hectic schedule of

speeches.

In March, he flew to New York for a conference on the art of

dying,

sponsored by Tibet House and the Open Center. Robert Thurman,

the

pre-eminent Tibetan scholar who knew Alpert at Harvard and

whose

wife, Nena, was formerly married to Timothy Leary, introduced

Ram

Dass as "our astronaut, our psychonaut, who went first."

Later, Thurman

said that in the 60's, "Leary was leading people toward doom.

Ram Dass

found a more responsible way to encourage people to go on

vision

quests. He also pushed them into service so they weren't being

 

self-indulgent. That was crucial."

 

Ram Dass spoke at the conference about the need to make dying

a

"sacred ritual" and to create environments where people can

prepare for

death with caretakers "who are not afraid and are not

pretending that it's

not happening." He showed a film taken of him and Timothy

Leary

shortly before Leary died of prostate cancer. Leary looks

gaunt and

ashen, yet his eyes still hold an impish mad glint. Sitting on

cushions,

Leary says, "When I knew I was dying and wanted to do it

actively and

creatively, I called Ram Dass because I knew he'd understand."

Leary

had planned that after his death, his brain would be frozen

and the rest of

his body would be placed in a space capsule that would orbit

the earth.

 

Ram Dass, filmed the year before his stroke, wears a lavender

shirt and

sits cross-legged beside Leary. "If you see death as the

moment when

you engage the deepest mystery of the universe, then you

prepare for that

moment," Ram Dass says. "That's what the Eastern traditions

are about

-- preparing you so that you'll be open, curious, equanimous,

not clinging

to the past. You'll just be present, moment by moment."

 

He turns to Leary with a grin and hugs him. "It's been a hell

of a dance,

hasn't it?"