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Baba Ram Dass Dies at Age 88

Journal by takyon

Baba Ram Dass, Proponent of LSD and New Age Enlightenment, Dies at 88

Baba Ram Dass, who epitomized the 1960s of legend by popularizing psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary, a fellow Harvard academic, before finding spiritual inspiration in India, died on Sunday at his home on Maui, Hawaii. He was 88.

His death was announced on his official Instagram account.

Having returned from India as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru, Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert, became a peripatetic lecturer on New Age possibilities and a popular author of more than a dozen inspirational books.

The first of his books, “Be Here Now” (1971), sold more than two million copies and established him as an exuberant exponent of finding salvation through helping others.

He started a foundation to combat blindness in India and Nepal, supported reforestation in Latin America, and developed health education programs for American Indians in South Dakota.

Also at Wikipedia, BBC, and NPR.

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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 23 2019, @09:27PM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 23 2019, @09:27PM (#935633) Journal

    From the say-his-name-fast Dept.

    OUCH!

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @09:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @09:56PM (#935649)

      OUCH!

      That's what he said!

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @11:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 23 2019, @11:08PM (#935679)

    Thanks for posting, Be Here Now was a favorite when I was in college in the mid-70s. Oddly enough, Junior Johnson just died as well, also 88, see http://www.autoextremist.com/the-line1/2019/12/13/december-18-2019.html [autoextremist.com] for one of many obits.

    Junior was another kind of hero...

    Johnson won the second running of the Daytona 500 in 1960, then added two more triumphs in NASCAR's premier race as a car owner in 1969 and ’77. His all-out style — honed from years of hauling illegal liquor at breakneck speeds through the North Carolina foothills — took a toll on his competitors and his own equipment, earning him a reputation as the hardest of the hard chargers. Johnson was also known as the Wilkes County Wildman and heralded as “The Last American Hero,” after a brilliant 1965 essay in Esquire by author Tom Wolfe.

    Esquire has posted the original story which also helped to popularize Tom Wolfe and the "new journalism". Wolfe has the idea to mix the styles of fiction with the hard facts of the journalist. It's still a great piece of work, https://classic.esquire.com/article/1965/3/1/junior-johnson [esquire.com]

    I was lucky enough to work out of Junior's shop a couple of times. We ran some computer analysis in parallel with the development of a new race car and then were invited to the instrumented test to (partially) validate the model. He worked as hard as any of his people, maybe harder and was sharp as a tack. Nothing like the "aw shucks" image that NASCAR promoted.

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