"Ram Dass’s father, George Alpert, was a lawyer who had been president of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. He and his fiancée, Phyllis, were often at the house when I came up to visit Ram Dass in Franklin. They were extraordinarily hospitable, and I felt like extended family. Clearly Ram Dass’s new manifestation had left them at a loss after his career at Harvard, but they loved who he had become, and they didn’t really care why. George continued to call him Richard and seemed bemused by the assortment of mostly young people who kept turning up. It was all a bit of a mystery, but the love had infected them too.
Although he was mostly a hermit that year, in 1967 Ram Dass also gave a talk at the Bucks County Seminar House in Pennsylvania. In Franklin, along with his daily sadhana, or spiritual practice, he worked on a manuscript about his experience in India. In the winter of 1967–68 he gave an extended series of talks at a sculpture studio on the East Side of Manhattan. The same people showed up night after night, often with friends. Others were beginning to be affected by the extraordinary energy and presence that accompanied his talks.
Ram Dass spoke with self-deprecating humor, using his own missteps as counterpoint to the intensely serious journey he was illuminating. His self-revealing honesty in facing his personal demons and his delight in the absurdity of a Harvard psychologist encountering Eastern mysticism became hallmarks of his presentations. He linked his psychedelic drug experiences, which many of us had experienced by then, to the dissolution of the ego in Eastern philosophy. And he used his encounter with the guru as a model for attaining the higher consciousness he now saw as the goal, enlightenment.
Soon after graduation from college in 1969 I was drafted and called in for a physical. Bearded and hirsute, I stood in my underwear with a string of prayer beads repeating a Hindu mantra during the entire day of prodding and poking. The psychologist was the last station along the line, and by the time I arrived at his station I had been praying with such intensity I could hardly see. The psychologist, who looked as though he was unhappily doing his alternative service himself, disqualified me. I was put in a 1-Y and later a 4-F classification, which meant unfit for service. That left me free to join the young people, students, hippies, flower children, and others who had heard Ram Dass in person or by word of mouth and were arriving at the driveway in Franklin. My younger brother and sister went to the rock festival at Woodstock while I meditated at yogi camp with Ram Dass.
Outdoor weekend darshans, spiritual gatherings with Ram Dass, evolved under a tree in the yard, with George’s gracious permission, into summer camp. We were a ragtag group of twenty to thirty on an “Inward Bound”adventure. Tent platforms and a darshan house went up in the woods above the farm, and Sufi dances and yoga classes were held on George’s beloved three-hole golf course. Group meditations and yoga were part of the daily schedule, as Ram Dass sought to transfer his experience in India to this motley cadre of would-be yogis. We made up with enthusiasm and love for what we lacked in disciplined renunciation. By summer’s end the weekend crowd under the trees numbered in the hundreds. Some of the campers were like ships passing in the night, some have perished, and others are still in touch, now grandparents...
As we arrived K.K. said, “Maharaj-ji, they are here now.”Maharaj-ji said, “Feed them,”and sent a bunch of bananas. It was a good sign. We were asked to take prasad, food. We sat down to piles of spicy potatoes and puris, deep-fried bread, on leaf plates. I ate three mounds of potatoes and seventeen puris. After eating, K.K. brought us to where Maharaj-ji was sitting on a wooden tukhat, or bed, in his “office.”There was no hesitation, no unfamiliarity. Maharaj-ji told K.K., “They are good persons.”K.K., who was glad the newcomers were being treated so well, replied without missing a beat, “I never bring bad people to you.”Everyone laughed, and he proceeded to interpret for us. Maharaj-ji said we came from good families, and he played a bit with our clothing. Later we went back to Nainital to stay at a family hotel owned by K.K.’s cousins and were permitted to come back to the ashram every few days.
Meeting Maharaj-ji was a total flashback to that first night at Wesleyan. The feeling inside was the same, the same figure-ground reversal; I became a speck floating in the ocean of existence instead of the focal point of my own egocentric universe. Maharaj-ji’s overflowing love and affection made me feel completely safe. I was soaking it up like a sponge. Though I was meeting him for the first time, I felt as if I had known him and he had known me forever. I had come home, to a real home in the heart, to a family that transcended blood relationship."
- Be Love Now
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