Ram Dass Lecture

Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert, was a spiritual guru and crucial figure in the early research of psychedelics alongside Timothy Leary in the 1960s–70s. In the early 70s, he gave a lecture at the Art Institute of Chicago. He began by mentioning a recent interaction with Sidney Cohen with whom he had co-authored the book LSD (1966). Ram Dass discussed being on a panel with Cohen about substance use in Washington D.C. and the ongoing tension between the desire to pursue mind expanding journeys through psychedelics and the opposing government control.

For their book, Ram Dass and Cohen searched through two hundred images at Leary’s place. In Ram Dass’s account, Cohen deliberately selected images that depicted “bad trips,” while he chose more peaceful and tranquil pictures. Despite the different choices, they landed on an image that showed a puddle of Coca-Cola. Cohen’s moral was how substance could lead to the loss of the significance of life; to Ram Dass, “In the spilled Coca-Cola, it’s the entire universe.” The ability of psychedelics to expand perception and examine identities introspectively became the central theme of the SAIC lecture.

Ram Dass then talked about his upbringing and family background. As the son of the president of the New Haven Railroad, he took part in the railroad business in his early twenties though he knew nothing about it. He saw corruption and power working with a structure that had over 17,000 employees. Breaking through this familial obligation, he eventually fled into academia, and held a short-lived professorship at Harvard. 

Due to his controversial studies on the therapeutic uses of psychedelics with Leary, he was dismissed by Harvard University in 1963. Criticizing the rationality and bureaucracy of educational institutions on hindering mind-expansion, he paraphrased an original quote from William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience that was displayed on the office’s hallway: 

“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

To further exemplify how psychedelics expand consciousness, Ram Dass used a timely comparison between perception and television broadcasting. He compared different consciousnesses or realities to tuning into different channels across different wavelengths. He reminds the audience that the perception of one particular channel does not exclude the existence of other possibilities. One needs to be on the same channel to perceive information available to that plane. Therefore every type of reality is valid. The ultimate goal of a person is to fulfill one’s purpose through all manifestations.

As a spiritually enlightened person, Ram Dass recognized the importance of delving into one’s true purpose, instead of indulging in any prescribed identities assigned through social norms. He quoted Timothy: “Dig your legend, dig your legendary role, figure out who you really are.” 

According to Ram Dass, the so-called self-identity is a cement cage where any label is just an illusion. To fulfill one’s purpose, one should pursue oneness and interrelatedness of all things. One way to become unstuck from expectations and illusions is by surrendering. As Ram Dass said: “As long as you think you have to be who you thought you were, you keep turning it off. The game is surrendering who you thought you are in order to become whoever you are.”

This conversation goes deeper and eventually lands on what artists truly are. Ram Dass believes that the arts share a strong connection with spirituality and divinity. The difference between a neurotic artist and a real artist is the real artist’s ability to “see inward and beyond.” The highest artists and musicians develop technical skills to a point where they surrender completely and just let their creations flow through into fruition. By tuning in and manifesting, artists become merely a vehicle for bringing into being a divine message for the greater good. As Ram Dass describes such an ascended master’s oeuvre: 

“then your art is THE ART, and your music is THE MUSIC, and your architecture, is THE ARCHITECTURE, and your speaking is THE SPEAKING; it’s no longer my speaking; it’s not my book in my head, it’s THE BOOK.”

–Gordon Dic-Lun Fung

For more information, visit the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive page. 

Date of recording is approximate.