Ram Dass & Timothy Leary So, this section of Death, Dying, and the Beyond is goi

Ram Dass & Timothy Leary
So, this section of Death, Dying, and the Beyond is going to be a look into the works of two former Harvard psychologists, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. In the 1960s, these two guys (especially Leary) were synonymous with the counter-culture movement (or, the “hippies”). There are many colourful stories about these guys. Leary has even been immortalized in a couple of classic rock songs: “The Seeker” (by The Who) and “Timothy Leary” and “Legend of a Mind” (by The Moody Blues). He famously experimented with psychedelic mushrooms, mescaline, and then LSD. He (and Alpert) both thought that certain psychedelics held a wonderful potential for therapeutic work in psychiatry. So, while I am neither advocating nor condemning their approach, what I would like you to focus on is what these guys thought they gleaned from psychedelics, especially with regard to facing death. Oh, I forgot to mention . . . in case you were wondering, “Yeah, okay, but who the heck is Ram Dass?” Well, Ram Dass is Richard Alpert. Alpert went over to India and became the disciple of a guru there. Ram Dass is the name his teacher gave him. Ram Dass broke with Leary at some point. Leary doubled down on his drug use/explorations while for Ram, that path was pretty well played out. The two reconciled in the end and this documentary Dying to Know is one of the last meetings between the two friends as Timothy was dying of prostate cancer. Timothy Leary died in 1996 and Ram Dass died in 2019. the documentary: Dying to Know I was able to find a link that does have the entire movie (below). You will likely get a few distracting pop-ups (I got some dude speaking Italian that came up twice?!) but on the third try, the movie played.
https://denhout.monster/movies/play/dying-to-know-ram-dass-timothy-leary-2014?mid=17&sid=&sec=d04477fe526bd53e150c70fe16894f7c649efd68&t=1668705268
Listen to these podcasts: https://www.ramdass.org/journey-to-the-east/#more-20513

Ram Dass – Here and Now – Ep. 176 – Loving & Dying

Paper assignment: I’m going to kind of let you address this paper pretty much as you wish, provided you give me something that is 2-3 pages in length and germane to this course. I imagine for many of you, these guys were pretty interesting characters (Timothy Leary died in 1996 and Ram Dass died in 2019) and they must have given you a lot to think about? Some of you might have heard about some fairly recent experiments that have been done with administering mushrooms to terminal patients under controlled environments? In most cases, the findings seem to be overwhelmingly positive with the dying people reporting back that they felt a loss of anxiety and fear of dying after having tripped on mushrooms (check this page out. They even reference Timothy Leary and talk about Harvard University conducting some of these experiments! Talk about coming full circle, huh? https://maps.org/news/multimedia-library/3012-how-psychedelic-drugs-can-help-patients-face-death ). When I think about that, I remember what Ram Dass said about being an avowed atheist until he experienced psychedelics. Clearly, there is something about the psychedelic experience that forces a shift or a change in how we perceive our Self in relation to Reality. Remember that part of the Indian Worldview is the belief that the true nature of things is hidden by the world of appearances.